Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

“The feds have a vested interest in Whitley’s role as a CI. I wouldn’t blow him off as a suspect,” I said. “Remember that case in Boston when one of their CIs was doing contract hits?”

Clete shook his head as though a fly were buzzing around his face. “Yeah, I think Whitley is involved on one level or another. The Wellstones didn’t hire him just to shovel horse turds. A guy like that is a weapon you point at other people.”

“You want to have another talk with the Wellstones?”

He chewed at a piece of skin on the ball of his thumb. “Yeah, then we start over. We missed something. It’s real simple, too. Know why we haven’t seen it?”

“No, but tell me.”

He gave me a look. “The main players all have normal roles,” he said. “They’re not skells or grifters or junkies or porn addicts. They don’t have rap sheets. They don’t get picked up in shooting galleries or at cathouses or live-sex shows. They don’t give us the edge.”

“But sooner or later, they all go down, Cletus, edge or no edge.”

“That’s why neither one of us ever developed drinking problems,” he replied.

When Cletus was at the plate, your best slider usually came back at you like a BB in the forehead.

WE HEADED UP to the Swan Valley in Clete’s Caddy. An hour and a half later, we were rebuffed at the Wellstones’ front gate by none other than Lyle Hobbs. Even though Clete had ripped out Hobbs’s wiring at the park in Missoula, Hobbs was oddly detached and self-possessed. His recessed eye, the one looped by a chain of tiny scars, still looked as dead as a lead ball but no more lacking in expression than his other eye. “The Wellstones aren’t receiving guests right now,” he said. “You can come back tomorrow or the next day.”

Through the electronically locked gate, I could see the fortress-like structure the Wellstones called home at the end of the driveway. Deer were feeding on the lawn, their coats golden in the sunlight, like decorative ornaments. I got out of the Caddy and closed the door behind me, indicating physically that my presence was going to be a problem that wouldn’t disappear easily. “How about calling up to your boss and asking?” I said.

“They’re not to be bothered,” Hobbs replied, his expression flat, his gaze fixed on the mountains.

“Would you tell Ms. Wellstone I’d like to speak with her?” I said.

“She’s not here right now,” he replied.

“Do you know when she’ll return?” I asked.

“No sir, I don’t.”

“Would you know where she is?”

“With the driver and the maid and the little boy. Shopping, maybe. She’s real good at shopping.”

“You think your buddy Quince Whitley got a raw deal?” I asked.

Hobbs’s mouth was pinched, as though he were sucking in his cheeks. His dry, uncombed hair blew in the wind, his untucked short-sleeve shirt loose on his thin frame. “The way I hear it, Quince dealt the play. He wasn’t a bad guy. But he made mistakes in judgment sometimes,?

? Hobbs said. “I don’t play another man’s hand, if that’s what you’re trying to make me do.”

“You think Reverend Sonny Click offed himself,” I said.

This time his eyes found mine. “That’s what happened, right?” he said.

“I think he was unconscious when somebody strung him up,” I said. “I think somebody thought he was the weak sister in the chain. You’re a smart guy, Lyle. You were Mobbed up and in the life when the Wellstone brothers were getting blow jobs with their daddy’s credit card. What do you think is going to happen to you when you’re no longer useful?”

Clete leaned over to the passenger window. “Hey, Lyle, remember what Sally Dee used to always say: ‘There’re kings and queens, and then there’re worker bees.’ Did you know Sally read Machiavelli and Hitler in jail? Glad you’re not working for him anymore.”

Lyle Hobbs stared blankly at both of us. Nobody knew the skells better than Clete Purcel, and nobody was better at pressing thumbtacks into their heads.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON Candace Sweeney and Troyce Nix were eating in the café that adjoined the nightclub on the lake when a long white limo pulled in and the daytime bartender, Harold, got out and went inside. He placed a take-out order for hamburgers and fries at the counter, then went into the nightclub and began fixing a drink with a blender behind the bar. The curtains were partially closed on the café’s front window in order to keep out the glare, but through a crack, Candace could see the extravagant full length of the limo and its charcoal-tinted windows, its bulk and mass and power a visible rejection of all those who set limitations on their own lives. The engine was running, the air-conditioning units on, the charcoal windows damp from the coldness inside.

“Why would people with money like that want to eat in a greasy skillet like this?” Candace asked.

“So they can pretend they’re like the rest of us,” Troyce replied.

“Why do they want to pretend to be like us?”