"You stuck your finger in a deputy sheriff's eye?"
"It was an accident. He grabbed my arm. It hurt."
Then I watched a phenomenon to which I had never seen the exception in dealing with sociopathic behavior. Terry threw a temper tantrum, his voice
hissing with spleen. He was the victim, not others. It was he who had been wronged by the world, the fates, the cosmos, maybe even by his own genes. It was my obligation to be an attentive and sympathetic listener. Never mind the fact he had buried a friend of mine alive. Nothing was of consequence to him except his own pain and the unfairness with which he had been treated by a pair of greaseball humps like Molinari and Frank and now a bunch of Montana hillbillies with badges they probably got out of cereal boxes.
"I might watch what I said to these guys, Terry."
"Why?" he asked. "They don't like you."
Then, as though I were supposed to fix the situation for him, he said, "Wyatt and Carl aren't home. I got a five-hundred bond. Somebody's got to go a bond for me."
"You think Wyatt Dixon gives a shit what happens to you?" I asked.
He pushed up his glasses and looked at me, uncomprehending.
"He might get around to going your bond but he's not going to take on Nicki Molinari. Nicki's a made guy, Terry, a genuine Sicilian badass. You think Wyatt wants to get into it with the Mob because you got hit with some baseballs?"
"Wyatt's my friend."
"Could be," I said, and leaned on one arm against the cell door and looked down the corridor at the turnkey, who was reading the paper.
"Somebody needs to take the weight for those dead ATF agents. The real shooter is probably up in Canada now. Think about it, Terry. Who's the most likely candidate in your bunch? Somebody who wanted to do Sue Lynn and didn't know the agents were sitting in her car? Somebody who never had a job except as a box boy?"
Then he did something I didn't expect. He walked toward the cell door and gripped the bars loosely with his palms, his weight on one foot, his hip cocked at an angle. He pursed his lips, as though he had reached a conclusion that would affect both of us. His eyes were strangely serene, the way dark water is, devoid of all light and moral conflict and perhaps, at least in that moment, any fear of mortality.
When he spoke his voice was suddenly feminine. A smile played around his mouth.
"Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm at the point I don't have any more to lose. Say hello to Maisey for me. You can do that for me, can't you?" he said. His breath touched my skin like vapor off dry ice.
That evening I took Temple to an Italian restaurant on Higgins called Zimorino's Red Pies Over Montana. The tables and bar were crowded with tourists and people from the university. In the back of the room, wearing a suit and tie, I saw Amos Rackley eating by himself.
"You feel sorry for him?" Temple said.
"Yeah, I guess."
"If Lamar Ellison was a snitch and the feds knew he killed Cleo Lonnigan's child, our man there deserves whatever pangs of conscience he has."
"Maybe."
"No maybe about it," Temple said.
I started to say something else, but let it go.
In the middle of our dinner a shout went up from the bar. On the screen of the TV attached high up on the wall was the face of Xavier Girard.
"That guy's on CNN?" Temple said.
"Looks like it," I said, and continued to eat.
But Temple's attention remained fixed on the TV screen, where Xavier was promoting his new book and being interviewed by the best-known talk-show host in the industry.
"Girard's talking about Nicki Molinari," Temple said.
I got up from the table and walked to the bar. Xavier had set aside a copy of his new book and was now expounding on his work in progress.
"Nicki is right out of Elizabethan theater," he said. "He volunteered for the Army and Vietnam to get away from his father. But he ended up in a godforsaken outpost in Laos, surrounded by oceans of poppy fields. He escaped out of a Pathet Lao prison camp by shoving his best friend off a helicopter skid at five hundred feet. He's a tormented human being, Larry. I like him, so does my wife, a little too much, to tell you the truth, but I've never underestimated his potential for violence."