April Smith - Judas Horse

On the brighter side of the partition, two clean-cut African-American men in Polartec vests and corduroys are eating meatballs and spaghetti off paper plates, and there is pickled cauliflower in the salad bar. But here in this murky pool of bottom-feeders, blue light pours from an ancient cigarette machine and the brightest eyes are in the heads of the deer, elk, raccoon, bobcat, fox, and wolverine set up in rows above the redwood paneling like a mute jury. Decor is simple: a flag with a skull and crossbones, big enough for a coliseum.

I settle at an L-shaped bar, going slow with a Sierra Nevada pale ale. How did Steve Crawford, on the same assignment, play this scene? I can picture his lanky body wrapped around a bar stool. A washed-up hippie? Meth addict? Lost businessman? Sloppy drunk? I really don’t know. They did not share his uc identity. Although we’d been colleagues for a decade since those days as naïve rookies, so high on the Bureau that we wanted to be married in the chapel at the Academy, I never saw the undercover side of him and he never saw the Darcy part of me.

Would he have loved me anyway?

I make an effort to look uneasy and forlorn in Omar’s swamp dive, paying particular attention to the 250-pound bruiser with a full dark beard down to his waist at the other end of the bar. It took him a long time to grow that beard, I reflect, and therefore he must mean it, or whatever it stands for, which cannot be pleasant.

He is wearing an entertainer’s tall black top hat and mirrored sunglasses, and rings on every finger — skulls and swastikas, it looks like from here. No shirt, just a vest showing massive biceps no doubt hardened by lifting motorcycle parts. He could carry me out of the place under one arm, like a baguette. Embroidered across the vest are the flowered words Terminate the helmet law.

Although his bulk dominates like Mount Hood, Mr. Terminate is not the only major bonehead on the horizon. The area where Steve Crawford was murdered is known for meth kitchens and marijuana farms. Drug wars are fought in our national forests; left-wing anarchists and redneck Klansmen trying to blow each other up, and bikers after the spoils. On the face of it, each patron at Omar’s would fit one or more of those profiles. The one thing you could probably say about everybody in this bar is they all hate the United States government.

Rough trade.

Marvin Gladstone got that right.

It is 10:00 p.m. on a Monday night and this must be the crossroads of criminal activity in Washington County. Two fat truckers and two even fatter hookers are squeezed rump-to-rump, pitcher-to-pitcher at a table littered with pizza and chips, openly popping pills. Mexican gangbangers hover near a TV showing the fights, palming nickel bags of coke, muttering and complaining, flicking butts, grinding the worn heels of their western boots to jukebox Santana. The female neo-Nazis are big into black eyeliner and leather halters that show off their breasts, but I am wearing one of Darcy’s yellow oxford shirts with a collar, jeans with a belt, and beat-up Timberlands. (“Bad guys don’t have good boots,” Angelo warned.) The only woman at Omar’s less conspicuous than I am seems to be the lady in a calf-length denim skirt with a flounce, who is standing at my left, patiently waiting for the bartender’s attention. She has been there long enough, and close enough, for me to pick up her scent, like fresh almond soap, underneath the bitter stench of cigarette smoke. And then I notice the sheaves of richly colored gray-and-silver hair caught up in barrettes and falling past her shoulders, and that the woman, although twenty-some years older than I am and as many pounds heavier, radiates the sturdiness and ease in her body of someone who labors outdoors; her finely creased skin seems to hold the moist glaze of cold and foggy mornings.

The bartender darts his chin at her as he blows by. “Give me a sec, Megan.” “Sure thing.”

“You’ve been waiting a long time,” I observe.

“The waitress is busy,” the woman replies without a trace of resentment, and there is an eager jolt as I recognize this person shows an inherent sympathy for the underdog — such as a lonely stranger in a new city?

Opening move: “I love your necklace.”

A heavy silver pendant of interlocking triangles rests upon her pillowy chest.

“A valknot. Ever heard of it?”

I shake my head.

Megan answers with a forgiving smile. “A Nordic symbol for the three aspects of the universe.” “Now,” announces the bartender, sweating from his shaved head, “what can I get for you, Megan?” He pours white wine and mixes up a Salty Dog with fresh grapefruit juice and premium gin while Megan stares across at Mr. Terminate. And Mr. Terminate glares right back at her.

“You know that guy?” I ask.

“That’s John. I think he likes you.”

“No.”

“Yes. He’s looking right at you,” she says without moving her lips.

“He’s looking at you. ”

It is hard to tell what is going on underneath the top hat and mirrored sunglasses.

“He knows better than to mess with me,” Megan says lightly.

Mr. Terminate has picked up an ashtray. It is a white ceramic ashtray, like the one in front of us, and it says Coors.

Megan says, “Uh-oh.”

“What’s he doing?” I ask, alarmed.

“If you’re wearing a leg holster for a primary weapon, you’re an idiot,” Angelo always says, but for the second or third time that evening, I wish Darcy DeGuzman were carrying a.45 automatic.

I have noticed we are often burdened by our own creations.

“Look out,” Megan warns.

“Why?”

Instead of answering, she starts to back away from the bar.

Mr. Terminate is examining the ashtray closely, hefting it in his hand as if it were an apple.

Then he eats it.

He chews it, and chomps it with his back teeth, and there is an extraordinary sound, like marbles grinding against one another in a soft cloth bag. A pause, then he spews a great shower of white shards and pink-flecked foam across the bar. He picks the remaining pieces out of his beard, and then, with a meaningful look at me, lifts his glass and drinks the rest of the whiskey down.

Nobody bats an eye. The bartender is there with a rag.

I turn to the woman in disbelief. “What was that?”

Megan is matter-of-fact. “That’s John.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Megan’s answer encompasses the feminine dilemma, and seems to draw us both together in it.

“It’s what we’ve known since seventh grade,” she says. “Boys are stupid.” A wild laugh escapes me, while Mr. Terminate remains impassive, body language boulderlike and calm, as if he has not just eaten a glass ashtray and spit it out in our faces. He is waiting for an answer, but the question remains — What is the question? Is this some kind of brain-dead buffalo love, or has he made me, in the same way he might have made Steve Crawford for an undercover cop?

The bartender finally sets down the white wine and Salty Dog but waits a moment longer, keeping his hands on the drinks.

“What can I get your friend?” he asks Megan.

“We don’t really know each other,” I explain.

“Well, you should. Two beautiful ladies?”

I introduce myself as Darcy DeGuzman and it rolls right off my tongue. Her name is Megan Tewksbury, and she would like to pay her bill. But the bartender lingers, drawing things out.

“So, Darcy, another beer?”

White, built, maybe forty — he’s giving me a very friendly look. Is he trying to pick me up? It’s my lucky day. His black T-shirt says Does Not Play Well with Others. His lip is pierced, and he sports a bearded braided thing hanging off his chin.