Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Her name was Rita. Half Mex, half Irish, but she kept the Irish to herself. She called Curtain “patron.” The way she said it, you’d think she really wasn’t joking at all.

“Patron.” Wyatt had to translate that one for Kirby, too. Curtain still remembered laughing as he eavesdropped on their conversation, the one hardcase telling the other that “patron” was Spanish for “big daddy.”

That was the way Curtain saw it, too. When they met at a college fund-raiser, he was forty and Rita was twenty-two. Part of a mentoring program, someone’s bright idea to shake some extra scratch from the alumni. They kept it pretty quiet through her senior year, and Curtain really thought he’d been a perfect gentleman about the whole thing.

And he took the mentoring seriously. Rita finished with a 3.83 GPA and an MBA. Not that she was ever going to need her degree. Curtain didn’t want a business partner. He wanted a partner between the sheets.

For a couple years, it went just that way. Everything seemed okay. Rita was a little bored, sure. Sometimes she got on Curtain’s nerves, wanting to get involved in the business. He was tempted to develop a home study course, Corporate Wives 101. But instead he kept Rita happy with trips when he could steal a few days away from the business and expensive gifts when he couldn’t.

Then Curtain started noticing things. Rita would disappear for an afternoon, take off for a weekend.

With friends, she said. The old college gang.

He knew better. Rita had never been the type to have many friends. And as far as he knew, he was the old college gang.

Curtain told Wyatt to check things out. He didn’t have time to do it himself. Besides, he couldn’t do something like that. Surveillance wasn’t his game. What Curtain did was manage the Bahamian accounts, the holdings in the Pacific Rim.

What Wyatt did was something very different.

And Wyatt was good at what he did. He wasn’t a hothead like Kirby. Wyatt understood the way things worked. He knew when to talk and when to shut up.

Eventually, Wyatt told Curtain about Jesus Sanchez. Sanchez handled a few racehorses for Curtain and ran his private stable. There wasn’t much to it, really. The guy was a glorified stableboy. Of course, Wyatt didn’t say that. He knew what to say and what to leave out. He knew better than to rub his boss’s nose in it.

Curtain could do that job for himself. He imagined the stableboy doing Rita in the fucking barn. Right there in a stall, bent over a hay bale with her riding breeches down around her knees. Sanchez playing the show stud, Rita the brood mare —

No, Walter Curtain wasn’t going to start thinking those thoughts again. You thought like that, the next thing you knew you’d lose it all.

But that was the way it was when you were the front runner.

You always imagined what it was like to finish out of the money.

Curtain was sweating like a pig. He didn’t want to stop, but he needed a breather.

‘You all right?” Wyatt asked.

Curtain nodded. “Just give me a minute.”

“Shit, give me two,” Kirby said, and he slouched against a rock in a muted patch of shade.

Curtain stared ahead. At least they were done climbing. The trail had leveled out. They had another mile and a half to go.

Mile and a quarter, if they were lucky.

No matter how far it was, there wasn’t an inch of it in the shade.

“From here on out, we’re cookin’,” Kirby said.

“It could be worse,” Wyatt said. ‘You could be Jesus Sanchez.”

‘Yeah.” Kirby laughed, and it seemed his anger had dulled. “I’ve got to admit, the patron here knows his way around a hammer just like a Roman centurion on Easter Sunday. Fuck, ol’ Jesus sure lived up to his name, the way he got nailed.”

The big ox went on like that. Sweat dripped off Curtain’s nose. He was getting uncomfortable again. For the first time, he realized that using the hammer had been a mistake.

Sure, he wanted revenge. Sure, it felt good. But using a claw hammer. Jesus. That wasn’t his game. Not at all. That was why he had Kirby and Wyatt.

He’d definitely crossed a line that he didn’t want to cross. And Kirby and Wyatt knew it. Wyatt had the good sense to keep his trap shut, but he probably felt the same way as Kirby. They’d seen the boss try his hand at their work, seen he wasn’t nearly as efficient as they were, and now they were like a couple of seasoned old-timers slapping the new kid on the back while they demolished a six-pack.

The roles were reversed.

Curtain had to nip this one in the bud, and fast.

He glanced at Wyatt, and that was all it took.

“Shut up, Kirby,” Wyatt said.

“Hey!” The big man was offended all over again. “All I’m saying is the boss knows his business. In and out, over and around and — ”

“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “We know what you’re saying. But nobody wants to hear it.”

“Jesus.” Kirby grunted. “Pardon me all to hell.”

He stepped past Curtain without even looking at him.

Wyatt shrugged. “After you.”

Curtain bristled, but he made a joke of it because he couldn’t afford to piss off the both of them.

“You first,” he said. “I think I need a buffer.”

Wyatt grinned. “I think you might be right.”

Another quarter mile. The canyon widened, but that just meant there was more room for sunlight. They moved through it, three gringos on a sandstone griddle. Heat baked the soles of their boots, which kicked up plenty of dust that the man in the rear ate without a word of complaint.

The dust was bitter, and Curtain was too dry to spit. He started thinking about the canteen he’d left with Jesus Sanchez. Leaving the canteen was a gesture meant to conclude the matter in an appropriately sardonic manner. In retrospect, it was a hell of a mistake. Curtain wanted a drink of water. Hell, he would have traded shares of Microsoft for one.

The way Kirby was panting, it was a sure bet he wanted a drink too. Best not to mention the canteen. Things were touchy enough as it was. Besides, there was another canteen in the SUV. And they couldn’t be more than a half a mile away from it.

Sure, they were in the sun, and it was noon sun.

And this was August. And this was Arizona.

But fuck it. The trail was highway from here on out. Thirsty or not, anyone could make the last half mile. A peg-legged man pushing a wheelbarrow full of steaming horseshit could make it.

Let Kirby charge on like a damn fool if he wanted to. Curtain would remain calm. He wouldn’t let the heat burn him down, be it emotional or meteorological. He didn’t have to be in front to be the leader.

Curtain shook his head. Just look at the idiot, he thought. Kirby hadn’t even put on any sunblock. The dumb Irishman was beet red.

Beet red and slowing his pace.

Beet red and planting his sizable ass on a rock.

In the middle of the pack, Wyatt shook his head.

In the rear, Curtain did the same.

Kirby glared at them as they approached. “Wish we had that fuckin’ canteen,” he said.

“Wishes are a waste of time,” Wyatt said.

Curtain didn’t say a word.

Like they say in the war movies, Curtain took point.

In the lead again. Wyatt in the middle. Kirby dragging ass in the rear.

Curtain wanted to laugh. Wish we had that fuckin’ canteen. The goddamned muscle-headed moron. Everyone knew it. Even Rita. She hated Kirby. She said he was the worst kind of jackass, and she jerked his chain every chance she got.