Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split (20 page)

“Hurry up,” Tammi snapped. “Hurry the hell up.”

He saw drops of water on the keyboard. It was sweat. His sweat.

Tammi let Wade pull into a convenience store on the way to the track just to shut him up. He went inside and bought a lottery ticket, using his usual numbers, and a liter bottle of malt liquor.

He tucked the ticket in his pocket. He had the bottle half empty by the time he got back behind the wheel of his grandmother’s car.

“This better work,” Tammi said through clenched teeth.

“You’re telling me?”

Michael Streck was right where they’d arranged, in the tenth row from the gate.

Wade parked next to Mikey and got out. Tammi got out too, slowly, giving Mikey a good long look at her legs.

“Who’s this?” Michael asked, annoyed.

“His partner,” Tammi said silkily.

“I don’t like it,” Mikey said. “I never said nothing about partners. That’s not our deal. You tryin’ to fuck with me, kid?”

He opened his sport coat and they saw the grip of the Beretta sticking out of the waistband of his slacks.

Wade gulped. He thrust the computer disk toward Michael. “Here. The disk. See. I told you I’d get it back for you.”

A slow smile spread over Mikey’s vulpine features. “You sure this is the real thing? I thought you said that other chick took off with it. You found it, or is this some kind of scam?”

Wade laughed nervously. “Come on, Mikey. Look. I made another one. Good as new. Now, uh, about my money.”

“You’ll get the money,” Michael said. “As soon as I’m sure this is the real goods.” He opened the car door, got in, had his hand on the door to close it again.

Tammi stepped up and put a delicate hand on the car door.

“The disk works,” she said. “But you got to have the raw data to make it work, right, Wade?” She gave him a conspiratorial wink.

Wade’s jaw dropped. Why was she doing this to him? Aggravating a guy who was about as friendly as a pit viper.

“I got the race program,” Michael said, patting the slick booklet on the seat next to him. “That ought to take care of it.”

Tammi leaned in the window of Mikey’s car. “I’m not talking about that shit in the program. I’m talking about the other stuff, inside stuff, that makes our program work. Right, baby?” She turned to Wade for confirmation.

“Well, uh,” Wade stammered.

Tammi stood up and smoothed her skirt over her hips. “If you want the blanks filled in,” she said, “you gotta pay.”

“I’ll fuckin’ kill you,” Mikey gasped, whipping the gun out. He pointed it first at Wade and then at Tammi.

“I don’t think so,” Tammi said. “I think your bosses want the program. With all the data on it. You kill us, you got nothing.” She waggled her fingers at him. “Unless you come up with the money, that disk is all you get. Bye now.”

Tammi got back in the car, leaving Wade standing there, mouth agape, like some largemouth bass that had just been landed.

Michael shook his head in disbelief. He looked at the disk in his hand. He had something, but at the same time, he had nothing.

He reached in his jacket pocket, pulled out a roll of bills, money Nunz had given him earlier in the day to make the deal. There were hundreds on the outside, then fifties, then twenties. He peeled off the proper amount of bills and handed it to Wade.

“Here’s five,” he said. “A down payment. Now let’s go find a nice quiet place where you can show me how this thing works.”

Tammi leaned across the seat of Wade’s car. “We’ll go to his place. He’ll show you how it works there.”

“I don’t deal with women,” Mikey snarled.

Wade, emboldened now, snatched the money from Mikey’s outstretched hand.

“You can follow us in your car,” he said, and he ran to his own car, shut and locked the door, and gunned the engine.

Tammi eyed Wade with newfound interest. She took the gun back out of her purse, but this time she only rested it in her lap. “Let me see the money,” she said. “I want to count it.”

Wade’s fingers raced across the keyboard. He’d added some data categories to the rudimentary chart on the disk, now he was filling in the blanks from the racing program Mikey had brought along. Some dogs he recognized from other races he’d previously handicapped.

Hot Flash, the number seven dog in the third race, he definitely remembered. She was a big brindle female out of the Bainbridge kennel, a dog Rosie always favored on a five-sixteenths mile race, and she’d had six firsts already this season. He weighted the chart in her favor under a catchall heading he called “star power.”

Hot Flash looked a good bet, but there was so much information he didn’t have: the stuff Rosie picked up in her rounds of the kennels, the trainers, vets, and lead-out boys, that was the data that made the difference. If only … never mind. He pushed the thought from his head.

Michael stood behind him, watching, impressed. The lad knew handicapping. This thing would be a gold mine.

Tammi had gone out for beer, taking the five thousand dollars with her. Wade wished she would get back. He glanced at his watch again. It was nearly seven. “These are the only races I’ll have time to do if you want to make the daily double,” he said. He didn’t need to tell Mikey that to win the daily double, you had to pick the winners of the first and second races, in exact order. He liked the odds for tonight; if Michael played his picks, he was liable to do okay. He’d also doped out the super trifecta and the Big Q. They were all races with big payoffs.

He pushed the enter button and waited. The laptop made quiet whirring noises and the screen saver came up, a graphic of three racing greyhounds. When the screen came back, the chart had numerical rankings attached to each of the six races he’d handicapped.

He typed the print command, and Michael stood, arms folded, glowering at the machine as it spat out the play sheet.

By the time Tammi got back, the printout was nearly finished. Wade was already marking up Mikey’s race program. He didn’t want anybody at the track seeing his chart or the data on it. Wade was conscious of a deep, bone-jarring sense of dread. He was exhausted. A nervous wreck.

Mikey snatched up the computer disk and the printout as well as his marked-up program.

“Don’t get lost,” he warned them. “This is like a test run. If it works, you’ll get the rest of your money. If not, you’ll get dead.”

Wade snapped the lid of the laptop shut. “Bet only the races I’ve marked, and bet the way I suggested too,” he said. “Like in the fourth race, you need to box a trifecta. Don’t just buy a two-dollar quinella ticket, because it won’t come in. Understand?”

After the screen door slammed shut behind Mikey, Wade stood up, stretched, and began gathering up his papers.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tammi asked.

“Out of here,” Wade said. “Your boyfriend and his buddy are still out there looking for me, right?”

“Right,” Tammi said absentmindedly. She took the pistol out of her purse again.

“You can go back to your grandma’s for now. But I’ll take the computer. Security deposit. You better hope he wins tonight.”

“I know,” Wade said gloomily. “I know.”

“Just a minute.” Truman stopped and pulled his billfold out of his pocket.

He thumbed through his senior citizen discount cards: Winn-Dixie, Rite-Aid, Steak and Shake. Finally he pulled one out. The American Association of Retired Persons card. That one was golden.

“Here it is.”

Jackleen kept on walking. She was impatient to get inside, start looking. Truman caught up with her at the admission window. She’d paid her money and gotten the token that would let her through the turnstile.

Truman pushed the AARP card through the slot in the window along with a dollar bill.

The cashier, a heavy-set black man with a gleaming bald head and a too-tight red blazer held up the card. He frowned. “What’s this?”

“AARP card,” Truman said. “Members get fifty percent off at Florida attractions.”

“Not this one.” He shoved the card back through the slot.

Truman pushed it back again. “I’ve used it at Busch Gardens and Disney World and Silver Springs. They never give me no trouble.”

He heard whispering behind him. Two young couples stood there, money in hand, eager to get inside and blow it all.

Jackie edged up to Truman’s side. “It’s only a buck, Mr. K. I’ll pay it. C’mon, okay? We got a lot of ground to cover.”

“Hey, man, can we go ahead of you?”

Truman scowled but stepped aside to let them by. Then he stepped up to the window again.

“You again?” The cashier had his hand on the phone. “I told you, buddy, it’s two bucks. No discounts. No exceptions.”

Jackie pushed two dollar bills through the slot in the window. The cashier smirked and flipped a token through the slot.

She tugged at Truman’s sleeve. “Can we go in now?”

“I want his badge number,” Truman muttered.

“Later,” Jackie promised.

They walked down the concrete runway toward the grandstands. It was nearly five; the matinee crowd was slowly drifting out and most of the evening crowd had yet to materialize. Here and there knots of casually dressed people stood around looking up at the closed-circuit television monitors watching taped replays of the matinee races.

Others sat on the rows of green-painted wooden benches, hunched over racing programs. Workmen with wooden push-brooms swept drifts of betting slips, beer cups, programs, and hot-dog wrappers into irregular piles along the fence.

Truman and Jackie walked over to the rail separating the grandstands from the track. On the infield, a gardener slowly pushed a fertilizer spreader.

“What now?”

“We start looking,” Truman said. He was gazing out at the sky. It was brilliant blue. Ribbons of orange and pink streaked along the horizon, and occasionally a seagull swooped and landed in the tall sabal palms at the edge of the infield. It was cooler now. A slight breeze made the hairs on his forearms stand up.

Mel would like this, he was thinking. He always liked to be early to things, ball games, the track. He liked to watch batting practice, liked to watch the dogs prance by on their walk-out.

Jackleen was talking. “Mr. K? Let’s go talk to some of the cashiers. Maybe one of them knew Rosie.”

The first they asked, an older man, just shook his head when they asked about Rosie. “Saw her around,” the second one said. “But she never bet with me.” He turned to the cashier in the booth next to his. “You ever know that tout that got killed last week?”

“Rosie,” the cashier said. He was young, maybe twenty-two, and Hispanic. “Marion knew her,” he said. “Ask her. Next level up.”

Marion was studying the racing program, bifocals balanced on the tip of her nose.

“Rosie was a cute kid,” Marion said. She was pudgy, looked to be in her fifties, but her skin was smooth and unwrinkled. “Rosie was superstitious. Thought I brought her good luck” She frowned. “Not so good the other night, huh?”

“You saw her?” Truman asked.

“Just for a couple of minutes. She was in line in back of a high roller, Billy from Philly. One of my regulars. Billy was taking his time, shooting the breeze, and I noticed Rosie looked nervous.”

“Did she talk to anybody else?”

“Not that I saw. When she finally got up to my window, she had a piece of paper with all her bets for the night, like a kind of chart.”

“Is that how she usually made her bets?” Jackie asked.

Marion shook her head. “Rosie bet one race at a time. Always the same way. I told you, she was funny about that kind of stuff. The other night it was different. I’ll tell you something else, too,” Marion offered, “she had a lot of money that night. Mostly twenties. It was the most money I’d ever seen her with.”

“Did she make the bets?” Truman asked.

“No,” Marion said. “She got spooked. Yanked the paper back, put the money in this little nylon zipper pouch she wore around her waist, and took off running.”

“Did you see who she was afraid of ?” Jackie asked.

“No.” Marion sighed. “Poor kid. Hell of a thing, that was.”

“Getting killed like that,” Jackie agreed.

“That too,” Marion said. “I saw the first three picks before she jerked that paper away. All of ‘em winners. Long shots, too. She would have made a pile if she’d gotten those bets down.”

“First three races all winners and all long shots,” Truman said slowly. “Was Rosie always that accurate?”

Marion shrugged. “She knew dogs pretty good. Rosie won some and lost some. But I never saw her bet every race like that. I guess it was the first night for her new system.”

“You mean the computer program?” Jackie asked eagerly.

“Yeah,” Marion said. “Her and that boyfriend dreamed it up. Rosie thought it was gonna make them rich.”

“Did you know her boyfriend?” Truman asked.

“Wade? I never saw him. From what Rosie said, he was supposedly the one who knew computers.”