Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (13 page)

Sanchez looked away.

Peterson cried out, grabbed for his arm.

But I wasn’t done with him.

No, not by a long shot.

I went to work on him, and when it was
finally over, when Sanchez finally pulled me off him, my knuckles
were split and bloodied and I was gasping for breath.

37.

The MGD bottle slipped from my fingers and
crashed to my cement balcony. Foam erupted among the broken glass
shards.

Shit.

I considered grabbing another beer from the
twenty-four pack at my feet, then decided to give it a rest for the
night. Instead, I began drunkenly counting the empty glass bottles
standing like sentries along the tabletop, lost count, started
over, lost count again, then decided that I had drunk a shit-load
of beer tonight.

I had murders, child molesters, broken arms,
dead cats, suicides and death threats on my mind. And now perhaps
new information about my mother. Enough to drive any man to drink.
But then again I never needed much reason to drink.

Cindy was with her sister-in-law tonight,
Francine. They got together once every other week and gossiped
about their men, football and the nature of God in society since
Francine was a religious studies instructor at Calabasas Junior
College near San Diego.

That left me alone tonight. Just me and my
beer.

I automatically reached down for another
beer. Stopped halfway. Put my hands in my lap, and laced my fingers
together.

Good boy.

The night was cool; a soft breeze swept over
my balcony. Traffic was thick on PCH. I could smell exhaust and
grilling hamburgers.

On its own accord, my hand reached down for
another bottle. I stopped it just as it brushed a cold bottle
cap.

The bone had snapped loud enough for birds to
erupt in surprise.

My knuckles still ached from the beating I
gave Peterson. The assemblyman’s solo vehicle accident had made the
local papers. Neither I nor Sanchez were mentioned. After the
beating, we had dragged Peterson’s limp body down the incline and
stowed him in the driver’s seat. I placed a call via his cell phone
to 911, pretending to be Peterson, gasping for pain. Hell of a
performance. Sanchez was amused, although I noted he looked a
little sick and pale.

A horn honked from below, along Main Street,
followed by a short outburst of obscenities.

I would have killed Peterson if Sanchez
hadn’t pulled me off him.

And, Lord help me, I was enjoying every
minute of it.

I reached down and grabbed another beer. This
time there was no stopping my hand. I twisted off the cap and drank
from it. And it was good, so very, very good.

38.

“How’s the case going?” asked Cindy.

She had just sat down in front of me at the
Trocadero, a Mexican place across the street from UCI. She was
wearing a casual business suit, and her hair was down. She looked
three years my junior, rather than the other way around. Her
lipstick was bright red, which was good since I was color blind.
Seriously. She wore the bright red for me.

“Other than the fact that I have no idea who
killed Amanda, just swell.”

The waiter took our drink orders. An apple
martini for Cindy and Coke for me.

“I called you last night,” she said.
“Twice.”

“I know,” I said, “and I called you this
morning when I got the messages.”

She let her unspoken question hang in the
air: so why didn’t you pick up? I let it hang in the air as well. I
still felt like shit from the night before. I had drunk the entire
case. A new record for me.

“Are you feeling well?” she asked.

“Just great.”

“Bullshit. Your eyes are red and you look
pale.” She opened her purse and removed the local edition of the
Orange County Register. “Amanda Peterson’s father was in an
accident. A bad accident. A broken arm. Three broken ribs. A broken
collar bone. And a broken jaw. Jesus Christ, Jim.”

“Like they said, a bad accident.”

“It was no accident.”

“No,” I said, looking at her. “It wasn’t; it
was a methodical beating that I gave to a son-of-a-bitch to
reinforce the idea that he is to never, ever touch his family
inappropriately again. The way I see it, he got off easy. His
wounds will heal. The damage he inflicted may never heal.”

“Did your point hit home?” There might have
been sarcasm in her voice.

“So far he’s sticking to the accident story.
So he’s scared. As he should be.”

The waiter came around and took our order.
Salmon for Cindy and two Super Mex chicken burritos for me, extra
guacamole and sour cream.

“You’re going to kill yourself before your
tryouts,” said Cindy. More sarcasm?

“I’m still about seven pounds from my target
weight.”

“Isn’t there a healthier way to gain
weight?”

“Is that an oxymoron?”

“I’m serious, Jim. I’m concerned about you.
About us.”

She wouldn’t look me in the eye, and sipped
her martini faster than normal. Her free hand played with the
napkin, repeatedly wadding it and smoothing it out.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I can’t keep doing this.”

“You mean strangling your napkin?”

“No. I mean us.”

I let the air out of my lungs. We had had
this conversation before.

“Last time, I convinced you to stay,” I said.
“Talked until I was blue in the face. Do you remember what I told
you I would do if you did this to me again?”

“Yes,” she said. “You said you wouldn’t try
to stop me the next time.”

“Yes.”

The napkin was wasted, rendered perfectly
useless. She pushed it aside and drank deeply from her martini. So
deeply, in fact, that she finished it. I said nothing. There was
nothing for me to say. I was not going to keep having this
conversation with her. I loved Cindy with all of my heart, but I
was not going to make her do something she did not want to do.

The waiter saw her empty glass and came
over.

“Another?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

She still hadn’t looked me in the eye. I
studied her closely. She was behaving very un-Cindy like. Small,
jerky movements as she tapped on the now empty cardboard coaster.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

I said nothing.

“Jesus Christ, Jim, you beat the unholy shit
out of another human being. Your life has been threatened by a
hired killer. A dead cat shows up in your office. Cut in fucking
two. And now you’re drinking again. It’s not that you’re drinking,
really. It’s that you are getting drunk, and doing it in secret,
which makes it dirty and dangerous and all-consuming. And,
ultimately, sad. Very, very sad.”

I said nothing.

“You didn’t answer the phone last night
because you were passed out.”

Her second apple martini came, followed by a
second waiter bearing our food. The food was placed before us; it
went ignored.

“And now you’re trying out for the Chargers
in a few weeks. What if you make the team? I would never see you. I
know that’s selfish of me, but it’s true. You would throw your
whole life into it, like you do everything else, and the NFL would
own your heart and soul. Would there be any room left for me?”

She drank her martini. Her eyes were wet.
Hands shaking. She spilled some of the drink, and used the shredded
napkin to clean up. The napkin only managed to smear the
liquid.

“Christ, aren’t you going to say
anything?”

I said nothing.

“And I love you so much, you big sonofabitch.
You worked your way deep into my heart like a damn thorn. A thorn
that hurts, but has so much love to give.”

I didn’t like the analogy, but said
nothing.

“I worry so much about you. But you can take
care of yourself. I’ve seen it. And you have Sanchez and your
father to help you. The three of you are an amazingly formidable
force. And you are so brutal and deadly, but moral and just, and so
fucking hilarious. Shit.”

She stopped talking and picked at her salmon.
She even went as far as to bring up a forkful, but then got
distracted by her own thoughts, and set it down again.

“You are a wonderful man, but you fuck me
up.”

She started crying. She brought her hands to
her face, and the tears leaked from under her palms. I resisted the
strong urge to reach out to her. She needed to make a decision. I
was not going to influence her decision in any way. I held on to
that thought, no matter how hard it was for me to do so.

“Are you just going to sit there and let me
cry?”

I said nothing, and didn’t move, although my
hand flinched.

“I think I need to leave,” she said.

She did, getting up quickly and dashing
through the dark restaurant. I watched her go, and when she was
gone I set aside my Coke and signaled the waiter.

I was going to need something a little
stronger.

39.

It was almost 1:00 a.m. when I came home that
night.

With a twelve-pack of MGD in hand, I took the
stairs two at a time, climbing my way to the fifth floor, where my
apartment and drinking sanctuary awaited. I had made it a point
recently to always take the stairs, to augment my training. I
figured every little bit helped.

I was regretting that decision now.
Especially at this hour, and what had happened over dinner.

Maybe I should have said something to her, I
thought.

But I was determined not to sway her
decision. She needed to decide for herself whether or not she
wanted me in her life. Me prostrating myself, switching into used
car salesman mode, and listing my strengths and perks did no one
any good. It debased me on one level, and clouded her thinking on
another.

Cindy and I had been seeing each other
steadily since my senior year in college. At the time, she was in
the master’s program at UCLA. I had met her through a teammate of
mine, her brother Rob. Cindy had come from a football family, and
although she made no real effort to understand the sport, she at
least understood the men who played it, and we were a good match.
She went on to get her doctoral in anthropology, her expertise the
anthropology of world religions. Turns out, there’s a lot of world
religions out there, and so she keeps fairly busy writing papers
and what-nots. She’s only recently been tenured at UCI, which is
great because now she really has to royally screw up to be fired.
Luckily, she rarely screws up.

After my injury, she had been so supportive
during those years of rehabilitation. She had also been supportive
of the idea of me following in the footsteps of my father, although
I had sworn long ago to never be a detective. I mean, I was
destined for a long and rewarding career in football, right? Say
ten years in the NFL, another ten in broadcasting, and finish
things up as an NFL coach. That had been the plan.

Things change.

Especially when you’re hit by a cheap chop
block, and you hear the sound of your bones fracturing in so many
places that you still have nightmares over it. It was only later,
after my drinking had started, that I found amusement in the fact
that the fracturing of my leg had sounded like the popping of
popcorn.

I was now on the fifth floor. I was not
winded, but there was a healthy burn in my legs. And as I stepped
through the stairwell door, I saw a man smoking a cigarette five
feet away. He was waiting by the elevator door, and there was a
pistol hanging loosely by his side. He did not see me.

It was Fuck Nut.

40.

I eased the stairwell door shut, removed the
Browning from my shoulder holster and set down the beer. This wing
of the fifth floor is reserved for four apartment suites. The
elevator lets you out under a veranda outdoors. From there one can
choose four different routes: immediate right or left, or straight
ahead and then right or left. My apartment was straight ahead and
then right. The whole area is flooded with outdoor lighting.

He had been leaning behind a stucco pillar,
just feet from the elevator, gun hanging idly by his side, blowing
smoke from his cigarette straight into the air. I could smell the
smoke.

I had the element of surprise, of course,
being that he did not expect anyone in their right mind to walk up
five flights of stairs, especially someone with a bum leg. And if
Fuck Nut was a professional killer, as I assumed him to be, he had
done his research on me; he knew about the bum leg. He was
confident I would take the elevator. He did not realize I was a
hell of an example of human perseverance in the face of
tragedy.

In the least he should have positioned
himself to see the stairs and elevator.

Expect the unexpected, as my father would
say.

I eased open the door and raised the
Browning.

But he was no longer standing behind the
pillar. No, he was now waiting off to the side of the elevator. His
cigarette, tossed aside, was glowing ten feet away, half
finished.

Because the elevator door was about to
open.

Shit.

He raised his own weapon. In the glow of the
outdoor lights I could see he had a silencer on the end of his
pistol. A true killer.

The doors slid open.

Yellow light from the elevator washed across
the veranda, and out stepped my Indian neighbor from across the
way. My neighbor who had told me his name seven or eight times but
I could never remember it. Poorjafar? I always felt like crap
asking him to pronounce his name again, so we both accepted the
fact that he was known as “Hey!” And I was known as “Jeemmy!”
Normally, Jeemmy is an unacceptable variant of my name, but I let
it slide in this case.