Swan Peak (33 page)

When he finished cleaning Jamie Sue’s bathroom, he pulled the laden leaf bag down the back stairs, the garbage inside thudding heavily on each step. He opened the iron lid on the Dumpster and dropped the bag inside, a cloud of gnats and the smell of a week’s rotting produce rising with the heat into his face. He slammed the lid down as loudly as he could, hoping the sound reverberated through the wall into the house.

But his wishes were fulfilled in a way he hadn’t foreseen. When he turned around, Leslie Wellstone was staring at him, a frosted mint julep clutched in his right hand. “You out of sorts about something, Quince?” he said.

Quince could feel words forming in his mind that he had never spoken to a man of Leslie Wellstone’s background, words requiring an intimacy and a reciprocity of trust that he realized, for the first time in his life, he actually feared.

“Speak up. Are you not feeling well?” Leslie said.

“What would you do if folks spit on you, Mr. Wellstone? If they treated you like a nigra or white trash or like you didn’t have any dignity in their eyes?”

“Me? That’s a good question. Let me think on it a minute. Why, I don’t really know, Quince. It must be awful when somebody does that to a person,” Leslie replied.

You don’t even know what I’m asking you, do you
? Quince said to himself.
Shows how goddamn smart any of y’all are
.

“I’d like to help you, Quince, but you got into it with that big fellow from Texas on your own,” Leslie said. “Why not just file charges against him? You’re not afraid of him, are you? That couldn’t be the case, could it?” Leslie Wellstone lifted his julep glass to his mouth and drank, his eyes brightening.

“Nobody disrespects a Whitley and gets away with it,” Quince said.

But Leslie Wellstone had lost interest in the conversation, and he went back into the house without replying. When he pulled the door into place behind him, the rubber seal along the jamb hissed from the compression of air inside. A fire had broken out above Swan Lake, and the bottoms of the clouds along the mountaintop had turned a soft red from the flames’ updraft. Quince felt as though ants were crawling across his brain.

Hurt them all, one by one, in ways they’ve never been hurt before
, a voice inside him said.
Get to Mr. Leslie Wellstone last, the way you save out a dessert. See if he’s got that smirk on his mouth then
.

But where to start?

Quince walked toward the garage apartment he shared with Lyle Hobbs. What did the man from West Texas own that he couldn’t bear to lose?

Quince’s answer to his own question created an image in his mind that made him close his eyes and wet his lips, like a hungry man about to begin a fine meal.

CHAPTER 18

LATE THE NEXT
afternoon, Candace Sweeney dressed by the bed while Troyce was showering. Through the open door, she could see his used bandages in the wastebasket. They were dry, unspotted by blood, and had been that way for three days. For the first time she began to believe that Troyce would heal in both body and spirit and that an opportunity was at hand for the two of them to simply step through a door into a life that would have no connection to their pasts.

“You believe in karma?” she said through the door.

He turned off the water and began drying himself on top of the bath mat. His body was pink from the shower heat, the hard contours of his chest and ribs and the flatness of his stomach a study in power and masculinity, his wounds like black zippers on his skin.

“Karma is for people looking for excuses, if you ask me,” he said.

“There’s different kinds of karma,” Candace said. “It’s like people’s lives are supposed to intersect, but not because that’s their fate. The intersection is the place where they make the choice that results in their fate. See?”

“No.”

“It means a certain kind of fate doesn’t have to be ours. It means there are people we’re destined to meet. It’s them that lets us choose the door we’re supposed to walk through.”

“Where’d you get all this stuff?” he said, smiling, wiping at his hair with the towel.

“From a guy who used to smoke dope with us in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland.”

“You’re cute,” he said.

“You don’t take me seriously sometimes, Troyce.”

“Always,” he said, placing a towel on the bedspread, then sitting down nude next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve got the prettiest-shaped face of any woman I ever knowed. I love your tattoos, too. Not many women look good tattooed, but you do.”

She placed her hand on his thigh. She could smell the clean odor of his hair and feel the heat his skin gave off. “We could just go away. Pack it up and start all over,” she said.

“Where?”

“Washington or Oregon. We could open a café in the Cascades for tourists and loggers. I’m a good cook, Troyce. I know everything there is about food service. The key to a café’s success is having a good cook and making sure your suppliers aren’t cheating you. You’d be good at managing a café. You ever been to the Cascades?”

“I don’t see that happening right now.”

She thought a long time before she spoke again. “Troyce?”

“What is it, you little honey bunny?”

“You’re in over your head.”

“Not to my mind, I ain’t.”

“Messing with rich people like the Wellstones? Think you’re gonna come up here and write the rules with people like that?”

“You ain’t got to tell me about the likes of the Wellstones. I knowed their kind all my life.”

“Your wounds are healing up now. Isn’t that a sign?”

“Of what?”

“Those choices I was talking about. The fate that’s waiting for us if we’ll just reach out and take it.”

“The choice right now is what kind of steak we’re gonna order at that club up yonder.”

He patted her on the back, then slipped on his boxer shorts and began combing his hair in front of the mirror.

“You want me to put on fresh bandages for you?” she asked, her face blank now, all of her arguments used up.

“Don’t worry about them rich people. They ain’t interested in folks like us. We ain’t got nothing they want,” Troyce said.

“We went to their house. We told them we know their business. You told them you beat up one of their employees. They won’t forget it,” she said.

He stopped combing his hair and looked at her reflection in the mirror.

Ten minutes later, when they were about to leave, someone with a heavy fist knocked hard on the door. Candace peeked through the window curtain. A man with sandy blond hair and a scar that ran through one eyebrow waited in front of the door. He wore a porkpie hat and a Hawaiian shirt that was almost bursting at the shoulders. A semi passed on the road, and the man turned and watched it disappear around a bend. The back of his neck was oily and pockmarked. His whole body seemed to be supercharged by energies that it could barely contain.

“Who is it?” Troyce said to Candace.

“A guy who looks like a cop or a bill collector,” she replied.

“Let him in. It’s been a dull day,” Troyce said.

CLETE PURCEL OPENED
his badge holder when he entered the room and introduced himself. The room smelled of aftershave and hair tonic. “Albert Hollister gave me the name of your motel,” he said. “He says you’re interested in finding a guy by the name of Jimmy Dale Greenwood. An Indian, I think.”

“More like a breed,” Troyce said. “Know where he’s at?”

“Can’t say I do. You know who Ridley and Leslie Wellstone are?”

Clete saw the young woman’s eyes shift onto Nix’s face.

“I know they’re probably the richest people in the state of Texas,” Nix replied.

Clete studied Nix’s expression. It was relaxed and confident, even good-natured. Clete said, “Somebody tried to light me up, Mr. Nix. Problem is, I got no idea who. But one way or another—”

“Light you up?” the woman said.

“A man in a mask sapped me with a blackjack and tied me to a tree and poured gasoline on me and tried to burn me alive. I don’t know who this dude is, but one way or another, I think he’s involved with the Wellstones. You have any opinion on that, Mr. Nix?”

“Not really. Jimmy Dale Greenwood is a fugitive from the law. He escaped while in the custody of a contract prison which I’m a founding officer of. He was also the boyfriend of Jamie Sue Wellstone, formerly Jamie Sue Stapleton. Does that clear things up for you, Mr. Purcel?”

“There’re people who think you kicked the shit out of a guy by the name of Quince Whitley. Why would you do a thing like that, Mr. Nix?”

“Troyce hasn’t done anything wrong,” the woman said. “I think you need to spend more time at Weight Watchers and quit bothering people who haven’t bothered you.”

Clete saw Nix suppress a laugh. The woman was three feet from Clete, her thumbs hooked in her back pockets, her chin and her boobs pointed at him. She wore a Mexican blouse and black jeans and had a small Irish mouth and bangs like a little girl’s.

“I had a friend run Quince Whitley’s sheet,” Clete said to Nix. “Guess what. He doesn’t have one. Does it seem reasonable to you that a dude like that wouldn’t have a sheet?”

“I’m not interested in this fellow you’re talking about,” Nix replied.

“You should be. I made a couple of calls to the county in Mississippi where he grew up. Quince put out a girl’s eye with a BB gun when he was ten. A retired sheriff told me he thought Quince and two of his friends dropped a log from a railroad overpass through the windshield of an automobile. They almost killed the driver, a black man from Memphis. But the log and any prints on it disappeared the same night. Quince’s uncle was in charge of the investigation. The uncle was also an officer in the Ku Klux Klan. That’s why Quince doesn’t have a sheet. Are you going to bother my friend Mr. Hollister again?”

“I couldn’t care less about your friend, Mr. Purcel. Second of all, I don’t think that’s why you’re here. You’ve got a bug up your ass about either the Wellstone family or Jimmy Dale Greenwood. Which is it, or is it both?”

“Two college kids were abducted from the hillside behind the university and murdered. One of them wore a wood cross. It was of a kind that kids in the Wellstone ministry program are given. Then a California couple who had been drinking in a saloon on Swan Lake with Jamie Sue Wellstone were murdered in a rest stop on the interstate west of Missoula. The woman was set on fire in the toilet stall. I think the guy who committed these murders is the same guy who tried to turn me into a candle. If I find out you’re holding back on me, Mr. Nix, you and I will be shooting the breeze again.”

“Listen, lard ass, nobody invited you here,” the woman said. “Go to a blubber farm or get your stomach stapled. Just go somewhere else. Think about changing your brand of deodorant while you’re at it.”

Clete gave Nix and his girlfriend a long look. Nix was laughing under his breath while the girlfriend stared up into Clete’s face with what seemed to be barely restrained outrage. Except Clete was convinced her emotions were manufactured.

“Thanks for your time. Welcome to Montana. It’s a real tolerant place,” Clete said.

He went outside into the twilight and got into his Caddy. He let out his breath and started the engine, revving it up senselessly. What had he accomplished? he asked himself. Nothing, except perhaps to indicate to Troyce Nix that Nix had gotten close to finding Jimmy Dale Greenwood, also known as J. D. Gribble. Clete shifted the transmission into reverse. The convertible top was down and the air was cool, the hills along the winding two-lane road already purple with shadow. Just as he began to back onto the asphalt, he heard footsteps on the gravel.

Troyce Nix’s girlfriend cupped both of her hands on top of the passenger door. Her eyes were glistening. “Were you saying this guy Quince Whitley might be the one who killed all those people?” she asked.

“Ask your bozo boyfriend,” Clete said, and gunned the Caddy onto the highway.

As he sped away, the young woman grew smaller in his rearview mirror, his dust drifting back into her face.
Way to go, Purcel
, he thought.
Next time out, beat up on a cerebral palsy victim
.

THE SUNSET HAD
died on the far side of the mountain when Candace Sweeney and Troyce Nix pulled into the club up the road from their motel. The bottom of the valley was dark with shadow, but the sky overhead was still blue, tinged with the pink afterglow of the sun, the moon as thin as a wafer over the mountains that jutted straight up from the south banks of the Clark Fork River. The day was cooling rapidly, the eastern sky starting to grow dark, like the color of a bruise. Candace could smell smoke blowing from a fire up in the Swans. The smell seemed to hang in the air, to wrap itself around her skin and seep into her lungs. She wondered if it was an omen.

“It’s too early in the season for fires,” she said. “June is always wet. There’re no serious fires here till August.”

“Well, they’re not burning here,” Troyce said, walking beside her toward the club’s entrance.

“You ever been to Portland or Vancouver?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“You’d like it out there, the fishing and outdoors and all. It’s green all year round, like down south. Like Miami, except with rain and cool weather.”

He was still wearing his shades, even though the sun had set. He pulled them off and slipped them in a leather case. He pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked. “We can check it out,” he said. “In the meantime, ain’t nobody running us off. That ain’t our way.”

She didn’t pursue it.

The inside of the club was crowded, the country band located on the far side of the dance floor, the tables filled with people who were drinking pitcher beer and eating fried chicken and pork-chop sandwiches and steaks ordered from the truck-stop café that adjoined the main building. Candace and Troyce had to take a table by the entrance, one that gave them a poor view of the bandstand and dance floor. Troyce kept trying to get the waiter’s eye.