Dark Horse

38

Women. Stupid, ungrateful bitches. Van Zandt spent most of his life courting them, flattering them-no matter what they looked like-carting them around to look at horses, giving his advice and counsel. They needed him to tell them what to do, what to think, what to buy. And were they grateful? No. Most of them were selfish and silly and didn't have a brain in their heads. They deserved to be cheated. They deserved whatever happened to them.

He thought of Elle. He still thought of her by that name, even though he knew it to be false. She was not "most women." She was clever and devious and bold. She thought with the hard logic of a man, but with a woman's slyness and sexuality. He found that exciting, challenging. A game worth playing.

And she was right: there was nothing she could do to hurt him. There was no evidence against him, therefore he was an innocent man.

He smiled at that, feeling happy and clever and superior.

He snatched up his cell phone, punched the speed-dial number for the town house, and listened to it ring unanswered on the other end. His mood spiraled back down. Another ring and he would get the machine. He didn't want to speak to a fucking machine. Where the hell was Lorinda? Off somewhere with that obnoxious dog of hers. Horrible, flea-ridden beast.

The machine picked up and he left a curt message for her to meet him at The Players later.

Angry now, he ended the call and threw the phone onto the passenger's seat of the cheap piece-of-shit car Lorinda had given him to drive. He hadn't wanted to tolerate the police following him around. Following him for no good reason, he had told her. He was the innocent victim of police harassment. She had believed him, of course, despite the fact that she had seen the bloody shirt. He had excused that away, and she had believed him in that too.

Stupid cow. Why she didn't rent a better car when she traveled was beyond him. Lorinda had money she had inherited from her family in Virginia. Tomas had taken it upon himself to do the research. But she wasted it on charities for abandoned dogs and broken-down horses, instead of using it for herself. She lived like a gypsy on the farm that had belonged to her grandmother, renting out the grand plantation house and living herself-with a pack of dogs and cats-in an old clapboard farmhouse that she never cleaned.

Tomas had told her she needed to get a face-lift and a boob job, and fix herself up or she would never get a rich husband. She laughed and asked him why she should get another husband when she had Tomas to look out for her best interests.

Stupid creature.

Women. The bane of his existence.

He drove east on Southern Boulevard, thinking about the woman he was to meet. She thought she could blackmail him. She told him she knew all about the dead girl, which, of course, she did not. But she had already become a problem before that, because of the lies she told the Americans about him. Bitter, vindictive cunt. That was the Russians. A more vicious race of people had never lived.

The death of this one would be, of course, the fault of Sasha Kulak. Tomas had taken her in, given her a roof over her head, a job, an opportunity to learn from him and take advantage of his vast knowledge-in the barn and in the bedroom.

She should have worshiped him. She should have wanted to please and service him. She should have thanked him. Instead, she had stolen from him and stabbed him in the back and spread stories about him.

He had, at great cost to himself, called any clients she might have known, might have contacted after she had left him, to warn them this girl was trouble, that she was a thief and probably on drugs; to tell them of course he hadn't done anything wrong.

And now he had to deal with her friend, Avadon's Russian girl. Avadon should have fired her on the spot Friday when the girl had tried to kill him in Avadon's own stable. Incredible what these Americans would tolerate.

He'd had his fill of Florida. He was ready to go back to Belgium. He had a flight already lined up. A cargo plane traveling to Brussels with a load of horses. Going as a groom, he never had to pay. One more day he would do business here, showing everyone he had nothing to hide, no reason to worry about the police. Then he would return to Europe for a time, and come back when people had better things to gossip about than him.

He slowed the car as he looked for the sign. He had suggested meeting at the back of the show grounds, but the girl had refused, insisting on a public place. This was the place she had chosen: Magda's-a shitty bar in an industrial part of West Palm Beach. A clapboard building that even in the dark looked as if it needed paint and had termites.

Van Zandt pulled in the drive alongside the bar and drove around back to find a parking place.

He would find the girl in the bar, buy her a drink. When she wasn't looking, he would slip her the drug. It was a simple thing. They would talk, he would try to assure her there had been a misunderstanding about Sasha. The drug would start to take effect. When the moment was right and she was incapable of protest, he would assist her outside.

She would appear to be drunk. He would put her in the car and drive away to a place where he could kill her and dispose of her body.

He found a spot to park, backing in along a chain-link fence that separated the bar's property from an auto salvage yard. The perfect place. Out of sight. This problem would be dealt with quickly and neatly, and then he would go to The Players to have a drink with Elena Estes.

I went into The Players alone. If Van Zandt showed with Lorinda Carlton, I would make Sean's excuses, but I wouldn't drag Sean any further into the drama than I already had.

The club was busy. Celebrants from the showring and losers drowning their sorrows. Most stables are closed on Mondays so everyone can recuperate from the weekend's competition. No reason to go to bed early on Sunday.

The place was a stage with a hundred players. Women showing off the latest in Palm Beach fashions and the newest plastic surgery. Swarthy polo players from South America hitting on every rich thing in a skirt. Minor celebs in town for a long weekend. Saudi Arabian royalty. Every pair of eyes in the place sliding to the next most promising conversation partner in the room.

I found a small table in the corner of the bar and settled in with my back to the wall and a view of the room. I ordered tonic and lime and fended off an ex-baseball star who wanted to know if he knew me.

"No," I said, amused he had singled me out. "And you don't want to."

"Why is that?"

"Because I'm nothing but trouble."

He slid into the other chair and leaned across the table. His smile had lit up many an ad for cheap long distance service and colorful underwear. "Wrong thing to say. Now I'm intrigued."

"And I'm waiting for someone."

"Lucky guy. What's he got that I haven't?"

"I don't know," I said with a half smile. "I haven't seen him in his underwear yet."

He spread his hands and grinned. "I have no secrets."

"You have no shame."

"No. But I always get the girl."

I shook my head. "Not this time, Ace."

"Is this character giving you a hard time, Elle?"

I looked up to find Don Jade standing beside me with a martini in hand.

"No, I'm afraid I'm giving him a hard time," I said.

"Or something," Mr. Baseball said, bobbing his eyebrows. "You're not waiting for this guy, are you?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"Even after you've seen me in my underwear?"

"I like surprises. What can I say?"

"Say you'll ditch him later," he said, rising. "I'll be at the end of the bar."

I watched him walk away, surprised at myself for enjoying the flirtation.

"Don't look so impressed," Jade said, taking the empty seat. "He's all hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas."

"And how would you know that?"

He gave me a steady look that belied the drink in his hand. He was sober as a judge. "You'd be surprised at the things I know, Elle."

I sipped my tonic, wondering if he knew about me; wondering if Van Zandt had told him, or Trey, or if he had been left out of that loop on purpose.

"No, I don't think I would," I said. "I'm sure there isn't much that gets past you."

"Not much."

"Is that why you were with the detectives so long yesterday?" I asked. "Because you had so much to tell them?"

"No, I'm afraid Jill's murder is a subject I don't know anything about at all. Do you?"

"Me? Not a thing. Should we ask someone else? Van Zandt is coming later. Shall we ask him? I have a feeling he could tell us some stories to make our hair stand on end."

"It's not difficult to get someone to tell you a story, Elle," Jade said.

"No. The hard part is getting them to tell the truth."

"And that's what you're looking for? The truth?"

"You know what they say: the truth shall set you free."

He sipped his martini and looked away at nothing. "That all depends on who you are, doesn't it?"

T he girl was waiting under the back-door light. Her hair stood out around her head like a lion's mane. She wore black tights that clung to her long legs, and a denim jacket, and her mouth was painted dark. She was smoking a cigarette.

At least Van Zandt thought it was Avadon's girl. They never looked the same, these girls, away from the stables.

Van Zandt opened the car door and got out, wondering if he should simply lure her away from the building, shove her in the car, and go. But the threat of a possible witness coming out the back door of the bar was too big a risk. Even as he thought of it, the door opened and a large man stepped out under the light. He took a position there, feet apart, hands clasped in front of him. The girl glanced up at him, smiled bewitchingly, and said something in Russian.

Halfway between the car and the building, a sense of apprehension crawled over Van Zandt's skin. His step slowed. The big Russian had something in his hand. A gun perhaps.

Behind him, car doors opened and shoe soles scuffed the cracked concrete.

He'd made a terrible mistake, he thought. The girl was near enough that he could see she was looking at him and smiling wickedly. He turned to try to go back to the car. Three men stood in front of him, two built like plow horses standing on either side of a smaller man in a fine dark suit.

"Are you thinking you should not have come, Mr. Van Zandt?" the small man said.

Van Zandt looked down his nose. "Do I know you?"

"No," he said as his associates moved to take hold of Van Zandt, one on each arm. "But perhaps you know my name. Kulak. Alexi Kulak.

D o you believe in karma, Elle?" Jade asked.

"God, no."

Jade was still nursing his martini. I was on my second tonic and lime. A couple of cheap dates. We'd been sitting there fifteen minutes with no sign of Van Zandt.

"Why would I want to believe in that?" I asked.

"What goes around comes around."

"For everyone? For me? No, thank you."

"And what have you ever done that you'd have to pay for?"

"I killed a man once," I confessed calmly, just to see the look on his face. It was probably the first time in a decade he'd been surprised. "I'd rather not have that come back around on me."

"You killed a man?" he asked, trying not to look astonished. "Did he have it coming?"

"No. It was an accident-if you believe in accidents. How about you? Are you waiting for your past deeds to ambush you? Or are you hoping someone else will have their markers called in?"

He finished the martini as Susannah Atwood came in the room. "Here's what I believe in, Elle," he said. "I believe in me, I believe in now, I believe in careful planning."

I wanted to ask him if it had been in his plan for someone to murder Jill Morone and kidnap Erin Seabright. I wanted to ask him if it had been in his plan for Paris Montgomery to have an affair with Trey Hughes, but I had already lost his attention.

"My dinner companion has arrived," he said, rising. He looked at me and smiled with a cross between amusement and bemusement. "Thanks for the conversation, Elle. You're a fascinating person."

"Good luck with your karma," I said.

"And you with yours."

As I watched him walk across the room, I wondered what had prompted his sudden philosophical turn. If he was an innocent man, was he thinking this sudden turn of twisted bad luck was payback for the things he'd gotten away with in his past? Or was he thinking what I was thinking? That there was no such thing as bad luck, that there are no accidents, no coincidences. If he was thinking someone was hanging a noose around his neck, who did he like for a candidate?

From the corner of my eye I could see the baseball player homing in on the seat Jade had vacated. I got up and left the room, my patience for flirtation worn thin. I wanted Van Zandt to show up for no other reason than to rub Dugan's and Armedgian's noses in my obvious usefulness.

I believed he would show. I believed he wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity to sit in a public place, relaxed and pleased with himself, conversing with someone who believed he was a murderer and couldn't do anything about it. The sense of power that would give him would be too intoxicating to pass up.

I wondered what his business of the evening entailed, if it had anything to do with the kidnapping. I wondered if he was the man in black Landry had described viciously beating Erin Seabright with a riding whip. Sick bastard. It wasn't hard to imagine him getting off on that kind of thing. Control was his game.

As I stood outside the front doors of The Players, I pictured him in prison, suffering the ultimate lack of control, every minute of his life dictated to him.

Karma. Maybe I wanted to believe in it after all.

T he beating wasn't the worst of it. The worst thing was knowing that when the beating was over, so too would be his life. Or perhaps the worst thing was knowing he had no control in the situation. All the power was held by Alexi Kulak, cousin of that Russian cunt who had now ruined his life.

While the Russian stationed at the back door kept anyone from coming out to witness the act, Kulak had personally slapped a wide swatch of duct tape over Van Zandt's mouth and taped his hands together behind his back. They shoved him into the backseat of Lorinda's rental car, which they drove through an open gate onto the grounds of the auto salvage yard behind the bar. They then parked the car inside a cavernous, filthy garage and dragged him from it.

He tried to run, of course. Awkward with his arms behind him and panic running like water down his legs, it seemed the door grew no closer as he ran. The thugs caught him with rough hands and dragged him back onto a large black tarp laid out on the concrete floor. Tools had been lined up on the edge of the tarp like surgical instruments: a hammer, a crowbar, pliers. Tears flooded his eyes and his bladder let go in a warm, wet rush.

"Break his legs," Kulak instructed calmly. "So he cannot run like the coward he is."

The largest of the henchmen held him down while another picked up a sledgehammer. Van Zandt kicked and writhed. The Russian swung and missed, cursing loudly as the hammerhead connected with the floor. The second swing was on target, hitting the inside edge of his kneecap and shattering the bone like an eggshell.

Van Zandt's screams were trapped by the duct tape. The pain exploded in his brain like a white-hot nova. It ripped through his body like a tornado. His bowels released and the fetid stench made him gag. The third blow hit squarely on the shin below his other knee, the force splintering the bone, the head of the hammer driving through the soft tissue beneath.

Someone ripped the tape from his mouth and he flopped onto his side and vomited convulsively, again and again.

"Defiler of young girls," Kulak said. "Murderer. Rapist. American justice is too good for you. This is great country, but too kind. Americans say please and thank you and let killers run free because of technicalities. Sasha is dead because of you. Now you murder a girl and the police cannot even put you in jail."

Van Zandt shook his head, wiping his face through the mess on the tarp. He was sobbing and panting. "No. No. No. I didn't… accident… not my fault." The words came out in gasps and bursts. Pain pulsed through him in searing, white-hot shocks.

"You lying piece of shit," Kulak snapped. "I know about the bloody shirt. I know you tried to rape this girl, like you raped Sasha."

Kulak cursed him in Russian and nodded to the thugs. He stood back and watched calmly while they beat Van Zandt with thin iron rods. One would strike him, then another, each picking his target methodically. Occasionally, Kulak gave instructions in English so Van Zandt could understand.

They were not to hit him in the head. Kulak wanted him conscious, able to hear, able to feel the pain. They were not to kill him-he did not deserve a quick death.

The blows were strategically placed.

Van Zandt tried to speak, tried to beg, tried to explain, tried to lay the blame away from himself. It was not his fault Sasha had killed herself. It was not his fault Jill Morone had suffocated. He had never forced himself on a woman.

Kulak came onto the tarp and kicked him in the mouth. Van Zandt choked on blood and teeth, coughed and wretched.

"I'm sick of your excuses," Kulak said. "In your world, you are not responsible for anything you do. In my world, a man pays for his sins."

Kulak smoked a cigarette and waited until Van Zandt's mouth stopped bleeding, then wrapped the lower part of his head with the duct tape, covering his mouth with several layers. They taped his broken legs together and threw him in the trunk of Lorinda's rented Chevy.

The last thing he saw was Alexi Kulak leaning over to spit on him, then the trunk was closed. Tomas Van Zandt's world went dark, and the awful waiting began.