Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

I pulled my royal coachman loose from the tree and walked back up the slope toward the road.

The motorcycle driver went past me, looking me full in the face, then turned around a hundred yards down the road. I removed my fly vest and laid it on the hood of my truck and took L.Q. Navarro's.45 revolver out of the cab and put it under the vest.

Lamar Ellison cut his gas feed and let his bike coast to a stop next to the truck. He slid his sunglasses up on top of his head, his eyes wandering over my person.

His body seemed larger in the shadows of the trees, his bronze skin darker. He swung one leg over the motorcycle seat, like a man getting down from a horse, and stood two feet from me. The wind puffed at his back and I could smell reefer in his clothes and hair and an odor like rotted teeth or decaying meat on his breath. I leaned my fly rod against the truck and rested my forearm on top of my fly vest.

"Say it quick," I said.

"I didn't know the guy was a SEAL. I was in the Corps. I'm sorry about his daughter," he said.

"You didn't sound that way over the phone."

He touched at his nose with his wrist and blew air out his nostrils. He glanced up and down the road, and put an unlit cigarette in his mouth, then pulled it back out and stared at it stupidly.

"Other people were listening. It was all flash, man. They got me made for a snitch," he said.

He was bare-chested except for his cracked, black leather vest. He inserted his hands in his armpits as though he were cold.

"What were you doing up around Cleo Lonnigan's place?" I asked.

"Looking for you. I got Sue Lynn to call and ask where you was at. Sue Lynn's an Indian broad who digs bikers. I mean, she'll pull a train if she has to."

When I didn't reply he stuck his hands into his pockets, then refolded his arms across his chest and gripped the outside of his triceps.

"I can't go back inside, man. I got the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Army down on me. When you're inside, they can reach out anywhere you're at. The Aryan Brotherhood ain't always there. The BGA is. Main pop anywhere is seventy percent boon."

"It's time for you to go," I said.

His lips were dry in the shade, the skin of his face grained with dirt. He shifted his weight and dust powdered around his boots. His eyes were like those of a man trying to figure out how to get inside a bus after the doors have been closed on him.

"Two other guys nailed her first. I'll give them up," he said.

"Are you that afraid of Doc?"

"I want Witness Protection. I talked to an ATF guy. He made fun of me. He said Voss was in the Phoenix Program. He said Voss would find me and cut off my ears and put out my eyes and paint my face."

His eyes were dark green, with cinders for pupils, and now they were wet along the rims.

I lifted up L.Q. Navarro's revolver from under my fly vest and cocked back the hammer.

"You either get out of here now or I'll shoot your sack off. My hope is that you don't believe me," I said.

That afternoon I picked Cleo up at her house and we drove toward Flathead Lake to have supper, through ranchland and low hills, along an undulating, boulder-strewn river, into a golden s

un. I told her about my encounter with Ellison and the fact that his interest had been in me, not her.

"Why do you believe anything a man like that says?" she asked.

"Because the ATF has obviously jammed him up. Because he's a coward and could hardly hide his fear. I don't think he was lying."

"Why does the ATF care about him?"

"He's mixed up with this militia bunch. Maybe he's dealing guns for them."

We drove through a long, green valley, past the Mission Mountains, whose timbered slopes rose into the clouds. Then I saw Flathead Lake for the first time, so vast it looked like an ocean, its blue water ringed by hills, its eastern shore terraced with cherry orchards. The sun had dropped below the mountains and the air was suddenly cool and touched with rain and the smell of wood smoke, and I looked at the shadow that never seemed to leave Cleo's eyes and squeezed her hand.

"Why'd you do that?" she said.