Blood Sport Read online

  ‘Is Walt back yet?’ Lynnie said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s a funny man, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘All moods and glum looks, and then suddenly he smiles, and you realize how nice he is. I like him.’

  After a pause I said, ‘So do I.’

  ‘How was San Francisco?’ she asked.

  ‘Foggy.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She sighed and shook her head.

  Eunice arrived in a cloud of yellow chiffon and clanked her gold bracelet as she stretched for her drink. She was cheerful and glowing; almost too much to bear.

  ‘Well, you son of a bitch, when did you crawl in?’

  ‘This afternoon,’ I said.

  ‘So what’s new?’

  ‘I’ve given up trying to find the horses.’

  Eunice sat up straight with a jerk. ‘For crying out loud!’

  ‘I’ll be starting home soon. Tomorrow evening, I expect.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Lynnie said.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid so. The holidays are over.’

  ‘They don’t look as if they’ve done you much good,’ Eunice observed. ‘So now how do you deal with it?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With flopping. With not making out.’

  I said wryly, ‘Look it smack in the eye and dare it to bite you.’

  ‘It probably will,’ said Eunice sardonically. ‘It’ll chew me to bloody bits.’ She drank the second quarter of her drink and looked me thoughtfully over. ‘Come to think of it, it seems to have done that to you already.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll take up golf.’

  She laughed, more internally relaxed than I’d ever seen her. ‘Games’, she said, ‘are a bore.’

  When they went in to eat I couldn’t face it, and drove off instead to fetch the tape recorder from the rocks at Orpheus Farm. The short journey seemed tiresomely long. It had been nearly four hundred and fifty miles back to Santa Barbara from Kingman, and neither bath, shave, nor two hours flat on the bed seemed to have had any effect.

  Back in my room at The Vacationer I listened to the whole of the tape’s four-hour playing time. The first conversations, two or three business calls, were from the previous morning, after Walt had put in a new reel. Then there was almost an hour and a half of an interview between Offen and a man from the Bloodstock Registry Office. They had already been out to see the horses, and Offen was piling proof on proof that the horses in his barn were veritably Moviemaker and Centigrade. A groom who had cared for Centigrade during his racing days was asked in to sign a statement he’d made that he recognized the horse and would if necessary swear to its identity in any inquiry.

  The bloodstock man apologized constantly that anyone should have doubted Offen. Offen enjoyed the scene, the joke rumbling like an undertone. After they’d gone he laughed aloud. I hoped he’d enjoyed it. He wouldn’t be laughing much for a long time to come.

  Next on the tape was a piece of Offen giving his houseman instructions for replenishing the drink stocks, then an hour’s television programme. And after that, Matt telephoned.

  I couldn’t hear his voice at all, only Offen’s replies, but they were enough.

  ‘Hello, Matt ….

  ‘Slow down, I’m not taking this in. Where did you say you were?…

  ‘What are you doing on the road to Las Vegas?…

  ‘Well, I can see the house must be insured ….

  ‘You found what under the glove shelf?…

  ‘How do you know it’s a homer?…

  ‘All these minute transmitters are a mystery to me …

  ‘Who could have put it there?…

  ‘I don’t follow you. What was that about yellow paint?…

  ‘But the police said it was vandals …

  ‘All right, Matt, don’t shout. I’m doing my best. Now let’s get this clear. You were fumbling for a pack of cigarettes and you dislodged this … thing. Bug, whatever you said. And you’re worried now that Hawkins and Prensela put it in your car, and that they used that and the yellow paint to follow you, so that they know where you’ve been staying, or maybe. Is that right?…

  ‘Matt, I think you’re blowing this thing up too big …

  ‘But did you actually see a plane following you?…

  ‘Well, yes, sure, if you think you should go back, go back. The horses are far more important than the insurance on the house. But I think you’re wrong. Hawkins and Prensela have been concentrating on Moviemaker and Centigrade here, they’ve stirred up the DA’s office from LA and the bloodstock registry, and it’s been a three ringed circus here for the last couple of days. They wouldn’t have been trying to find any horses anywhere else, because they’re sure they’re here in the barn …

  ‘Well, I don’t know who could have planted the bug …

  ‘Yeah. All right. Go on back, then …

  ‘Call me in the morning …

  ‘Goodnight, Matt.’

  The receiver went down, and for a few seconds there were the indistinct noises of Offen going over the conversation again in his mind, punctuating it with ‘umphs’ and small doubtful grunts.

  I switched the tape off temporarily and thought bitterly about Matt finding the bug. I hadn’t had a chance to remove it: on my first night visit to the farm the car in the garage had been the one he’d hired while his own was being cleaned of paint. But neither had I looked upon it as a very great hazard, because the little capsules were light and clung tightly. It had been long odds against him groping for cigarettes while driving in the dark, and dislodging it. I hadn’t taken it into account.

  Some time on his way back to the farm it must have struck him that the insurance appointment might be phoney; that if we had tricked him into going to Las Vegas once already, we might be tricking him again. If we’d got him out of the way, it could only be to take the horses. So he’d wait; in the dark, ready to spring.

  He must have begun to think, when he’d sat out the three hours it took to mend the gasket, that Uncle Bark was right and he was wrong: but all the same he’d gone on waiting. And, in the end, we had come.

  I switched the tape on again for the rest. The whole night had been telescoped into the few seconds’ silence, because when Offen made his next call it was clearly morning.

  ‘Yola, is that you?’

  A faint clacking reached the bug. Yola’s higher pitched voice disturbed more air.

  ‘Have you heard from Matt?’

  ‘…’

  ‘No, he said he’d call me this morning, and he hasn’t. I can’t get any answer from the farm.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Well, not really. He called me last night because he had some crazy idea Hawkins had traced the horses …’

  A loud squawk from Yola.

  ‘Something about a listening bug and yellow paint.’

  Yola talked for some time and when Offen answered he sounded anxious.

  ‘Yeah, I know he found the first one when we thought that was impossible … do you really think Matt may be right?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Yola, that’s right out. Why don’t you go yourself?’

  ‘…’

  ‘Close the ranch then. Send them all home.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Look, if you’re right, if Matt’s right … say when he went back last night the DA’s men were sitting there waiting for him? Say they’re sitting there right now, waiting for me to turn up and see why Matt doesn’t answer his calls? No, Yola, I’m not walking into that farm and find I have to answer questions like what am I doing there, and what are those two horses in the barn, with Moviemaker and Centigrade’s registrations tattooed inside their lips? I’m not going.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Matt may be off on some plan of his own.’

  ‘…’

  ‘No. I’ll give him today. If I haven’t heard from him by morning I’ll … well, I’ll think of something.’

  Yola’s final remark
was loud, and I heard it clearly. Full of anxiety, full of anguish.

  ‘If anything’s happened to Matt …’

  The end of the tape ran off the reel, and I switched off the recorder. For Yola, as for Walt’s wife, life would never be the same again.

  I went to bed and lay awake, feeling feverish from lack of sleep. Relaxed every limb, but my mind would have none of it. It was filled too full, as it had been all day, of a picture of Walt still lying on his back in the farmyard. The sun had risen and blazed on him, and set again. He would have no shelter until tomorrow. I couldn’t sleep until he had. I tried to, but I couldn’t.

  On my way back to Santa Barbara I’d stopped for coffee and a handful of change, and I’d telephoned to Paul M. Zeissen in the Buttress Life office on Thirty Third Street. It had been nearly 6 PM New York time. Zeissen was preparing to go home for the weekend. I was a little worried, I told him, about Walt. He had gone to do some life insurance business on a farm in Arizona, and I hadn’t heard from him since. Zeissen and I talked it over for a few minutes in unurgent civilized tones, and arranged finally that if I hadn’t heard from Walt by morning, Buttress Life would ring the Arizona State Police in Kingman, and ask them as a favour to go out to the farm, just to check.

  In the morning I would ring Zeissen at his home. By noon, perhaps, the Kingman police would reach the farm. They would read the story: insurance salesman arrives for appointment, gets out of car. Matt Clive, hurrying back to meet him, swings into the yard, sees a dark figure too late, hits him, runs straight on into the wall because judgement suspended by horror at collision. Matt, with whisky inside him, and a bottle in the car. Inside the house the 9 PM insurance appointment written in Matt’s hand. And nothing else. No horses. No suggestion of visitors. No sign that it could have been anything but a tragically unlucky accident.

  Matt had been good at accidents.

  So was I.

  I lay on my stomach on the beach all morning while Lynnie sat beside me and trickled sand through her fingers. Eunice had gone to Santa Monica, down the coast.

  ‘Are you really going home this evening?’ Lynnie said.

  ‘First hop, yes.’

  ‘Would you mind … if I came with you?’

  I stirred in surprise.

  ‘I thought you wanted to stay here for ever.’

  ‘Mm. But that was with you … and Eunice. Now you’re going … and Eunice hasn’t been here much this week, you know. I’ve spent ages all on my own, and there isn’t that much to do on a beach, when you do it every day …’

  ‘Where had Eunice been?’

  ‘Santa Monica, like now. There’s some place there she spends all her time in, where they import vases and bits of sculpture and expensive light fittings, and things like that. She took me there the day before yesterday … I must say it’s pretty gorgeous. Marvellous fabrics, too.’

  ‘She might feel hurt if you just pack up and leave her.’

  ‘Well, no. I mentioned it to her before she went this morning, and honestly I think if anything she was relieved. She just said if I really wanted to go, OK, and she would probably be moving down to Santa Monica in a day or two anyway.’

  ‘If you really want to, then. I’m catching the night flight to Washington … I’ve a visit to make in Lexington tomorrow morning. After that, back to New York, and home.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I tag along?’ She sounded a scrap uncertain.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ I said, ‘you can wake me at the stops.’

  We had a sandwich for lunch which I couldn’t eat, and at two the girl from the reception desk came to say I was wanted on the telephone. Paul M. Zeissen told me in a suitably hushed voice that the Arizona police had been most co-operative and had gone to Bellman’s farm as asked, and had found Walt dead. I made shocked noises. Zeissen said would I pack Walt’s things and send them back? I said I would.

  ‘I suppose,’ he suggested diffidently, ‘that you and he had not completed your other business?’

  ‘The horses?’

  ‘One horse. Allyx,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Showman was insured with another company.’

  ‘Oh … yes. Allyx should be in circulation, safe and authenticated within a month or so. I expect the Bloodhorse Breeders’ Association will be getting in touch with you. Walt worked very hard at this, and it was entirely owing to his efforts that Buttress Life will be recovering most of the million and a half it paid out.’

  ‘Where did he find the horse?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. Does it matter?’

  ‘No …’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Goods back, no questions asked … we work on that principle, the same as any other company.’

  ‘Right then,’ I said. ‘And you’ll of course pay his commission to his widow?’

  ‘Uh … of course. And naturally Walt had insured his life with us … Mrs Prensela will be well provided for, I feel sure.’

  Provided for. Money. But no Walt. No picnic.

  I said goodbye to Zeissen and went slowly back to Lynnie. When I told her Walt was dead, she cried for him.

  Upstairs, when I packed his clothes, I lingered a good while over the framed photograph of him with Amy and the kids, and in the end put it in my suitcase, not his. It could hardly be the only photograph his wife would have of him, and I didn’t think she’d worry much if it didn’t return with his baggage.

  Eunice came back tired and abstracted from Santa Monica, and after absorbing the shock of Walt’s death was unaffected when Lynnie told her over early dinner that she was going home with me.

  ‘Much better to travel with a man to look after you, honey,’ she agreed absent-mindedly: and then, giving me a more characteristic sharp glance, added, ‘Don’t let him get up to any tricks.’

  Lynnie sighed. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘Huh,’ she said, but without conviction, and then asked me, ‘Will you be seeing Dave when you get back?’

  I nodded. ‘Very soon after.’

  ‘Tell him then, will you, that I’ve found a darling little business in Santa Monica. They’re looking for a partner with some capital, to open another branch, and if the accounts are right I’d like to do it. I’ll write to him, of course, but you could explain … I guess you could explain better than anyone.’

  ‘I’ll explain.’

  She said she was too tired to come all the way back to Los Angeles to see us off, and we said goodbye to her in the lobby, where she kissed Lynnie and then me on the cheek with a quite surprising strength of feeling.

  Lynnie said, as we drove away, ‘I’ll miss her. Isn’t that extraordinary. I’ll really miss her.’

  ‘You’ll come back.’

  ‘It won’t be the same …’

  I returned the hired car to the Hertz agent at the airport, we caught the plane to Washington, and I made up on parts of the way for the three nights without sleep. Lynnie said at Lexington that she could quite see why I needed someone to wake me at the stops.

  We went in a taxi to Jeff Roots’s house and his teenage daughters took Lynnie off for a swim in the pool while I sat with him under his vine-covered trellis and thought how cool and substantial he looked in his bright open-necked Sunday shirt.

  ‘Sam Hengelman should reach Lexington some time this afternoon or early evening,’ I said. ‘He’ll call you to know where to take the horses.’

  ‘That’s all fixed,’ Roots nodded.

  ‘Would you give him a message from me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Just tell him everything’s OK: that I said so.’

  ‘Sure. You are, aren’t you, one hundred per cent certain that those two definitely are Showman and Allyx?’

  ‘One hundred per cent. There isn’t the slightest doubt.’

  He sighed. ‘I’ll get the identification started. Though who is to know Showman after ten years? A bay with no markings … and only a four-year-old when he came from England.’ He paused, then said, ‘Have you any suggestions as to how we can start prosecuting Offen for fr
aud and theft?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not a policeman. Not interested in punishment, only prevention.’ I smiled briefly. ‘I came to get the horses back. Nothing else. Well … they’re back. I’ve done what I was engaged for, and that’s as far as I go.’

  He eyed me assessingly. ‘Do you want Offen to go on collecting huge stud fees, then?’

  ‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘Not if someone starts a quick rumour immediately that both Moviemaker and Centigrade have been suffering from an obscure virus which will certainly have affected their virility. Owners of mares can be quietly advised to insist they don’t pay any stud fees until the foals have shown their quality. After that … well, Offen does legally own Moviemaker and Centigrade, and he’s entitled to the fees they earn on their own merits.’

  ‘You’re extraordinary,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to see Offen behind bars?’

  ‘Not passionately,’ I said. Offen had enjoyed his prestige almost more than his income. He would be losing both. And Yola … she was going to have to work hard, without Matt, and probably without the expensive house on Pitts. Bars seemed superfluous.

  He shook his head, giving me up as a bad job. ‘We’ll have to prosecute, I’m sure of it. I’ll have to get the lawyers to see about it.’

  He called the houseman to bring our drinks, and merely sighed when I said I’d as soon share his sugar free tonic.

  We sipped the well-iced innocuous stuff and he said again that Offen would have to be prosecuted, if only to provide a reason for Allyx and Showman having disappeared for so many years, and to account for tattoo marks inside their mouths.

  ‘I can see you would think that,’ I said. ‘I also think you’ll have a terrible job proving that any of the mares booked to Moviemaker and Centigrade were actually covered by Showman and Allyx. I didn’t find Showman and Allyx on Offen’s farm. I doubt if anyone would testify that they were ever there. Certainly Offen would deny it, and go on denying it to the bitter end. It’s his only hope.’ I paused. ‘I did manage to get some tape recordings, but unfortunately, even if they could be used as evidence, they are inconclusive. Offen never mentioned Showman or Allyx by name.’