He removed a twenty-five-caliber automatic from under the dashboard and Velcro-strapped it to his right ankle. From under the seat he removed a small brown plastic-capped bottle of sulfuric acid, wrapped it carefully in a handkerchief, and slipped it into his pants pocket. Then he walked around behind the club and entered through the back door so he could sit in a dark area where the bar curved into the wall and watch the band and the dancers on the floor and the people eating at the tables in the front of the building.

TROYCE WAS ENJOYING his T-bone, forking meat and french fries into his mouth with his left hand. He drank from his beer and winked at Candace. “Don’t be worrying, little darlin’. People like us is forever,” he said.

“You’re willful and hardheaded, Troyce.”

“If you don’t find your enemies, your enemies will find you.”

“My father’s nickname was Smilin’ Jack. He had impractical dreams. He thought he was gonna find gold in the Cascades,” she said.

“Yeah?” Troyce said, not understanding.

“I don’t know if he found his gold or not. If he did, he probably died doing it. He never came out of the mountains. But he believed in his dreams.”

“Your meaning is I don’t?”

“You don’t know how to dream. You’re caught up in a mission. You’re like a bat trying to find its hole in the daylight.”

“Wish you wouldn’t talk that way.”

“You break my heart,” she said.

He crossed his knife and fork on his plate and rested his hands on the table. “I thought you wanted to come here,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

She stared at nothing, her face wan.

“I bet your old man was a good guy,” Troyce said. “It’s too bad he went away. But everybody gets hurt. Life’s a sonofabitch, then you die. In the meantime, you don’t let people run you over.”

She thought about leaving and walking back to the motel. But if she did that, eventually she would have to tell Troyce why – namely that she had recognized the man he had come to Montana to find. “The food is real good. I’m glad we came here,” she said. “After we eat, I’d like to go back to the motel, though. I’m not feeling too good.”

He picked up his knife and fork and began eating again. A few minutes later, up on the bandstand, the dark-skinned man in jeans and a denim jacket sat down in a straight-back chair and placed a Dobro across his thighs. Another musician lowered a microphone so it would pick up the notes from the Dobro’s resonator. The man in the denim jacket slipped three steel picks on his left hand and slid a chrome-plated bar along the guitar’s neck, the resonator picking up the steel hum of the strings, a sustained tremolo like the vibration in the blade of a saw. The band and the man in the denim jacket began to play in earnest. Troyce kept eating, seemingly unmindful of the music, his face empty.

Then he looked up from his plate and smiled. “What’s the name of that piece?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“It’s a Bob Wills number, ain’t it?” he said.

“I don’t know, Troyce,” she replied.

“‘Cimarron,’ that’s what it is,” he said.

“I got to go to the restroom. I really don’t feel good.”

But Troyce had spent a lifetime reading lies in other people’s faces. “Did that actor upset you? Tell me the truth. I’m not gonna hurt him. You got my word. But tell me what’s going on here.”

“I got the headspins, that’s all. I don’t know what it is.”

She got up unsteadily from the table and walked between the dance floor and the groups of people drinking at the bar. The actor was facing the bar, talking to his friends. When he saw her approach, he stepped away from them into her path. “Decide to join us?” he said.

“Tell the guy playing the bottle-neck guitar that Troyce Nix is here. Tell him to get his ass out the back door,” Candace said.

“That’s J. D. Gribble. He’s a quiet, gentle guy. I think you’ve got him mistaken for somebody else.”

“I don’t know his name. If you like your friend, take him somewhere else, you hear me?” she said.

“What’d he do?”

“You asked if Troyce was in an accident. The accident was the guy up there on the bandstand.”

The actor raised his eyebrows and set his drink on the bar. His cheeks were slightly sunken, his jaw well defined, his eyes clear as he looked at her. “I’d like to help,” he said. “But it’s not my business.”

She walked away, not surprised by the actor’s unwillingness to involve himself in the plight of another, but oddly depressed just the same. When she returned from the restroom, the actor was still looking at her. “I did it,” he said.

“Did what?”

“What you said. I did it. But I don’t think J.D. could hear me over the noise. He was toking on a jay earlier. I tried. What’s your last name?”

“Why?”

“You’re fucking beautiful is why.”

“It’s my tattoos and the pits in my skin that turn men on,” she replied.

When she sat back down with Troyce, he was looking at her strangely. “Were you talking with that actor again?”

“He said I was beautiful.”

“He’s got good judgment.”

“My stomach’s not right. I’d like to go back to the motel,” she said.

“You’re jerking me around about something. I just don’t know what it is,” he replied.

“You ever hear of Looney Larry Lewis?”

“No.”

“He was a black roller-derby star in Miami. He told me I was the only girl he ever met who was as crazy as he was. He meant it as a compliment. I can’t finish my food.”

Troyce put down his knife and fork and sat back in his chair. He wiped his mouth with a paper towel and dropped the towel on the table. “I’ll get a box,” he said.

CLETE PURCEL CALLED me on his cell phone just after nine P.M. I had not seen him all day. Since he had become involved with Special Agent Rosecrans, which in Clete’s case meant in the sack and in trouble, I had seen less and less of him.

“I’m in the parking lot of a joint on the two-lane in East Missoula. I could use some backup,” he said.

“What’s the deal?” I asked.

“I interviewed this prison guard Troyce Nix and his girlfriend at their motel, then decided to follow them later, just to see what might develop. So I ended up at this juke joint where-”

“Why are you following Nix?”

“Because both he and his girlfriend are hinky.”

“In what way?”

“The guy who tried to fry me had a mask on. I don’t think it was because he’s seen too many chain-saw movies. I think his face is deformed, like Nix’s or the sheriff’s or Leslie Wellstone’s.”

“We’ve talked about this before.”

“Quince Whitley is here, too.”

“Where?”

“At the juke joint. Are you listening to anything I say?”

“Anything else going on?”

“Yeah, J. D. Gribble is up on the bandstand. How’s that for a perfecta? Jesus-”

“What?”

“I’m outside. Gribble just came out the back door with this actor and some other people. What’s that actor’s name, the guy in that new western? They’re smoking dope.”

QUINCE WHITLEY WAS getting sick of watching this collection of Hollywood characters down the bar from him. Who were they, anyway? They all thought their shit was chocolate ice cream, but probably not one of them had ever heard of Tammy Wynette or Marty Stuart or knew they came from Mississippi, or knew that Marty Stuart was from Neshoba County, where those civil rights workers got killed back in the 1960s, because that racial crap was all they cared about, not the fact that a celebrity like Elvis grew up in Tupelo. One guy had even been hitting on Troyce Nix’s punch, keeping his eyes level with hers, like he wasn’t aware of her tattooed bongos sticking out of the top of her blouse. For just a second Quince entertained a fantasy in which he was a movie director, orchestrating the deaths of Nix, the girl, and the actor, turning the three of them into a bloody swatch across a camera lens. Now, that would be a movie worth seeing, he thought.