Sylvie's Cowboy (12 page)

Harry bent over and braced his hands on his
knees, panting. “Why were you following her?” he asked when he
could breath again. “I know it was you.”

“Heck yes, I followed her,” said Walt. “How
else could I know where the deuce she was going? I was just doing
what you wanted, you old buzzard!”

Harry stepped closer. “I didn’t want her
dead!”
He delivered a punch that spun Walt around and left
him holding himself upright against the top rail of the fence.

Walt’s breathing became ragged. His eyes
watered.
Sylvie? Dead!

“Maybe I can’t bring her back, and
maybe—things being what they are—I can’t call the law, but I can
sure as blazes make you pay!” cried Harry.

Walt’s nostrils flared as rage replaced
grief. He turned to face Harry. “You! You caused all this with your
phony funeral and your lies on top of lies!”

“It’s no lie this time!” Harry yelled. “This
funeral will be real!”

“And you’re gonna pay for it outta your
infernal hide!” Walt shouted, and he knocked Harry backward into
the frightened horse that was cowering against the far side of the
ring.

Harry wiped a bleeding lip and lunged at
Walt, murder in his eyes.

They fought back and forth across the ring,
the horse always a factor and always in the wrong place. Walt
kicked the wind out of Harry. Then, while Harry was pulling himself
together, Walt leaped to a corral gate, opened it, and shooed the
hysterical horse into a pasture. Walt latched the gate and pulled
his pistol from his boot. He pointed it at Harry.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Walt lowered the gun. He looked at Harry
through a volcanic haze of anger and grief, and he threw the pistol
over the gate into the pasture. He drew the knife from his belt and
thwacked it deep into the top rail of the fence where Harry had
climbed over.

“I took care of her, didn’t I,” Walt said
angrily. “Oh, yeah! I took great friggin’ care of her!”

Harry stood looking at Walt, at the distant
pistol, and at the knife just across the corral. He made his
decision. Harry bolted for the knife with Walt only two steps
behind.

At the fence Harry tried to wrench the knife
from the wood, but it was embedded deep. Walt tackled him before he
could loosen it. Both men fell to the ground and rolled under the
fence, past Harry’s Mustang, and into the ranch yard. They writhed
on the ground, neither able to get the upper hand.

A shadow with wide-spreading, sharp-pointed
horns glided across the ground and covered them like eagle’s wings.
The two men froze, looked up, and then made a unison roll away from
the shadow. In a flash they were up and running toward the corral,
with Old Beauregard hard on their heels.

The Mustang parked between them and the fence
posed no obstacle. They leaped onto the fender, the hood, the roof,
and from there to the fence and safety beyond. Beauregard slammed
hard into the front quarter panel of the Mustang, then came around
the car to stand, pawing and blowing, looking through the fence at
the two men.

Their fight forgotten in the face of a mutual
enemy, they sat stunned and panting on their backsides in the
dirt.

“What the Sam Hill’s got into him?” asked
Harry. “Somebody been parkin’ under his tree?”

“Sylvie,” said Walt, before he choked and had
to clear his throat. “But she’ll never do it again.”

He was shocked when Harry laughed at that.
“Reckon you put the fear of God into her, eh?” Harry quipped.

“Don’t seem important now.”

Harry began dusting himself off and gradually
lifting himself up from the ground. “Well, you’ll have to do it
again before long, I expect.”

“What?”

Harry reached down to give Walt a hand up.
Walt took the hand without hesitation.

“Just when you think she’s come around to
your way of thinkin’,” Harry said, “she goes off on one of her
toots again, and you’re right back where you started. If you can
break her of doing everything her own way, you’re a better man than
I was.”

Walt looks at Harry, puzzling through what he
just heard. “Harry,” he said, “you said Sylvie’s dead.”

“Leslye!” Harry responded, amazed that he and
Walt had been dealing at cross purposes. “Leslye Larrimore’s dead.
That’s what all this was about.”

“I thought all this was about Sylvie! I dang
near killed you for lettin’ it happen!”

It was Harry’s turn to look puzzled. “You
mean you wasn’t the one following Les?”

“Heck no! Only person I ever followed was
Sylvie.”

Harry began looking around him as if for
something he’d forgotten. “Dang!” He looked at Walt. “I gotta get
back to town! I been on the wrong track all along about this!”

They started toward the Mustang, but
Beauregard still stood his ground. They looked for an alternative.
Walt decided and pointed across another fence. “You work your way
around through there to the truck shed and take the pickup. After
Beauregard cools off, I’ll see about fixin’ that fender. Tune her
up, too, while I’m, at it.”

“Right. I’ll be in touch.” Harry climbed
across the far fence. Walt set about retrieving his knife and his
pistol as if nothing had happened. Almost nothing. Walt wiped his
eyes with his sleeve.

…

That night at the Polo Club restaurant,
valets parked fancy cars out front while fancy people partied
inside. Music and festive light spilled from the doors and windows.
Dan Stern, with confetti in his hair and an open bottle of
champagne in one hand, was table hopping, greeting the guests.
People were exceedingly jolly. The room rang with laughter and
congratulatory wishes. The polo set was celebrating the afternoon’s
victory.

Dan Stern wobbled into the men’s room, where
he passed a teammate and swapped high fives. Both men yelled,
“Aw-
right!”
The teammate left and Dan settled down to aim
carefully into a urinal. He heard the door open but paid no
attention until a large hand gripped his chin.

“Don’t move,” Hugo’s deep voice rumbled.

Scampi’s hand came alongside Dan’s head.
Something cold and metallic touched Dan’s ear. Dan tried to turn
his head, but Hugo gripped his chin even harder.

“Don’t!” snapped Hugo.

“What is that? What are you doing?” whined
Dan, trying to see over his shoulder by moving only his eyes. It
wasn’t working.

“That’s an ice pick,” said Hugo. “Scampi’s
favorite. Very versatile. Very portable. Very clean. Very.
Effective.”

Dan was definitely not moving now. Scampi
smiled. Hugo released Dan’s chin and washed his hands at the
nearest sink.

While drying his hands, Hugo said, “You won
big today, Danny Boy. Looks good on your record here at the club,
huh? Unfortunately, it’s only a drop in the bucket toward what you
owe us. So here’s the thing. Two days. Forty-eight hours, Danny
Boy. We need to see the cash in forty-eight hours, or you don’t owe
nobody nothin’, now or ever again. Okay? Don’t nod. I know you
understand.”

Hugo and Scampi left as silently as they had
come. Dan stood perfectly still until the door closed. Then he bent
forward and vomited into the urinal.

…

It was almost dawn when Dan slumped in
through his front door to the ringing of his phone. He was tired
but almost calm. He ignored the ringing phone and began to take off
his clothes as he walked through the living room to the
bedroom.

The phone rang again, and this time the
answering machine in the bedroom clicked on. Dan continued
undressing. He moved into the adjoining bathroom and tossed his
Ostrich boots out onto the bedroom floor. He heard his own voice on
the answering machine. “This is Dan Stern. I’m not here or I don’t
want to talk. So you either do your thing at the beep or hang up.
Ciao.”

The answering machine emitted its
high-pitched tone. A surprising voice came through the small
speaker. “Stern, this is Harry Pace. I have to talk to you about
Les Larrimore.”

Dan, in his underwear, walked toward the
answering machine. The voice continued, “What happened to Leslye
didn’t have to happen. We can work something out before anybody
else gets hurt.”

Dan punched the Speaker Phone button and
snarled at the phone. “Well, ain’t this a miracle. Where’s the
money, Harry?”

“Why did you have to kill her, Danny?”

“She was having conversations with dead guys,
Harry. Freaking out. I needed a partner with a cool head and a
closed mouth.”

“So now she’s dead.”

“Yeah, yeah, so are you. So am I, if I don’t
come up with some cash real quick. What did you do with the money,
Harry?”

“I transferred most of it. What I didn’t
use.”

Dan walked toward the dresser and swiped a
cigarette lighter from it. He shouted toward the phone while
digging in his discarded slacks for a cigarette pack. “Transferred
... to Sylvie, naturally. Listen, hot shot. I need that money, and
I need it fast.”

Flame erupted from the lighter in his hand,
his lit his cigarette and stuffed it into his mouth. He tossed his
slacks on the floor.

Harry said, “Okay. If you promise to stay
away from Sylvie. In fact, it would be best if you went away
somewhere.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Dan, watching the
glow at the end of his cigarette.

“I need time to put your deal together, and I
need some sleep,” said Harry. “Let’s meet tomorrow, midnight, at
the penthouse.”

A few hours later, the sun was well above the
horizon, and Walt was tuning up Harry’s Mustang. The hood was open,
parts and tools littered the ground, an oily rag hung from the
car’s bumper. Butch and Maude lay together on the grass, watching
the work in progress.

Walt was talking to the dogs as he worked.
“Danged pea-brained idea all along. You know what I am?”

He looked at the dogs. He got only blank
looks in return. He ducked back under the hood of the car. “What I
am is a fool caught between two crazy people. I shoulda said ‘No’
right off. ‘Don’t send her to me,’ I shoulda said. ‘I got work to
do, I can’t be babysitting no gold-digging female that don’t know a
ranch from a hole in the ground. Not me. I don’t owe you that much,
Harry Pace. I don’t owe you so much that I gotta lie and pretend
and be something I’m not while you go on some tomfool crusade for
justice.”

He stood and shook his wrench at the dogs to
emphasize his words. “Ain’t no justice in this life, Harry Pace,
and if there was, you wouldn’t get it by lyin’ and cheatin’. That’s
what I shoulda told him.” He stooped under the hood again. “Why the
heck didn’t I tell him? She’s drivin’ me nuts. It’s gone too
far.”

From inside the house a phone rang. Walt
stood, put down his wrench, and wiped his greasy hands. The phone
rang again. Walt stomped toward the house. The dogs watched him as
he passed them, still fuming. “It’s gone too danged far.”

Walt entered the house and lifted the
receiver of the ringing phone. “McGurk.”

The caller was Dan Stern, who was sitting in
his car in the parking garage of Sylvie’s erstwhile penthouse. A
sack of groceries occupied the passenger seat beside him. “Is Harry
there?”

“Harry doesn’t live here.”

“Yes, I know, Harry supposedly doesn’t
live
anywhere, but I’ll bet you can get a message to him
for me.”

“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talkin’
about.”

“Listen, Dogpatch. Harry called me and set up
a meeting for tonight at the penthouse. You tell him for me that
I’ll be there—but Sylvie will be with me. Tell Harry the only thing
I want him to say when he gets there is ‘The money’s in your
account in Geneva. Have a nice trip.’ Got that?”

“Leave Sylvie out of it!”

“Impossible now, I’m afraid. See that Harry
gets my message.” Dan hung up.

Walt slammed the phone down. Then he yanked
it up again and punched in a number from memory. Cradling the phone
between his ear and shoulder, he carried it to the kitchen sink and
began scrubbing the auto grease off his hands. While the distant
phone could be heard ringing, he muttered, “Come on! Answer the
gol-danged phone! Come on!”

He rinsed his soapy hands and dried them on a
kitchen towel. He laid the phone on the counter long enough to pull
off his shirt, then he pressed the receiver to his ear again.

“Come on, Harry, be there! Aw, shoot!” He
slammed the phone down in frustration.

He thought for a second and snatched up the
phone again. He punched in a number. Busy signal. He shouted,
“Clarice, get off the dad-blame phone! Dang!” He smacked the phone
down and raced for the bedroom.

Moments later he emerged from the house,
pulling on a clean shirt, and leaped over the two dogs. He slammed
shut the hood of the pink Mustang and jumped into the driver’s
seat. He cranked and cranked and cranked—but the car wouldn’t
start. He jerked the door open, climbed out, and slammed the door
behind him. “Dang it! I knew this would happen!”

He reopened the hood with a fierce yank, and
he started to work in earnest.

...

Two hours later, about a hundred miles away,
in the parking garage of the penthouse condominium, a cellular
phone rang in its holster. The holster was mounted inside a red
pickup truck with yellow doors. The phone rang again and again and
again. But the parked truck was unoccupied. The call went to
voicemail. Moments later it rang again with the same result. The
caller tried a third time, then the phone went silent.

Across the garage, Dan Stern was leaving his
car, carrying a sack of groceries, walking toward the
elevators.

Outside on the street, Harry Pace, wearing
his windbreaker, boots, and Stetson, sauntered down the sidewalk
toward the condominium parking garage. He was carrying a bag of
takeout burgers and whistling “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”