by John Dunning
“Sandy’s here. He just came looking for you.”
I told them it had been nice and thanked them for the experience.
“Come over and see us in the evenings if you want to,” Dulcie said.
“I’ll teach you how to play the guitar,” Ruth said. “You can teach me how to sing.”
We laughed and I hugged them.
Sandy had arrived at one-thirty with two fully loaded rigs, and I pitched in with the unloading. They had brought three ginneys from Barbara’s farm, and we started the horses around the tow ring to give them some movement after their long, confining truck trip. A quick walk for each: Now there was much work to do and no time to talk about what to do later. Sandy asked where Bob was and I told him only that he had to go away and I would explain when we had more time. That made him unhappy but Sandy was born to be unhappy and I didn’t care. I wasn’t about to tell him where Bob was, now or later.
For two hours we were all engaged with busywork: unloading tack, setting up the room that would be used as Sandy’s office, staking out the rooms where we’d each sleep, bringing in the rollaway beds and the tables and chairs. There was no time yet even for meeting the crew. Sandy went looking for two more hands, a hot walker and another ginney, and he returned with the ginney, a sour-looking superior bastard who I guessed wouldn’t be with us long. We put up a canvas cover on the front of the shedrow, which would keep our horses cool during the hot part of the day and keep our business private all the time. The canvas was done up with Barbara’s colors, red and white, and a logo with her initials in big letters. By feeding time we had transformed my dead shedrow into a place bustling with life. I felt better already.
Barbara drove up at four in her year-old Cadillac. She parked at the end of the barn and walked along looking at her horses. We had fifteen head counting the filly Sandy had brought down from his own stable for Bob to rub. “I’ll take her in Bob’s place if you want,” I said. “You could hold his job open till we see what’s what.” I could see he was frustrated and annoyed but Sandy was born frustrated, and annoyance was his copilot. We would have some things to discuss after we got up and running: maybe later tonight. We did have a tense, caustic conversation in his office.
“So you’re rubbing horses now? Where’d you learn that?”
“I did a few for Bax before you got here, when I had nothing else to do.”
He didn’t like that either. You get so you can tell with a guy, and I hadn’t done much that was right in Sandy’s eyes since I’d joined him at Golden Gate. He had gone from cold to lukewarm but now he was cold again, and I still had no illusions that I was becoming his main man. “I like new people to learn things my way,” he said. I told him I could still learn it his way, but at least for now I knew a cooler from a muck sack; for the moment I could take up some slack and rub four in a pinch. Later I’d tell him not to forget why I was really here. So fire me, Sandy, I thought: I’ll have another job with Baxter or somebody else by tomorrow morning. I watched him walk away and I thought, There goes a puzzlement, a helluva strange and moody guy.
I did up some horses: three ankles that Sandy wanted to brush with some solution and leave wrapped overnight. He came along and made me do it again, his way. He came around again and checked my progress, nodded curtly, and moved on, but if there was any difference between what he showed me and what I had learned from Ruth, I couldn’t see it. I did it his way. Good judgment prevented me from breaking into the Sinatra song in full voice, there in my stall. Barbara walked up behind me and said, “Hey, Cliff, you’re doing great,” and in the same moment I saw a shadow pass in the shedrow behind her. I looked up in time to see her husband go by. Charlie. Our eyes met for less than two seconds: Then he turned away and left us there.
If I didn’t know better, he’d be a candidate.
Hell, I didn’t know better.
Strange fellow. Another puzzlement. He talks but he doesn’t talk. Never heard him speak. Why is that? What the hell’s wrong with him? Apparently he talks to others, not to me. Maybe it’s a case of hate at first sight.
I decided to get right up in his face and say hi the next time I saw him. But he disappeared and I lost him in the crush of work. I didn’t see Barbara leave at all; I just knew at some point that she had.
Now I focused on Charlie. He was the right age and he sure did seem like a cracked prism, a term that happened to fit him perfectly. I didn’t know why but I thought it did. I didn’t know where the hell he was going when he ran off like that, or what he did, why he was here, or what his business was. Maybe he was a high-class bookie selling insider stuff to some gambling syndicate. All I really knew was that he disappeared immediately whenever they arrived. Barbara always had to go hunt him down when she was ready to leave and she laughed about it good-naturedly, but I could see she was annoyed. On this particular day I heard her shout, “Charlie! Charlie, goddammit, where the hell is that man?” and one of her ginneys told her he had seen Charlie hurrying down the shedrow in the barn across the way. That had been two hours ago, time enough for Charlie to burrow into Fort Knox, steal the national gold supply, round up a herd of horses, and apply for Martha’s old job in the racetrack kitchen.
I called Idaho after we got set up and I talked to Erin. “Everything’s fine up here,” she said. “We’re all getting along famously in your absence. How’s your madman doing?”
I told her Bax was still a suspect but had been downgraded to lukewarm.
“So where does that leave you?”
“Scrounging for a new leading man. How about you, really? How’s your mental health?”
“I may go back to Denver after all.”
“Mucking stalls isn’t quite your cup of tea after all.”
“It’s been good, grand actually, a real break from my daily grind, and I love Sharon. But somebody’s got to make some money.”
I sensed growing discontent and I told her so. “What’s up?” I said into the silence.
“I think we have some things to discuss.”
“Issues.”
She said nothing for a moment, but I had sensed as much. She had never been quite the same since we’d had that other brush with madness over in Paradise. She had come so damned near death and that kind of experience will change a person’s mind-set. She still had buckets of nerve, but things were not working out quite as we had envisioned that first night when she came into my bookstore. “This is probably not something we want to do on the phone,” she said. “But we do need to talk.”
“Give me a hint, so my subconscious can be working on it till I see you again.”
“Oh, it’s the same old stuff. We made some big and glorious plans for our life together in books. I still think it would be a great life, except for one tiny thing. You don’t really want it. It took me a while to understand that.”
I didn’t know what to say, probably because I was afraid she was right.
“I’m changing you, Cliff, not the other way around. You’re becoming tentative, not the charge-into-hell, damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead rover boy you were when we met.”
Funny: I had had that thought myself.
“What you really want is to be a cop again,” she said.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. It’ll never happen.”
“Oh my dear, it has happened. You’re never going to be a bookman in that upper tier; you don’t have it in you. You want to be a cop; you’re still a cop at heart. Correct me if I’m wrong, break in at any time with challenges or interrogatories; beg to differ to your heart’s content. But then be honest with yourself.”
The longest silence in the universe followed this defining statement. “Damn, Erin, this sounds like you’re giving me the old heave-ho.”
“I’m not.” She sighed. “Really, I’m not. But I am asking you to take another look at it.”
“Okay, that didn’t take long. Now what?”
“Don’t be a wise guy.”
“Hey, wasn’t it y
ou who pushed me this way? Yes, I believe that was you. Something about me becoming the book cop.”
“I only want you to do what you want. If I know nothing else about you, I do know this—you will never be content just running a bookstore on East Colfax, and you don’t want anything higher than that from the book world. It’s really not you who’s changing, it’s me. I guess two crazy people in a row will have that effect.”
“Come on, Erin, they’re not all going to be crazy.”
“If there’s a madman anywhere you will leave no stone unturned in your effort to find him. And suddenly, for some strange and maybe unknowable reason, that world is losing its charm for me.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Nothing now. Just think about it, and don’t get yourself killed out there.”
The second-longest silence now stretched between us.
“I might change my thinking if you’d let me come back and help you,” she said.
But no, that wasn’t an option. No way.
32
Nightfall, and another duel of words with Sandy. He was there through the feeding hour: He supervised the cooking of the evening mash for the horses and stayed around to see how they ate up. I left him alone for most of this time but I was always there as well—always in sight, always an irritant, always waiting. At seven o’clock he said good night and walked away, but I followed him out to his car and caught him just as he opened the door.
“Hey, Sandy. Got a minute?”
“No, I don’t. It’s been a long day.”
“What can you tell me about Ms. Patterson’s husband?”
“Charlie? Nothing, why?”
“I’m just finding him a little strange is all.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything, Sandy. Not yet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Listen, I don’t want you bothering him. Either of them, is that clear? I don’t need to tell you, she is very important to me in the scheme of things.”
“Who is he, Sandy? How long have they been together?”
“You’re not listening to me, Janeway. That’s a bad habit you’ve got.”
“It tends to happen when I encounter resistance without reason.”
“I don’t need any reasons. This is my stable and I am ordering you here and now, you leave Charlie alone.”
“Is Patterson his last name?”
“It’s her name, for Christ’s sake. She’s like a lot of rich women, she goes by her own name.”
“What’s his?”
“I don’t know. What the hell are you looking for?”
“I told you that the first day I met you. It hasn’t changed since then.”
“You are going to cost me plenty if you keep on this way. I can’t believe you’re actually thinking of talking to Charlie about all this foolishness.”
“It’s not foolishness and I am going to talk to him.”
“The hell you are. You can get your stuff together and get out of here right now.”
“I can do that. But I’m still going to talk to him.”
“I wish to Christ I’d never met you,” he said. “You’ve been nothing but trouble.”
“I’m sorry, Sandy, I truly am. But these things go where they go.”
“You’re not sorry about anything; you don’t give a damn what happens to me. You don’t care about anything and you’re willing to embarrass everybody with this crazy business.”
“I’d rather not do that, but if I have to…”
I think that was the moment when he finally realized he had never had the upper hand with me. He couldn’t order me to behave; he couldn’t tell me to get lost or do anything. I saw his jaw tremble and I understood then how desperately he wanted Barbara’s horses and what he’d suffer to keep them. He would never be the boss: She was. He was only her latest in a long line of trainers and he’d be gone too; the first time he said or did something she found offensive he’d be out of here. And Barbara blew with the wind, there was no telling what might offend her. I was her pet of the month: Fire me and explain that to Barbara. I didn’t know this for a fact but tonight I’d put money on it.
“Don’t do this,” he said, and my ante just went up.
He said, “What the hell have I ever done to you?” and it went up again.
I made a gentle hunkering-down gesture. If we were old pals that’s what we’d do, hunker down in the shedrow, go out for a beer, talk it over. But Sandy had never been a palsy guy. I said, “I don’t want to hurt you, Sandy, and I’ll do my damnedest not to, but right now I need some answers and you’re not helping me much.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Tell me about Charlie.”
“I don’t know anything about Charlie. He’s her husband, that’s all. I don’t ask personal stuff like that, and I have no idea what you’re getting at.”
“How long have they been together?”
“How the hell do I know that?” The old anger flashed but he covered it quickly. “Forever,” he said.
I waited for some kind of elaboration but it was a long time coming.
“What are you thinking, Charlie’s a gigolo? Charlie’s somebody who just popped up and latched onto the rich woman, is that what you think? And what difference would that make anyway? It’s none of my business and it sure isn’t any of yours.”
“What does forever mean?”
“It means a helluva long time. I first met Barbara fifteen years ago. He was with her then, so it must’ve been true love.”
“Was it fifteen years ago or longer?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t keep a stopwatch on him. What are you asking me?”
“If Charlie might have known Candice when he married Barbara.”
“Stop doing this, Janeway. You are messing me up royally here.”
“Was Charlie always weird?”
“What’s weird? Hell, I never thought of him as weird.”
“Come on, Sandy, the guy’s a spook. If that man’s not weird, we don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“He never was like that, take my word for it.”
“Until when?”
“Until you came along.”
33
I felt my heartbeat in the middle of the night and finally I had to admit it. Erin was right. This was what I had missed like crazy and would never get in kind from the book trade. The life-and-death rush. The slow, steady building of a case. The questioning, the tightening noose, the hot nights in the box downtown. Dueling with the professional badass, the frightened stonewaller, the killer with the sweet face. You get a hunch and you ask your questions until the hunch gets stronger, hardens, becomes a fact, and the perp cracks. I thought of Billy back at Sharon’s farm—eager Billy, full of wide-eyed energy, pumped-up and wanting to be a cop. But I had not told him the whole truth, had I? I missed it so much more than I’d told him, far more than he would ever know.
So Barbara Patterson’s man Charlie was now officially weird in my mental casebook. Another fact: I had shaken him up without as much as a hello or a watch-where-you’re-going-stupid passing between us. I didn’t yet have Charlie’s book connection but I knew in my heart it was there. As sure as God made apples, Charlie whatever-his-name-was was a bookman, not a horseman. I could see him in my mind, perusing a shelf of books, browsing in a bookstore, maybe my bookstore, reaching for the rarity, devouring Candice’s books with his eyes, with his hands. I hadn’t yet spoken to the man but I tasted blood. I couldn’t hear him but I could see him, always in the book world.
The day dawned windy and gray. I was out with the crew, mucking my stalls, doing my chores, waiting for Sandy to come and do whatever he had to do. Waiting for Barbara and Charlie. This morning they were all later than usual. The sky was getting white over the mountains when we started walking the walkers, using Sandy’s work chart for guidance, and Sandy arrived ten minutes later. He shuffled into the shedrow
and passed just a few feet away, apparently without seeing me. He called for a red gelding named Fireball, one of mine as it turned out, and I led the horse into the shedrow and held him while Sandy put on the saddle and bridle. Still nothing. He looked right past me as he gave his boy a leg up; then they headed up toward the track. Nothing was said when they came back, either. The hot walker held the horse while I washed and scraped him and draped him with a cooler, and the business of the morning went on.
Barbara appeared suddenly, so late I had almost given her up for the day. No sign of Charlie yet, and in fact he didn’t come at all. The morning faded away, Barbara sat in her director’s chair while Sandy finished up on the track. I went about my work, watching them as closely as I could while trying to seem disinterested. They talked occasionally; Sandy said something and Barbara laughed politely and that was all. They went up to the kitchen at eleven and left together in the early afternoon.
Finally I began meeting the crew. I shook hands with the ginneys and the hot walker and then with the exercise boy, who was also hanging around watching. “Nice people,” I said just for something to say, but it opened him up and led me into something else.
“How long you been working for Barbara?”
“Three years come summer.”
“I sure like her,” I said easily. “She seems easy to work for.”
“As long as you do your work and take care of her horses, Barbara’ll love you to death.”
“Can’t ask for more than that. What about Charlie?”
“What about him?”
“I guess what I’m really asking is, how much authority does he have around here?”
“He make you nervous, does he?”
“A little. He never seems to have anything to say, so I just wondered.”
“Well, here’s a word to the wise between us girls. He’s got plenty to say, and he’s not shy about saying it. She’s the boss but he’s got her ear full time, so don’t get on his bad side.”
