by Brad Smith
Dean came out of the bedroom, wearing jeans and a white dress shirt, carrying his suit. Paulie was still on the couch, sporting the beer, the magazine, and a hard-on. Dean picked up the phone and checked his messages.
“How much does a TV like this cost, Dean?” Paulie asked.
Dean looked over, receiver to his ear. “That’s eight hundred bucks. Too rich for your blood, Paulie.”
He punched the phone buttons and then hung up. “Shit,” he said. “We gotta go out to the farm.”
“What for?”
“Jackson left a message. But we’re going to the dry cleaner’s, first off. And while we’re at the farm, maybe I’ll ask some questions.”
Paulie got to his feet, adjusting his pants to accommodate his condition. “What kind of questions?”
“Questions I shoulda asked a long time ago.”
It was Sunday night. It took them the better part of an hour to find a dry cleaner that was open.
“Why don’t you just wait ’til morning?” Paulie asked at one point.
“It can’t wait,” Dean said. “You know what kind of material this is?”
“What kind?”
“It’s special Italian material,” Dean decided. “It’s gotta be cleaned right away.”
They finally found a place open in a strip mall north of the city. Dean conducted a short interview with the owner, who was Korean, to ensure that the man possessed the expertise required to clean an Armani. Then they drove out to the farm.
Jackson was leaving the barn when they arrived. Dean parked in front of the house, and they got out. Sonny’s BMW was parked on the lawn. Jackson walked over to the car.
“Sonny wants you to run his car over to the golf course,” he said.
“Oh, wonderful,” Dean said. “We were afraid you wanted us for something trivial. We want to talk to the old man, Jackson.”
Jackson was walking away, finished with them. “Well, he should be back about April. If it won’t wait ’til then, then I guess Sonny’s your man.”
He got into the pickup and drove off.
They drove Sonny’s car out to Hidden Valley Golf and Country Club, Dean behind the wheel of the BMW and Paulie following in the Lincoln. They parked by the pro shop and got out. The clubhouse was huge and ostentatious, fashioned after an antebellum style, which seemed to appeal to the country club set.
“What’s Sonny do out here all the time?” Paulie asked, looking at the pillars that supported the porch roof. “He doesn’t play golf anymore.”
“He hangs out with a bunch of guys just like him,” Dean said. “They sit around smoking cigars and talking about sports and cars and all the women they’ve fucked. The kind of guys who’d rather talk about fucking than do it.”
“It’s a big place. How we gonna find Sonny?”
“Won’t be hard.”
Sonny was playing poker in the private dining room with a cluster of men, all smoking cigars and talking about sports and cars and all the women they’d fucked.
They were playing wild cards when Dean and Paulie walked in, and Sonny was down a couple hundred and about to drop another hundred by way of bumping on a baby straight in a game where four of a kind was on the weak side. A big man with a shaved head and gold hoops in each ear won the hand with a straight flush. Dean knew the man to be a real estate developer named Rockwood. He called himself the Rock because he was an amateur bodybuilder who considered himself as hard as a rock. Dean had been in his presence several times and was of the opinion that he was also as smart as a rock.
When he lost the hand Sonny grabbed the cards and threw them into the air in a gesture of easy come, easy go. The cards fluttered about the room, and then Sonny noticed the two.
“You bring the car?”
“No, we’re here to practice our putting,” Dean told him.
“You better not have fucked with the stereo, like last time,” Sonny said. Then: “Paulie, pick those cards up, will ya?”
Paulie did as he was told, gathered the cards, put them back on the table. The players watched him in amusement. Dean stared at Sonny, and he returned the look, smiling around the Cohiba in his mouth.
There was a large Rottweiler sitting to the side of the Rock. The dog had a bandanna around its neck, and it was drooling on the Persian carpet. Paulie sat down at the next table and watched the dog. After a moment, the dog began to watch Paulie.
“You guys want to play a couple hands?” Sonny asked.
“We’re leaving,” Dean said. He’d decided to wait to talk to Earl about the profit sharing.
“I’ll play.” That was Paulie, grinning as he stood.
Sonny gave the others a look, nodding behind his cigar.
“You don’t want to play, Paulie,” Dean said sharply.
But Paulie was draping his jacket over a chair, taking his wallet from his pocket. “I like cards,” he said.
Sonny and the boys were getting a big kick out of the whole scene, eyeballing one another, smiling into their drinks. Dean looked on angrily.
Sonny was shuffling the deck. “Kings and little ones, Paulie,” he said. “You know the game?”
“I think so.” Someone had given Paulie a glass of rye on the rocks.
“Paulie, you don’t drink whiskey,” Dean said.
“Would you relax?” Sonny said, and he dealt the cards.
Paulie won the first hand on five aces, the second with five queens, and the third with a royal flush. He took in roughly nine hundred dollars and then, drinking off his rye, announced to the table that he was out of the game. He unzipped his wallet, tucked his winnings carefully inside, and then pushed away from the table.
“What the fuck you mean you’re out?” asked the Rock.
“I got enough to buy a new thirty-two-inch TV,” Paulie said. “That’s all I wanted.”
“Sonny,” the Rock said sharply. “What the fuck is this, man—a hit-and-run?”
Dean was laughing now. “Let’s get outa here, Paulie.”
“I have to go to the washroom first,” Paulie said.
The Rock sat at the table and glowered as Paulie left the room. After a moment he got up and approached Dean. It appeared that the Rock bought his golf shirts a size too small; his biceps, already huge from lifting, looked even bigger under the thin double knit.
“That little fucker’s not leaving,” he told Dean.
“He can do what he wants,” Dean said.
“He’s got our money,” the Rock said. “He stays in the game. End of conversation.”
Dean looked past the Rock’s massive shoulders and saw Paulie come back into the room and gather his jacket from the chair. Dean showed the Rock a grin and said: “Come on, you should be happy that all he wanted was a TV. What if he had his eye on a new Cadillac?”
“Yeah?” the Rock asked. “And what if I have my Rotty tear his fucking throat out?”
Dean looked past the Rock again, to where Paulie had the animal in question on the floor, the dog on its back, all four paws in the air, tongue lolling to one side as Paulie vigorously rubbed its belly.
“Sure, Rock,” Dean said. “That oughta work.”
8
When Ray walked outside Saturday morning Pete Culpepper was sitting on the porch, working on a plug of Redman and watching the sky like a man watching the dealer in a crooked card game. The morning was cool and clear, but there were clouds stacking up in the west and the wind was on the rise. Pete was watching the accumulation and occasionally spurting a stream of tobacco onto the tangled rose bushes along the porch, bushes planted years back by one of Pete’s girlfriends, although Ray couldn’t remember which one. It was probably no better than even money that Pete could.
“You ’bout ready?” Pete asked when Ray came out of the house.
“I’d like a little breakfast. Did you eat?”
“I had a cowboy’s breakfast,” Pete said.
A cowboy’s breakfast, Ray knew, was a piss and a look around, and that alone told Ray that the ol
d man was nervous. He wasn’t one to miss a meal.
“Well, I gotta eat,” Ray said. “Whoever it was said breakfast is the most important meal of the day probably wasn’t talking about chewing tobacco.”
They were on the road by nine, Pete behind the wheel of the pickup. They hit the QEW just east of Hamilton, skirting the city traffic. The rain began around St. Catharines, and when it did it came in a torrent. By the time they reached Fort Erie the ditches were running, and Pete was describing in detail what he would like to do with the weatherman’s genitals.
The gelding Fast Market was in barn eleven. Pete had trailered him down on Monday and had been making the trip every day since, working him on the main track.
“What shoes you got on him?” Ray asked as they parked the truck.
“Put bars on him, just yesterday. I got calks if I need ’em,” Pete said.
“Does he like the slop?”
“I don’t know that it’s got anything to do with liking it. All a horse knows is to run. How he runs in the muck depends on a lot of things, but mostly the trip.”
They found the gelding calm and content in the barn. Pete gave him a handful of oats and then went to track down his rider. Ray got a brush from a shelf and began to curry the gelding’s coat. The horse was as quiet as Pete’s old hound as he worked; at one point Ray was certain the animal was asleep.
As Ray was finishing up, Pete came back, walking through the mud with a lanky brunette with dark eyes, wearing jeans and cowboy boots, a faded Nirvana T-shirt.
“This is Chrissie Nugent,” Pete said. “Ray Dokes.”
Chrissie Nugent wore dark eyeshadow and lipstick, and she looked to Ray like a wasted fashion model from the 1960s. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and she had a fuzzy look about her with which Ray was familiar. She was maybe twenty-five. She shook Ray’s hand, then turned and hacked and spit in the mud.
“Chrissie was up when he won in July,” Pete was saying. “Girl’s been having a hell of a year, got near fifty wins. But she’s fixin’ to lose her bug.”
Chrissie was in the stall with the horse now, her hands on his withers, talking softly to him, words Ray couldn’t make out. Ray had never seen a jockey—male or female—wearing makeup before. But then he’d been away awhile.
When Chrissie came out she lit a cigarette and looked at Pete. “Anything I need to know? What about the hoof?”
“Ride the horse like he’s sound,” Pete told her. “I’d like to keep him middle of the pack ’til the stretch, but if this rain keeps up you might have to move him sooner. I wouldn’t go wide with him. He gets a little lonely out there.”
Chrissie nodded, looked at Ray a moment, then back to Pete. “That it?”
“That’s it,” Pete said. “The silks are in the pickup.”
“Well, I don’t have a mount ’til the fourth,” Chrissie said. “I’m gonna go catch some sleep in my truck. I got a hangover that would kill a fucking Clydesdale.”
They watched as she retrieved the silks from the truck and then walked away in the rain.
“Where’d you find her?” Ray asked.
“Turned around one day, and there she was,” Pete said. “Gal’s a comer; she’s tougher than a boot sandwich, and she’s a natural jock. Horses just plain relax around her. Ain’t nothing you can teach. She’s gonna be a great one if she doesn’t kill herself. I think she’s about half crazy.”
“Well,” Ray said, watching her walk in the tight jeans. “Half ain’t as bad as whole.”
They stood in the doorway of the barn and watched the rain come down. The lanes between the barns had turned to muck; the water ran off the tin roofs and pooled up on the ground below, sending rivulets along the lanes, racing for the lower ground.
Pete retrieved a bale of straw from the trailer and broke it up, tossed half in under the horse and spread the rest outside to keep the mud down outside the barn. Then he stepped back inside and had another long look at the sky.
“I guess I better change those shoes,” he said at last. “I hate to bother that hoof two days running, but I got no choice with this weather.”
Ray got the nail pullers from the trailer and removed the shoes from the gelding. The hoof that had been cracked looked sound enough, and he took extra care in pulling the nails from it. The gelding stood calmly as he worked, occasionally looking back at Ray as if checking to see that the job was being done right.
Pete Culpepper set to work shoeing the horse. Ray was in the way, so he decided to head over to the grandstand to have a look around. He walked between the rows of barns, trying to keep to the thin strip of grass alongside the lane, avoiding the mud. Luis Salvo loped by him, sitting a western saddle on a stout chestnut mare, the mare’s hooves throwing mud in the air.
“Hey Raymond,” he called. “You are free!”
“So they tell me. You riding today, Luis?”
“No more. I’m a fat mon, can’t you see? Dese days I just exercise.” He rode on, standing in the stirrups, easing the mare through the mire toward the track.
Ray walked around the west end of the grandstand and went inside. He was shocked when he walked in. The place was filled, wall to wall, with slot machines. It was carpeted, chandeliered, a cut-rate Vegas North. There were women in evening dresses, and it wasn’t yet noon. Whether they were early for Saturday night or left over from Friday was anybody’s guess. On closer inspection Ray decided they were leftovers. The place was bustling, and the bustling had nothing to do with thoroughbred racing. Ray stood on the scarlet carpet and looked in vain for a tote machine. Finally he walked to a kiosk, where a platinum blonde in cat’s-eye glasses was serving juice and soft drinks.
“Where are the totes?” he asked.
“Clubhouse side,” she told him. “You can’t bet here.”
“I can’t bet here? What the hell happened to this place?”
She looked at him as if he’d just stumbled down from the hills. “What happened was, they either had to put in the slots or close the doors. I don’t know where you’ve been, but the province has gone casino crazy. The government has finally found a surefire way to make money. They legalized gambling.”
Ray looked around. “Look at this place.”
“We couldn’t fight ’em, so we had to join ’em,” the blonde said. She gestured with both hands toward the people at the slot machines, slipping in coin after coin, going faster with each losing pull. “You know what it is, don’t you?”
“What is it?”
“A tax on the stupid.”
Ray left and walked over to the clubhouse. The wickets were just opening, and he walked up and placed the bets. Fast Market was listed at ten to one. Pete had given him twenty across the board, and he bet that first.
“Anything else?” the man behind the wicket asked.
Ray hesitated, thinking about Chrissie Nugent, her manner with the horse, her tough-guy pose under her hangover. He imagined her sleeping in her truck just now; no jingle-jangle nerves there, just the cockiness of her years and herself.
He bet a hundred to win on the gelding.
* * *
Back at the barn Pete had finished with the shoeing, and both man and horse were dozing off in the stall. When Ray got back he let them be, got into the truck, and turned on the radio. He lit a cigarette and slipped the match out the vent window.
He punched through the AM buttons, found a Buffalo talk show on which an enthusiastic hostess was endorsing capital punishment for homosexuality and other assorted crimes against humanity. She was of the belief that every word in the Bible was true, and when a caller asked what Noah did with the huge accumulation of manure on the Ark she called him a communist and hung up on him. The woman’s voice possessed a hearty midwestern twang, and except for the fact that she was a raving lunatic she could have passed very easily for someone’s kindly aunt. Ray turned the radio off.
The gelding was to run in the sixth race. After the fourth, Pete hooked a lead onto the horse’s halter, and they followed a
s a walker led him over to the saddling barn. By the time they got there, the horses for the fifth race were already on the track. The rain had let up, but the track was sloppy and not likely to improve in the next twenty minutes.
“Better the slop than the mud,” Pete said. “Least the slop don’t stick.”
They met Chrissie, wearing the Culpepper silks, as she was walking to the paddock. She had just raced, and there were traces of mud on her face and in her hair.
“How’d you do?” Pete asked Chrissie.
“Second last,” she said, stopping. “Little filly was lugging in so bad it took all my strength just to keep her straight. Trainer said I didn’t ride her right. Fuck him—if he can’t train the horse, I can’t ride it.”
“I don’t know that my horse wants to go in the slop,” Pete said.
“Oh no, I like this old boy,” Chrissie said, and she rubbed the gelding’s nose. “He’s sexy. He’ll be in the bridle for me.”
They heard the bugle for the fifth and then waited for the race to finish. Chrissie put her cap on and turned to walk into the paddock. She saw Ray watching her.
“I haven’t seen you before,” she said.
“I’ve been away.”
“I kinda figured that, the way you been looking at me,” she said.
The walker led the horse out for the paddock parade, and Pete followed. He gave Chrissie a leg up, and she and the other entries headed for the track. Ray and Pete watched for a moment, then went through the clubhouse and out to the track.
They made their way to the rail. Several people spoke to Pete, asking after his health, his horse’s chances. Pete wasn’t real talkative on either subject.
