"Thanks very much, Tess. Tell Jason I appreciate what he's done."
Alafair and I drove over to the Heidelhaus, a large Bavarian-style restaurant on the south side of town. The lunch crowd had started to come in, and the parking lot was half filled with cars, but none of them was a yellow Mercury. I drove behind the building and around the sides but had no luck there, either. I took Alafair for an ice cream cone, returned in a half hour, and still came up empty.
When we got home Dixie Lee was reading the newspaper on the front steps.
"It ain't rung. At least not while I was here," he said.
"How was church?"
"It went okay. They asked me to play again Wednesday night. They ain't a bad bunch for people that probably left their toast in the oven too long."
Alafair went inside just as the phone rang.
"Damn, there it is," Dixie Lee said.
"Go easy, boy. Let's stay on the sunny side for a while."
Alafair had picked up the receiver, but I eased it out of her hand before she could speak. I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door on the cord.
"You had time to think, Robicheaux?" Sally Dee said.
"I still believe you have things mixed up."
"I'm not interested in opinions. You want to do some business, or you want to keep fucking around?"
"You've got it backwards, Sal. You hired Charlie Dodds to take me out."
"That's past history. You come up to the lake uninvited, you provoked my father, you started that beef out on the road. I mark it off even. That's the way I see it."
"What's the offer?"
"What d'you mean, what's the offer? I spelled it out to you yesterday."
"No, you didn't. You said three or four grand a week. Are you going to pay that kind of money for house security?"
"We'll set you up with your own action. You manage a club in Vegas. All you got to do is count the receipts. You know what the skim is on a half-dozen lobby slots?"
"I'm about to go on trial."
"You're breaking my knob off."
"No, I think you're trying to do a number on me, Sal. You'll talk a lot of shit about the big score out in Vegas, let me think I got no worries about Harry Mapes, then a little time passes and I'm back in Louisiana in handcuffs."
"You think I'm playing games while that crazy fucker is shooting at me?"
"That's your problem. My big worry is prison. That and your shitheads coming around my house."
"I told you, there ain't anybody after you now. What is it I can't get through to you? This is a simple deal. You make money, I make money, Mapes gets whacked. You're home free. I guarantee it. People don't get out from under us. You were a cop. You know that."
"I don't think I want to do business with you, Sal."
"What?"
"I think you're about to take another fall."
"What is this? What the fuck are you up to, man?"
"Don't call here again. I'm out of your life. Don't even have thoughts about me."
"You shit-eating motherfucker, you're setting me up… It won't work, cocksucker… it's entrapment… you tell that to Nygurski… I've got lawyers that'll shove it up his ass."
I placed the receiver quietly in the cradle and went outside and sat down on the steps beside Dixie Lee, who was reading the comics in the newspaper. He turned the page and popped the paper straight between his hands.
"Don't start telling me about it. My system's puny as it is. I just as soon drink razor blades," he said.
I called Nygurski at his house a few minutes later. He wasn't home, so I put Alafair in the truck and we drove back to the Heidel-haus. This time the yellow Mercury with the cracked back window and the University of Wyoming sticker was parked in the shade of the building behind the dumpster.
I parked in the main lot, away from the Mercury, took Alafair inside and bought her a Coke by a stone fireplace that was now filled with a huge tropical aquarium.
I went up to the male cashier at the bar.
"I backed into a yellow Mercury by the side of the building," I said.
"I think it might belong to somebody who works here. I think I just scratched it, but I'd like to make it right."
"Next to the building? Right out there?" he asked, gesturing toward the side of the restaurant where the dumpster was located.
"Yeah, that's it."
"It sounds like Betty's. That's her down the bar."
She was around thirty, blond, thick across the stomach, overly rouged, too old for the Bavarian waitress costume that she wore.
"Is that your Mercury by the side of the building, the one with the Wyoming sticker?" I said.
"Sure." She stopped washing glasses and smiled at me. There were tiny lines in the corners of her eyes.
"I'm afraid I backed into it. I don't think I really hurt it, but you might take a look at it to be sure."
"You couldn't hurt that thing. It's twelve years old and has eighty-five thousand miles on it."
"Well, I just didn't want to drive off and not say anything."
"Just a minute." She took several glass steins out of the tin sink, set them top down on a folded dish towel, then said something to the cashier.
"I have to hurry. We're real busy right now."
I told Alafair I would be right back, and the waitress and I went outside to her car. I ran my hand over some scratches by the Mercury's taillight.
"That's about where I hit it," I said.
"I couldn't tell if that was old stuff or not. Maybe I just hit the bumper."
"Forget it. It's not worth worrying about. I'm getting rid of it, anyway."
"Aren't you a friend of Harry's?" I said.
"Which Harry?"
"Mapes."
"Sure. How'd you know that?"
"I guess I saw y'all together."
"How do you know Harry?"
"Through the oil business. I thought he was doing lease work east of the Divide."
"He is. He's just visiting right now."
"Well, I'm sorry to have taken you away from your work."
"It's all right. It's nice of you to be concerned. Not many people would bother."
She was a nice lady, and I didn't like to deceive her. I wondered how she had gotten involved with Harry Mapes. Maybe because it's a blue-collar, male-oriented town, I thought, where a woman's opportunities are limited. Regardless, I felt sorry for her.
I took Alafair back to the house, called the baby-sitter, then Tess Regan, but neither of them was at home.
"There's a dollar double feature at the Roxy. How about I take her to that?" Dixie Lee said.
Before I could hide it he saw the hesitation in my face.
"You think I'm gonna get drunk, I'm gonna run off and leave her alone?" he said.
"No."
"Or maybe I ain't worked up to the step where you can trust me as good as that old woman down at the church."
"I just didn't know what you had planned for today."
"You want me to look after her or not?"
"I'd appreciate your doing that, Dixie."
"Yeah, I can see that. But that's all right. I ain't sensitive. It all bounces off me."
"I probably won't be home until late this evening," I said.
"Can you fix her supper?"
"Show me a little trust, son. I'd be grateful for it."
I drove back across town and parked on a side street behind the Heidelhaus so I could see the yellow Mercury. It was a long wait, but at eight o'clock she came out of the restaurant, walked to her car with her purse on her arm, started the engine, and drove south into the Bitterroot Valley.
I followed her twenty-five miles along the river. The light was still good in the valley, and I could see her car well from several hundred yards away, even though other cars were between us; but then she turned onto a dirt road and headed across pasture-land toward the foot of the mountains. I pulled to the shoulder of the highway, got out with my field glasses, and watched the plume of white dust grow smaller in the distance, then disappear altogether.