Sylvie's Cowboy (5 page)

Sylvie glowered at the oblivious player
number three and muttered to herself. “The secret life of Walter
Mitty McGurk.”

Down on the field, players criss-crossed in a
systematic drill for warming up the horses and the players’
mallet-swinging “shooting” arms. As both teams were moving about
the field, Dan Stern managed to ride up alongside Walt and Walt’s
pinto in a corner of the field where their interchange would be
unheard.

“Say, Dogpatch,” said Dan, “as long as you’re
here, why not be a sport and help me win a friendly wager this
afternoon, eh? I’ll share the winnings.”

“How ‘friendly’ is the bet?”

“Substantial—but he can afford it. No one
will be hurt. Sort of a great joke on him, all right?”

Walt smiled. “Sorry. No sense of humor. If
you’ve got a lot riding on this match—and if you need to win for a
change, as I expect you do—I reckon you best try to play a little
better’n usual today.”

As quickly as they had come together, they
parted as if nothing had happened. Dan had to work hard to
camouflage his anxiety, however. He
did
need to win, and
McGurk on the other team meant no sure thing for Dan’s side.

The afternoon progressed and the lead changed
hands several times. The match was tied going into the last
chukker.

The ball was dropped. Dan and Walt battled
for possession. Dan took it. They raced for the goal.

Walt leaned forward, said something to his
horse, and the animal surged forward with new life. Dan seemed set
for his match-winning shot when Walt came out of nowhere to snatch
the ball with an unbelievable backshot.

Dan was stunned. Walt whirled 180 degrees and
raced to the opposite end of the field, where the ball had been
cornered by his teammates. They set up the shot. The timing was
perfect. Without breaking stride, Walt’s horse met the ball at
center field, where Walt’s mallet sent it zipping past the
goaltender’s ears into the net. The winning point!

The crowd screamed and applauded. Spectators
surged onto the field.

Walt’s eyes met Dan’s across a sea of
celebrating players and spectators. No love was lost between them.
Dan made his way to the edge of the crowded field, where he
dismounted and slunk away toward the horse trailers, treating his
exhausted horse like a criminal.

Leslye and Sylvie, who had surged onto the
grass with the rest of the spectators, showed themselves to be
loyal fans. They left the celebrating masses on the field and
joined Dan on his walk to the trailers.

Leslye tried to be encouraging. “Quite a
thrilling match, Danny! You played wonderfully!”

“Not wonderfully enough,” he grumbled.

Sylvie patted the footsore cayuse on its soft
nose. “You need more ponies like this one, Danny. He works so hard
for you. He just played his heart out in that last chukker.”

“Thinking of having him shot,” muttered
Dan.

An hour later the stands were empty, the
horses in their trailers, and the stragglers making their way to
the parking lot. Sylvie had waited as long as she could so that
none of her wealthy former peers would see her sneaking to her
dilapidated Volkswagen. When she reached her bug, she climbed in
quickly, intent on getting out of the parking lot with no
witnesses.

In her hurry, she revved the clankety engine,
ground the rattling gears, and zoomed backward—BANG—into the yellow
door of a red pickup truck.

“Careful,” called Walt through his open
window. “That’s your half you’re puttin’ dents in.”

Sylvie glared at him as he exited his truck
and walked around the two vehicles. He studied her Volkswagen.
Until today, three of its fenders had boasted layers of body putty.
Now the fourth fender needed body putty, too.

“Guess you do this kinda thing a lot?” Walt
quipped.

“You could see me backing out, you jerk! Why
did you get behind me? And what do you mean showing up here without
telling me? Are you following me or something?”

“Following you!” he said over her words.

“Because if you are,” she continued, “if you
are, buddy, you’ve got another think coming.”

Walt began talking at the same time, since it
appeared she was not stopping, even to breathe. “I’m not the least
bit interested in where you go or what you do!”

“I’m a grown woman and I can go where I
please!” she said, while he was saying, “I’m a grown man and I can
darn well go anywhere I want!”

They both shouted, “It’s a free country!”
Then they glowered at each other.

Walt bounced his car keys in the palm of his
hand before making a fist around them. “I’ll see you at the house,”
he said.

“I’m meeting someone for dinner first.”

“Fine.” He swung into his truck, slammed the
door behind him, gunned the motor, and roared out of the parking
lot. Sylvie leaned her head against the steering wheel of the
Volkswagen, exasperated.

At the same time, on the opposite side of the
polo grounds, Leslye Larrimore sat in a Jaguar alongside Dan’s
horse trailer. She counted out a large sum of cash angrily. She
jammed the money into Dan’s waiting hand then fumed while Dan
counted it again.

“What does it take to convince you?” she
scolded. “There is no ‘sure thing.’ You think because you’re
playing in it, the match is a smart bet?”

Dan snapped, “It was until that friggin’
cowboy showed up.”

“Or until your horse stumbled, or the wind
changed, or the girth slipped, or the ball took a bad bounce. Where
does it stop, Danny?”

“Shut up, Les. You sound like Harry.” He
shook the money at her. “You’ll get it back.” He walked swiftly
toward an ominous black limousine waiting several yards away.

Leslye muttered, “At least
I
won’t
break your legs when you don’t pay. I think.”

As Dan approached the black limousine, two of
its doors swung open. A slight, jockey-size man with one hand
amputated at the wrist emerged. He was immediately overshadowed by
a large bald man, who got out of the second door.

Dan held out the money to the big man, whose
name was Hugo. Hugo fanned it and gave it to the smaller man,
Scampi. Hugo’s eyes never left Dan’s while Scampi expertly pinned
the cash to his side with his elbow and flipped through it with his
one hand, counting. Scampi returned the money to Hugo, who leaned
down expectantly. Scampi whispered something in Hugo’s ear.

Hugo rose to his full height and glared at
Dan. “What about the rest?”

“This is just to take care of today’s match,”
Dan said. “I’ll have the rest. I’m putting it together.”

Scampi spun and sent a kick across Dan’s jaw.
Dan dropped to all fours, only to be lifted and flipped onto his
back by Scampi’s follow-up kick to Dan’s ribs. Dan wasn’t bleeding,
but the wind had been thoroughly knocked out of him.

Hugo looked with pride at Scampi. “Gotta soft
touch, don’t he? Didn’t even break nothin’ this time. You make sure
there ain’t no next time, okay?”

Breathless, Dan could only nod and mouth,
“Okay, okay.”

Hugo and Scampi slithered into their black
limousine and drove away. Dan rolled over and began pushing himself
to his feet. He looked around. It had all been so fast and quiet,
no one on the polo grounds had taken any notice. Dan headed for the
locker room. He needed a shower in the worst way.

...

Sylvie waited inside the glass foyer of Il
Girasole, an upscale Italian bistro favored by the polo set. Leslye
Larrimore’s car pulled up and stopped outside the front door, but
Les did not give her keys to the valet. Instead, she beckoned to
Sylvie.

Sylvie hurried out to the curb. The passenger
window whirred down, and Sylvie leaned on the sill. “Hi, Les.
What’s up?”

“Sure you want Italian?” Les asked. “We can
go somewhere else.”

“I wouldn’t mind a good old-fashioned
lobster, actually.”

“Hop in. I’ll bring you back to your car
later.”

“Works for me!” Sylvie got in, and Leslye’s
car moved away.

Nearby an engine rumbled to life and a set of
headlights bloomed white. A red pickup truck with yellow doors
eased forward to follow Leslye’s car.

Minutes later, Les looked in her rearview
mirror for the tenth time. Anxiety crinkled her brow. Sylvie
noticed. “What’s wrong?”

Leslye forced a smile. “Guilty conscience. I
thought I saw an old friend I’ve been trying to avoid, but it
wasn’t them.” Then she diverted the conversation to the seafood
restaurant they had been considering. “I hope the lobsters are
already dead. I can’t eat them after they’ve seen me and waved
their little claws at me through the aquarium glass.”

“Oh, geez, you’re right. Let’s eat Japanese
instead.”

“Listen, Pearl Harbor or no Pearl Harbor, I
draw the line at cannibalism.”

The women exchanged a glance, suppressed a
giggle, then together said: “Italian!”

Leslye’s car made a U-turn and headed back
toward the Italian restaurant they had left only minutes before. In
the passenger seat, Sylvie was laughing. While digging in her purse
for a tissue to dry her eyes, she didn’t see the red pickup truck,
which had been caught off-guard and was now part of oncoming
traffic. Leslye saw the truck, however, and flashed a smile of
triumph. By the time the red truck could escape the congested
multi-lane intersection, Leslye would be long gone. It would be
impossible for Walt McGurk to follow her.

...

Hours later, Sylvie’s Volkswagen bug
clattered into the ranch house yard and parked under the forbidden
tree. She was too tired to go park in the truck shed and then trek
across God’s Little Acre on sore feet. Sylvie got out of the car
and, carrying her ultra-high heels, entered the house. She floated
from room to room, singing to herself, extinguishing the few lamps
that had been left on for her.

As she neared her bedroom, she noticed the
door of the opposite bedroom was ajar. Walt’s voice growled from
the darkness beyond the door, “Late enough for ya?”

Sylvie smiled. “ ‘Night, Mother.” She entered
her own room and firmly shut the door.

In the wee hours of that same night, at the
Pace-Larrimore-Stern office building, the janitorial team moved
through the rooms, emptying trash receptacles and vacuuming
carpets. A man in janitor’s coveralls stopped at the locked door of
Leslye Larrimore’s private office. He took a key from his pocket
and let himself in.

Once inside, the janitor flicked on lights,
set aside his cleaning supplies, and went to Leslye’s elaborate
wall unit. A curio shelf swung out at his touch, revealing a hidden
cabinet behind the wall unit. Removing a second key from his
pocket, he unlocked the hidden cabinet. He removed four file
folders from the cabinet and dropped them into his cleaning
cart.

The file labels read: Tropigale, N.V.;
Danmore Limited, N.V.; King’s Cay, Limited; and Pace Tower.

The janitor cleaned the cabinet, curio shelf,
and wall unit meticulously—until not even a fingerprint could be
seen on their glossy surfaces. Then he closed and locked the
office, leaving it looking exactly as he had found it.

Downstairs in the Pace-Larrimore-Stern
parking garage, the cleaning crew packed their van and prepared to
depart. One janitor removed four file folders from his cleaning
cart and walked across the echoing concrete to a 25-year-old pink
Mustang parked nearby. He handed the files in through the window.
Accepting them was the driver of the Mustang: a man in a yellow
windbreaker and Stetson hat. The driver handed the janitor an
envelope.

The janitor opened his envelope, fanned a
large number of twenty-dollar bills, nodded, and left.

The Mustang started, sputtered, died, started
again, and drove away. It had no license plate.

After exiting the parking garage, the
Mustang, running rough, stopped at a corner post office.
Windbreaker Man leaned out of the car window to drop an overnight
express envelope into the curbside drop box. The envelope was
addressed to Ichi-Nobuko Corporation, One Independent Square,
Jacksonville, Florida 32201.

...

The light of dawn seeped into Sylvie’s
bedroom to find her sound asleep. Outside, the air resonated with a
symphony of birdsong. Inside, Maude slept at the foot of Sylvie’s
bed, atop a Laura Ashley coverlet.

Sylvie had made her mark on the room since
that awkward first day at the ranch. Now the ten-point buck was
covered with drying pantyhose. Rings and bracelets dangled from the
claws and teeth of the bearskin. The moose had become a shoe rack,
and the mountain lion wore a diamond choker. The robe of Sylvie’s
sheer negligee hung from the curled horns of a mountain sheep.

A cacophony of pounding metal and shattering
glass abruptly jolted Sylvie from sleep. The pounding and crashing
continued, coming from outside. Sylvie leaped from bed, snatched
the sheer robe off the wall, and donned it over her equally sheer
nightie as she raced down the hall toward the front door.

She arrived in the living room to find Walt’s
bulk blocking the open front doorway. She elbowed past him to look
out into the yard. Sylvie screamed. “What is he doing! Stop that!
Stop it right now!”

A large, foul-tempered Brahma bull bashed
into the Volkswagen bug, beating the heck out of it. From the
doorway behind her, Sylvie heard Walt say calmly, “I told you not
to park there.”

Sylvie shook off the paralysis of surprise
and went into action. She charged at the bull, pelting it with
rocks she picked up from the ground as she crossed the yard. “Stop
it! Get out of here! Get! Go on! How dare you! Get out!”

Walt grabbed Sylvie about the waist and
thrust her behind him as the bull turned toward them. Walt stood
between Sylvie and the bull, knowing the bull could easily
obliterate them both. Walt held his breath.