All Hat (33 page)

“I would,” Ray said. “But I'm afraid you might cut and run.”

“I don't cut and run, cowboy.”

She grabbed the fiberglass with both hands and pulled it apart while Ray cut. They had the cast off in a couple minutes. The leg was foul smelling, and Ray went into the house for a bucket of warm water and a quart of rubbing alcohol. He and Chrissie cleaned the horse's leg and then rubbed him down with the alcohol.

“Well, let's take him outside and let him walk,” Ray said.

Paulie was finished with the stallion now, and he followed them outside to the corral. He and Ray leaned on the fence and watched as Chrissie walked the gelding slowly around the enclosure. The horse was uneasy putting weight on the leg.

“He's got a limp for sure,” Chrissie said.

“That's good,” Ray said. “I want him to favor it.”

“You do?”

“Yup.”

“I suppose that's part of the overall plan?”

“Yup.”

They heard a vehicle and turned to see Pete Culpepper coming down the driveway in his pickup. He parked in front of the house and then got out and walked over. He was wearing an old pair of dress pants and a blue suit coat over a denim shirt, his good Stetson. Dressed up, for Pete.

“Is he sound?” he said, looking at the gelding.

“Sound enough, I hope,” Ray said. “How'd you make out?”

“Do I look like a crazy old man?” Pete asked by way of reply.

Ray stole a quick glance at the others, who were watching Pete warily.

“Why would you ask that?” Ray said.

“I want to know if I look like a crazy old man,” Pete said. “Because when I went to Woodbine and entered my nine-year-old gelding in the Stanton Stakes, everybody there looked at me like I was a crazy old man.”

Ray was lighting a cigarette, and he grinned around the smoke. “I bet they did.”

“The part that worries me is they might be right,” Pete said.

“Well, I could tell you that you aren't any crazier than the rest of us, but that probably wouldn't give you much consolation,” Ray said.

“Not one bit.”

Pete pushed his hat back with his thumb and put his foot on the bottom rail of the corral. Ray watched as Paulie copied the old man's moves precisely, looking over slyly to see if he had the hat just right.

Chrissie walked the gelding over to the far side of the corral and back again. The animal wasn't favoring the leg so much that he seemed to be in actual pain, Ray decided. The joint would be stiff from the cast, and the animal was just naturally cautious about it.

“I guess we can put him back inside,” Ray said.

Paulie went and opened the barn door for Chrissie, and they both went inside with the horse.

“So there was no problem?” Ray asked. “Other than the question of your sanity?”

“I had to pay a supplement for late entry,” Pete said.

“How much?”

“Five thousand.”

“Where the hell'd you get five grand? Oh—the ten you got from that acre piece?”

“I gave that back.” Pete took a half plug of Redman from his pocket and bit off a chaw. He turned toward the barn for a moment, then spit in the dirt. “Chrissie put it up.”

“Jesus.” Ray hung his forearms over the top rail. “I don't know about this, Pete. I've always been real willing to fuck up my own life, but I never liked to drag other people into it. If this blows up in our faces, there's gonna be a lot of people in a lot of trouble.”

“Well, we ain't quittin' now, Ray.” Pete nodded toward the barn. “That Paulie—he's a damn good kid. You see the change in him already? Hell, he even walks different. When he first got here, he'd walk into a room like he was apologizing for something. And now he don't. All I did was give him an old hat, and he thinks I'm the second coming. He's been told his whole life he ain't worth nothin', by people like Sonny Stanton. Calling him down and hitting on him. His whole life. Now maybe I done a few things I shouldn't have done, and maybe you done a few things you shouldn't have done, and maybe when the last steer is branded we ain't much better than Sonny. But I gotta believe we're a little bit better than Sonny, and I'd like to show that kid that it's so. I'd like to show him that the Sonny Stantons in the world don't always come out on top.”

It was a long speech for Pete Culpepper. When it was done Ray looked at his old friend a moment, and then he flicked his cigarette into the dirt. “I wouldn't mind knowing that myself,” he said.

When Chrissie came out of the barn she was carrying a short length of hemp rope in her hand, and with it she was showing Paulie how to make a hackamore. Paulie hung on her every word like it was the gospel, and when she was finished she pulled the rigging apart and let him have a try. Then she walked over to Ray and asked, “What's next, boss?”

“Next we have to figure how to change that bay into a chestnut,” Ray said. “We can use Pete's bay mare as a guinea pig; she's about the same color as the stud.”

“How you gonna do it?” Chrissie asked.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Ray said. “I've noticed that women like to color their hair.”

“This is my natural color, if that's what you're getting at,” Chrissie said. “I dyed my hair once, in high school. It was purple.”

“I can't see us fooling a lot of people with a purple horse,” Pete said.

“I'll go to the drugstore after lunch and see what they got in a chestnut brown,” Chrissie said. “We are gonna eat lunch, aren't we?”

They went into the house, and Pete cooked up hamburgers and fried potatoes, and the four of them sat at the kitchen table to eat. Pete hung his hat on a peg inside the back door when he came in, and Paulie was halfway through his first hamburger before he noticed, and then he got up and hung his hat alongside. When they were finished eating, Pete made a pot of coffee, and they all had a cup.

“There's one thing nobody's mentioned,” Pete said. “How you gonna pass that stallion off as a gelding. And don't tell me we're gonna geld the sonofabitch.”

“Might improve his disposition if we did,” Ray said. “But no, we're not gonna geld him. I figure he's doing us a favor, and that'd be a hell of a way to repay a favor. The thing is, when it comes to
cajones,
a horse isn't like an Aberdeen bull. You have to get pretty close to see 'em. I figure we braid his tail up, maybe weight it down some so he can't swing it, and we'll just take our chances. And he's a nasty piece of work; nobody's gonna want to get too close behind him. And when he's on the track, the plan is for him to be moving so fast that nobody'll get a look at anything.”

“What about afterward, in the winner's circle?” Chrissie asked.

“That's gonna take some fancy footwork,” Ray said.

“Because Sonny and Jackson Jones are both gonna be there,” Pete said. “Before and after.”

“I'm guessing Sonny will be in the bar,” Ray said. “Jackson will watch the race from the clubhouse, with the high hats. But you're right; Jackson knows that horse better than anybody, and he'll be tough to con. We have to get out of there before he gets close.”

“What about afterward?” Chrissie said. “The grooms and the hot walkers are gonna see something; you're never gonna keep this quiet.”

“Monday, we tell Jackson he gets his horse back, safe and sound, if there's no questions asked,” Ray said. “He'll do it to get the horse back. And Jackson's word is good.”

“What about Sonny?” Pete asked. “You gonna trust his word if he finds out?”

“Not on your nelly.”

Ray looked at Paulie across the table. Paulie was watching Chrissie at the counter, pouring more coffee. Pete was right; the kid seemed more at home on the farm each day.

“What if Sonny was in on it?” Ray asked.

“Yeah, we'll just call him up,” Chrissie said.

Ray sat there thinking. “What if somebody else called him up?”

Ray dropped Chrissie off at the drugstore in the mall, and then he drove over to ask Tiny Montgomery where he might find Misty. Tiny sent him to the Ramada but said he didn't know if she was still around. She'd only been at the club once since her encounter with Sonny, and that had been to get her pay.

“Hard to say where you might find her,” Tiny said as Ray left.

Ray thought about it as he drove across town, heading for the Ramada. Finding her would be the first problem.

Convincing her would be the second.

*   *   *

After Ray and Chrissie had left, Paulie gathered up the dishes and ran the sink full of water and set to washing them. Pete finished his coffee and then came over, dumped his cup in the dishwater, and then took up a dish towel and began to dry.

“I see you got a For Sale sign out front,” Paulie said.

“Yup,” Pete said. “You in the market?”

“No. I don't have any money. It's sure a nice farm, though.”

They finished up the dishes and then sat at the table while Pete had a cigarette and Paulie patted the Walker hound. It was a warm day, and there was no reason to have the space heater on. After a moment Pete went over and shut it off.

“Looks like I'm heading to Texas when this is over,” he said when he sat back down. “Ain't really fair to drag that hound all that way at his age. Would you consider taking him?”

“I'd like to, but I don't have anyplace for him,” Paulie said.

“Where do you live, anyway?” Pete asked.

“I just got a room at a motel.”

“You live in a motel?”

“Yeah, just a room.”

Pete put out his smoke in the ashtray. Paulie had hold of the loose skin at the scruff on the hound's neck and was shaking it gently, and the hound had his eyes closed and his neck arched.

“How old are you, Paulie?”

“Twenty-three.”

Pete leaned back and looked out the window. The two broodmares and the new foal were moving along the fencerow in front of the barn, the mares walking single file, heading for some spot near the lane, where there was grazing or maybe something else altogether, something that would be of interest to broodmares only. The foal was full of piss and vinegar, kicking her heels and running back and forth, circling her mother, her head high. Less than a week old, and she was as confident as a cock rooster. Pete watched the horses, and he tried to recall being twenty-three.

He liked to tell stories about his wild youth—about the panhandle and oil derricks and flat-head Fords. Flush Fridays and busted flat Mondays. Pretty Texas girls in thin summer dresses. The problem was, he couldn't remember what was truth and what was made up anymore. It was a hell of a thing when a man couldn't distinguish between what he'd lived and what he'd invented.

“Maybe I'll bring that mare up to the corral for Ray,” he heard Paulie say, and he turned to see him standing at the door, the Stetson in his hand.

“Yeah,” Pete said. “Take a pail of grain, she'll come right to you.”

“Okay,” Paulie said, and he opened the door.

“Paulie, why do you suppose Sonny is the way he is?”

“I don't know. My mother used to say that it just seemed like the devil had a lot more interest in Sonny than he did in other people.”

Paulie walked out onto the porch, and the hound followed him. After a few moments Pete saw him walking into the pasture field, a grain bucket in his hand, the animal still on his heels. It was the first time in a year the old dog had ventured that far from the house. Pete Culpepper sat at the kitchen table, watching the two crossing the field and trying to remember what it was like when he was twenty-three.

*   *   *

Sonny was in the den, watching the PGA on the satellite, when the phone rang. He set the clicker down, reached for the phone with one hand and his drink with the other. He said hello, watching the television.

“Sonny Stanton?”

“You got him.”

“This is Detective Frank Harmer,” the voice said. “Metro police.”

Sonny's hand froze on his drink. “Is this about my horse?” he asked.

“No, it's not about your horse. We've had a complaint lodged against you by a young woman. She claims you assaulted her.”

Sonny's heart jumped in his throat. He took a drink, tried to keep his tone nonchalant. “Who is this woman?”

“She's a dancer at a club. That's all the information you get for now. Do you have anything to say about this?”

“Yeah—I never assaulted anybody.”

There was a short silence. “Listen, Sonny. I know your father.”

“What's your name again?”

“Detective Frank Harmer.”

Sonny had never heard of the man. “You say you know Dad?”

“I've known him for twenty-five years. Now, there's going to be a warrant issued for your arrest. I can stall it for twenty-four hours. If you can get in touch with this woman before then and settle this, maybe we can avoid a bad situation. You've had problems in this area before. Do you know what I'm saying?”

Sonny was staring at the set, and as he watched, Sergio Garcia sank a forty-foot putt for eagle, then leaped in the air and ran across the green, pumping his fist. Sonny took another drink and then set his glass down.

“This allegation is complete nonsense,” he said into the phone. “Let me talk to the woman.”

“You've got twenty-four hours.”

*   *   *

Pete hung the phone up and looked across the room at Ray, who was leaning against the counter and watching him expectantly. Chrissie and Paulie were sitting at the table, also looking on.

Pete just shrugged his shoulders. “Wait and see,” he said.

“Who's Frank Harmer?” Ray asked.

“A good old Texas lawman from the days of yore,” Pete said.

“Does he know you're using his name?” Chrissie asked.