“You want to have another talk with the Wellstones?”

He chewed at a piece of skin on the ball of his thumb. “Yeah, then we start over. We missed something. It’s real simple, too. Know why we haven’t seen it?”

“No, but tell me.”

He gave me a look. “The main players all have normal roles,” he said. “They’re not skells or grifters or junkies or porn addicts. They don’t have rap sheets. They don’t get picked up in shooting galleries or at cathouses or live-sex shows. They don’t give us the edge.”

“But sooner or later, they all go down, Cletus, edge or no edge.”

“That’s why neither one of us ever developed drinking problems,” he replied.

When Cletus was at the plate, your best slider usually came back at you like a BB in the forehead.

WE HEADED UP to the Swan Valley in Clete’s Caddy. An hour and a half later, we were rebuffed at the Wellstones’ front gate by none other than Lyle Hobbs. Even though Clete had ripped out Hobbs’s wiring at the park in Missoula, Hobbs was oddly detached and self-possessed. His recessed eye, the one looped by a chain of tiny scars, still looked as dead as a lead ball but no more lacking in expression than his other eye. “The Wellstones aren’t receiving guests right now,” he said. “You can come back tomorrow or the next day.”

Through the electronically locked gate, I could see the fortress-like structure the Wellstones called home at the end of the driveway. Deer were feeding on the lawn, their coats golden in the sunlight, like decorative ornaments. I got out of the Caddy and closed the door behind me, indicating physically that my presence was going to be a problem that wouldn’t disappear easily. “How about calling up to your boss and asking?” I said.

“They’re not to be bothered,” Hobbs replied, his expression flat, his gaze fixed on the mountains.

“Would you tell Ms. Wellstone I’d like to speak with her?” I said.

“She’s not here right now,” he replied.

“Do you know when she’ll return?” I asked.

“No sir, I don’t.”

“Would you know where she is?”

“With the driver and the maid and the little boy. Shopping, maybe. She’s real good at shopping.”

“You think your buddy Quince Whitley got a raw deal?” I asked.

Hobbs’s mouth was pinched, as though he were sucking in his cheeks. His dry, uncombed hair blew in the wind, his untucked short-sleeve shirt loose on his thin frame. “The way I hear it, Quince dealt the play. He wasn’t a bad guy. But he made mistakes in judgment sometimes,” Hobbs said. “I don’t play another man’s hand, if that’s what you’re trying to make me do.”

“You think Reverend Sonny Click offed himself,” I said.

This time his eyes found mine. “That’s what happened, right?” he said.

“I think he was unconscious when somebody strung him up,” I said. “I think somebody thought he was the weak sister in the chain. You’re a smart guy, Lyle. You were Mobbed up and in the life when the Wellstone brothers were getting blow jobs with their daddy’s credit card. What do you think is going to happen to you when you’re no longer useful?”

Clete leaned over to the passenger window. “Hey, Lyle, remember what Sally Dee used to always say: ‘There’re kings and queens, and then there’re worker bees.’ Did you know Sally read Machiavelli and Hitler in jail? Glad you’re not working for him anymore.”

Lyle Hobbs stared blankly at both of us. Nobody knew the skells better than Clete Purcel, and nobody was better at pressing thumbtacks into their heads.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON Candace Sweeney and Troyce Nix were eating in the café that adjoined the nightclub on the lake when a long white limo pulled in and the daytime bartender, Harold, got out and went inside. He placed a take-out order for hamburgers and fries at the counter, then went into the nightclub and began fixing a drink with a blender behind the bar. The curtains were partially closed on the café’s front window in order to keep out the glare, but through a crack, Candace could see the extravagant full length of the limo and its charcoal-tinted windows, its bulk and mass and power a visible rejection of all those who set limitations on their own lives. The engine was running, the air-conditioning units on, the charcoal windows damp from the coldness inside.

“Why would people with money like that want to eat in a greasy skillet like this?” Candace asked.

“So they can pretend they’re like the rest of us,” Troyce replied.

“Why do they want to pretend to be like us?”

“So they can make us feel bad about ourselves. So they can tell us they made it but we didn’t.” Then he grinned at her in his old way, at the corner of the mouth, like the Duke. “Or maybe there just ain’t another place here’bouts to get good food.”

Candace felt like a clock was running faster and faster inside her, its wheels and cogs starting to shear, its hands spinning in a blur. “There’s still gold up in the Cascades, places where nobody ever found the mother lode,” she said. “My father swore it was there, up in the high country, up in the snow line. All those years it was washing down into the creeks, telling the panners down below where it was, but nobody was interested. Think of it, Troyce, maybe a vein three inches thick running through the face of a cliff you just have to sweep the snow off of.”

Troyce looked at her peculiarly. “Bet you and me could find it,” he said.

She waited for him to finish.

“Soon as we tie up things here,” he said.

He forked down the last of his chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes and peas and took a final sip from his coffee. “I need to talk to that old boy in the saloon a minute.”

Candace realized who was in the white limo. “Leave them alone, Troyce.”

“Don’t worry. It’s them what better look out for us,” he said.

WHEN TROYCE ENTERED the nightclub, Harold Waxman was pouring a daiquiri into a stemmed glass, wrapping a towel around the bottom to catch the overflow.

“Remember me?” Troyce said.

Harold lifted his eyes from his work. “I’m on my own time right now. If you want a drink, order from the other bartender,” he said.

“I’m a businessman. I don’t drink during the day,” Troyce said.

Harold Waxman wore black slacks and a black leather belt and a long-sleeve dress shirt that was so white it had a blue tint. Every hair on his head was combed neatly into place, with no attempt to disguise his growing baldness or advancing age. A toothpick protruded from the corner of his mouth. “The state of Texas hires businessmen as prison guards?” he said.

“I’m empowered to offer a reward for this escaped felon Jimmy Dale Greenwood,” Troyce said. “The reward pays upon custody rather than conviction. I’m talking about five thousand dollars.”

Harold Waxman propped his hands on the bar and stared at the video poker machines lined up against the far wall. “Number one, I don’t know any escaped felons. Number two, if I did, I’d call the Sheriff’s Department. Number three, this is the second time you’ve come in here pestering people. I’m hoping it’s the last.”

He looked at the young woman who had entered the saloon and was standing behind Troyce. “You want a drink, miss, you need to order from the man down the bar. I’m off the clock,” he said.

“I’m with him,” Candace said, nodding toward Troyce.

“My offer still stands,” Troyce said to Harold.

Harold let his eyes go flat and rolled his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. He poured the rest of the daiquiri from its pitcher into a large thermos. He did not look up again until Troyce and Candace were gone.

While Troyce paid the check in the café, the limo drove away with the bartender behind the wheel, the charcoal windows still closed to the heat outside.

“Why were you talking to that guy?” Candace asked.