Mad River

thought about that a minute, then simultaneously said, “No,” because, when everything was said and done, Kristofferson just wasn’t country enough, down in his heart.
    Billy Joe Shaver? Good, very good. There was a lot to be said for “Georgia on a Fast Train” and even, they agreed, “Wacko from Waco,” which testified to a certain genuineness of the lifestyle. Then there was “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,”
covered by the likes of Bob Dylan, backed by Eric Clapton. What about that? What could you say about the second-best country song ever?
    They were still working through it, each with a Leinenkugel longneck in his right hand, and Cooper crowned with a black hundred-beaver cowboy hat from Santa Fe, New Mexico, when along came a Mankato cop named Bob Roberts, who everybody called Bob-Bob, and who said, “Hey there, Virg.”
    Virgil asked, “Is Ray Wylie the best living country singer?”
    Bob-Bob hitched up his duty belt and said, “Well, hell. Let me think. How about . . . Emmylou Harris? Or maybe Linda Ronstadt?”
    There was a moment of silence, then Virgil said to Cooper, “You miserable sexist piece of shit. You never even considered a woman.”
    “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “I apologize to all women. For everything.”
    “I don’t think that’s good enough,” Bob-Bob said. “You’ll have to come down to the station for an application of pussywhip.”
    Virgil, trying to smooth over the awkwardness, said, “I think we can all agree that the Texas guys write very smooth stuff.”
    “In other words, not tin-eared Nashville whining violin Martha White Grand Ole Opry banjo bullshit,” Cooper said.
    “And at this very moment, I say Ray Wylie leads the pack—nothing against the women,” Virgil said. He held out his bottle, and Cooper hesitated only for a moment, then clinked his bottle against it, and they both said, “Ray Wylie.” Cooper tipped his bottle up, finishing the last of the brew, and then looked down the alley and said, “See that net?”
    They couldn’t, because there was no net. What there was, was a hoop, with a sixty-watt bulb flickering just beyond it, where the kitchen staff shot baskets on slow nights.
    “Sort of,” Virgil said.
    “One shot each, for five dollars.”
    “You got it,” Virgil said.
    Cornelius carefully gauged the distance—just about a free throw—then arced the bottle toward the hoop. The bottle clanged off the rim, ricocheted down the alley, and shattered on a cobblestone. “Shit,” he said.
    Virgil finished his beer, and Bob-Bob said, “I got two dollars says you don’t even hit the rim.”
    Virgil said, “You got that, too,” and lofted the bottle down the alley; it dropped gracefully through the hoop, the neck just ticking the steel as it went down, and then shattered on another cobblestone. “That’s what you get when you go head-to-head with a natural athlete, you ignorant small-town hicks,” Virgil said. “Pay me.”
    “I been set up,” Bob-Bob said, as he dug two dollars out of his pocket. “By the way, Virgie, this BCA guy, Davenport, is trying to find you. He said you don’t answer your phone, but he knows you’re around here. He called at the station house and Georgina said she’d seen you down here. She sent me down to tell you to call in.”
    “I told you, you shouldn’t have been hittin’ on her,” Cooper said.
    “I was just being social,” Virgil said. To Bob-Bob: “Did Davenport say what he wanted me for?”
    “Not to me,” Bob-Bob said. “But calling at this time of night . . .”
    They all reflexively looked up toward the moon: it was after midnight. A call after midnight meant there’d probably been a murder somewhere. Virgil fished the cell phone out of his pocket, turned it on, found three messages from Davenport.
    “Goddamnit. I got home from vacation at six o’clock, and he’s already on my ass.”
    “You look like you’re tanned,” Bob-Bob said, squinting in the bad light. “You didn’t get that here. Where you been?”
    “Bahamas,” Virgil said. “Bone fishing.”
    “Bahamas,” Bob-Bob said with amazement, as though Virgil had said Shangri-la.
    Virgil pushed the button to call Davenport, who picked up on the first ring.
    “We got a bad one in Shinder,” Lucas Davenport said. He sounded sleepy, and maybe bored. “You better get over there.”
    “I’d blow about a ten-point-three right now,” Virgil said. “Can it wait until morning?”
    “They’re holding