And we laughed as if life could begin all over again.
We found a quiet dinner at Chatham's Bar & Grill, a couple of good Scotches, a bottle of wine, and a couple of steaks worth dying for. Then we walked back to the hotel in the blizzard.
'What do people do here in the wintertime?' she asked, the wind nearly whipping away her words.
'Well, when winter really starts,' I said, 'they drink and fight and fuck and bet on when the chicken shits. Get divorced, kill each other, fall in love,' I added. 'Just like normal life. Or what passes for normal life in a Montana winter.'
'Sounds like fun,' she said as she struggled with the hotel door. 'How come you left?'
'I guess I made the mistake of thinking love was more important than fun,' I said.
'Or disconnected from it,' Molly said, then we stepped into the warm safety of the hotel. 'I guess I grew up so fast I never knew much about it.'
As it turned out, neither did I. Not until now. We spent the rest of the night doing our best to discover what we had both missed. We nearly made it.
The next afternoon we checked out of the hotel, then drove out to Punky Creek. As we parked in front of the small steel building, the music boomed and the snowstorm rattled, but the noise must not have covered the sound of our arrival, because when Enos opened the front door, he had the huge automatic stuffed into his belt. 'You folks lost?' he said, waving us in out of the blizzard.
'Not exactly, Mr. Walker,' I said, 'but we could use some directions.'
'You ought not to be out in this kind of shit,' he said. 'Ain't fit for visiting.'
'It's important that I talk to you, Mr. Walker,' I said as I removed my gloves, hood, and sunglasses.
'What the fuck? You're that old son of a bitch from Duval's place,' Walker said, then stepped back to consider us and our arrival at his hideout. At the end of the table one of the large cardboard boxes was half-unloaded. It didn't take a genius to realize that Enos was unpacking a meth lab.
'What the fuck are you doin' here?'
'Pat me down,' I said, leaning into a steel support. 'I'm clean.' I had assumed that this wasn't the time to be armed.
'Pat you down, my ass,' he said, pulling the large pistol out of his belt and flopping into a chair. 'Man, you strip. And you, bitch, you lock your hands behind your head, and don't fucking move. I'll deal with you later.'
'This is a hell of a place to be cooking meth,' I said as I was undressing.
'I can't get off on that fuckin' coke anymore,' Enos said. 'And the bastards who stole my money, this is the only stake they'll give me to get back in the coke business. So I'm working my way back into the good times.'
'Lomax?' I said.
But Walker just laughed. Once I was down to my T-shirt and shorts, Walker made me lock my hands behind my neck, while Molly stripped to her thermal underwear.
'Well, at least you people are clean,' he said, 'so come over here and sit down.' He motioned to a worktable with several swivel chairs around it. I sat beside him. Molly sat on the other side of the table. Walker shoved a partially eaten microwave dinner to one side. An almost full bottle of Crown Royal stood beside ten or twelve long, sloppy lines of cocaine, lines like drifts or sand dunes, that had been chopped along the side of the table. As we sat down, Walker grabbed a straw and huffed two of the huge lines. 'You understand, this ain't exactly an ideal time for me, man. I'm up here all alone, with this fuckin' meth to cook, and you two are the first human beings I've seen in two weeks. So I gotta ask what the hell you're doin'? If you ain't delivering money, drugs, or pussy, what business you got botherin' me?'
'I started off looking for you so I could keep the state of Texas from jabbing a needle in your arm,' I said calmly, 'then somebody started popping caps in my direction, and now I guess I'm looking for Mandy Rae and some answers.'
The burst of his laughter banged the sides of the building like a twelve-pound sledge. 'Mandy Rae. Shit, man, she's been dead for years. After Duval got shot that night, there was too much heat to work, so she split for France to move into the heroin trade. Perfect business for a bitch like that. When I was in the slam, I heard that the Corsicans blew up her car. She was a real pain in the ass, man, she always had to be running things, to be in charge of everything. Hell, if she wasn't dead, I'd kill her myself. I know damn well she dropped the dime on me when me and my brother went into business on our own.'
'I think it's a quarter now,' I said. 'Where'd she get the cocaine?'
Walker laughed and reached for the bottle, saying maybe we should have a drink. 'You think she'd give up her source to a Mandingo nigger like me? Hell, no. Not a chance.' He hit the bottle hard, then looked at me and said, 'But you still be wanting something else, don't you? You one of them unsatisfied white motherfuckers. You think if you know some shit, it'll make everything better? You don't know shit.'
'You might be right. But I think if you'll come back to Texas with me, Walker,' I said. 'And roll over on Mandy Rae, Sissy Duval, and Hayden Lomax, I can help you beat the Billy Long murder charges.'
'Billy Long's murder charges,' he said, then laughed for a long time before he did another line, then hit the bottle again. 'Fuck the small stuff. Mandy Rae, man, she's long dead. Hayden Lomax, hell, he owns the world down there, and you couldn't touch him in a hundred years. And Sissy Duval, she's just a silly piece of ass. She liked it up the old dirt track even better than her husband did. Fuck her. And all them other cunts.' Then he paused to hit the bottle again. 'Billy Long, that racist fucker, he don't count for nothin'. Nobody gives a shit that he's dead. I'm clean on that one. I'm clean here. Come spring, I'll sell all this shit to some Mexicans over in Yakima, then I've got some South American plans.' He hit the bottle again. 'Look at it from my point of view,' he said, then stood up.
'That's what got me in trouble, Walker,' I said. 'Looking at it from your point of view. Now I'm thinking I should have just walked away.'
'Maybe you should have walked away, man. What's to keep me from poppin' your ass, then runnin' it through the rock crusher?'
'Just me,' I said.
'Milo,' Molly whispered.
'By the way, who is that fine lady?' Enos asked. I didn't tell him.
'Maybe we ought to forget all this and go,' she whispered, staring at the pistol swinging casually in his hand.
'Go!' Enos shouted before I could agree with her. 'Shit, the party's just gettin' off the ground, girl. Hey, girl, let's see what you got under that other shit.'
'Don't fuck with me, man,' I said. 'I'll sic Lomax on your ass.'
Walker was suddenly no longer interested in Molly. 'What's that you say?'
'Lomax sent me to look for you,' I said, lying as fast as I could.
'That's your bad luck, old man,' Walker muttered. 'I ain't ever doin' no more time.' Then without another word, Walker backhanded me on the side of the head so hard that I lifted out of the chair and fairly flew across the room, smacked into the side of one of the roaring gas heaters with the side of my neck and shoulder, then bounced hard to the concrete floor. I didn't have a second to appreciate my scrapes and burns before Walker kicked me in the side with his work boots. I had a moment to feel the left arm and several ribs crack before he stuffed the pistol in his waistband and jerked me upright to smash me full in the face with his giant fist. I felt my nose flatten and several teeth splinter. I guess I should have been surprised that he hadn't knocked my eyes right out of their sockets. When he picked me up again, at least I got the remains of my nose out of the way of his fist, but he caught me high on the forehead. I rolled over the heater again, then landed on a pile of rock-crusher bits. Then Walker picked me up again. I was done, all my strings were broken, my limbs dangling like broken wings. Piss ran down my leg, shit dribbled whenever it wanted, blood filled my eyes.
Before he could hit me again, through the billowing fog of shock, I heard Molly scream 'No!' Then a sharp pop. I grabbed weakly at Walker's pistol, but he swatted me away like a gnat, then I heard another crack, followed by an explosion, then he released me. I tumbled to the cold floor as softly as a black feather, glancing off the bulk of the gas heater again, the smell of burning skin rank in the bloody, crooked remains of my nose.
Sometimes you don't get a chance to say goodbye. Sounds maudlin, but it's true. I don't know how long it took Molly to die. The.50 Magnum round had taken her just two fingers to the left of her right hipbone, right in the
