Stallion Gate

  As Joe sat down, Ray swabbed his forehead with petroleum jelly. "He's trying to cut you."

  "Tell me something I don't know." Joe ran his tongue round his mouth and counted teeth.

  "Captain Augustino's here, sitting over in the bar."

  Shouts and hands indicated the changing odds. Three fingers. Hilario wrote a chit for a somber Navajo in a velvet shirt. Shapiro had moved closer, and looked like he was sucking a cyanide pill or had bet on the wrong fighter. Across the court, the kid didn't want to sit and rest. He bounced on his toes and stared at Joe until Hilario called the two men forward.

  The kid had madness and speed. Joe sidestepped and the kid was there. When he stepped back, the kid was ahead of him. The scar on the stomach had turned a dull red as if alive all by itself and it occurred to Joe that it might be the mainspring, the potent source of that insanity. It looked like the sort of a tear a steer horn would make. No matter how good the kid got, and he was better than good, he'd never have a career fighting with a split stomach, he couldn't even get drafted. How would an over-the-hill professional, a fake Indian chief, look to a kid like that? No wonder his lips twisted in an effort as he wound up for the hook, chest cords popping and driving off the back leg, bringing his weight through without lunging or losing his balance, merely delivering as much hate as his fist could carry to the old damage above Joe's left eye.

  Fighting was a subtle matter, sooner or later a case of one man dominating first the center of the ring and then, corner by corner, the rest of it. Even under a tent in the rain, there was a centrifugal pattern to the steps, the feints, the mental concentration. Hate was a good thing to bring to a fight.

  Then Joe's brow popped under nothing harder than a touch. One moment he could see and the next moment his eye was a well of blood. The kid was all over Joe, ignoring Hilario, who was shouting for time so he could get one more round of bets down, until Joe made the kid step back with a jab.

  "What time is it?"

  Ray pinched Joe's brow closed, taped it, daubed it with jelly, then wiped Joe's face.

  "Eight twenty, eight thirty. You don't need a clock, you need a zipper."

  "The last money. Bet it, spread it around."

  "With you bleeding to death, we can get pretty good odds."

  "Bet it."

  Joe stood alone. Headlights merged in the center of the courtyard and insects spun over the white haze as if it were a pool. Across it, the kid stood and squinted back. Had that jab been the first tap of knowledge? There was a lot of sound from such a small crowd. He'd always had the sense that towards the end of a fight the paying public wanted to climb into the ring to deliver the last decisive blows. He remembered how once on the mesa a horse broke its legs and he and some other kids had had to stone the animal to death. It took a long time to kill a horse with stones.

  The kid went right at the cut. In the middle of the court, Joe backpedaled and jabbed. Against the cars, he covered up, locking his fists against his cheeks, his elbows over the solar plexus, accepting the punishment on the ribs until he could escape. The kid winged combinations and then single shots. An effusion, an undiminishing supply of rage, a hook to the kidney, to the ear, then the cross to the cut. Like a busy sculptor working on a statue he passionately hated. Joe staggered, ducked, clinched, backpedaled until Hilario called time again.

  On the hood of the patrol car, Hilario's pockets were misshapen from the money he'd stuffed into them. He watched Joe thoughtfully. Looked at the kid.

  Ray rubbed Joe's back, massaged his arms. "Drop the fucker."

  The kid came out with another rush of punches, each punch a complaint from a small, withered soul. Joe answered with a fluid jab twice as fast as any other he'd thrown, but soft, just enough to tell the boy, I understand. Understanding was contagious. The kid circled instead of wading in. Good as he was, the kid had never fought more than three rounds before. This was the fourth. He still hit hard, but he leaned on the jab and wound up for the hook. Joe slipped the hook and countered to the heart, a probe, a gesture of rising interest in the boy's condition, also an announcement: we are at a new level. The kid jabbed for time, for an opportunity to rethink the changing context. His jabs were short. Joe snapped a jab off the kid's nose and for a moment the little eyes were glass.

  The kid answered with a jab-and-cross, tearing the tape from Joe's cut. Joe's eye filled with blood that sprayed as he ducked. The kid came in to finish the cut. Left-handers when they punch tend to slide to the right. A matter of physics. One of Newton's Laws. The more they tire, the more they slide out of control. Moving low for a big man, Joe slipped a hook and rose, driving arm and fist of the bluntest curiosity into the boy's unguarded stomach and red cicatrix. The kid arched, half of him still following the parabola of his swing while the other half tried to bend away from Joe, who hit the coralroot scar again and continued to move in, staying low, pursuing the softening, collapsing midsection. In the air, the kid had no place to go. Joe hooked from the ground up, his own body rising.

  Inevitability came in grunts and the sound, when Joe hit, of a stake being driven into sodden earth. When Joe stopped, the boy went from weightless to gravity-bound and sprawled in the headlights like a figure under water.

  The suddenness of the end brought a quiet to the tent. Joe pressed the back of his hand to the pulsing blood of his cut. Ray and the MPs started collecting money. Hilario was collecting, too.

  Joe had left his clothes in the café kitchen. He washed, taped and dressed himself by the sink while Ray cleared the table of cans of peaches, lard and beans and counted the money by denominations. The long kitchen table was covered by stacks of bills.

  "Chief, you should've seen Shapiro and Gruber. They went through those cowboys like Gestapos, took everything but their watches. Done." Ray took a step back from the table like a man getting a better view of a big Rembrandt. "My God, I've never seen this much money before. $66,000 for you. That's as good as a title fight. You should open a bank."

  "I had something else in mind." Joe tucked his tie into his shirt and gingerly touched the tape on his brow.

  "Well, here's to Chief Joe Peña." Ray found two glasses in the sink and filled them with Black Label. "The greatest heavyweight in the Army. Your night, Chief."

  Pollack slipped through the kitchen door. His hair was freshly straightened and looked combed with a razor. He wore a canary jacket and a diamond ring on each hand. Dressed like a man about to travel at his ease, he made a slow, respectful circuit of the table. Then he laid down three folded papers.

  "Deed. Receipt. Liquor license." Pollack touched a stack of green notes briefly, to establish the fact of them. "Congratulations, you own a nightclub. I wish I could stay to show you the ropes."

  "You're leaving tonight?"

  "I said I was going to be on the dock when Eddie Jr came in. That's a three-day drive. Kansas City, Pittsburgh, New York. If he can come back from Italy, I can be there on the dock." Pollack counted out $50,000 and stuffed the bills in a money belt while Joe checked the papers. They were already signed.

  "I never thought I'd say goodbye to the Casa Mañana or New Mexico, Joe. Something else happening here tonight? Lots of Army trucks sort of hidden off the road."

  "It's a bombing range, you know."

  "Thought I recognized some soldiers from the Hill."

  "Maybe." Joe tucked the papers into his shirt.

  Pollack draped the money belt over his arm. He'd never put the belt on in front of anyone else, he had too much dignity for that. Just like he didn't go cross-country in a train because he never wanted to be mistaken for a porter.

  "You're going to be okay, Joe. From now on, everyone's going to be okay."

  "Thanks for everything." Joe shook hands gently because his fist hurt so much.

  At the door, Pollack hesitated.

  "That was the last fight for Big Chief Joe Peña?"

  "Yeah."

  "Good. I thought this time he cut it a little close."

  "Son o
f a bitch," Ray said when Pollack was gone. "You own the Casa Mañana? You son of a bitch, you pulled off a deal like that?"

  "I've got to go." It was nine o'clock. Joe counted out $1,000 and pushed the rest of his money with Ray's. "Hold this for me for a couple of days. Forget about the garbage business. I'm going to turn you into a maitre d'. After the test you're driving people back to the Albuquerque Hilton? Go to the Casa and stick by the cash register until I show up."

  "Serious?"

  "If anyone here asks tonight, say I was off to hunt Apaches."

  "You're serious about me?"

  "People are going to be lining up to grease the palm of Raymond the maitre d'."

  "In a tux?"

  "You better be."

  "That's better than garbage."

  "Sometimes it happens that way, Ray. Some things actually work out."

  "But it's a surprise," Ray insisted.

  "Yeah."

  The tent stood in an empty courtyard. The motel cabins were dark because their occupants were the MPs who were on the highway monitoring traffic, chasing the losers back to Texas, ushering fresh truckloads of GIs towards Trinity. The only vehicle left in the court was Joe's jeep, its top up to the rain.

  Squalls were raiding parties of lightning and thunder that moved under a half-moon across the valley. There was no sign of any jalopy or pickup truck and it occurred to him that Ben and Roberto might not show. No. It was Joe Peña's night, he thought, and, as if in answer, the rain briefly let up. Joe Peña's Casa Mañana. He walked across the courtyard to the jeep and the drops seemed to part before him like a curtain, as if the world were opening up for him.

  Joe got into the jeep. In the dark, on the seat next to him, was a muted yellow glitter with the shape of snakes. Two lightning wands.

  "The boy didn't have a chance, Sergeant," Captain Augustino said from the rear seat. "You suckered him. That boy didn't know who he was fighting."

  "You saw the fight, Captain?" they looked to Joe like Roberto's wands.

  "I didn't need to."

  "Lost some money?"

  "No, I bet on you."

  "You found the medicine men you were looking for?"

  "They're very elusive. Found the wands where they were hiding. Magic." Augustino tapped a cigarette on a silver case. It looked like the same case the captain's wife had had and he tapped on it the same way his wife had. Couples did do things the same way, Joe thought. The match flame made the wands start from the seat; otherwise, the flame cast a soft, confidential glow within the jeep, an illusion of golden warmth against the water that laced the windshield.

  Augustino leaned forward, his sallow face lit by a smile of mutual understanding, his eyes full of something close to admiration. "I'm not going to put the Army in the position of saying that a medicine man can call fire down from the sky. Even if it is attempted sabotage, a medicine man doesn't know any better."

  "I have to go look for Mescaleros. Groves' orders."

  A car with its lights out turned into the courtyard and stopped by the café on the other side of the tent. A Plymouth two-door.

  "Sergeant, I find amusing something so puny as a boxing match on a night like this, but I suspect the general would call it a dereliction of duty."

  Augustino saw the car as well as Joe. Augustino knew the cars from the Hill as well as Joe, and this was Teller's car. There seemed to be only one person inside. Her white hands held the steering wheel.

  "You'd have to arrest half the MPs on the site. You're not going to do that."

  "True, I do have other matters in mind."

  Amazing he could recognize her even by her hands. In the dark, he could see her gray eyes look around the courtyard and stare at the jeep.

  "Since these aren't my sticks," Joe said and nodded to the wands, "and since you aren't going to do anything about the fight, I better start looking for those Apaches."

  "Good hunting, Sergeant."

  Joe started the jeep's engine. He'd leave the courtyard and wait on the highway for her to catch up.

  "Just one question," Augustino said, "and then you can go. One question– fair enough?"

  "Ask."

  "Have you ever seen Harry Gold and Oppenheimer together?"

  "You're back on that kick?"

  "You know Harry Gold, also known as Heinrich Golodnitsky?"

  "Yes."

  "And you've never seen him with our Dr Oppenheimer?"

  "No."

  Something dropped on the wands. Augustino produced a flashlight and shone it on a photograph of Oppy and Joe and Harry Gold. The three of them were standing on the corner outside La Fonda.

  "I think I've earned another question, Sergeant. Have you ever seen Harry Gold with Dr Anna Weiss?"

  Joe sat back and wondered where a photographer was that day in Santa Fe. The captain dropped a second picture. It was of Joe and Harry Gold and Anna Weiss on the same corner. She wore the silver hairpin she'd bought on the portal.

  "The tour bus," Joe said. "The dudes with the cameras."

  "Yes. We had a pair of buses following him. Considering the fact they couldn't stay near him all the time, we were lucky." A third picture slipped to the seat. In this one, Joe and Gold were alone and Joe's hand was on the newspaper under Gold's arm. "You see, a Soviet courier doesn't just coincidentally bump into Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the Director of a secret US Army project, or Anna Weiss, a member of the project. That's why you said 'No' to me. That's why you lied to me."

  "I was talking to Gold. Dr Weiss joined us to talk to me."

  "That's all you have to say. You witnessed a meeting between Anna Weiss and a Soviet courier. You did the right thing in telling me."

  Joe cut the engine. The rain had a steadier hiss now, a long-drawn, patient sound on the tarmac. Even at a distance and in the dark, he could see two heads rise from hiding in the back of the Plymouth.

  "You missed Fuchs," he told Augustino. "Gold met Fuchs at a bridge a few blocks from the plaza. They switched newspapers. I was trying to get the newspaper from Gold, to see what Fuchs gave him."

  "I'm not interested in Fuchs."

  "He's the man Gold came to see. I saw them meet."

  "I'm not interested in Fuchs."

  "When you saw Gold on the portal, he was carrying a copy of the Santa Fe newspaper. At the bridge–"

  "I'm not interested in Fuchs."

  How often does a man see an example of love? A chance taken for him? Even if the danger was so much greater than she knew.

  "

  Leave Dr

  Weiss alone," he said to Augustino.

  "That's up to you. It's her or Oppenheimer. You choose."

  "I need some time."

  As she waited, the windshield fogged before her face. Beads of rain idly coalesced and ran.

  Go, Joe thought. Thank you, now go.

  Augustino said, "Tonight. You know all the tests on the Hill for the last two days point to an ignominious failure here. We are on the eve of an historic debacle, Sergeant. Billions of dollars wasted. A chance to end the war lost. That's why Julius Oppenheimer is coming apart now, because he knows the bomb won't work. He knows the first question General Groves is going to ask is, who's to blame? Oppenheimer is a master of escaping blame. His wife is a communist, his brother is a communist, his friends and students are communists, but he says he's not a communist and here he is running our most important project. I didn't make up Harry Gold, Sergeant. Harry Gold came here with a message. If Trinity fails, it won't be a failure of American science; it will be the result of Soviet orders. When it fails, as it will tonight, I will do my part. My men are in Santa Fe, waiting to arrest Gold. I will arrest his co-conspirator. That's been my mission all along."

  Run, Joe pleaded in his mind. Go!

  "No one is going to believe any charge against Anna Weiss."

  "No one will defend her. A refugee from a Nazi mental home? A scandal? The wives on the Hill will rise as one to burn her at the stake and Kitty Oppenheimer will throw the f
irst torch. Sergeant, I have some small experience in security, and I can promise you that in the atmosphere following the failure, everyone will be relieved that someone was blamed."

  "On what proof?"

  "Gold, Weiss, you. Courier, contact, witness. The evidence does point to this sordid triangle."

  Finally the Plymouth slipped forward, lights still out, a shadow reluctantly turning in the café driveway, the sound of its motion covered by the rain. Joe watched the car's tail-lights, a red blur fading. After ten seconds, an Army sedan with its lights out rolled from behind a motel cabin across the courtyard and followed. It was half a mile to the highway.

  For the first time, Augustino paid attention to Anna, now that she was gone.

  "We assume she is taking those two fugitive medicine men to the border. I've told the officers not to arrest her without my direct order, but you certainly have incriminated her. And you will incriminate her more. You will incriminate her as only a lover can. How did she escape from Germany? While here, did she ever work to impede the development of the bomb, or prevent its application, or influence others to do so?"

  "What do you want?"

  "Gold, Oppenheimer, you. That would be perfect."

  Joe took a deep breath. "Let me see the picture again."

  Augustino picked up the top photographs and played the flashlight on the picture of Oppy standing with Gold and Joe in front of the hotel in Santa Fe. In glossy black and white, Oppy was angry, Gold wistful. With Joe cropped, the two men might have been holding an animated conversation.

  "It seemed like a chance meeting," Joe said.

  "I need more than a chance meeting." On to the picture Augustino dropped a white business card that said in raised letters, "Harry Gold". "I want this card in Oppenheimer's pocket – trouser pocket, jacket pocket, it doesn't matter. See, I have proof enough for myself. What I need for others is some minute piece of evidence, some concrete fulcrum of incrimination."