“Shit, Marlowe. Our MPs couldn’t navigate their way out of their own mother’s cunt even if they had a compass and a flashlight and a GPS. As for the Iraqi police—”
At my feet, the guy was waving his hands and starting to make too much noise. Like screaming and begging-for-mercy kind of noise.
I made sure he got quieter before he could get louder.
“Shit, shit, SHIT! Look what you did, Franklin! Look at what you went and did.”
“I’m looking, Marlowe, and it looks okay to me. But if you don’t shut up, I’ll be forced to make it a two-fer tonight. And I don’t really want to do that, my friend.”
In response, Marlowe went fifty shades of pale, then brought up that afternoon’s MRE all over the warehouse floor.
When he had coughed his way out of it, I said, “If you’re through, hand me that washing-machine timer so I can put it back in this butt-fuck’s hand.”
“You’re a goddamn criminal, Franklin. Before long, you’ll be a regular butt-fucker yourself at Leavenworth. That’s what I think.”
It didn’t matter what Marlowe thought or who he tattled to because two days later he’d been divided a dozen different ways into the wind.
Now everyone wanted their own piece of Marlowe: claiming his legacy, his fortune — his sun-washed blond wife with legs up to here and breasts out to there, according to the photo Marlowe had tucked inside his helmet. The helmet and the snapshot of Chloe sitting leg-cocked on a lakeside boulder were the only things to survive the bomb blast intact. I carried that picture in my pocket now. The left edge was charred, burning away the tips of her bare feet, but the rest of the girl still had all that glorious flesh packed around her bones. Her head was tipped back — any farther and her hair would take a dip in the lake — and she looked through the camera as if to say, Come get me.
I followed the skunky smell up Montana Street. It was full dark now and Butte’s old headframes, the hundred-foot iron skeletons that had once lowered miners into the earth on cables, glowed red against the sky. Civic-minded do-gooders installed lights on the headframes years ago as a way to remind the city of its heritage — even if the past was not just dead but rotting in this place. What was once Butte’s pride now stunk like Brian’s coat.
Someone had to stop this guy from spreading his stink all over town and onto nice, pretty girls like Chloe.
As I walked, leaning into the slope of the Richest Hill on Earth, I kept thinking about how the army’s engineers swept Baghdad’s streets with heavy machinery — armored vehicles they called “Buffaloes.” They rode their Buffaloes, sniffed out bombs buried by the side of the road, and disarmed the explosives before we followed in our thinner-skinned Humvees.
That’s what I’d be doing now here in Butte. Making life easier for Chloe. Clearing the obstacles off her highway to happiness.
When Brian wobbled into the Party Palace, I hesitated. The Neversweat whiskey had me pretty loose already. I didn’t want to go any further and have my limbs fall out of my joints.
I found a patio table on the sidewalk with an empty beer bottle. I sat and pretended I was nursing that bottle back to health.
Thirty minutes passed. A group of bikers came out for a cigarette, telling jokes punctuated by smoker’s coughs. They were too into themselves, preening with their bandannas and leather chaps, to pay any attention to me.
Another hour passed.
A dog trotted past and lifted his leg on the table next to me. The man and woman sitting there did not appreciate that.
A fire truck, followed by a police car, screamed down Park Street.
I had time to examine the sidewalk in front of the Party Palace. I’m no engineer, but I determined the pavement there was a good inch higher than the surrounding concrete, built up by a decade’s worth of vomit from drunk miners and bikers with smoker’s coughs.
A woman with a ruined face and too-short shorts came out, put her arm around me, and slurred her undying, unconditional love. I led her over to the nearest lamppost where she professed the same type of affection.
Another twenty minutes passed.
My man finally came out of the swinging door, stumbled, and ran to catch up with his body before he fell onto the vomit-paved sidewalk. He pivoted and announced to the now-closed door, “I’mallright.”
As he walked past me, he weaved off course and bumped into my table. I was there to catch him by the elbow and said, “Whoa there, Brian.”
He raised his head and looked at me with alarm and puzzlement, then said, “Byron, I’mmmByron.”
“That’s what I said, Byron.”
“Allright then.”
“You should be more careful.”
He took back his elbow and said, with sudden clarity, “Thank you, I will.” He bowed, turned, and continued to walk up the sidewalk toward the dark mouth of an alley. He lowered his zipper as he walked — clearly a man on a mission.
“Yo, Byron. Wait up.”
He swivel-wobbled again. “Whut?”
“I want to have a little talk with you.”
“Whutabout?”
“Chloe.”
“Who?”
“You know a girl by the name of Chloe, right?”
“Whut of it?” His hand was still down his pants.
“You know where I can find her?”
“Mebbe I do, mebbe I don’t.” He turned and resumed his stutter-walk to the alley.
“Maybe you’ll tell me now, huh?” I called after him.
“Mebbe I will, mebbe I won’t.” He went around the corner and less than ten seconds later, a trickle of piss carrying a load of alley-dust reached the sidewalk.
I picked up my empty beer bottle by the neck and followed him into the alley to get some information. I was betting mebbe he’d tell me.
Two minutes later, I was back out of the alley with no beer bottle. But I had an address.
Behind me, a trickle of blood joined its fluid brothers Piss and Puke on the sidewalk.
Before I removed his teeth, Byron had given me an address that sent me north, up the hill to Walkerville. He said Chloe’s sister Jacinda lived up there and maybe she’d know where to find the girl — a girl, by the way, he swears he never did methametics with. I didn’t believe him when he said this, and I only half-believed him when he gave me the sister’s address.
There was a good chance I’d find plenty of wild geese but no Chloe. After all, this was the city’s rough neighborhood, the kind of place where good intentions go bad. I went anyway — drawn by the beacon of sun-washed hair.
The hair and the breasts and the legs were just part of it, though. This girl was starting to get under my skin. I needed to see her in person to find out a few things for myself. Like, if I pressed a gun barrel to her forehead, would she beg for her life, or would she tell me to go fuck myself?
After two hours of wandering Walkerville’s maze of streets and asking three guys in wifebeaters working on a gutted Ford in their front yard if they knew someone named Chloe — or Jacinda or Byron, even — and getting a wrench thrown in the general direction of my head, and deciding retreat was the better part of valor, and rib-kicking a dog who got in my way, and wandering in the dark, and squinting at unlit porches, and not finding even one goddamn trace of 1321 Transit Street, I turned back.
Ask anyone in Bravo Company and they’ll tell you I don’t even know how to spell the word surrender, but I’ll admit Walkerville defeated me that night.
I made my way back down the hill to the Finlen, consoling myself with one thought: Marlowe’s welcome-home parade was tomorrow and I was sure to find Chloe riding in the grand marshal’s car. I would catch her as she floated like a blond goddess, waving to all the little people who lined the streets cheering for her dead husband. I would grab her, pull her to me, and find my future somewhere in her eyes. Yes, that was my plan.