Ground Money (28 page)

“Thanks.”

“This won’t make it any easier on them.”

“No,” said Wager. “It won’t.”

The drive back was as quiet as the morning’s ride; the sun had swung low over the mesas west of the river to soften the dry sweep of valley and the sharp faces of the cliffs. Much of the soreness had been driven from Wager’s body as he scrambled and stretched to make his way along the riverbank, and weariness and hunger dulled the soreness of his mind. Silently, he watched the sagebrush blur past the window and the occasional line of crooked fence posts that swung in slow pendulum across the gray earth.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, Gabe. We got no use for that room so far. So you might as well use it.”

“I’ll be going back tonight, as soon as I pack up. I have to talk to her parents.”

“I understand. But you’re welcome anyway. I think Dee’s got Josephine’s stuff together; she said she was going to do that while you were gone today.”

She had, and—after supper—tried to force an envelope on Wager, a refund for the time remaining on their cabin.

“You keep it, Dee. Use it to call me if Jo’s body turns up.”

She refused, saying she couldn’t do that, and both of them made him tuck it into his bag. When he reached the highway, he sealed it and scrawled “Thanks” across the envelope and left it in their mailbox.

Turning toward Rimrock, he drove until his headlights picked out the marker he looked for, an oversized mailbox mounted on a post and anchored in a small oil drum. The name, roughly painted in white, said Watkins; below that, nailed to the upright, was the T Bar M branded into a board. Wager turned the Trans-Am onto the dirt road and, careful of the humps and occasional rocks, wound through the night toward the ranch. When the road fell away into darkness, he eased forward and the headlights dipped to a locked gate swung between new timbers. Wager backed and turned, parking on the sandy shoulder, and climbed over the wooden gate.

If the dog heard him, it did not bark. Staying at the edge of the splashes of light from the ranch house, he went toward the bunkhouse. The windows of the long, low structure were dark, and he could make out the shadows of equipment and gear scattered in the yard: the roping dummy with its wide cow horns, a stack of fence posts, a hay rake with the tips of its spidery tines buried in the dirt. He knocked at John’s door, the rap loud in the night. No answer, no sound, no light. Trying once more, he went to the windows and peered in; the curtainless panes showed no movement. Wager turned and went to the ranch house.

His boot heels thudded on the porch boards, and finally the dog woke up, its bark coming with a booming yelp from somewhere in the house and then settling behind the door. Wager heard a man’s voice say, “Shut up, goddammit,” and a moment later the porch light flicked on. The door swung open and the cook, face stubbled in dark beard, looked at him with surprise. “What do you want?”

“John and James Sanchez.”

“They ain’t here.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they still at the ranch or have they gone?”

“I don’t know that it’s any of your damned business.”

Wager’s fist caught the man just above his stomach, the air from his lungs a wheezing grunt as he half bent and stumbled back into the living room. The next was a straight jab landing with the weight of his back and shoulders and mashing the man’s nose with that cold little squish that comes when the knuckles break it. The cook tried to cover and swing back, but Wager stepped away and snapped a kick at the side of the man’s knee with his boot. The leg gave way to drop him hard in a rolling scramble for a small table. Another kick, this one to the man’s lower ribs, and he doubled, grunting loudly, and Wager drove the corner of his heel on an outstretched hand that yanked back under the man with a high squeal. Across the room, lit by the flickering colors of a television set, the dog cowered against the wall with its tail wrapped tightly between its legs and whined a howling note that drowned out the cook. Two or three other chairs sat emptily facing the set, and Wager listened for the sound of running feet from upstairs. But the only noise came from the man and the dog, and the tinny music of the television where two figures traded choreographed punches and took graceful turns being knocked down.

“Are they still at the ranch or have they gone?”

“Gone.” The word was breathed out between heavy grunts, and the cook struggled up to his knees clutching his hand to his chest. “You broke my goddam fingers, god damn you!”

Wager looked in the drawer of the small table and picked up a forty-five. He clicked off the safety with his thumb and worked the slide once to spin a copper blur across the room. Aiming it loosely toward the man, he fired. The orange flash winked on bulging eyes and a smear of bloody lip as the cook crabbed backward across the scarred boards of the bare floor. The dog, howling again, disappeared.

“Where are they?”

“Put that fucking thing down—you almost shot me, you crazy son of a bitch!”

The stinging smell of gunpowder floated through the room, and Wager stilled the weapon on the man’s midsection. Under the stained T-shirt, the stomach seemed to shrink and pucker.

“Where are they?”

“A rodeo—where the hell else? A fucking rodeo!”

“Where?”

“I don’t know—Denver! They went to Denver—some fucking rodeo in Denver!”

“Where’s Watkins?”

Something closed behind the man’s eyes, and he shook his head in small twitches. “He ain’t here either. I don’t know where he is. I swear to God.”

“Give me your wallet.”

The man’s good hand went slowly to his hip pocket, and his eyes said that he knew now what Wager was really after, and that Wager wasn’t a damn bit different from any other scumbag in the world.

Wager flipped through the little plastic windows for the driver’s license. It said Maynerd L. Riggs, and the tiny colored photograph showed him leaning stiffly away from the glare of the flash. It was a Colorado license, and that meant a set of fingerprints on file with DMV. Wager took it and tossed the wallet back to him.

“What do you want that for?”

“Where’s Jerry Latta?”

The head shook again. “Hey—hey, man, I don’t know. He lives up in Glenwood—he never comes here.” He wiped the blood from his lip with his thumb. “What you want with my driver’s license? Why’re you taking that?”

“I want to know who to kill if you lied to me.”

“I’m not lying—I don’t know where Latta is! He never comes here. Who the fuck are you, anyway? I thought you were a goddam cop!”

“I’m a man with a forty-five. If you come out that door, you can be a man with a forty-five hole.” He was halfway across the porch when he heard Riggs say, “You sorry son of a bitch, I ought to kill you,” and turned back, weapon ready. But the man wasn’t talking to Wager; he was glaring at the dog, whose wet muzzle poked cautiously around a doorframe.

H
E REACHED
D
ENVER
about sunup, the harsh glare burning his sleepless eyes as he coasted down the long grades of I-70. One of Jo’s favorite views of the city was from up here, where the highway crested the Front Range and you could see almost all the way to Kansas. Out of the broad, shadowed bowl of prairie stretching east from the foot of the mountains, clusters of office towers rose in dusty silhouette against the orange sky. He tried to see it with her eyes, and to imagine her on the empty car seat beside him. But of course she wasn’t. During the night when the car was filled with shadow, he could almost believe that she lay sleeping there. But the glaring light angling into the windshield took even that away, and his mind repeated for a countless time: She’s gone. Once he could convince himself of that, it would be easier. It might be easier. It did not make any difference whether it was easier or not, she was gone. That was a fact.

There were other facts, and the Sanchez boys were the most important right now. That was the fact he would keep his mind on. Wager, beginning to tangle in the morning traffic that flowed into downtown from the surrounding suburbs, pulled into a diner and bought copies of the
Denver Post
and the
Rocky Mountain News
. As he drank his coffee, he flipped through the pages looking for two things, notice of Jo’s death and rodeo ads. The first had not been picked up yet; the second he found in the News on a back page near the comics, a large drawing of a cowboy on a bronc. A regional rodeo of the Mountain States Rodeo Association, affiliated with the North American Rodeo Commission—top prize money in all categories, open to all contestants residing in the Mountain States region. Contestants from outside the region must be PRCA members. The shows were at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—Sunday at 1:30 and 6:30. Location: National Western Arena. Wager tore out the ad and gazed at it as he finished his breakfast.

The sun had moved to its familiar place over the ragged shadow of western mountains when Wager woke late in the afternoon. His visit to Jo’s parents had been, as he expected, grim. They still hoped she would be found alive, even though he had to tell them again there was no hope. Unlike Sidney’s mother, they did not hate him, though they had better reason. They could have hated him for taking her out there, they could have hated him for not saving her, they could have hated him for destroying the dream that she might still be alive. But they didn’t. Instead, soft-spoken and formal, they thanked him for coming by.

“Did she—was it a nice trip before the accident?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“That’s good. She loved the mountains … nature … We want her back, but if …”

They didn’t hate or accuse. But Wager did, and for reasons he could not tell them: he was the one who had goaded John Sanchez, he was the one who had told Jo there was nothing to worry about, he was the one she reached to in those last terrible moments when he failed her. He was one of those who had contributed to her death.

Kicking off the sweaty sheet, he soaked in the shower for a long time, trying to let the pummel of water erase the feeling of self-disgust that had awakened with him. It did not leave, but at least it sank deeper toward that area of his soul where all his other guilts had been shrugged. There it would fester and rot and, like gas, erupt through his dreams to leave him wide-eyed and numb, and waiting for the dawn and its refuge of daily routine.

The National Western Arena was on the north side of town near the old stockyards and across I-70 from the hulking green bulk of the Denver Coliseum. Wager swung off the freeway at the Coliseum sign and followed the flow of traffic toward the unpaved vacant lots that provided parking. Orange-jacketed attendants beckoned the traffic toward lanes marked $2.00, and Wager pulled in between a pickup truck and a station wagon full of bouncing children wearing cowboy hats and jeans tucked into their small boots. A harried woman screamed at one who darted toward the traffic, and her husband, another slung over his shoulder, said, “Stay right here—you kids want to see this damned rodeo, you stay right here with me!”

Wager crossed the busy street to a mesh fence where a cowboy leaned against a metal pole. On this side of the high-walled building, twilight was heavy and arc lights from the elevated freeway filled the sky with blue light and cast a spray of thin shadows from his feet.

“This is the contestants’ gate, sir—you with the rodeo?” A badge said “Arena Police.”

“No.”

“Ticket windows are around that way. Just cross the street and through that parking lot under the vidock, there.”

“Have John or James Sanchez come through yet?”

“I don’t know them. But they’re probably here—most of the contestants are by this time.”

“How can I get in touch with them?”

“The arena secretary’s office under the grandstand. In the south gate and turn left—it’ll be crowded as all get out. You can’t miss it.”

Making his way under the bed of a ramp leading up to the elevated freeway, he passed a line of tall cattle trailers.

In the mote-filled glare of spotlights high up the arena’s wall, he saw the pens filled with broncs and the massive, thick-bodied bulls. The horses stood patiently, chewing and steaming in the cool air. The bulls, their wide horns clicking together occasionally, moved with a slow, steady restlessness that reminded Wager of the river.

“Look at that one, Daddy—he is big!” A boy pushed against his knee to gaze closely at one of the animals, whose thick hump was as tall as Wager’s head. “Which one’s Jay going to ride?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get a program.”

Beyond the pens, a sand-colored building housed the tack rooms and stalls for the contestants’ animals. Through a partly open door, Wager glimpsed rows of horses’ heads and an occasional figure with a bucket or shovel working around the stalls.

“Sorry, sir, contestants only in here.” Another arena policeman smiled and propped a casual arm across the opening.

“I’m looking for John or James Sanchez. Do you know if they have a stall here?”

“Sure don’t. Do you know what events they’re in?”

“No.”

“If it’s not roping or steer wrestling, they probably wouldn’t be here anyway. You know where the arena secretary’s office is?”

“I can find it.”

He bought his ticket and a program, a booklet bright with the names of rodeo sponsors and the drawing of a cowboy being flung from a saddle bronc. The insert listed the Sanchez names three times in tonight’s performance, but that didn’t help Wager find them in all this crowd. The arcade under the grandstand was filled with people in western wear who milled slowly past booths that sold shiny commemorative pins or offered comic sketches while you posed. Others displayed saddle equipment and leather wear, and a few had trays of shiny badges and buttons with a variety of slogans. A cluster of cowboys stood in front of a dart game, five dollars for three tosses, and tried to win a GMC pickup truck. Another small crowd studied the samples of lariat rope hanging in one booth. Many wore satiny blue warm-up jackets with “Mountain States Rodeo Association” in white letters across the back, and a number of other colors and rodeo names decorated other jackets. He made his way through the crowd and past a snack bar whose serving line snaked out into the alley; beyond a beer booth, he saw a lit window and a bulletin board filled with thumb-tacked notices. From somewhere outside one of the stock entrances that cut across the arcade and slimed the floor with mud and manure, the scream of a whinnying horse knifed through the voices of the crowd.