Blood Sport

Chapter Sixteen

For most of thirty hours I sat in the mountainous Arizona desert and looked down at Matt Clive leading a boring life.

Like his sister, he was capable, quick, efficient. He watered the stock and mended a fence, swept out the house and fed the hens; and spent a great deal of time in the largest barn on the place.

I had found myself a perch among the rocks on the east-facing side of the valley, half a mile off the dusty road to the farm. At nearly three thousand feet above sea level the heat was bearable, though the midday sun blazed down from nearly straight overhead, and eggs would have fried on the sidewalks if there had been any. Desert plants were designed to save themselves and no one else: at my back grew a large agave, its central stem rising six feet high with flat outspreading flowers turning from red to brilliant yellow. For leaves it had razor-sharp spikes springing outwards from the ground in one large clump. Stiff; angular; not a vestige of shade. The spindly buckhorn and the flat devil’s fingers would have been pretty useless to a midget. I folded myself under the overhang of a jagged boulder and inched round with the meagre shade patch until the sun cried quits behind the hill.

Showman and Allyx had to be in the big barn: though I saw no sign of them, nor of any other horses, on the first afternoon.

By air to Las Vegas and hired car to Kingman had taken me all morning, and at the last fork on the way to the farm I’d had to decide whether to risk meeting Matt head on on the road or to walk ten miles instead. I’d risked it. Ten miles there was also ten miles back. The car had bumped protestingly off the road two miles short of his farm, and was now out of sight in a gulley.

Binoculars brought every detail of the meagre spread up clear and sharp. The small dilapidated house lay to the left, with the big barn on the right across a large dusty yard. Along most of a third side of the rough quadrangle stretched an uneven jumble of simple stone buildings, and behind those the rusting guts of two abandoned cars lay exposed to the sky.

Maintenance was at a minimum: no endemic prosperity here. The owners scratched for a living in a tiny valley among the Arizona hills, existing there only by courtesy of the quirk of rock formation which had brought underground water to the surface in a spring. The small river bed was easy to follow from where I sat: grass and trees circled its origin, sparse paddocks stretched away to sagging fences on each side of its upper reaches, a corn patch grew beside it near the farm buildings, and lower down it ran off into the desert in a dry wide shallow sandy trough. Heavy rain would turn it every time into a raging torrent, as destructive as it was vital. High behind the house, dominating the whole place, a huge onion-shaped water storage tank sat squatly on top of a spindly looking tower.

Mile after mile of plain dark poles stretched along the road to the farm, carrying an electric cable and a telephone wire, but civilization had fallen short of refuse collection. A sprawling dump at one side of the big barn seemed to consist of a brass bedstead, half a tractor, a bottomless tin bath, the bones of an old wagon, a tangled heap of unidentifiable rusting metal, and roughly fifty treadless tyres of varying sizes. Filling every crevice among this lot were bottles and empty food cans with labels peeling and jagged lids mutely open like mouths. Over the top the air shimmered with reflected heat.

Matt had already spent at least a week in this ugly oasis. Walt shouldn’t find it too hard to persuade him to make an evening visit to Las Vegas.

I watched until long after dark. Lights went on and off in the house, and Matt moved about, visible through the insect screens because he didn’t draw any curtains. If, indeed, there were any.

Cautiously at some time after one o’clock, when all the lights on my side of the house had been out for more than two hours, I picked my way down to the farm. The night was still warm, but as the only light came from the stars it was black dark on the ground, and with agave clumps in mind I reckoned my torch held lesser risk.

I reached the farmyard. Nothing stirred. Quietly, slowly, I made the crossing to the barn. Matt in the house slept on.

No padlocks: not even bolts. There weren’t any. The wide door of the barn stood open; and with this invitation, I went in. Inside, the barn was divided into six stalls along one side, with feed bins and saddlery storage racks along the other. Here and everywhere else dilapidation and decay were winning hands down: everything my torch flicked over looked in need of help.

Four of the stalls were empty, but in the two central ones, side by side, stood two horses. Gently, so as not to frighten them, I went over, talking soothingly in a murmur and shining the torch beam on the wall in front of their heads. Their eyes in the dim light rolled round inquiringly, but neither gave more than a single stamp of alarm.

The first one tried to back away when I shone the torch into his mouth: but an exceedingly strong looking head collar and a remarkably new chain kept him from going more than a few feet. I ran my hand down his neck and talked to him, and in the end got my inspection done. The tattooed mark, as often, was none too clear: but discernibly it was 752:07. The registration of Moviemaker.

The tattoo on the second horse was more recent and also clearer: the registration number of Centigrade.

Satisfied, I gave them each a friendly slap, and with great care left the barn. Matt still slept. I hesitated, thinking that enough was enough, but in the end went down to the end of the farmyard to take a quick look through the other buildings. In one only, a deep narrow garage, was there anything of interest: a car.

It was not Matt’s pale blue convertible, but a tinny black saloon three or four years old. My flashlight picked out a piece of paper lying on the passenger seat, and I opened the door and took a look at it. A copy of a work sheet from a garage in Kingman. Customer’s name: Clive. Work required: Remove yellow paint from Ford convertible. Further instructions: Complete as soon as possible.

I put the paper back on the seat and shone the light over the dashboard. A small metal plate screwed on to it bore the name of the garage in Kingman: Matt had rented this car while his own was being cleaned.

Outside, everything was still, and feeling like a shadow among shadows I went quietly out of the farmyard and along the dusty road towards Kingman. It seemed a lot farther than two miles to the flat stones I had left one on top of the other as a marker, and even after I had reached them it took me quite a while to find the hidden car and get it back on to the road.

It was well after three when I called Walt. He sounded resigned, but he’d known it would be some time in the night.

‘Are they there?’ he said.

‘They are. They’re quite unguarded, and there’s only Matt on the place. How about things your end?’

‘Oh.’ Amusement crept in. ‘Offen was full of offended dignity. Didn’t know how anyone could suggest he was engaged in fraud; that sort of thing. It didn’t impress the DA’s squad at all, because they get that sort of bluster every time. Made them all the keener, if anything. They had quite a long session with him, all fairly polite but definitely needling. Artists, they are. From our point of view Offen said nothing significant except for one little gem. The DA’s guys asked to see the stud groom. That’s Kiddo, remember? The one who told us about the mares foaling at night?’

‘I remember,’ I said.

‘Well, it seems it’s a slow time around studs just now, and Kiddo went off on vacation the day after our first visit.’

‘He didn’t say anything about that when we were there.’

‘He sure didn’t. Offen says Kiddo will be back in three weeks. By then, I guess, he expects to have had Moviemaker and Centigrade identified as themselves, and then when the dust has settled he can bring Showman and Allyx quietly back, and it’ll be safe for Kiddo to return. I guess Offen didn’t know which way he’d jump, and booted him off out of trouble.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said. ‘Anything interesting on the tape?’

‘I’ve been listening to that damned machine until I’m bored to death with it,’ he said wearily. ‘Today’s run was mostly the DA’s men talking to Offen, so I heard all that twice over. He then called both Yola and Matt and told them about it, and he sounded pretty pleased with the way things were going. I’d say Matt was a mite annoyed at having to stay where he is: Offen was telling him not to be stupid, what was a week or two with so much at stake. Also Yola must be wanting Matt back, because Offen smoothed her down with the same spiel.’ Walt paused and cleared his throat. ‘What would you say is the relationship between Matt and Yola?’

Smiling into the receiver I said, ‘Such thoughts, Walt, from you!’

‘It’s possible...’ he said uncomfortably.

‘It sure is. But there’s nothing to indicate it except for their not being married.’

‘Then you don’t think...?’

‘I’d say they’re certainly centred on each other, but how far it goes I couldn’t guess. The only time I’ve seen them together they’ve had their hands full of punts and guns.’

‘Yeah... well, maybe crime is how it takes them.’

I agreed that it probably was, and asked him if he’d got Matt set up for the insurance meeting.

‘I sure have,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I called him this afternoon. It must have been soon after he’d been talking to Offen, I guess, because he seemed to be glad enough to be given a reason for going to Las Vegas. I suggested six PM which sounded all right, but he himself asked if I could make it later.’

‘He’ll probably want to feed the horses about then, when the day gets cooler,’ I said. ‘And those horses would come first.’

‘Yeah. At three million for two, they sure would. It beats me why he doesn’t guard them every minute.’

‘Against what?’ I said.

‘You got a point,’ he conceded. ‘Only us. And we’re obviously concentrating on the two at Orpheus. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Anyway, Matt said could I make it later than six, and we agreed in the end on nine. That should mean he’ll take that gander at the roulette tables on his way home, and maybe give us most of the night to get the horses clear.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s fine. But Walt...’

‘Yes?’

‘Take care.’

‘Go teach your grandmother,’ he said, and I smiled wryly and asked him if he’d heard from Sam Hengelman.

‘Sure, he called this evening, like you asked. He’d reached Santa Rosa in New Mexico and he was going on to Albuquerque before stopping for the night. He said he’d be in Kingman by four or five tomorrow afternoon... today, I suppose, technically... and he’ll meet you at the Mojave Motel. I told him the return trip wouldn’t be starting before eight, so he’s going to take a room there and catch a couple of hours’ sleep.’

‘Thanks, Walt, that’s great,’ I said.

‘We’re all set, then?’ There was a hint of unease in his voice, and it raised prickles again in my early warning mechanism.

‘You don’t have to go to Las Vegas,’ I said reasonably. ‘We’ve time enough without it.’

‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘And that’s that.’

‘Well... all right. I think we could do with a checkpoint, though, in case anything goes wrong. Let’s say you wait in the lobby of the Angel Inn from eight to eight-thirty tomorrow evening. That’s where I stayed. It’s right on the edge of Las Vegas, but it’s an easy trip to Pittsville Boulevard. I’ll call you there sometime during that half hour; and if I don‘t, you stay put, and don’t go out to Matt’s house.’

‘OK,’ he said, and although he tried, there was distinct relief in his voice.

We disconnected, and I ate a sandwich and drank coffee at an all night lunch counter at the bus station before returning to my hired car and pointing its nose again towards the farm and the hills. The two flat stones came up again in the headlights, and re-stowing the car in its former hiding place, I finished the journey on foot.

Back in the shelter of the same jagged rock I tried for a time to sleep. There was still an hour or more before dawn, and the sun wouldn’t be too hot for a while after that, but in spite of knowing that I’d get no rest at all during the following night, my brain stayed obstinately awake. I supposed an inability to sleep on open ground surrounded by cacti and within yelling distance of a man who’d kill me if he had a chance could hardly be classed as insomnia in the ordinary way: but I had no illusions. That was precisely what it was. The restless, racing thoughts, the electrical awareness, the feeling that everything in one’s body was working full steam ahead and wouldn’t slow down; I knew all the symptoms much too well. One could lie with eyes shut and relax every muscle until one couldn’t tell where one’s arms and legs were, and still sleep wouldn’t come. Breathe deeply, count all the sheep of Canterbury, repeat once-learnt verses; nothing worked.

The sun came up and shone in my eyes. Inching out of its revealing spotlight I retreated round the side of the rock and looked down to the farm through the binoculars. No movement. At five-thirty Matt was still in bed.

I put down the glasses and thought about a cigarette. There were only four left in the packet. Sighing, I reflected that I could easily have bought some in Kingman, if I’d given it a thought. It was going to be a long day. All I’d brought with me beside the binoculars was a bottle of water, a pair of sunglasses, and the Luger in my belt.

At seven-thirty Matt came out through the rickety screen door of the house, and stood in the yard stretching and looking around at the cloudless cobalt blue sky. Then he went across to the barn and poked his head briefly inside.

Satisfied that the gold was still in the bank, he fetched buckets of water and joined it for long enough to muck out the stalls and see to the feed. After a time he came out with a barrowful of droppings and wheeled it away to empty on the far side of the barn, out of my sight.

The hens got their grits, and the calves in a near compound their ration of water, and Matt retired for his breakfast. The morning wore on. The temperature rose. Nothing else happened.

At noon I stood up for a while behind the rock to stretch my legs and restore some feeling to the bits that were numb from sitting. I drank some water and smoked a cigarette, and put on the sunglasses to circumvent a hovering glare headache: and having exhausted my repertoire except for a few shots from the Luger, folded myself back into the wedge of slowly moving shade, and took another look at the farm.

Status quo entirely unchanged. Maybe Matt was asleep, or telephoning, or watching television, or inventing systems for his trip to Las Vegas. He certainly was not doing much farming. Nor did he apparently propose to exercise the horses. They stayed in their stalls from dawn to dusk.

By two I knew intimately every spiny plant growing within a radius of ten feet of my rock, and found my eyes going far oftener to the broad sweep of desert on my left than to the dirty little farm below. The desert was clean in its way, and fierce, and starkly beautiful. All hills and endless sky. Parched sandy grey dust and scratchy cactus. Killing heat. A wild, uncompromising, lonely place.

When I first felt the urge just to get up and walk away into it I dragged my eyes dutifully back to the farm and smoked the second cigarette and thought firmly about Matt and the horses. That only worked for a while. The barren country pulled like a magnet.

I had only to walk out there, I thought, and keep on going until I was filled with its emptiness, and then sit down somewhere and put the barrel of the Luger against my head, and simply squeeze. So childishly easy; so appallingly tempting.

Walt, I thought desperately. I couldn’t do it because of Walt and the unfinished business we were embarked on. The horses were there in front of me, and Walt and Sam Hengelman were on their way. It was impossible just to abandon them. I hit my hand against the rock and dragged my mind back to the farm and the night ahead. And when I’d gone through that piece by piece I concentrated one at a time on Yola and Offen, and Eunice and Dave Teller, and Keeble and Lynnie, trying to use them as pegs to keep me believing that what I did mattered to them. That anything I did mattered to anybody. That I cared whether anything I did mattered to anybody.

My hand had been bleeding. I hadn’t even felt it. I looked dispassionately at the scraped skin, and loathed myself. I shut my eyes, and the desolation went so deep that for an unmeasurable age I felt dizzy with it, as if I were in some fearful pitch black limbo, with no help, no hope, and no escape. Spinning slowly down an endless shaft in solitary despair. Lost.

The spinning stopped, after a while. The internal darkness stayed.

I opened my eyes and looked down at the farm, only half seeing it, feeling myself trembling and knowing that there wasn’t much farther to go.

Matt came out of the house, walked across the yard, took a look into the barn, and retraced his steps. I watched him in a disorientated haze: those horses in the barn, what did they matter? What did anything matter? Who cared a sixpenny damn about blood lines, it would all be the same in a hundred years.

Dave Teller cared.

Let him.

Dave Teller cared a ten thousand dollar damn what happened to them.

Crystal clear, like distilled water logic, it occurred to me that I could give us both what we wanted if I postponed my walk into the desert until later that night. I would pack the horses off with Hengelman, and instead of driving back to Kingman after him, I would set off on foot, and when it was nearly dawn, and everything looked grey and shadowy, and the step would be small... then...

Then.

I felt, immediately after making this firm decision, which seemed to me extremely sensible, a great invasion of peace. No more struggle, no more fuss. My body felt relaxed and full of well-being, and my mind was calm. I couldn’t think why such an obvious solution hadn’t occurred to me before. All the sweat and sleeplessness had dissolved into a cool, inner, steady light.

This stage lasted until I remembered that I had once been determined not to reach it.

After that, creeping in little by little, came the racking conviction that I had merely surrendered, and was not only despicable but probably insane.

I sat for a while with my head in my hands, fearfully expecting that with the false peace broken up and gone, back would come the shattering vertigo.

It didn’t. There was only so great a tiredness that what I’d called tiredness before was like a pinhead on a continent. The dreary fight was on again; but at least I’d survived the bloodiest battle yet. Touched bottom and come back. I felt that after this I really could climb right out, if I went on trying.

A long way to go. But then, I’d have all the time I needed.