Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse

He was silent for a second and then continued. “I did… earlier.”

“Well, I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Leave him alone, Cliff.”

I recognized the voice and turned my head just a little to see the green-eyed rancher that I’d met at the bridge earlier in the afternoon.

“Oh, he looks like a big boy. I bet he can take care of himself.”

Mike Niall countered as I looked down and closed my eyes in an attempt to loosen the grip of the pain in my head. “Yep, I bet he can. As a matter of fact, I bet he could stick his boot so far up your ass, your breath’ll smell like Kiwi shoe polish, but you work for me now and if you think I’m going to buck bales by myself tomorrow morning, you’ve got another think comin’.”

I could feel the drunken cowboy’s breath on the side of my face. “Are you a fighter, mister?”

The blonde still looked straight ahead but spoke up. “Kick his ass, Cliff.”

I finished off my beer in one swig and placed the empty can back on the bar. There wasn’t anything here for me, my head hurt, I was tired, and it was possible that I’d lose my patience, so I figured the best thing for it was to go get Dog and duffel and head for my bed, which was only four doors down.

I tried to remember if I had any aspirin in my suitcase.

I started to rise and turn, but he placed a powerful and young hand on my shoulder. I continued up as he stood, and we were very close. I was sober and he wasn’t, and that was probably something he was used to, but I was bigger than he was, and that he wasn’t.

You always register the hands. His were occupied, one on my shoulder and the other hitched in his pocket. And register the eyes. One was focused on my face, and the other a little right.

The mechanics of twenty-four years on the job fall into place in these situations, and you don’t have to think about taking the hand on your shoulder by the base and twisting it in a reverse wrist lock that plants his face suddenly and securely on the surface of the bar, about the second hand that pins his neck, and the boot that kicks his feet out and spreads them so that he has no leverage to resist.

Drunks can be amazingly intuitive, however, and as I stood there thinking, I was sure he could see the entire scenario playing out in my tired face. His eyes widened a little and then stayed set on mine, his hand still on my shoulder. The bottle blonde had turned and was looking at both of us and it dawned on him that he couldn’t back down, not now. “I’m a fighter.”

The rancher spoke again. “Cliff?”

I didn’t say anything, so he repeated it. “I’m a fighter-” He didn’t sound so sure about it this time and pulled his hand off my shoulder. He stabbed a finger at the piece of paper Scotch-taped on the bar. “That’s me, right there, Cliff Cly. Number one on the list, and you know why that is?”

I still didn’t say anything.

“ ’Cause I’m the toughest bastard on the Powder River.” The rancher behind me snickered, and the self-proclaimed toughest man on the Powder River with the weakest lineage shifted over to get a look at him. “What the hell are you laughing at?”

It was silent for a second. “I’m gettin’ a head start on laughing before you get licked. You’re drunk, Cliff. Sit down.”

“Screw you, old man.”

I heard the chair move and could just make out the shot glass Mike Niall had out on the surface of the bar to my right. “Barkeep!” I could see him approaching from the kitchen as the older rancher continued. “Cliff, if I was you I’d save myself for tomorrow night, ’cause I think you got your work cut out for you.”

The young man breathed a response. “I can kick the shit out of every man on that list.” His eyes shifted back to mine. “You wanna put your name on that list, mister?”

“Is there a problem?” The bartender was just at the other side of the particleboard now, and I could see his hands resting on the shelf that held the baseball bat. I was relieved it wasn’t the next shelf down that held the Winchester pump.

Niall was the first to speak. “Gimme another shot, Pat.” The bartender looked at the two of us for a moment more and then reached behind him for a bottle of Wild Turkey. “There’s a couple of those boys you might have a little trouble with.”

“Like who?”

Pat poured, and Niall sipped his shot and returned it to the bar. “Well, that big buck that came in here this afternoon and gave everybody the hard eye for one.” His eyes drifted toward me. “Big Indian fella came in, didn’t say a word to nobody-just put his name on the list and turned around and walked out.”

I smiled, and Cliff Cly misinterpreted. “You think that’s funny, mister?”

I looked down at the list and continued smiling as my headache lessened just a little. It figured that the other toughest bastard on the Powder River with a lineage that stretched back into the history of this country before there was a country would find a way to provide backup even when it hadn’t been requested.

“I asked you a question.”

I looked at the cowboy for a moment more and then stepped past him and toward the door. I left behind the piece of paper on the bar that announced the Friday Night Fights, Powder-River-Pound-Down-Tough-Man Contest, where the last name on the list was Henry Standing Bear.

October 20: seven days earlier, late morning.

I had read the report that’d been faxed from the FBI field office in Denver.

Vic stood over my desk and fidgeted as I looked up from the eighteen pages. “You want me to read aloud?”

“I’ve already read it.”

“So, what does it say?” My undersheriff’s distillation was always more entertaining than the reports from the Feds.

She crossed around the desk and sat in her usual chair. “If she hadn’t killed him, it looks to me like somebody else would’ve, or he would have been spending the rest of his life in a place where there are no light switches and you have to ask to go piss.”

“He was in trouble with the Department of Justice?”

She sipped her coffee but didn’t put her feet up like she usually did; instead, she sat there with her knees bobbing up and down. “Worse.”

I sighed and forced more coffee into my system. “What’s worse than the FBI?”

Vic pushed her nose to her cheek with her index finger. Her voice was nasal, and she emphasized her South Philly accent. “He was made-the operative term here is made-the accountant in charge of operations for a casino operating firm, and in a matter of five years was able to siphon close to three million dollars out of the place.”

“From the mob?”

She released her nose and smiled; she always smiled when she was relaying information like this, the way sharks smile when they see snorklers wearing yellow. “Makes you wonder if he was dropped on his head as a child or if he was eating fucking paint chips like they were Cool Ranch Doritos, doesn’t it?”

“Or he was a lot tougher than anybody gave him credit for.” I flipped to the photo on page two; the deceased was inordinately handsome and could’ve been Italian except for his name. “Barsad doesn’t sound particularly Italian.”

She shook her head. “Wannabe. He started out as Willis Barnecke and worked for an accounting firm that did business for a number of casinos in Atlantic City, where he comes in contact with Joey ‘Suits’ Venuto and was offered a job. He took the job and the three-very-very-large, but when the Fed turned up the heat after a waterfront-based racketeering investigation where a competitor ended up shot to death in the trunk of his own car in Union, New Jersey, Willis’s name started popping up on FBI wiretaps like Whack-A-Mole.”