by Rex Burns
“It was a rank horse. Anybody ought to ride good on a horse like that.”
“A lot of riders didn’t stay on at all,” said Wager.
“Well, I’d of liked to done better.”
“Is the stock a problem at these rodeos?”
“Yes, ma’am. It ain’t very consistent. And the best ones go on up to the big rodeos pretty quick.”
“I thought you should have had a re-ride on the bull.”
“He had his mind set on running, didn’t he?” He unlocked the camper door, and they shoved the bag into the truck. “But I should have rode better even at that.”
“At least you didn’t break your arm like that one rider,” said Wager.
James gave a little laugh. “Yeah—third time, same arm, for him. He just got the cast off last week.”
Wager glanced at the saddles and ropes lining one side of the truck bed. “All that equipment’s yours? It looks pretty expensive.”
“The rigging? Yeah, it’s best to have your own. And it does cost, that’s a fact.” He folded up his shirt sleeve and began unwinding tape from his right arm. “Anything particular you wanted to see us about, Mr. Wager?”
“I’m a friend of your dad. I told him I was coming up here, and he asked me to say hello, that’s all.”
James carefully folded the elastic tape and reached down to unbuckle the straps that held his dull spurs on scarred and deeply creased boots. “Haven’t heard much from him in a long time.” He straightened, the rowel clinking against its stop, and looked at Wager with eyes that flatly masked any feeling. “In fact, I didn’t even think he knew we were alive.”
“He wanted to get up here,” Wager lied. “But he had to go to Oklahoma for some stock.”
“Yeah, right. Well, that’s nothing new. He always did have something better to do.”
“Who has something better to do, Jimmy?” A taller cowboy rounded the side of the truck. A couple of years older and heavier across the shoulders, he had the same dark hair and eyes. But the chin on this one was bonier and longer, and bore a thin white scar just above the jaw line like an old knife wound. “You the one that left the note for us?”
James introduced them to John. “He says Daddy asked him to say hello.”
“Oh?” John’s mouth widened slightly in a polite smile. “Thanks. That nice of you. Nice of him to think about us.”
“We enjoyed the rodeo,” said Jo. “Do you have another one next weekend?”
John’s eyes went up and down Jo’s shirt and jeans with a practiced glance before he smiled. “Sure do. We’ll be over in Utah. Week after, down in Walsenburg. Maybe we’ll do a little better there—I sure hope so. That’s a PRCA rodeo.”
“Are you PRCA members?” she asked.
“I got my permit. Jimmy’s got to wait until he’s eighteen for his. If Ma signs for him.”
Jo had told Wager about the certification rules: after a rider obtained his beginner’s permit, he had three years to win a thousand dollars in PRCA-sanctioned rodeos in order to earn his full membership card. “If she won’t,” said Wager, “maybe your dad will.”
“We don’t need him to sign,” said James. “We don’t need him for nothing, now.”
“Jimmy, these folks ain’t interested in that. What line of work you in, Mr. Wager?”
“I work for the city of Denver. Do you rodeo all year round?”
“We aim to in time. I guess it runs in the family.”
“Can you make a living at it?”
“Didn’t look that way today, did it? Cost us some money today, didn’t it, Jimmy?”
“Do you win enough to pay expenses?” asked Jo.
“Not yet. We work a ranch over in Ute County.”
“Which one?” asked Wager.
John hesitated, eyeing Wager. Then he shrugged. “The T Bar M.”
“They let you off every weekend to rodeo?”
“Well, yeah. I’m the ranch manager and I work it out so’s we can rodeo.”
“That’s lucky.”
“Right. Jimmy and me, we’re real lucky.” John gestured to his brother to take off the number pinned to the back of his shirt. Then he did the same for James. Behind them, three cowboys watched a long-legged blond stride through the parking lot. She saw them looking at her and spit a stream of brown juice their way. A worn circle marking a tobacco can rose and fell on the smooth, taut curve of her jeans. One of the cowboys punched the other on the shoulder and said, “Gawdamn, Hern, how’d you like to swap slobber with that one?”
“Just what kind of work do you do for the city of Denver, Mr. Wager?” asked John.
“Police.”
“Police? Well, now.” He tied a coiled rope with a thong and laid it carefully in the camper. “Wouldn’t have thought Daddy’d have a policeman for a friend.”
“We grew up in the same neighborhood. I’ve known him a long time.”
“Can’t say Jimmy or I have. But no hard feelings—a man does what he’s got to do, right, Jimmy?”
“Right.”
“Maybe you and Tom can be in the same rodeo sometime,” said Wager. “I know he’d like that.”
“Might work out that way. We’ll see what happens.” John touched a forefinger to his hat brim. “If you’ll excuse us, ma’am. We got to turn in our numbers and then get on down the road.”
They watched the two cowboys walk with their stiff-legged gait toward the arena secretary’s office, the tailored yokes of their western shirts rolling slightly from side to side. James’s hat bobbed with the strength of what he was saying, and John’s Stetson wagged a brief negative as they turned out of sight.
“Did you ever notice,” Wager asked Jo, “how friendly civilians are after you tell them you’re a cop? It’s almost as warm and cozy as saying you have herpes.”
“You could tell them you have AIDS.”
“That’s not my kind of disease, kid.”
“We’ve got a whole weekend to find out.”
CHAPTER 4
A COUPLE OF days passed before Wager managed to get in touch with Tom Sanchez, and there wasn’t much to tell him when he did.
“I’ve asked around and haven’t come up with a thing, Tommy. I’m still waiting on information from a couple other sources, but I don’t expect too much.”
“All right, Gabe. I appreciate your trying.” The telephone line crackled as if water had seeped into the cable. “Did you get a chance to see them last weekend?”
“Yes. James came in third on the barebacks, and John got fourth on the bulls.”
“Well, that ain’t too bad. That’s a good little amateur rodeo over there, so that ain’t bad at all.” Tommy cleared his throat. “Did—ah—did they look OK, Gabe?”
“They looked fine. They said they planned to be in Walsenburg in a couple of weeks.”
“The Walsenburg rodeo? I could maybe get over that way … You told them I said hello?”
“I did.”
“What’d they say?”
“They didn’t sing hallelujah.”
“No, I don’t reckon they would.”
“But they didn’t tell me to go to hell, either. I think they’d like it if you went to see them.”
“Well, I’ll think about it.” There was something else on his mind, and finally he came out with it. “I’ve been doing some more asking around, and I can’t come up with nothing to get my hands on neither. It’s like the viejos used to say, there’s an itch but no place to scratch.”
“I can’t do any more than I’m doing, Tommy.”
“I know that, Gabe—I’m not asking you to. But you remember that place over in Glenwood? That bar I told you about?”
He didn’t, but he said he did.
“Well, I found out that Johnny drinks with a fella named Jerry Latta there. I asked this old boy to find out who Johnny was drinking with, and he said it was this Jerry Latta.”
Wager remembered now: the Hanging Lake Lounge, where someone had seen John spend some time. Wager si
ghed and wrote it down; he’d wanted some more names, and now the old cowboy had brought one. “I’ll see what I can find out on him.” Which would probably be nothing. How many people could a rodeo cowboy drink beer with? “Do you know anything about him? Is he in rodeo?”
“No. I checked that—he’s not a PRCA member, anyways. I never heard of him before.”
“All right. Do you know John’s a ranch manager?”
“Manager? Ranch manager?”
“That’s what he said.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“How old is John?”
“Nineteen, twenty. He’s a couple years older than Jimmy. That’s really something: ranch manager! What ranch is it?”
“The T Bar M. Ever heard of it?”
“No. Where’s it at?”
“Ute County.”
“I never heard of it. I don’t get out there too much.”
“Isn’t he young to be a manager?”
“Well, yeah. But he’s got a lot of experience—and somebody over there must know a good man when they see one. That really brightens my day!”
“How much does he get paid for that kind of work?”
“Depends on how big the ranch is. It could be twice as much as what they pay a regular hand. But even if it ain’t, that’s a real good start for somebody that young. Ranch manager!”
And it offered a happy alternative to John’s wasting his life in rodeo. “James works there, too.”
“Now that’s good—that Johnny’s looking after his brother. That speaks real good of him, don’t it?”
Wager answered the muted plea in the man’s voice. “Yes. If something turns up, I’ll give you a call, Tom.”
“Appreciate it, Gabe—gracias, amigo.”
But nothing came up that tour or the next, and after a few more, Tommy and his problems were buried under the steady drizzle of cases spawned by the heat that filled the city’s streets and left them baking long after the shadows of the mountains brought relief from the cloudless sun. The heat forced people out of their apartments and houses to sit on dark front porches or stroll the sidewalks and try to find a puff of cool air. It sent others into the air-conditioned bars to swig beer and sweat and finally to get happy or careless or mean. It led women to open their windows when they went to bed in the hopes of trapping a stray breeze, or to leave the back door ajar with the screen locked in futile security. All these things that in earlier times would have been harmless relief from the heat now made people vulnerable to those who had been waiting.
Wager and Max finished the day shift and rotated to the night, a new schedule that ran from 7:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. It put two homicide officers on duty for an hour past the 2:00 a.m. closing time for bars, the period when most of the drunken trouble was pushed out onto the streets to either sober up or explode. The hours from 3:00 to 8:00 in the morning were supposed to be covered by a homicide officer who was on call. All that meant, of course, was an extra stretch of duty that helped cover the manpower shortage and was not registered on the work roster unless the officer responded to a homicide. It was the new administration’s attempt to cut down on overtime that had to be compensated for, but it didn’t work. When a case came in at 2:45, the duty watch couldn’t shrug and say to hell with it, let the on-call handle it. Instead, they grabbed a radio-pack and took the elevator down to the stale-smelling basement where the official cars were parked in their shadowy stalls. Then they squealed their tires across town through empty red lights to the cluster of figures looming over the twisted shape on the sticky sidewalk in front of a bar’s orange-and-green neon.
“What’s this one?” asked Max.
The uniformed officer wagged his flashlight beam across the body. “Stabbing. The ME’s already been here.”
“He was found on his back like that?”
“No—his friends turned him over after he got cut.”
The flash of strobe lights from the police photographer winked like heat lightning against the dark storefronts on each side of the bar. It was a quick record of the site and the corpse. The lab photographer’s real work would come at the morgue while they undressed the victim. As each layer of clothes came off, pictures would establish the location of all wounds, the angles of penetration, the cause or causes of death. But that would wait for the day shift. The victim wasn’t going anywhere, and it cut down on the overtime.
“What’s that all over him?” asked Wager.
“Beer. His girlfriend poured a couple pitchers of beer on him trying to wake him up after he went down.”
“Was she sober enough to tell you anything?”
“None of them’s sober. But here’s what I got so far.”
Walking Max and Wager through the action, the officer—a young one whom Wager did not recognize—traced the fight that started as the bar closed. “The victim’s name is Sam Walking Tall and the assailant’s been identified as Robert Smith.”
“Is he an Indian, too?”
“That’s what Sam’s girlfriend says. That’s her over there in the doorway.” He pointed to a figure sitting on a low step and propped against the brick entry. Her head rested heavily on folded arms, and long gray-and-black strings of hair hung across her knees and brightly patterned dress and skinny shanks. “Looks like she’s out again.”
“I hope she tells the same story when she’s sober,” said Max.
“She said Sam and this Robert Smith knew each other on the reservation up in South Dakota—the Rosebud Reservation. Anyway, they were arguing all night long, and when the bar closed, Sam and Molly White Horse—that’s her name—came out of the bar and turned here.”
“Facing south?”
“Facing south. They went about six steps and Robert Smith came out of that doorway there and stabbed him.”
“Did he say anything? Did Sam fight or challenge him or anything?”
“Not according to Molly. He just stepped out and swung and Sam went down, and Robert Smith ran off in that direction, west, across the street and into that alley over there.”
“Anybody go after him?”
“Hell, they could hardly stand up. Anyway, they turned him over and saw he’d been stabbed, and the bartender called the police. Meantime, Molly’s got this pitcher of beer and she’s crying and yelling for Sam to get up, and pouring it over him like this.” The shadow of his arm dipped to the still figure. In the background, black uniforms not quite invisible in the pale of the street lamps, the man-and-wife team of the Cadaver Removal Service waited to be called forward. Behind them, a news photographer kneeled to take a long-range picture of the scene and the police; and Gargan, crime reporter for the Post, stepped over the fluorescent tape and aimed toward Wager.
“Stay outside, Gargan. You know the rules.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Wager. What happened?”
He took the reporter’s arm and led him away from Max and the uniformed officer. “Your basic barroom stabbing.” At least the television people weren’t here screwing up the scene by shoving and scuffling to get closest and to interview witnesses before the police got to them. Their crews went home at midnight, but Gargan made up for them.
“Now stand over here till we get through.”
“What is he, an Indian?”
“That’s right. We’ll tell you all about it when we get our investigation completed.”
“Sure you will, Wager. I’ve heard that one before. Hey, Max—what’s the story?”
Max lifted a hand but stood where he was with the still-talking officer; Wager tapped Gargan’s bony chest with a finger. “Stay out of the way. Period.”
“‘Period’? Jesus, Wager, you almost sound like you can read.”
“Nobody can read your stuff.” He turned back to Max, ignoring the drawn-out haa-haa that Gargan threw after him. Wager could not remember the beginnings of his feud with the reporter, and in fact the beginnings were no longer important; Gargan was simply a shit.
Max was asking the officer, “Is the bart
ender still around?”
“Yeah. Inside there cleaning up. He didn’t see the stabbing, but he verified that Sam and Robert had been picking at each other earlier.”
“He’s sober?”
“About the only one.”
“OK, thanks. Write up what you’ve got and we’ll take statements from the witnesses.”
They tried to, anyway. The bartender, in a practiced way, told them what he had seen and then asked if he could close up and go home. “The wife’ll be worried. She don’t sleep good until I get home.”
They let him.
Molly said she didn’t have a home now that Sam was dead, and she wished she was dead too, and that if Wager couldn’t give her something to drink would he at least shut up and let her go to sleep.
“This Robert Smith, Molly, you want us to get him, don’t you? Molly, do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“You want us to get the guy that stabbed Sam, don’t you? Where does Robert Smith live, Molly?”
“Don’t know.”
“What about friends? Do you know any of his friends? Molly?”
“She’s out again, Gabe. Let’s take her in to sleep it off. She can tell her story in the morning.”
“Max—hey, Max, how about telling me what’s going on? Is that a witness? Did she stab him? Come on, Max, good police relations with the fourth estate, right?”
It took almost half an hour to book Molly into the detention center with an isolation hold on her. The turnkey promised she’d have a bath and breakfast and be able—if not willing—to talk to the duty officers tomorrow. The rest of the paperwork, including the responding officers’ reports, took another hour to finish, package up, and leave in the tray to be combined with the lab reports when they came down tomorrow. Max finally talked to Gargan while Wager finished the cover letter for the captain to read in the morning, and the two men wearily rode the elevators to the main floor and walked out into the thinning summer night. This was one of the worst times, when the coffee tasted like sour water, the long hours piled like stones on weary shoulders, and a vacation didn’t sound so bad after all. Above them, gaining outline against the sky, office towers rose toward a coming dawn; at the buildings’ feet, darkness still filled the streets and alleys and covered whatever hole Robert Smith had found to crawl into. Down those alleys cruised police cars, their lights probing the corners, and within a few hours the day shift would begin to gather the facts of Robert Smith’s life: where he came from, what he was doing in Denver, where he lived and worked, who his friends were, and where he might have run. He would be found. Then the statements and paperwork and laboratory reports and testimony would all be pulled together for his day in court. And Wager and Max would log another couple of hours of unpaid overtime.