Phil and I sat silently watching the progress of the cloud of dust that was Raymond Welle's vehicle as it tracked slowly through the dry bottoms near the creek bed and then through the wide expanse of high prairie that carpeted the dirt all the way up to the house.
"He loves this ranch," Phil told me.
"He was born and raised in Manitou Springs, of course, but he calls this place home."
I sipped bitter coffee from my Dilbert mug. I hadn't known that Ray was from Manitou, but I didn't see that it was relevant to much. I said, "I think it would be pretty easy to love this ranch."
Phil shot a glare my way. I guessed that he was wondering if I had been sarcastic with my comment about the ranch. To put him at ease I said, "Most of us can only dream of having a spread like this, right, Phil?"
"Amen," he said. I suspected that it was a word that rarely crossed Phil Barrett's lips on any given Sunday.
Raymond Welle's vehicle was finally pulling up to the house. The car, if you could call it that, was actually a snow-white Humvee. I should have been more surprised than I was. Welle was driving the huge thing himself. The young woman in the jeans and polo shirt who had delivered my coffee rushed out the front door to meet him. I wondered if that was part of her job description. Ray jumped out with the motor still running. A light breeze was to his back, and it carried his crisp radio voice to the porch. I heard him say, "My clubs are in the back, Sylvie. They'll need to come back to Washington with me this time.
Pack 'em up careful, okay? I don't want to see any scratches on that new driver."
I didn't hear him say "please."
Phil Barrett stood, and I decided I should, too.
Still twenty yards from the porch, Raymond said, "Joey let me beat him on a par three, Phil. The fourth, you know that one? The one with the green by the creek?
After I got a lucky tee-shot that left me a three-footer for a birdie, I think he intentionally put his in the sand so that I could say I beat him on a hole.
Had witnesses for it, too. Good kid. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Nice of him. Nice gesture. Only wished I had time to play eighteen with him. Who knows, I might have gotten lucky a second time." He reached into his pocket, pulled out a golf ball, and held it high in the air.
"I kept the ball I used, too. He even initialed it for me. When Joey goes and finally wins one of the majors, this will be a sweet memory for me."
He stuffed the ball back in his pocket.
"Alan, Alan. Welcome to Gloria's Silky Road. I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for pulverizing your schedule to accommodate my need to return to Washington. So kind of you. So kind. Please offer my personal apologies to all of your patients for the inconvenience I've caused them." He hopped up the two steps to the porch and held out his hand to me.
"I'll be sure to do that, Ray" Yeah, right after I distribute copies of my driving record and income tax returns to each of them.
"The only good news for me is that its real likely that they're all living outside my district. Don't have to worry much about voter backlash." He laughed and moved toward the front door.
"Come on inside, now. It's starting to get warm enough to cook oatmeal out here." We walked inside and stood in a bright entryway. The walls were papered in rich red paisley and the floor was made of octagonal limestone tiles. To my left I saw the huge post-and-beam space where Gloria Welle and Brian Sample had shared tea and Girl Scout Cookies. Ray said, "Phil, go find those files for me and bring them to us in the study."
I followed Welle down a narrow hall to a pine-paneled study. The room was large, but warm. One wall was covered with bookcases. I've learned that my eyes are as magnetically attracted to a wall of books as they are to a woman's cleavage. I had to remind myself not to be distracted, and I tried to stay focused on my conversation with Welle.
"Sit, sit."
I did, in a leather club chair beside a low table that had been built on a frame fashioned from an old wagon wheel. The wheel caused me to recall the photograph that Kimber Lister had used to begin his film about the two dead girls. Tami and Miko against a background of an old wagon wheel.
I expected Ray to take his place behind the monstrous desk halfway across the room. He didn't. He chose another one of the club chairs. As he sat down, his trousers rode up, and he spent a few moments trying to free his boxers or his briefs from the confines of his crotch. He yanked and tugged at his underwear as though I weren't even in the room.
Finally he said, "I don't know about you and the way you practice. But I've never been comfortable just handing over case files. I actually like to review them, explain them."
"Sometimes I feel the same way. Ray."
"Good!" he said much too jubilantly.
"Glad to know we're on the same page. Phil should be in here any second with those files. Phil! Hey!"
Phil chose that second to waddle through the door shaking two manila folders.
"Sylvie had these in the lockbox of papers that were packed to go back to the District. I had to dig them out." He handed the files to Raymond. I could tell he was dying to be invited to take a chair.
Without looking up Ray said, "This will be one of those clinical talks you're not allowed to listen to, Phil. Sorry. We won't be long."
Phil looked hurt.
"Oh. Sure. Sure. I'll be, uh, following up with Senator Specter's office about that highway matter, Ray. I'd like to have that whole thing settled before we get on the plane." To me, Phil said, "The congressman is trying to get funding for two additional lanes on 1-25 south out of Denver."
"That's great," I said, trying to sound like a grateful constituent though I was neither grateful nor Ray's constituent. And 1-25 south of Denver wasn't even in his district.
"Yeah." Ray's attention was already on the case file.
The label on the tab of the manila folder was handwritten but I couldn't read it from where I was sitting. I said, "That was scary the other day. What happened at the tennis house."
Ray shrugged, seemed nonplussed.
"You know, I didn't even hear the shots. Saw some people runnin' around crazy over by the door. Then Phil flattens me to the floor. Next thing I know I'm being hustled into a side room by a bunch of security types. I wasn't so much scared as I was… puzzled."
"Do your people think you were the target, though? The thought of someone coming after you with a gun has to be frightening regardless of the amount of security you might have."
"My people?" He chuckled and seemed to find the concept amusing.
"It's risky, being in public life. But the danger comes with the territory-that's what I think. We all have to come to terms with it. Those two Capitol policemen killed by that crazy guy? No more than sixty feet from my office. Who can predict those things?" He shook his head, and his voice changed an octave or two with that sentence. For a moment I thought he might have reminded himself of his wife's murder. When he continued, though, his tone had modulated again.
"I'm an outspoken advocate of some unpopular ideas. I always have been. And that, my friend, raises are." Listening to him, the thought that crossed my mind was stump speech, and I prepared myself for a long oration, but he quickly returned to the matter of the two dead girls.
"Here we go"-he opened the file and his face softened a little as he continued-"one of my absolutely favorite clients of all time."
Are? I repeated to myself while he silently perused the top sheet in Mariko Hamamoto's record. Had he really said, "raises are"? I tried to steal a look at the rest of the file on his lap. The collection was as thin as an anorexic gymnast. If it had held as many as six sheets of paper, I would have been surprised.