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“Stop looking at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
He smacked the bag hard, flinging sweat out of his hair. “Like it’s me who’s always got that problem. Like it’s me who doesn’t see the world as it is.”
“I never said that.”
He threw a left into the bag, then hit it with a right hook that was so hard the blow pushed me back, even though my feet were set and I was holding the bag with both hands.
“You didn’t make Heckle and Jeckle over there?” he said.
At the other end of the building, two men in their thirties were shooting baskets, concentrating on their game, their backs to us.
“No, I didn’t make them for anything except two guys playing with a basketball,” I replied.
“How many guys have haircuts like that and look like jocks on crystal meth?”
“The FBI has other things to do besides follow guys like us around.”
“Watch this,” Clete said, cupping his hands by his mouth. “Hey, ladies, I got to grab a shower, then Dave and I are going to motor downtown for some eats. Join us if you like.”
The two men stopped their game and looked at us blankly. I felt my face shrink with embarrassment.
“We’ll see you at Stockman’s,” Clete shouted. “They make pork-and-beef sandwiches that’ll rev up your dorks for a week.”
“I’ll see you out front,” I said.
“Nobody believed Hemingway when he said the feds were bird-dogging him. After he blew his head off, somebody got hold of his FBI file and found over two hundred pages of surveillance on him. You’re always quoting Hemingway. You think Hemingway was just blowing gas?”
“Why should the feds have this huge interest in you? Why don’t you try a little humility for a change?”
“Maybe they’re looking at me for Sally Dee’s death. Maybe they’re humps for the Wellstone family. How do I know what they’re after? I camped on the Wellstone ranch by mistake and got in the Wellstones’ crosshairs. Why should they care about a PI with a jacket like mine? I don’t think it’s about oil and methane, either. What’s crazy is I think we’re probably looking right at it, but we don’t see it.”
“See what?”
“I don’t know. It’s not just money. These cocksuckers moved past that a long time ago. They can punch wells all over the planet and send the bill to the taxpayers. Look at those two guys bouncing the ball off the rim. You don’t think they have Quantico written all over them?”
I didn’t want to hear any more of his obsession. I drank coffee in the lobby, then went outside and sat in his Caddy and waited some more. The two men who had been shooting baskets emerged from the health club, still wearing their sweats, looking back over their shoulders. They walked to the far end of the parking lot and got in a four-door black car with a fresh wax job and drove off. They got as far as a half-block from the club when one of them picked up a handheld and put it to his ear.
Clete and I drove to Stockman’s and ate at the counter. Outside, the street was still cool and covered with shadow. The black four-door sedan was parked halfway down the block. The crew-cut, unshowered jocks from the health club were sitting in the front seat. I had a hard time concentrating on my food.
Clete followed my line of vision to the sedan. “Feel like voyeurs are looking through your bathroom window?”
“Order me a glass of milk,” I said.
“Where you going?” he said.
I went out the door and down the street. I tapped on the passenger window of the sedan. The man rolled down the window. Neither he nor the driver spoke.
“Mind if I get in and have a word with you?” I said.
The driver hit the lock release on the back doors. Both men remained silent. I sat down inside and closed the door behind me. The car’s interior smelled new and clean. I pulled out the badge holder Joe Bim Higgins had given me and opened it. “We’re on the same side, right?” I said.
The driver peeled off the foil on a yogurt cup and began eating it with a tiny plastic spoon. The scalps of both men were shiny inside their crew cuts, the backs of their necks and heads somehow reminiscent of shoe spoons. “Why don’t you guys share information, maybe cooperate a little bit with the locals?” I said.
No response.
“It sends a bad signal,” I said. “We always get the sense we’re the dildos and you guys are the serious dicks. Not cool, right?”
