Sylvie's Cowboy (11 page)

In the bathroom, thunder and rain were less
audible, but lightning flashed across a tiny, high window. Sylvie
luxuriated in a steamy, noisy shower. With her eyes closed and head
back, she was oblivious to the storm outside.

The bathroom door opened. A shadowy figure
entered the steam-filled room and moved toward Sylvie’s silhouette
on the shower curtain. The figure passed the steam-fogged bathroom
mirror, a hunting knife upraised in one hand. With the knife lifted
high, the shadowy figure clank-clanked the blade against the metal
curtain rod.

Sylvie’s eyes flew open, her hands crossed
her breasts, and she screamed.

“Calm down!” Walt shouted over the shrieking.
“I knocked, but you didn’t hear me.” He stood outside the shower
curtain, a huge, menacing shape. Sylvie shrank back against the wet
tile wall.

“What do you want?” she said when she could
catch her breath.

“I gotta cut the circuit breaker.”

“What?”

“I gotta cut the circuit breaker.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you just hate to be inconvenienced
by any little ol’ thing and I’m tryin’ to be considerate—gimme some
slack here. So, can I cut it?”

“Where is it?”

“In the breaker box in the kitchen,
naturally.”

Naturally,
she mimed and stuck her
tongue out at his shadow. “I don’t care. Yes, cut the stupid
thingamabob if you want to.” Under her breath she muttered, “Shear
it off at the roots, if it makes you happy.”

Walt was out the bathroom door and gone.
Thunder rolled outside. Lightning streaked the window.

Sylvie lathered her hair, enjoying the
pelting massage of the hot shower until suddenly the water ran icy
cold. She jumped back with a yelp and a loud string of curse
words.

In the living room, by the light of a candle,
Walt was sitting on the floor peeling chewed lamp cord with his
hunting knife. Sylvie stalked in, dripping, wrapped in the
terry-cloth robe, with her hair twisted up in a towel. Thunder,
lightning, and rain outside mimicked the storm she wanted to
unleash in the living room.

“What happened!” she demanded of Walt.

He continued working calmly. “Maude ate the
lamp cord.”

“No, Thomas Edison, what happened to the hot
water!”

Walt stopped working to stare at her. “I told
you. I had to cut the power to this end of the house. The water
heater is at this end of the house.”

“You told me you were going to trim the
whatzit, the breaking thing. Cut the—

“Cut the circuit breaker. And I did.”

“And you also turned off the hot water!” she
shrieked.

He spoke as if she were a five-year-old:
“That was a side effect. Yes.”

“I want to see this breaker thingy,” she
demanded.

Walt looked at her a moment, decided all city
dwellers were probably crazed, and opted to humor her quickly so he
could go on about his business. He gestured toward the doorway.
“Fine. It’s right out there in the kitchen. Take a look.”

Sylvie stomped off in search of the
electrical grail. Walt turned back to splicing the lamp cord. Maude
leaped up to follow Sylvie and knocked Walt’s can of diet root beer
off the end table, into his lap, and onto the floor where it
puddled.

Walt reacted to the sudden flood as might be
expected. “Oh my ever-lovin’—You stupid mutt! Criminy! What a
gol-danged mess!”

The ragged end of the lamp cord, which was
still plugged into the wall, was now floating in the root beer
puddle. Without warning, the puddle became electrified, zapping
Walt’s posterior. “Ow!” He jumped clear of the puddle and squatted,
rubbing his zapped behind and eyeing the offending cord.

Sylvie, emerging triumphantly from the
kitchen, asked, “Was that it?”

Thunder boomed outside. Walt, fuming, rose
and hulked toward her brandishing his knife. He raised it as if he
would stab her. Instead, he took her hand and forcefully wrapped
the knife hilt in it.

“I’ll be danged if I’ll take the death
penalty for somethin’ that was done by that furry raisin you call a
dog!”

Terrified, Sylvie remembered Leslye’s
assertion that Walt had once committed murder. “What if you did it
yourself? Would you take the death penalty for something you did
yourself?”

Walt’s strong hands pinned Sylvie’s arms to
her sides. He leaned his face close to hers. Thunder rolled. “If I
was a murderer; if I was strapped into the electric chair this very
minute,” his hands slid up to her shoulders, “what would you do?”
His hands slid from her shoulders to close around her neck.

“I ... I ... “ she stammered.

His hands slid up from her neck to frame her
face. He kissed her, hard, working his fingers in her hair. Thunder
rumbled. Then he lifted his lips only an inch from hers. “Could you
throw the switch even if you knew I was a murderer, Sylvie?”

She blinked at him. “That’s not a fair
question. I ... “

He kissed her again. Thunder growled and
echoed and echoed.

When he backed away, her eyes stayed closed.
Lightning flashed outside the windows. Then whack! Something hit
her in the stomach. Her eyes flew open in shock. She looked down to
see herself holding a big, heavy
Handyman’s Guide to Home
Repairs.

Walt grabbed her hand roughly and folded it
around the book. “You’re college educated. You can read.” He
pointed to the severed lamp cord. “Your dog ate it. You fix
it.”

He stomped to the door, grabbed his slicker
and hat, and gave her one last piece of advice. “I suggest you turn
off the power and mop up the puddles first, if you don’t want your
hair permanently frizzed.”

He exited the house, leaving thunder, rain,
and lightning in his wake—and in Sylvie’s face.

…

It was midnight and Les Larrimore was the
worse for booze and pills. She took up her car keys and stumbled
from her office. Outside her windows it was raining.

In the office building’s parking garage,
Leslye got in her car, fumbled with the keys—proving she was too
drunk to drive, especially in the rain—but got the car started.
Thunder growled in the distance. Lightning flickered a long way
off.

Not far away, an engine roared to life and
headlights bloomed white, exactly as they had the night Les picked
up Sylvie at the Italian restaurant. Maybe it was the red pickup
again, and maybe it wasn’t. Whatever it was, it followed Les’s car
out of the garage.

…

At the Pace Tower construction site,
everything glistened and dripped with water from a thunderstorm
that had passed. On top of the unfinished high rise, in the yellow
light of jury-rigged security lamps, Harry Pace sat on a bare
girder and looked out over the city lights. He saw cruise ships on
Government Cut, skyscrapers on Biscayne Boulevard bathed in pastel
lights, a silver MetroRail train clacking across the neon rainbow
bridge over the crooked mirror of the Miami River.

Harry set his open can of diet root beer on
the girder beside him and leaned slightly to peer over the edge. It
was a long, long, long way down. And from the clanking of the
construction elevator, someone was making their long, long, long
way up.

The elevator clunked to a stop. Its wire mesh
door creaked open. Hesitant footsteps thumped onto the girders.

“Over here, Les,” said Harry. “Watch your
step.”

Unsteady and disheveled, Leslye looked like
she hadn’t eaten or slept much, but she had swallowed plenty. She
crept across the girders toward Harry, hanging on to anything
within reach. There wasn’t much.

Harry didn’t get up. “Pity Mr. Stern couldn’t
join us. I think this is a real ‘high level’ meeting, don’t
you?”

“You don’t seriously think he believes I had
a telephone call from a dead man. More than once. Or that I agreed
to meet a corpse in the middle of the night in a place like this?
He thinks I was hallucinating. I’m not sure I’m not.”

“I’m no hallucination, Les. I called you.”
Harry stood and walked along the girder, surveying the construction
project. “You and I both know you got real problems with this
place, Les.”

“What did you mean on the phone—’you get what
you pay for’—what was that supposed to mean?”

Harry picked up a length of two-by-four and
whacked it at a short metal crosspiece bolted to an angle of steel
framework. The bolts crumbled like ceramic pottery; the metal
crosspiece fell—and fell, and fell—until a distant clang indicated
it had hit bottom.

“You pay for crooked inspectors and
substandard building materials, you get a building that falls
down—if you ever get it built in the first place.”

“Why wouldn’t we get it built?” Leslye hung
onto the nearest upright girder, careful not to rely on any short
crosspieces for support.

Harry’s smile was not comforting. “Because
you won’t have the money to finish it, Les. Your money is
disappearing, isn’t it? I mean, what little Danny hasn’t gambled
away already. Disappearing. And so are your buyers. And if you
can’t sell Pace Tower for a boatload of cash in a hurry, it’s
doomed—and so are you.”

Realization crossed Leslye’s face. “It was
you! The wire transfers, the canceled insurance, someone breaking
into my office! You’re behind all this! It was you all along!”

Harry shrugged in an aw-shucks manner.
“Surprised, Les? Well, imagine how surprised I was to find out my
empire was gone. You were slick, weren’t you? You got me. I signed
anything you put in front of me, until I figured out what was
happening.

“By the time I realized you had stolen most
of what I had, and all that Sylvie would ever have, it was too
late. You’d done it. Very clever, Les. Almost worked.”

“It’s all legal,” Leslye said proudly. “You
signed it over. You can sue, but you’ll never convince a court that
a sophisticated businessman like you didn’t know exactly what he
was signing.”

Harry adopted a soothing demeanor. “I can’t
sue you, Les. I’m dead, remember?”

“Obviously, you’re not dead,” said
Leslye.

“Isn’t money wonderful? It can’t buy
happiness or good health, but it can buy coroners’ clerks and
funeral directors, and even the occasional policeman. I bought my
own death. Dead men can’t sue, Les.”

“You can’t have us arrested, either,” she
snarled. “The paperwork is perfect. We made sure. Everything
absolutely lawful. We won’t go to jail.”

“You’re right,” said Harry. “You and Dan will
not go to jail. Since I’m, dead, neither will I.”

Leslye was so terrified by what she heard in
his voice and saw in his face, she nearly lost her handhold.

Harry began walking toward her across the
girder. “Calm down, Les. You’re too drunk to be safe up here. You
better let me help you down.”

“Keep your hands off me!” she shouted. “All
those years when I threw myself at you, worked with you, joined the
polo club, the yacht club, any frigging club you might go to, just
to be close to you! All those years—even after Helen died! And you
never even
saw
me, never really knew who I was. And now,
now when you’re dead and you hate me and it’s too late. Now! You
follow me around, you want to ‘help’ me. But it’s too late. Too
late! You’re dead, I’m dead. We’re all dead. Just leave me
alone.”

Harry’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Follow
you aroun--? What the deuce are you talkin’ about, Leslye? Leslye!
Wait!”

Les dove for the elevator and pounded the
“down” button before Harry could stop her. He could only stand and
listen to the whine of the machinery and the clank-clank as the
elevator reached the ground.

Then he heard a woman’s scream. A gunshot.
Silence.

He was frozen for a second or two in
disbelief. Then Harry began yelling, “Les! Leslye!” He pounded the
elevator call button and listened to the machinery whine far below
him, on its way up to him. Far below, an engine coughed to life and
a vehicle drove away.

When the elevator arrived at Harry’s level,
Leslye Larrimore lay dead on its plywood floor. She had been shot
cleanly in the forehead.

…

The next morning, at the McGurk ranch, Walt
stood in the center of a fenced circle, exercising a horse by
allowing it to trot around him on the end of a long halter rope.
Harry’s vintage pink Mustang roared into the ranch yard, raising
dust and spewing gravel, and lurched to an abrupt stop beside the
corral fence. Harry was out of the car and climbing the fence in a
split second.

With his concentration on the moving horse,
Walt knew that Harry was present but had not yet realized Harry was
enraged. Calmly, he greeted Harry with, “Well, I declare. This is a
surprise. Ain’t you afraid Sylvie’ll catch you out here?”

“I know exactly where Sylvie is, don’t think
I don’t. I ain’t the idjit you take me for, mister!” Harry started
down the inside of the corral fence as quickly as he had come up
the outside of it. “Took me a couple hours to stop shakin’ so’s I
could drive, or I’d ‘a’ been here sooner!” Harry’s boots slapped
the ground hard as he came off the fence charging toward Walt.

The horse passed between them, nearly running
Harry down, but Harry dodged it and—as Walt turned his back,
following the progress of the animal—Harry tackled Walt from behind
and whacked him face down into the dirt.

The horse whinnied and jigged away from the
commotion, as far as the fence. Walt’s rope dragged loose behind
the horse. Walt and Harry rolled on the ground, narrowly missing
the panicky horse’s hooves.

Walt elbowed Harry, breaking his
stranglehold, and somersaulted to his feet. He stood against the
fence, ready for a fight. Harry rose more slowly in the center of
the ring.

Walt spat dust, spared a glance at the
nervous horse, and tried to speak calmly for the animal’s sake.
“You got somethin’ on your mind, or did you just wake up in the
mood to break my back and lame my horse? And if you ain’t got a
real good answer, mister, I’m fixing to transplant your organ while
you’re still playin’ it!”