Dark Horse

by Doug Richardson

  That was if Hollice Waters turned up dead.

  The 11:35 P.M. Sunday Sports Final followed. Football scores sandwiched in between paid political advertisements. Commercials for county supervisor. For state Senate. For Congress.

  FACT: Mitch Dutton is a rich corporate attorney.

  FACT: Mitch Dutton once represented a Houston chemical company convicted of dumping thousands of gallons of toxic waste into our precious Gulf waters.

  FACT: If elected to Congress, it’s clear that Mitch Dutton would fall victim to rich corporations that would spoil our environment for profit.

  QUESTION: Can we trust rich corporations and their lawyers to know OUR business?

  Paid for by Citizens for a Clean Environment.

  Pro-McCann ads. Pro-Dutton ads. Anti-Dutton, Anti-McCann ads. Mitch remembered thinking, What kind of person could vote and know they’d chosen wisely? It was a battle of two evils. The devil you know versus the devil’s advocate. Kingman’s third party candidate was the invisible man.

  The clock read 1:00 a.m. Time for more pain medication. He washed it back with a glass of scotch. He remembered staring at the Weather Channel. A storm was swirling up the Gulf. The newsman was calling it Tropical Storm Les. Mitch wondered who made up those storm names. Would there one day be a storm named Mitch? Or Connie? Or Shakespeare?

  Then memory crashed into dream.

  Yes, he’d showered. That much was real. He pictured it. Remembered it. But all of a sudden there was so much blood! Gina’s blood! It was dried and wouldn’t scrub off. On his hands and his face. The TV viewers must’ve seen it! How couldn’t they? The doctors too. Did they think it was Mitchell’s? Had someone scraped a sample from him to keep for DNA tests? Jesus, that would be as good as fingerprints!

  Mitch jolted awake, sucking air into his lungs, his eyes wide and dilated—then at once, relieved that it had all been a dream. The TV. The news.

  Or was it?

  He was still in darkness, parked in his chair with the TV beaming at him from its appointed shelf. Surrounding him, though, was the aftermath of his own medicated unconscious. A nearly empty bottle of scotch, four fully consumed frozen meals on the couch, dirty cereal bowls. Pillows and blankets strewn. A thinly scattered Daily Mirror. And not a Goddamn lick of it remembered.

  My God, he thought. And it’s still dark? It can’t be any later than 5:00 A.M.

  To make matters more confusing, there was the television program. He didn’t recognize it. He watched so little TV as it was. But he knew enough to know the program he was watching was some prime-time sitcom. And they didn’t rerun primetime shows just before dawn. He aimed his focus to the desk clock. His eyes were still fuzzy in the dimness, so he switched on the lamp. The light blazed and his eyes squeezed shut. Yet he’d seen the clock, and the image remained latent against his eyelids.

  8:36 P.M.!

  Couldn’t be. Mitch waited for his eyes to readjust before he looked again, just in time to see the digital numbers switch to 8:37. He dove for the newspaper, automatically looking at the upper right-hand corner for the day and date.

  Tuesday, October 27.

  Slowly it began to come together. The meals. The empty bottle of booze. The TV. Mostly, the two prescription bottles left open, colorful capsules spilled across his desktop. All of it lost without a single recollection.

  My God. Two full days? Lost?

  Crossing his study, he opened the door to a dark living room and a chilling breeze. The front door yawned, unlocked and swinging wide open. Leaves were blowing about with each gust. Then, at the top of the stairs, the door to the master suite slammed shut! He jumped, his heart in his throat and throbbing at warp speed. Was this his house? And who the hell was upstairs?

  “Connie?!” shouted Mitch from his subconscious. But she was in California. Safe and sound. At least, that’s what he thought.

  Fear got the better of him. He rushed back to the study and the phone, punched up 911, but found no dial tone. The lines were dead. He grabbed the pistol and his spare set of keys and ran out the front door to Connie’s Mustang. The wind and leaves swirled.

  “Fuck!” he shouted. The spares belonged to the Volvo. The Mustang keys were always in Connie’s purse. She carried both sets in case she ever locked a pair inside. Reeling, Mitch took a look back up at the big old house with its darkened windows and steeply pitched roof. It scared him. Anybody could be inside. A medicated delirium. Sure, he thought. But to hell with the house. And feeling no compulsion to return, he backed down the driveway, eventually pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and breaking into a slow, painful run. His back ached. His ribs were sore and swollen. The cast on his arm, heavy like a handful of lead.

  Push it, Mitch. Push, push, push.

  After he’d put a solid half mile between himself and the house, the runner’s engine warmed, the knotted muscles loosened, and for the first time in days, his mind seemed clear and conscious. Faster, he ran. Harder, begging his endorphins to ease the pain.

  FOURTEEN

  “MCCANN OF the People Campaign Committee.”

  “I need to speak with Shakespeare McCann.”

  “The campaign office is closed. This is the service. Do you want to leave a message?”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said I must talk to Shakespeare.”

  “I said this is the service, sir. We only take messages.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “ ‘Fraid not. Now, if there’s a message—”

  “It’s important. He must get this.”

  “And the message is, sir?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Okay. The message is from Ron. It says, ‘Deandra is having both parties for cocktails.’”

  “Deandra is having a party.”

  “No! I said, ‘Deandra is having both parties for cocktails. ’ Tonight, nine o’clock.”

  “How do you spell Deandra?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Just read back the message.”

  “Deandra is having both parties for cocktails. Tonight at nine o’clock.”

  “Thank you. And I’m sorry for my language.”

  “You should be.”

  Tropical Storm Les was formed in a barometric crush off the north coast of South America and whipped its way up the east coast of Mexico and back out into the Gulf. Farther south, another disturbance stirred in the same low-pressure vortex. The crashing of the two turned Les into a full-blown hurricane that threatened to lick the boots of South Texas if the normal trough of Arctic-cooled jet stream flattened and failed to blow the SOB back out to sea. Cathedral was used to such threats. Most storms evaporated into nothing more than harsh winds and rain, speculation by the locals, even a hurricane lottery. But not all.

  As with most locals, had Mitch known of the hurricane warning, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought other than, maybe, to spur fond political memories of the late, great George Hammond. The gusts of wind weren’t enough yet to knock him off his feet, and the rain was insufficient to soak him to the point of discomfort. He was running. And when those endorphins kicked in, they killed all the pain. He was feeling strong in body, crystal in clarity, and lucky. The sloped harbor road was leading him to safety and the arms of his ol’ Uncle J.

  The Harbor Motor Inn was a former Motel Six he’d rescued from bankruptcy when Jasper Hargroves retired from a life of shrimping and roughnecking on offshore oil rigs. The deal was sweet, put together by his lawyer nephew. Jasper had the cash from the sale of his threeboat fleet, and Mitch knew the owner of the motel in question. The twenty-room dump overlooked the harbor that Jasper’d known his entire life. Mitch helped make sure his ol’ Uncle J would never have to trade in the sea air for a mainland retirement plan.

  He made the downhill turn onto Salisbury Street, nearly a straight shot down to the harbor. A car passed on the left as memories came and went. He
remembered the old sailor had been fond of giving the boy Dutch rubs on his crew-cut scalp. A sign of affection, surely. But Mitch never let on that he hated those moments and that Uncle J’s nasty, raspy voice scared the bejesus outta him. Yet a bond had formed aboard those summer shrimpers. Uncle J and Mitch, allies in the war against the old man, Quentin Dutton. Lousy boss and lousy father. They’d bitch and moan, swap stories, and Jasper’d teach Mitch a thing or two about life. It was, indeed, a sweet deal.

  Young Mitchy was going to ask Uncle J for a room, no questions asked. J would keep the secret. In exchange, though, he would surely give Mitch a ration for not returning his calls during the campaign. That much, Mitch could handle. The trade-off was cheap by recent comparisons.

  Nearing the harbor, he twisted onto Lefcourt Place, otherwise known as the Loop, a quarter-mile stretch of two-lane connecting back onto the main drag whether a driver was headed east or west. He cut safely across Beach Road and onto the Loop, switching back to the oncoming lane as the street swept sharply toward the waterfront. There, at the bottommost portion of the turn, the motel was saddled against the hill, neatly tucked below the main road. Its yellow fluorescent sign surely blazing until dawn. The neon beacon, calling out Vacancy to lonely fishermen skunked from spending too much time in any one of the many hard-luck harbor bars, blinked at Mitch as if to signal him that all was clear. Cross the road and enter.

  But he stopped to catch his bream. He needed to find a smile for old Uncle J before pushing through the motel office doors. And that’s when the cramps set in, locking up his thighs and practically hobbling him dead center in the street, right at the bottom of the Loop. Dammit, he thought. He hadn’t stretched before the run as was the habit of most experienced runners.

  From the south came headlights, roaring down the blacktop and straddling the center line. Dead on and bearing down at Mitch. With his left foot he tried to shove off, but his leg wouldn’t respond. It shut down. The muscles were bound, bent, and left him crashing to the pavement, the gravel stinging his palms.

  He crawled a single arm’s length before he looked up for the last time to see the car rushing headlong down the center path. He tucked a shoulder underneath himself and rolled away from the swerving car. He felt a rush of wind as it roared past, its wheels set on a track that led away from the motel. Aiming not at Mitch. But at some other unknown destination.

  Then came the image. A picture tattooed crisply in his memory as if the car were still rushing at him, twenty feet away and prepared to expel him of his last breath. It was a license plate.

  ISPIN4U.

  Mitch twisted upon the pavement, dialing his vision back up the Loop to the receding car. The brake lights flashed and turned off the Loop down toward the harbor, giving him a brief yet distinctive profile of a BMW 540…Fitz’s leased BMW.

  ISPIN4U.

  Once again balancing on his feet, he stumbled back to the edge of the road opposite the motel to get a good look down into the harbor. Through the misting rain it wasn’t hard to pick up the BMW’s lights. He followed them all the way down to a nearly empty parking lot along one of the docks reserved for recreational boats. In the distance he could make out Fitz’s rotund figure, hustling from the car out onto the dock. All the way to the end where a launch idled, waiting to pick him up. Fitz awkwardly crawled aboard and the boat quickly pulled away.

  “Gawd, ding it!” bitched Jasper at the sound of the door buzzer. Rail-thin, bald to his empty follicles, feet up in his La-Z-Boy lounger, TV remote in one hand and a fifth of low-budget bourbon in the other. But drunk, he wasn’t. He liked to lick at the bottle more than guzzle it. If he drank too much, he’d get sleepy and miss the news. The remote control allowed him to jump back and forth between broadcasts to catch each and every weather report. See if all them weather boys were in sync with his own predictions.

  The office buzzer rang again.

  “Customers,” grumbled the old man. He was in the customer business. He just wished the customers would all check in before ten. Because that’s when the first newscast would begin, and he didn’t want to miss the damn weather.

  A curtained partition and a storage closet were all that separated J’s apartment from the front office. And when Jasper saw the hooded man standing outside the glass door, he thought to retreat and pocket a pistol. He was a cautious man. He hadn’t been robbed…yet!

  The stranger knocked at the glass as Jasper turned back toward the rear. He gave him one more look in time to see Mitch pull the hood down. “Uncle J! It’s me. Mitch!”

  “Well I’ll be a sonofabitch.”

  Jasper reached underneath the counter and buzzed him in. Mitch shoved through the door with the ultimate non sequitur for a candidate only days away from November third. “Jasper, do you still watch the boats?”

  “Is that any way to say hello to your ol’ Uncle J?”

  Mitch walked around the desk and pushed to the rear. “You old sea snake. You gotta have a telescope!”

  “Sure I got a scope,” said Jasper, who was caught off guard, following Mitch back into his own apartment. “You know, you never called me back! That musta been months ago!”

  There it was, not five feet behind Uncle J’s La-Z-Boy, a telescope on a tripod, pointed out through a big, curtained window and aimed toward the harbor. Mitch threw the curtains open and stepped behind the scope. He put his eye to the viewfinder, but saw nothing but pure blackness. “Why can’t I see anything?”

  “You okay, sonny boy?” This was a Mitch Uncle J didn’t remember. The boy was never this urgent. Always polite. Well behaved. In control. A natural politician. “How about some bourbon? Settle your ass down some.”

  Mitch fiddled with the focus ring. All he could see was black. “Just help me, Uncle J.”

  Jasper reluctantly crossed over to the scope and simply removed the lens cover. “Keeps the fuzzies from the carpet off the lens.”

  Relieved, Mitch aimed and focused. He started at the dock where the launch had picked up Fitz, then panned back and forth while tilting toward the horizon.

  “Whatcha lookin’ for? Maybe Uncle J can be good for somethin’.”

  “A launch. It was headed out of the small boat docks…” Mitch steadied the scope. In his viewfinder appeared the cigarette boat. Only it was tethered to a large yacht anchored midway in the harbor. With the powerful scope it wasn’t hard to make out the name. Deandra. Vidor Kingman’s summer retreat was parked again in Cathedral’s waters. Only now it was fall and there was a hurricane brewing a hundred miles offshore.

  “Find what you’re lookin’ for?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mitch, his tone turning polite and thoughtful. “Give it a look, Jasper. Tell me what you think.”

  Mitch stepped away from the telescope and made room for him. He stuck his face down onto the eyepiece. “Yup. That’s a big boat. Kingman’s. Why’s he parked out there when they say we got a first-class hurry on the way?”

  “He bought the paper. He’s probably living on it.”

  “Which one? The Mirror or the Breeze? I sure hope he didn’t buy the Breeze.”

  “The Mirror” answered Mitch. “You think the hurricane’s gonna hit?”

  “Fifty-fifty. If I were a bettin’ man, which I am, I’d say no. High pressure’s still hangin’ on to the Coast. My guess is it gets pushed over to Louisiana and heads south. Takes a good piece of Florida real estate before she’s done.”

  “It’s called Les.”

  “Les, Leslie. Who the crap cares? All hurricanes are bitches. Don’t matter what name they give ‘em. Now, tell me, sonny. Why didn’t you return my telephone calls back in June?”

  Mitch had his eye back to the scope’s viewfinder. He was following Fitz along the gangway to the upper deck. Once there, the rotund show runner was greeted with a hearty handshake from a smiling Vidor Kingman.

  So Kingman’s finally come on board, thought Mitch, briefly forgetting the last couple of days and Kingman’s eleventh-hour endorsement of the envir
onmentalist candidate, Peter Dunphy. The political animal that had grown inside him calculated the timing of the handshake. Kingman’s the pragmatist. Like most businessmen, he wants to be on the side of the elected office. The events of the past week, the turn in the polls, had paved the way for the moment when Kingman would come aboard and acknowledge the future congressman with some flashy display of unconditional support. Clearly Fitz was still on the job.

  Goose bumps rose on his neck as another man came into view. Stepping from the shadows with all smiles for Fitz was none other than Marshall Lambeer, reluctant proxy for the McCann platform. He shook Fitz’s hand with the relish of a car salesman about to make a deal.

  What’s this? Some kind of political powwow? In whose honor?

  All of a sudden Mitch was boxed. He was there to ask Uncle J for a room. A quiet, safe place. Where he could think things out. Then, just when he felt he had enough information to make a cogent new plot for those final campaign days—to leave the fog and reenter the race with his life intact—Fitz Kolatch nearly ran him down on his way to make a private date with Vidor Kingman and Marshall Lambeer. Common sense turned, once again, into gobbledygook.

  His broken hand was aching again. Probably swollen from the run. But fearing another blackout, he wanted to ask Jasper for nothing stronger than an aspirin.

  “Do you still have a boat?” he found himself asking.