Murder at the Racetrack (5 page)

A hooker I had in Bed Stuy, whining,

“Don’t touch the hair and no kissing.”

Real affectionate broad.

I’m banging away, trying to get it over, get off, and she asked,

“You near done?”

Just like my old lady, if a little better looking, and at least she took the cash up front, not the daily bleeding me useless.

Lenny goes,

“We gonna stay on the curb all evening? Get your sorry ass in here.” Christ, what a pad, massive and with white leather furniture,
paintings on the wall. I don’t know art from shinola but they had little lights above them, so I figure they were expensive.
There’s a young girl on the couch, dressed in bra and panties, a real beaut, her head nodding like the junkies on Seventh.

Lenny said,

“Say hello to Angie. She’s a little outta it but she bangs like a trooper.”

Lenny always had a mouth on him. He shouts,

“Yo, babe, get us some cold ones and bring the bottle of Grey Goose.”

Took her a time, but eventually we got behind some serious drinks and Lenny said,

“The fuck you standing for? Take the weight off, get your ass on that couch, chill buddy.”

I had on a Goodwill sports jacket, and truth to tell, I was a little ashamed of it. Got it off with more than a bit of relief
and Lenny asked,

“You’re not packing?”

A cop without his piece is like a pimp without rock. I had no answer to that, so chugged my vodka and that shit, it goes down,
real smooth. Lenny fills it right up, says,

“No prob, get you fixed up.”

He goes out of the room and the girl looks at me, her eyes drooping, asks,

“You a cop?”

I take my time, she’s not going to remember in five minutes anyway, then I said,

“Used to be.”

She stared at me, then,

“Lenny says you’re a compulsive gambler.”

Lenny and his mouth. I feel regret that I no longer carry the shield. The regret is more than I expected and I swear I feel
my eyes tearing up. Must have been that Grey Goose; sneaks up on you.

Lenny comes back, hands me a Glock, says,

“Lock ’n’ load, bro.”

It’s like a toy in my big hand. Light as hope. Dull sheen that catches the light.

The girl asks,

“What’s with you guys and guns?”

Lenny says, real quiet,

“Shut up, bitch.”

The steel in his voice, no fucking around with that.

He smiles then, swallows a huge dollop of his drink, the ice clinking against his teeth, freshly capped and gleaming, like
a movie star. Set you back three grand. I know; I inquired.

He said,

“October twenty-seventh.”

The booze has muddled my head and I don’t know what he means, so I go,

“Dunno what you mean.”

He’s incredulous, then,

“The Sox, man, we became world champions.”

He’s fucking with me, big time. I’ve been a Yankee fan all my life—how could I not?—and I’d almost forgotten how Lenny liked
to stick it to people. The Glock is still in my hand and for one glorious moment I considered shooting the fucker.

Wish I had.

He’s not finished.

“You guys choked—am I right?—got your ass handed to you.”

Like I said, I should have shot him.

He busted my chops some more, making a few comments about slow horses and slower ex-cops, then suddenly jumps up, disappears
into the bedroom, returns with a suede jacket, still in its plastic, asked,

“You go an XL, right? Try this. That piece of crap you got looks like you got it in Goodwill. No offense, buddy, this will
make you look like a player. Next time you hit the ponies, you’ll at least look the part.”

I wanted to tell him to shove it, but pride had long ago taken a walk. The jacket fits snugly and he sits down, a smirk in
place, and I wondered,

“Did I ever like this prick?”

He puts down a line of snow, takes a deep snort, says as he lays down some more,

“Get on the other side of this, bro.”

What the hell, I do a few and feel the icy drip down the back of my throat and the instant clear thinking in my brain, like
it’s been washed in intelligence. Everything is hunky-dory and if I’d a copy of a form sheet, I’d have picked me some sure
winners, I know it.

He smiles, says,

“See, you got to lighten up, pal.”

Light? I’m floating, on clouds of ease.

I need music and hop up, ask,

“You got any music?”

Dumb, huh?

He’s got Sinatra and… Sinatra. Sees me hesitate and says,

“There’s some other crap over near the wall, the broad picked it up.”

I flip through them, lots of names that mean nothing to me,
The Killers, The Streets, Frantz Ferdinand,
then at the very end,
Bowie’s Greatest Hits.
I grab that, like a prayer, and put it on, the opening of “Aladdin Sane” begins, Lenny snorts,

“That English faggot?”

The coke had mellowed me way low so I let that slide.

Lenny sits forward, wiping at a dribble from his nose, says,

“Time to talk business, buddy.”

No free lunch, especially with cops.

His voice changes. He’s got the Boston twang in place, sounding like one of the goddamn Kennedys, all fake sincerity, says,

“You want to get behind some serious change, am I right?”

I want to go,

“Take a wild fucking guess.”

But just nod, shaking hands with the devil, he shakes… a cigarette loose from a pack of Marlboro Lights, and I nearly smile.
He’s shoving every substance known up his nose and smoking
Lights?

He cranks a battered Zippo, the flame making his eyes look demented. He drags deep, then,

“We got us a sweet deal. Two lowlifes, they owe my employers a lot of green and they ain’t coming up with it. They need a
lesson in manners, nothing too major, no biblical stuff, but a wake-up call, you following me?”

Jesus, how complicated is it?

I ask,

“And you need me, why?”

He emits a short laugh, more like a bark, says,

“I need backup, you think I’m gonna trust some guinea in a suit to have my rear and if I remember, you were pretty damn good
at shakedown before you got all fucked with that racing gig.”

Not something I like to recall.

The gig smells to high heaven but what’s my alternative? Joan Baez, and the barrel of a piece I’m not sure even works, so
I agree.

Hearing Bowie has made me want things I used to want and haven’t been able to get for a long time, like respect.

Am I blaming Ziggy?… duh… yeah.

Lenny says,

“C’mon, buddy, I’ll drive you back to Brooklyn.”

He’s about to finish the remnants of his drink when the girl comes out of the bathroom. She’s obviously been doing some dope,
or rather more of it, and she staggers, knocks into Lenny, his drink spilling on the Armani suit and he loses it, big time,
goes,

“The fuck you doing?”

Begins to lay into her, slapping her face with a concentration that is pure, unadulterated hate

One

Two

Three

Slap.

And I grab his arm, say,

“Enough.”

Her face is already bruising, he spins, out of control, spits at me,

“You’re telling me what to do…
Loo-tenant?
Memo to asshole: You don’t get to give orders anymore, you take ’em, got that?”

I’ve got it.

The girl is weeping and one thing I could never take is women weeping. Reminds me of my little girls, bawling as their mother
dragged them out the door and out of my life. Her final words:

“Your father is only interested in horses.”

And my youngest, said,

“I like Black Beauty.”

Words to kill you. Time was I’d read that to her at bedtime but got sucked into the
Racing Post
instead.

Lenny is right in my face, his spittle on my cheek, like acid. I bite down, tell myself,

“Chill, buddy, you need this gig, let it burn, slow, and keep it on simmer.”

When he sees I’m not going to muscle, he spins on the girl and screams,

“Take that fucking whining cunt off my stereo.”

Calling Bowie that, I add it to the shopping list.

His ride is, of course, a Chevy and I try not to think about the amount of booze and chemicals in his blood, but the rage
has cleansed him and he’s Mr. Affability. We get to Brooklyn, him extolling the Sox the whole trip and he pulls up, looks
around at the hood, says,

“Man, you’re almost in Bed Stuy.”

Then he gives me a good-natured punch on the shoulder, asks,

“We cool, buddy?”

I give him the yard about letting off steam, and we both act like it’s true. He aims a feint blow at my chin, says,

“Try and stay out of the OTB. In a little while, you can go to the track in style. A week from Friday, come to my place, we’ll
go do our work and after, we’ll party hard. Sound good? We do it right, you can buy your own horse.”

I agree it sounds great.

In my rathole, I pour a large tumbler of the Stoli, knock a hole in the wall with my fist and throw Baez out the window.

Something had to give, right?

Friday evening, he’s wearing a long raincoat and packing a Mossberg in the right cutaway pocket. I ask,

“Shotgun? You expecting up close and personal?”

He’s also putting a Nine in his left, says,

“For show, bro, get them focused.”

I have the Glock. In the movies, you see them stick it in the waist of their pants, at the back.

Fuck that.

I have it in the new suede jacket, my finger lightly caressing the trigger.

We drive to the East Village, up a flight of stairs and I notice Lenny has a run of sweat on his forehead. He says,

“Follow my lead.”

Knocks on a door and I hear a deadbolt drawn, a guy in his early thirties opens, goes,

“Lenny, hey.”

And we’re in, there’s a guy on the couch, watching
The Wire,
box of pizza on the table, Bud longnecks, riding point. He has a sweatshirt with the logo
JIMMY’S GYM.
And the guy sees me, a look of recognition in his eyes. Lenny has the Mossberg out, blows the first guy’s face off and pumps
the second load into the guy on the couch, the logo obliterated.

The sound is deafening and the smell of cordite is overpowering, Lenny goes,

“Move. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

We don’t speak a single word on the ride back to the Island, except for Lenny asking,

“You don’t get that rush from horses, am I right?”

He didn’t expect a reply and I didn’t have one.

We go into the apartment and Lenny shucks off his jacket. He’s running on pure adrenaline and me, I’m running on empty.

I’m sitting on the couch, glass of Beam in my hand and Lenny is pacing, mania blowing off him and he stops, asks,

“Gone a little quiet there, buddy?”

I put my glass down, say,

“Jimmy’s Gym.”

He’s staring at me, his eyes wild, snaps,

“So?”

I take my sweet time, get it right, go,

“Guy’s from the eighty-fifth, they practically own that place and that kid on the couch, I knew him. Ted Brennan’s eldest.”

He’s reaching in his coat and asks,

“You got a point or you going to sit there, swilling my hooch.”

“Cops. Those guys were on the job.”

His Nine is in his hand and he sighs,

“Horse players, the bottom feeders, you’re still a fuck-up. Course they were cops. You think you get the big bucks for offing
some lowlifes? Those guys, they were nosing around where it don’t concern them. I try to do a good thing here, get you out
of the hole, but gamblers, you wouldn’t recognize a winning bet if it bit you on the ass.”

The Nine is leveled at me, and the thing is, I don’t feel a thing, maybe sadness, he says,

“Ah, you could have been a contender, know? But we handed you your ass at Fenway Park and guess what, you’re…”

He never got to finish. The bedroom door had opened and the girl was out, swung the bottle of Grey Goose at his head. He went
down like a bad song.

After I dumped him in the East River, I muttered,

“You choked, pal, and your horse is disqualified.”

Back on the Island, the girl has built me another Jim Beam, is running her hand along my thigh and I ask,

“Why?”

Her head is nodding again, she’s way into that coke and she whispers,

“For Ziggy.”

The riff unreeling in my head…
and where were the spiders?

I look around the apartment, wondering if I can hold off tomorrow’s runners. I’m feeling lucky, figure I’ll bet the Nine horse
in the last race.

I think Lenny would appreciate the irony. I’d stuffed the Nine in his mouth, not an easy fit. Figured it would be the last
time he pulled it and he sure as hell wouldn’t be running his mouth no more.

Jan Burke

E
ric Halsted ran a hand over his closely cropped hair, sighed, and shifted in the big leather chair. He was being made to wait,
and he didn’t like it.

Over the past weeks, taking over all the loose ends of his late brother’s loosely led life had tried Eric’s patience nearly
to the limit, and today the delaying tactics of trainer Arnie Shackel just might exceed that limit.

Eric had spent all of yesterday afternoon and evening, as well as an hour or two this morning, rehearsing exactly what he
was going to say to Shackel. He would praise the trainer, thank him for his work with Zuppa Inglese, and make it clear to
him that his services were no longer required. About that time, Shackel would probably do a little arguing, claim he had a
contract saying he must have a certain amount of notice, but Eric would point out that his attorneys had already provided
that notice, and mention that certain features of that contract undoubtedly made it null and void in this state.

Donna Freepoint, the new trainer, had also found the contract to be highly unusual. “Downright odd for there to be one. Weirder
still for Mark to have signed it,” she had said.

Why Mark had signed it without first letting one of Eric’s attorneys look it over—as had been Mark’s practice with other business
deals—was one of a great many questions Eric would ask him if he saw him in the Great Beyond. It would be very far down the
list on such a quiz.