The Final Country

separate ventilation system, had a view. Everything behind the bar was within two easy steps on the hard rubber duckboards.

Just as important were the things the bar didn't have: no beer signs and no sports paraphernalia – they attracted the wrong sort of drinker – no jukebox or canned music but a CD system with a collection of classical music and jazz; and no television, except for the small color set above the closed end of the bar where only the bartender and the bar drinkers had a view. For the occasional day drinker and my lonely nights. A small grill in a room behind the bar served only nachos, taquitos, tacos, red and green chili, and cold sandwiches. It was as close to a bartender's heaven as stolen money could buy. In addition, Petey had inserted a program in the computer system that showed random drink and food orders paid for with cash. All I had to do was match the overage with cash from the floor safe in the kitchen, and suddenly clean money appeared. When I first met Petey, he was a skateboard punk with spiked hair and lots of metal in his face. Now he was my silent yuppie partner. He was worth it. I could even turn the program off if one of us wasn't going to be there to close out the register.

Most of the people who worked the bar and grill were members of the Herrera family, and Sunday was their day to howl with the familia, so I worked most Sunday nights, but no two were ever the same. Some Sunday nights the bar resembled a fraternity party gone bad. The technocrats and software salesmen visiting the nearby computer companies sometimes drank like spoiled, nervous children, slobbering from rubbery lips onto their pocket computers or loosened silk ties. Then sometimes they didn't drink at all. The crowd was occasionally leavened by a clot of Japanese, who after their first burst of fun would droop politely like fragile flowers over their martini glasses, or demand karaoke until they passed out. Occasionally the evening would be punctuated by smart professional women hiding their disgust behind brittle smiles. On other Sunday nights, though, the bar resembled an elegant morgue.

Like that Sunday night. Three nicely buffed executive wives without husbands, down from the large stone houses in the hills to the west, idled over glasses of chardonnay in the nonsmoking section. A large, burly, but aging fellow with a gray crew cut – known as Paper Jack – in a wrinkled suit and a stained tie steadily downed Wild Turkeys on the rocks in the middle of the bar. At the far end a remote and beautiful young woman with a deep tan sipped a Macallan Scotch neat with an Evian back. Everybody left everybody else peacefully alone. The wind softly buffeted the glass walls as dusk rode gently into star-spangled darkness over the Hill Country.

Two of the grass widows drifted out, seeking either more excitement or the pharmaceutical solace in the medicine cabinets of their large, empty houses. The third one, a tall blond named Sherry, stopped at the bar, as she often did, for an Absolut on the rocks, three of my Dunhill cigarettes, and a gently bored pass at me. I ignored her offer as politely as possible, knowing, of course, that some cold Sunday night I might need the warmth of her bed.

Once Sherry ambled out, her slim hips as elegant as a glass harp, I watched, smiling sadly, then bought Paper Jack and the lovely young woman a drink, told the cocktail waitress to call it a night, went into the grill to send the cook home early, poured myself a large glass of red wine – Betty had been fairly successful weaning me from double handfuls of single malt Scotch whisky to red wine – and settled in to wait out the evening, leaning against the back bar as I polished glasses and watched Jimmy Stewart tremble and stutter through Bend of the River. So I didn't exactly notice when Paper Jack started forcing his mumbled attentions on the young lady at the end of the bar.

Paper Jack, with his seemingly unending supply of hundred-dollar bills, had always been long on cash and short on charm, but he was an old drinking buddy of Travis Lee Wallingford's and one of Jack's nephews managed the Blue Hollow Lodge, so I had always cut Jack a large length of slack when he stayed at the Lodge on one of his business trips-cum-binges. But his first clear words got my attention.

'Hey pretty lady,' Jack said loudly, 'where the hell I know you from? I know you from some place?'

'I beg your pardon,' the young woman said quietly, the arch of a perfect eyebrow raised. 'I don't think so,' she added. She had elegant cheekbones and a generous mouth, and her makeup seemed professionally blended across the smooth planes of her face.

'I fuckin' know you, lady,' Jack continued, a crooked smile elastic on his face. 'I'll remember evenschually -'

'Believe me, sir,' the young woman interrupted calmly, 'I've never seen you before in my life.' She took a long drink of her whisky and turned as if to leave.

Then Jack's drunken face suddenly brightened. 'Does this fuckin' help?' he said, then cast a sheaf of Franklins in front of him and hammered his huge fist on the bar. 'That's what it cost me last time, honey.'

'Okay, Jack,' I said as I stepped in front of him, 'that's it.' I dumped his drink in the sink, stuffed the bills in his shirt pocket, and told him to get the hell out of my place.

'She's a fuckin' whore, Milo,' he said, 'you dumb shit. And gimme my drink back, you cheap bastard.' Then he stood up and reached across the bar to grab my shirt.

I had seen this act once before and knew that even in his late sixties Jack still had hands like ham hocks, hardened by years in the oil patch, and he was too big, too drunk, and too stubborn for me to handle without hurting him. So it had to be quick and quiet. I waved my hands in front of Jack's bleary eyes, grabbed his tie with my left hand, then popped him smartly on the forehead with the heel of my right palm. Not hard enough to knock him out. Just hard enough to slosh his whiskey-soaked brain back and forth against his skull bones. Stunned, Jack's eyes rolled up in his head. I caught him before his nose smashed on the bar, then laid his pudgy cheek gently on the padded front.

'Excuse me,' I said to the young woman as I went around. 'Would you watch the bar for a second, please? I'll be right back.'

I hooked the half-conscious bulk of the old man under the arm, grabbed his room key out of his pocket, then steered him out the door and down the hall to his usual room, where I dumped him on the bed. Jack was snoring before I could prop him on his side with pillows so he wouldn't drown in his own vomit. I loosened his tie and shoelaces, then hurried back to the bar. The young woman was still there.

'Sorry for the trouble,' I said as I went back behind the bar. 'And thanks for watching the bar.'

'Not the first one I've ever watched,' she said. 'Thanks, but I wouldn't come into strange bars if I couldn't handle drunks,' she added.

'I didn't want you to hurt ol' Jack,' I said, 'and it's my job to keep the peace.'

'And a thankless job, I'm sure,' she said, smiling. 'May I buy you a drink?'

What the hell, I could catch Jimmy Stewart in The Naked Spur tomorrow night, and this was a truly beautiful woman. Thick dark hair cascaded in soft waves off a warm, dusky face dominated by eyes as darkly blue as a false dawn. A small crescent-shaped scar at the corner of her broad mouth and a slight knot at the bridge of her arched nose kept her face from being perfect. But perfect would have been wrong. Beneath her dark blue pin-striped suit and light blue mock turtleneck blouse, her body looked long and lean, softly dangerous. Except for tiny gold hoops in her ears and a large pendant, a round black stone set in an irregularly shaped gold band, she wore no jewelry. The stone rested heavily between her full, fine breasts.

'What the hell,' I said. 'It's my place – why not?'

'And I'll have another, please,' she said. 'I'm not going anywhere.' Then she smiled as if she had enjoyed the pleasure I was taking in the presence of such loveliness.

I hadn't spoken to Betty since the night she left the bar – that wasn't unusual these days – but we sort of had a standing date for breakfast at the ranch on Monday mornings, the beginning of her nights off, but damned if I was going to be the first to break the silence, so I poured the lady and myself large Macallans over ice.

'Absent friends,' I said as I raised my glass.

'New friends,' she said, smiling. 'Molly McBride,' she added, handing me her card, 'lawyer.'

'Milo Milodragovitch,' I said as I glanced at the Houston address and slipped the card into my shirt pocket, and handed her one of my own. 'Bartender,' it said.

Then we shook hands like civilized people, her hand softly moist in mine, her blue eyes shining.

'Nice move you put on that old man, Mr. Milodragovitch,' she said, not stumbling over the name. 'But you didn't learn that move in a bar.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Listen, my father, after he got hurt, ran a place over in Lake Charles, so I grew up in a bar,' she said, a Cajun lilt coming into her voice, 'and I tended bar all the way through my undergraduate degree and then law school, so I know something about violence in bars. You popped that old man as if you were cutting a diamond. Any harder,