Badger Games (13 page)

Joe readily fell in with that plan. “I'll go see some realtors,” he said. “Maybe I can get a line on some property. Maybe even a house out in the hills. I don't know how long I can take this old hotel.”

Helen agreed with that. They would meet later, for dinner. There was a restaurant on Main Street, near the power company. It looked like the kind of place that had a modern eclectic cuisine, vaguely French by way of California.

Joe wandered around uptown on foot. He began to feel better, just getting out, getting active. It was odd, he realized, but even if one has spent a significant amount of time in a place, once you've been away for a while you fall back on a kind of mental image or general impression of it. And when you return it seems neither as nice nor as awful as you remembered. The harsh necessities of everyday life are oppressive, at first, with their disregard for esthetics. Butte had plenty of that. But overall, he thought, the image lacked the interest of the real. The small dramas and successes assert themselves. The ways in which the city accommodates its aspirations to its needs begin to seem interesting.

He liked the old town's mixture of Cowboy West, Mining West, and New West. People casually used the word “pardner” when you asked directions and cheerfully pointed out the way. It was a battered town, but remarkably upbeat. Just walking a few blocks uphill from the main business district, he came upon a remarkable stone chalet that had, according to a plaque, been erected by one of the copper barons. It had been purchased in Europe, dismantled, and rebuilt here.

He had turned away from contemplating it with amusement and was standing on the corner, undecided about which way to go next, when an SUV pulled over to the curb and its driver, an attractive blond woman, called out.

“Looking for something? Can I help?” She may even have said, “pardner”; he wasn't sure.

Carmen Tomarich was a big woman, at least a head taller than Joe, and she looked like she'd dress out nicely in a brass brassiere and a horned helmet. Instead, she was decked out in full western rig, complete with tooled cowboy boots, flared slacks, and a fringed buckskin vest over her prominent bosom. She looked to be in her late thirties. She had a throaty contralto voice and a big smile. Joe mentally dubbed her Queen of the Rodeo.

As it turned out, Carmen was the proprietress of her own real estate agency. “Just the gal I was looking for,” Joe said, pleased.

Carmen was more than happy to drive him around to look at some homes. They were just a few blocks from some real bargains, she said, if you liked old mansions with fifteen rooms, beautiful hardwood floors, cut-glass chandeliers, and curving staircases with splendidly crafted banisters. They also had, she pointed out, ancient furnaces, poor insulation, suspect plumbing and wiring, crumbling foundations, steep roofs that needed reshingling, rusty rain gutters, and brick chimneys that could use repointing.

Alternatively, she would love to show him some spectacular newer construction “out in the flat,” meaning the area spreading around the bottom of the hill, out into the valley. It was the modern part of town. She had some bargains in the “hundred-fifty to two-hundred-K range.”

Joe said “the flat” sounded more his speed. He didn't have any problems with the “two-hundred-K range.” He hopped into Carmen's fancy new vehicle. He liked Helen's Durango better, but he said Carmen's “outfit” was nice.

They drove out past the airport and up into the grassy, treeless foothills to look at a large, rambling house with far too many bedrooms but a lavishly modern kitchen and a vast open basement that was decorated as an entertainment room, with an enormous fireplace. The house sat on five acres of not very private lawn; no fences out here.

“You'll need a riding mower,” Carmen said. “There's one in the barn.” She pointed at a small utility shed artfully tucked away near the back. “It doesn't come with, but the owner will sell it for peanuts. He's moved to Helena. Got elected our new attorney general.”

She led him across the lawn along a path shielded by evergreens to a small, rustic-looking structure. “Ta-da!” she said. “Your own sauna. It's a beauty, too.” It was. Helen would love the sauna, he knew. Joe hated the place. He didn't like the deck, the high upkeep, the general hugeness of it. It wasn't him. And the thought that it belonged to the new attorney general wasn't appealing. But he didn't say so. He said he'd have to bring his wife out to look at it.

On the way back into town, he asked, offhandedly, if there were a lot of Serbs around here. He said he thought he'd noticed an Orthodox church on the way into town.

“Oh, gosh, yes,” Carmen said. “People are always asking me if
I'm
Serb, but we're Crotes. Well, my mom's Mexican, which is why I'm Carmen.”

“Croats?” Joe said.

“Yeah,” she said, “you can't always tell by the name. Some Tomariches are Serbs, though. The Crotes are Catholic, the Serbs are Orthodox. Everybody gets them confused. There's plenty of Serbs in Butte.” They were passing a large car dealership on the road back into town. “That's one, there.”

Joe looked at the sign. “O'billovich,” he read out loud. He smiled. “Irish?”

“I'm pretty sure he added the apostrophe,” Carmen said. “Lots of Irish around here. Fabulous Saint Pat's Day celebration. You may have heard about it, even down in Salt Lake.”

“I didn't live long in Salt Lake,” Joe said. “I'm from back East, really. But is that a real Serbian name?”

“Or Crote,” she said. “I went to school with some of them. Tomjanoviches, Kapariches, that kind of thing. There's a lot of them around. There's more than one Obillovich family. I'm not even sure if they're all related.”

A thought suddenly occurred to Joe. “Do you know a Frank Obradovich?”

“I think I've heard the name,” Carmen said. “How old is he? I might have gone to school with some of his relatives.”

“You think so? I'd love to find Frank,” Joe said. “I knew him back East. He's about thirty-five, medium height, kind of dark. That'd be something, to run into Frank out here! I'd forgotten all about him. He said he was from Montana, but I never made the connection.”

“I could ask around,” she said. “Realtors always know everybody, especially in a town like Butte.”

In fact, it took about ten minutes in her office, on the phone. There was a Frank Oberavich, who had returned to the Butte area a few years ago, she was told. Her informant wasn't clear. He'd been living out of state, maybe in California or Washington. But he'd come back. “They always come back to Butte,” Carmen said. “That's the old saying.”

“Not Obradovich?” Joe said. “But Oberavich?”

“You don't pronounce the
e,
” Carmen said. “Ob'ravich.”

“Well, it could be,” Joe said. “Where does he live?”

That wasn't so clear. Carmen said it seemed like he hadn't stayed in town long. He'd found a place up in the mountains, up
toward Helena. “Kind of a reclusive fellow, I guess,” she said. “I don't know if I've ever met him. Most of the Oberaviches I know are real friendly, social kind of folks. My friend Trudy—she's a realtor, too—knows him. Is your friend, um … I don't mean to pry, and no disrespect, you know … as far as I'm concerned, everybody's got a right to his own, ah, choice—”

“Gay?” Joe said, with a disarming smile. “You know, I never thought of it, but”—he shrugged—“it could be, I guess. Is your friend's Frank gay? Maybe it's not the same guy.”

“Maybe not,” Carmen said, “but it's not too common a name, is it? Anyway, he lives out in the brush, not too far from a little town called French Forque.” She spelled the second part of the name. “It's over the pass, north. Trudy doesn't know just where the house is, but you could ask in the town. Ask a realtor. Let's see … that'd be Denny, Les Denny.”

Joe practically ran to the restaurant to tell Helen his discovery. She had some great news, too, she said, “But you first.” They were sitting at dinner, eating a very good veal parmigiana.

When Joe told her about Oberavich Helen's face fell. “That's what I was going to tell you,” she said. The priest had told her about “Franko Bradovich,” correcting her pronunciation of the name and confirming her hunch.

But they were pleased with their joint discovery. Helen said they were just like Nick and Nora Charles, in
The Thin Man.
Joe wasn't familiar with the movie, but Helen filled him in, mentioning that Myrna Loy had played Nora, to William Powell's Nick. Joe said that was auspicious, because he'd just been told by Carmen that Helena was the birthplace of Myrna Loy, and that was the direction their investigation was headed.

The next morning they drove north, over the pass, and took the turnoff to the little village of French Forque. Most people just
called it Forkee, they'd been told in the bar of the restaurant last night. In fact, there were ruder versions of the name, based on a “fork-you” pronunciation. It was an old mining town, now in considerable decay, located in a well-wooded gulch, through which flowed Frenchy's Fork of the Boulder River. This was a beautiful little twisting stream, easily wadable except during the spring runoff. It was lined with alder and, according to locals, “very trouty.” Many miles farther down, where this gulch opened into a much broader valley, the stream flowed into the Boulder River, which in turn flowed into the Missouri. But Joe and Helen were not interested in fishing.

Carmen had called ahead to Les Denny, the local realtor, who was also the owner and bartender of Frenchy's, the one remaining tavern of a dozen or more that had catered to the deep thirst of hundreds of gold and silver miners in the area. The mines were all closed now, although Denny said that there were still some prospectors working claims. An unlooked-for business had developed, he said: “radium treatment” mines. These were old mines with a fairly high radiation level. People paid good money to go sit in these mines, some of which were outfitted comfortably, to “take the cure.”

“Personally, I think they're nuts,” Denny said. He was a pleasant man, burly and with a bushy beard that covered the open neck of his plaid shirt. “Hell, you're more likely to get some kind of radiation sickness, I'd say. Wouldn't you? But these are desperate people, mostly. They already got cancer, or had it, I guess, and they've had radiation therapy, so maybe they're not so dumb. But it can't be the same thing, you reckon?”

Joe agreed. Denny was happy to pour them whiskey and draw beers and talk about the fishing and the mines, but when it came to discussion of Franko, as Denny called him, he became more guarded. There was no one else in the tavern at this hour of the morning, but Denny dropped his voice.

“You know, I'm not a close pard to ol' Franko,” Denny said, “but I known him a while and he's a guy who likes his privacy. Y'gotta respect that up here. Are you a friend of his?”

Joe fed him the Franko Bradovich story that he'd told Carmen. Joe said he and his wife, Helen, were from out of state, just passing through, but they were impressed with the country. It might be nice to buy some property, maybe even move out here. They were in a kind of on-line consulting business that didn't require them to live in a city, the way things were these days. And then he'd stumbled on this Oberavich thing. It looked too good to pass up. Joe just wanted to meet this Frank and see if he wasn't the same guy. And who knows? They might even see some property that would interest them.

“Well, it's damn nice back there,” Denny conceded, “and I do know about some property, right on the crick. But you gotta know that there ain't no electricity back there and not likely to be anytime soon. Great place for a hunting or fishing cabin, maybe, but if you're doing anything in the computer business, you're gonna want power.”

Joe said that consideration could come later. Mainly, for now, he thought it'd be interesting just to take a look and meet Frank.

“The thing is,” Denny said, his voice dropping again, “Carmen referred you, but she admits she don't know you from Adam. You see what I mean? You got Michigan plates on your rig, you look like good folks, but …” He shrugged. “You got any identification?”

Joe fished out his wallet and showed a Utah driver's license in the name of Joseph Humann. He also had one in the same name from Montana, as well as a couple in different names from California and Colorado, but he thought the Utah one more consistent with the story he'd told Carmen. They'd bought the vehicle in Detroit, he explained, and licensed it there for convenience, until they decided where they were going to settle.

Denny nodded at all this while staring at the Utah license. Finally, he said, “Well, it's you all right,” tapping the picture on the license. “But I don't know … ol' Franko's pretty much a hermit…. I feel kinda like I should give him a call, first.”

“Oh? So there's phone service back there?” Helen said.

“Well, he's got a cell phone, of course,” Denny said. “You guys doing okay with those beers? I'll be right back.” And he went into the back room.

“Hm,” Helen said, “he's damn cautious. What do you think?”

“I think we're on to something, Nora, my dear,” Joe said. “If this doesn't work, we'll just take it in good humor and ask about property and then go on our way. We can always locate the guy one way or another. In fact, it might be bet—” He broke off as Denny reappeared. “You get hold of him?” he called out.

“Yeah,” Denny said, lifting his eyebrows quizzically. “He says come on back. Funny thing is, he don't know no Joe Humann. But that's how it goes with these hermits…. I guess he's feeling like company today.”

“That's great,” Joe said. “I guess he forgot me. It was a while back. He'll recognize me, though, if it's him. Listen, I appreciate your being careful and all that, and I'm sure Franko does, but isn't this a little, uh, mysterious? What's the big deal?”