was when she’d been around town for a few months, long enough that merchants had learned to watch her closely. He employed a “high-altitude” defense, claiming to the judge that Sheila’s brain was out of whack because she came from New Jersey and her brain had yet to adapt to the altitude and lack of oxygen. It made her forgetful, he said, and she had simply forgotten to pay the clerk. The judge was amused with the argument but still would have convicted her if the drugstore owner hadn’t forgotten to show up and testify. Sheila credited McCann for her acquittal.
Sheila D’Amato admitted to McCann after the trial that she was getting old and her clothes were too tight. All she wanted was her old life back, before she’d been dumped. She was pathetic,he thought, but he enjoyed her stories of being a kept woman in Atlantic City, being passed from mobster to mobster for fifteen years. She claimed she hated Montana and all the tight-assed people who lived here. She’d left town with men a few times since her arrival, but had drifted back after they cut her loose. She said she didn’t know why she kept ending up here.
“Do you plan to stay around?” she asked him. Sheila had an annoying little-girl-lost voice, he thought.
“Why are you asking?” But he knew why.
She shrugged and attempted to look coy. “Well, everybody hates your guts.”
“Not everybody,” he said, saluting her with his beer bottle.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, letting a little hard-edged Jersey into her voice, but cocking her head to make sure he knew she was teasing.
“I won’t be here long,” he said. He knew not to tell her too much. But she could be of use to him, even if he couldn’t trust her. She probably didn’t trust him either. They had that in common.
“Where will you go?” she asked, trying not to be obvious.
“Someplace warm.”
“What’s keeping you?”
That, he couldn’t tell her. “I’ll leave when the time is right.”
She nodded as if she understood. He drank another beer and she started to look better.
“What was it like?” she asked, her eyes glistening. She wanted him to tell her killing was a rush, a high. He wondered what the mobsters used to tell her it was like.
“It solved the problem,” he said, measuring his words, lettingher interpret them however she wished. How could he tell her it meant nothing to him? That, in fact, it was hard work and unpleasant but simply a means to an end?
He waited her out until she finally asked if he would take her with him when he left.
“On what?”
“On you.”
She had paid her legal bill to him for the shoplifting charge in blow jobs. They’d haggled and determined $50 per. She was pretty good. He’d been in jail for three months. He’d make her keep those too-tight clothes on.
Early the next morning, after shaving in his office and deciding that maybe he would look into some sort of hair coloringthat would drown out the gray, McCann dropped the.38 into his coat pocket and went outside into the chill. Sheila had been gone for hours, but not before they’d made a date for later that night. At least she was someone to talk to, he thought, although he preferred her with her mouth full. Maybe she wasn’t so patheticafter all. She’d do until he left, at least.
West Yellowstone was called a gateway community; it existedalmost solely as a staging area or overnight stop for tourists en route to the park. With a permanent population of less than two thousand people, the little town swelled to seven or eight thousand on summer nights and about half that with the snowmobile crowd in the winter. The place was unique in that they didn’t plow the roads so snowmobiles could be used legally on the streets.
West, as it was called, was rough-hewn and blue collar, consistingof motels, fly-fishing shops, and souvenir stores. Winters were severe and the people who lived there were rugged. Of the five places McCann had practiced law-Chicago, Minot, Missoula,Helena, and now West Yellowstone, West was by far the bottom of the barrel for a lawyer. Not that he’d had any choice, of course, after the trouble he’d had. For McCann, West was the place he ended up, like something washed up on the shore of the Madison River. Sheila’s story was similar. He could go no farther. He liked to tell people that when they brought him their problems.
A sheen of frost covered the windshields of parked cars and stiffened the dying grass between the cracks in the sidewalk. His breath billowed as he walked down Madison. There were no cars on the streets except those parked haphazardly around Bear Trap Pancake House. Locals, most of them. He bought a newspaperfrom the stand and went in.
He sat alone in a booth with his back to the front door and surveyed the crowd. Men wore cowboy hats or caps proclaimingtheir allegiance to fly shops or heavy equipment. They were sullen, waking up, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. In contrast were the four bustling waitresses who seemed unnaturallycheery. McCann figured it out: the staff was happy becausetoday would be their last day for the season. Like most businesses in West, the Bear Trap would close until December when there was several feet of snow and the snowmobilers would be back.
A middle-aged waitress with a name tag that read “Marge” practically skipped across the restaurant toward him with a pot of coffee. McCann pushed his empty mug across the table towardher.
As she began to pour, she looked up and her eyes locked on his, and she froze.
“Yes, please,” he said, gesturing toward his cup.
Her face hardened and she righted the pot without pouring a drop. Then she turned on her heel and strode into the kitchen.
A few moments later, McCann saw the face of the cook above the bat wing doors, then the face of the owner of the Bear Trap. The lawyer nodded toward the owner, who acknowledged him cautiously, then returned quickly to the kitchen.
A young waitress (nameplate: Tina) had apparently not witnessedMarge’s reaction and came over with a pot.
“No,” Marge said out the side of her mouth from two tables away.
Tina stopped, unsure of what to do.
“No,” Marge said again.
Tina shrugged apologetically at McCann and retreated to the far end of the restaurant to take care of other tables.
McCann sat quietly for twenty minutes as customers came in and placed their orders. Nothing was said to him. He was simply being frozen out, as if he didn’t exist. His coffee cup remainedempty.
As Marge passed with another fresh pot, McCann reached out and tugged on her apron and she jumped back as if he’d goosed her.
“I’d like breakfast,” he said.
“In hell,” she answered, swinging her large hips away from him.
McCann stood up angrily and reached for his coat. The.38 thumped against his side and for a second he considered reachingfor it. Several patrons watched him furtively between forkfulsof pancakes. Most didn’t even look up.
He slammed the door so hard that the bells on it swung and hit the glass, punctuating his exit. He stormed halfway across the street before stopping and turning around. Marge glared back at him from behind the window, her face distorted by condensationon the glass. His eyes slipped from Marge to the rust-tingedFOR SALE sign on the door of the building. Every place in West, it seemed, was always for sale. That went with the transientnature of the town.
But it gave him an idea.
Maybe he could buy the goddamned place and fire Marge. He could buy Rocky’s too. He could own the whole fucking town; then they’d
Mccann couldn’t feel his feet as he walked back towardhis office to make a call. His insides boiled, and he kept his mouth clamped shut so tightly that his jaw ached. His brief revenge fantasy of buying the town faded quickly. Despite his hunger for reprisal, the last thing he wanted was to stay a minute longer in this place than he had to.
He looked at his wristwatch, calculating the time difference. He needed to make a call. As he began to open
