“Do you know who it is?”
Even Nate turned to look at her, but she shook her head. “No, I thought for a minute, but…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I studied her. “You’re sure?”
She straightened and stepped back from the counter. “Yeah.”
I sighed and looked at Nate. “You?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I wish I did. Believe me.”
“I do.” I patted him on the shoulder. “We’re going to head up to Jimtown and ask around. Do you think you can keep manipulating the recording so that we can try and get more out of it?” I paused. “Without putting it on the air?”
He smiled and looked at the lights still blinking on the phone. “Hey, man, I may have produced a hit here.”
Chief Long had been silent in the five miles up to the notorious drinking establishment; it had been a quick five miles, but five miles nonetheless.
She slid the Yukon to a stop in front of the steel-red posts sticking up in front of the Jimtown Bar’s front door-likely there to keep the patrons from instituting an impromptu drive-through-and sat staring at the dash, the midday sun drying the irrigation water in the surrounding hay field with wisps of vapor trailing up from the ground.
“Something wrong?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
She looked at me as if I’d just fallen off the official sheriff’s-only turnip truck. “I’m just wondering how complex this case is, you know?”
I nodded. “It usually is complicated when it concerns matters of the heart; things tend to get venal and earthy.”
She pressed her lips together. “So you don’t think it’s a hidden gold mine or about nuclear weapons?”
I smiled. “No, I don’t; I think it’s something small, something personal, and probably something stupid.” I waited a moment. “You got anything you want to tell me, Chief?”
She looked at me for a longer moment and then pulled the handle and threw open her door. “Not really.”
The Jimtown bar itself isn’t an impressive sight, but the beer can pile out back most certainly is. Documented by National Geographic and Guinness World Records as the largest beer can pile in the world, it dwarfed the actual bar, where the twin mottos, which appeared on the back of souvenir ball caps, had always been WHERE THE CAN OF WHUPASS IS ALWAYS OPEN, and FRIDAY NIGHT SPECIAL, SHOT, STABBED, OR RAPED. I got tired the way I always did when approaching such establishments and hoped that Luanne, the proprietor for the last few miraculously quiet years, was about.
I started to follow Long toward the door but paused when I saw an old, faded powder-blue Dodge with a white replacement door that read COLSTRIP CONCRETE and a phone number belying its age with only four numerals.
I stopped.
The moment must have lasted longer than I thought, as Lolo paused with her hand on the front door of the bar and looked at me. “Something wrong?”
I thought about repeating the conversation in reverse but decided her mood wasn’t conducive. “I’ve seen that truck before.”
“There are only a couple of thousand vehicles on the Rez, so I bet you have.” She pushed the door open but instead of going inside turned to look at me. “Where?”
“Birney.”
“Red or White?”
“I’ll tell you later.” I glanced at the truck one more time, then caught the heavy glass door and followed her into the interior gloom, lit only by the red neon spelling BAR in the small window. It was still well before opening time, but a familiar character sat on one of the massive log stools bolted to the concrete floor.
Thom Paine had been the unofficial mayor of Jimtown for as long as I could remember; half Cheyenne and half Crow, he was the perfect peacemaker for the just-off-the-Rez bar. He was a small man, so his best technique for breaking up beer brawls was to get the patrons to laugh with an unending stream of politically incorrect Native humor mostly borrowed from Herbert His Good Horse. He leapt off his stool as soon as he saw us. “ Haho! ”
Lolo held up a hand to stop the coming tirade as I wandered over to the jukebox at the far end of the bar. “Thom, is Luanne around?”
“No, she went to Billings for a hair appointment.” His voice became more excited as he thought of a joke to tell. “I got this one off the morning show the other day-there were these two cowboys out ridin’ and they came onto this Indian lying on his belly with his ear against the earth.”
I thumbed through the machine’s old-style tabs as Long’s voice sounded dubious. “She left you in charge?”
“No, Nattie Tyminski is here, but she’s in the bathroom.” He continued with the joke as if she hadn’t interrupted. “The one cowboy turns to the other and says, ‘See that Indian, he can put his ear to the ground and hear things from miles away.’”
I got to the end of the song listings and then went back in the other direction just to make sure I hadn’t missed it.
“About that time the Indian looks up at them and says, ‘Covered wagon pulled by two oxen, one white, the other speckled, one man, one woman, three children and a black dog-wagon full of all family supplies.’ The one cowboy looks at the other one and says, ‘That’s amazing.’ The Indian continued, ‘Yes, ran over me about a half- hour ago.’”
Lolo chuckled in spite of herself and glanced toward the two bathroom doors, one marked “SQUAWS,” the other “BRAVES,” that led toward the pool table past the jukebox where I stood. “Thom, sometimes…” And she finally laughed wholeheartedly.
His eyes almost disappeared in the folds around the sockets. “It makes me happy to see you laughing the way you used to, Little-Lo. You don’t laugh enough anymore.”
She gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “I guess it’s the job, Thom.” She took a deep breath and glanced over to me. “I’ve had some help with that lately, though.”
I leaned against the jukebox and tipped my hat back in an aw-shucks manner. “No Ballad of Ira Hayes.”
She let the hand slip from the mayor’s shoulder and crossed to me. “No?”
“No.” I glanced at Thom. “When’s the last time they changed the music on this machine?”
He shook his head, looked at the floor, and then back to us. “Never that I know of.”
“That means that Artie didn’t call from here.”
She studied me. “Then where?”
“Could’ve been anywhere: a cell phone in Artie’s truck, a home stereo, or a radio station.”
Thom watched us like we were a tennis match, but I cut him off before he could start in with the jokes again. “The key is the woman; if we know who the woman is then we know where the place might’ve been.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
“Because I think you know who she is.”
It was at that point that the Squaws bathroom door opened and two individuals of separate sexes exited. One was an obese woman with a modified beehive hairdo and way too much makeup; the other was a skinny white guy with a shaved head, a flame tattoo spiraling up his neck, and sunglasses, despite the gloom inside. The man held a brown plastic grocery sack and looked very surprised to see us.
I smiled. “Mr. Kelly Joe Burns-I see you have your belt on.”
He paused there for a second, pushed Nattie Tyminski toward us, and then dodged behind the bar through the doorway toward the back. It took both of us to catch the screaming woman, who stumbled, fell halfway to the floor, wrapped one arm around me and the other around Chief Long’s leg, and held on for dear life.
The chief was the first to disentangle, and she lithely leapt over the bar and through the back door. “Arrest her!”
