Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (17 page)

“How long you been thinking that one up?”

“Just came to me. I am, after all, a
UCLA-educated Latino.”

Our food came. And lots of it. I had ordered
from the appetizer menu, running my forefinger straight down the
list and rattling off anything that sounded good. And it all
sounded good. Now, plates of nachos, chicken wings, calamari,
southwestern eggrolls and even an artichoke were arriving steadily
at our table.

“Someone in the kitchen must like you,” said
Sanchez, “because they gave you a green flower.”

“It’s called an artichoke, you oaf.”

“Well, your arteries are going to be choking
after you eat all that shit.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

“What can I say?” Sanchez said. “I’m on a
roll. Can I have any of that shit?”

“Get your own food.”

“Can’t; you cleaned out the kitchen.”

We drank from our beer. The Lakers were
playing the Jazz. Shaq was unloading on them.

“So I’ve got news on Pencil Dick.”

“Who’s Pencil Dick?”

“Your teacher friend, Bryan Dawson. Anyone
poking high school students is called a pencil dick.”

“I see; what’s the news?”

Sanchez leaned forward on his elbows. “Pencil
Dick was involved in another murder up north. In a city called Half
Moon Bay.”

“So tell me.”

“A student of his, a band student,
disappeared. They found her floating in the San Francisco bay.
Pencil Dick was a suspect, but they couldn’t pin anything on him.
He quit his job and came down here.”

“Well, then, what do you think we should do?”
I asked.

“We tail him. With Amanda gone, he might be
looking for new blood.”

52.

I found the allegedly green Taurus parked in
front of a small woodframe house in Santa Ana. It was 9:00 p.m.,
and the Taurus still looked blue to me.

Santa Ana is mostly Hispanic and its
residents are perhaps the poorest in Orange County. In fact,
downtown Santa Ana looks as if it had been lifted whole from Mexico
City.

Johnny Bright, as a Caucasian, would stick
out in Santa Ana like a sore white thumb.

But one question remained: was Johnny Bright
the same guy who took a potshot at my ear? The vehicle could have
belonged to a friend. In that case I would follow the friend.
Either way, with a paid killer on my ass, I preferred to be
proactive in my involvement with him.

I waited in my car around a corner, with a
clear view of Bright’s front porch. My own vehicle had nicely
tinted windows, and from behind them I watched the house through
lightweight high-powered binoculars. I didn’t have many tools of
the trade, but this was one of them.

I was listening to Will Durant’s Story of
Philosophy on tape. The 5 Freeway arched above the housing tract.
Freeway noises, especially the rumble of a Harley, cut through the
drone of the tape. I was on my third tape, marching on through
Voltaire and the French Enlightenment, when four gang members
stopped by the Mustang and looked it over, not realizing I was
inside. I rolled down my window and reached under my seat and
pulled out a fake police badge.

Another one of my tools....

“Can I help you gentlemen?” I said, flashing
the badge.

The first one, a skinny kid with a black
bandana tied around his head, shot his hands up as if I had pointed
a gun at him. When he spoke he had a long, drawling Hispanic
accent, punctuated by jerky hand movements.

“Don’t shoot me, officer, I didn’t mean to
look at your killer set of wheels.”

“You can look but don’t touch.”

“Waddya doin’ here?” asked the kid, their
obvious leader.

“Watching you boys.”

“Are you gay, too?”

His buddies slapped each other high
fives.

Behind them there was movement in Bright’s
house, but I couldn’t see because the gang members were in my way.
I heard a screen door swing open and slap shut.

“Beat it,” I said.

The three of them waited for their leader.
The leader squinted at me and seemed to recognize me. I get this
kind of partial recognition a lot. Probably because at one point in
their lives they had seen me on their TV screens, or in their
newspapers, or sports magazines. But this kid was young, perhaps
too young to know of me. But you never knew.

He jerked his head. “Let’s roll,” he told the
others.

They sauntered off. One called me a pig. They
would be potential witnesses; that is, if the police tried very
hard to investigate the murder.

Murder?

Yeah, someone’s going to die tonight.

Across the street, Fuck Nut, with his
slicked-back graying hair visible from even here, opened the door
to his Taurus and got in.

53.

We drove through Santa Ana. I tailed him
using tricks gleaned from my father. Once, at a red light, I even
turned into a liquor store parking lot. When the light turned green
again, I pulled out of the parking lot and continued tailing
him.

At least I was amusing myself.

He pulled into a Taco Bell, and I waited
across the street. He went through the drive-thru, and when he
exited I followed him back to his house.

Across the street, I waited for him to finish
his tacos, since it was his last meal. As I waited, I listened to
the beating of my heart, filling the silence now that the book on
tape had been turned off. The thudding filled my ears, and I
focused on that rather than what was about to come. What had to
come. I didn’t think of myself as a killer, but sometimes you had
to do what you had to do. I needed this guy off my ass and away
from Cindy.

When twenty minutes had passed, I stepped out
of my car, crossed the street and walked up his front porch. The
porch was made of cement, and my footfalls made no sound.

I stood before the door, aimed for the area
under the doorknob, lifted my foot and smashed it open. Wood
splintered. The door swung open on one hinge, and I kicked it the
rest of the way open.

“What the fuck?” came a startled voice from
inside.

Johnny Bright, a.k.a. Fuck Nut, was now
dressed in a wife beater and blue boxers. On the coffee table
before him was a porn magazine. There were little boys on the
cover. He had dropped his soft taco in his alarm, and had just
wrapped his fingers around the handle of his own 9mm.

Standing in the doorway, I shot him four
times in the chest.

When I was about three miles away, in a city
called Fountain Valley, I pulled over to the side of the road and
threw up my breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And I kept throwing up....

54.

He was waiting for me at the back of
McDonald’s. I sat down without ordering. I was still feeling sick
to my stomach, and the thought of a greasy McGriddle did little to
alleviate the queasiness.

I didn’t look him in the eye, although I
could feel his on me. Today, he was smelling especially ripe, as if
he had slept in a dumpster. Hell, as if he was a dumpster.

A few minutes of this and I finally risked
looking up. He was smiling at me kindly, and the love and warmth in
his eyes was almost unbearable.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What are you sorry for?” he asked.

“If you are God, you know.”

We were silent some more. I didn’t feel like
playing his head games today. If he was God, then let him take the
next step. If not, then I was content to sit across from him until
the smell of frying bacon made me hurl. Which might be sooner
rather than later.

“He was a very troubled man,” said Jack.

“Yes, he was,”

“He made many poor choices.”

I took in some air. The queasiness seemed to
intensify as I relived Fuck Nut’s last moments.

“Perhaps his poorest choice was threatening
Cindy,” said Jack.

I had never once mentioned Cindy’s name to
the man sitting across from me. The fact that he knew who she was
should have amazed me, but in my current state of disarray, it was
mostly lost on me.

“A very poor choice,” I said.

“And you were forced to take action to
protect her.”

“Yes.”

“So what are you sorry for?”

“For killing him.”

“He wanted to die, Jim. He knew this day was
coming. He was miserable and lonely and hated every day that he was
alive.”

I said nothing. I could not speak. His words
did, however, ease some of the queasiness. I sat a little
straighter even as I felt a little better.

“Is he going to hell?” I asked.

“He is in a place you do not want to be.”

We’d had this discussion before and I didn’t
feel like getting into it now. There was no heaven or hell, but
only worlds of our own creations. There was no punishment in the
afterlife, only reflection and recreation. Blah blah blah. New age
mumbo-jumbo. I didn’t want to hear it. I had killed a man and that
was my reality.

“He hurt a lot of kids, too,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Hey, I’ve got a fucking question for you,
Jack...God, or whoever the fuck you are. Why the fuck did you allow
him to hurt innocent kids? There you go. Answer that question. I’m
sure there’s a million mothers out there who’ve lost innocent
children who’d just love an answer to that one. Oh, wait, never
mind. You’re just a bum and I’m a fucking idiot for coming in to a
fucking McDonald’s and entertaining the idea that you might be
something more than just street trash.” I stopped, took a deep
breath.

“You done?” asked Jack.

I nodded, sitting back, my heart yammering in
my chest.

“Nobody dies without the spirit’s consent,”
said Jack.

“So a child who’s kidnapped, raped and buried
alive gives such a consent.”

“Yes.”

“But they’re a fucking child, Jack. How the
fuck could a child make that kind of a decision?”

“The decision was made long ago.”

“Long ago? You mean in a place where time
suddenly does exist?”

He ignored my sarcasm.

“Prior to taking on the body, the soul made
an agreement with another soul—”

I cut him off; this was just pissing me
off.

“An agreement to allow themselves to be raped
and killed? How very generous of the soul.”

Jack looked at me for a long moment.

“Yes,” he said. “Very generous.”

“And that’s supposed to comfort a grieving
mother? A mother who, say, just lost her child to a sick-ass
motherfucker?”

“Such a death serves many purposes, Jim.
There is a ripple effect that will touch many, many lives for
generations to come.”

“Fine. Many lives are touched. It’s a noble
act of sacrifice. But it’s the thought of their child suffering
that drives parents mad with grief. The fact that their baby
suffered at the hands of an animal.”

Jack said nothing, although he did finally
sip his coffee. Glad to see he still had his taste for coffee.

Finally, he said, “You might be pleased to
know that a spirit may leave the body whenever it wants.”

“A child could leave its body?”

“Yes.”

“And not suffer?”

Jack looked at me and smiled very deeply and
kindly, and I saw, for the first time ever, that there were tears
in his eyes.

“And not suffer,” he said.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

55.

Two days later I was in San Diego, about an
hour and a half south from Huntington Beach.

It was 10:00 a.m. sharp and I was sitting
alone in a leather sofa in an ornate office overlooking the lush
playing field at Qualcomm Stadium. The field, as viewed through the
massive window, was empty.

The office was covered with photographs of
past personnel and players. I recognized almost all of them, since
football was my life. Not to mention, I had taken a particularly
keen interest in the San Diego Chargers since their last offer.

I was dressed to the nines in khakis and
cordovan loafers and a blue silk shirt that accentuated my blue
eyes. At least that’s what I’m told.

A door opened and a little bald man with gold
rimmed glasses came in. He saw me, smiled brightly, and moved over
to me with surprising speed. Of course, it shouldn’t be too
surprising, Aaron Larkin had been free safety for the Chargers for
most of his career in the seventies. In the seventies, he had not
been bald.

“My God, Knighthorse, you are a big boy,” he
said, pumping my hand.

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

He laughed and gestured for me to sit. He
moved behind his black lacquer desk and took a seat. Larkin leaned
forward eagerly and laced his fingers together before him. His
fingers were thick and gnarled and some seemed particularly
crooked, not too surprising after a full career in football.
Between high school, college and the pros, fingers were bound to
get broken.

“We are very excited to hear from you,” Aaron
Larkin began.

“Excitement is good. I am happy to be
here.”

“Well, we had given up on you. Such a tragedy
about your leg. But my God you have kept yourself fit. And we need
someone like you badly. Hell, who doesn’t need a fullback
nowadays?”

“Outside of football, few people.”

He laughed. “We want to give you a private
workout in two weeks. If we like what we see we’ll invite you to
training camp. We are honored that you’re here, Knighthorse. My God
you were an unholy terror on the playing field. Your services could
be very, very valuable to us. So how is the leg?” he asked, and his
voice was filled with genuine concern, and for that I liked the guy
immensely.

“It has healed completely.” I lied. It hurt
like a motherfucker.

“An utter miracle. I watched you coming down
the hall. There’s no limp to speak of.”