Free Swan Peak by James Lee Burke Page B

glass-framed color photograph mounted on the wall behind the bar. In it a couple were building a snowman on the edge of the lake. The woman in the photo wore a fluffy pink sweater and knee-high brown suede boots stitched with Christmas designs. Her hair was the color of a flamingo’s wing.
    “My boss says they used to stay up in those cottages there,” the bartender said. He appeared to be a practical man who made a marginal living mixing cocktails in a rural area, and he was not interested in the visitors from California or their questions about gangsters from another era. His concern was with Jamie Sue Wellstone. She was probably one of the richest women in Montana, and she was now living year-round less than fifteen miles from the saloon. Jamie Sue Wellstone was watching the bead curtain at the entrance to the café. It was obvious to the bartender that she had seen someone or something that had disturbed her.
    “You want another whiskey sour, Ms. Wellstone?” he asked.
    “Yes, if you please, Harold.”
    Harold bent to his task, lifting his eyes once toward the entrance to the café. He was a powerful man who wore crinkling white shirts and black trousers and combed the few strands of his black hair straight across his scalp. “Somebody out there get out of line, Ms. Wellstone?”
    “I thought I recognized a man. But I was probably mistaken,” she replied.
    “A guy who’s maybe part Indian?”
    “Yes, how did you know?”
    “I saw him looking at you. In fact, I saw him around here a couple of days ago. Want me to check him out?”
    “No, don’t bother him. He did no harm.”
    “You just tell me whatever you need, Ms. Wellstone,” the bartender said, wrapping a paper napkin around the bottom of her drink.
    The man in black leather pants with the chemically sprayed hair had come in the saloon wearing a western straw hat, and had placed it crown-down on the bar. Stamped inside the rayon liner was the image of George Strait. The man noticed a greasy smear on the brim. He frowned at the bartender. “Give me some paper napkins,” he said.
    Without looking up, the bartender put a stack of at least ten napkins on the bar.
    “Give everybody a round, including yourself. You might get the fucking grease off the bar while you’re at it,” the man in leather pants said. He went into the restroom and shot the bolt behind him.
    “You okay on your drinks?” Harold said to the women at the bar.
    “I’m feeling just right, but thanks for asking,” the woman in purple lipstick said.
    “When your friend comes back, maybe tell him this is Montana,” Harold said.
    “What’s that mean?” the woman said.
    “That this is Montana,” Harold replied.
    “That’s your limo out front?” the woman in purple lipstick asked Jamie Sue.
    “No, it’s my husband’s,” Jamie Sue said.
    “Are you talking about Ridley Wellstone? He must own half of Texas.”
    Jamie Sue’s chin rested on her palm. Through the window she could see a boy in a red canoe spin-casting along the bank, the water’s surface shimmering like pewter whenever the wind gusted. She could feel the rush of the whiskey sour taking hold in her nervous system, warming every corner of her heart, deadening memory, preempting expectations she knew would never be fulfilled. “I used to live in Texas, but I don’t anymore,” she said.
    “I wasn’t probing, honey. I grew up in a shithole in the San Joaquin. The biggest event of the year was the Garlic Festival,” the woman said. “I would have screwed the whole Russian army to get out.”
    She removed a piece of mucus from the corner of her eye, then opened her purse to get a cigarette. Three joints were tucked neatly in a silk side pocket. While she lit her cigarette with a tiny gold lighter, she watched an unshaved man in corduroy pants and a work shirt and lace-up boots enter the bar and try the handle on the men’s room door. When he discovered the door was locked, he shook the handle. A moment later,