The Sea Horse Trade

by Sasscer Hill

  “I’m fine.” I glanced at the younger man. “Are you Orlando Castellano?”

  When he turned to face me, a second set of double earrings flashed into view. He looked me up and down, then he folded his arms across his chest.

  “I work for Mr. Ravinsee. Where is Mr. Ravinsee?”

  Forcing a smile, I put out my hand. “He’s put me in charge for the meet. It’s nice to meet you, Orlando.”

  He ignored my hand. “In mi familia, the men, they don’ work for girls.”

  Great, just what I needed. I’d be twenty-four in March. How old did I need to be for this jerk?

  “No problem, I can hire somebody else.”

  He pasted on a quick smile, white teeth gleaming beneath the moustache. “Is okay. I ride for you.”

  “That’s big of you, Orlando.”

  The guard cleared his throat. “I got a call a few minutes ago. There’s a van on the way with Ravinsky’s horses.”

  He must be mistaken. “They weren’t supposed to ship from Maryland until tomorrow.” I wasn’t ready for horses. I hadn’t even seen our barn yet.

  “It’s not Ravinsky’s van. This was a Mr.…” He picked up a clip board. “A Mr. Mal…never can pronounce these names.”

  “Maldonista?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  The Colombian. Niggling doubts about this new owner had kept me awake the night before.

  I stared at a black-and silver horse van entering the parking lot. “But they’re two days early.” I tried not to whine.

  “Something going on at the local quarantine facility,” the guard said. “Guess the place is overloaded. Anyways, your horses did their time and the authorities wanted them out of there.”

  A heavy rumble grew audible as the eighteen-wheeler approached the stable gate. I looked down at my hand. When had I started this habit of twisting my horseshoe ring? My finger felt raw.

  “That’s probably it,” the guard said.

  It couldn’t be. I had to unload supplies, locate a feed and hay man, get the blood off my clothes.

  With a loud hiss of air brakes, the van crawled to a stop. A deep, demonic whinny erupted from inside. Hooves crashed against an interior stall partition, and someone screamed in terror or pain.

  CHAPTER 4

  Another agonized scream came from inside the eighteen-wheeler. Orlando and I raced to the last of three doors in the side of the huge trailer. The crashing and screaming seemed to come from back there. Orlando bumped my shoulder with his, pushing me to the side just before he leapt to the small platform beneath the door.

  To my left the guard rushed into the security booth. I hoped he was calling for help.

  “You get hurt. I do this.” Orlando grabbed the handle and turned it. He swung the door outward.

  Macho man. No time for an eye roll as I fastened the door to the latch on the outside of the trailer.

  Orlando took one step inside and froze. “Santa Madre de Dios!”

  I jumped to the platform and stared.

  A huge black horse gripped a man’s upper arm in his teeth. The man’s feet dangled in the air outside the horse’s stall. His shirt was ripped and blood stained.

  “Get this fucker off me!” The man’s words became an unintelligible scream as the horse shook the guy like a rag doll.

  The animal, free to move about in a box stall, must have grabbed the guy by snaking his head over the metal partition. Damn, the monster’s neck looked seven feet long! I spotted a push broom mounted on the wall and grabbed it.

  “Hit him!” the man yelled.

  “I don’t want him dragging you in there.” I kept my voice low, hoping not to make the horse more wild.

  Orlando stood rooted to the floor next to me. Useless.

  Slowly, I lifted the pole-end of the broom toward the horse. The beast ceased pinning his ears long enough to flick them at the broom.

  “Hey, big stuff,” I cooed, moving the handle closer to his mouth. The long, narrow shaft came at the horse so slowly he never drew back, even as the handle touched the corner of his mouth. I wiggled it slightly, working it into the crease of his lips. The handle inched onto the smooth bar of gum between the front teeth and rear molars. I pushed and the horse opened his mouth, just like he was taking the bit.

  The man fell to the floor, moaning. The horse got his teeth on the broom handle and jerked it out of my hands.

  “Have at it, you son of a bitch!” I backed away.

  Orlando stared at me with new respect. “You the man!”

  I shook my head. “We still have to get that horse out of here and into our barn.”

  Dropping the broom handle, the beast glared at the open doorway. The van’s driver, a wiry little man with wispy graying hair, had climbed onto the platform and was helping his injured groom to the ground.

  “Are we having fun yet?”

  I knew that voice! I glanced down from the van into a familiar pair of green eyes. Will Marshall.

  “Not really,” I said.

  Will had told me he’d be riding at Gulfstream, but I’d forgotten. I’d known Will for a few years, ridden races against him, and knew him to be a straight shooter. I was absurdly glad to see him.

  The security guard peered into the van. “Is anyone else hurt in there?” When I told him no, he said, “We got to move this rig. Traffic’s backing up.”

  Outside, the racetrack ambulance was taking the injured groom away. The van driver walked towards us, wiggling a toothpick in the side of his mouth.

  “Are you sure this devil really belongs to Maldonista?” I asked him. Never hurts to hope.

  “Sure does,” the driver answered with a gleam in his eye. “Him and those two fillies up front.” He pointed beyond the solid partitions that separated the black horse from the rest of the trailer.

  “Anyways, I got to drive them to your barn.” He frowned. “You got some help to unload them?”

  “Sí, por su puesto, she have me!” Orlando’s white teeth flashed.

  “I’ll help, too,” Will said. “Might as well catch a ride.” He hopped onto the platform and stepped inside. “Hey, Orlando.”

  They exchanged some sort of handshake. Everybody knows everybody at the track.

  The driver left the door open, probably as an escape hatch. In a moment the rig rolled forward and two minutes later stopped outside a barn with the numeral three painted on the end.

  * * * *

  A groom Orlando knew provided the name of his feed man and lent me bedding and hay. In short order, we had three stalls knee deep in straw, water buckets hung and filled to the rims. The two Maldonista fillies were in their stalls. The loading ramp was down, and just outside the van, the driver fidgeted with his toothpick. He couldn’t get the horse from hell off that van fast enough.

  Orlando, Will, and I stood inside, studying the beast. His baleful expression kept us at a respectful distance. How would we get him out? We might as well have been the Three Stooges.

  I held a clipboard with three sets of Argentinian Jockey Club papers. “What do you know about this horse,” I asked the driver.

  He shifted his toothpick. “I know he fits his name, ‘Diablo Valiente.’”

  “Means ‘Bold Devil,’” whispered Orlando.

  I examined the horse’s papers. “Three-year-old colt by Dynaformer, out of a Ribot line mare.” Nice pedigree.

  “See, what it is, is you got too much Ribot.” The driver gestured at the colt with his toothpick. “His sire, Dynaformer, he’s from that Ribot family, too. I knew Ribot. He was a mean son of a gun. He’d hurt people.”

  “How’d you get him on here?” I asked

  “Loaded the fillies first. That wall wasn’t up.” He waved at the solid metal panels dividing the colt’s section from the rest of the trailer. “He could see ’em and came right on. Then he wants to…get romantic. We got that partition up right quick. He about climbed out of that stall trying to get at ’em.”

  I’d have to separate the co
lt by turning the stall between his and the fillies into a storage area. Wouldn’t do to have him climbing the wall to get at his neighbors.

  “How you people plan to get a shank on that horse? Go in there with him, he’ll be all over you.”

  This driver was enjoying our predicament entirely too much.

  “He’s a horse, isn’t he?” I was losing my temper. “Orlando, get a bucket of feed.”

  Orlando started to say something, caught my expression, and hurried off the van.

  Earlier, I’d noticed a long, thick crop lying on the floor outside the horse’s stall. “Why is this crop here?” I asked the driver.

  “I wouldn’t know.” The driver’s glance drifted to the ground.

  “Your man like to show a horse who’s boss?” Will asked.

  “I wasn’t back here,” the driver said.

  Will and I exchanged a look. If the savaged groom had been smacking the colt with a crop.…

  “Nikki, if we can get hold of his head, maybe we can get that chain over his gum.” Will gestured at the lead shank I held in my other hand.

  I nodded and set the clipboard down. Maybe we could slide the chain section under Diablo’s lip, let it rest against his gum, tighten it in place. The sudden pressure would get the horse’s attention. If we were lucky.

  Orlando trotted up the ramp with a bucket of grain. He looked at the colt, handed me the bucket and stepped back. I moved closer to the stall gate and held out the bucket. The colt pinned his ears and shook his head, but his eyes were on the feed. I took one step forward, trying not to envision my arms as bloody stumps.

  The colt shoved his head into the bucket and ate the grain. I grabbed one side of his halter and Will grabbed the other. Orlando snatched the bucket away. Will’s fingers were so nimble and swift he had the chain over the gum and tightened down while I was still thinking about it.

  I’d been told the discomfort caused by the chain makes the equine brain release endorphins, natural painkillers that also act as a sedative. Since it hurts to fight the chain, Diablo didn’t. He quieted down.

  Will held Diablo’s head, while Orlando and I opened the stall gate. Will double-timed the horse down the ramp, leading him into his stall before Diablo had time to come up with a plan of his own. Orlando and I followed at a sensible distance.

  “Safe in the barn.” I slumped against the wood rail that enclosed the aisle beneath the overhanging roof.

  Will and Orlando stood nearby, staring at Diablo.

  “Thanks, guys,” I said.

  “No problema.” Orlando shrugged as if he dealt with man-eating horses every day.

  “You have to ride this Godzilla tomorrow morning?” Will seemed to have serious doubts.

  As I nodded, Diablo rammed his chest into the stall gate with a loud bang. When the gate didn’t give, he backed up and kicked the wall. Then he trumpeted in the direction of the fillies. Fortunately, they had better sense than to answer.

  What the hell was I going to do with this beast?

  CHAPTER 5

  By the time Will left, the Florida sun was high and strong in a cloudless sky, and my watch confirmed that the morning was all but shot.

  “Orlando,” I said, “can you be here at four o’clock to feed?”

  “Sí, no problema.” Then he frowned. “How I feed him?” He gestured at Diablo.

  We stared at each other. We’d put Diablo’s hay and water in before Will had led him off the trailer.

  “Good question,” I said.

  Normally, I’d dump the feed into a tub, then clip the tub to the screw eyes in the corner of the stall. But no one was going in there with Diablo until I’d gotten a handle on the beast. Too bad he didn’t come with a ring in his nose, like a bull.

  I went to our feed room and rummaged through a stack of supplies, pulling out a rubber pan from beneath a pile of rolled horse bandages. I placed the round container in the dirt outside Diablo’s stall, and caught Orlando’s eye.

  “Use this. Once you’ve poured feed in this pan, shove it in under the gate.” I gestured at the almost two foot high space under the wire gate.

  “Ah.” Orlando’s white teeth gleamed as he smiled. “I do very fast. Then he not bite.”

  I nodded. “Good idea.”

  Only I didn’t know anything about Maldonista’s three horses—what kind of feed they were used to, the training regime they’d been under, if they suffered from any old injuries or respiratory conditions. As soon as I got my hands on a phone, I’d call Jim. I had questions about this new owner.

  What kind of man wanted to own a horse like Diablo?

  * * * *

  To obtain a license, the backstretch guard had sent me beyond the grandstand to a series of gray double-wide trailers hooked together like toy trains. One of them housed a temporary office for Florida’s Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering, the state agency empowered to issue racing permits. Air-conditioning units jutted from the trailers’ windows. Their vents radiated waves of heat as their metal frames vibrated and dripped water.

  I ducked inside the wagering office where I spent an hour trying to stay awake while filling out paperwork and posing for mug shots. When I got curious looks, I used the car accident story. When the clerk finally handed me my licenses with the newly laminated photo IDs, I shuddered. I needed sleep desperately. I needed a shower even more.

  Back outside, I noticed the racing secretary’s office located in the trailer next door. This was where I’d enter Diablo for a race. Only first he’d have to pass a starting gate test and earn his Gulfstream gate card. I wasn’t looking forward to being inside the tight quarters of this metal contraption on Diablo. But he’d run before. He couldn’t be too violent in the gate or they would have ruled him off in South America.

  But what if they had ruled him off? This horse could have killed somebody down there. Crushed his jockey, for all I knew. Step at a time, Nikki, don’t think about it.

  I left the track and discovered almost anything I might need lay within walking distance on Hallandale Beach Boulevard. I passed a public library, a branch of my bank—and just about everyone else’s—fast food eateries, grocery stores, pharmacies, doctor’s offices, and several upscale-looking restaurants. Best of all, I made out a Verizon sign a couple of blocks further down.

  First, I had to eat. Before stepping into a Boston Market, I glanced down at my jeans. They looked stiff and dirty, but didn’t really show the blood.

  Inside, I had the guy behind the counter load a plate with baked chicken, creamed spinach, and cornbread. I’d worry about the calories later.

  An old man with liver spots on his bald head stared at me from the next table while I wolfed down everything to the last dollop of cream sauce. Did he have to stare at my chest? I should go over, let him inspect my blood-soaked sneakers with the scabby shoelaces.

  I sketched a little wave when I was finished, said, “Have a nice day,” and hurried outside.

  I reached the Verizon store, bought a new phone, and finally dragged myself back to the Sand Castle, grateful my room was on the first floor.

  I’d left in the dark that morning, and as I neared my room, I took a moment to study my surroundings. My room was on the backside of the motel. Outside my door, a concrete walk ran alongside the row of rooms, and a railing separated it from a strip of driveway.

  Beyond that, a chain-link fence protected the unwary who might drive or fall into what must be an inlet of the Intracoastal. The salt waterway flowed past the motel, then dead ended against a concrete seawall at the base of an empty lot. Large signs in the lot’s broken soil proclaimed a new luxury condominium would be “coming soon.”

  I fitted the key into the lock, entered my room, and shut the door. In my absence, the cleaning crew had blasted through and set the air conditioning to arctic. I shut the unit off and yanked the door open again. Warm, moist air drifted in, and a shaft of sunlight warmed the gray tile floor.

  I heard a door chain rattle, and stuck my head out. The do
or to my left clicked shut. A quick glance at the remaining rooms flanking mine assured me no one was about.

  Had I really left the motel just this morning? It felt more like a week.

  Closing the door, I stripped off my clothes, threw them into the tub and climbed in after them. I turned the shower on full blast and tried to ignore the blood flowing past my feet and spiraling down the drain.

  A lot of soap and two towels later, I hung my clothes on the curtain rod and stretched out on the bed, trying not to think about any of it. Later, I’d make sure Orlando had fed the horses.

  Hell, I still had to call Jim.

  Rolling to the edge of the bed, I pulled the Verizon bag from my tote. Checking my new phone’s call log I saw half a dozen calls from Carla, but nothing from Jim.

  I grabbed a knife from the kitchenette drawer and sliced through the plastic box enclosing the charger. I plugged the phone in and sank back on the bed.

  I’d just close my eyes for a moment, then call Jim.

  CHAPTER 6

  An electronic ring from the phone woke me, a tuneless reminder that Detective Bailey had pocketed my old one that played “Camptown Races.” With sudden clarity, I remembered everything.

  I rolled over and grabbed the cell. “Hello.”

  “Are you all right?” It was Carla, and she sounded anxious. “I’ve left you so many messages. You never called me back.”

  I had a cornucopia of excuses, but they’d all sound too weird. “It’s been kind of a…long day.”

  As Carla’s sigh came through the line, I sat up and scooted back against the headboard. Through the slats in the blinds, the portico outside appeared deep in shadow.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.” Some emotion ground a sharp edge into her words.

  I didn’t want any more bad news, but had a feeling it was coming. “Tell me.”

  Carla breathed in, and remained silent a moment, as if searching for the words.

  “Carla?”

  Her voice was hesitant and slow. “I never told you this, but…”

  “Whatever it is, Carla, just say it.”