LITMIR.BIZ

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he owe anybody money?”

      Grant said, “He always paid me on time. I never had any complaints.”

      “As far as you know, did he get along with his owners?”

      Outhouse said, “I didn’t like his new owners much. That Khan guy, he spent way too much money way too fast, with no clue what he was doing.”

      Grant nodded. “He spent a quarter-mill on a colt with a crooked leg. Turned out to be an expensive mistake. He’s one of these guys who makes a pile of money in some kind of business—in his case it was computers, right?—and then he thinks, ‘Well, I know everything about computers, I guess that means I know everything about racehorses.’ He didn’t ask for advice, and nobody offered him any.”

      “The horse with the crooked leg,” Young said. “That the one that died?”

      Grant nodded. “Yeah, Download.”

      “The vet said it was colic. Seems unlikely for a three-year-old.”

      Again the two men looked at each other, then Outhouse said, “Far as I know, colic can happen at any age.”

      “What about Percy Ball?” Young said. “He was Shorty’s drinking buddy, right?”

      “One of them,” Outhouse said.

      “Well, how did Percy figure in all of this? He told me one of the other owners, a guy called Doug Buckley, was offered a hundred grand for Someday Prince, and he wanted to sell, but Shorty wouldn’t go along.”

      Grant said, “Shorty owned part of that colt, he had every right—”

      “That Buckley,” Outhouse interrupted, “was another bad owner Shorty picked up. Get-rich-quick guys.”

      “Did Buckley have any reason to go after Shorty?”

      Outhouse shook his head. “Buckley’s a jerk-off. I seen him in his green suit and his white shoes and white belt and those stupid fucking sunglasses. Even if he did have a beef, he don’t have the balls to do anything about it.”

      “Well, what about Percy then?” Young said. “Why would he offer up all this information on Shorty and Buckley unless there was something in it for him?”

      Grant started to speak, but Outhouse raised a hand to stop him. “Shorty’s dead,” he said, showing his crocodile grin, “and there’s no harm saying certain things were this way or that way, but Percy’s still alive, at least for the time being—he’s not too bright, that lad, and he gets himself in enough trouble without no help from the rest of us—and here in Shedrow one thing we don’t do is we don’t rat each other out.”

      His stomach ache once again in evidence, Young was standing at the bar waiting for Dexter to pluck a pickled egg out of the jar for him when he heard laughter behind him. He turned and saw Jessy walking away from the table where Priam Harvey and Trick were sitting, and the two of them were killing themselves over something. The music on the jukebox was drowning out whatever they were saying, but Trick was laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes. He seemed to have recovered from his Thursday night funk. The new waitress, Freedom, was nowhere to be seen. Young wanted to go back to the table and ask them what was so funny, but he was waiting on Dexter, who was still trying to lift an egg out of the jar with a spoon.

      “Where’s your tongs?” Young asked. “Usually you always use your tongs.”

      “Fucked if I know,” Dexter said. “Ask Jessy. She’s always moving stuff.”

      Young looked back over at the table. Trick was mopping his face with a paper napkin, and Harvey was going on about something. Young felt an urge, a physical need, to go back to the table. He was missing out on something, he didn’t know what, but it was something good, something funny. Seeing Trick laugh like that was a rare enough occurrence, and he hated to miss out on it. He turned back to Dexter, who was still bent over the jar, pink tongue visible at the corner of his mouth. “Fucker keeps sliding off,” Dexter said.

      “Forget it,” Young said. He took a step away from the bar, his eyes fixed on his laughing friends, then stopped as Dexter said, “Got it! I got it!”

      By the time Young had paid for his egg and walked back to the table, Trick and Harvey were back to their normal unsmiling selves. “What was so funny back then?” he said.

      “Back when?” Trick said.

      “Two minutes ago, the two of you were laughing your heads off, and two minutes later you can’t remember?”

      “Oh that,” Trick smiled. “Mr. Harvey asked Jessy to bring us some wings, so she said, ‘How many?’ and Mr. Harvey said, ‘Forty,’ and she said, ‘How do you want them?’ and he said, ‘What are the choices?’ and she got pissed off because he knows what the choices are, but she’s always polite to him, right—Mr. Harvey this, Mr. Harvey that—so she says, ‘Mild, medium, hot, suicide, or honey garlic,’ and he says, ‘Bring us forty medium,’ and she says, ‘Okay,’ but then he says, ‘But Jessy, make sure you only bring us left ones.’ ‘What ones?’ she says. ‘Left ones,’ he says. ‘We only want left wings.’ ‘Are you serious?’ she says. ‘Why do you only want left ones?’ And Mr. Harvey says, ‘Well, most chickens are right-winged, and consequently their right wings are tough. We only want left wings, because they’re more tender.’” Trick started to crack up again.

      Young’s eyes narrowed, then he turned to Harvey. “So what did she say?”

      Harvey shrugged. “She didn’t seem to find it amusing. She said, ‘I’ll give you a left,’ then she stomped off. Is that a pickled egg you’ve got there?”

      “What the fuck’s it look like?”

      “May I have a bite?”

      “Here, take the whole damn thing!”

      Harvey’s eyebrows raised. “What’s wrong with you?”

      Young shook his massive head. “I hear you guys laughing and I think how great it is, how I don’t even have to be a part of it or anything, or know what it’s about, it’s enough just to see the two of you laughing like that, and when I get back over here and ask what it’s all about, what was cracking you up like that, I find out you were making fun of Jessy.”

      “I wasn’t making fun of her,” Harvey laughed. “I was just—”

      “You were just seeing how far you could take it.”

      Trick said, “He didn’t mean anything, Camp.”

      Young kept his sights on Harvey. “How are you coming with Percy Ball? Anything to report? No, don’t answer, let me guess. You’ve been too busy, right? Too many magazine articles? This is the third time you said you’d do it and you haven’t. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

      Harvey watched Young until he was done. “Are you doing her?”

      “What?”

      “Are you doing Jessy? You seem awfully protective of the wench. Doesn’t he seem that way to you, Arthur?”

      Trick said, “I’d leave it alone if I were you, Mr. Harvey.”

      “No, I’m serious.” He sat up straighter in his chair. “Are you doing the barmaid?”

      Young came around the table, grabbed Harvey by the lapels of his rumpled white plantation suit, and lifted him into the air like a father would an insolent child. “You sorry drunk,” he said, “if you were half a man I’d break your neck.” Then he did a half-turn, dropped Harvey on the floor, and steamed for the exit.

      Outside, the streets were quiet. The stars were out. Young’s gut was bothering him, so he tried to walk it off. He headed south on Donlands to Cosburn, then turned west and walked across to Pape, then north to O’Connor and back east towards McCully’s. While he was walking he thought about disappointment, how everything turned to shit: Trick was a good man who

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