The Bookwoman's Last Fling

by John Dunning

  “That’s how it goes. Nothing lasts forever.”

  “Nope. Not many career opportunities over there. But she didn’t give ’em any notice.”

  “That happens, too.”

  “Unlike Martha, though.”

  Meaningless small talk: a time killer. At last I said, “Bob, you might consider following Martha’s example and getting the hell out of here.”

  “Is that what she did?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Get out and do what?”

  “A little vacation is all.”

  “How am I supposed to pay for all this?”

  “Not to worry. There’s money coming from your guardian angel.”

  “Jesus. Just go, just like that? I might as well tell Sandy where to stick his job.”

  “I’ll try to cover you with Sandy when he gets here.”

  “Crap,” he said under his breath.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Why, for Christ’s sake? Make me understand why and I’ll go.”

  “I can’t make you understand what I don’t quite understand myself. But I’ve got a deal for you. Something you can’t refuse.”

  “Oh wow. Do I keep both hands in my pockets while you tell me? Or just bend over now?”

  “This is ranch work, Bob, it’s a piece of cake. Same kinda stuff you’re doing now, only better money. Fine working conditions, happy people, good pay, needy horses. That’s how I was sold on it. I think it can be fixed with Sandy for you to be gone till we see how the wind blows. But starting now, I’m going to be busy elsewhere.”

  I could see the worry in his eyes. “I hear Erin’s going with me.”

  I nodded.

  “She’s a good gal, Erin.”

  “Yes she is.”

  “You’re a lucky bastard.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  I dug deep for something else to say. “This is the right thing, Bob. Just don’t tell anybody.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “This too will pass, Bobby.”

  That afternoon I got them booked on a connecting flight to Idaho. I handed Bob a roll of money and sent them off in a cab with no time to spare.

  I called Martha from a bar near the racetrack and asked how it was going. Her nerves had worn thin.

  “I left him a message at the stable gate,” she said. “Told him I’d call him there at four o’clock.”

  “And he was there then?”

  “Oh, you bet he was.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “I couldn’t tell at first from his voice.” I heard her take a deep shivery breath. “I knew he was uptight when he found out it was me,” she said. “More so when I told him what I wanted.”

  “I’ll bet he was. Was he shocked?”

  “I think I’d describe him that way. Shocked numb in fact.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “He denied everything, but then I got angry and there was a quieter time when he just talked about the old days.”

  “Did that strike you as weird?”

  This whole goddam thing strikes me as weird. But I know what you mean. Here I’ve just accused him of murder and he slips into this quiet soliloquy, a reverie. The guard finally told him he’d have to stop tying up the phone.”

  “Did you get a tape?”

  “Yeah, I’ve done lots of interviews, I know how to do this. It came out fine.”

  “I’ll hear it later. But for now, what did he say? Exactly, Martha—as close as you can remember it.”

  She paused a moment, then said, “He couldn’t believe I would say something like that. It’s not true, he said, over and over, but conversationally, not at all angry like you’d expect. I mean, what would you do if some dame called and told you something like that? You’d hang up, right? Not him. He says, Look, we’ve known each other way too long to let stuff like that be said, as if we were ever bosom buddies, as if I was betraying him and throwing his long, warm friendship back in his face. He comes at me with this hurt on his sleeve till I wanted to ask him for a barf bag. People don’t trust each other anymore, he said. I told him there are good reasons for that, but he rambled on, remembering the days when it was just him and Damon and the old man. He remembered the first day I ever worked a race meet, years ago at Tanforan, how I walked horses for the stable across from him. He remembered things I had long forgotten, the colors of the silks, for God’s sake: what colors my first trainer had, and I remembered them too as he talked about them. He said how pretty I was, how different everything is now. The life, the horses, everything: It’s a whole new ball of wax. I almost felt hypnotized listening to him, his memories are so vivid, so real, and to anybody who worked here then, they’re true.”

  On the TV behind the bar the news bozo had passed off to the weather gal. Denver, Idaho, or Southern California, they all look alike: sweeping hair, perfect teeth, drowning the viewer in plastic. Back to you, guys.

  “What happened next?”

  “More of the same. I let it go on for a while, then I cut him off at the knees.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I know you didn’t want me to get into this yet, but I had to say it. Had to. Damn, I thought I was about to explode. So I said come on, Bax, let’s knock off the bullshit, I know you killed Candice. I didn’t have to fake the anger. When I think of Candice and I think of that idiot doing that to her, I can’t help it, I just get livid.” Her voice trembled. “And I’ve got to tell you, he frightens me.”

  “Easy, Martha, it’s all right. Just stay put, you’ll be fine, you’ll be out of there tomorrow. So you told him you knew about Candice. Then what?”

  “Talked about maybe meeting him.”

  “Umm-hmm. How’d that go?”

  “It was easy. He’s the one who brought it up. It sounded so natural; all I had to do was play my role. We really need to talk this out, he said. We can’t have you go off believing this stuff, much less spreading it around. Like yeah, I would believe such a thing and still meet him alone somewhere. He must think I’m the one who’s nuts.”

  “Is that what he suggested, that you meet him alone?”

  “He certainly implied that. Someplace, you know, where we could hash it out, and he could convince me—his words—that he was okay.”

  The moment settled and I pondered it. There seemed to be nothing else to say: Just meet Baxter at the time and the place. “Where?”

  “Restaurant called Larson’s, downtown Inglewood, away from the racetrack but public, you know, with people around. I told him that’s the only way I’d even consider it.”

  “And he believed this?”

  “I don’t know. It sounded okay at the time, but the whole conversation was almost surreal.”

  “When is this meeting supposed to take place?”

  “Tomorrow evening after work, around six o’clock.”

  We didn’t say anything then for almost a minute. I was running the whole screwy scenario through my head and apparently she was doing the same.

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “Play it by ear.”

  “Go there and meet him.”

  “At least go there. Watch and see what he does.”

  “Are you going to confront him?”

  “I’ll see how he acts when you don’t show. Then, maybe.”

  She said, “Maybe I should show.”

  I waited for the punch line.

  “If you were there too, I wouldn’t worry,” she said. “Just don’t let us out of your sight.”

  “Not even for a moment, Martha.” I took in a breath. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I think I should be there, look him in the eye, see what kind of lies he comes up with.”

  If I ever had a doubt about her, it was gone now. She shivered and I could hear the flutter in Arcadia. “I’m…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You’ll really think I’m nuts.”r />
  “Let me in on it, Martha, we’ll be nuts together.”

  “It’s just that when he was talking, there was suddenly something so touching about him. His voice quivered like a little boy about to cry. At that point he almost made me believe him.”

  I wanted to tell her that this might only be the classic ways and means of a psychopath: one of the countless variants in the craziness of the human animal. I wanted to say there are eight million stories in the Naked City and this may be one of them: at least she’d be old enough to remember that line. I wanted to ask if these were the antics of a harmless screwball or the methods of a vicious killer feeding his own bloodlust. Somebody was certainly killing people: Maybe the local news guy would figure it out in depth after the fact, but I thought the odds were against him; I wouldn’t bet on him finding the bathroom in the three minutes he called depth on TV. “What are you thinking?” Martha said across town, and I had no easy answer. I could give her my old standard, “I don’t think, I just react,” and sure, it’s a funny line but even I get tired of it. Hard to believe, but there are actually times when I become annoyed with my own bullshit. Unless you’re on TV, there are no easy answers. There never are, out here where the real people live and die.

  27

  An hour before the dawn I was sitting in the shedrow, surrounded by nothing but the void. There hadn’t been much sleep in my immediate past. My chair was propped back against the threshold of the open tack-room door, where I had been sitting for a while now, slowly waking up. In the dark I could almost picture the ghosts of the great horses that had run here—Swaps, Round Table, Citation—and I looked off across the tow ring at the barn across the way. The time was four-thirty by the clock in my head, and sure enough, almost at that second, the ginneys began stirring down the row and I heard hungry horses nickering in the distance. Lights began to appear two barns away, then in my own shedrow at the far end. But where I sat only the darkness remained, deeply black.

  So was this the day of Baxter? Obviously I didn’t know how this would all end but I was primed, I believed something would happen, and I sat still until the first trickles of light began spreading across the mountain range and down along the backstretch rail. I let my chair drop softly, got up, stretched, and headed over to the kitchen for some coffee.

  The place was buzzing with horsemen: trainers, exercise boys, ginneys, hot walkers, and jockeys. About one face in three was a woman’s. And then there was me. It didn’t take long to get established in the closed environment of a racetrack and already I knew some of them, if not by name, at least by their faces. I nodded to people as I took my coffee and sat for a moment, sipping it. All around me the hum of voices wafted, the rustle of the Daily Racing Form and the occasional Los Angeles Times: all around was laughter, coughing, the blowing of noses, the soft murmur of serious discourse. Another day, and money was here to be made and lost.

  I heard him coming. Amazing how fast an old cop can pick things out in a collage of common sounds. I played him cool, keeping my eyes down studiously on my Form.

  He sat without being invited. Slowly I raised my eyes and with my gentlest, pleasantest smile on, I said, “Hi, Bax.”

  His face was deadpan, and for the moment I didn’t know whether he’d try to be palsy or call me outside and haul my ashes. “I had a phone call from Martha,” he said. “You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

  “Martha who?”

  “The woman…”

  “…who works in here, oh yeah,” I said as if in very sudden enlightenment. But I left the question open to see where he’d take it.

  “She’s gone. You know anything about this?”

  “About what? What would I know?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  “Hell, I don’t know anything, Bax. Sounds like you’re pissed about something.”

  “I might be,” he said, “especially if I found out certain things.”

  “I might be too, if I were you. Any number of things tend to piss me off these days.”

  He stared at me until I said, “Anybody at this table got any idea what the hell we’re talking about?”

  “Nobody’s here but you and me, pilgrim.”

  Pilgrim. I smiled and he blinked at me. “Well,” I said, “I’m afraid I can’t offer you much enlightenment this early in the morning.”

  “Bullshit.” He smiled at me when he said that but the smile was a little late coming.

  I kept playing dumb with the slightly raised eyebrow.

  “Where’s she gone?” he said.

  “Martha? I have no idea.”

  He shook his head. “Where is she, Janeway?”

  “I’m sorry, did I stutter? I don’t know.”

  “You know, all right,” he said, and I looked at him steadily. “You know,” he said again.

  I shook my head.

  “Where’s that other ginney who was with you?”

  “He’s gone too.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he ran off to a desert island with Martha. Come on, Bax, what’s going on here?”

  “I’m trying to decide something.”

  “Lay it on me, I’ll see what I can do with it.”

  “I already told it to you, I want to know where Martha is.”

  “That I can’t help you with.”

  I waited calmly but he seemed to have second thoughts. “I want to know why you came to me asking for work,” he said. “Now of all times.”

  “You offered me a job, as I recall, and now’s as good as any other time. Sandy’s been pretty testy. Kinda like you’re being now, all of a sudden.” I leveled him with a look and said, “I’ve never worked well for a man who goes off if the moon doesn’t come up right.”

  “Like me, you mean?”

  “I never said that. I haven’t worked day one for you yet, I don’t know how you are.”

  “Sounds like you’re already giving notice and you haven’t even got the job yet.”

  “I’m trying to answer your questions is all. You’re the one who started this line of talk.”

  A slow smile played around the edge of his mouth, but his face remained tight.

  “Look, Bax, if you’ve got second thoughts…”

  “No, I was just wondering about Martha.”

  “Martha and me, you mean. Why would you even think about that?”

  “You two have been seen together, talking. Then the woman called and jacked me up and I’d like to know what you know about her.”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s it then, nothing?”

  “Not a damn thing. I know she writes, she’s interested in books, and so am I. I met her in the kitchen and we’ve had two or three talks about writers. She likes William Faulkner and I wanted to know somebody who can explain him to me.”

  “William Faulkner,” he said dumbly. “That’s what you’re telling me this is about? William Fuckin’ Faulkner.”

  “That’s it.”

  He looked at me like some alien life-form and I said, “He’s not easy to read, Faulkner. You ever tried reading him?”

  “Not today.”

  “Take a look at him and you’ll see what I mean.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know why anybody’d read shit like that.”

  I watched him walk away, oblivious to the people around him. An old man loudly invited him to join a table of fellows like himself but he went on by without even a nod at their existence. Someone at their table chuckled softly as he went out into the rosy morning. I lingered just long enough to finish my coffee, then I headed over to Bax’s shedrow.

  Horsemen and horses were suddenly everywhere. Racing would begin in less than three weeks and the place was filling up. Bax had gone to the track and I decided to play it as if this morning’s conversation had never happened. Let him run me off with the chain end of a lead shank if that’s what he wanted. I asked Rigger Boyles where I should start and he said, “Hold that horse when Ba
x brings him back and then we’ll find you something.” Bax returned in five minutes. He didn’t run me off, he just handed me the horse while his ginney gave him a bath. We covered him with a blanket and I started him around the tow ring. This went on for a while: I walked hots until Bax said, “You want to get your feet wet, you can get that gray horse ready for the track. See if you can figure out which end his ass is fastened to.”

  That was it: He was giving me a baptism by fire and I had no idea what to do next. I stood in the stall for a minute trying to work it out. The horse needed a bridle. Okay, what kind of bridle? D-bit, ring-bit, what? I leaned over the webbing and asked the ginney in the next stall if she had ever rubbed this horse. “Yeah, he’s a bit pissy,” she said. “Catch him wrong and he bites.” That told me something at least: I put him in a D-bit and brushed out his mane. “Wake up, pissy one,” I said, and the horse nuzzled me and let me drape an arm over his neck. Hey, I like this guy, I thought. So what if he did have his pissy moments, he hadn’t had them with me yet.

  Bax returned and I led the gray out into the shedrow. Bax looked at the bridle and said nothing about it, so I must have passed the first test. He saddled his horse and gave his boy, who was actually a girl, a leg up; then they headed along the road to the track. I began drawing a bucket of steaming water and got ready for their return.

  I washed the horse with a sopping wet sponge and scraped him off. I walked him too, and so the morning went.

  Bax left without a word. His guy Rigger and I hung out with one of his two girl ginneys until Rigger left.

  “Except for Rigger, Bax seems to prefer women pretty much across the board,” I said.

  “Yeah, we’re easier to work with, we’re gentler with the horses, and we don’t tend to have troubles like drinking and carousing.”

  Her name was Ruth: she was in her late twenties and had been with Bax two years.

  “How’s he to work for?”

  “He’s always been good to me. I think he gets a bum rap from others.”

  “Maybe I’ll be workin’ for him,” I said; “but it does seem like I got off on the wrong foot.”