Hex: A Ruby Murphy Mystery

by Maggie Estep

  A number of days pass. There’s follow-up work on the DiCello case but it doesn’t keep my mind off Ruby or my kitten.

  Eventually, after calling in favors with a few detectives I know, I manage to find out that Lena is out at her aunt’s place on Long Island. I show up unannounced, pound on the front door of the ugly little two-story house. Lena herself comes to the door, and seeing me, immediately retreats.

  I pound and threaten and she finally relents and lets me in. She looks awful. Her face is puffy and she’s wearing baggy sweatpants. Her hair hangs lank at her shoulders.

  My kitten is asleep on the couch.

  “This is all I wanted,” I say, walking over to the couch, scooping up my kitten, and then heading right back to the door.

  Lena says not a word. Which, I admit, piques my curiosity.

  “What’s the matter with you, Lena?” I ask, standing at the door, holding the purring ball of kitten.

  “You do not care,” she says limply.

  “You kidnapped my fucking cat.”

  “That is all you care about.”

  “Damn straight,” I say.

  “I am going back to Russia. I am beautiful in Russia,” she says.

  And I’m sure she is.

  I take the kitten back to my car, where I’ve got a little carrying case waiting. I inspect her, half expecting to find new trauma, but there isn’t any. Her wounds have actually healed and she’s in fine form. I put her in the case and place this on the passenger seat. I stop every few blocks to peer into the case and make sure the kitten is all right. She seems to be fine. About halfway home to Queens, I call Ruby, figuring she won’t pick up but I’ll leave a message.

  I start talking into the machine.

  “Yeah?” She surprises me by picking up.

  “I got my kitten back,” I tell her.

  She laughs a little. “That’s good, Ned, I’m glad.”

  “Can I take you to dinner?” I ask.

  There’s a long pause. And then she says yes.

  Ruby Murphy

  37 / Raging Machete

  I wake up to the sound of rain drumming at the windows. For a second this soothes me, until I remember that today’s the day of Oliver’s memorial. I turn my head on the pillow, wanting to bury my face back in sleep. The cats are both there, though, staring at me, willing me out of bed.

  I slowly sit up. My eyes are swollen the size of golf balls. I’ve cried more in the last ten days than in the collected thirty-three years of my life.

  I swing my legs over the side of the bed and hobble into the bathroom to throw water on my face. I look like someone threw a Buick at my head.

  I feed the cats, drink down my coffee, and read a dozen pages of Anna Karenina. I unroll my yoga mat and stand there uttering the Sanskrit prayer that claims I am bowing to the lotus feet of the jungle physician who eliminates delusions brought on by poisoned snakes. Why not?

  I fold over into my first standing forward bend and then spring back into crocodile pose. The confusion is going around in my head, but eventually, as my body gets warmer, it wanes—or at least gets more evenly distributed throughout me.

  An hour later, as I lay flat on my mat, breathing and drying, I feel better. Not completely restored, but better.

  I find myself putting on a vibrant blue halter top, slinky blue pants, and a pair of tacky but sexy pink pumps. Oliver always liked me best at my sleaziest. I pull my mess of hair up in a knot on top of my head, licks of it spilling out and trailing down my neck. I stuff wallet, cigarettes, and hairbrush into my red tote bag then go to the door. I turn back and stare at my apartment. I let myself see Oliver again, as he was the last time he was here. Skinny but ebullient. Face lit up from within.

  I turn around and go into the hall, pulling the door shut behind me. Just as I slip my key in the lock, I hear the phone ringing inside.

  I go back in, stand listening to the machine informing callers that I’m out.

  “Miss Murphy, this is Sebastian. You’re needed.”

  This is startling enough to warrant picking up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Ruby.”

  “Sebastian?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What’s up?” My heartbeat accelerates.

  There haven’t been any drastic developments in the last week. Ariel is in a nut ward and will, as Elsie predicted, plead insanity. Probably serve time on a flight deck. Frank has recovered from what could have been a fatal gunshot wound. He’s out on bail. Gaines and Sebastian are continuing on with their lives, as are the rest of the horses in their care. Except Joe, who is now officially government property and still at the Hole, awaiting transport to Versailles, Kentucky, where he’s to stand at stud.

  “You just gonna leave us hanging over here?” Sebastian chides. “We need you walking hots.”

  “But Sebastian, I was just … you know … I’m not a real hot-walker.”

  “You looked real to me.”

  “I liked it, Sebastian, but I can’t get up that early in the morning. And I live a million miles away from the track.”

  Silence.

  “Sebastian?”

  “I liked having you around.”

  This just about floors me. I’ve seen Sebastian once since this whole mess came unraveled. And it’s not like he made any great show of affection.

  “The horses liked you,” he amends.

  “Sebastian, I’m honored that you’ve asked, but I don’t think I can do it.”

  “But you’ll think about it. Yes?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Have a nice day,” he says, hanging up in my ear.

  I put the phone down, stare at it a second, and then proceed back into the hall and out to the subway.

  I get on the train and burrow deep into my thoughts.

  I’m emotionally seesawing between thinking about Oliver and dwelling on Ned. Yesterday morning, as he was getting ready to leave my place, he got a phone call from the bureau. He’s to go down to Tampa for yet another horse-racing investigation. He was somber as he told me this. And I had mixed feelings at hearing about it. I like the guy, but I have reservations. Maybe Tampa is the best place for him.

  Moments after Ned left my place, Mark Baxter, who I hadn’t been able to reach in days, finally called. He didn’t sound happy.

  “What’s the matter, Mark?” I asked, not daring to inquire about the piano competition.

  “I lost,” he said gloomily.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “They placed me second,” he fumed.

  “Second? That’s hardly losing, Mark. What, weren’t there like six hundred pianists in the competition?”

  “Five hundred and sixty-three.”

  “And you were second?”

  “It’s just not good enough. It’s the end of my career,” he announced.

  “Mark, even Secretariat was second once or twice. Doesn’t take away from his greatness, though.”

  “I have no interest in historical facts about the equine species right now, Ruby.”

  “Okay, then give me a lesson.”

  “I must recover my strength first.”

  I sighed. I humored my eccentric teacher a while longer and then, having extracted a promise of a lesson sometime soon, I hung up and sat on the couch ruminating for a long time.

  And I’m ruminating once more. So much so that in what feels like seconds, the subway is pulling into the Second Avenue stop.

  When I was a kid, coming out at this subway stop was always an adventure. The neighborhood was unruly, mildly dangerous, and endlessly interesting. Now it’s like Seattle down here, only not as pretty. Mean-spirited bankers and dot com moguls mingle with fashion victims and Ivy League artistes. Most of the poor Spanish and Jewish families are gone and a neighborhood I used to love has been homogenized beyond recognition.

  I make my way down Eldridge Street, to the huge community center where the memorial is being held.

  On the steps outside, packs o
f Oliver’s friends are lingering. Carpenters, musicians, sculptors, and yoga people. And of course, droves of ex-girlfriends, each one sexier than the next. I go inside, up a wide marble staircase to the auditorium.

  Bright flowers are strewn everywhere and Arvo Part’s Tabula Rasa comes insistently throbbing from a portable CD player. Photos of Oliver have been tacked to the walls. Oliver in his band, bare-torsoed and insane-looking. Oliver in a dance performance. Oliver smoking a cigarette. Oliver sitting in lotus.

  I take a seat in the back. I’m not feeling social. I don’t even know why I came.

  I get up halfway through the service and leave.

  I don’t know how to say good-bye to my friend.

  I walk, heading south on Allen Street and right on East Broadway, under the overpass leading to the Manhattan Bridge. A train thunders above, making the whole structure groan in metallic misery. The sound makes me feel like killing myself. Instead, I decide to call Jane. Of course, there’s not a pay phone in sight and I’ve long since turned Ariel’s cell phone over to the cops.

  I find a pay phone on the corner of Market Street, but a Chinese guy is barking into it. I stand behind him, waiting. He turns around and levels a murderous gaze at me. He’s kind of cute. I stare at his ass. He finally slams the phone down and storms away.

  I put a quarter in and dial Jane. I get right to the point: “I feel like killing myself, do you mind if I come over?”

  “Of course, come over, but weren’t you at Oliver’s memorial?”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t feel right. I left.”

  “Yes. That’s why I stopped going to memorials years ago. Harry and I were going to take a ride, do you want to come?”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. You know Harry. He just wants to drive.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I tell my friend.

  I walk north, weaving through Chinatown and then up through the Lower East Side.

  Harry and Jane are waiting on their stoop, just standing there, looking pleased to be alive. Harry immediately offers me a cigarette, which I accept and fire up as Jane makes disapproving sounds. We head up Avenue C to where Harry’s blue Honda is parked.

  “Where to, madame?” Harry asks when we’ve settled into the car. “Your choice,” he says benevolently.

  “Can we go see Joe? He’s leaving tomorrow.”

  “Who’s Joe?” Harry asks, baffled.

  “The racehorse,” Jane clarifies, “the one she saved. He’s at the Hole.”

  “Ah … the Hole,” Harry says dreamily. “I’m very curious about this place.”

  Harry grew up in East New York, on Dumont Avenue, which is in fact the very road leading into the cul-de-sac that is the Hole. But he never knew of the place’s existence.

  “It’s hard to imagine I spent twenty years of my life a few blocks from it but never noticed this Hole.” Harry shakes his head in disbelief. “Let’s do it,” he decrees, pulling the car into traffic.

  He weaves the Honda through the streets of Alphabet City, over to the FDR and then onto the bridge, into Brooklyn.

  On Atlantic Avenue, we pull over near an Arabic grocery store where Jane wants to buy strange Arabic candy. Jane is fanatical about candy. She doesn’t even eat much herself but she always likes to have a few pieces in her pocket to dole out, like some sort of demented sweets fairy.

  Harry and I sit and smoke as she pops into the store, emerging a few minutes later toting two brown paper bags stuffed with odd bonbons.

  Jane feeds me strange candy as we drive deep into Brooklyn, through the grand decay of Crown Heights, on into bleak Brownsville, then through East New York, Harry’s childhood stomping grounds. We ride past the building he once lived in, a little two-story brick now ramshackled and blaring ominous hip hop from its entrails. We drive to what Harry had always thought was the end of Dumont Avenue, where it forks into a huge garish housing project.

  “Now go to your left, Dumont picks back up on the other side of the projects here,” I tell Harry, who is disbelieving but follows my instructions.

  Coming to the other side, we find the big dip in the road that leads down into the Hole. Junk cars and weeds share the swampy terrain with packs of wild dogs. Shooting off the sides of the central dirt road are the various stables, horse noses poking out of stall doors.

  A rotund Puerto Rican lady riding an equally rotund chestnut mare lopes down the road just ahead of us as Harry noses the Honda in front of Coleman’s stable.

  Coleman himself is sitting there on an overturned milk crate, feeding raw meat to Honey and Pokey. The cowboy looks relaxed, completely at ease in his world, as he should be considering no charges were brought against him.

  Coleman looks up, frowning at our car.

  “Hey, Coleman,” I say, sticking my head out the window.

  “Well if it ain’t Miss Troublemaker,” Coleman says, slitting his eyes at me.

  I introduce the cowboy to Harry and Jane. Coleman nods at them.

  As I get out of the car, the pitbulls emit low threatening growls. “Shush up,” Coleman says, turning the dogs mute.

  “I came to say good-bye to Joe,” I tell the cowboy.

  “Get in there and throw some tack on him.” Coleman motions toward the barn behind him.

  “Tack? I’m not gonna ride him, Coleman.”

  “What you doin’ here, then?”

  “Saying good-bye to him.”

  “Ain’t no better way to do that than have a little lope through the dunes,” Coleman says. “I’ll come with you. Gotta get Rusty out. Been in his stall two days.”

  I stare from Coleman to Harry’s car, where he and Jane are still sitting, looking around them at the strange vision that is the Hole.

  “What’s the matter, girl?” Coleman asks me.

  “What?”

  “You gonna get on your horse or what?”

  “I can’t ride Joe,” I say, a little dejected.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a racehorse.”

  “So what? You know how to ride, right?”

  “A little. But not a racehorse.”

  “He’s just a horse. Likes to go fast. Hang on tight and let him do his thing. You’ll be fine,” Coleman says, seeming irritated that I’d even think twice about it.

  It probably isn’t the wisest idea in the world, but it does appeal to me. Coleman suggests we put a halter on under Joe’s bridle. That way Coleman can keep him on a lead rope and, essentially, pony us along on the ride, tugging Joe in if he tries to take off with me.

  Eventually, my desire to get on the horse outweighs any notions of caution. I walk over to Harry’s car. “You guys can get out and walk around, you know. Coleman put the pitbulls away,” I tell them.

  “We will, we will,” Harry says, nodding slowly.

  It’s as if they’re afraid to get out and walk around, afraid the whole thing will evaporate like a strange dream.

  “I’m gonna go put some tack on Joe,” I say, expecting protests from Jane, who is obsessively protective of me, but she just nods pleasantly.

  “Can I borrow your shoes?” I ask, eyeing Jane’s brown oxfords.

  “What?” She frowns.

  “I can’t ride in these,” I say, motioning down at my pink pumps.

  “Oh,” Jane says. She dutifully removes her shoes. I slip them on. They’re a bit big but a vast improvement.

  “Thanks,” I say, handing her my pumps.

  I go into the barn and find Coleman foraging through a dusty trunk. “I got an English saddle in here somewhere,” he tells me.

  I help him sort through the heap of ancient tack. Toxic clouds of dust and mold rise up and make me sneeze. We finally unearth a small jumping saddle buried under some moldy blankets. It’s got a crusty girth still attached to it, and Coleman locates a bridle that will fit Joe.

  I find Joe hanging his head out of his stall, ears pricked forward. He whinnies gently as I come in to stand at his side.

  �
��And how is Your Equine Highness today?” I say, draping my arm over his muscular neck. He stands perfectly still, taking in the worship. I immediately feel better than I’ve felt in days.

  I put a halter on the colt and lead him into the aisle. He hasn’t been getting out much since moving into the Hole. Coleman hand-walks him every day and lets him trot around the small paddock out back but it’s not like he’s been putting in any serious workouts. He’s visibly excited as I give him a perfunctory brushing then start putting the tack on. He doesn’t even pin his ears back as I tighten the girth. The other horses look on with interest, sensing Joe’s excitement, probably flabbergasted at this strange thoroughbred stablemate who’s so anxious to go out and work.

  Harry and Jane both make appreciative noises as I bring Joe out onto the dirt road in front of the barn and present the colt to my friends.

  “He’s beautiful.” Jane’s eyes milk over and she stands there, looking absurd in her green socks.

  “That’s the biggest horse I’ve ever seen,” Harry decrees.

  “He’s a big guy,” I concur, taking a moment to panic over the fact that I’m about to climb aboard a seventeen-hand stallion who assumes that anytime someone gets on his back, he’s supposed to run as fast as his slender legs will take him.

  “Ruby, is this a good idea?” Jane’s face pinches with worry.

  “Joe will take care of me,” I tell her, though I’m not sure I believe it.

  “She’ll be fine, miss.” Coleman beams a reassuring smile at Jane as he snaps a lead rope onto the halter I’ve left on under Joe’s bridle.

  I lengthen the ancient saddle’s left stirrup, stick my foot in, and hoist myself onto the colt’s back.

  It’s a long way up.

  Joe points his ears forward and takes a few steps to the side as I settle into the saddle. I shorten the reins, gently taking his mouth into my hands. I look to my left and squeeze with my outside leg, asking Joe to walk forward and left. I feel his body tensing with anticipation as he takes a few quick steps.

  Coleman steers Rusty to Joe’s side and, keeping a short hold on the lead rope he’s snapped to Joe’s halter, takes us past the other stables, out toward the road we have to cross in order to get to a makeshift bridle path leading to the dunes.