Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

“Hey, girl,” I said, putting one hand on her muzzle and leaning in close to catch a whiff of her warm creature smell. She wanted breakfast though, not cuddling. She pinned her ears and tried to bite me.

“All right, then,” I laughed, and walked off to the little feed room.

I fed all six horses even though only Culprit is mine. I keep her here free but I have to look after other people’s horses in exchange. Which suits me fine. The only job I have right now is working as a lifeguard at a pool in Downtown Brooklyn. No way I could afford to pay board for my mare.

As the horses ate their grain, I started raking the stable yard’s nubby dirt, trying to make the place look presentable despite the fact that there were ominous puddles in front of the stalls and the lone flower box near the tack room had a propensity for killing anything we planted in it. This week it was working on terminating some hapless petunias.

I was raking pretty violently, trying to keep Stella out of my mind. The way her black hair fell in her face. The way her ass had hung out of her crappy cutoffs that first night I’d met her at the bar. I started focusing harder on the rake I was using and how it was falling apart. I envisioned a trip to the Home Depot out at Coney Island to get a new one. I imagined the brightly lit aisles full of useful items. Then I imagined Stella in there with me. I stopped raking.

I was standing there half-paralyzed by my thoughts when the front gate rattled and Dwight Ross suddenly appeared in the stable yard.

I wasn’t glad to see him and the feeling was obviously mutual.

“Triple Harrison, I want my fucking horse back,” Ross said.

Dwight Ross had always been on the thin side, but now he looked like a whisper would knock him down. His red hair needed cutting and, as he came close, I could see that his navy blue suit had pea-sized pills all over it.

“You stole my mare,” Dwight hissed, coming to stand two inches away from me. “Don’t fuck with me, Triple, took me six months to find you and I’m not leaving without my horse.”

“She’s mine now,” I said, trying to seem calm even though I was anything but. I pulled air into my lungs, trying to make myself huge. Dwight backed up a little and started looking around at the horse stalls. He located Culprit’s and started unlatching it.

“Don’t go in there, Ross,” I said. “Don’t touch that horse.” I felt myself getting hysterical.

“You want to take this to the law?” Dwight asked, as he got the latch undone and went to stand next to my mare.

“I don’t think you do,” I warned. Six months earlier, I’d been working as a groom, looking after Dwight Ross’s string of horses at Aqueduct Racetrack. One day about a month into my tenure there, I caught Dwight trying to inject E. coli into Kiss the Culprit’s knee. Of course, I hadn’t realized what was in the syringe at the time, but I could tell by the way Dwight jumped when I walked in that the massive syringe did not belong in Culprit’s knee. I’d already been suspicious about some of the stuff he was doing to his horses, though it wasn’t till that moment that I fully realized he was one evil motherfucker. He was trying to kill the mare to collect the insurance and split the proceeds with the owner.

I happened to have a pitchfork in my hand and I didn’t hesitate to use it. I pinned Ross to the wall and made him hand the syringe over and get out. He issued a few choice threats as he backed out of the stall. I figured it wouldn’t take long for him to make good on the threats, but for that moment, he had hightailed it away from the barn. I had skipped bail on a beef in Florida two years earlier so I wasn’t in a position to go to the authorities. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving the horse there unprotected though, so I decided to take her. I went into Dwight’s office and forged the paperwork, then I loaded the mare into Dwight’s horse trailer. She walked into the trailer without fussing. It seemed to me she knew I was saving her. As I passed through security and drove the trailer away from the Aqueduct backside, I kept expecting to hit a snag and get caught. But I made it. I stashed Culprit at a little stable near Prospect Park while I figured out what to do. I was now unemployed and broke with a horse to take care of. I figured I’d make do though. All my life I’d been taking care of things, stray cats and dogs and crazy women.

After a week, I got the lifeguard job — swimming was the only thing I was good at apart from taking care of horses — and, not long after I’d made arrangements for keeping Culprit at The Hole, I’d moved into one of the abandoned houses just down the road. I hooked into the electric at one of the stables, and ran a hose in from the yard for water. Culprit and I had settled into a nice daily routine and we’d both been doing just fine. Until now.

Dwight Ross was still standing in my mare’s stall.

“Come on, Ross,” I said in a quiet voice, “get out of there. Now.”

At that he smiled. I didn’t see what was funny though.

“I had the crazy idea you’d be reasonable about this,” Dwight said, leveling a gun I didn’t know he had at me.

“That was a crazy idea, all right,” I told him. I could see worry in his eyes even though he was the one with a gun.

“I’m taking my mare back and I will hurt you if I have to,” he said in a shrill voice. He stepped out of the stall to reach for Culprit’s halter.

I didn’t think. Just grabbed for something. Turned out to be a shovel. Ross had his back to me. He heard me move but not in time. I slammed the business end of the shovel into the side of his head. He went down face first. Culprit spooked and her eyes got huge.

I walked over and put my palm over the end of my mare’s nose and brought her big head against my chest.

“It’s okay,” I told the horse as I scratched her muzzle.

I looked down at Ross. He wasn’t moving. I pushed on his shoulder, trying to turn him over. His body felt funny. His eyes and mouth were open. There was blood matted into his red hair. I realized he wasn’t just unconscious.

I started feeling dizzy and I couldn’t get myself to move. Culprit was looking at me with curiosity, her ears pricked forward.

“What do I do now, girl?” I asked. She just kept looking at me though.

It was getting close to 7 a.m. Pretty soon, people would be arriving at the other barns.

I left Dwight’s body in the stall but led my mare out and tied her up in the yard. I didn’t want her looking at the body.

I walked back to my house to get the car keys. My stomach was doing backflips. I went inside and it smelled a little like Stella. That didn’t help any.

I got my keys and went back outside. My ’86 Chevy Caprice Classic had once been blue but now it was just dirt-colored. It still ran though. The engine coughed to life and I drove to the front of the stable yard. I opened the big metal gates wide enough to get the car in, nosing it ahead slowly so as not to alarm Culprit. She stared at the car but she didn’t spook.

I dragged Dwight’s body out of the stall, pulling it by the feet. The head bounced along the dirt making a funny sound that made me sick.

I had to shuffle the shit in my trunk around. There were some empty feedbags, a small cooler, a horseshoe, and a pair of Stella’s panties. I made room, then hoisted the body in. Dwight Ross was much heavier in death than he’d ever been in life. I had to bunch him into a fetal position to get him to fit. I put the empty feedbags over his body, then closed the trunk. My heart was beating too fast.

I went and put Culprit back into her stall. I stood for a few minutes leaning my head against her muscular neck, getting strength. My mare just stood there, seeming to understand.