After they’d returned to the safehouse and debriefed, Marquez felt too edgy to call it a night.
“I’m going to take a ride into town,” he said. “Anybody want to come along?”
“I’ll go with you,” Shauf said. “I could use a drink.”
They drove past the Creekview Saloon and spotted Petroni’s orange Honda parked not far away. After a moment’s hesitation Marquez pulled over and parked.
“You sure you want to do this tonight?” Shauf asked.
“Yeah, he owes us some answers.”
The bar at the Creekview had been built to look like a big horseshoe, and they took a position along one side. Marquez leaned in to get the bartender’s attention. Three bartenders stood talking to each other, wearing black shirts carrying a gold emblem in the shape of a prospector on the pocket. Gold rush branding was a change he’d seen start in Placerville a few years ago. The original town name, Hangtown, appeared more and more on store windows.
He ordered drinks and then spotted Petroni sitting with a young black-haired woman at a table in front of a bandstand where a country singer was tuning up her guitar and bantering with the crowd. A waitress wearing cowboy boots, red tights, a short black skirt, and a red bandana around her neck leaned over Petroni’s table.
Marquez chatted with Shauf while waiting for their drinks. It was too noisy to unwind here, and after they had their drinks he wished they’d gone somewhere else. This wasn’t going to be the place to sit with Petroni. He clicked his glass against hers, and she asked, “Who are these guys across the bar?”
“The one with the thin blond mustache is Bobby Broussard, one of the cousins. He lives out there with Troy. I don’t know the other guy.”
The other man was also young but much tougher looking, powerfully built. On this cold night he wore a tight T-shirt under a loose leather jacket open wide enough to show off his pecs. His hair was short, gelled, bleached, his face flat, cheekbone planes too sharp, as if someone had screwed up a wood carving but kept going at it anyway. He became aware of them now. He leaned and said something that brought a leering smile to Bobby’s face.
Marquez took a sip of rum and said, “That’s Troy Broussard’s daughter, Sophie, sitting with Bill.” He turned, got the bartender’s attention, and asked, “Is Sophie working tonight?”
“She’s over by the bandstand with her boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah, I see her now, thanks.”
Marquez lifted the rum again, and the bartender lingered, did he want another? Marquez did, but rum wouldn’t work for him tonight. He’d thought coming into town and cooling down would help, but the buy had been too disturbing. He glanced over, caught an arrogant expression on Bobby’s companion’s face.
Shauf turned her back to them and spoke softly. “They’re focused on Petroni’s table, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“Why is that?”
Maybe it was the novelty of a Broussard going out with a game warden, or maybe these two at the bar didn’t have anything else to occupy themselves with, Bobby like a schoolboy giving his girl cousin shit. Petroni’s head shifted just slightly, perhaps sensing the conversation out of his view at the bar, then he finished his drink and stood heavily. He gave Sophie a grim smile before heading for the bathroom.
“Arguing with her,” Shauf said. “Doesn’t anybody in this town get along?”
Petroni moved awkwardly around a young couple, the new jeans he wore too tight for his middle-aged gut, the wide leather belt more fitting in a western bar than here.
As soon as Petroni disappeared into the bathroom, Bobby Broussard started weaving his way to Sophie, his thin frame sliding between tables, a geeky, sleazy smile offered to women he brushed into, his thigh and crotch rubbing against them as he squeezed his way through.
Watching him, Marquez remembered a much younger Bobby working as a spotter on bear hunts, keeping an eye out for the law, a thin kid with bad skin and always running his tongue over his upper lip in a way that made you glad you didn’t know what he was thinking. When Bobby reached Sophie he tapped her on the shoulder and used his beer bottle to point at the bar where his friend stood smiling. Sophie turned, looked at the man at the bar, then raised her hand, and flipped him off as though there were no one else in the room. Shauf chuckled.
But then something more got said, and Sophie came out of her seat and stuck the same finger in Bobby’s face. Even the singer looked over as Bobby grinned, backing up like this was all good fun, and Sophie’s gaze returned to the other man, who toasted her with his beer and crooked a finger motioning her to come to him. A couple of women yelled at his gesture as if it offended them personally. Marquez heard the word “asshole.”
“I’m ready to go,” Shauf said. “Who needs this? You don’t, I don’t. Let Petroni have his midlife crisis. I’m fried, you must be too.”
“Let’s hang for a couple.”
Petroni came back from the bathroom, and by then Sophie had turned her chair so her back was to the bar. Petroni sat down and looked around at the nearby tables, but what he needed to see was Bobby Broussard’s companion crossing the room behind him. Within a few strides the man was there, and he jerked Petroni’s right shoulder from behind. Petroni just managed to get on his feet as his chair went over, his drink skittering.
“Watch my drink for me,” Marquez said, and started across just as Petroni and the man came to blows. He saw Petroni take hard jabs to the gut and one to the chin. Petroni went down on one knee, then fell to the floor. The man reached down, wadded Petroni’s shirt, started to lift him, was swearing at him, calling him a cocksucker when Marquez got there and forced him to lower Petroni back to the floor.
“This is the part where the lowlifes haul ass,” Marquez said. “That’s you.”
“Let go of my wrist, fucker, before I kick the shit out of you.”
A moment later he threw his weight sideways, trying to knock Marquez off balance. A table upended but Marquez kept his feet, blocked a hard punch that hurt. He waited for the man to come at him again, but surprisingly, he didn’t.
“Kick his ass, Nyland, kick his ass!” But Nyland had changed his mind, and the same voice egging Nyland on called to Marquez, “She’s his girlfriend, asshole.”
Two Placerville officers pushed through the bar doors. Nyland tried to back away, but the police closed on him and looked as though they recognized and didn’t like him. Petroni got to his feet, wiped blood from his nose. Sophie handed him a napkin. Marquez didn’t take his eyes off Nyland. If Nyland was local, he had to know Petroni was the warden out of Georgetown, and not many people come after law enforcement officers, at least not in a crowded bar.
“Take him in,” Petroni told the officers.
But they didn’t work for Fish and Game and went about it their own way. They stopped Nyland from walking away and asked Marquez and Petroni to come outside as well. Marquez waited near the bar entrance away from the patrol cars. But Petroni got close enough to Nyland to where one of the cops put a hand on Petroni’s chest and pushed him down the sidewalk. Nyland swore as one officer clicked on cuffs and the other read him his rights. He yelled over at Marquez.
“I’m watching for you.”
Marquez ignored him, instead watched Bobby Broussard, who stood in front of one of the cops and kept pointing down the street. Nyland’s keys got handed over to Bobby, and Marquez realized that must have been what the conversation was about. After Nyland was in the back of the patrol car, Marquez moved close to Petroni. One of the cops walked over. He asked Petroni, “Are you going to press charges?”
Petroni shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What do you mean, warden?”
“I mean, I’ll deal with it.”
The officer looked to Marquez. “And who are you?”
“A friend of Bill’s. I was at the bar and saw Nyland or whatever his name is cross the room and start the fight.”
“And how did he do that?” The cop started writing.
“He came up from behind and yanked Bill off his chair.”
Marquez gave terse answers and then his alias as a name. The police cruiser pulled away.
Petroni’s voice was thicker, his nose clogged with mucus and blood as he explained. “Nyland used to be her boyfriend. They lived together for years.”
“Is that his truck Bobby’s driving?”
A Toyota pickup went past on Main Street, and Petroni nodded, touched his lip, and looked at the blood on his fingers.
“He’s got dogs in the truck. That’s why they let him take it,” Petroni said. “Nyland’s close with the Broussards, and he used to go out with Sophie. That’s what that was about.”
“How long have you been going out with her?”
“She’s not one of them if that’s what you’re thinking. She left home when she was sixteen.”
Petroni turned to face him, his nose still bleeding, teeth streaked with blood, the tissue paper in his hand saturated. He forced a strange pained smile, and Marquez didn’t think it was the pain of the blows.
“This isn’t over,” Petroni said.
Marquez left it alone. Petroni was angry, humiliated, and he needed to cool down. He ought to go down to the station and press charges, let Nyland sit in a cell for a month.
“Want me to run you by the clinic and get your nose looked at?”
“No.”
“Where does Nyland live?”
“I’ll deal with him.”
“I’ve got a different problem with him.”
Marquez got directions to Nyland’s place before Petroni went back inside to Sophie. Shauf was waiting for Marquez near his truck. As they got in he told her.
“Nyland was at the wheel the other night. That’s the truck that followed me.”