Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [124]
Shorty grunted. “It’s your first day on the job, so I’ll give you some slack. But if you’re going to work for me this summer, I expect you to put your back into it.”
“Yes, sir,” Kerney said.
The next morning, as they finished up at the trap, Johnny told Kerney how he’d stopped by his girlfriend’s house in town on the way to the store and had gotten “distracted.” He never once apologized for leaving Kerney in the lurch, nor did he thank him for covering up his absence with Shorty.
“Don’t worry about Shorty,” Johnny said as he pounded in the last post. “I’ll make sure he keeps you on through the summer.”
Kerney spliced a top wire with fencing pliers, clipped it to the post, and stretched it tight. “Don’t do me any favors, Johnny.”
“What’s bugging you?”
“Nothing,” Kerney replied, staring at Johnny, who stood grinning at him, showing his perfect white teeth. Unlike Johnny, who lacked for nothing, Kerney needed the job and the money it would bring. “Just don’t expect me to lie for you again.”
“You’re taking this way too seriously.”
Kerney wrapped the remaining wire around the post, took off his gloves, and handed Johnny the pliers. “You can finish up.”
Johnny laughed. “When did the hired hand start giving orders?”
“When I found out my partner is a slacker.”
Over the course of the summer, Kerney distanced himself from Johnny and won Shorty’s respect as a hand, which meant more to him than Johnny’s friendship.
That summer, Johnny’s wild streak took over. In his free time, he organized beer busts on his father ’s boat at Elephant Butte Lake, made trips to sleazy Juárez nightclubs in Mexico, and got in fistfights over girls. When he wasn’t working or partying, he was glued to the back of a horse, practicing his calf roping and rodeoing skills.
As he considered Johnny’s invitation, Kerney wondered if his old boyhood pal had changed at all over the years. Did he still have the big grin, the easy laugh, his charming, cocksure ways? As a rodeo fan, he’d kept up with Johnny’s career for a time. Johnny had been good enough to repeatedly reach the national finals and had won two saddle bronc championships, but never the all-around title. Then he’d faded from view.
Kerney decided it was worth his time to have dinner with Johnny, just to find out what had prompted his phone call. He dialed the hotel and asked to be put through to Johnny’s room. The operator asked for his name and when he responded, she told him Johnny would meet him in the bar of an expensive downtown restaurant at seven o’clock.
Kerney confirmed he’d be there and disconnected, thinking maybe Johnny hadn’t changed much at all: he still expected things to go his way and for people to do his bidding. Any nostalgia he had about his past friendship was erased by a sense of wariness.
He checked the time. If he left for home now, he could change out of his uniform into civvies and get back in town to meet up with Johnny at the restaurant.
At the Santa Fe airport, Johnny Jordan sat with the woman he’d brought with him to Santa Fe, eager to put her on a flight home and be done with her. Brenda was a petite, hard-bodied workout maven who conducted trim and tone exercise classes at a Denver gym and spa that catered to professional women. He’d met her at a party three weeks ago, and by the end of the night he had taken her to bed.
Over the past three weeks Johnny had found her to be the perfect combination of what he liked in a woman: haughty, hot-looking, and sluttish in bed. Two days ago, he’d invited Brenda to accompany him on a short business trip, thinking it would be fun to have someone to play with who liked it wet and wild and didn’t demand too much of his time. By the end of the drive down from Denver, Johnny realized he’d make a huge mistake.
From the moment she got in the car, Brenda had talked endlessly, about her parents, her siblings, her job, her ex-husband, her hiking vacation to the Canadian Rockies, and anything else that just popped into her pretty head. In Santa Fe,