by Brad Smith
“I’m not exactly famous for doing the sensible thing.”
“Hope you’re not looking for an argument on that.”
She shook her head then and got to her feet and walked across the room. She glanced into the kitchen, and then she walked to the staircase and sat down on the lower step. She looked at him evenly and said: “You’re like a goddamn ten-year-old. You just need to be in trouble.”
“I don’t plan on getting into trouble with this. If I thought that, I’d leave it alone.”
“Like hell you would. You have a need for this, Ray. You gotta have a windmill to tilt at, or you get bored. You haven’t been out of jail for two months, and you’re set to do something that’s gonna get you thrown back inside.”
Ray, sitting in the chair, looked out at the yard. It was growing dark already; to him it seemed like morning still.
“I was hoping I could talk you into this,” he said after a moment.
“Why is that so important?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a part of me that knows that it’s wrong, and if I can get you involved that’ll make it right. Because you’re usually right, Etta,” he said without a hint of sarcasm.
“So if I say no, you’ll forget about the whole thing?”
“Maybe.” He stood up and half-smiled. “But I wouldn’t bet on it,” he added.
“Neither would I.”
He walked over to where she sat on the stairs. She stood up, stepped on the first tread so she was as tall as him, looked him in the eye. He returned the look.
“I don’t want him to take this place from you, Etta. He’s gonna get away with it, like always.”
“Maybe not. I hired a lawyer yesterday. We’re gonna challenge Dad’s marker to Sonny in court.”
“And Sonny’ll bring in half a dozen of his boys to testify that’s it’s legit.”
“Maybe.”
“And you’re gonna spend money on a lawyer that you can’t afford.”
She sighed. “Maybe.”
He reached out and brushed her hair back from her forehead with his fingertips. Then he turned and walked to the back door. She stepped down and followed. In the doorway he turned back to her, his hands in his coat pockets, and he played his hole card.
“To me, Sonny’s like those money changers in the temple,” he said. “Remember, Jesus had to go in there and kick some ass. It was the Book of Mark, if memory serves.”
“Been reading the Bible today, Ray?”
“I might have glanced at it,” he said and then left.
Etta crossed the room and watched out the kitchen window as he drove down the driveway and onto the side road. Behind her, Homer had finished what he was going to finish of his macaroni.
“What do you do with a guy like that, Dad?” she asked without turning. “Steals me a horse and then tells me that Jesus says it’s okay.”
* * *
Dean got back to the farm at a little past ten in the morning. He’d spent the night with the waitress from the Dorchester Tavern, and over the past twelve hours he’d drank too much and ate too much and invested way too much time and money in a fruitless effort to get laid. When he got out of the truck Jim was standing in the doorway of the barn, leaning against the jamb. He was in the shadow of the awning, and he was giving Dean a look that appeared to be somewhere between huge disappointment and just plain pissed off.
“What’d you do with him?” Jim demanded.
“What’d I do with who?”
“The goddamn horse.”
Dean pushed past Jim and went into the barn to find the horse gone. Jim was following, and Dean turned on him: “What the hell’s going on?”
“You tell me.”
“You think I took him out of here?” Dean asked. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Why did you?”
Dean turned to look at the empty stall, his mind working. “Go back to the bush, Jim. That horse trailer’s still sitting there where Paulie and I left it.” He paused. “Shit, you don’t think Paulie—”
Jim jumped at the suggestion. “Well, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you.”
Dean wasn’t convinced. He opened the stall door and had a closer look inside. Then he walked over to the exterior door on the east end of the barn and opened it and stepped outside. There were hoof prints scuffed in the dirt there.
“They took him out here,” he said.
When he came back in he saw something on the bench just inside the door. “What the hell’s this?”
There was an extension cord and a pair of leather gloves on the bench. Dean picked them up and showed them to Jim, who was still standing by the stall, looking inside as if he thought the stallion might somehow reappear by magic.
“This stuff belong to you?”
Jim walked over. The extension cord had its wires stripped back, and there were alligator clips on the ends. “Jesus,” he said when he saw it. “They killed the horse.”
“They didn’t kill the fucking horse,” Dean said. “What—you think they killed him and then dragged him out of here?” He looked at the extension cord again. “But they were sure as hell gonna kill him. They musta changed their minds.”
“You think Paulie?”
“Paulie wouldn’t step on a bug,” Dean said. “Lookit these gloves, read what it says. One hundred percent calfskin, made in Italy. These aren’t work gloves. These are a rich boy’s gloves.”
He handed the gloves over to Jim, and then he took a long look around the barn, sniffing the air as if it might give him a clue. There was no getting around it. There was only one person who would benefit by killing the horse. There was only one person he knew who was capable of killing the horse. And there was only one person who would wear hundred-dollar Italian leather gloves to do it.
“Sonny was here,” he said. “Sure as shit.”
Jim was growing nervous. On the one hand, he wanted it to have been Sonny, because if it wasn’t, then Sonny was going to show up at noon, looking for a horse they didn’t have and exposing Jim’s double cross. On the other hand, if it was Sonny, Dean was going to want to know how he knew where to come.
“That fucking Paulie rolled over on us,” Jim said. “Probably went to Sonny and made a deal.”
Dean nodded absently and walked back to the doorway and looked outside. It didn’t add up. He turned back to Jim, and he held the extension cord out for display.
“Sonny came here to kill the horse,” Dean said. “For the insurance. That part I get; it’s what Sonny would do. What I don’t get is why he changed his mind.”
“Maybe Paulie talked him out of it,” Jim said, working Paulie’s name into the conversation again.
“Paulie wouldn’t have anything to do with this,” Dean said, indicating the cord again. “Not for a minute and not for a million dollars. I doubt he was even here.”
“Sonofabitch gave us up, though, didn’t he?”
“I guess so. That fucking Sonny is up to something, though. Otherwise he’d have shown up here with Jackson Jones and a couple carloads of cops, lights flashing. Hell, he’d call the newspapers. You know something—I bet Jackson don’t even know Sonny’s got the horse. What the fuck is he up to?”
“Maybe he still figures to kill him. He just didn’t want to do it here.”
“Why not? If he does it here, it looks like we did it. No, he’s got something else in mind. That’s the problem with Sonny—you never know what the fuck he’s gonna do.”
Dean turned and walked out of the barn, heading for the truck. Jim followed at a distance. Now that he’d convinced Dean that Paulie was the rat, Jim was back to thinking about how he was going to profit from all this. The possibility seemed a little iffy, now that they no longer actually had the horse. Sonny sure as hell wasn’t going to honor his offer of the ten grand, not after sneaking in here in the dead of night and stealing the nag. It seemed to Jim that you couldn’t trust anybody these days.
“Where you going?” he ask
ed Dean when they were outside.
“I’m gonna take a drive,” Dean said. “That fucking Sonny’s about to pull a fast one, and I gotta figure out how. Remember, if he does kill the horse, we’re the ones gonna get blamed for it.”
Dean got into the truck and powered down the window.
“Yeah, well—you remember you owe me five grand,” Jim told him.
Jim was standing by the door of the truck, trying to look defiant and hard done by, like he was the only one in the whole situation holding up his end. Dean gave him a look like he had two heads, and then drove off without a word.
* * *
In general, people had little respect for Dean’s intelligence. And while there were times when Dean didn’t do a hell of a lot to refute the notion, the truth of the matter was, given enough time and enough information, Dean’s powers of deduction were as good as most.
By the time he’d driven a couple of miles he knew that Paulie wasn’t the rat. Even though Paulie might have been concerned about the horse’s safety, he wasn’t the one who rolled over. Dean knew this because he knew that Paulie would never go to Sonny. Paulie hated Sonny as much as anybody. If Paulie was worried about the horse, he’d have gone to Jackson. Jackson had always treated Paulie decently, like a human being.
So if Paulie wasn’t the rat, then Jim Burnside was. Which is why he was so anxious to tar and feather Paulie. Shit, he’d probably helped Sonny load the horse in the trailer. Sonny had paid him off and been gone. Dean wondered what Jim had gotten for the double cross.
He drove around north of the city, keeping to the side roads. He was nervous driving the Stanton Stables truck so close to the scene of the crime, even though he’d painted over the logos on the doors. As he drove he listened to the radio, catching as many newscasts as he could. There was nothing about the missing horse turning up.
He went to the casino and parked around back, beside the black Navigator. Big Billy Coon was in the back room, sitting behind the bar and watching a tape of a heavyweight fight from Las Vegas.
When Billy saw Dean, he smiled and said, “Look at you, walking round, bold as day.”
“Hey, Billy.”
“Get yourself a beer.”
Dean went to the cooler and grabbed a Corona. It seemed to him that Billy was being awful friendly for some reason. He’d been unsure whether to come; he knew that Sonny spent time here and that Sonny and Billy were acquainted, were maybe even good friends. He opened the beer and went to sit at the bar.
“Stole any good horses lately?” Billy asked.
“Just the one.”
“Crazy bastard. What the hell you gonna do with him?”
“I don’t have him anymore. Sonny’s got him back.”
“Hell, I never heard anything about it.”
“You’re not gonna hear anything about it. Sonny found out where I had him stashed and stole him back in the middle of the night. I got a feeling he hasn’t told anybody. If he did, it’d be on the news. He’s up to something, Billy.”
“He always is.”
“He been here?”
“Breeders’ Cup, he spent the day here. Never had a winner, dropped ninety-five grand on the ponies and more at cards. The ninety-five he still owes,” Billy added.
“He ran a tab on a hundred grand?”
“Yup, and his leash is getting shorter every day. He’s got that gray Rather Rambunctious running in the stakes race on Sunday. He should romp—they’re dropping him down—and Sonny better pay me out of the purse, or I’m gonna send a couple of the cousins over to his place to cut his balls off and bring ’em to me. I’ll pickle ’em and put ’em in a jar above the bar here. Just a little reminder for folks who might find themselves delinquent in their debts.”
Dean took a long drink of the beer and had a look above the bar. There were indeed jars of pickled meats there. Dean decided he didn’t want to know the nature of the contents.
“What do you suppose he’s doing with that horse, Dean?”
“I’ll be goddamned if I know,” Dean said. “That’s the problem with a guy like Sonny. His brain doesn’t work like a normal person’s. There’s no telling what he’s gonna do. The only thing you can count on is that it’ll be fucked up when he does it.”
* * *
Sonny woke up feeling like Elvis must’ve felt most mornings. It had been daylight when he’d returned from the Burnside farm, and he had still been flying from the speed in his system. He’d attempted to counter it with Demerol and vodka and finally fell asleep at about nine. The cocktail mix, however, was messing with his head this afternoon. He took more Demerol when he got up, and then went downstairs and ate a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Now he was sitting in the kitchen, looking out the window to the barn, where he knew Jackson was at work, and trying to decide whether he should tell Jackson about Jim Burnside’s visit, and about his own early morning excursion to the Burnside farm.
He was inclined not to mention any of it. Jackson would be sure to tell him that he’d fucked up again, just as he had with Paulie. As if Jackson’s presence would have changed anything this time. Even Jackson couldn’t pull a horse out of thin air. Besides, nothing had changed with regard to the situation. Sonny was of the opinion that Dean had somehow been spooked—maybe Jim got cold feet and tipped him off—and moved the stallion before Sonny had arrived. After all, there’d been no sign of the truck and the horse trailer at the farm.
He had the option of sending the cops to the Burnside farm to see what they could get out of the old piss-tank, if he was still around. He began to warm up to the idea. Jim Burnside was a leaky vessel, Sonny suspected, and he would spill whatever he knew, if properly persuaded.
But when he was having his first vodka and tonic he suddenly remembered that he’d left the extension cord in Burn-side’s barn and that decided it as far as Jackson or the cops were concerned. If the cord turned up, with the alligator clips, they would know exactly what Sonny had been planning.
There was nothing to do but pretend the whole incident had not happened. Maybe Dean would do the right thing and kill the goddamn horse himself.
The mail was on the table. Glancing through it, he spotted a letter from a lawyer in town, a name he didn’t recognize. He opened it; it was notice that Etta Parr was fighting his note on her father’s farm. Sonny felt his anger rise.
He pulled his jacket on and walked out to the barn. Jackson was in his office, and he was looking at a printout of Sunday’s Woodbine entries. The bandage was gone from his head, and Sonny could see the arc of stitches above his left ear.
“How’s the gray looking?” Sonny asked.
“He’ll win,” Jackson said. He was still pissed and didn’t bother to look up.
“What’s in the field?” Sonny asked.
Jackson tossed the papers across the desk. “Just six horses,” he said. “Four trainers pulled their mounts, probably ’cause we’re running the gray. We can expect some comments about that.”
“Fuck ’em,” Sonny said, looking at the sheet.
“You talk to the cops?”
“No.”
“Why not, Sonny?”
“Why would I talk to the cops?”
Jackson gave him a look. “You saw Paulie last night. If Paulie’s in the area, then Dean’s in the area. If Dean’s in the area, then maybe—just maybe—the horse is in the area. And everybody beating the bushes down in Kentucky can go home to a big ol’ heaping plate of opossum and collard greens. None of this occurred to you, Sonny?”
“It’s not like we know where Dean is. Or Paulie either.”
“I was thinking maybe that’s where the cops would come in handy.” Jackson’s voice was heavy with sarcasm, his eyes on Sonny like he was looking at a stray dog that had just pissed on his pant leg.
“They haven’t been much good to us so far,” Sonny said.
“Never mind. I’ll call them myself.”
“I’ll do it,” Sonny said quickly. “Matter of fact, I’ll stop by the station o
n my way to town. You gonna work the gray today?”
“I breezed him this morning. You work horses in the morning, Sonny.”
Sonny drove into the city. He didn’t stop at the police station. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced he didn’t want the horse back. And the longer the horse was in the hands of those idiots, the better the chances he wouldn’t make it through alive.
He went to the track and drank a half-dozen Bloody Marys in the lounge, watching the races on the screen and telling everybody who would listen that his big gray was going to win the Stanton Stakes. He presently found himself drinking alone, and he left.
Driving back out of the city, he stopped at the country club for a drink in the bar. The place was largely empty. The pins had been pulled earlier that week and the course shut down. The clubhouse would stay open over the course of the winter as a service to the members, but with no golfers, business was greatly reduced.
There was no one there to get drunk with, so Sonny left after a couple of drinks. In the car he popped another Demerol and started for home, then decided to drive out to Holden County to have a look at his acquisitions there.
He really had no intention of stopping at Etta Parr’s place until he found himself pulling into the driveway. Sometimes it seemed that he had no real control over his actions, that his muscles simply took over from his brain. When it happened he quite often found himself in trouble, and when he did Sonny always rationalized that it was not his fault because he really wasn’t in charge.
It was nearly dark as he coasted up to the house and parked behind the Taurus in the driveway. The house lights were on.
* * *
Etta was getting ready to go to work. She heard the car approaching, and she knew it was too early for Mabel. She thought for a moment that Ray had returned. Maybe he’d found a passage in the good book that advocated the fixing of horse races. She turned on the porch light, and when she looked out the window she saw Sonny getting out of his car. Watching him walk, she realized at once he was wasted.
Homer was in the living room, and she went quickly past him and up the stairs and into her room. She unlocked the top drawer of the old rolltop and found the little automatic and slipped it into the pocket of her jacket.
