Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"Would you say what's on your mind?" I said.

"I guess I'll just have to keep an eye on you, that's all," she replied.

That EVENING Lucas borrowed my truck to go to work at the Milltown Bar. When he picked up Sue Lynn at her uncle's house he didn't make it out of the driveway. Amos Rackley and the agent named Jim pulled their car at an angle across the entrance, their brights burning into Lucas's face, and approached both sides of the truck.

"What's with you guys?" Lucas said.

"We just need a minute of Sue Lynn's time," Jim said, and reached through the window and turned off the ignition.

"Maybe she doesn't want to talk to you," Lucas said.

"Trust me, she does. Step out of the truck. I'll give you a cigarette. Would you like that?" the agent said, and winked. He squeezed the handle of the door and eased it open.

Lucas stepped down on the gravel, feeling belittled, unsure why, unsure what to do about it. The sun was down, the sky purple, the air cold and bitter with the smell of diesel off the highway. Jim wore jeans and a beige sports coat and had a blood blister on the bridge of his no

se.

"Walk over here with me," he said, turning his back, clicking on a pen light with his thumb and focusing the beam on some photographs he held in one hand. "This will interest you."

Lucas stared down at the photos of Sue Lynn and himself coming out of a supermarket, sitting in her uncle's car, entering the Milltown Bar, undressing on a blanket by a stream.

"You guys are real shits," Lucas said.

Jim put a filter-tipped cigarette in his mouth but didn't light it.

"I heard you play at the Milltown Bar. You want some advice? Lose the Indian broad. It's a matter of time till she goes into the system. Number two, I don't blame you for being pissed off. Nobody wants a telescopic lens focused on his bare ass while he's getting his ashes hauled. But you're taking your old man's fall, kid."

"You're talking about Billy Bob?"

The agent blew his nose into a Kleenex and looked at a drop of blood on it.

"He messed up his career. He's got a store-front law practice in a shithole. You think it's a mystery why he runs around trying to fuck up a government investigation? I'd use my head," the agent said.

"Billy Bob's got a nice office on the town square. People respect him. That's more than I can say about some folks," Lucas replied.

"You see Treasure of the Sierra Madre?" the agent said. "Humphrey Bogart plays this worthless character named Fred C. Dobbs. He's always saying, 'Nobody's putting anything over on Fred C. Dobbs.' What do you think that line means? I never really figured it out."

But Lucas's attention was now fixed on Sue Lynn and the other federal agent, Amos Rackley. Rackley had opened the back door of his car for her and Sue Lynn was getting inside.

Lucas started toward them, but Jim stepped in front of him and spread his fingers on Lucas's chest, pressing slightly, his face only inches from Lucas's. In the headlights of the car the shape of his head seemed like a manikin's.

"She's coming voluntarily. Don't mix in it," the agent said.

"Sue Lynn?" Lucas called out.

But she didn't answer. Jim backed away from Lucas, one finger pointing at him.

"Keep in mind what I said. Hey, stop squeezing your Johnson. We're gonna bring her back," he said.

Lucas returned my truck keys the next morning and sat at the plank table in the kitchen and drank coffee and looked out the window at the frost high up on the mountain.

"Don't worry about her. She's a smart gal," I said.

"I went by her uncle's after I got off work. They hadn't brought her back," he said.

"She was involved with these Treasury guys before you met her, Lucas. She hung out with bikers. She was there when they stuck up a general store and post office on the Res."

"I don't like it when you talk that way, Billy Bob."