As we crossed the pasture, Frederick Gardiner, who managed the ranch and had trained horses for forty years, told us, “Reason Long Island’s warmer here on the South Fork is ’cause the ocean pushes the snow up island. Gulf Stream sweeps close to the Springs, from away down by Florida-like you three.” He chuckled, surprised by the accidental irony, a man unaccustomed to making jokes.
The FBI agent told him, “I thought I mentioned that I’m from Boston, Mr. Gardiner. These men work for Senator Hayes-Sorrento, not the agency.”
The horseman stopped. He tossed a blanket over the shoulder of his Barbour jacket, gray hair showing beneath his wool hat. “Boston, eh?”
“Near Concord, like I told you. It couldn’t have been more than an hour ago.”
“Well, maybe so, but Boston’s Boston. And maybe you heard me mention I’d appreciate not hearing no smart comments about the Yankees, if you happen to be a Red Sox man. Don’t think I didn’t notice that sticker on your vehicle. Now here you are back again.”
When I started to laugh, Tomlinson elbowed me. Gardiner had already exceeded his joke quota. The man was serious.
“Red Sox people, they always got some damn smart remark. A way of being clever, I suppose, to those b’low the bridge, but they’ll get no smile from me. Which I think you should be aware of, Mr… Mr… .” He’d lost the name. “Oh, here we are. Why you gotta take another look at the saddest thing that ever happened here, it don’t make no sense to me.”
It was a little after six but felt later because of a waxen light that blew off the North Atlantic. We had stopped at the broken fence. Death creates its own silence, a silence with boundaries that extend beyond the body mass of the corpse. We stood without speaking for a minute. I got the feeling Gardiner would have been offended if we’d scrambled over the fence to get closer.
Maybe Sudderram had tried earlier, because he was taking his time. “Would you mind telling these men what you told me? About horses jumping fences, Mr. Gardiner-this horse, I mean.”
Gardiner replied, “If I could pronounce your name, I’d use it.”
“Uhh… it’s Egyptian. Jah- bah -reel,” the agent began, then gave up as he watched the trainer shaking his head impatiently.
“I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about him.” Gardiner gestured toward the horse. “The registered name’s Alacazar-Alacazam, but he answered to Cazzio. A horse as fine as Cazzy, you ought to at least call him by name.”
Sudderram sighed. “My apologies,” he said, but with a false deference that told me he and the trainer hadn’t gotten along earlier in the day and their relationship wasn’t going to improve.
“We wouldn’t of sold Cazzy for a million dollars, and that there’s an accurate dollars-and-cents figure. How many folks can claim they’re worth half as much? FBI agents, doctors, politicians”-the trainer glanced at me and Tomlinson-“I’d take ol’ Cazzy back alive before any of ’em.”
Tomlinson spoke for the first time. “It’s got to be a pain in the butt for an old hand like you, Fred, dealing with summer people in January.” He glanced at the agent, then me, to confirm he’d surprised us calling Frederick Fred. “Winter’s the only time this man gets a break from dealing with outsiders. I don’t blame him for being upset.”
It was obviously meant to be ingratiating, but it meant something to the horse trainer. “You hit the nail on the head with that one, bub. First night since Christmas I went up-street for beers and the place goes all catty-fucked. When the nine-one-one woman called, I should’a known and come home right away. Vandals, is what did this. City-idiot kids looking for drugs. Rich little fucks with nothin’ better to do than cause a workingman more work.”
Tomlinson, who looked respectable but cold in jeans and a black sports coat I’d loaned him, said, “Summer people! Like the old saying, huh? Some are people, summer not,” his shrug adding What’re you gonna do?
Gardiner liked that but didn’t want to show it. “You’re from Florida, someone said?” Talking as if Sudderram wasn’t there.
“West Coast, not Palm Beach.”
“Not all summer people goes to Palm Beach nowadays,” Gardiner told him. “Sarasota, that’s become big with the money families.”
“I’m about an hour south,” Tomlinson said as if I’d vanished, too. Local knowledge. He had it and was making the most of it.
On the plane, I had asked Tomlinson about growing up in the nearby Hamptons, which may have fueled his irrational rant. It wasn’t the first time I had asked and it wasn’t the first time he’d dodged the question, switching subjects after a long silence spent twisting and tugging at his hair. Just before landing, though, he’d tried to explain, telling me, “I have friends in the Hamptons who’d be very bummed if they heard I was hanging with cops. You mind introducing me as Thomas?”
If he wanted to keep his past a secret, I didn’t mind. He knew the area and understood how to interact with locals. That was obvious when Gardiner began speaking only to Tomlinson.
“I’d think even people who didn’t know nothin’ about horses would see it’s more likely Cazzy would jump a fence with a rider than without.”
“Seems obvious, when you think about it,” Tomlinson said.
“Yes… yes, sure does. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t something else that caused him to do it. He wouldn’t have jumped just to leave what he knew was his home.”
“That’s the way you trained him,” Tomlinson offered.
“Damn right, I trained him! Like you said, I shouldn’t have to explain what’s pretty goddamn obvious.”
Tomlinson told him, “Well, Fred, I don’t know much about horses, but I know the best way to learn from an expert is keep my ears open and my mouth closed.”
“By God, ain’t that the truth? Pay attention, don’t make me do twice the work. You said your name was Thomas?”
“Call me Tom. I don’t like all the formal crap.”
When Sudderram saw that Tomlinson had bridged some invisible social barrier, his relief was apparent. He took a step back, content to let Tom serve as interpreter. Maybe we would learn more.
Gardiner looked at the dead horse and spit. “Cazzy was one of the country’s finest hunters and jumpers. It’s the rare horse that can do both. He was a prime actor in the dressage ring, too. A warm-blood, just full of music.”
When I said, “He looks like an Appaloosa,” the old trainer made a sound of irritation, then continued talking as if he hadn’t heard me.
“Eight years back, maybe you saw Cazzy in the Olympics-a bitch from the Jerseys, a woman whose name I won’t say, she leased him for the trials, then again for the Games. He was on the television ten, fifteen times. We figured he could win the next Olympics. Age didn’t bother him. Sorta like that mare Fein Cera. Hell, she won the World Championship when she was sixteen!”
As Gardiner explained why Cazzy hadn’t retired even though he’d been put out to stud, I was trying to auger my heel into the frozen pasture. I had a question but wanted to time it right. In January, how do you bury a valued horse… or an abducted teenager of great value?
I ducked through an unbroken section of fence, but only after Tomlinson, then Sudderram, gave me private nods telling me it was okay.
14
I waded through the grass, then cleaned my glasses before taking a close look. Big horse, with a back as long and broad as a couch. His coat was the same dappled gray as the horse in the painting of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, on his gelding, Traveller.
A backhoe would have to be brought in-no problem punching through the frozen ground or digging a hole big enough for more than just the horse.
Alacazar-Alacazam had been shot at least twice. There was a pock hole the size of a quarter on the rib cage, another on the neck just below the ear. Blood had coagulated into patches of ragged amber, a carpet of red on the bloated belly, probably because the bullet had punctured a lung.
Otherwise, the body was unmarked. The mane was articulately braided, as was a portion of the tail. The horse had been recently shod, the farrier’s nails still shiny.