He Was Her Man (11 page)

Jack was charming and smooth and bent—all prerequisites for the state’s governorship, which he could have taken with a fingersnap, except that
Cut to the chase
was Jack’s motto. Why go to all that trouble pretending to be straight when he had the juice to run numbers, cards, shylocking, bookmaking, all at the indulgence of Joey the Horse, who took a healthy cut, of course.

It was a horse named Lush Life, in fact, that had come between Jack and Joey and had brought Early into the picture.

Joey had desired that the filly win the last race of a Pick-Six, which would have resulted in Joey’s bagging a half-million dollars and Lush Life not only breaking her maiden but becoming a rising star. Forget the details, the bottom line was Joey passed the responsibility for said scenario along to Jack, who not only understood the subtleties of such a delicate operation but also loved horses. Jack meticulously explained the game plan to one of his men out at the track, Doc Miller, who’d in turn explained it to Speed McKay. They’d fucked up (Speed from stupidity, Doc out of avarice, trying to cut his own angles) so ignobly that the end result was not only did Lush Life lose, but she literally died in the stretch due to the enormous amount of phenylbutazone pumped into her—bute not having been part of Jack’s game plan at all.

Early had been broken-hearted. He’d loved that filly. Nonetheless, when he came stumbling into his backside barn after the race and found three of Joey the Horse’s men about to club Jack’s brains out, he thought three against one plus the tire iron was chickenshit odds, no matter what the big silver-haired man had done. So he’d mounted a horse named Caliban and, with a ferrier’s tool, whacked each of the three upside their heads as neatly as if they’d been polo balls.

Jack had reached in his pocket on the spot and counted out 5,000 dollars in hundred-dollar bills as a thank you. A few months later he’d called Early up, said, Come guard my body, be my man-of-all-trades, I’m going into the casino business. I’m up in Hot Springs, that being where Joey the Horse has decided he’ll allow me to continue breathing.

Early wasn’t sure. It would be tough to trade in the dawn smells of freshly farrowed track, manure, new-mown grass for cigarette smoke and booze in some casino room where you never saw the light of day. Especially after the time he’d pulled in the state pen in Angola, Louisiana, for a seriously dumb mistake, Early didn’t fancy anything that felt like lockup. But, on the other hand, Hot Springs was home. His birthplace.

Jack said, “Oaklawn’s up here, you know. Awfully sweet track. We’ll buy us some horses, run ’em. First one, we’ll call her To Lush Life.”

That did it. Early had hung up his manure-caked rubber boots and overalls, got himself fitted for a neat navy blue double-breasted suit complete with bulletproof lining. He’d taken a quick course in target shooting, for which he found he had a natural aptitude, as he did for the martial arts, and he began to shadow Jack Graham, who quickly set up undercover casino operations in Hot Springs as if the town were ripe for sin. Which, not having had much to speak of since the feds shut down all the fun back in the sixties, it was.

And things had been good, except Jack had been steaming since the day Lush Life was put down. It wasn’t even so much his exile. He said the mountains were a nice change from the swamp. It was that that perfectly beautiful filly had died for no good reason, Doc’s cupidity not being a good reason.

That’s what Jack had said to Doc when he’d called him out on the matter. Jack wasn’t one to blindside you with a tire iron. He’d called him out like a man, the last day he was in town before he shipped out for Hot Springs. Early hadn’t been there, but he’d heard it wasn’t much of a fight, at least not on Doc’s part. Jack, who’d grown up with knocking around the ring in the Irish Channel, had stepped right up to Doc and started punishing him with his jab, put a couple of combinations together before he staggered him with a short left hand to the head. Doc fell facedown like a redwood. When he got to his feet, he didn’t say a word, but there was murder in his eye.

Jack had brushed himself off and gone on his rounds to say his good-byes around town.

But that night when he got home, Jack found his two beloved Irish setters, Yeats and Maude, to whom he’d promised a big yard and long runs in the Arkansas hills, decapitated with their guts pulled out and strung around the bushes in front of his house like Christmas lights.

The pain had gone deep. Jack had truly loved those dogs.

But he was a patient man, and he knew how to bide his time. He’d gone on along to Hot Springs and set up his casinos, of which Joey the Horse got his 20 percent. One out on Lake Hamilton at Gardiner Place, a handsome former mansion now a superb restaurant with full-tilt gambling in the gigantic basement, which you could reach through an underground tunnel that led right from the marina where you could pull your boat up. Another in the old Quapaw Bathhouse right in the middle of town on Central Avenue.

Jack had been very busy—and very successful. He’d pat his pocket and say, “Early, I’ve got the sixth tailbone of a black cat in there, brings me luck.” But it wasn’t any Irish Channel mojo that made the man so good. He knew what he was doing, he wasn’t afraid of work, and he was a good guy. People liked him. Early liked him a lot.

So things were going great, just rolling along, until that day just a couple of weeks ago, To Lush Life’s running in the sixth, and Jack’s in his favorite spot, way over at the top of the grandstand, you can see the horses making the last turn. Early’s up in the Oaklawn Club with the white linen napkins and the roses on the tables, which he likes to do every once in a while just because he can, Jack gave him the membership as a little perk. All of a sudden Early spots Speed McKay. He can’t believe his eyes, but it’s the little man all right, romancing this curvy blonde, a couple of years on her, but you could tell she’d been the real article in her prime, and Speed’s saying to her, “I once knew another filly named Lush Life, just Lush Life without the To, but she was a lazy nag, couldn’t go the distance, dropped dead rather than run.”

Early wants to pull out his gun, pop the stupid little son of a bitch right there. Damn him! But the Oaklawn Club wasn’t exactly the place to do that, not that he would really, he just
wanted
to so bad he could taste it. As soon as the race was over, To Lush Life won, bless her sweet heart, paid ten to one, he ran to find Jack.

“I want you on him like a fly on shit,” had been Jack’s response. Early knew that Jack was hoping that where there was Speed, there’d be Doc. So Early had spent the past few weeks following the little man, watching him romance the blonde. It wasn’t long before he reported to Jack that their little Speed McKay seemed to be getting himself engaged to the ex–beauty queen who had won herself a million dollars in the Texas lottery not all that long ago.

“You don’t say?” Jack had smiled and told Early to keep on keeping on. So Early followed them to the gate when the lovebirds flew off to the Bahamas and to New York, though he hadn’t gone on either trip. Jack said he was interested in what was happening here at home. Like Speed renting a big stone house out on Lake Ouachita. Early kept watching, and one thing he noticed that was real odd was that the bride-to-be never showed at the lake house. Never set foot in it. Never drove by. Never bought even a lamp for it. Now wasn’t that strange, that she wouldn’t take an interest in their love nest?

“Let Speed go, watch the house,” Jack had said.

Which is how Early came to see Doc and then Mickey drive up to the big stone house yesterday.

Jack had said, “So who’s the woman?”

Early did some backtracking through friends of friends in New Orleans and found out that Doc and Speed hadn’t been working together for a long time now, that Doc had been partnered with this Mickey Steele for a few months. And he was almost sure she was the woman he had seen Speed having lunch with at the Carousel Club the week before.

Now Jack, behind the wheel, puffed on his little cigar and goosed the gas so he almost hit a Toyota that was halfway through a left turn. He said, “What’s Doc’s angle, Early? He has to know I’m here. Got to know first chance I get, I’m going to even the score.”

Early peeked through his fingers. “I don’t know what they’re up to, Jack. Like I told you, Speed rents the house, then these two show up. I drive by, I see their Mercedes sitting in the driveway pretty as you please. Doesn’t make sense to me.”

Jack agreed. “And you actually saw Doc? You’re sure it was him?”

Early nodded. “I parked down a way, sneaked back on foot. Got up close enough to see Doc sitting in the kitchen, drinking a beer, eating a big bag of potato chips, sour cream and chives.”

“We wait long enough, he’ll have a heart attack. The man always was stuffing his face with junk.”

Though Jack himself was carrying a few extra pounds, it was what he called good weight. Made of the finest ingredients, gumbo and crawfish étoufée and lamb stew, he ordered the baby lamb direct from a grower in Marin County. He had a man in southern California who air-shipped his restaurant produce, the best grown on God’s green earth, from the Chino Farm twice a week. Jack himself was a most extraordinary cook.

Early said, “Well, you can’t say that about the woman. Doc’s partner’s a runner. Up and down the hills. Wears those little shorts.”

“Interesting.” Jack blew a smoke ring. “And cards are her speciality?”

“She’s a righteous player. Wouldn’t even have to cheat to make a decent living on poker tournaments. Except she likes to cheat.”

“Well, you know, lots of them do.” Jack grinned. And then the grin faded, and he said, “You know, what bothers me is Doc’s not stupid like Speed. Mean as a five-foot rattlesnake with a six-foot poker up his butt, but clever.”

And that was as far as he went. Jack never mentioned the animals. Never said a word about Lush Life or Yeats or Maude. He blew another smoke ring. “Do you think it’s possible, Early, this has anything to do with Joey the Horse? Maybe Joey’s decided he wants to muscle me out up here now that things are going so well, sent Doc to do the job.”

Early shook his head. “Joey loves you, boss. That’s why he told you to come up here, because he couldn’t bear to kill you. So why would he change his mind now? Besides, you think Joey’d pick those two?”

“Nawh. If Joey were in the same room with Doc and Speed, he’d step on them like they were water bugs. He wouldn’t send those bums to do me. The man has more respect than that. Besides, you’re right, he loves me too much.”

Early glanced over at Jack. The big man’s mouth was turned down at the corners, like he tasted something rotten. Early really liked Jack. Actually, he’d grown to love the man. Which meant he liked to see him happy. “So, what do you think, Jack, you want me to shoot ’em?”

At that Jack Graham wheeled the big heavy car right off the road into the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken, cutting in front of a pickup truck that squealed and fishtailed, but stopped, the driver inside glad he’d listened to his wife and had that 500-dollar brake job.

“What do you mean, shoot ’em?” Jack looked like he was going to blow up, like he might explode all over the inside of the Rolls.

Early was confused. Wasn’t he a bodyguard, for chrissakes? Wasn’t that what Jack had been talking about for months, doing Speed and Doc?

Though to tell you the truth, at first Early didn’t think he wanted to. He was nervous about it, lay awake nights thinking how that would be. He knew it’d be nothing like that time he’d got real thirsty after a track kitchen meal of white bread and chicken wings, swaggered in the front door of the liquor store with his finger poked in his jacket pocket like it was a gun, and said Gimme y’all’s cash and a six-pack of Bud. The liquor man had laughed, busted his arm with a baseball bat, next thing Early knew he was doing 37 months at Angola in West Feliciana Parish, compliments of the Louisiana State Penal Authority. But that time hadn’t been for real. No gun.

And, of course, if some sucker who’d got pissed because he’d just gambled away the farm came waving a pistol, hollering about blasting Jack six ways to Sunday, now that was something else again. But if somebody, even Jack, just picked out a person, said, Kill that mother, he’d have a hard time with it.

On the other hand, Early’d got to thinking about Lush Life, that sweet filly, pretty little girl who never had an evil thought in her head, and he got to thinking about people getting away with mistreating all kinds of animals, not just horses, and he said, Hell, yeah, I could kill those rotten sons of bitches. Point me at ’em.

And now Jack’s saying, “Did you think I was going to
kill
them, Early? I’m not a killer. I’m a businessman.”

“Yeah, uh-huh,” said Early, not knowing what to think. Which way to look. Trying to cover his butt. “I was just saying that in a manner of speaking, you know. Shoot ’em. Like mess ’em up. Heh heh heh. But I knew all the while what you had in mind was just teaching ’em a lesson, right? Like stealing Doc’s woman? Maybe Speed’s, too, that blonde? I told you, didn’t I, she’s first runner-up to Miss Arkansas?” Early was trying to change the subject, fast.

And it worked. Or something did, as suddenly the big man relaxed back into the leather seat.

Jack’s moods reminded Early of when he was living down in New Orleans, a big storm would blow in over Lake Pontchartrain. One minute it wasn’t there, next thing you knew, skies dark as pitch, 100-mile-an-hour wind was throwing water and trash all over you, you figure you’re dead, then it was history. Leaving you wondering, did you have a little nightmare there or what?

Jack was saying, “Was. Jinx Watson
was
a beauty queen. A long time ago, Early.” Then Jack rotated his big head, and his neck creaked. “But what the hell, none of us are as young as we used to be.”