In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland 4)

Johnny got into his pickup truck and drove into Missoula and on down West Broadway toward the business district. In the distance he could see the huge brown slopes of the mountains that enclosed the eastern end of the city, the trees a deep green in the saddles. On his right the Clark Fork of the Columbia River paralleled the street he drove on, its banks fringed with willow trees. The current was a greenish-coppery color from the first snowmelt, the water braiding between the chains of rocks that protruded from the surface. To the south were the beginnings of the Sapphire Mountains and the Bitterroot Valley, the fresh snow on the peaks a blinding white in the sunlight.

But here, on each side of the street, was a different world, one of $19.95 motels, a self-service filling station that advertised itself as AMERICAN OWNED, and bars where women fought with knives and the clientele came to the door at 7 A.M.

He parked down by the river and entered the back of a bar that smelled of coffee, flat beer, and cigarette smoke that had soaked into the walls and vinyl booths. A swamper was swinging a wet mop on the floor, the bartender loading a cooler with long-necked bottles of beer. A man with peroxided hair, wearing a yellow muscle shirt and stonewashed jeans and polished military boots, split a nine-ball rack with such force the cue ball jumped the rail and rolled across the floor.

Johnny picked up the ball and set it back on the felt.

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; “Thanks,” the pool shooter said, his eyes flat.

“No problem,” Johnny said.

He sat at the bar, ordered a soft drink, and peeled a hard-boiled egg. The pool shooter ran the balls in a string down to the nine ball, chalking his cue before each shot, his eyes never leaving his game. Then he replaced his cue in the wall rack and started to leave the bar.

“Where’s your friend?” Johnny asked.

“Which friend?” the man asked.

“The guy you drove out with.”

“You lost me.”

“No matter what you guys are getting paid, if I was you, I’d give the money back.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s good to know. But I got no idea what you’re talking about,” the man said.

“Maybe I got you confused with somebody else.”

“Yeah, maybe you do,” the man said.

Johnny watched the man with roses and parrots tattooed on his arms go out the door and cross the street, then walk down an alley, where a car was parked. The man walked gracefully, light-footed, like a prizefighter, his back a triangle of sinew and muscle. Just before he reached the car, a Firebird, he turned and looked back at the bar.

When Johnny got back home, he strung tin cans on wires around his house and removed a box from under his bed containing a bowie knife that had been forged from a car spring, and a trade hatchet, with an oak handle and a half-moon hook on the head, given to him by his grandfather. He went into his toolshed and ground the hatchet on an emery wheel, then sharpened both it and the bowie knife on a whetstone and returned to the house.

The day was growing warmer, and through the window he could see flies hatching out of the reeds on the riverbanks, drifting onto the riffle, where rainbow trout popped them as soon as they touched the surface. He fell asleep in a chair on the porch and thought he heard dry thunder on the far side of the mountains that ringed his land.

EVERY DEFENSE ATTORNEY has clients who enter his life on a seemingly temporary basis, then become the human equivalent of chewing gum on the bottom of a shoe. Celebrity defense attorneys who appear regularly on CNN talk shows may lead glamorous lives, but the average practitioner of criminal law has a clientele with whom he does not want to be seen in public. These include grifters of every stripe, jackrollers, pimps, paperhangers, drug dealers, Murphy artists, cross-dressing prostitutes, court-assigned women who kill their children, and lifetime recidivists who are convinced they are criminal geniuses and try to outwit the system by lying to their attorneys.

Private investigators deal daily with the same bunch, although occasionally there’s one who doesn’t fit into the box. Temple called me that afternoon. “It’s Amber Finley again,” she said. “She’s in on a drunk and disorderly. She also hit a cop. Actually, she threw her underwear in his face.”

“Why is she calling you?”

“She’s burned herself with every attorney in town. At least with the good ones,” she replied.

“She wants me to represent her?”

“She’s not a bad gal, Billy Bob.”

“Answer is no.”

“You pretty busy now?”

“She can call her father. I don’t want to get involved.”

“She says she knows why Johnny American Horse was carrying a pistol.”

“How does she know anything about Johnny?”