James Burke - Swan Peak

“Not really,” I said.

“Because it doesn’t look local. I’m wrong on that?” he said.

“No, you’re right. But you can call Joe Bim Higgins on my cell if you think we’re pulling on your crank,” Clete said.

“It was just a question. What do you guys want to know?”

I opened my notebook on the bar. The bartender told us his name was Harold Waxman and that he worked part-time at the saloon and sometimes drove 18-wheelers after Labor Day, when the tourist season shut down. “Lot of the mills have closed. There’s not that much log hauling anymore,” he said.

“Did the California people have trouble with anybody here? Exchange words, something like that?” I said.

“Not exactly,” the bartender said.

“How do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” I asked.

“The guy was a negative kind of person, that’s all. He wasn’t a likable guy.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Said the place was dirty or something to that effect. Look, there was a half-breed or a Mexican-looking guy hanging around. He was watching Ms. Wellstone or the California woman from the doorway over there. Maybe he’s a cherry picker. It’s not the season yet, but they’ll be showing up at Flathead Lake for the harvest pretty soon.”

“You told this to the sheriff?” I said.

“Yeah, or to the detectives he sent out here. You want a drink? It’s on the house.”

I shook my head. “Give me three fingers of Jack straight up,” Clete said. “Give me a beer back on that, too.”

“The woman and the guy with her?” the bartender said, fixing Clete’s drink. “The way they talked, I think maybe they were in the life, know what I mean?”

“What did they say?” Clete asked.

“She said she’d been a high-priced hooker. She was talking about it to Ms. Wellstone like it was nothing. It was embarrassing to listen to. If you ask me, California is a big commode overflowing on the rest of the country.”

He set down a deep shot glass brimming with whiskey on a paper napkin, then drew a draft beer and set it on a separate napkin. The foam swelled up over the lip of the beer glass and pooled onto the napkin. Unconsciously, I touched at my mouth with my knuckle, then looked out at the rain dancing on the lake. The mist on the water’s surface made me think of Lake Pontchartrain years ago, long before Katrina, long before I had blown out my doors with Jim Beam straight up and a beer back.

“Did Ms. Wellstone seem to know these people?” I asked.

“No, not at all. I don’t think she liked them, either. Ms. Wellstone is highly thought of hereabouts. She could be a Nashville star if she wanted to. She gave up her career to sing gospel. That pair from California were low-rent. To be frank, anybody who thinks Ms. Wellstone would be mixed up with people like that has got his head up his ass.”

Clete knocked back his Jack and sipped the foam from his beer. I could see the color bloom in his cheeks and his eyes take on a warm shine. “I hear Jamie Sue Wellstone married a guy who was fried in a tank,” he said.

“Mr. Wellstone was wounded in a war. But I don’t know how. Maybe you ought to ask him about it,” the bartender said.

“You know what I can’t figure, Harold?” Clete said. “You’re knocking people in the life, but you’ve got a photograph of Bugsy Siegel and Virginia Hill on your wall there.”

The bartender looked at him silently.

“What I also can’t figure out is why young, beautiful women never marry mutilated poor guys or even old poor guys,” Clete said. “It’s a mystery.”

“You guys want anything else?” the bartender asked.

Clete looked at me and back at the bartender. “Not a thing,” he said, and slipped a folded five-dollar bill under his empty shot glass.

We talked to the waitress in the café about the man who had been looking through the bead curtain at the murder victims and Jamie Sue Wellstone. Then we walked out to my truck.

“What was that stuff with the bartender?” I said.

“I don’t like blue-collar guys who suck up to rich people,” Clete replied. “The Wellstone place isn’t far from here. Let’s check out the broad.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I replied.

“What are they going to do? Dime me with the feds? Lighten up, big mon. Everything is copacetic.”

THE WELLSTONE RANCHwas only a half hour from the Swan River, up on a plateau of emerald-green meadowland bordered by sheer mountains that were still capped with snow. The house was Tudor, huge, more a fortress than a home. The barns and sheds were red with white trim, the pastures separated by the same hand-stacked rock fences that you see in the Upper South. At least a hundred head of bison grazed on one slope; Texas longhorns grazed on another. The Wellstones, at least ostensibly, had created a bucolic paradise. The fact that they wanted to dig test wells on it, or anywhere else in the Swan Drainage, was beyond comprehension.

The security man at the gate called up to the main house, and we were waved in and told to meet Ms. Wellstone at the entrance to the garden. She wore a bloodred dress with a white ribbon that was threaded through the eyelets at the top of the bodice. She carried a martini glass with two olives in the bottom. I thought perhaps alcohol explained the casual access she had given us to her home. But I quickly began to feel that Jamie Sue Wellstone was one of those rare individuals who could use booze selectively, perhaps to deaden the senses if need be, and not become hostage to it.

The garden was dissected by gravel pathways and surrounded by a gray stone wall that was stippled with lichen in the shade. The flower beds were planted with pansies, English roses that were as big as grapefruit, forget-me-nots, violets, clematis vine, and bottlebrush trees. I wondered if the eclectic nature of the ornamentals in the garden said something about the undefined and perhaps deceptive nature of the Wellstones and their ability to acquire an entire culture as easily as writing a check.

“Would you like a drink?” Jamie Sue said, indicating a redwood table where a bottle of vodka sat in an ice bucket.

“ I would,” Clete said.

“Is your husband home, Ms. Wellstone?” I asked.

“He’s taking a nap. This is about the people who were at the saloon on the lake before they were killed?” she said.

“Yeah, the bartender said a guy who was maybe a Latino or part Indian was paying undue attention to either you or the homicide victims,” I said.

“I don’t remember that, really. I didn’t see anything unusual there that day,” she said.

The sky was still sealed by rain clouds, and it was cold sitting at the table. The garden itself seemed like an intrinsically cold place, dotted with stone benches and tarnished bronze sundials, shut off from the vistas surrounding the ranch. Clete poured himself a full glass of vodka and dropped three olives in it. “Bombs away,” he said, and tanked it down.

“Would you like a beer or a Scotch, Mr. Robicheaux?” Jamie Sue Wellstone asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s odd you have no memory of a Mexican or Indian watching you at the saloon, because the bartender made a point about his being there.”

“Maybe an Indian or Mexican was there. It’s just not the way I remember it. I’m not saying the bartender is wrong,” she said.

Know what the false close is in the ethos of a door-to-door salesman? The salesman backs off, concedes that the customer’s reluctance is understandable, and seemingly gives up. It’s a hot day. The salesman is tired and asks for a glass of water. A moment later, he’s the customer’s friend, a victim himself, a family man with a wife and kids depending on him. The customer gets sandbagged without ever knowing what hit him.