Tender Is the Bite

by Spencer Quinn

  “Capitol Hill is the name of the horse?” Bernie said.

  “I don’t name ’em,” Billy Baez said. “I just train ’em. And between you and me, the goddamn horse could use a bite on the ass, maybe motivate him some.”

  This interview, if that’s what it was, had taken an interesting turn. Although Billy Baez had those tiny eyes, plus a scratchy voice and an overall stink, coming from many places but especially his feet, I was starting to like him.

  Bernie gazed at Capitol Hill. “I’m no judge, but he looked pretty fast coming around that turn.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Billy Baez. “And pretty fast is just fine and dandy for a small-stakes career. But the owner didn’t pay small-stakes money for him. Small-stakes money won’t get you mounts with his bloodlines. Problem is, bloodlines don’t always tell you what’s here.” He tapped his head. “Or here.” He tapped his chest.

  “So somehow you’ve got to get him to love speed more than anything?” Bernie said.

  Billy Baez gave Bernie a second look. “You an owner? Lookin’ for a trainer, by any chance?”

  Bernie shook his head. “We’re actually looking for Johnnie Lee Goetz.”

  Billy Baez, who’d been warming up to us—I feel these things, sort of in the air, hard to explain—now went cold real quick. “You some kind of muscle?”

  An odd question. No one had ever asked us that before. We had muscles, me and Bernie, nothing weak about either of us, but if Billy Baez thought that was all we were bringing to the table, he had lots to learn.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” Bernie said, just showing how alike we were in some ways. He handed Billy Baez our card.

  Billy Baez peered at the card, then held it at arm’s length and peered again, a puzzling human move you sometimes see. “Who you workin’ for?” he said.

  “We keep the name of the client confidential,” said Bernie.

  “Hell with that,” said Billy Baez, and he ripped our card in two and threw away the pieces. Not a first in my experience, but I never liked seeing it. “You’re workin’ for that meathead prick.”

  “Absolutely no way,” said Bernie.

  “Huh?”

  “Our client’s a woman.”

  Billy Baez, his face already screwed up around the cigar, screwed up some more. “It’s not Mickey Rottoni?”

  “Nope. What have you got against Mickey Rottoni?”

  “You know him?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  Billy Baez nodded. “He hit her. Beat her up but good. That crosses the line, where I come from.” He blew out a huge cloud of cigar smoke, hot smoke I felt on my nose.

  “You’re talking about Johnnie Lee?” Bernie said.

  “Hell yeah. A great gal. Not here or there, issue-wise, I guess. But a great gal and the numero uno exercise rider ever worked this ranch.”

  “I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Me, too,” said Billy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t show up for work two days ago—which ain’t how she rolls. Johnnie Lee’s straight up reliable. She didn’t answer my text or calls. I even drove out to her place, two hours each way, for crissake. And guess what?”

  “She wasn’t there?”

  Billy took the cigar from his mouth and stabbed it in Bernie’s direction. “Way worse. Johnnie Lee’s packed up and gone, no message, no forwarding address, nada.”

  “Any idea where she went?”

  “Nope.” He shot Bernie a sideways look. “Tell you what worries me—the idea maybe that bastard did something to her.”

  “The timeline pretty much rules that out,” Bernie said.

  “What’s that sposta mean?”

  “Just that I think she took off before he could get to her,” Bernie said.

  “How do you know that?”

  I was with Billy on this one. The two of us watched Bernie, waiting for the answer.

  “From our preliminary investigation,” he said.

  Billy nodded like that made sense. I didn’t get it. Preliminary investigation? What was that? Also where and when?

  “But right now,” Bernie went on, “I’d like to get a handle on their relationship.”

  “Like, how do you mean?”

  “When did they meet? Did they live together? What was the attraction? How did it go wrong?”

  “You talkin’ about psychology? Is that a private detective thing?”

  “Crime comes out of human relationships,” Bernie said. Was I hearing this again, and so soon? It had to be important. I told my mind to hold on to it and not let go, but my mind seemed to be more interested in Capitol Hill, now standing not far away while the jockey hoisted off the saddle. “Maybe not always, but in this case for sure.”

  “I don’t know how they met, exactly. Maybe two years ago. He treated her real nice at first—flowers, jewelry, weekends at Cabo, all that crap. The Rottonis have money, but you wouldn’t know it. Mickey’s the black sheep and the only one who acts rich, even though he’s the one that ain’t. They were even talking marriage, but then—this was a couple months back—she showed up here with a black eye and goddamn stitches on her face.”

  “What happened?”

  “He beat the crap out of her is what happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a no-good son of a bitch, and if there’s a god, he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

  Sometimes with Bernie you get a pause where maybe he’s thinking of saying one thing but changes his mind and goes with another. A pause like that happened now, and then he said, “I meant what provoked him.”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” said Billy. “Course I asked, but she wouldn’t say. All’s I told her was that a man does that once, he’ll do it again, only worse. Like a dam’s been broke.”

  “Good advice,” Bernie said.

  “And she took it,” Billy said. “Locked him out, got a restraining order. But he followed her around a time or two, texted her … what are those little things?”

  “Emojis?”

  “Yeah. Threatening emojis. Like an actual threat would violate the restraining order, but an emoji? You see what we’re dealin’ with?”

  Bernie nodded. “Did anything unusual happen in that time period?”

  “Like what?”

  “Another man showing interest in Johnnie Lee, for example,” Bernie said.

  “Well, Johnnie Lee’s the type to get second looks. Not a show horse, like her friend, but no plow horse neither. More on the exotic side, you might say.”

  “Her friend?” Bernie said.

  “Childhood friend, from where they grew up, which was over in Grantville, New Mexico.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “A real beauty, like I said. Natural-like. No makeup, no fancy hairdo, came up hardscrabble, same as Johnnie Lee.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Billy shook his head. “Can’t help you there. Only met her the once, not long after she came to the Valley.” His eyes got a faraway look. “Although I remember thinking about her name.”

  “Yeah?” said Bernie.

  “Not suiting her. A beautiful girl like that, you’d think her name would be Gisele or Christie or something of that nature. But instead…” Billy shrugged.

  “Instead, it was Mavis?” Bernie said.

  Billy’s eyes opened as wide as they could, getting him a little more in line with other humans. “How’dja know that?”

  “Just a guess. What about her last name?”

  “Not sure I ever heard it,” Billy said. “Only meeting her the once and all.”

  “Where was this?” Bernie said.

  A big white convertible drove slowly around the barn, top down and a blond woman wearing big sunglasses at the wheel. Billy glanced over, dropped his cigar on the ground, and mashed it under his foot.

  “At Griffin Wray’s holiday party, out at his lake house. He always includes the whole crew, so Mavis tagged along with Johnnie Lee.”


  “You’re talking about Senator Wray?”

  “Uh-huh. Griffin Wray.”

  “Griffin,” said Bernie, kind of to himself. “I must have known that, but…”

  Billy gave him an odd look. “The senator owns Capitol Hill. Well, Caroline’s the actual owner.” He turned to the white convertible and waved. “That’s her now.”

  The blond woman didn’t wave back. She got out of the car and headed toward the rail. The jockey led Capitol Hill toward her.

  “She actually knows a thing or two about horses, unlike her husband,” Billy said. “I hope he’s more clued in on senator type things.”

  Fourteen

  The blond woman ducked under the rail in a smooth, easy movement and walked up to Capitol Hill. The jockey was wiping down Capitol Hill’s glossy back with a towel, but he stepped aside as the woman came forward. A small gold purse hung from her shoulder. She unbuckled it and took out a carrot. Capitol Hill snapped it right up and started chomping with his huge yellow teeth. I’m not a fan of carrots, so you might think I wouldn’t care at all about this particular carrot. But I did. I wanted Capitol Hill’s carrot so badly, and if I couldn’t have it, then I wanted the carrot or possibly carrots that remained in the woman’s purse. At this distance, my nose couldn’t tell if there was more than one. I began shifting my position.

  The woman watched Capitol Hill chew on the carrot. Without looking at the jockey, she said, “How’s he doing, Cesar?”

  “Good, señora,” said the jockey.

  “How was his workout?”

  “Real good,” Cesar said. He glanced over at Billy. “Real good workout, huh, boss?”

  “One of his best,” said Billy.

  The woman tidied up Capitol Hill’s brown mane, twisted it into a curl at the top. Her head turned slightly in our direction. Because of her sunglasses, I couldn’t tell who she was looking at, but I got the feeling it was me.

  She came over to us, rested one hand on the rail. The late-in-the-day sunshine turned the diamond on her finger—maybe the biggest I’d ever seen—into a fiery little sun of its own. Had I seen another diamond ring recently? Not this size, but … but just as the memory was about to arrive, Capitol Hill neighed the most high-pitched neigh I’d ever heard, farting at the same time, also high-pitched, weirdly so. There’s only so much you can take, although no one else seemed to notice.

  “One of his best, Billy?” the woman said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s reassuring,” she said. “Sometimes I worry. But why worry for no reason, Billy, if there’s no reason?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She turned to me. “Here’s a specimen with championship bloodlines, unless I’m mistaken,” she said. She looked up at Bernie, standing behind me. “Is he yours?”

  “We’re more like partners,” Bernie said.

  She gazed at Bernie, or seemed to—the sunglasses made it impossible to tell. “Have we met before, Mr.…?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bernie said. “I’m Bernie Little. This is Chet.”

  “Bernie, Mrs. Wray,” Billy said. “Mrs. Wray, Bernie.”

  “Call me Caroline,” she said. “Are you involved in the horse world, Bernie? What my husband calls the equine money pit?”

  “The senator’s got a great sense of humor,” Billy said.

  “Most certainly, and in so many ways,” Caroline said. “But I was addressing Bernie.”

  Billy looked down at his feet. He was wearing flip-flops, his toes so thick with dust they looked like they were made of it, through and through.

  “I appreciate that world from a distance,” Bernie said.

  Caroline laughed and pushed her sunglasses up on her head, revealing her eyes. They were big and dark and … and other things I didn’t understand. I ended up liking her and being a bit afraid of her at the same time. Well, not afraid. I’m afraid of nobody. You’d be the same if you’d gone one-on-one with a gator and come out of it, if not the winner, then at least in one piece.

  “Can you ride, Bernie?” she said.

  “Not well,” said Bernie, which wasn’t a lie, since Bernie’s not a liar. It just meant he’d forgotten an episode with a horse named Mingo on a case not very long ago where he’d revealed himself to be maybe the greatest rider in the world. But who remembers everything? “I had a horse when I was a kid,” he said.

  Is there a human expression about being knocked down by a feather? I’d seen a perp knocked over by a whole bird once—the case involving a Thanksgiving turkey and an angry girlfriend—but no cases where it was just the feather part. But not the point, which was about how stunned I was at that moment. Bernie had a horse when he was a kid? I was just finding that out now? One thing for sure: I did not like that horse. I felt a sudden need to be active. Close by stood Capitol Hill, swishing away flies with his tail, a vacant look on his very long face.

  “What was its name?” Caroline said.

  “Dottie,” Bernie said.

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “The name?” Bernie said. “Mine.”

  “Any particular reason for it?”

  Sometimes—not often—Bernie has this little soft laugh that comes mostly through his nose. I love that one! Why? No idea. But he did it now and said, “I had a pal named Dottie who lived next door. They moved away.”

  “And then you got the horse?”

  He nodded again.

  “How old were you?”

  Bernie shrugged. “Eight or nine.”

  Caroline tilted her head as though seeing Bernie from a different angle. Bernie’s mom, a real piece of work—she calls him Bernard!—does that same head-tilt thing. I suddenly got the idea she and Caroline might be the same age, although Caroline looked quite a bit younger.

  “What is it you do, Bernie?” she said.

  “Private investigations.”

  “How interesting.” Caroline lowered her sunglasses back down and turned to Capitol Hill.

  * * *

  Two-lane blacktop, no other cars in sight, pedal to the metal. A sign zipped by. “Entering New Mexico,” Bernie said. Something glinted in the distance, and Bernie eased off the gas. Not long after that, a car took shape around that glint, a desert thing I’d seen before, in this case a cruiser parked by the side of the road and partly hidden by some silvery bushes. A kind of bush wasps take a liking to, in my experience. And as we passed by, I caught a glimpse of the cop behind the wheel, batting his hand frantically in the air. A nice sight. We’ve picked up a number of speeding tickets in New Mexico, me and Bernie.

  Meanwhile, Bernie’s mind was elsewhere. I can feel when that happens. It makes me a bit lonely, sometimes lonely enough to lean up against him. He glanced at me and smiled.

  “Need some help with this one, big guy. New Mexico is to Arizona as…?”

  Sometimes Bernie doesn’t get enough sleep. When that happens, he tends to worry for no reason, think about things that don’t need thinking about. The mind can only do so much even when it’s not tired. A tired mind? Look out! I gazed into Bernie’s eyes and sent a message. Pull over. Take a nap. I’ll watch over you.

  “You’re having deep thoughts,” he said. We sped up, me and Bernie, the only moving things on an endless high plain under an endless blue sky. The nap that got taken was mine.

  * * *

  We came down from green hills on a long curving road and entered the kind of town you often saw in our part of the world, one with better days in the past. They all had a nice little core of solid old brick and stone buildings with a few restaurants, inns, and shops, but the farther you got from the core, the more ramshackle everything became. It was all about mining, Bernie said. We turned a few corners and followed an empty street to a high school at the end. You can tell a high school from the football field on one side and the yellow buses on the other. I love high school when the kids are around. But in summer, like now, when they’re not, high schools give me an uneasy feeling.

  Bernie parked at
the entrance and got out.

  “Chet?”

  I gazed up at him.

  “Tired today? How about waiting in the car? I won’t be long.”

  The next thing I knew, we were walking up to the front doors of the high school side by side, together. Bernie tried the door—locked—but we could see a man in the lobby mopping the floor. He leaned his mop against the wall and stepped outside.

  “He’p you?” he said.

  He wore a beige uniform and a tag around his neck. Bernie glanced at the tag and said, “Hi, Hector. I’m Bernie, and this is Chet. We’re looking for a former student named Johnnie Lee Goetz.”

  “Why?”

  Some humans have quicker minds than others. You can’t always tell by how they look, and you can never tell by what jobs they work. This mop-pushing guy was the quick-minded type.

  “She has information about a horse we’re interested in,” Bernie said.

  “To bet on or to buy?”

  Bernie smiled. I got the feeling he was liking Hector. “That depends on what she tells us.”

  Hector smiled back. Most of his teeth were gone, but the ones he had were gold. “The other fellow said he had some money for her. I like your story better.”

  “Other fellow?” Bernie said.

  “A few days back. Also looking for Johnnie Lee Goetz, who I never heard of, by the way. Former student, evidently, but I’m new here. Which is what I told him, and that was that.”

  “Can you describe this other fellow?” Bernie said.

  “Why?” This was Hector’s second why in a very short time. Normally, Bernie takes care of the whys in interview situations. Was it my job to make sure the mop-pushing guy understood that fact? If so, how?

  “Because we’re looking out for Johnnie Lee’s welfare,” Bernie said.

  “Are the cops after her?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Was the other fellow a cop?”

  “Not in uniform, or nothin’, but you get a vibe sometimes. I’m getting it from you a little bit. And from this pooch of yours a lot.”

  “We’re not cops.”

  Hector pointed at me with his chin. “I’d like to hear it from him.”