Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

“So they can make us feel bad about ourselves. So they can tell us they made it but we didn’t.” Then he grinned at her in his old way, at the corner of the mouth, like the Duke. “Or maybe there just ain’t another place here’bouts to get good food.”

Candace felt like a clock was running faster and faster inside her, its wheels and cogs starting to shear, its hands spinning in a blur. “There’s still gold up in the Cascades, places where nobody ever found the mother lode,” she said. “My father swore it was there, up in the high country, up in the snow line. All those years it was washing down into the creeks, telling the panners down below where it was, but nobody was interested. Think of it, Troyce, maybe a vein three inches thick running through the face of a cliff you just have to sweep the snow off of.”

Troyce looked at her peculiarly. “Bet you and me could find it,” he said.

She waited for him to finish.

“Soon as we tie up things here,” he said.

He forked down the last of his chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes and peas and took a final sip from his coffee. “I need to talk to that old boy in the saloon a minute.”

Candace realized who was in the white limo. “Leave them alone, Troyce.”

“Don’t worry. It’s them what better look out for us,” he said.

WHEN TROYCE ENTERED the nightclub, Harold Waxman was pouring a daiquiri into a stemmed glass, wrapping a towel around the bottom to catch the overflow.

“Remember me?” Troyce said.

Harold lifted his eyes from his work. “I’m on my own time right now. If you want a drink, order from the other bartender,” he said.

“I’m a businessman. I don’t drink during the day,” Troyce said.

Harold Waxman wore black slacks and a black leather belt and a long-sleeve dress shirt that was so white it had a blue tint. Every hair on his head was combed neatly into place, with no attempt to disguise his growing baldness or advancing age. A toothpick protruded from the corner of his mouth. “The state of Texas hires businessmen as prison guards?” he said.

“I’m empowered to offer a reward for this escaped felon Jimmy Dale Greenwood,” Troyce said. “The reward pays upon custody rather than conviction. I’m talking about five thousand dollars.”

Harold Waxman propped his hands on the bar and stared at the video poker machines lined up against the far wall. “Number one, I don’t know any escaped felons. Number two, if I did, I’d call the Sheriff’s Department. Number three, this is the second time you’ve come in here pestering people. I’m hoping it’s the last.”

He looked at the young woman who had entered the saloon and was standing behind Troyce. “You want a drink, miss, you need to order from the man down the bar. I’m off the clock,” he said.

“I’m with him,” Candace said, nodding toward Troyce.

“My offer still stands,” Troyce said to Harold.

Harold let his eyes go flat and rolled his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. He poured the rest of the daiquiri from its pitcher into a large thermos. He did not look up again until Troyce and Candace were gone.

While Troyce paid the check in the café, the limo drove away with the bartender behind the wheel, the charcoal windows still closed to the heat outside.

“Why were you talking to that guy?” Candace asked.

“’Cause he’s hinky. ’Cause he’s working for the Wellstones now.”

“Hinky?” she said. “He’s a cop.”

“Maybe he used to be, but not now.”

“A cop’s a cop. I can always tell one. That guy’s a cop, Troyce,” she said.

“If he is, he’s for sale. I know a dishonest man when I see one.”

ONE HOUR’S CROOKED drive to the north, up by the Canadian line, Jimmy Dale Greenwood entered a phone booth by a filling station at a crossroads, where a single traffic light hung suspended from cables over the intersection. He began feeding pocket change into the coin slot. Through the scratched plastic panels in the booth, he could see the wind blowing clouds of dust out of a wheat field, hills that had started to go brown in the summer heat, a windmill ginning on the horizon, a dead Angus bull swollen under a willow tree whose canopy looked like an enormous stack of green hay. A gas-guzzler loaded with Indian teenagers went through the red light and disappeared down the asphalt, a beer can bouncing end over end in its wake.

No answer. Jimmy Dale hung up the receiver and checked the heel of his hand where he had written Jamie Sue’s cell phone number. He dialed the number a second time.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hey, hon,” he replied.