Judas Horse

by April Smith

  The bartender darts his chin at her as he blows by. “Give me a sec, Megan.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “You’ve been waiting a long time,” I observe.

  “The waitress is busy,” the woman replies without a trace of resentment, and there is an eager jolt as I recognize this person shows an inherent sympathy for the underdog—such as a lonely stranger in a new city?

  Opening move: “I love your necklace.”

  A heavy silver pendant of interlocking triangles rests upon her pillowy chest.

  “A valknot. Ever heard of it?”

  I shake my head.

  Megan answers with a forgiving smile. “A Nordic symbol for the three aspects of the universe.”

  “Now,” announces the bartender, sweating from his shaved head, “what can I get for you, Megan?”

  He pours white wine and mixes up a Salty Dog with fresh grapefruit juice and premium gin while Megan stares across at Mr. Terminate. And Mr. Terminate glares right back at her.

  “You know that guy?” I ask.

  “That’s John. I think he likes you.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He’s looking right at you,” she says without moving her lips.

  “He’s looking at you.”

  It is hard to tell what is going on underneath the top hat and mirrored sunglasses.

  “He knows better than to mess with me,” Megan says lightly.

  Mr. Terminate has picked up an ashtray. It is a white ceramic ashtray, like the one in front of us, and it says Coors.

  Megan says, “Uh-oh.”

  “What’s he doing?” I ask, alarmed.

  “If you’re wearing a leg holster for a primary weapon, you’re an idiot,” Angelo always says, but for the second or third time that evening, I wish Darcy DeGuzman were carrying a .45 automatic.

  I have noticed we are often burdened by our own creations.

  “Look out,” Megan warns.

  “Why?”

  Instead of answering, she starts to back away from the bar.

  Mr. Terminate is examining the ashtray closely, hefting it in his hand as if it were an apple.

  Then he eats it.

  He chews it, and chomps it with his back teeth, and there is an extraordinary sound, like marbles grinding against one another in a soft cloth bag. A pause, then he spews a great shower of white shards and pink-flecked foam across the bar. He picks the remaining pieces out of his beard, and then, with a meaningful look at me, lifts his glass and drinks the rest of the whiskey down.

  Nobody bats an eye. The bartender is there with a rag.

  I turn to the woman in disbelief. “What was that?”

  Megan is matter-of-fact. “That’s John.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Megan’s answer encompasses the feminine dilemma, and seems to draw us both together in it.

  “It’s what we’ve known since seventh grade,” she says. “Boys are stupid.”

  A wild laugh escapes me, while Mr. Terminate remains impassive, body language boulderlike and calm, as if he has not just eaten a glass ashtray and spit it out in our faces. He is waiting for an answer, but the question remains—What is the question? Is this some kind of brain-dead buffalo love, or has he made me, in the same way he might have made Steve Crawford for an undercover cop?

  The bartender finally sets down the white wine and Salty Dog but waits a moment longer, keeping his hands on the drinks.

  “What can I get your friend?” he asks Megan.

  “We don’t really know each other,” I explain.

  “Well, you should. Two beautiful ladies?”

  I introduce myself as Darcy DeGuzman and it rolls right off my tongue. Her name is Megan Tewksbury, and she would like to pay her bill. But the bartender lingers, drawing things out.

  “So, Darcy, another beer?”

  White, built, maybe forty—he’s giving me a very friendly look. Is he trying to pick me up? It’s my lucky day. His black T-shirt says Does Not Play Well with Others. His lip is pierced, and he sports a bearded braided thing hanging off his chin.

  The Darcy part likes it that some oaf is looking at me. I hope he makes a move, just to see what it would be like. This never happens in normal life, when I am Special Agent Ana Grey. Even on a weekend, even at a car wash, looking like everybody else in a tank top and shorts, my first reaction to a guy staring is, What are you up to? Not exactly a turn-on.

  Megan: “What do I owe you, Rusty?”

  “No worries. I’ll just run a tab.” To me: “What’re you doing here, girlfriend?”

  “I must have read the guidebook wrong,” I say, flirting.

  Rusty grins. “Don’t fret. We get a lot of nice folks stopping in après the market. Megan has a booth there. She’s a regular. Guess what she’s sellin’?”

  Megan carries the drinks away. “Nothin’ you’ll ever afford.”

  “She sells homemade hazelnut brittle!” Rusty shouts. “She’s a nut.” He winks. “Lives on a nut farm, along with some goats and about a hundred cats and dogs. Got a whole thing going where she rescues animals.”

  “She’s an animal lover?” My head swivels back toward the woman, who is now sitting at a table with the man who ordered the Salty Dog.

  “Who is she with?”

  “That’s the boyfriend. His name is Julius Emerson Phelps.”

  Broad-shouldered, six three, hard-built but with enough gut to put him over two hundred pounds. It would be difficult to pinpoint his age. Young girls would find the implication of sexual mastery in his craggy smile and wish for his attention, while men of my grandfather’s generation would resent having to relinquish their grip on the world to a male who still looks young. I make him for a middle-aged farmer with a ponytail; he must be some type of an agro guy, because there’s a flying ear of corn on his cap.

  Above the rows of liquor bottles, in a mirrored sign for Becks, I watch Megan Tewksbury drape a possessive arm over Julius’s shoulders. They are talking cheek-to-cheek without really looking at each other, eyes scanning the room. I am surprised to see myself in the mirror—looking happy. My cheeks are flushed from the heat and noise and sexual signals snap-popping off the crowd. I’m feeling all warmed up, looking for a friend. Someone local, who would be a way into the community. Megan? Approachable?

  Not while they’re nuzzling. I nip at the mug and observe. The beer is cold, and after a while I realize that it has been going down nicely with the wigged-out nasty metal guitar band coming from the jukebox.

  The mirror shows it is Julius Emerson Phelps who has changed the music. He is holding on to both sides of the machine, bent over the glass as if in a trance. The heavy ridges of his face are colored blue by the jukebox lights, a handsome face that has gone to seed. He wears a worn-out denim shirt and blondish hair that, if unloosed, would fall below the shoulders. But here’s what really dates him: an improbable pair of frayed red suspenders only old hippies can pull off.

  I choose to steal what you choose to show

  And you know I will not apologize

  “Anybody know what that is?” I ask in general.

  “‘Career of Evil,’” rasps Mr. Terminate, like he’s still got pieces of ashtray stuck in his throat. “Blue Oyster Cult.”

  “Weren’t they big in the seventies?”

  But Mr. Terminate goes stone-cold silent.

  I slide off the stool and meander to the jukebox.

  “Blue Oyster Cult,” I say. “Weren’t they big in the seventies?”

  Julius’s eyes are slow coming out of the trance.

  “You are way too young to know about Blue Oyster Cult.”

  “That’s the only song of theirs I recognize.” I smile truthfully.

  He straightens up. There’s a silver loop in one ear. I like earrings on men. I like the kind of face that knows you’re looking at it.

  He indicates the lighted selections. “One song left. You pick.”

  “Jackson Browne.”

  He ap
proves. I move closer, so now we’re peering over the titles together. The heat of the machine jumps up.

  “I like your friend, Megan.”

  “Good lady.”

  “You come here after the market?”

  “She sells her hazelnut brittle. I grow ’em, she sells ’em.”

  “I just moved to Portland. I haven’t been to the market, but I hear it’s awesome.”

  “You should go,” Julius says.

  We listen to the piano riff at the opening of “Fountain of Sorrow.” The mood shifts, low-key and melancholy.

  “Why do you have a flying corn on your hat?”

  Reflexively, as if to be sure it’s there, Julius touches the red-and-green ear of corn with wings that adorns the cap.

  “DeKalb,” he explains.

  “What’s DeKalb?”

  “DeKalb, Ohio. Corn-seed capital of the world.”

  “What does corn seed have to do with hazelnuts?”

  “I was born there,” the big man tells me. “Picked corn when I was in high school, lying on my back on this very uncomfortable contraption, a mattress they put on wheels—”

  Megan is on her way. She’s had enough of us talking. She slips two fingers in the waistband of Julius’s jeans, sliding him close.

  “I was just telling this young lady about Ohio.”

  “Is he boring you with his life story?” she asks.

  “Yes,” replies Julius, glad for the intrusion.

  “Your friend, Rusty, at the bar, he was saying that you rescue animals? At the hazelnut farm?”

  Julius’s attention snaps back. “Rusty said that?”

  “Why not?” says Megan. “It’s true.”

  “I’m a total animal person,” I say, boasting. “I once got arrested for getting into a fight with a dude at a shelter who euthanized this cat I was going to adopt. Because I was fifteen minutes late.”

  “That’s awful. Where are you from, Darcy?” Megan asks kindly.

  “Southern California. Don’t ask.”

  “Heat, traffic, smog?”

  “And the most repressive attitude toward animal rights. We have to fight for every soul.”

  “Are you in the movement?” she asks.

  “I show up. Done a lot of cat and dog adoptions. Can I come to the farm and see your operation, maybe help?”

  Megan hesitates. “We don’t encourage visitors. It upsets the animals.”

  “But don’t you want to adopt them out?”

  “Once we get ’em, we keep ’em. We’re not open to the public,” Julius says abruptly, and downs a beer.

  Regroup.

  “I’ve been reading in the Oregonian about the wild mustangs,” I say barreling on. “I think it’s terrible what the government is doing to them.”

  “Infuriating,” Megan agrees.

  “Ever heard of FAN?”

  “Are you a member of FAN?” she whispers conspiratorially.

  “Me?” I strike my heart with surprise. “No, are you?”

  “No,” she says slowly. “But I don’t condemn what they do. Especially concerning Herbert Laumann,” she adds bitterly.

  My stomach goes whoa! Angelo’s intel just paid off.

  “The deputy state director of the BLM? What’s he up to now?”

  “Killing horses.”

  “They can’t be killed; it’s the law.”

  “He steals them.”

  “Steals them?”

  “He’s been stealing the horses he’s supposed to protect. Since he’s been deputy director, Herbert Laumann has supposedly adopted one hundred and thirty-five mustangs.”

  “What?”

  “This is a guy who lives in the suburbs.” Megan nods, disbelieving. “Where is he going to put a hundred and thirty-five horses?”

  “The man’s a scumbag,” Julius says, scanning over people’s heads. Waiting for someone?

  “Know what he’s been doing?”

  I shake my head. My eyes are wide.

  Megan’s voice is rising. “Government employees aren’t allowed to bid on the mustangs that are up for auction. So Laumann adopts them illegally under his relatives’ names.” Her cheeks are pink. “Then he sells them to a slaughterhouse in Illinois, where the horse meat is packed and shipped for human consumption in France.”

  “They eat horses, don’t they?” comments Julius, not taking his eyes from the crowd.

  The scam sounds too bizarre to be radical propaganda.

  “Why isn’t this front-page news?”

  “It will be. FAN discovered the paper trail and leaked it to the press. It’ll be up on their Web site.”

  Two or three Mexican gangbangers jump the bar. Glass shatters with earsplitting blasts as bottles fly off the wall. Omar’s quiets down and roars at the same time—women freeze; men cheer the fight—as Rusty, the friendly bartender, is tossed hand to hand and then trammeled below the mahogany.

  “What are they doing?” Megan gasps.

  Julius restrains her. “Stay out of it.”

  “No! How can you stand there?”

  Three on one? My blood is roaring; I’m out of my body with outrage. But this is training: I do not yell “Freeze! FBI.” I do not speed-dial 911. I am a witness.

  I see that neither Mr. Terminate nor Julius makes a move to intervene, but watch with calm and unworried expressions, as if this were a regularly scheduled TV show.

  Sickening thuds. Someone’s turned up the music.

  “This is revolting,” Megan says, breaking from her aging boyfriend and elbowing through the crowd, which has gone frenetic, standing on tables, laughing girls waving beer bottles perched on the shoulders of burly guys, like the place is about to erupt in a massive game of chicken. I scramble along with Megan as she pushes her way behind the bar.

  Rusty’s arms are pinned and they’ve got his head in the ice bin. They pull it out by his chin hair, repeatedly smash his nose against the chrome, then plunge him into the ice again. His face is a mass of bruises and splintered bone, teeth are gone, and the ice cache has become a hemoglobin cocktail.

  Megan is screaming, “Leave him alone,” trying to pry the Mexicans away. A small one jumps on her back and clings.

  I’m saying, “Chill out, brother,” but they laugh, so I get the little monkey dude in a rear chokehold and pull him off Megan and maneuver his flailing body around until I can flip him flat onto the wet wooden joists of the catwalk behind the bar. He lies there, stunned as a fish.

  There’s a baton Rusty keeps near the cash register. I’ve got it ready for counterattack, when a big warm hand grabs my wrist. Julius has put himself between them and me.

  “Don’t worry yourself. Rusty had it coming.”

  I stare at the destroyed face of the barely conscious human being slumped in Megan’s lap on the floor, where she kneels in a nest of broken glass. Her shirt is soaked with his blood. The space looks like Laumann’s mustang slaughterhouse—blood on the mirrors, blood in the drains. The attention of the crowd has shifted to the cash register.

  “What’d he do?” I shout.

  “He’s a cop,” Julius says, and Rusty awakens just enough to roll an eye toward me, piercing as the bloodred sun.

  Seven

  My grandfather Poppy taught me that everything must be earned. As a lieutenant in the Long Beach police department, he believed in progress through the ranks. But his black-and-white view of the world carried beyond the patrol car, right into our kitchen, where he would subject my young mother and me to sadistic quizzes on current events, or rate her cooking as if he were a restaurant critic.

  “Dry as dust,” he’d proclaim about her roast turkey. “You’re stupid,” he’d say, frowning when I failed to name the secretary-general of the United Nations. Give him a sweater for Father’s Day and his face would go into a soft paralysis and his eyes would drift, and he’d give you a neutral “Hmmm.” He literally did not know what to do with a gift.

  If you did something bad, like flooding the garage with a garden h
ose, there would be punishment—washing your mouth out with soap, or making you stand in the scary backyard at night in your pajamas. Like Darcy, I did bad things anyway. Things that tested Poppy’s love against Poppy’s rules. When I was a child, a vein of longing wound through my body, like coveting those ribbons of marshmallow set in chocolate ice cream, and just because he knew I wanted it more than anything, Poppy would never let me have it—no matter how many chances I gave him to say “I was only kidding. You really are okay. Here’s my love, with whipped cream on top.”

  Screw you, Grandpa.

  The girl who used to stand in awe of you was Ana.

  At Omar’s Roadhouse, I was Darcy, acting out like crazy. Darcy, all Darcy.

  And I liked it.

  Donnato tugs his tie loose and drops into a chair. We have met at a seedy motel near the Portland airport.

  “Why wasn’t I told there was a Portland police detective working undercover?”

  “Don’t yell,” he says with a sigh. “I just found out myself. They know Omar’s is a nexus of criminal activity. They’ve had undercovers embedded for years—”

  I’m pointing a finger, an aggressive habit.

  “Goddamn it, I should have been told!”

  “Look, Ana, it’s the same old tune. The local cops want our assistance on a task force, and then resent the hell out of it when we show up. The cop goes down,” he says tiredly. “And you throw money?”

  “They smashed the cash register, so I grabbed a couple of handfuls. It was a diversion. If anyone asks, ‘Who is this new girl in town named Darcy?’ they’ll have an answer. ‘She’s the one who got up on the bar and started throwing cash to the crowd.’ I gave a handful to Megan for the horses.”

  “Don’t try so hard is what I’m saying.”

  “That’s the juice, Mike. Darcy being out there, that’s the key to this new identity. Will Rusty live?”

  “Yes. Was he helpful?”

  “Before he almost died of internal injuries? Yes, he put me in bed with Megan Tewksbury. He knows she’s an activist. That’s why he made a big point of introducing us, even though I had no clue what he was doing at the time. He must have thought I was a real lamebrain fed—”