Shedrow (16 page)

“It was before.”

“But you never told me about that meeting when we spoke before.”

“You never asked,” Gianni said.

Jones’ eyes narrowed. “Do you know that Chet is missing, that he left a suicide note at his home?”

“What?”

“How long have you been in Kentucky, Doctor?”

“I drove down last night.”

“You haven’t seen any of the news about the missing New Jersey mobster and the dead man hanging in his house?”

“I’ve seen virtually no news for the last week or so. I catch a little radio in the morning, usually NPR or Imus. That’s been about it. I told you the last time we met that I have been a little obsessed with the death of that stallion. Between that and my medical practice, I’ve
barely had time to eat.”

“Dr. Gianni, your office informed us that your departure this week was rather abrupt. I called them because I had originally planned to travel to New York and meet you there along with the detective in charge of investigating the Pawlek disappearance.”

She brushed back a loose strand of hair that had fallen across one eye. “Your office informed me that you cancelled several patients because of an emergency out of town. What was the nature of that emergency?”

“I told you. I have been very wrapped up in the mysterious death of the stallion, Chiefly Endeavor. Dr. Highet and I have been in close contact, but I needed to see him face-to-face again.”

“Do you always drive from New York to Kentucky in the middle of the night, Doctor?”

Look, I have nothing to hide and I am trying my best to be cooperative with you. But right now, I don’t like this line of questioning. You said you wanted to know what I could tell you about Chester Pawlek. I obviously know a lot less than you do about his present status. Chet is someone I generally try to avoid.”

Gianni looked at Jones and then at the troopers, doing his best to match their cold stares.

“So if you are now making this an interrogation about me, then I am going to insist that I have legal representation present.”

“Did Chester seek your opinion on any other medical matters or facts,” Jones asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Do you keep insulin in your office, Dr. Gianni?”

“No. And this interview is over.”

Delores Pawlek stood in her enormous kitchen and looked at her son John, slouched over the granite-slab breakfast bar. He looked awful. His once muscular frame was at least ten pounds lighter. His face was pale and gaunt. When he had first come in, she thought she noticed pinpoint pupils. Perhaps she was looking too hard, she thought.

He cast a perfunctory glance her way and said, “I hope he
is
dead.”

“How dare you. He’s your father, John.”

“By blood, maybe.”

“What has gotten into you?”

“What’s gotten into me? How about the fact that I can’t pretend to have any feelings for him just because there’s a chance he may be dead. I can’t forget all the bullshit, his arrests, the beatings and the lies about how they happened, all the times he left in the middle of the night and never came back for days. What’s gotten into you?”

“We had our rough times, but your father was always a good provider.”

“A provider of what? Of all this shit here.” He gestured wildly with his arms. “All this useless crap.”

“He’s putting you through college right now, young man.”

“Oh my God, I cannot deal with this. Just tell me what they told you.”

“They found his car abandoned in Westchester, in a ditch near the train station in Ardsley. The train station is right on the river. There was a note in the car, almost like the old one. Except this one also said
Death by drowning is painless.
It’s his writing and it’s for real. He was obsessed with that theme from M*A*S*H:
Suicide is Painless
.”

“And suppose they don’t find a body, then what?”

“I don’t know. Your Uncle Ralph already stopped by with some cash. He said how sorry he was and that he had instructions to make sure we had everything we needed until things were straightened out. Instructions from your father, I mean.”

“He’s not my uncle, Ma. Stop calling him that. How much cash?”

“Enough for awhile.”

“Just great. A friggin’ Mafia annuity.”

“Stop right now. I’ll hear no more of that, John.”

“So what will they do, dredge the whole damn river from the Tappan Zee to Jersey City?”

“I’m not sure. They’re investigating. That Chinese detective wants to question us again.” She took off her glasses and raised them to the light, squinting as she inspected them, then blowing away tiny specks of dust.

John said, “God, you sound just like him, now. Doesn’t the Chinese detective have a name?”

“Chang,” she answered. “I had a call from that doctor too, the Italian one he owned the horse with.” She started to pick at her blouse with her thumb and index finger.

“What did he want?” John asked.

“I’m not exactly sure. It was a very strange call.”

“I can stay here with you tonight, but I’m going to my room now.”

“Don’t you want some dinner? You need to eat.” She stood up and walked over to the oven, a shiny, stainless steel Viking. “I made some nice lasagna in my new oven.”

“Maybe later.”

WHEN THE MUSIC became too loud and too metallic for her to stand any longer, she knocked on her son’s door. There was no answer, so she let herself in. She thought she saw John sleeping, slumped over a beanbag chair. His eyes were partly open and he had a look of utter contentment on his face. She felt happy for him until she looked beside his outstretched arm and saw a rubber tourniquet and a small, tuberculin-type syringe, the kind her mother used for insulin injections. His eyes opened a little more, and then rolled back in his head.

“John, my God!”

His head lifted just slightly. He smiled at her and waved her away. “I’m fine…my music...fine.”

The sight startled her at first, though she wasn’t overly surprised. She simply regarded it as one more destructive tentacle that she could
trace back to Chester Pawlek, bringing her one step closer to despising the man she had married.

When Gianni drove up to the gatehouse at Midway Farm it was barely light. He knew he would find Highet on his morning rounds and he would see him one last time before heading back to New York. The gatehouse light was off and he didn’t see the attendant.

He got out of his car, looked in the window and saw the attendant on the floor. A stool was overturned, and it was lying between his legs. The small Mexican man had a slash across his neck, extending from ear to ear, partially decapitating him. Blood had splattered everywhere within the small hut, as if the man had spun in circles—all the while spewing blood—until he finally collapsed on the floor.

Gianni reached for his cell phone to dial 911 and for an instant, he thought about getting back into his car and just driving. He surveyed the once white, painted surface of the hut’s walls, painted now with blood that in some areas still hadn’t dried. Gianni knew that the drying time of blood could vary, but was generally less than
fifteen minutes.
He was just here
.
I just missed him.

The Kentucky State Police were the first to arrive. Gianni felt relieved that neither of the two troopers who had questioned him the previous day was on duty for this call. Joe Travers, the farm manager, had also arrived. While one of the troopers secured the crime scene, the other began to question Gianni and Travers.

Gianni looked at the trooper’s name plate:
Larson
. He was a young sergeant with a Nordic look, blond hair, blue eyes and a narrow face. He didn’t introduce himself by name, only that he was from the Kentucky State Police.

“Who was first at the scene,” he asked.

“I was,” Gianni replied.

“What time?”

“Just about 6:00 a.m.”

“And you?” he said, looking at Travers.

“Just now, same as you,” Travers said.

“What’s the man’s name?”

“Alvaro,” Travers answered. His first name was…he went by Gus. Gus Alvaro.”

“How long has Alvaro worked here?” he asked.

“Several years. He was a good man, a good employee.”

“I assume he has all his papers?”

“Probably an H-2B Visa, but I’d have to check.”

“You better do that. Did he have any enemies that you know about?”

“No, I think he was pretty well liked.”

“Any family?” The trooper asked.

“None that I know of, not here in the States anyway.”

“Girlfriend?”

Travers paused. “There were some rumors about Gus.”

“Rumors about what?”

“Some of the other workers said Gus was a homo.”

“Homosexual?”

“Yeah,” Travers said. “They talked about him and this guy at the dump, the guy they call Zoom. That guy would come around here once in a while. I never liked him. In fact, he was around here the morning our stallion died. You, I mean, the police brought him in for questioning then, didn’t they?”

Larson ignored the question and continued. “What else can you tell me about Gus and Zoom? Were they homosexual lovers?”

“How the hell would I know,” Travers snapped. “But if they were, then things were pretty tense lately.”

“Why do you say that?” Larson asked.

“Well, this is just talk around the barn, you know. But Gus had told some of the workers that he knew something about the Zoom guy, something really bad. He said it was something he wasn’t sure he could keep to himself. He was a good man, and I think he was feeling really guilty about it.”

“You said Zoom sometimes came onto the farm property here at Midway?”

“I saw him here twice and threw him out both times. We have a lot of very valuable horses here and we try to run a tight ship,” Travers said.

“So how did he get on the property?”

“Well, like I said, there were rumors about him and Gus.” “So did you talk to Gus after you threw Zoom off the property?”

“Yeah, gave him holy hell. And the last time he was real upset, like he wanted to confess something but he didn’t. Then I started to hear more rumors that he knew something bad about Zoom, something that was just eating at him.”

“But you have no idea what it was?” Larson asked.

“No idea, and now…we may never know,” Travers said, looking back at the gatehouse.

As the trooper was walking back to his car, Gianni’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller I.D.
Restricted
. He assumed it would be Janice calling from their home number, and for the first time in a long while, he actually wanted to hear her voice. He turned and walked a few steps away and flipped open the phone.

“Dr. Gianni?” a low, gruff voice said.

“Who is this?” Gianni asked.

“Go back to New York,” the gravelly voice said.

“What?”

“I said, go back to New York. You’re not needed around here. There is no business for you here in Kentucky. Stop nosing around and go back to New York while you still can.”

“Who the hell…” The caller hung up and the call ended.

While Gianni and Joe Travers were at the gatehouse with the state police, Ryan Fischer was starting his morning chores in Barn 32. An unmarked police cruiser pulled up alongside the barn and two men emerged from the vehicle. Both men were at least six feet tall. One had a muscular frame and short dark hair standing mostly on end. He had a long scar on the right side of his face, extending from alongside his eye, down towards the corner of his mouth, ending near his shirt collar. The other man had a huge frame, but he was burly and fat, not muscular like the man with the scar. His baggy chino pants were held up by wide orange suspenders, and he carried a four-pronged pitchfork in his chubby hands.

The pair walked slowly down the shedrow, looking into each stall. In one of the stalls, Ryan was using a pitchfork to remove manure from the wood shavings and straw remnants, pitching it into a wheelbarrow at the stall door. He hummed a tune as he worked.

The fat man stopped in front of the wheelbarrow. “Mucking
stalls?” he said.

“Yeah,” Ryan answered, startled by the stranger. He hadn’t noticed the pitchfork at first, but he noticed it now as the man leaned on it, his huge hands now beside his head, clutching the tool as he smiled at Ryan.

“Are you Ryan?” the fat man asked.

“How did you know that?”

The man grinned and bounced his head side to side, his fat face almost looking friendly. “I just know,” he said.

Ryan could see the man with the scar standing at the stall door now. Unlike the fat man, he had a mean and penetrating gaze. There was no mercy in those eyes.

The fat man said, “You’ve been snooping around the dump, talking to those guys that live there.”

“I just bring the garbage there. I talk to them a little.”

“You know Mahlon?”

“I know who he is,” Ryan answered.

“Mahlon told you about the hermit.”

Ryan was silent.

“This is all shit you better just forget, kid.”

The man with the scar grinned. His teeth looked like big white squares. “Do you know how you can just forget certain things?” he said.

Ryan shook his head in terror.

“Because we can help you forget,” the fat one said, still smiling and shifting his grip on the pitchfork. I mean, I could take this pitchfork,” he said, raising it and then moving it to one side, holding it like a spear. “I could take it and plunge it right through your fucking
heart. But I really don’t want to do that. I mean, you seem like a pretty good k-kid.”

Ryan had recoiled to the far corner of the stall, and the fat man was inside the stall door now.

“I only give one warning, kid,” the fat man said.

The two men then left quickly. When they reached the end of the shedrow, Ryan ran to the last stall and peered around the corner at the dark-colored vehicle as it skidded down the gravel lane, spitting gravel and raising a trail of dust.

HIGHET ARRIVED AT BARN 32 sometime later, accompanied by Gianni, who was still visibly agitated from the scene at the gatehouse. Ryan was sitting on the ground outside the entrance to the barn when Highet and Gianni walked up. Gianni was still recounting the horrific events of the past hour, but Highet raised his hand, cutting him off in mid sentence when he saw the boy.