Brett Halliday - Nice Fillies Finish Last

“We were hoping you’d be back early, Paul. Mr. Rourke here is from the Miami News. They want to do a feature story on you. Isn’t that great? You’re just in time, he was getting impatient.”

Without saying a word, her husband picked her up by the waist in his huge hands and slammed her against the stainless steel partition separating the living area from the tiny kitchen. Her lips writhed, she was suddenly ugly. She slid into the kitchen, snatched up a butcher knife and whirled.

“Don’t do that again.”

Thorne laughed. He wasn’t as large as he had looked in the doorway, but he moved with the power and grace of a jungle animal. One of his front teeth had been broken and not yet repaired.

“What have you got on underneath?” he demanded.

“Don’t be stupid!” She flicked the robe open and gave him a glimpse of the bikini. “I’ve got my bathing suit on, or doesn’t that prove anything?”

“You didn’t think I’d be back for a couple of hours. You knew I’ve got a busy afternoon. What are you on, about the fourth batch of martinis?”

“I offered him a drink! Why not? What’s wrong with being friendly with a reporter? You don’t need favorable publicity, do you? What was I supposed to do, spit in his eye?”

Rourke had checked his clothing and decided it would do no harm to try to get out without any broken bones. He sat forward, and the couch lurched underneath him.

“Three’s a crowd,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I’ll wait outside. Call me when the argument’s over.”

“This won’t take a minute,” Thorne said without turning his head. He took a step toward his wife and put out his hand. “Handle-end first.”

She made a stabbing motion at his outstretched hand. “Handle-end, hell. Right below the belly button, if you come any closer. Don’t you know how to behave? What kind of story do you want him to write about you anyway?”

“I don’t need any help from the goddamn newspapers! You bitch, let’s have that knife before I-”

“I’m supposed to hang around all day doing housework, is that it?” she cried. “How much housework is there in a twenty-eight-foot trailer? And where have you been, may I ask? I don’t suppose you’ve been bouncing around in a motel with anybody, have you? Of course not. She’s too busy helping out in the hospital. The nurses are so overworked, Lady Bountiful has to come in and change the flower water.”

“Shut up, damn you. That’s over and you know it.”

“Do I?” she screamed, dancing forward. “And you never really cared about her, did you? You were just in it for the money, to squeeze a few horses out of her before she got sick of you. You lying bastard. You saw her again last night. Don’t you think I know that perfume? I ought to by now. Those damn little cigars she smokes?”

“I said to shut up.”

“And what if I feel like having some sex in the middle of the day? Tim’s not like you. He’s got a little consideration for the way a person feels.”

Her husband kicked out at her ankles. As she dodged back he feinted at her with one open hand.

“And he wants to know about the twin tonight,” she cried. “And did you use to drive for Domaines. What did you want me to do, turn him loose in the barns?”

He feinted at her again and as the knife came up his other hand came up beneath it. He caught her wrist and with a quick wringing motion shook the knife out of her fingers. She kicked at his groin with one bare foot. He jabbed her almost playfully in the jaw. It was more of a push than a blow, but it dropped her to the floor without a sound.

Rourke, having finally forced the couch to let him go, was on his way to the door. He was fumbling at the knob when Thorne swung around and cuffed him lightly. Rourke stopped trying to open the door.

“I hate like hell to slug a woman,” Thorne said ruefully, “but you don’t know Win. You may think she was fooling with that carving knife.” He shook his head. “She would have stuck it in me if I’d given her the chance. It’s happened before. She punctured one of my lungs. She probably soaked up quite a few martinis, didn’t she?”

Rourke straightened his tie. “We only had a couple. She was telling me about that accident you had. What was the name of the horse? Don J.”

Thorne tossed his head in a way that made Rourke think of a spirited horse. “Don’t remind me. Things were just beginning to break right for me when that happened.”

Rourke motioned at Thorne’s unconscious wife. “We’d better do something about her.”

“Aah,” Thorne said. “It’s a policy of mine-bat them around now and then, it’s the one way to keep them in line. She’ll be OK.”

Reaching out suddenly, he pulled Rourke off balance and sent him spinning into the interior of the trailer. Rourke crouched, watching warily to see what came next.

“I don’t pretend to be any great brain,” Thorne said. “I’m trying to figure something out, and it may take a minute. You’re a reporter, she said. From the News.”

“I’ve got a press card if you want to see it.” Rourke knew he was sweating, but he didn’t want to show Thorne how nervous he was by wiping his face. “We want to run a piece about what actually happens in the course of a race, how you get the most out of a horse, the things you have to look out for, and so on.”

“What was that about the twin?”

Rourke smiled weakly. “Just talk. It happened to come up.”

The flesh around Thorne’s little eyes contracted and he yelled, “Goddamn it, what do you mean, drinking my gin and necking around with my wife?”

Rourke tried to look surprised and amused. “Was that what you thought when you came in? No, no. You’re barking up the wrong tree. She had a bit too much to drink and she tripped. That’s all in the world that happened.”

Thorne sneered. “I happen to know that kid. Am I supposed to be blind, that I don’t notice the top button on your pants is open? The only thing that surprises me, she didn’t have the radio on.”

He moved toward Rourke, completely filling the space between the furniture. The contest, Rourke could see, was going to be strictly one-sided. Thorne outweighed him by forty pounds, and it had been years since Rourke had had any exercise except pecking at a typewriter.

“If you try to get back at me by putting something lousy in the paper,” Thorne said, “I’ll come after you, and I’ll find you, don’t worry. I can’t let you get away with feeling my wife just because you work on a paper. Win wouldn’t like it and she wouldn’t understand it. We’ll make up, but there’s got to be blood and a couple of teeth on the floor when she conies out of it, or she’ll think I don’t give a goddamn.”

His eyes narrowed, and all at once Rourke realized that he was only using his wife as the pretext. Rourke had made the mistake of asking about the twin double, and Thorne was going to see to it that he didn’t ask any more questions until after the payoffs. That look didn’t mean the kind of friendly punch in the head he had given his wife. It meant a beating.

Rourke took a deep breath and rushed him, butting as hard as he could at the point where his rib cage came together. It was like running into a wall. Rourke reeled back as Thorne’s left fist came around. It connected with, his ear and his head rang like a bell. He snatched up the butcher knife and threw it blindly at Thorne. Whirling, he cleared Win’s unconscious body in one bound and hurled himself at the long window over the stainless steel sink. A row of cactus plants was lined up on the sill, and Rourke carried them with him as he went through in an explosion of shattered glass, his eyes closed, arms up to protect his face. He bounced off a tank of bottled gas and landed in the dirt in a welter of glass and sash and broken pots.