"Listen to what you've got on that tape. Solicitation to commit murder. He stepped in his own shit."

"You remember when I told you that Sal is not Bugsy Siegel? I meant it. He did time for stolen credit cards. He's a midlevel guy. But he's connected with some big people in Nevada. They're smart, he's not. He makes mistakes they don't. When he falls, we want a whole busload to go up the road with him. Are you starting to get the big picture now?"

"All right, I screwed it up."

"That doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I think you knew better."

"He walked into it. I let it happen. I'm sorry it's causing you problems."

"No, you wanted to make sure he thought he was tapped. That way he wasn't about to try to whack you again."

"What would you do?"

"I would have stayed away from him to begin with."

"That's a dishonest answer. What would you do if a guy like io was trying to whack you out, maybe you and your daughter ath?"

I could hear the long-distance hum of the wires in the receiver.

"Did that Missoula detective get ahold of you?" he asked.

"He came out and left his card."

"I hope he'll be of some help to you if you have more trouble there."

"Look, Dan-"

"I have another call. We'll see you," he said.

I went into the kitchen to fix a bowl of Grape-Nuts and spilled the box all over the floor. I cleaned up the cereal with a wet paper towel and threw it in the trash.

"I'm heading out for work," Dixie Lee said.

"All right."

"Who was that?"

"Nobody."

"Yeah… well, what do you want to do after Wednesday?"

"What?"

"About Alafair. That job ain't but four hours a day. I can put them in any time I want."

"What are you talking about?"

"School's out for the summer, ain't it? I can help look after her. What's the best time for me to be home?"

"I don't know, Dixie. I can't think about it right now."

I felt him looking quietly at the side of my face, then he turned |and walked outside to his automobile. I looked at my watch. It was eight-thirty. I locked the house, put the.45 under the truck seat, land drove south once again into the Bitterroot Valley.

This time the black Jeepster was parked right next to the Mercury, and when I pulled into the yard and got out of the truck woodsmoke was blowing off the stone chimney. Through the front window I could see the woman named Betty drinking coffee with a man at a table in the living room.

The porch rails and the lacquered yellow logs of the house were wet with dew. I stepped up on the porch, knocked on the door, and when the woman opened it I saw Harry Mapes stare at me with his mouth parted over his coffee cup. Then he got up and walked out of my line of sight into a side room.

"Hi," she said, and smiled with recognition.

"You're"

"I didn't tell you my name yesterday. It's Dave Robicheaux. I'd like to talk to Harry."

"Sure. He's here. But how'd you know where I lived?"

"I'm sorry for disturbing you, but I'd appreciate it if you'd ask him to step out here."

"I don't understand this," she said, then turned and saw Mapes standing behind her.

"Harry, this is the guy I told you about."

"I figured it was you," he said to me.

He wore jeans and a flannel shirt, and a black automatic hung from his left hand. The chain scars on his face were almost totally gone now.

"Harry, what are you doing?" she said.

"This is the guy who attacked me in Louisiana," he said.

"Oh!" she said. Then she said it again, "Oh!"

"Come outside, Mapes," I said.

"You don't know when to leave it alone, do you?" he said.

"My lawyer told me you might try something like this. He also told me what to do about it "

"What's that?"

"You try to intimidate a witness, you just create more trouble for yourself. Figure it out."

"So you're holding all the cards. Look, I don't have a weapon. Why don't you step outside? Nobody's going to eat you."

His fingers were long on the sides of the automatic. I had seen only one or two like it since I had left Vietnam. It was a 7.62-millimeter Russian Tokarev, a side arm often carried by NVA officers.

I saw Mapes wet the triangular scar on his lip, his mouth tight, his eyes narrowed as though he were biting down softly on a piece of string. He wasn't a bad-looking man. He still had the build of a basketball player or a man who could do an easy five-mile morning run. You wouldn't pay particular attention to him in a supermarket line. Except for his eyes. He was the kind who was always taking your inventory, provided you represented or possessed something he was interested in; and sometimes when you studied the eyes in his kind you saw a hidden thought there that made you look away hurriedly.

"You're right," he said, and set the pistol on the arm of a couch by the door.

"Because you're all smoke. A guy who's always firing in the well. A big nuisance who couldn't mind his own business."

He opened the screen door and stepped out on the porch.

"You think it's going to come out different somehow at your trial?" he said.

"You think following me around Montana is going to make all that evidence go away?"

"You've got it wrong, Harry. I gave up on trying to nail you. You're too slick a guy. You've fooled people all your life. You burned two people to death when you were seventeen, you murdered the Indians, the waitress in Louisiana, your partner, and I think you raped and murdered Darlene. You got away with all of it."

I saw the blood drain out of the face of the woman behind the screen. Mapes's chest rose and fell with his breathing.

"Listen, you asshole" he said.

"But that's not why I'm here. You were at the school ground, in that Mercury there, looking at my daughter through field glasses, asking questions about her. Now, my message here is simple. If you come around her again, I'm going to kill you. Believe it. I've got nothing to lose at this point. I'm going to walk up to you, wherever you are, and blow your fucking head off."

I walked off the porch into the yard.

"Oh, no, you don't," he said.

"You, too, Betty. You stay out here and listen to this. My lawyer did some checking on this guy. He's a drunk, he's a mental case, he's got an obsession because he got his wife killed by some drug dealers. Then somebody threatened his daughter, and he accused me and my partner. The fact that he's an ex-cop with dozens of people who'd like to even a score with him doesn't seem to enter his head. Let me tell you something, Ro-bicheaux. Betty's son goes to a Catholic school in Missoula. She and her ex-husband have shared custody. Sometimes I pick him up or drop him off for her. If that's the same school your daughter goes to, it's coincidence, and that's all it is."

"You heard what I said. No warning light next time," I said.

I got inside my truck and closed the door.

"No, Harry, bring him back," the woman said.

"Who's Darlene? What's he talking about a rape? Harry?"

"He's leaving. Close the door," he said to her.

"Harry, I'll call the sheriff. He can't get away with saying that."

"He's leaving. He's not coming back."

Then he walked toward the truck window just as I started the engine.

"You're going to prison," he said.

"Nothing's going to change that. You can mess me up with my girl, you can say stuff about blowing me away if it makes you feel good, but in a few weeks you're going to be hoeing sweet potatoes in Angola."

I put the transmission in reverse and began backing around in a half circle. The wind blew his hair, and his skin looked grained and healthy in the sunlight. His eyes never left my face. My knuckles were ridged on top of the gearshift knob, and my thighs were shaking as I depressed the floor pedals.

It had all been for nothing.