The Right Wrong Number: An Ed Earl Burch Novel

by Jim Nesbitt

  The two Asians cut out of the flow and down a side staircase. Burch eyed the people milling and standing near the cut in the wall that opened onto the staircase. He sidled his way past two drunk roughnecks in gimme caps that advertised drilling equipment and thought about easing the Colt out of its holster. He decided not to and hit the staircase. On the wall to the left of the opening, a sign said: Contestants, Concessionaires.

  Burch was neither. But he could turn on the good-ol’-boy and bullshit his way past most rent-a-cops, parking lot guards and uniformed flunkies. On a good day. Just like this.

  At the end of a hallway walled with concrete block painted the puke yellow of high schools and hospitals, two tables were drawn together with a narrow opening between them. Four middle-aged women, two at each table, sat in folding metal chairs. In front and behind each table stood a guard — Lone Star Security on the shoulder patches, pot-bellies curving over pistol belts and billy clubs.

  Milling around either side of this barrier were cowboys with numbered squares pinned to loud print shirts, along with stockmen, friends and hangers-on. He saw Thanh and the younger man disappear behind a bend on the other side of the tables.

  Burch picked a young blond-headed competitor wearing a three-digit number, bat-wing chaps, a straw Resistol with a George Strait San Antone roll and crease and the bored look athletes use to cover the butterflies.

  “Howdy. You up soon?”

  “Naw. I’m in the slack.”

  “Rough stock or timed?”

  “Roper. Calves and team.”

  “Oh — good deal. You know Bill Huber?”

  “Yew bet.”

  “I owe him some money. I don’t suppose you could get me through here.”

  The cowboy rubbed his jaw and spat on the floor. For a second, Burch thought he had blown it.

  “Yew bet.”

  They walked up to the table. The cowboy arched a thumb at Burch and said: “He’s with me.” The guards nodded in unison. They passed on through and walked toward the dirt, noise, smells, portable corrals and pawing stock common to the backside of any rodeo. Glaring lights that made you squint. Noise that jacked your blood pressure, made you sweat and made it tough to hear the spoken word.

  “‘Preciate this. Been awhile since I’ve been on this side of the chutes.”

  “My pleasure, mister. Ever cowboy up?”

  “No. Too rough for me. Football was my poison. My cousins rode a lot. Real regulars at Mesquite. Didn’t do the circuit much. Too busy working the ranch. Real cow hands. I helped them out. Hung around the chutes. Drove the truck. Warmed up their mounts. That kind of thing.”

  “Mesquite. That’s Dallas. Never been there. Heard it’s kind of a cocktail party with bulls and broncs as chasers.”

  “That would be Mesquite. Every Friday night. Great place to get throwed. In and out of the ring. Where you from?”

  “Wyoming.”

  “Got a name?”

  “Name’s Ken Archer.”

  Burch shook Archer’s hand and gave his real name.

  “Tell me somethin’, Mr. Burch. You don’t really know Bill Huber at all, do you?”

  “No, Ken. Not really. Only met him once. At Pocatello. Seemed like a real nice fella.”

  “Thought so. Ol’ Bill don’t loan nobody any money that don’t ride the circuit.”

  “Guess you want to know what I’m up to.”

  “None of my business, mister.”

  “`Preciate you seein’ it that way.”

  “Yew bet.”

  Archer tapped the brim of his hat in salute and peeled away from Burch. They parted just behind the corrals holding the rough stock — a series of pens divided by metal pipes that held the bulls and broncs. The dirt was a clumpy, chocolate brown clay-based mixture that covered the concrete he was standing on and the long ramp that sloped between the stands to the heat, humidity and parked stock trailers outside the Dome.

  No Thanh. No Asian gunsel in black. No flunky in a green Baylor sweatshirt. No Mr. Slick. No joy, as the jet jocks say. At any angel. Just blue sky and no contrails.

  Burch didn’t worry. At his eleven o’clock, there was a Pace Arrow RV with a large sign advertising it as headquarters for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the big league sanctioning body of the sport. At his two o’clock, there was a long red snack trailer with a round Coca-Cola sign centered at the top of its facade. Asian faces worked the counter, serving free cups of Col. Pemberton’s Atlanta-grown elixir to the cowboys. In between the two was a short ramp leading to locker rooms. On a metal door to the right side of the ramp was another one of those convenient signs that said: Concessionaires. His gut told him Thanh and his lethal youngsters were behind that door.

  The arena was at his eight o’clock. A clown was working a routine with a donkey and a rubber chicken. Burch couldn’t remember the punch line. At his seven, the rough stock chutes —snorting broncs, frantic stockmen, tense riders and cowboys perched like crows on the catwalks and cross beams. At his nine ran a broad pathway between the stands and the arena rail, a link between the rough stock chutes where Burch stood and the chutes for the timed events — bulldogging, calf roping and team roping.

  Burch leaned on the cross-pipe of the corral, ignoring the proximity of a dozing brindle-colored bull with the wheelbase of a milk truck, a dropped horn with the curve of a Gurkha fighting knife and the floppy hump that marked him as a Brahma. You could ignore something this big and deadly but you could never lose the feel of sleeping nastiness just inches away from your back.

  The feeling braced Burch and relaxed him at the same time. Made him more alert. He enjoyed it. To his left, along the rail, the hardboys of rodeo, the bullriders, flexed, stretched and worked their rigging with rosin. Impossibly small and young-looking, they were gearing up nerve and muscle for the night’s finale, short rides on a ton and a half of slobbering meanness. Some rides shorter than others. Or deadlier. Lane Frost’s last turn at Cheyenne still burned the collective rodeo memory. A horn to the heart. A dead cowboy in the dirt.

  All testosterone and tension up on that stretch of the rail. Rolling necks and eyes. Furious concentration on small items and tiny, practiced gestures. Hard glares for those inside and outside their circle. The pre-game smell of fear that any ex-jock can recognize.

  For those faddish folk just surfing the curl of the cowboy craze, this is the Main Event. They may not know how hard it is to rope and ride. They might not appreciate the subtle combination of power and finesse shown by a bulldogger or the flashing skill of a calf roper. But they could plug into the current pumping out of this socket. Sure as hell. It holds the thrill of primal power. The promise of violence and blood. And the strong hint of death.

  Big Money could smell the waves of ozone rippling from this electric connection. So could television. Big Action emphasized; the subtler cowboy arts downplayed; rodeo seen through a distorted lens; heroes made out of men ballsy enough to ride a bull but utterly clueless about ranching, cattle, riding and roping. Hanging around his cousins at the Mesquite rodeo, Burch often heard them dismiss the competition with this phrase: “Aw, he ain’t what you’d call a real ranch hand — he’s just one of them rodeo cowboys.” Bravery with the bulls was no guarantee a man could be trusted to cinch up a saddle tight enough not to fall off.

  Even the cowboys buy into the distortion, lusting after the cash that is finally flowing into rodeo, cussing the corny clown acts, the kiddy events and the long delays between events. It is a pace ill-suited for the camera’s eye, they say, one that harkens back to county fairs, roundups and rodeo’s roots in the unique, workaday skills demanded of those who work cattle and its status as the only sport to rise out of a laborer’s duties. Rodeo’s got to leave the past in the past, they say. Rodeo’s got to get modern.

  Leaning on the rail of a corral at the Astrodome with a few tons of rough stock at his back, Burch didn’t feel the need to defend the tradition of rodeo. He felt at home, at ease among people girding themse
lves for a hard, hard sport. But he knew he had to move. To his rear, sitting in a spot that was tucked next to the mouth of the ramp he just passed through, was a horse trailer with its rear doors open, an awning propped up over the back and an old man shoveling manure and soiled hay out of the stalls. Burch walked over.

  “Need some help?”

  “No sir. Got her covered.”

  “Mind if I perch myself here?”

  The old man stopped his work. He leveled a look at Burch.

  “What’s your business, son?”

  “I need a clear view of that door and that snack stand.”

  “You the law?”

  “Used to be. Kind of now. Been trailin’ some Vietnamese gentlemen.”

  “Well you just missed two of `em. Young guy in black and that older one with the cigarette holder. Must think he’s F-D-goddam-R. Went through that door over there. Slopes been goin’ in and out of there all night like a bunch of ants. Don’t like the looks of them sumbitches. Didn’t kill enough of `em when we were over there if you ask me. Have a seat.”

  The old man gestured at a stack of overturned feed buckets in the shadow of the awning. Burch spotted a gimme cap on a hook just inside the door. He grabbed it — a sweat-stained red number with Carnation Feed scripted in white across the front — slapped it on his head and sat down. A small change in profile.

  The old man went back to work. And didn’t say another word.

  SEVENTEEN

  For most people, on the majority of the days that make up their lives, the world is a chaotic place that assaults them as they struggle to get to work, feed the kids, find love or seek out a quiet place to turn it all off and breathe an unharried breath. Too many choices, too much feedback, too many snarling dogs and snappish humans.

  All this just on the days when true disaster doesn’t strike — a car wreck that kills your spouse, a tornado that threshes your house into matchsticks and lost memories, a child molester wearing the cloak of a trusted coach striking your brood, a gangbanger deciding your head would make an excellent target while he rides down a traffic-clogged interstate and decides to practice using the new gun he just stole.

  But there are times when the world narrows down to an essence or a simplicity — the sure cut of a running back as a hole opens up in a line of thudding bodies, the moment a buck steps into the crosshairs and a hunter squeezes the trigger or lets the arrow fly, the first shot in a firefight, the defenseless afterglow of an orgasm that lets love pierce a hardened heart.

  For Burch, the world became a suddenly narrow place when he spotted the flash of a green Baylor sweatshirt heading down the locker room ramp. Two cowboys obscured his vision. They parted and Burch could see that the sweatshirt was on the body of the first young Vietnamese kid he saw at Thanh’s T-shirt stand. The youngster was leading a tall, trim gray-haired man with a deep-water tan, a military haircut and the wounded stride of an ex-jock with bad knees.

  Burch was still in the shadow of the awning. He pushed away panic and the desire for sudden movement. He pushed away this thought: Where’s Mr. Slick?

  He fought very hard to sit still and watch. Before he walked into the arena, he’d been in the groove and felt the calm that instinctive sureness brings. While he was leaning against the corral, feeling the tension of the bullriders and the napping malevolence of the bull, he’d been alert and relaxed.

  But sitting at the back end of this horse trailer, with the rise and fall of the crowd noise and the nagging desire to see what was happening in the center of the arena, out there in the dirt, beyond the pennants, banners and cowboys who perched on the superstructure of pipes and catwalks above the chutes, Burch became antsy. He couldn’t find a place to rest his hands. He couldn’t find a position that didn’t hurt his butt. A thin ridge of plastic cut into each ass cheek.

  Burch forced himself to become very still. The man with the gray brush cut was Crowe. No doubt. Now that his quarry was in sight, he wanted to leap out and kill it. Or tackle it — a full-bore, hat-on-hat hit, a total pancake. He was fighting old cop and ballplayer instincts and even older fight-or-flight reflexes that man has carried since emerging from the primal ooze. See the perp, nail him. See the ballcarrier, drill him. See the prey, kill it. See the predator, run.

  To get Crowe’s money, Burch had to get Crowe. To get Crowe, he had to be patient. He had to wait. While the deal went down behind the closed door and the roar of the rodeo crowd thrummed through his bones and left him jangled and edgy.

  The barrel racers were running: Hard-charging women with wild eyes, thick-muscled thighs and teeth clamped around braided leather quirts, thundering into the arena on fast cow ponies. Speed, power and finesse from their mounts. A dirt dance around the barrels. A flat-out sprint through the spaces in between. Not that Burch could see them. The omnipotent voice of the announcer gave Burch an update he couldn’t avoid. The images running through Burch’s mind turned the peg on his wired nerves.

  Burch did what the techno-cops call a risk assessment. A threat analysis. Keep it simple for the redneck challenged — Who the hell can shoot your ass?

  A sure bet was the youngster in Baylor colors — a pistol in the waistband covered by that oversized sweatshirt. At least one gun behind the door with Thanh if the youngster in the stylish black jacket was there. Crowe would also be packing. But not the ever-elegant Thanh; he wouldn’t soil his manicured hands with clunky hardware. He would get close with his blade and go for the throat. Or the back. Two main players and a skeletal supporting cast. In a very public place that gave comfort to both of them.

  That strengthened Burch’s hunch about the envelope Thanh took from the briefcase. Burch imagined the rest of the set up. Thanh handing the envelope to Crowe with a sheaf of cash inside; Crowe giving Thanh a sample of the goods. A ritual and prelude to the real deal, a trade of bona fides that symbolized shared risk.

  Burch figured the product was elsewhere and so was most of the money. Crowe and Thanh would go to the product and money to complete the transaction face to face. Very risky for Crowe but he needed his hands on the cash. Now.

  Burch didn’t know if he could tail them all the way to the trade and didn’t know how much cash he could scoop up if he did. Didn’t matter. He did know he could be a human wrecking ball, smashing Crowe’s emergency pipeline and leaving that arrogant asshole naked and alone against that killer conga line. It would have to do.

  Sudden darkness. The Astrodome in a blitz blackout. Burch’s heart lurched. He felt the tilting pitch of vertigo. Laser lights flashed and stabbed the stands. Like tracer in a firefight. Strobes stuttered. The announcer started a rumbling intro, his voice booming the bass notes. Crowd noise ratcheted up to jet turbine level.

  Bulls and the snuff-dipping samurai who ride them. He worried about losing his quarry in the dark. He rose from his seat and edged toward the corral, straining to see the door closed on the deal going down between Crowe and Thanh. He pitched the borrowed cap onto the pile of overturned feed buckets.

  Bulls banged the pipes. Burch jumped then steadied himself. Stockmen cussed as they coaxed bulls from the pens and into the narrow alleyways that circled left and right and led to the rear of the chutes. Working his way toward the door, Burch felt this action more than he saw it — lighter space where darker bulk stood just a second before, the shadowy dodge of the stockman, the zapping sound of a cattle prod, the smell of burned hide and hair. And fresh bullshit — a natural form of protest.

  Burch stood at the last angle of the corral, the corner closest to the door. The lasers stopped. So did the announcer’s voice. The crowd noise fell to a long yammer and a constant buzz, one part beehive, the other part jackhammer.

  Strong spotlights flooded the chutes and the first quarter of the ring. The glare blinded Burch — a garish white that struck the chopped up dirt, the mounted pickup men, the red-and-white barrel and the two clown-suited bullfighters, one sitting on top of the barrel, the other in the feet-apart stance of a linebacker, standing on
the balls of his feet, hands dangling between his thighs, about five yards in front of the first gate that was about to boom open with the twisting bulk of a bull and rider.

  He felt buck naked and exposed. The chute gate clanged like a car clipping a guardrail. The crowd noise pierced his ears and bored into his chest. He moved forward and to his right to get out of the light, glancing to his left and the center of the arena.

  Quick snapshots in shadows and glare.

  The brindle bull, rump high in the air, shit smearing its butt, tongue out and slobber flying as it twists its head upward and to the right, trying to hook a horn into the rider. An overmatched cowboy in a white shirt with a blue flame across the chest, already behind the curve, black hat flying forward, head snapping back, out of synch and one buck away from a drilling in the dirt.

  Burch veers toward the Coke stand, his face toward the door, letting his light-shocked eyes pick up the grays and blacks of the shadows again. The door opens. Two figures fill the brightened frame. Burch reaches inside his jacket and clears the Colt, thumbing off the safety and easing into a two-handed grip and a combat shuffle.

  An empty doorway. Two new figures in the frame. A flash of brushy gray tops the one to Burch’s left. He steps forward slowly, shifting his head so his peripheral vision can pick up the first two figures — the young guns, in a black trapezoid between the glare of the arena and the light from the door and the Coke stand.

  Two more steps. His eyes pick up the young guns. One is heading toward the locker room ramp. The other faces the pens. Twenty yards between him and them. Crowe and Thanh step through the door.

  An opening.

  Speed, shadows and glare. More noise than Burch can stand, noise that thrums through his chest and makes him open and close his mouth as if his jaw hinge is stuck.

  Ten yards. Now five.