"What do they have so far?"
"Not much. They know about where the shot came from. That's about it."
"No witnesses?"
"Not so far. You got some ideas?"
"Put it this way. How many people wouldn't like to see him cooled out?"
"No, no, let's be a little more candid here."
"My speculations aren't of much value these days."
"We're talking about Purcel."
"He was here earlier tonight."
"How much earlier?"
"Three hours."
"That'd give him time to get up there, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, it would."
"You think he did it, don't you?"
"Maybe."
"Well, ole Sal's on the other end of the stick now. I wonder how he's going to handle it."
"He'll bring in some more of his hired shitheads. I'm real tired, Dan, Is there anything else?"
"Stay clear of Purcel."
"You better tell that to the Dio family. I wouldn't want Clete I hunting me."
"I don't think these guys want advice from the DEA. It's not a federal situation, anyway. Sometimes you get to sit back and watch the show."
I went back to bed and slept until the sun came up bright in my eyes and I heard the Saturday morning sound of children roller-skating out on the sidewalk.
For one morning I didn't want to think about my troubles, so when the lady next door gave me a venison roast, Alafair and I packed my rucksack for a picnic, took Dixie Lee with us, and drove down into the Bitterroot Valley to Kootenai Creek Canyon. The sky was cloudless, a hard ceramic blue from the Sapphire Mountains all the way across the valley to the jagged, snow-tipped ridges of the Bitterroots. We walked two miles up a U.S. Forest Service trail by the stream-bed, the water white and boiling over the rocks, the floor of the canyon thick with cottonwoods and ponderosa pine, the layered rock walls rising straight up into saddles of more pine and peaks that were as sharp as ragged tin. The air was cool and so heavy with the smell of mist from the rocks, wet fern, pine needles, layers of dead cottonwood leaves, logs that had rotted into humus, that it was almost like breathing opium.
We climbed down the incline of the streambed and started a fire in a circle of rocks. The stream flattened out here, and the current flowed smoothly over some large boulders and spread into a quiet pool by the bank, where we set out cans of pop in the gravel to cool. I had brought along an old refrigerator grill, and I set it on the rocks over the fire, cut the venison into strips, put them on the grill with potatoes wrapped in tinfoil, then sliced up a loaf of French bread. The grease from the venison dripped into the fire, hissed and smoked in the wind, and because the meat was so lean it curled and browned quickly in the heat and I had to push it to the edge of the grill.
After we ate, Dixie Lee and Alafair found a pile of rocks that was full of chipmunks, and while they threw bread crumbs down into the crevices I walked farther down the stream and sat by a pool whose surface was covered by a white, swirling eddy of froth and leaves and spangled sunlight. Through the cottonwoods on the other side of the stream I could see the steep, moss-streaked cliff walls rise up straight into the sky.
Then a strange thing happened, because she had never appeared to me during the waking day. But I saw her face in the water, saw the sunlight spinning in her hair.
Don't give up, sailor, she said.
What?
You've had it worse. You always got out of it before.
When?
How about Vietnam?
I had the U.S. Army on my side.
Listen to the voices in the water and you'll be all right. I promise. Bye-bye, baby love.
Can't you stay a little longer?
But the wind blew the cottonwoods and the light went out of the water, and the pool turned to shadow and an empty pebble-and-sand bottom.
"Don't be down here talking to yourself, son," Dixie Lee said behind me.
"You'll give me cause to worry."
I didn't have to wait long to learn how Sally Dio would try to handle his new situation. He called me that evening at the house.
"I want a meet," he said.
"What for?"
"We talk some stuff out."
"I don't have anything to say to you."
"Look, man, this is going to get straightened out. One way or another. Right now."
"What have I got that you're interested in?"
"I ain't interested in anything you got. What's the matter with you? You got impacted shit in your head or something?"
"I'm busy tonight. Plus, I don't think I want to see you again, Sal."
I could almost hear his exasperation and anger in the silence.
"Look, I'm making an effort," he said.
"I'm going the extra mile. I don't have to do that. I can handle it other ways. But I'm treating you like a reasonable man."
I deliberately waited a good five seconds.
"Where?" I said.
"There's a bar and restaurant in Missoula, the Pink Zebra, right off Higgins by the river. It's in an alley, but it's a class place. Nine o'clock."
"I'll think it over."
"Listen, man" I hung up on him.
Later, I put the.45 back under the seat of the truck, dropped Alafair off at the baby-sitter's, then drove to the Pink Zebra downtown. It was located in a brick-paved alley that had been refurbished into a pedestrian walkway of small cafes and shops and bars that offered philodendron and brass elegance more than alcohol.
I went inside and walked past the espresso machines and a row of booths that had copper champagne buckets affixed to the outside. The brick walls and the ceiling were hung wich gleaming kettles and pots of ivy and fern, and in the back was a small private dining room, where I saw Sally Dio at a table with two men whom I hadn't seen before. But they came out of the same cookie cutter as some I had known in New Orleans. They were both around thirty, heavier than they should have been for their age, their tropical shirts worn outside their gray slacks, their necks hung with gold chains and religious medals, their pointed black shoes shined to the gloss of patent leather, their eyes as dead and level and devoid of emotion as someone staring into an empty closet.
I stopped at the door, and one of them stood up and approached me.
"If you'll step inside, Mr. Robicheaux, I need to make sure you're not carrying nothing that nobody wants here," he said.
"I don't think we'll do that," I said.
"It's a courtesy we ask of people. It's not meant to insult nobody," he said.
"Not tonight, podna."
"Because everybody's supposed to feel comfortable," he said.
"That way you have your drink, you talk, you're a guest, there ain't any tensions."
"What's it going to be, Sal?" I said.
He shook his head negatively at the man next to me, and the man stepped back as though his body were attached to a string.
Sal wore a cream-colored suit, black suspenders, and an open-necked purple sport shirt with white polka dots. His duck tails were combed back on the nape of his neck, and he smoked a cigarette without taking his hand from his mouth. He looked at me steadily out of his blade-face, his stare so intense that the bottom rim of his right eye twitched.
"Get the waiter," he said to the man who was standing.
"What are you having, Mr. Robicheaux?" the man said.
"Nothing."
He motioned the waiter to the door anyway.
"Bring a bottle of something nice for Mr. Dio's guest," he said.
"Bring Mr. Dio another Manhattan, too. You want anything else, Sal?"
Sal shook his head again, then motioned the two men out of the room. I sat down across the table from him. A half-dozen cigarette butts were in the ashtray, and ashes were smeared on the linen tablecloth. I could smell the heavy odor of nicotine on his breath. The looped scar under his right eye was tight against his skin.
"What the fuck's going on?" he said.
"What do you mean?"