Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (7 page)

Sanchez looked at me and grinned. “Seems like
you’ve got your work cut out for you, kiddo.”

16.

It was a late April morning in Huntington
Beach, California, which meant, of course, that the weather was
perfect.

Why the hell would anyone want to live
anywhere else?

I was sitting at my desk, reviewing a
sampling of the San Diego Chargers playbook, a sampling that Rob,
Cindy’s brother, had just faxed to me. Rob let it be known that
this was Highly Classified material, and that his job was on the
line. I reminded him that I was boffing his sister, and that
practically made me family. He told me that he never wanted to hear
the words boffing and his sister in the same sentence again and
that he was going to get drunk at our wedding and make a nuisance
of himself. I told him there would be no wedding because his sister
wasn’t marriage material. He told me to fuck off, and hung up.

The plays were complex, but not rocket
science. The majority faxed to me involved the fullback position,
which was my position. I studied them with interest, making my own
notes along the borders.

And that’s when the guy with the gun showed
up.

* * *

I heard the door open, and when I looked up
the Browning 9mm was pointed at my head. I hate when that
happens.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Shut the hell up, fuck nut.”

“Fuck nut. The one nut Home Depot doesn’t
carry.”

The man was probably in his fifties, gray
hair sleeked back with a lot of gel. He wore a gold hoop in his
left ear, pirate-like. Indeed, in his misspent youth he probably
always wanted to be a pirate or a buccaneer, only I didn’t really
know the difference between the two. Had it been fashionable, he
would have worn a patch over his eye. His face, all in all, was
hideous, heavily pock-marked, sunken and sallow. The gun never
wavered from my face.

“What’s the difference between a pirate and a
buccaneer?” I asked.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I don’t know either. Nothing to be ashamed
of.”

His eyes, for all intents and purposes, were
dead. Lifeless. Lacking sympathy, compassion, or caring. The eyes
of a killer, rapist, suicidal bomber, genocidal dictator. His eyes
made me nervous, to say the least. Eyes like that were capable of
anything. Anything. They kill your family, your babies, your
children, your husbands and wives. I only knew one other man who
had eyes like that, and he was my father.

The Browning never wavered from my face.
“You’re working on a case,” the man said.

“I’m working on a few cases. It’s what I do.
See that filing cabinet behind me, it’s full of pending cases. The
shelf on the bottom is full of my closed cases.”

There was a heavy silence.

“You’re going to call me a fuck nut again
aren’t you?” I said. “It feels like a fuck nut moment, doesn’t
it?”

He pulled the trigger. My ear exploded with
pain. I tried not to flinch, although I might have, dammit. If he
had chosen that moment to call me a fuck nut I might have missed
it...due to the excessive ringing in my head.

The bullet had punctured a picture frame
behind me. I heard the glass tinkling down. I did not know yet
which picture it had been, although it would have been one of the
featured articles about yours truly.

That’s when I felt something drip onto my
shoulder. I touched my ear. Blood. The bullet grazed my lobe.

“You shot me,” I said.

“We want you off the Derrick Booker case,” he
said. “Or the next shot won’t miss.”

“But you didn’t miss. You shot my earlobe.
Get it straight.”

“I heard you would be a smart ass.”

“Sometimes I am a smart ass. Now I’m just
pissed. You shot me.”

“We meet again and I kill you.”

“You shot me,” I said. “We meet again and I
owe you one.”

He grinned and proceeded to shoot out five or
six framed pictures behind me. I didn’t move. The cacophony of
tinkling glass and resounding gunshots filled my head and
office.

He pointed the gun at my forehead and said,
“Bang, fuck nut.”

He backed out of my office and shut the
door.

And I went back to my playbook. My ears were
ringing and my earlobe stung.

The fuck nut.

17.

On the way home from the office I stopped by
the local liquor store and bought a bottle of Scotch and some
Oreos. The Scotch was for getting drunk, and the Oreos were for
gaining weight. At two-hundred and ten pounds I was still too small
for an NFL fullback.

Cindy was away tonight at UC Santa Barbara’s
School of Anthropology giving a guest lecture on what it means to
be human.

Hell, he thought, I could have saved everyone
a trip out to Santa Barbara. Being human meant walking into any
liquor store from here to Nantucket and buying a bottle of Scotch
and a bag of Oreos. Let’s see the chimps pull that one off.

Cindy Darwin was a favorite on the guest
lecture circuit. Any anthropology department worth their salt
wanted Cindy Darwin’s ruminations on the subject of evolution.
Really, she was their messiah, their prophet and savior.

She had wanted me to come with her up the
coast, but I had declined, stating there were some leads I needed
to follow.

Which was bullshit, really. True I had made a
few phone calls prior to leaving the office, but I could have done
those on my cell. I wasn’t proud that I had fibbed to the love of
my life. The only lead I needed to follow was my nose to the scotch
and Oreos.

Cindy did not know the extent of my drinking.
And if it meant fibbing to keep it that way, then fine. I drank
alone and in my apartment. I harmed no one but myself and my
liver.

I lived in a five story yellow stucco
apartment building that sat on the edge of the Pacific Coast
Highway, and overlooked Huntington State Beach. I parked in my
allotted spot, narrowly missing the wooden pole that separated my
spot from the car next to mine. And for training purposes only, I
hauled my ass up five flights of stairs. The bag of Oreos and the
bottle of scotch were heavy on my mind.

Those, and the prick who took a pot shot at
my earlobe.

Inside my apartment, surrounded by shelves of
paperback thrillers and my own rudimentary artwork, I tossed my
keys and wallet next to the stove, grabbed my secret stash of
cigarettes and pulled up a chair on my balcony.

I had a wonderful view. And should probably
be paying a lot more for this apartment, but the landlord was a
Bruin fan and he appreciated my efforts to beat SC through the
years. So he gave me a hell of a deal, and in return he often
showed up at my apartment to drink and relive the glory days. I
didn’t mind reliving the glory days. The glory days were all I
had.

Now I hoped to make new glory days with the
Chargers.

We’ll see.

I opened the bag of Oreos and commenced my
training, bulking up with one Oreo after another. I washed them
down with swigs from the bottle of scotch, as a real man
should.

When I was tired of the Oreos, after about
the thirtieth, I took out a cigarette and tried like hell to give
myself lung cancer.

I watched the ocean. Flat and black in the
night. The lights of Catalina twinkled beyond a low haze. Further
out the lights of a half dozen oil rigs blinked. And somewhere
below the water was a cold world filled with life. The secret
world, where sharks ate seals, where manta rays glided, where
whales sang their beautiful songs.

Sometimes I wanted to jump into that cold
world and never emerge, especially after the destruction of my
leg.

That’s when the drinking began. Few knew
about my drinking. I did it alone and I did it hard, and I did it
until I could drink no more. Until I could forget what was stolen
from me by one fluke play by a son-of-a-bitch who chop blocked
me.

My goddamn leg had been throbbing ever since
Sanchez and I had been running sprints every morning for the past
week. I was a step slower. I could feel it within me. Sluggish.
Maybe too slow for the NFL.

And I had a goddamn kid in jail for murder
one. And he was innocent. Because if he was guilty the asshole with
the slicked back gray hair would not have felt it necessary to
pierce my ear with a 9mm.

I had to stop drinking. I had to reclaim what
was mine. And the smoking didn’t help, either.

But on this night I continued to drink. And
smoke. And eat the Oreos. Gluttony at its fucking worst.

The lights continued to blink on the
ocean.

The night was slipping away with each swallow
from the bottle and hit from the cigarette. I heard music and
voices coming from Main Street below my apartment. Lots of
laughter.

I didn’t feel like laughing.

18.

It was Sunday evening. Cindy and I were at my
place. We were waiting for Restaurant Express to deliver our food.
I don’t cook, unless you count cereal or PB&J’s. The last meal
I cooked, an experimental spaghetti with too much of everything
from my spice rack, was promptly emptied into the garbage disposal.
We considered my cooking a failure and decided that I was more
useful in other areas.

We were sitting next to each other on my
leather couch in my living room, with my blinds open to my patio.
We had a good view of clear skies and open water. Bob Seger crooned
in the background. Our knees touched. When our knees touched I
usually became excited. I was excited now, and that was nothing
new. Cindy had brought her orange Pomeranian named Ginger. Ginger
was likely to pee on me when she got excited. Unfortunately she got
excited every time she saw me. I have learned to make it a point
for her to see me first outside.

“So am I still useful in other areas?” I
asked Cindy now.

“Are you harkening back to what we have come
to think of as The Great Spaghetti Debacle?”

“Yes.”

Cindy was dressed in jean shorts and a yellow
tank top. Both showed off her naturally wonderful tan. She had a
lot of Italian in her, which accounted for the coloring. Her brown
hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Her face was smooth and
without make up. She didn’t need make up, anyway. But when she
did...Lord help me.

“Hmm. You have your purposes,” she said,
sipping her glass of chardonnay.

“Is one of those purposes my usefulness in
the bedroom?”

“I have uses for you in the bedroom.”

“We have time before our dinner arrives.”

She looked at her watch. “Should be here in
ten minutes.”

“Like I said, we have time.”

She didn’t need much more encouragement than
that. With Ginger on the pergo floor below, running laps around the
bed, I served one of my useful purposes.

Twice.

* * *

We were now on the balcony. The balcony was
devoid of last night’s cigarette butts and Oreo crumbs. We were
sharing a glass patio table, eating cheese tortellini and drinking
chardonnay.

“Does Sanchez have any idea who threatened
you?” asked Cindy.

“He doesn’t recognize him, but Sanchez works
primarily in L.A. He’s going to ask his cop buddies around
here.”

“Who do you think this guy works for?” she
asked.

“I’m willing to bet for someone who doesn’t
want me to find the true killer.”

“So you think the boy’s innocent?”

“Now more than ever.”

“What do the police think?”

“They think I’m a nuisance. Nothing new. They
think this is an open and shut case and resent the fact that I’m
poking around on their turf. In essence, calling them fools and
liars and incompetent.”

“Are you?”

“In this case, yes.”

“Will you call your father?”

I felt my shoulders bunch with irritation,
but let it slide. She was only trying to help.

“No.”

She patted my arm, soothing me. “Of course
not. You don’t need him. You are your own man. I’m sorry if I
offended. I just worry about you.”

“I know.”

We were quiet. Ginger was chasing a fly that
was almost as big as her.

“The man who came to your office, he was a
hired killer?”

“Yes.”

“You could see it in his eyes?”

“He looked like a shark. Dead eyes.”

“You sometimes get that look,” said Cindy,
pushing her plate away. She had eaten most of it, but had left
exactly three tortellinis. I was still hopeful they would go
forgotten. But the woman had a bottomless stomach, to my
chagrin.

“You mean in the bedroom when my eyes roll up
during the final throes of passion.”

“Final throes of passion?”

“Means before I climax.”

“Thank you for that clarification. No, I’m
referring to the bar fight in Matzalan. I thought you were going to
kill the guy. But you emerged from that look, sort of came back to
your senses. I always considered that man lucky to be alive, lucky
that you found yourself before you killed him.”

I said nothing. I remembered that night. A
barroom fight, nothing more. The man had felt up Cindy on her way
to the bathroom. Bad move.

She suddenly leaned over and kissed my ear
above the scab. It was a heartbreakingly sweet thing to do. She
took my hand and led me into the living room, to my sofa. We sat
together.

She said, “You were a devastating football
player. And you may very well be again. It is a violent sport that
you excel at. I would not love you if you were not always able to
come back down from whatever heights you need to scale to fight and
even kill.”

We were silent for a few minutes.

“Almost makes you think I am at the apex of
evolution,” I said. “A handsome, physically imposing,
intellectually stimulating, emotionally sophisticated brute.”