He popped three more antacids into his mouth, but still, he felt as if hamsters were running a treadmill in his stomach. Not only did Bobby fear for himself, he felt he had let down his son. If he couldn't pay the bills, he'd lose joint custody and the boy's grandfather would have even greater access to Scott. The bastard would try to mold Scott into younger version of himself.
Bobby looked toward Scott, his heart aching with love. The boy's dirty blond hair radiated in the afternoon sun as he stood on the paddock railing, leaning toward a jittery bay which could have been descended from wild mustangs.
"Hey Dad, isn't that Mr. Kaplan?" Scott pointed to a far corner of the paddock where a shriveled little man in a seersucker suit and a Panama hat watched the horses prance through the moist soil.
"Saul!" Bobby called out. The Cantor looked up, made eye contact, then gingerly slipped between the rails of a fence and disappeared into the open door of a stable.
What the hell!
Bobby took off, vaulting the fence, shouting back at Scott. "Wait here!"
He caught sight of the Cantor, waddling more than running, ducking out of one red-paneled stable and into another. "Saul! Stop!" Bobby called after him.
Bobby ran through the open door of the stable, horses filling stalls on either side of an earthen walkway. Flies buzzed, and the air was tangy with horse sweat and horse droppings. A chestnut mare kicked at her stall, and an Indian red stallion across the way responded with a plaintive whinny. But the Cantor was neither seen nor heard.
Bobby hurried between the rows of stalls, peering into each one, scratching the noses of several horses. He was near the end when a pile of straw seemed to move inside a stall occupied by a large seal brown horse with a jet black mane and tail. The door to the stall was slightly ajar.
Bobby grabbed a pitchfork from against the wall and entered the stall, sidestepping a mound of droppings. Gently, he pushed the pitchfork blades into the straw pile. "Saul, I'm going to feed you to the horses and any leftovers go to Vinnie LaBarca's sharks."
"Ow!" Suddenly, the Cantor, Panama hat still weirdly in place, burst from the straw pile, spitting dust and expletives, his Adam's apple bobbing like a cork in the ocean. "You momzer! It's not bad enough there's rats in here, you gotta stab me, you nogoodnik!"
"Why are you hiding from me?" Bobby demanded.
The old man blinked from behind his thick eyeglasses, looking like an owl aggravated at being awakened by the sun. "Because I'm not a brave man."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
The Cantor calmed down and looked dolefully at Bobby. His face was speckled with age spots, and he was barely above five feet, even in his elevated alligator loafers. His sparse white hair was matted with straw, and his wattled neck quivered. "You know why they call me the Cantor?"
"I don't know. I figured maybe you went to seminary, or whatever you call it."
"Yeshiva? Not me. I'm the Cantor because every time I'm arrested or subpoenaed, I sing like it's Yom Kippur. Like it's Kol Nidre, I sing."
"What are you saying?"
"Once the line moved, I couldn't lay off your six hundred dimes, and I've been afraid to tell you. I like you Bobby, so I couldn't look you in the eyes and tell you that I let you down. And now, I'm scared to death Vinnie LaBarca's gonna make you into chopped liver."
Bobby tossed the pitchfork into the pile of straw, and the brown horse whinnied. " You're scared? What about me?"
"What I can't figure out, why'd LaBarca place a bet like that with a little pisher like you? For that kind of money, why didn't he go straight to the sports books in Vegas?"
It's a question Bobby had asked himself, but he thought he'd figured it out. "You bet that kind of money out there, they withhold taxes, report it to the IRS. He wanted to go incognito, that's all."
"Yeah, maybe." The Cantor removed his eyeglasses and dusted the lenses with his shirttail. "But all week long, the line keeps moving and I keep asking myself, 'Why did Vinnie LaBarca come to Bobby Gallagher, whose ex-father-in-law just happens to own the Dallas Mustangs?'"
"Okay, Saul, tell me."
"I don't know Bobby, but if you ask me, something ain't kosher in Dallas."
13
Saturday, January 28-Dallas
Martin Kingsley drummed his lacquered nails on his mahogany desk and scanned the financial reports in front of him. Attendance figures, quarterly revenues, annual projections, income from local radio and network television, even sales of nachos and salsa. Revenue up a healthy thirteen per cent. But expenses…expenses were killing him.
Signing the free agents last year, then re-signing the veterans ready to bolt, gave him highest payroll in the league. Kingsley's file cabinets were stuffed with players' contracts so complex it would take a room full of Philadelphia lawyers to figure out how he was circumventing the salary cap, if not outright violating it.
The financials showed he was losing buckets of money on America's Team. But to hell with it! It's worth every last dollar, he told himself. They were just one win away from the Big Dance, the Super Bowl, and he could feel the atmosphere at Valley Ranch crackling with anticipation. Tomorrow was the NFC championship game, and his senses tingled with an electric buzz.
Damn, it's a fine day to be alive and be a Texan.
He'd had his annual physical earlier in the week, and the doctor pronounced him a remarkable specimen for his sixty-seven years. "You've got the heart of a lion and the prostate of a teenager." His long mane of white hair was brushed straight back, and today, wearing a tailored jet-black suit coat with silver piping, he felt vigorous enough to spar a few rounds in the gym or rope and brand some ornery livestock.
He considered himself a man who had damn near everything. There was only one missing element needed to fulfill his life.
I gotta get me a Super Bowl ring…the biggest, brightest Texas-sized ring they ever made.
All his energies were directed toward that one goal, and his assets were being drained for it. If they beat Green Bay tomorrow, they'd be on the threshold. But something else was gnawing at him, distracting him. The unfinished business of Robert Gallagher. It should have been finished two years ago. He'd crushed the little turd into dust and expected him to blow away like a West Texas tumbleweed. Would have too, if Christine hadn't agreed to that asinine split custody deal.
What a damn fool settlement! With Judge Bonifay-my golf partner for Christ's sake-we could have stripped the bastard of all his rights to Scott.
He still fumed thinking about it, Christine playing King Solomon with his grandson. He'd warned her there'd be trouble. Now, the shyster was refusing to return Scott from Florida and send him to boarding school. This time, he'd take care of Gallagher his way. Kingsley toyed with telling Christine his plan, then decided against it. She was too sentimental, too weak where the son-of-a-bitch was concerned. But she'd know soon enough, and when it was over, there'd be a barbed wire fence-or "bobwire" as they say hereabouts-between Scott and his loser father.
Kingsley shot the French cuffs on his custom-made shirt and glanced at his watch. No Rolex or Piaget. This was a solid gold number shaped like a Mustangs helmet and encrusted with diamonds. Two smaller versions of the helmet were fashioned into cufflinks.
Nearly noon. The plane was scheduled to leave for Green Bay in an hour. But it could wait. It was, after all, his own Gulfstream 5, the silver and blue "Point After."
"Let's cut back expenses," Christine had told him in their breakfast meeting that morning. Filled with pride for his little girl, he watched her expertly dissect the financials.