Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"Seems like he has a lot of company," I said.

"But people listen to him. He was a war hero. He's got this Byzantine aura of spirituality about him. He could read the phone book and sound like John Donne."

"You think somebody's going to hurt him?"

"How would you feel toward Doc if you had no work and no food in the house and a poet was telling you a trout stream was more important than feeding your family?" she said.

Through the glass door I saw Doc bang the phone receiver down in the cradle.

"Excuse me," I said, and went inside. Doc widened his eyes at me, his hand still on the phone receiver, feigning a smile.

"I called the theater they were going to. I know the manager. He didn't see her," Doc said.

"Like the theater manager doesn't have anything else on his mind," Cleo said.

"Y'all want to go?" I asked. "I should have brought my car," Doc said.

"It's all right," I said.

"It's been quite an evening. I just don't know if I can stand any more like it," Cleo said.

I told them I'd see them outside and I went down a hallway to the bathroom. Three women and two men were standing by an abstract oil painting, not far from the bathroom door. Their eyes were bright, their conversation gilded with laughter.

"Is this the line for the bathroom?" I asked.

They stopped talking and looked at me peculiarly, as though I had spoken in another language. Then a woman said, "Holly's inside."

The door was ajar, and I saw Holly Girard bend over a framed mirror that lay horizontally on a marble-topped counter. Her evening dress was backless, and I could see the delicate bones under her skin as she inhaled a chopped white line deeply into her lungs through a rolled dollar bill. She wiped the mirror's surface with her index finger and rubbed her finger inside her gums.

She straightened her shoulders, turned and opened the door, and looked blankly into my face.

"Oh hello, again," she said. "The maid must have misplaced my toothbrush. I had to brush my teeth with my finger. Can you imagine?"

"Right. Can I get out through that far door?" I said, pointing toward the end of the hallway.

"Are you offended in some way?" she asked.

"No, I'm not."

"Then stay," she said, and reached out and encircled my wrist as she had earlier.

"You asked me why I quit the Justice Department," I said. "It's because a Texas Ranger named L.Q. Navarro and I killed a bunch of cocaine and tar mules down in Old Mexico. I hate the son-sofbitches who sell that stuff, and if I had it to do all over, I'd kill those men again. So I guess it'd be a little hypocritical of me if I prosecuted homicide cases.

The group by the oil painting stared at me with the opaqueness of people caught in a strobe light.

"Don't be that way," Holly said to me, her expression suddenly tender.

I walked down the hall and out the door into the night, the back of my neck flaming with embarrassment.

Doc AND I dropped Cleo at her car by the ice cream parlor, then drove up the Blackfoot River toward his house. We turned off the highway north of Potomac, rumbled across the log-and-cable bridge onto the dirt road, and drove along the edge of a dry creek bed that was white and dusty and webbed with algae under the moon.

Doc kept squinting his eyes through the front window.

"That looks like a fire," he said.

"Where?"

"Through the trees. You see it?" he said.