Simpatico's Gift

by Frank Martorana

  “You are obviously proud of that.”

  “I am. I was in on the ground floor, and I feel like I contributed a little.”

  “Like which blood stock to pilfer from Kentucky?”

  The guy definitely didn’t mince words. “Yes, early on, to get started, I guess. And other places, like Florida, California, Europe. We still buy some now. That’s why I’m here, obviously. But we breed our own for the most part. Like Hubris.”

  “Ah, the great son of Simpatico? I’ve heard of him.”

  Kent knew that was an understatement. Anyone who followed the horses as closely as Figurante did, knew of VinChaRo’s Hubris.

  “Is he as good as they say?”

  Kent played along. “Check out his racing record. And while you’re at it, check out the records of his first foal crop to race.”

  “Good, huh?”

  “Superb. We sell our own horses, too. To Kentucky and all the others. And we win with our horses.”

  Figurante mulled over Kent’s words. “Personally, I am not so sure the New York Program is as strong as you say. But I’ll tell you this, your success with horses like Hubris has struck fear into many of the gutless gentry around here.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. But you can tell them to relax. We’re not a threat to Kentucky or anywhere else. We simply want New York to have a top Thoroughbred business in its own right.”

  “And so it shall, if you buy my horses.” Figurante said, as he rose from his chair. “Let’s go look at some of them.”

  CHAPTER 29

  In spite of the oak tree’s shade, the Taurus felt like an oven. Kent turned on the air, but it was no match for the direct rays of southern sun that lasered through the windows. Figurante sat in the passenger seat. An oily shine coated his brow. Otherwise, he seemed unaware of the heat. He directed Kent down a meandering drive to the barns, then into a parking spot near the training track.

  They were walking along a cinder pathway that ran around the outside of the track’s white rail when Kent caught the sound of pounding hooves. He paused to watch a lone horse and rider, dust trailing behind, round the turn at the head of the stretch, and race toward them. Leaning on the rail, he was once again mesmerized by the strength and beauty of a racing Thoroughbred.

  A look of pride was just breaking onto Figurante’s face when the rider pulled back hard on the reins, pulling his horse up abruptly.

  “What the hell is that all about?” Figurante said, as he ducked under the rail, and crossed the soft dirt track with surprising quickness for a man with a bad leg. He met horse and rider as they bounced to a stop. Kent, still at the fence, saw the jockey leap down, stroke the horse’s neck, and speak to Figurante in rapid fire Spanish.

  Figurante ripped the reins from the tiny man’s hands and sent him reeling backwards with a vicious swipe of his cane.

  “That’s bullshit!” Figurante screamed in the man’s face.

  “He’s hurt! I’m telling you. Look at him,” the rider said, this time in English. He pointed at the horse’s left front leg with one hand, and rubbed his cheek with the other. The horse stood with the leg off the ground.

  “Cut the goddamn leg wraps off,” Figurante said, tossing the man a pocket knife.

  The jockey sliced at the wrap with quick strokes until it fell away, exposing an ugly swelling of the flexor tendon just above the fetlock. It grew in size as they watched. Figurante bent down and touched it. The horse grunted and pulled back.

  “Whoa, you pea-hearted bastard! Stand up here!” Figurante said.

  The horse stood trembling as his owner examined the leg.

  After a few seconds, Figurante said, “It’s just a bow. And not much of one, at that. A horse with any guts wouldn’t even have noticed it. Ice him. Twenty minutes. Then hit him with some bute, and wrap him up with a poultice. I want that son-of-a-bitch back on the track tomorrow. I don’t care how he looks. Tomorrow. Got it?”

  “Jesus! That’s enough of that,” Kent said, and ducked to slide between the rails. He had one leg through when he remembered why he was at Criadero del Jugador. If he alienated Figurante now by pointing out his cruelty, he’d never get any information out of him. Reluctantly, he resumed his place at the rail, gripped it like he’d tear it out of the ground, and bit his tongue.

  Figurante spun and took three steps toward Kent, then turned back to the jockey. “And if you can’t get any more speed than that out of my horses without breaking them down, I’ll be looking for someone who can. You hear what I’m saying?”

  The jockey nodded.

  By the time he had crossed the track, Figurante’s demeanor had changed, as if controlled by a switch. He smiled and gave Kent a no big deal gesture. “Just a bow. Not bad. He’ll be fine.”

  “Do you want me to take a look at him? I don’t mind.”

  “No. I don’t think so. We won’t take the time now. I might have my vet look at him later. We’ll give him a few days off. He’ll come around.”

  Kent turned and glanced over his shoulder. The horse hobbled three-legged, head down, at the coaxing of the tiny man pulling his reins. Kent had seen enough lame horses to recognize, even at a distance, that the injury was not a mild bowed tendon. It was something serious — a bad sprain or, worse yet, a fracture. Possibly surgery, and six months off, for sure, and the horse might make a comeback. He fought the urge to go to the horse’s aid.

  Figurante seemed to have dismissed the incident entirely.

  He said, “Renee should be at the other end of barn three with Snow Din by now.”

  They headed down the row of stalls in that direction. Figurante commented on several of his best horses as they passed their stalls. One Kent remembered from the Preakness four years ago, another had sired several stakes winners that Kent knew of.

  The string of horses was impressive. There was no denying that. Figurante had managed to amass a splendid group. But, two things were obvious to Kent as he peered into the stalls at the awesome horseflesh that stared back at him. First, and not surprising given Figurante’s reputation, most of the really top-notch horses, the world-class ones, were purchased, not born and raised at Criadero del Jugador. Second, and far more alarming to Kent, there were a lot more injured horses than he would expect on a well-managed farm. Throughout the barn, he saw knees and fetlocks swollen hard from sprains and joint damage. Many of the horses showed tiny scars coursing up and down their cannon bones like the tracks of a small rodent, grim vestiges of the firing iron, a painfully cruel and long ago discredited treatment. Kent saw cracked and weeping skin on the legs of several horses, the hideous result of harsh blister liniments once prevalent in the Neanderthal days of equine medicine, and now considered barbaric.

  “Who does your veterinary work?” he asked, forcing himself to keep a casual tone.

  “Mostly I do it myself. I take a bad problem over to Lexington once in a while, and the rest I figure out. Unfortunately, I find the vets around here difficult to work with.”

  Kent’s face twisted into a that’s pure bullshit expression.

  “Hector, I may be out of line here, but,” he tried to wring a compliment out of his anger, “you’ve got a barn full of fabulous horses. They deserve the very best. You’re within a stone’s throw of some of the best horse veterinarians on the planet. You ought to be able to find at least one you can work with.”

  Figurante kept walking. No reply.

  Kent wanted to grab the man and shake him until his head rolled off his shoulders. Instead, he jammed his hands in his pockets, fists clenched so tightly his nails cut into his palms.

  They found Renee at the end of the barn brushing the finishing touches onto a magnificent black stallion standing on cross ties. Kent recognized him instantly as Snow Din.

  “There’s the boy,” Figurante said proudly, pointing with his cane.

  Renee slipped
into the shadows. Kent played his role. He circled the horse from a distance, carefully scrutinizing Snow Din’s head, neck, and torso, giving extra attention to the all-important legs. The stallion was one of the few clean-legged ones in the barn, a testimonial to his durability.

  “Nice horse,” Kent understated, dickering for his client.

  Figurante smiled. “VinChaRo should have such a nice horse.” He waved his cane. “Renee, trot him off for the good doctor.”

  Obediently, Renee, whom Kent noticed had changed into more appropriate jeans and T-shirt, snapped a leather shank onto Snow Din’s halter, released the cross ties, and walked him outside onto safer footing. Kent and Figurante followed.

  “To the left. At a trot,” Figurante said impatiently.

  Renee glanced back at Snow Din to be sure that he was paying attention and tugged lightly on the shank. They commenced to trot along a gravel lane adjacent to the barn.

  Suddenly, a covey of doves blasted out of a patch of tall grass along a drainage ditch two horse lengths to Snow Din’s right. The birds cackled loudly, beat their wings, and executed perfectly their natural defense — escape by startling the enemy.

  No one could have known the birds were there, dusting themselves in the sandy soil. Kent felt his body jolt reflexively and saw Figurante do the same. Snow Din, his equine reactions a hundred times quicker than a human’s, was already spinning hard away from the birds. Renee held tight to the startled beast as he twisted to run. She looked like a marionette in the hands of an angry puppeteer as Snow Din swung his head.

  “Whoa!” she shouted, refusing to be shaken free. She braced herself in front of him, both hands fisted on the lead, shoulders stretching from their sockets.

  Kent rushed to help.

  “Hold him, damn it!” Figurante shouted.

  When Kent stepped behind Snow Din, the stallion realized there was no escape. He allowed himself to stand, still wide-eyed and quivering.

  Figurante grabbed the lead rope in one hand and swung his cane with the other. It landed on Snow Din’s neck with a sharp crack. The horse jerked back.

  “You goddamn fool!” Figurante roared.

  He was drawing his cane back for a second blow when Kent grabbed his arm. “Hey. Take it easy. The birds startled him. That’s all.”

  Figurante spun toward Kent and ripped his arm free. His eyes were on fire. Kent saw the cane drawing back and braced himself to deflect the kind of blow the jockey had received. But Figurante froze mid-swing. Still holding the cane above Kent’s head, he burned his eyes into Kent’s. An electrified silence surrounded them. Finally, Figurante tore his eyes from Kent and fixed on Renee.

  “You call yourself a farm manager and you let a stallion go crazy in your hands?” Figurante said. “A horse worth more than you will make in your lifetime, and you treat him like some skate!”

  “I didn’t know the birds were there.”

  Figurante pointed his cane at the mansion. “I don’t want to hear it. Get up to the house. You’ve got the horse skills of a gorilla.”

  Renee stared at him in disbelief. Just as it appeared Figurante would strike her, she wheeled and headed toward the house, rubbing her blistered palms on her shirt.

  Kent was preparing to strangle the man, when Figurante’s disposition switch flipped one more time.

  “Shall we try again?” he said, with a mellifluous smile.

  For the next two hours Kent conducted the prepurchase examination he’d done hundreds of times before on hundreds of horses. He reminded himself to appear genuinely interested and make the exam authentic. Snow Din was the picture of good health. The only fault Kent could find was a raised red welt on the side of his neck. It was a perfect imprint of the serpent spiraling up Figurante’s cane.

  Figurante’s treatment of Renee kept playing back in his mind. How could anyone work for such a man? His split personality would have been fascinating if it weren’t so terrifying.

  Through it all, Figurante watched in brooding silence.

  “I can’t find a thing wrong with him,” Kent said as he repacked his veterinary equipment in the Taurus. “Barring any unforeseen problems with the x-rays or blood work, I’m going to tell Elizabeth to go ahead. The rest is between you two.”

  “I didn’t think you would find any problems. At Criadero del Jugador, if they are not healthy, we don’t keep them. I’ll send a contract to Elizabeth.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Flame and Neapolitan carried Emily and Maria along the trail on loose reins. Their saddles creaked in rhythm with the peepers. Long shadows crisscrossed the trails as orangey light filtered to the forest floor. They pulled up facing west on the bluff, where Emily knew they would get the best view, and were rewarded by an explosion of blue and gold as the sun sank below the horizon.

  “Doc will be home tomorrow evening,” Emily said, letting her eyes adjust to the near darkness. “He’s only been gone overnight, but still, I’ll be glad to have him back safe and sound. I wonder if he found out anything.”

  “He’ll tell us, I’m sure,” Maria said in a tone that made it obvious she resented having to revisit the subject of Hector Figurante. She twisted in the saddle. Neapolitan perked up his ears, aroused by the stir on his back. For a moment he was attentive, feeling for additional cues. Receiving none, he relaxed again.

  There was another long silence, then Maria spoke out of the dark. “I want to block that place out of my mind.”

  “Why?” Emily asked, her frustration causing it to come out too loud. She had not had any better luck than her father getting Maria to opening up about her time at Figurante’s.

  “Because I hate Criadero del Jugador and I hate Hector Figurante.”

  “You have to tell me what happened down there, Maria,” Emily begged.

  “He’s a terrible person. He is why I left Criadero del Jugador.”

  “Did he do something to you?”

  When Maria didn’t answer, Emily tried a different tack.

  “Is Figurante mean enough to hurt our stallions?”

  Maria maintained her silence for a long time, then with caustic huskiness in her voice, she said, “He is capable of anything.”

  “What do you think, though? Do you think he could be behind everything that’s been going on?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this, if he felt he had a reason to do it, he would do it. He’s ruthless.”

  A horrifying thought crossed Emily’s mind. “Maria,” she said cautiously, “he wouldn’t hurt Doc, would he?”

  Maria didn’t answer.

  Emily repeated her question more forcefully. “My father is safe down there. Right?”

  Still Maria said nothing.

  Emily did not ask again. Instead, she said, “Come on, Flame,” and drove her heels into the pony’s flanks so hard he leaped a stride, then took off at a gallop. Ignoring the darkness, Emily pushed Flame to his max with clucks of her tongue and heels in his ribs. They charged toward Pine Holt at a dead run.

  As she reined him in at the barn, she remembered the phone number Doc had left for Criadero del Jugador was next to the telephone in the kitchen. She spun Flame toward the house and forced him back into a gallop. Flame bolted across the lawn, but when they reached the patio, he instinctively slowed. Emily urged him on one last time, and the bewildered pony leaped onto the slippery flagstone surface. She pulled him up within inches of the French doors, and dismounted as he stopped skidding.

  “I love you, little man,” she said, over her shoulder. “I’ll cool you out as soon as I’m off the phone. I promise.”

  She raced into the house. She glanced back over her shoulder in time to see Flame watching her through the glass. His chest was still heaving, his face looked confused. Then, to her relief, he sighed deeply, stepped to a pot of ornamental grass and began nibbling.

  In the kitchen, Emi
ly snatched up Doc’s note and punched the number for Hector Figurante’s farm into the telephone.

  “Hi. This is Emily Stephenson in Jefferson, New York,” she said to the bored voice that answered the phone. “My father is Kent Stephenson, a veterinarian there on business. I need to speak to him right now. It’s really important.”

  “Yes, ma’am. They are at dinner. Hold, please.”

  While she waited, Emily stretched the phone cord for a look at Flame. A smile flickered across her face — she’d worry about an explanation for the stump of grass in the pot later. Kent’s voice came over the line and her smile vanished.

  “Hello?”

  “Doc, it’s me. Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Em. I’m fine. Are you? Why are you calling?”

  Emily allowed herself to breathe again. “Yes. I’m okay. But Maria just scared the crap out of me. She told me Hector Figurante really is nasty enough to hurt our horses or even people. I think he must have hurt her, too, but she won’t talk about it.”

  Emily’s voice cracked. There was a pause. Then Kent heard her swallow hard.

  “I got afraid for you, Doc,” she said.

  “Em,” Kent said, the panic in his voice giving way to relief, “thanks for looking out for me, hon. But, hey. I’m fine. Nothing bad is going to happen to me.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart. Actually we’re having a nice dinner right now.”

  “I wanted to warn you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Emily brushed her fingers over the itinerary Kent had stuck to the refrigerator. “When are you coming home?”

  “Soon. Tomorrow. You and Maria are still picking me up at the airport, right?”

  “Yes.” Silence again. Then, “I miss you. Be really careful.”

  “I miss you, too, honey. I will.”

  Emily’s warning played in Kent’s head as he returned to dinner with Figurante and Renee. His appetite for sea bass had faded, but the Riesling hit the spot. What happened to Maria? What had she told Emily that got her so upset?