Murder at the Racetrack (36 page)

For this warm June evening at Meadowlands, Fritzi was wearing designer sports clothes: an Armani jacket, jeans that were fitted
to his narrow hips like a cowboy’s attire, and dark canvas shoes with crepe soles. The jacket was sleekly tapered, though
boxy at the shoulders, with large stylish lapels; the fabric was a soft pale gray, the color of a dove’s wings, and only if
you looked closely could you see the fine, almost invisible stripes in the cloth. Beneath, Fritzi was wearing a black T-shirt:
but a designer T-shirt. Fritzi Czechi always dressed with a certain swagger, unlike most guys from Jersey City of any age
or class, and his hair was styled to appear fuller and wavier than it was. Katie saw he wasn’t tinting it, though. A fair
faded brown beginning to turn nickel-colored, like his eyes.

A photographer for the Newark
Star-Ledger
recognized Fritzi and asked to take his picture with Morning Star, but Fritzi shrugged him off, saying he was too busy. Usually,
in public, Fritzi Czechi was smoothly smiling and accommodating, so Katie knew: This race meant a lot to him.

And if to Fritzi, then to Katie Flanders.
My future will be decided tonight.
Suddenly she was scared! On all sides she could feel the excitement of the races, like tension gathering before a thunderstorm,
and this evening’s Meadowlands races were ordinary events, no large purses at stake. Katie didn’t want to imagine what it
might be like at the Belmont Stakes, the Kentucky Derby. Millions of dollars at stake. Was this where Fritzi Czechi was headed,
or thought he might be headed? Or was Fritzi just a small-time Jersey horse owner, hoping for luck? Katie felt how deeply
her life was involved with his, or might be. She wanted him to win, if winning was what he wanted, and if he wanted badly
to win, she wanted this badly, too. A man is the sum of his moods, it was moods you had to live with. If he had a soul, a
deeper self, that was something else: his secret.

The tips of Katie’s fingers were going cold. She clutched at Fritzi’s arm, but he was getting away from her, walking so quickly
she nearly stumbled in her two-inch cork-heeled sandals with the open toes and tropical-colored plastic straps. Katie was
a soft-bodied fleshy girl, and she was wearing a candy-striped halter-top nylon dress that showed her shapely breasts to advantage;
the skirt was pleated, to obscure the fullness of her hips and thighs, about which she felt less confidence. Her dark blonde
hair was tied back in a gauzy red scarf, and around her neck she wore a tiny jade cross on a gold chain, a gift from Fritzi
Czechi on the occasion of some long-ago birthday he hadn’t exactly remembered when Katie showed it to him.

Fritzi, see? I love it!

What?

This. That you gave me. This cross.

Quickly Katie had kissed Fritzi, to cover his confusion. She was skilled at such maneuvers with men. Always, you wanted a
man to save face: Never did you want a man to be embarrassed by you, still less exposed or humiliated. Unless you were dumping
him. But even then, tact was required. You didn’t want to end up with a split lip or a blackened eye.

Right now, Ftitzi was practically pushing Katie away. He’d forgotten who she was. At Morning Star’s stall, talking in an earnest,
lowered voice with a fattish gray-haired man who must have been the horse’s trainer, while Katie was left to gaze at the horse,
marveling at his beauty, and his size. She would play the wide-eyed admiring glamorously made-up female hiding the fact she’d
been rebuffed, and was frightened: “Morning Star! What a beauty. So much depends upon you…” Katie was trying to overhear what
Fritzi and the trainer were talking about so urgently. This was a side of Fritzi unknown to her: anxious, aggressive, not
so friendly. It might have been that he and the other man, who was old enough to be Fritzi’s father, were taking up a conversation
they’d been having recently, in which the words
she, her, them
were predominant. (Fritzi’s wife Rosalind? His ex- or separated wife who was a part-owner of Morning Star? Was Fritzi wanting
to know if she was at the track, if the trainer had seen her?) Fritzi had only glanced at his horse, immense and restless
in his stall, being groomed by a young Guatemalan-looking stable hand, and must have thought that things looked all right.
Morning Star would be racing in a little more than an hour. When she’d visited Pink Lady before her race, Katie had been encouraged
to stroke the horse’s damp velvety nose, and to stroke her sides and back, astonished at how soft and fine the hair was, but
Morning Star was a larger horse, a stallion, and coarser, and when Katie lifted her hand to stroke his head as he drank from
a bucket, he raised his head swiftly and made a sharp wickering noise and nipped at her fingers quick as a snake. “Oh! Oh
God.” Katie stared at her hand, her lacquered fingernails, that throbbed as if they’d been caught in a vise. Within seconds
there was a reddened imprint of the horse’s teeth across three of her knuckles. Fritzi called over sharply, “Katie, watch
it,” and the trainer said, with belated concern, “Ma’am, don’t touch him, Mister can bite.” Katie quickly assured them she
was all right. (Later she would realize: The stallion might have severed three of her fingertips, in that split-second. If
he’d bitten down a
little
harder. If he’d been angry. If Katie had been due for some very bad luck.)

Katie was hurt, the young Guatemalan groom hadn’t warned her she might be bitten. He was rubbing Morning Star’s sides, he’d
been combing his mane, must have been aware of Katie putting out her hand so riskily, yet he’d said nothing, and was ignoring
her now. And Morning Star was ignoring her, though baring his big yellow teeth, stamping, switching his tail. Ready to race?
Did a horse know? Katie supposed yes, the horses must know. But they didn’t know how risky their race could be, how they might
be injured on the track, break a leg and have to be put down. At one of the races the previous year, a horse and jockey had
fallen amid a tangle of horses, and the horse had been “put down,” as Fritzi spoke of it, right out on the track beneath a
hastily erected little tent. Katie had been appalled, she’d wanted to cry. You came to watch a race and you witnessed an execution.
“Morning Star! That won’t happen to you.”

Fritzi came to inspect his horse. Fritzi dared to stroke the stallion’s head, talking to him in a low, cajoling voice, but
not pushing it, and not standing too near. Always he was aware of the stallion’s mouth. He spoke with the groom, and a short,
stunted-looking man who was Morning Star’s jockey, not yet in his colorful silk costume. It was a measure of Fritzi’s distraction,
he hadn’t introduced Katie to either the trainer or the jockey. She stood to one side feeling excluded, hurt. Embarrassed!
She would make a story of it to amuse her girlfriends, who were eager to hear how things had gone with Fritzi Czechi.
That damned horse!
—
it almost bit off three of my fingers. And you know Fritzi, all he does is call over, Katie, watch it.

Or maybe she wouldn’t tell that story. It wasn’t very flattering to her. Maybe, looking back on this evening at Meadowlands,
in Fritzi Czechi’s company, Katie Flanders wouldn’t carry away with her any story she’d want to recall.

•    •    •

Of the nine races at Meadowlands that evening, Fritzi was interested in betting on the second, third, and fourth. Of the fifth
race, in which Morning Star was racing, he seemed not to wish to speak. Maybe it was superstition. Katie knew that gamblers
were superstitious, and touchy. She knew that being in a gambler’s company when he failed to win could mean you were associated
with failing to win. Still she blundered, asking a question she meant to be an intelligent question about Morning Star’s jockey,
and Fritzi replied in monosyllables, not looking at her. They were in the clubhouse before the first race, having drinks.
Katie had a glass of white wine. Fritzi drank vodka on the rocks, and rapidly. He was too nerved up to sit still. Men came
over to greet him and shake his hand and he made an effort to be friendly, or to seem friendly, introducing Katie to them
by only her first name. Katie smiled, trying not to think what this meant. (She was just a girl for the evening? For the night?
Expendable, no last name? Or, Fritzi had forgotten her name?) Many in the clubhouse for drinks were nerved up, Katie saw.
Some were able to disguise it better than others. Some were getting frankly drunk. In other circumstances Katie would have
asked Fritzi to identify these people, whom he seemed to know, and who knew him, at least by name. Fritzi ordered a second
drink. He was looking for someone, Katie knew.
The wife. Ex-wife? Rosalind.
Fritzi was smoking a cigarette in short, rapid puffs like a man sucking oxygen, for purely therapeutic reasons. When forced
to speak with someone he smiled a bent grimace of a smile, clearly distracted. Compulsively he stroked the back of his head,
his hair curling behind his ears. Katie would have liked to take his nervous hand in hers, as a wife might. In an act of daring,
she did take his hand, and laced her fingers through his. She told him she was very happy to be with him. She told him she
was very happy about the previous night. “And I won’t ask about the future,” she said, teasing, “because Fritzi Czechi isn’t
a man to be pinned down.” Fritzi smiled at this, and stroked her hand, as if grateful for the bantering tone. Yet always his
gaze drifted to the entrance, as a stream of customers, strikingly dressed women, came inside. Katie asked if he’d stake her
at betting, as he had the previous year, and Fritzi said sure. “Not only am I going to stake you, sweetheart, you’re going
to place bets for me, too.” Katie didn’t get this. Must be, there was logic to it. She wasn’t going to question him. She wished
she could take chloroform and wake after the fifth race, when the suspense was over, and Morning Star had either won, or had
lost; if he’d lost, had he lost badly; if badly, how badly. Katie had a sudden nightmare vision of the beautiful roan stallion
crumpled and broken on the track, medics rushing toward him, the sinister canvas tent erected over the writhing body… It would
be Katie Flanders’s broken body, too.

Except Katie wasn’t worth as much as Morning Star, whose bloodlines included Kentucky Derby winners. Katie had no life insurance,
for there was no one for whom her life was precious.

After his third vodka, Fritzi took Katie to place their bets at the betting windows. The first race was shortly to begin.
This wasn’t a race in which Fritzi was much interested, for some reason he hadn’t explained. Only the next three. And in each,
he was calculating they’d win the exacta, which seemed to Katie far-fetched as winning a lottery: Not only was your bet on
the winning horse, but on the horse to place. (What were the odds against the exacta? Katie’s brain dissolved into vapor,
thinking of such things.) The money Fritzi gave her to bet with was in crisp twenty-dollar bills. Katie wasn’t paying much
attention to the odds on the horses. How much could they win, if they won? Especially she didn’t want to know the exact sums
of money they’d be losing, if they lost. Of course, all the money was Fritzi’s. Yet, if they won, Katie would win, too.

She thought,
He does love me. This is proof.

Fritzi led her to their reserved seats, in a shady section of the stadium, at the finish line, three rows up. Drinking seemed
to have steadied Fritzi’s nerves. He was still smoking, and looking covertly around. Whoever he was looking for hadn’t arrived
yet. Katie was beginning to tremble. (All the money she’d bet! And the fifth race, Fritzie’s race, beyond that.) The first
knuckles of her right hand were reddened, swollen, and throbbing.

Katie said, “I’m just so—anxious. Gambling makes me nervous.”

Fritzi said, “Horse racing isn’t gambling, it’s an art.”

He told her if you knew what you were doing, you didn’t risk that much. And if you didn’t know what the hell you were doing,
you shouldn’t be betting.

“My way of betting,” Katie said, meaning to be amusing in the little-girl way she’d cultivated since childhood, “would be
to bet on the horses’ names.”

Fritzi let this pass. “A name means nothing. Only the bloodline means anything. At the farm, young horses are identified by
their dams’ names. Until they demonstrate they’re worth something, they don’t have any identity.”

Katie was grateful that Fritzi was talking to her again. Taking her seriously. She wanted to take his hands in hers and lace
their fingers together to comfort him. Horses were at the starting gate, the crowd was expectant. A voice in her head, mellowed
by wine, reminisced,
That time at Meadowlands! Remember how nervous we were, Fritzi?’ I didn’t want to tell you how badly my hand was hurting.
.
.

Fritzi was saying, as if arguing, “Horse racing isn’t a crap shoot. It isn’t playing the slots. You figure how the horse has
done recently. You figure the horse’s history, meaning the bloodline. You figure who the jockey is. You figure who the other
horses are, he’ll be racing. And the odds. Always, the odds. There’s people who believe, and maybe I’m one of them, there’s
no luck at all. No luck. Only what has to be, that you can figure. Or try to.” Katie was silenced by this speech of Fritzi’s,
which was totally unlike him. He seemed almost to be speaking to someone else. Not the slightest trace of banter here, or
irony.

It was during the first race that Fritzi’s wife, unless the woman was his ex-wife, came to sit a row down from them, twelve
seats to Fritzi’s right. Katie saw, and recognized her immediately. Or maybe Katie was reacting to Fritzi’s sudden stiffness.
Rosalind was with a tall sturdily built man of about Fritzi’s age with olive-dark skin and ridged, graying hair. She was a
striking young woman, as she’d been described to Katie, stylishly dressed in a lilac pants suit with a loose, low-cut white
blouse, and wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. Her long straight dyed-looking black hair fell past her shoulders. Her skin
was geisha-white, and her mouth very red. She was theatrical-looking, eye-catching. Katie felt a pang of jealousy, resentment.
Rosalind was said to have been a model even while attending East Orange High School, and at the peak of her brief career she’d
appeared in glossy magazines like
Glamour
and
Allure.
She’d married Fritzi Czechi and gotten pregnant and had a miscarriage and within a few years the marriage was over and it
was Rosalind who’d sued for divorce. All Fritzi had ever said about this third marriage in Katie’s presence was that mistakes
were made on both sides: “End of story.”