Montana Noir

by James Grady

  “You might try the distillery.”

  “Distillery? Butte has one of those now?”

  “Had it for a couple of years. Their booze is smooth and gets the job done quick.”

  He wasn’t kidding. Two minutes after taking a stool at the Headframe, I was halfway to numb. Go a year without booze in a combat zone and your tolerance gets pretty low.

  I held up my tumbler, looked through the generous two fingers of amber, and ordered another. I asked the girl behind the bar, “What do you put in this?”

  “The Neversweat? The blood of virgins and a few drops of Novocaine.”

  “Funny lady. Don’t quit your day job.”

  “I don’t plan on it. Where else could I meet fascinating people like you?” She was wiping the bar with a rag and when she leaned over, there was plenty of agreeable movement inside her T-shirt. I could see all the way to Thursday from where I sat.

  “You lived in Butte long?”

  “Long enough,” she said. “I’m about ready to leave this dump.”

  “I hear you.”

  “What about you? Just passing through?”

  “Sort of.” I was still reluctant to show my Butte roots. Five hours in town and I hadn’t seen any familiar faces. Fine by me. “I’m here for the Marlowe Memorial Madness, or whatever the hell they’re calling it.”

  The girl snorted. “Red, White, and Butte Days.”

  I made a gagging sound.

  “Exactly,” she said with a laugh. She’d finished wiping, but still hung around at my end of the bar.

  “You knew him?”

  “Who, the war hero? Never met him. What about you? You a friend of his, or are you just one of those whaddayacallits—Rolling Thunder guys who go around protecting military funerals with baseball bats?”

  “Do I look like one of those kind of guys?”

  “I guess not,” she said. “So, friend of the family?”

  “Not really. Like I said, just passing through.” I wondered if she noticed how I tap-danced my way around her questions.

  A guy with a heavy, skunk-smelling coat came in and planted himself at the other end of the bar. My girl moved away to help him, leaving me to wonder what kind of weirdo wears a parka in June.

  I finished my whiskey and called her back for another.

  “Rules of the house—I can only give you two drinks per visit.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What if I was to step outside for a minute, then come back in?”

  She looked to her left. She looked to her right. Then she smiled. “I’d say I never met you before in my life.”

  I went out and came back and she set up another pour.

  She was nice, so I figured I’d proceed with my fishing expedition: “You know the widow?”

  “Whose widow?”

  “The war hero. Marlowe. He left a girl back home, didn’t he?”

  “Sure, Chloe. I know of her, but I don’t know her know her. Rumor has it she runs with a different crowd.”

  “What kind of crowd?”

  “Funny you should ask. See that guy down there?” She tipped her head toward Mr. Skunk Parka.

  “Yeah.”

  “That kind of crowd.”

  “Who is he?”

  The barmaid leaned closer. Now I could see all the way to Sunday. “I forget his name. Brian something. But I know what he does.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “He deals.”

  “Blackjack? Texas Hold’em?”

  “Funny man. You should hold onto your day job.”

  “I plan on it.” Widow Specialist, I thought to myself. “Never mind. I knew what you meant.” I leaned in and whispered, “He’s into methametics.”

  “One plus two equals you’re right.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “I’ll bet Marlowe had no idea he was going to come home to a skinny skank covered in sores.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know him.”

  “I never said that. I said I wasn’t a friend of the family.” Not yet, I thought.

  “But you knew him?”

  I grinned. “In bits and pieces.”

  “Well, the dude sure has a reputation around here.”

  “Like what?”

  “To hear folks talk, that guy is everything right about the war. He could do no wrong. Cut him, he bleeds stars and stripes. That kind of thing.”

  “Hoopla-worthy.”

  “Apparently.”

  “And now his wife is mayor of Skankville.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” She scrunched her face. “I’m just repeating what I’ve heard here and there. You know how the truth gets watered down the more it’s repeated.”

  “Yeah. So they say.”

  “One thing’s for sure. If she is using, she hasn’t lost her looks. I mean, she was good enough to be on the front page of the paper yesterday. Smiling and shit. What kind of widow goes around smiling?”

  Maybe the kind with insurance money. My plan was looking better and better by the minute.

  I was about to say something else—better yet, I was about to drop something on the floor she’d have to pick up—but Mr. Skunk Parka interrupted by calling her down to his end again. Not to get another drink, but to pay his bill.

  What kind of man walks away before his limit of whiskey smooth as this? The kind who has other people to deal with. Literally.

  I finished my drink because I had another idea percolating. With regret, I’d have to leave the barmaid and her fabulous T-shirt, but I knew my thirst would bring me back to the Headframe before too long.

  * * *

  Marlowe and I had chased the terrorist into an abandoned warehouse and now I stood over him with my rifle. Its muzzle pressed against his forehead like a cold kiss. Rules of engagement said this guy was a suspected terrorist, but I had no doubt in my mind.

  Marlowe wore out the warehouse floor with his pacing.

  “This is wrong,” he said. “This is wrong, Franklin.”

  “Shut up, Marlowe. We got him dead to rights. Nobody goes around with a washing-machine timer in one hand and a Nokia in their other when they’re just out for an evening stroll.”

  “We should wait for the MPs. ISP at the very least.” There was something in Marlowe’s voice that almost sounded like a sob.

  “Shit, Marlowe. Our MPs couldn’t navigate their way out of their own mother’s cunt even if they had a compass and a flashlight and a GPS. As for the Iraqi police—”

  At my feet, the guy was waving his hands and starting to make too much noise. Like screaming and begging-for-mercy kind of noise.

  I made sure he got quieter before he could get louder.

  “Shit, shit, SHIT! Look what you did, Franklin! Look at what you went and did.”

  “I’m looking, Marlowe, and it looks okay to me. But if you don’t shut up, I’ll be forced to make it a two-fer tonight. And I don’t really want to do that, my friend.”

  In response, Marlowe went fifty shades of pale, then brought up that afternoon’s MRE all over the warehouse floor.

  When he had coughed his way out of it, I said, “If you’re through, hand me that washing-machine timer so I can put it back in this butt-fuck’s hand.”

  “You’re a goddamn criminal, Franklin. Before long, you’ll be a regular butt-fucker yourself at Leavenworth. That’s what I think.”

  It didn’t matter what Marlowe thought or who he tattled to because two days later he’d been divided a dozen different ways into the wind.

  * * *

  Now everyone wanted their own piece of Marlowe: claiming his legacy, his fortune—his sun-washed blond wife with legs up to here and breasts out to there, according to the photo Marlowe had tucked inside his helmet. The helmet and the snapshot of Chloe sitting leg-cocked on a lakeside boulder were the only things to survive the bomb blast intact. I carried that picture in my pocket now. The left edge was charred, burning away the tips of her bare feet, but the rest of the girl still had all that glorious flesh pack
ed around her bones. Her head was tipped back—any farther and her hair would take a dip in the lake—and she looked through the camera as if to say, Come get me.

  * * *

  I followed the skunky smell up Montana Street. It was full dark now and Butte’s old headframes, the hundred-foot iron skeletons that had once lowered miners into the earth on cables, glowed red against the sky. Civic-minded do-gooders installed lights on the headframes years ago as a way to remind the city of its heritage—even if the past was not just dead but rotting in this place. What was once Butte’s pride now stunk like Brian’s coat.

  Someone had to stop this guy from spreading his stink all over town and onto nice, pretty girls like Chloe.

  As I walked, leaning into the slope of the Richest Hill on Earth, I kept thinking about how the army’s engineers swept Baghdad’s streets with heavy machinery—armored vehicles they called “Buffaloes.” They rode their Buffaloes, sniffed out bombs buried by the side of the road, and disarmed the explosives before we followed in our thinner-skinned Humvees.

  That’s what I’d be doing now here in Butte. Making life easier for Chloe. Clearing the obstacles off her highway to happiness.

  When Brian wobbled into the Party Palace, I hesitated. The Neversweat whiskey had me pretty loose already. I didn’t want to go any further and have my limbs fall out of my joints.

  I found a patio table on the sidewalk with an empty beer bottle. I sat and pretended I was nursing that bottle back to health.

  Thirty minutes passed. A group of bikers came out for a cigarette, telling jokes punctuated by smoker’s coughs. They were too into themselves, preening with their bandannas and leather chaps, to pay any attention to me.

  Another hour passed.

  A dog trotted past and lifted his leg on the table next to me. The man and woman sitting there did not appreciate that.

  A fire truck, followed by a police car, screamed down Park Street.

  I had time to examine the sidewalk in front of the Party Palace. I’m no engineer, but I determined the pavement there was a good inch higher than the surrounding concrete, built up by a decade’s worth of vomit from drunk miners and bikers with smoker’s coughs.

  A woman with a ruined face and too-short shorts came out, put her arm around me, and slurred her undying, unconditional love. I led her over to the nearest lamppost where she professed the same type of affection.

  Another twenty minutes passed.

  My man finally came out of the swinging door, stumbled, and ran to catch up with his body before he fell onto the vomit-paved sidewalk. He pivoted and announced to the now-closed door, “I’mallright.”

  As he walked past me, he weaved off course and bumped into my table. I was there to catch him by the elbow and said, “Whoa there, Brian.”

  He raised his head and looked at me with alarm and puzzlement, then said, “Byron, I’mmmByron.”

  “That’s what I said, Byron.”

  “Allright then.”

  “You should be more careful.”

  He took back his elbow and said, with sudden clarity, “Thank you, I will.” He bowed, turned, and continued to walk up the sidewalk toward the dark mouth of an alley. He lowered his zipper as he walked—clearly a man on a mission.

  “Yo, Byron. Wait up.”

  He swivel-wobbled again. “Whut?”

  “I want to have a little talk with you.”

  “Whutabout?”

  “Chloe.”

  “Who?”

  “You know a girl by the name of Chloe, right?”

  “Whut of it?” His hand was still down his pants.

  “You know where I can find her?”

  “Mebbe I do, mebbe I don’t.” He turned and resumed his stutter-walk to the alley.

  “Maybe you’ll tell me now, huh?” I called after him.

  “Mebbe I will, mebbe I won’t.” He went around the corner and less than ten seconds later, a trickle of piss carrying a load of alley-dust reached the sidewalk.

  I picked up my empty beer bottle by the neck and followed him into the alley to get some information. I was betting mebbe he’d tell me.

  Two minutes later, I was back out of the alley with no beer bottle. But I had an address.

  Behind me, a trickle of blood joined its fluid brothers Piss and Puke on the sidewalk.

  * * *

  Before I removed his teeth, Byron had given me an address that sent me north, up the hill to Walkerville. He said Chloe’s sister Jacinda lived up there and maybe she’d know where to find the girl—a girl, by the way, he swears he never did methametics with. I didn’t believe him when he said this, and I only half-believed him when he gave me the sister’s address.

  There was a good chance I’d find plenty of wild geese but no Chloe. After all, this was the city’s rough neighborhood, the kind of place where good intentions go bad. I went anyway—drawn by the beacon of sun-washed hair.

  The hair and the breasts and the legs were just part of it, though. This girl was starting to get under my skin. I needed to see her in person to find out a few things for myself. Like, if I pressed a gun barrel to her forehead, would she beg for her life, or would she tell me to go fuck myself?

  After two hours of wandering Walkerville’s maze of streets and asking three guys in wifebeaters working on a gutted Ford in their front yard if they knew someone named Chloe—or Jacinda or Byron, even—and getting a wrench thrown in the general direction of my head, and deciding retreat was the better part of valor, and rib-kicking a dog who got in my way, and wandering in the dark, and squinting at unlit porches, and not finding even one goddamn trace of 1321 Transit Street, I turned back.

  Ask anyone in Bravo Company and they’ll tell you I don’t even know how to spell the word surrender, but I’ll admit Walkerville defeated me that night.

  I made my way back down the hill to the Finlen, consoling myself with one thought: Marlowe’s welcome-home parade was tomorrow and I was sure to find Chloe riding in the grand marshal’s car. I would catch her as she floated like a blond goddess, waving to all the little people who lined the streets cheering for her dead husband. I would grab her, pull her to me, and find my future somewhere in her eyes. Yes, that was my plan.

  * * *

  I woke to the sound of a firing squad.

  Rifle shots cracked the air and brought me out of a swamp of bad dreams. I lifted my head and looked at the clock beside my bed at the Finlen. 10:32.

  Another round of gunshots echoed through the empty brick canyons of the city. I tumbled from bed and crouched on the floor, panting. Then I remembered I was in Butte, not Baghdad, and I had a mission this morning.

  I dressed quickly, sloppily, and raced down the Finlen’s stairwell. When I came out onto the street, I heard the amplified voices of city officials, one after the other stepping to the microphone and extolling the virtues of the brave and selfless Chandler Marlowe. Those lies only made me run faster up East Broadway.

  I followed the off-key blats of the high school band warming up and, turning onto Granite Street, found myself surrounded by big men zipping around in tiny cars. They wore maroon fezzes on top of their heads and big Shriner grins on their faces. Cowboys on horses clopped up the street behind me. I stepped to the side, walking in the gutter as stooped veterans marched past, struggling to stay in step as they recalled their drill-and-ceremony training from fifty years ago. Four of those wrinkled warriors had buckets of candy. Every half block, they reached in and tossed taffy to the kids along the parade route.

  I dashed alongside the parade until I saw it gleaming ahead of me: a white 1960 Cadillac convertible, the fins above its taillights sharp and polished. It crawled along the stained and potholed street like it was visiting from another world, carrying a diplomat from a faraway planet.

  She sat on top of the car’s trunk, slender legs dangling into the backseat. She had one hand propped behind her while the other cut the air with nonstop waves. The hand gently turned back and forth to the crowd with just the right bal
ance of grief and greeting: Yes, I’m a widow, but I thank you for this honor.

  I stopped to catch my breath, hands on my knees. The Richest Hill on Earth was proving hard to climb.

  “There she goes.”

  “She can keep on going and not stop until she gets to Missoula for all I care.”

  I half-turned to my right. Two women who looked like they lived on a daily diet of Pork Chop John’s watched the Caddy roll down the street.

  “Poor gal,” the first woman said. “All that trouble with her sister and that drug money.”

  “Poor nothing,” the second lady said. “That family made their bed.”

  “Well . . . that one there’s got a nice bed now.” She snorted a laugh. “Mattress stuffed with all that insurance money from the army. I say good for her, shaking loose of her druggy sister.”

  The second lady looked sharp in my direction. “Do I know you?”

  “No, I guess you don’t,” I said. Answering the beckon of Chloe’s cupped palm, I started forward. I could almost hear the crisp scrunch of all those hundred-dollar bills as the two of us rolled across that mattress—a clean Chloe, not a vacant-eyed skank like I’d been led to believe. Things just kept getting better and better.

  But then three men stepped from the crowd and blocked my way: Byron and two guys who looked like they got their full money’s worth from their gym memberships. Byron’s head was swaddled in a bandage. It clamped his head together and would have been perfectly white if it weren’t for three brownish-red stains that bloomed like flowers along his jawline.

  I heard Byron mumble-yell something approximating, “That’s him!” and then they were rushing me.

  Once upon a time, I’d soared down the field at Naranche Stadium to cheers of hundreds, carrying the ball to victory. I was older and a little slower now, but I gave it my all, dancing and dodging those three dudes on Granite Street.

  I had a convertible to catch and when I reached it, I would touch Chloe on the elbow and make her turn to face me. I wasn’t sure what I would say, but I knew what I wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t tell Chloe the truth of what went down in Baghdad that day, how her husband was supposed to be off-duty that afternoon, how I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, how I made a deal with Marlowe to take my shift on that patrol, and how he looked at me dead in the eye and said, “Sure, I’ll swap with you. But it’ll cost you.”