“To tell you the truth, Dixie, I mortgaged my house and business to make bail.”
“Oh.”
“Why is the Dio family buying up land around here?”
“The state is recessed. Property values are way down. The Dios are going to make a lot of money later on.”
I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. A narrow dock protruded out from behind the building, and skiffs and sailboats were moored to it. There was a glaze of gasoline and oil on the water, and sea gulls dipped and turned over an open bait well in one of the boats. I turned off the ignition.
“I don’t think you’ve been hearing me very well, Dixie,” I said.
“What?”
“I’m really tired of you trying to pull strings on me. We’re operating on the outer edges of my patience here.”
“What’d I say?”
“The mob doesn’t make money out of real estate speculation. You stop lying to me.”
“You hurt me, man. Maybe I’m a lush, but that don’t mean I’m a liar.”
“Then tell me why they’re buying up property.”
“Dave, if you go to prison, and, Lord, I hope you don’t, you’ll learn two things in there. You stay out of the boss man’s eye, and you never try to find out the other side of a cat like Sal. You go along and you get along. When you were a cop, did you want to know everything that was going on in your department? How many guys were on a pad? How many of them copped some skag or flake at a bust and sold it off later? Look, in another three or four weeks I’m going to start playing a gig at one of Sal’s places in Tahoe. It’s not a big deal—a piano bar, a stand-up bass, maybe a guitar. But it’s Tahoe, man. It’s rhythm and blues and back in the lights. I just got to ease up on the fluids, get it under control.”
“Why not get it the hell out of your life?”
“Everybody don’t chop cotton the same way. I’m going inside for a brew. You want to come?”
I watched him walk across a board ramp into the bar side of the restaurant. I had wasted most of the morning, part of the afternoon, had accomplished nothing, and I felt a great weariness both with Dixie Lee and my situation. I followed him inside. He sat at the far end of the bar, by the windows, silhouetted against the sunlight on the lake. The walls of the bar were decorated with life preservers and nautical ropes and fishnets. Dixie was drinking from a bottle of Great Falls with a shot of whiskey on the side.
The bartender walked toward me, but I motioned him away.
“You don’t want anything?” Dixie said.
“Who would Mapes and Vidrine have reason to kill?” I said.
“Not Vidrine. Mapes.”
“All right.”
He looked out the window.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“It was somebody who was in his way, somebody who would cost him money.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“So who would cause Mapes trouble?”
“Maybe the crazoids. The tree spikers. Star Drilling wants to get into a wilderness area on the eastern slope. The tree spikers want everybody out.”
“But they don’t represent anybody. You said they were cultists or something.”
“I don’t know what they are. They’re fucking wild men.”
“What could they do to keep Star out of a wilderness area?”