God Save the Child

6

I spent two days hanging around the riding stable and learned only that horses are not smart. Vinnie spent most of his time in with the TV and the Pickwick. And assorted kids, more girls than boys, in scraggly Levis and scuffed riding boots and white T-shirts which hung outside the Levi, fed the horses and exercised them in the oozy ring and occasionally rented one to someone, usually a kid, who would ride it off into the bridle trail. I looked good in a plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of Levis and high-laced tan work shoes. I had a gun stuck in the waistband under the shirt, and it dug into my stomach all day. For a prop I had a big wooden rake, and I spent the days moving horse manure around with it while I whistled “Home on the Range.”

Pick-up day was beautiful, eighty-two degrees, mild breeze, cloudless sunshine. A day for looking at a ball game or walking along with a girl and a jug of apple wine or casting for a small-mouth black bass where an elm tree hung out over the Ipswich River. That kind of a day. A day for collecting ransom, I supposed, if that was your style. I straightened up and stretched and looked around. Healy should have everyone in place by now. I saw nothing. The hill behind the stable culminated in a water tower; up in a tree near it there was supposed to be a guy with glasses and a walkie-talkie. I looked for sun flash on the lenses. I didn’t see any. Healy would see that there was no lens flash. Just as he’d see that the two guys in Palm Beach suits he had in the window booth of the restaurant wouldn’t be oiling their blackjacks. I looked at my watch — 11:45. Marge Bartlett was supposed to arrive at noon. High noon the letter had said. I wondered if there was a low noon. No one would make an appointment for it if there were.

I went back to the manure. In the woods behind the riding ring cicadas droned steadily in pleasant monotony. Now and then in the stable a horse would snort, or rattle a hoof against the stall. Several sea gulls were doing a good business in the garbage container back of the restaurant. I checked the parking lot again out of the corner of my eye. Marge Bartlett was there. Just getting out of her red Mustang. She went to the edge of the driveway carrying the green canvas book bag full of money and stood. She was dressed for a bullfight. Tight gold toreador pants with a row of buttons along the wide flare. A ruffled red shirt, a bronze-colored leather vest that reached to her thighs and closed with two big leather thongs across the stomach, high-heeled bronze boots with lacings, a bronze wide-brimmed vaquero hat, bronze leather gloves. I’d always wondered what to wear to a ransom payment. Traffic went by. Usually cars, now and then a truck down-shifting as it came up the hill beyond the curve. Occasionally a motorcycle loud and whining. Noisy bastards. My hands were sweaty on the rake handle. My neck and shoulder muscles felt tight. I kept shrugging my shoulders, but they didn’t loosen. I stood the rake against the stable and went and sat on a bale of straw against the wall. I’d brought lunch in a paper bag so I could be sitting and eating and looking when the pick-up was made. A big refrigerator truck lumbered by on the highway. Marge Bartlett stood rigid and still, looking straight ahead with the bag held at her side. The sea gulls rustled away at the garbage. Somewhere in the woods a dog barked. Down the highway another motorcycle snarled. It appeared around the curve. A big one, three-fifty probably, high-rise handlebars, rearview mirror, small front wheel, sissy bar behind. My favorite kind. It swung into the parking lot, and without stopping the rider took the bag from Marge Bartlett, took one turn around the mirror support with the straps, and headed straight across the parking lot toward the stable.

Bridle path, I thought as he went by me. The license plates were covered. I got one flash of Levis and engineer’s boots and field jacket and red plastic helmet with blue plastic face shield, and he was behind the riding ring into the bridle path and gone in the woods. I could hear the roar of the bike dwindle, and then I couldn’t hear it, and all there was was the drone of the cicadas. And the traffic. Bridle path. Sonova bitch. A lot of per diem shot to hell.

Marge Bartlett got back in her Mustang and drove away. I threw my sandwich at the sea gulls, and they flared up and then came down on it and tore it apart. I stood up and took the rake from against the wall and broke the handle across my knee and dropped the two parts on the ground and started for my car. Then I stopped and took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and went back and folded it around one of the rake tines and left it there. Vinnie didn’t look as if he could afford my temper tantrum. With the profits he’d shown in the two days I’d spent there, he couldn’t buy a pocket comb.

Healy and Trask were sitting in the front seat of Trask’s cruiser in the parking lot of the Catholic church four blocks from the stable. There was a map spread out against the dashboard in front of them. I pulled up beside them and shut off the engine.

“Your man in the tree spot them?” I asked.

“Nope, lost him as soon as he went into the woods. The trees overhang the trail.”

Trask said, “The goddamned trail splits and runs off in all different directions. There’s no real way to tell where it comes out. Some of the people riding have made new trails. He could have come out in Lynn, in Saugus, in Smithfield past the roadblock. He’s gone.”

Healy’s face was stiff and the bones showed. He said, “Two days, two goddamned days looking at that place, looking at that goddamned bridle path sign, listening to motorcycles going by on Route One. Two days. And we stood there with our thumb in our butt. For crissake, Spenser, you were there, you saw people riding into that path; why the hell didn’t you put it together? You’re supposed to be a goddamned hot shot.”

“I’m not a big intellect like you state dicks. I was overextended raking the manure.”

Healy took the map of the woods he’d been looking at and began to wad it into a ball, packing it in his thin freckled hands the way we used to make snowballs when I was a kid. The radio in Trask’s car crackled, and the dispatcher said something I couldn’t understand. Trask responded.

“This is Trask.”

Again the radio in its crackly mechanical voice. And Trask. “Roger, out.” Jiminy, just like in the movies. “Aren’t you supposed to say ‘Ten Four’?” I said.

Trask turned his big red face at me. “Look, you screwed this thing up, and you feel like a horse’s ass now. Don’t take it out on me.” He looked at Healy. “Did you get that on the radio?” Healy nodded. I said, “What was it?”

“The Bartletts got a phone call from the kidnappers telling them where to get the kid.” He put the car in gear and backed out of the parking lot. I followed. Maybe they’ll give him back, I thought. Maybe.