Bitterroot Blues Read online

  BITTERROOT BLUES

  Adventure by Paul Moomaw

  Kindle: 978-1-58124-425-0

  ePub: 978-1-58124-477-9

  ©2012 by Paul Moomaw

  Published 2012 by The Fiction Works

  http://www.fictionworks.com

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  With her head raised to the early morning sun, and one tanned arm draped gracefully over the side of the bubbling hot tub, you wouldn’t have guessed she was dead until you saw the magpie. The big, black and white bird perched in the blonde curls above her forehead, and pecked at her left eye.

  The door from the cabin’s bedroom opened and the housekeeper, her weather-beaten frame covered by oversized jeans and a tank top, and holding a large key ring in her hand, stepped onto the deck. The bird scolded her and flapped its way to the nearest tree. The housekeeper took a second step forward, then halted with a puzzled frown, tapping the key ring against her thigh.

  The magpie, emboldened by her silence, returned to the blonde woman’s brow. The bird cocked its head briefly toward the interloper at the door, then took another peck at the eye. The housekeeper gasped, and the keys fell to the deck. The bird flew to the tree again, complaining loudly as the housekeeper edged closer to the tub, her eyes wide. She reached the edge, leaned against it, and stretched out a hand as if to touch the blonde, but jerked it away at the last minute. The blonde was not alone. Another body, that of a man, floated face down, his head between the blonde’s knees as if it sought comfort there.

  The housekeeper fled. The magpie waited for half a minute, then glided back to the deck. It landed on the rail and cocked its head back and forth several times. Satisfied that it was alone, it flew back to the blonde and began to work on the eyeball again, tearing and worrying at it until it separated from the socket. Then the bird grasped the eye firmly in its beak, and flew away with a final, victorious croak.

  Chapter 2

  Ten-High Tina Tanner’s inch-long fingernails drummed a quick tattoo on the green baize surface of the table. The nails were also green today, bright green. One of the highlights of the week for Sam Arceneaux, who sat directly across from Tina, was to see what she had done to her nails.

  “You going to bet or not, Sam?” she asked.

  “I can’t get past those green nails,” Arceneaux said.

  “Key Lime, please. Bet or fold.”

  The game was seven card hold ’em, and Arceneaux occupied his usual back room seat at the gaming table of the Oxford Bar and Grill, one of two or three places in Missoula, Montana, where people took their poker seriously. Arceneaux favored the Ox, but couldn’t decide if he liked it because it was within walking distance of his small house on the North Side, or if he liked the North Side neighborhood, with its collection of artists, blue collar workers and ne’er do wells, because it was close to the Ox.

  “Come on, Sam,” Tina said, and Arceneaux scratched his chin as he gazed at her cards. The flop—two hole cards and the first three up cards—had been dealt, and it was Arceneaux’s turn to open the betting. He held three eights, two showing and one in the hole. Tina showed a seven, a nine and an Ace of clubs.

  “Five,” he said, and dropped a chip onto the ante pile. Harry the Fish shook his head and folded his cards. “Couldn’t buy a hand with a gold watch tonight,” he said. Tina pushed a five dollar chip to the center of the table and smiled sweetly at Arceneaux. The man sitting at her left shoulder, who said his name was Hannigan and whom Arceneaux had never seen before, glanced at the other players in turn. He had filled the one empty chair at the table an hour before, introducing himself as a newcomer from California. He shrugged and tossed in a chip.

  Edward, who had dealt the afternoon shift at the Ox as long as Arceneaux had been playing there, and whom nobody ever called Ed, extended the deck and dropped the turn cards. Arceneaux got a five, which did nothing for him, and Tina drew a three. She looked expectantly at him.

  “Five again,” Arceneaux said.

  “And five more, Sweetie,” Tina replied, picking up two chips and dropping them on the table. Arceneaux shrugged and added another chip.

  “You’d make a hell of a poker player,” he said. It was their private, running joke, a thing he had first told her when he had still been a practicing attorney, defending her on a misdemeanor disturbance charge, before he had learned she made a good part of her living right here at the Oxford.

  Edward dealt the seventh and final card, the river card, a six for Arceneaux, and the ace of hearts for Tina. With a sinking feeling, Arceneaux pushed another five dollar chip onto the table. “So tell me something,” he said.

  Tina smiled broadly and cocked her head at him. “What I can tell you is, if you want to see whether I sucked out, it’s going to cost you another twenty, sweetheart.” She dropped four more chips on the table. Hannigan pushed his cards away and leaned back in his chair.

  The door opened, admitting the bartender and a wave of noise from the front, a mixture of voices, dishes, and the beep-beep of the electronic machines that were there for people who didn’t want to learn to play poker.

  “Sam,” the bartender said. “There’s a guy says he needs to see you.”

  Arceneaux waved his hand across his face, the way you might brush at a fly.

  “I’m busy.”

  “He says it’s important.”

  “What’s important is for me to find out if Tina’s shitting me or not.”

  The bartender shrugged and left the room. Arceneaux returned his attention to the cards and Tina, who remained as inscrutable as a happy Medusa.

  “Oh, what the hell,” Arceneaux said, and dropped another twenty dollars onto the pile. He turned his hole cards up. “Three eights.”

  “Sorry, Sweetie,” Tina said, not looking sorry at all. She flipped over a third ace, and pulled her winnings in, her bony, freckled hands cradling the chips like an eagle with a mouse.

  Hannigan shook his head and grinned sourly. “Seems like I left my luck in Gardena,” he said. “Haven’t made a nickel since I got into this damn state. Been here, Kalispell, Great Falls, even tha
t shiny new Indian place in Browning.” He shook his head. “That was something else. All brand new, everything state of the art, and I suppose all paid for by tax money from the rest of us. Indians doing the dealing and white guys doing the losing. They’ve started that crap in California too. I guess it’s the latest P N job scam.”

  “P N?” Harry the Fish said. “What’s that mean.”

  “You know,” Hannigan said. “Prairie . . .” he waved his hands and looked at the ceiling.

  The table went dead quiet, the only sound the faint racket from beyond the door.

  “Prairie what?” Arceneaux said into the silence.

  Hannigan glanced quickly at Arceneaux and then let his eyes move around the table.

  “Come on,” he said. “We know what we’re talking about here, right?”

  “Prairie nigger?” Arceneaux said quietly. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  Hannigan tried to smile, but it became more of a rictus as he looked around the room again.

  Arceneaux stood up and Hannigan shrank into his chair.

  “You better watch out, white boy,” Arceneaux said. “Some of us Indians still get the itch to take a scalp now and then.” He pushed his chair farther away from the table and stepped around the table toward the door, gratified to see Hannigan try to get even smaller in his seat. He laid a hand on Tina’s shoulder as he passed her.

  “Get you back on Friday,” he said.

  “Drop by my place when you get a chance,” Tina said. “I made elk sausage.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Arceneaux said. He blew her a kiss and left the room, Tina’s voice following him as she ordered Edward to deal.

  As Arceneaux emerged into the long, narrow front room the bartender nodded toward a man sitting at one of the high tables near the windows, his face turned toward the street. The man’s hands rested on the table, the left one gripping the right and massaging it fretfully. He wore a suit, a cheap, black piece of goods that looked as if he had grabbed it from the Good Will super bargain rack; but any suit at all was a rare sight at the Ox. Arceneaux walked to the table and looked down at the man.

  “You’re looking for me?” he said.

  The suit flinched slightly, and the man turned around. He was small and thin, with a long face like a ferret gone to seed.

  “Are you Mister Arceneaux?” he asked.

  Arceneaux, who didn’t hear the term Mister applied to himself often, nodded.

  “My name is Elbert Marks,” the man said. Arceneaux nodded again and waited silently for Marks to continue.

  “You’re a private investigator?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Are you available for hiring?”

  “Depends.”

  Marks stood up. “I would like to go somewhere else to talk.”

  “My office is across the bridge.”

  “Good,” Marks said. He strode to the door, walking quickly, as if he wanted out of the bar more than anything else. On the sidewalk, he stopped. “We can take my car if you like.”

  “I always walk,” Arceneaux said, which was true, partly for a practical reason—to save wear and tear on his ancient Subaru station wagon, which carried more than a hundred and fifty thousand miles on its odometer, and was prone to mood swings. The other reason was the enjoyment of walking down a sidewalk where you might encounter a set of matched, middled-aged hippies in sweatpants, leg warmers, ragg wool socks and Birkenstock sandals coming at you from one direction, while the sidewalk in the other direction was being swept clear by a sixteen-year-old kid with dangling chains and a fluorescence mohawk riding a skate board and talking busily into his cellular telephone. Right now walking would serve yet another purpose; helping him calm down after his encounter with Hannigan. He was still seething inside. He felt as if Hannigan had gotten him dirty somehow. It was not anything new. His appearance owed more to his white mother than to his Salish father, and every now and then people said things they would have been too polite, or cowardly, to say if they had known he was Indian.

  He led the way down Higgins to the bridge across the Clark Fork River, which was another reason he liked to walk between downtown and his office. He loved the river. It was always the same, and yet ever different, showing a new face with the changing seasons and times of day. Half way down the bridge, he stopped to watch the water flow below him. A hundred feet downstream, a blue heron stood at the current’s edge, head cocked, waiting for an unsuspecting sculpin to swim past and provide a lunch treat. Arceneaux felt himself relax a little more, but his better mood vanished as he looked down the sidewalk and saw Clarence Tessah walking toward him. Not walking, really. Staggering a little. Not as bad as he would get later, but he obviously already had a good start on the evening.

  Arceneaux steeled himself and stood quietly, hoping that Clarence would stumble on by and continue toward whatever drinking buddies waited for him. He and Clarence had been in Iraq together, and that had been good. They had stuck together, the only Indian soldiers in their unit. When they finished their tours and came back to Montana Arceneaux started what he thought of now as his long march toward college and law school. Clarence stayed in the Army Reserves. They kept touch for a while, until Clarence started his own long march, one that led to an undesirable discharge and, from there, deep into the bottle.

  Clarence got to within touching distance of Arceneaux and stopped, swaying slightly, a huge, drunken grin pasted on his face.

  “Weh,” he said. “How’s it going, Sam?” His breath was already overwhelmingly boozy, and he clearly had not bathed for days. Arceneaux caught himself holding his breath.

  “Okay, Clarence,” he said.

  “You got a little change, Sam?”

  “Left it all at the Ox.”

  Clarence shook his head slowly back and forth. He almost lost his balance, and grabbed Arceneaux to right himself.

  “Damn shame, Sam,” he said, and released Arceneaux’s arm, and Arceneaux had to make a conscious effort not to wipe his jacket sleeve. “You shouldn’t gamble with those damn white guys. Poor fuckin’ Indian can’t win. It’s rigged. Been rigged ever since they came here. You should just go to Pow Wow and play the stick game.”

  “I don’t know how,” Arceneaux said.

  Clarence stared at him, the smile gone.

  “Course you don’t, do you?” he said. “You’re not a real fucking Indian anyway, are you? And I bet you’re not broke, either. You just think you’re too damn good, fucking law degree and all. Goddam apple, is all. You’re just a goddam apple.” He wheeled away and lurched down the sidewalk.

  Marks stood at Arceneaux’s right shoulder. “You’re Indian? You don’t look Indian.”

  “I’m one of the pretty ones,” Arceneaux said. He turned abruptly and began to stride down the sidewalk. Clarence made him sick. He was a caricature of everything white people believed about native Americans, everything Arceneaux had been forced to deal with all his life. And now this white asshole had gotten an eyeful, and a nose full, and Arceneaux would have to act as if nothing had happened, because business had been slow, and he needed the job.

  Marks hurried to catch up. “I didn’t mean anything by that,” he said from just behind Arceneaux’s shoulder. “I don’t have anything against Indians.”

  And your grandmother was a Cherokee princess, Arceneaux thought; but he slowed his pace to allow Marks to come abreast of him. He knew he should not be so touchy. It was none of Marks’ doing that he looked more white than Indian; and he knew that the accident of his physical appearance, his light skin and hazel eyes, had eased his passage through the dominant white culture. Sometimes he felt grateful for that. Other times he felt guilty. It was a conflict he had lived with all his life, and he supposed it would never get resolved completely. There would always be white people who looked down on the Salish blood he got from his father; and there would always be Indians who called him an apple, red on the outside and white on the inside, because of his Irish-German mother, and because
he had left the Flathead Reservation, gone to law school, and become, in their eyes, part of the white world.

  Arceneaux gave his head a quick shake. Let it go, he told himself. Can’t solve it, so forget it, and concentrate on separating Marks from some of his money.

  What Arceneaux called his office was one room of a suite in the square tower that rose from the east end of the old Milwaukee Railroad depot, a rosy brick, turn of the century building that sat with fake Italian elegance on the south bank of the Clark Fork River. It had suffered through numerous reincarnations after the railroad pulled out of town. Now the main floor belonged to the Boone and Crockett Club, and the tower housed several lawyers, one of whom sublet to Arceneaux under the table. The arrangement offered Arceneaux enough floor space for a desk and a couple of chairs, a combination bookcase and liquor cabinet, and a twin sized futon that he had picked up from a store down the street called Small Wonders, cheap, because the cover was stained. On one wall hung an old regulator pendulum clock that Arceneaux had gotten from a client in lieu of a fee, in the days when he was still practicing law. A tall window opened to the southwest, and offered a memorable view of Lolo Peak, with the rest of the Bitterroot Mountains stretched out beyond it. When the sky promised to be just right, Arceneaux would sometimes pry himself out of bed early and walk to his office just to watch the sun rise on the sharp peaks.

  Arceneaux unlocked the outer door to the tower suite and let Marks through, then led the way to his office. He dropped into a chair and hoisted his feet onto the desk. He had been told years before that putting your feet in a visitor’s face like that was impolite, a gesture of dominance that put the other person in his place. He liked the idea, especially with Marks.