The stable looked like someplace you’d go to rent a donkey. It was a one-story building with faded maroon siding, the kind that goes on in four-by-eight pregrooved panels. The trim was white, and the nails had bled through so that it was rust streaked. The roof was shingled partly in red and partly in black. Through it poked three tin chimneys. Next to it was a riding ring of unpainted boards and the trailer part of a tractor trailer rig, rusted and tireless on cinder blocks. In front of the stable parked among the weeds were five horse trailers, an old green dump truck with V-8 on the front, an aqua-colored ’65 Chevy hardtop, a new Cadillac convertible, and a tan ’62 Chevy wagon. A sign, Solid Fill Wanted, stood at the edge of the road, and a pile of old asphalt, bricks, paving stones, tree stumps, gravel, crushed stone, sewer pipe, a rusting hot water tank, three railroad ties, and a bicycle frame settled into the marshy ground behind it. Marlboro country.
Healy looked at it all without speaking. Carefully. A sea gull lit on the containerized garbage back of the restaurant and began working on a chunk of something I couldn’t identify through the rain.
“Let’s get out,” Healy said. We did. The rain was steady and warm and vertical. No wind slanted it. Healy had on no raincoat but seemed not to notice. I turned the collar up on my raincoat. We walked down toward the stable. The bare earth around it had been softened into a swamp of mud, and it became hard to walk. On the other side of the riding ring a handmade sign said Bridle Path, and an arrow pointed to a narrow trail that led into the woods. We walked back out to the parking lot and stood at the edge of Route One at the spot where Mrs. Bartlett was to stand. Cars rushed past in a hiss of wet pavement. To the left the road curved out of sight beyond a hill. To the right it dipped into a tunnel with a service road branching off to the right and parallel. Two hundred yards down was a light on the service road and a cross street.
Healy turned and headed back toward the stable. I followed. Healy seemed to assume I would. I walked a little faster so I’d be beside him, not behind him. I was beginning to feel like a trainee.
At the far end of the stable was a door marked “Office.” The torn screen door was shut, but the wooden door inside was open and a television set was tuned to a talk show. “Were you first into transcendental meditation before or after you made this picture?” “During, actually. We were in location in Spain...” Healy rapped on the door, and a dark-haired man answered. He was wearing black Levis and a white T-shirt that was too small for him. His stomach spilled over his belt and showed bare where the T-shirt gapped. His skin was dark and moist-looking, and his face sank into several layers of carelessly shaved chin. He went perfectly with the stable. He also smelled strongly of garlic and beer.
“Yeah?”
I said, “I’d like to rent a high-spirited palomino stallion with a hand-tooled Spanish leather saddle and silver-studded bridle, please.” The man looked at me with his eyes squinting, as if the light were too bright.
“A what?” he said.
“Shut up, Spenser,” Healy said and showed his badge to the fat man. “May we come in, please?”
The fat man stepped back from the door. “Sure, sure, come on in; I’m just having lunch.”
We went in. The television was on top of a rolltop desk. The actress was saying to the talk show hostess, “Sylvia, I never pay any attention to the critics.” On the writing surface of the desk were a big wedge of cheese and a salami on the white butcher’s paper in which they’d been wrapped. There was also a half-empty quart bottle of Pickwick ale, an open pocketknife, and a jar of pickled sweet peppers. The fat man belched as he waved us to a seat. Or waved Healy to a seat. There was only a straight-backed chair by the desk and a sprung swivel chair with a torn cushion on it. The fat man sat in the swivel chair, Healy took the straight chair, and I stood. “The critics I care about, Sylvia, are those people out there. If I can make them happy, I feel that I’m...” Healy reached over and shut off the television.
“What’s up?” the fat man said.
“My name is Healy. I’m a detective lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police. I want to have this man spend the next two days here as if he were an employee, and I don’t want to tell you why.”
A dirty white cat jumped up on the desk and began to chew on a scrap of salami. The fat man ignored it and cut a piece of cheese off the wedge. He speared it with the jackknife and popped it into his mouth. With the other hand he fished a pickled pepper out of the jar and ate it. Then he drank most of the rest of the ale from the bottle, belched again, and said, “Well, for crissake, Lieutenant, I got a right to know what’s happening. I mean, for crying out loud, I don’t want to screw up my business, you know. I got a right.”
Healy said, “You gotta right to discuss with the building inspector the code violations he and I are going to spot in this manure bin if you give me any trouble.”
The fat man blinked a minute at Healy and then said, “Yeah, sure, okay. Look, always glad to help out. I was just curious, you know. I don’t want no trouble. Be glad to have this fellow around.”
Healy said, “Thank you. He’ll be here tomorrow morning dressed for work, and he’ll hang around here for the next couple of days. I don’t want you to say anything about this to anyone. It is a matter of life and death, and if anyone starts talking about this, it could be fatal. Kind of fatal for you too. Got me?”
“You can trust me, Lieutenant. I won’t say nothing to nobody. Don’t worry about it.” He looked at me. “You’re welcome to stay around all you want. My name’s Vinnie. What’s yours?”
“Nick Charles,” I said. He grabbed my hand.
“Good to meet you, Nick. Anything you need, just holler. Want a piece of cheese or salami, anything?”
“No, thanks.” Vinnie looked at Healy. Healy shook his head.
“Remember, Vinnie, keep your mouth shut about this. It matters.”
“Right, Lieutenant. Mum’s the word. Wild horses...”
“Yeah, okay. Just remember.” Healy left. I followed.
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.