Bitterroot by James Lee Burke Page B

either,” he said, ignoring my question about his military background.
    His accent was Tidewater, the r’s almost like w’s. He sat erectly in his chair at his desk, his entire posture one of ninety-degree angles.
    “Ellison is no longer welcome?” I said, and tried to smile.
    “I have nothing to say about him.”
    “Wyatt Dixon offered to kill him for two thousand dollars. That’s bargain basement. I have the feeling Wyatt was trying to pick up two grand on a done deal.”
    “You’re offensive, sir.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I don’t share your frame of reference. You presume that I do.”
    I placed my elbow on his desk and leaned toward him and said, “Psychopaths like Lamar Ellison and Wyatt Dixon and the men who bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City? They all seek validation from male authority figures, fraudulent patriarchs who manipulate them for their own ends. They come to you like rats down a mooring rope, Mr. Hinkel.”
    He looked at me for a long time, his eyelids never blinking.
    “You came here to sow discord and violence between two troubled young men,” he said. “You use the methods of ZOG well. You may be a gentile but the yellow star is on your brow.”
     
     
    THE EVENING of the next day Doc took Maisey to a movie in Missoula. I called Cleo and asked her to supper, but she had to work late at the clinic and said she would meet me in town, maybe for dessert, at nine o’clock.
    I parked my truck by the Clark Fork River and walked back across the bridge toward downtown. The western sky was pink, the mountains unbroken and dark across the horizon. Down below I could see trout feeding on the flies that were hatching in the shadows of the bridge. The air smelled cold and heavy, and the runoff from the melting snow in the mountains had flooded the willows along the banks so that their branches trailed like lace in the water.
    I walked farther into town and went into a saloon and cafe called the Oxford, which claimed to have never closed its doors since 1891.1 paid little attention to a waxed, black car across the street, and the three men in suits who sat inside it.
    I ate a hamburger and drank a cup of coffee at the counter. Deeper inside the building was a darkened bar area where topless women were dancing on a runway. I finished eating and walked back outside and started to cross the street at the light. The black car pulled to the curb and a man in back opened a door for me. He was sandy-haired and pleasant-looking, and he held up a badge holder for me to see.
    “Hop in, Mr. Holland. We’ll give you a ride to your truck,” he said.
    “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is running a jitney service?” I said.
    “We justify our jobs any way we can. Come on, be a sport,” he said.
    I got inside and closed the door behind me. The two men in front did not turn around. We drove up the street, past an old vaudeville and movie theater that had been turned into a multiplex, and crossed the long bridge over the river. The mountains in the west were rimmed with fire and the air full of birds that swept in and out of the willows on the riverbank.
    The agent in back had a folder open on his lap.
    “You used to be one of us,” he said.
    “Yeah, it was a great life,” I replied.
    “It says here you meddled in a federal investigation down in Texas. That’s not true, is it?” He smiled when he spoke.
    “No, I don’t recall that.”
    “You always eat supper in T&A joints?” the agent in the passenger’s seat asked, without turning around.
    “Single man. You know how it is,” I said.
    “Lamar Ellison hangs out there. Just coincidence you wander in?” the agent in the passenger’s seat said.
    “Oh, you know Lamar? He raped my friend’s daughter,” I said.
    “My name’s Amos Rackley. You know why we’re here?” the agent in back said.
    “I think I do.”
    “Good. We’d hate for a well-intentioned person like yourself to hurt one of our people. You understand me,