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to live off pizza and beer for six months.
    He walked in as if he owned the place, and looked around. His red hair was thick and scruffy. He had the massive head of a
     rottweiler, and the front of it revealed the red face of a man who knew how to drink. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt covered
     by a denim jacket, and steel-toed work boots. Because Nederland’s winter population consists largely of telecommuting yuppies,
     aging hippies, and unemployed snowboarders, I was the only man in the place who looked like a former Marine JAG. I wore chinos
     and a cowboy’s tan corduroy jacket with my Polar Bear Club patch on it. The stone fireplace provided plenty of heat, so I
     didn’t need the jacket, but it kept the Glock out of view. Bugg saw me and walked toward my table. “You Keane?” he said.
    “Yeah,” I said. I extended my hand but didn’t get up. He shook my hand and sat down to my left. A young waitress in dreadlocks
     approached us. Bugg ordered black coffee and a stack of hotcakes. I asked for a bagel with cream cheese. She poured his coffee
     right away, refilled mine while she was at it, then headed to the kitchen with our order.
    “Fuckin’ cold out,” Bugg said in a gravelly voice.
    “Yeah.”
    “This is all confidential, right?”
    “Yeah.” Strictly speaking, that’s not true. There is no privilege for statements a client makes to an investigator. Not unless
     the investigator works for the client’s attorney.
    “You know who I am?” Bugg asked as he laid his big forearms on the table. I noticed he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.
    “I know a little,” I said.
    “Does it bother you?”
    “Depends on what you want me to do.”
    “I want you to find my fuckin’ wife,” he said. “That bother you?” I shook my head and sipped my coffee. “What’s it gonna cost?”
     he asked.
    “Seven-fifty a day, plus expenses.”
    “Pretty steep,” he said. I sipped my coffee and said nothing. “How much up front?” he finally asked.
    “Depends on how difficult the job is,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
    “What’s going on is that I’ve been with this lady seven years and she up and disappears on me.” He had just a trace of a southern
     accent, and I remembered he’d grown up in Arkansas.
    “When?” I asked.
    “’Bout a month ago.”
    “Why’d you wait this long to hire an investigator?” I asked.
    “Thought I could find her on my own,” he said.
    “How’d you get my name?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “I guess not,” I said.
    “Saw your card at the store over to Ward,” he said. There is only one store in Ward. “Store” is a generous term. It’s a little
     place in a hundred-year-old building that sells batteries and beer. Ward is a mountain town with a population of less than
     two hundred. It’s where you live if Nederland isn’t eclectic enough for you. It used to be a mining town, but today the population
     consists mostly of bikers, survivalists, anarchists, and the Rainbow People. I guess there are still a few miners over there.
    “What’s your wife’s name?” I asked. I removed a gold-plated mechanical pencil from my pocket and turned over the paper place
     mat so I’d have something to write on.
    “Karlynn Slade,” he said. “K-A-R-L-Y-N-N.”
    “You know her date of birth?”
    “Yeah, lemme think-it’s June fifth, nineteen sixty-eight.” The day Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy. I remembered it. Remembered
     seeing it on the black-and-white Zenith TV in our southeast Denver home. Remembered staring at the same television a few days
     later as the funeral train rolled across America.
    “What does your wife look like?” I asked.
    “She’s about five-five or five-six. Dark hair, nice body.”
    “You have a picture of her?”
    “Yeah,” he said. He reached into one of the pockets on his denim jacket and handed me a photo of the two of them smiling in
     front of a motorcycle. I couldn’t miss the “SPD” tattooed on his left hand