Shadow Roll (12 page)

“So what do you think?  Accident or murder?  With a possible suicide thrown in in the case of McBartle?”

Paul was seldom a serious man.  He was serious now.  Even more unusual for Paul Jarrett, he was thoughtful.  “I’ll tell ya, Sam.  I don’t know what to think.  I thought I did.  We all thought we did.  We all wanted to believe those were three accidents.  I can’t think of anyone who still doesn’t want to think that and not one of ‘em’ll be happy to hear different.  But after what I’ve heard here, I’m not sure I can think that anymore.  You were always the smart kid.  You were a reader.  Anybody else but you, I’d laugh.  But with you, with the Sam Russo who I looked up to— ”

That set me back a bit.  “You looked up to me?”

“Of course.  We all did.  Anyways, anybody else but you and I’d tell you to go soak your head.  But now, I just don’t know.  And there’s a jock who’s hiding?”

“Hell yes.”

“One of mine?”

“No.”

“If he was, I’d like to think he’d come to me with something like this.  I’m supposed to look out for my guys.  So you being this licensed private investigator and all, what’re you gonna do now?  What’s your plan?”

How could I tell Paul I had no idea?  He looked up to me?  He thought I knew what I was doing?  People thinking things like that are what made a man a success.  If I wanted to be a success as a PI, I had to act like Bogie and
be
a PI.  So I gave him what I hoped was a cagey look, and said, “Got an idea I’m following up.  I’ll know more after that.”

Paul held up his glass.

“Here’s to the great Sam Russo.  The man who’s going to save Saratoga!”

I held up my own glass.

“Thanks, Paul.”

We clicked glasses and smiled.  I felt like an idiot.

Chapter 23

It was exactly one a.m. when I walked into the overwhelming lobby of the Grand Union Hotel.  With no one there, I could count the chandeliers, the red plush chairs, calculate how much gold was used to paint the ceiling cornices and the forest of pillars, how much travertine marble (if it was travertine; that’s just a word I’d heard somewhere referring to expensive rocks) was dug out of the earth so expensive shoe leather—ripped off the backs of cattle or alligators or some other living thing—could trip gaily over it, and imagine how much electricity was used up in one day alone.

The elevators were also clad in embossed gold.  There were ten of ‘em.  Five on one side of a grand staircase leading up from the four acre entrance, and five on the other side.  Elevator number 9 was on the left.  The doors to every one but 9 were closed.

I climbed the staircase.  Still not a soul around.  I could of stolen the gladioli right out of their vases.  The vases, being as big as I was, would of been more difficult.

I once knew a guy, a great guy, and a hell of a great talker and great thinker, always had six ideas on the go at once.  This friend had two friends not near as great in any way—but just as crazy.  One sunny afternoon, dressed up as delivery men, they walked with complete confidence into the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, that really ritzy joint on top of some hill called Nob (the name of which I shall not comment on), strolled right up to the reception desk, whereupon the great guy I knew said: “We’ve come to collect the carpet.”  He’d pointed at his delivery outfit, “Cleaners, that’s us.”  “Oh,” said the sweet young thing manning the desk, and then watched as they rolled up a Persian carpet worth thousands and walked out with it.

Good thing I wasn’t like Lino.  I never wanted to be a cop or I might of had to do something about my friend.  As a PI, I could turn a blind eye unless I was paid to open it.

“Psst!”

Car number 9 was open but empty.  But a few feet away and across the wide hallway, stood a decorative glazed jar.  Behind that crouched what had to be Alonzo.  Alonzo was as black as Black Beauty.  He had the body of a ten year old but the face of someone pushing fifty.  I liked him immediately.  Probably because Thomas Clay Jefferson liked him.

Good thing when we were both behind the jar, there was room to spare.  It also had the advantage of Alonzo being able to keep a close eye on car number 9.

First thing he said was, “Clay says I can trust you.”

“Not counting the horses, Clay is my favorite Saratogian.”

Alonzo grinned at me, a gold tooth in front shining as brightly as the elevator doors.  “Mine too.”

“I can’t keep you here too long.  Clay said to ask you about McBartle who was supposed to have walked out of here in good shape at 3:15 a.m. and never come back.”

Alonzo poked his head out from our hidey hole.  Obviously seeing no one, he drew it back in.

“He wasn’t alone.”

“Then why did you say he was?”

“Anyone ever threaten your family?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go.  I only have a wife, but a wife is enough.  ‘Sides, I like her.”

“So what really happened?”

“Looked to me like McBartle was drunk or half asleep or maybe drugged.  One or the other of those.  And there was this guy holding him up on one side.  The big guy was talkin’ to him like he could talk back— ”

“Big?  Like in big or like in real big?”

“Well, seemed to me he was pretty big.  And maybe tall.  Of course I’m not too big and neither was Mr. McBartle, but I still think he was big.  Heck, maybe he was only just large.  Anyways, I saw right off the rider fella, he couldn’t say nuthin’.  So like that, they walked out of that side door over there.  It goes to the parking lot and only the valets use it, never the guests.  The guests get their cars brought to them out front.”

I thought about what he’d said.

“You think McBartle was alive at the time?”

“Yes, sir!  He was droolin’ and makin’ these noises.  Anyways, the big guy handed me a sawbuck— ”

“Whoa.  A lot of dough, ten bucks.”

“You better believe it.  And when he did, he made a remark about my family.  Couldn’t miss his meaning.  No sir!  Clear as a siren.  So until now, I ain’t said a word.  But Clay, he convinced me not sayin’ nuthin’ was wrong.”

“You know who the man was?”

“Nope.  Never saw ‘im before or since.  Or if I did, I din’t know it.  He kept his hat down way low over his face.”

“But you think he was a big guy, right?”

“Well, yeah.  Like I said, pretty big.  I don’t mean a giant or nuthin’.  Or a fat guy.  Just taller than your average customer.  Also strong and steady on his feet.  But I did notice one thing.”

As a PI, I admit that excited me.  A tattoo?  A scar?  Green hair?

“His shoes.  I never saw a pair like ‘em.”

“What about them?”

“Well, I’ll tell ya.  If I ever saw ‘em again, even half a block away, I’d know ‘em.”

My heart sank.  All that might mean was he was hired talent and was long since back on Broadway playing Macbeth.  Or, considering the shoes, Lady Macbeth.

I went back to my soft bed in my pink room in my pink hotel and slept like one of those dead jockeys.

The amazing thing was I woke up not only with the sun, but with an idea.  It was the same idea I’d had before I went to sleep, but there were more pieces to find places for, and more of a pattern was beginning to show.

For instance, a pair of unusual shoes.

A shower, a shave, a real breakfast, and Sam Russo, Private Eye, was off to the races.

I was going to spend the whole day there.  I might even get in a few bets while I worked on my bona fide idea.

My kidney even felt better.  Barely noticed it.  Creampuffs, those guys.  Real talent and I’d of been pissing red and groaning every step I took.

Chapter 24

Someone took Manny Walker for a midnight horse ride, so drunk he probably never woke up, and drowned him in one of the lakes near the track.  Someone drugged Matthew Mark McBartle and then somehow got it to look like he’d driven his car accidently into a tree.  Someone ruined Babe Duffy’s lunch.

Whoever that someone was rid the world of three young promising jockeys.  Why?  There’s always a reason for the things people do, good and bad.  Sometimes the reason makes no sense at all to the usual joe.  When the usual joe does something stupid or bad or both, it’s usually for money or to get rid of the wife (or hubby) or to shut someone else up.  But sometimes it’s so personal, only Mister and Florence Zawadzki, plus their personal god, understood the whys and wherefores of what they did.  The Zawadskis thought killing a lot of kids for a lot of years, kids they were paid to take care of, made perfect sense, and as far as I knew, from their cells in Sing Sing and Bedford Hills, they still did.

But most of the time it makes perfect sense to everyone, once you know what it is.  That was my job.  Figure out why a thing was done, and you’re bound to work out who did it.

I could hear Bogie saying that now, lisp and all.

OK.  So once I’d eliminated the track itself—star horses and star jockeys were their bread and butter, it made no sense to get rid of either—that left Mrs. Willingford.  But to imagine a woman knocking off jocks didn’t sit well.  She may have resented the brush-off, but that much?  The worst she’d do was keep the kids off her husband’s horses.  Then there was the guy Alonzo spoke of, the one who got out of the elevator with McBartle so he could take him for his long last ride.  Would she have risked hiring someone?

Didn’t think so.

Who wants a jockey out of the picture?  Like
The Shadow
, Sam Russo, hero of the Staten Island Pokey for Tiny Tots, knows.  Who else but another jock?  Get rid of the ones with promise and what happens?  Less competition.  A mount in Saratoga race track’s most prestigious race: the Travers Stakes.  The Travers was named for the man who was the first president of the old Saratoga Racing Association and whose fine horse, Kentucky, won its first running.  That was a long time back: 1864.  Kentucky was by Lexington, one of the greatest racehorses in American history as well as the greatest stud.  Of the first fifteen Travers, nine of them were won by a son or a daughter of Lexington.  Hidden away at the age of fifteen to keep him from getting stolen by either side in the Civil War, by then he was already blind.  Not seeing a damn thing didn’t put a dent in his efforts to keep making little Lexingtons.

If there’s one horse I would of liked to feed peppermints to, it was the “Blind Hero of Woodburn.”

Enough of that.

Someone built like a jockey: wiry, thin, short, as strong as the horses they rode, didn’t fit Alonzo’s description of the man who led McBartle out of the Grand Union Hotel elevator.  The guy he described sounded more like a middle-weight boxer than a jockey.

But that was a piece I’d begun to think was slotting into place.  I was sure I was getting somewhere.  Actually, I wasn’t sure of anything, but since I couldn’t yet think of anything else, I was playing the hand I held.

Saratoga’s racetrack was packed.  But I could go where I wanted to go, sit anywhere, stand anywhere, listen to anyone.  I was on a job here.

I went straight to the jockey’s dressing room.  For the time being, I ignored Alonzo’s description—who knew?  Maybe if the guy knew someone might spot him, he wore stilts.  Anyway, if a jock was the culprit, that’s where he’d be.  Coming and going from race to race to race, as many as he could get mounts in.

Everyone was at the track.  From jocks to agents to owners to trainers, they knew who I was and why I was there.  I was looking at ‘em all.  And they were looking at me.  Even Hank Hanson, an old friend and the track vet, was around, looking at a cut over Toby Tyrrell’s eye.  It was a fresh cut so it must of just happened in the last race.

Hadn’t said hello to Hank yet; I made a mental note to do that and got back to work.

If “everyone” included the killer, then he’d be sure to get a little nervous me hanging around, watching the races, talking with people.  That’s what I hoped to see.  Someone acting guilty.

I had a few reasons made me think I’d make a decent PI.  One of ‘em was because I thought I knew what guilty looked like.  I’d seen it enough hanging around with Lino Morelli.  He didn’t seem to notice, but I did.  The eyes, the mouth, the body language.  Reading those library books a few days back told me Hercule Poirot used the same methods.  But he was just a funny little man made up by an ugly English dame—one smart cookie of an ugly English dame, I had to give her that.

Sometimes the guilt had nothing to do with what I was looking for, and sometimes it did.  I was right more often than I was wrong.

Me and Paul, we’d worked out a little scene.  We’d have what should look like a private conversation during the prep for the second race.  I was going to tell Paul what I’d told him at dinner.  Without all the details, of course, but the idea was to rehash what we’d said over steak and salad.

If that didn’t spook anyone, I’d—well, I’d have to think of something else.  With Lino, I had this knack of coming up with a new idea when some old idea went bust.  He counted on that, not having an idea himself.  For a minute there, I worried that maybe off the Isle of Staten in the middle of my own case, the knack would desert me.  But I brushed that aside like Bogie brushed aside other people’s wise cracks.

Paul Jarrett showed up right on time.  He talked to one of the jocks—one he agented—he talked to George Labold.  Funny, I hadn’t noticed before; Paul stood the same height as George.  Anyway, they were probably making bet on whose jock would win the next race.  Paul talked to an owner, one of those excited types who got in everyone’s hair but he had to tolerate the guy.  Owners paid the bills.  They got tolerated.  He checked on some tack.  He had a word with a trainer, must of trained a horse one of his lads was riding.  And then he pretended to notice me.  I’d been sitting on a chair by a window smoking for over an hour.  I’d also been doing a lot of staring.  First at one jock, then at another.  Now and then at Labold which made him all of a sudden busy at the far side of the room.  The din was incredible.  Jocks in and out, showering from crossing the finish line last or first, didn’t matter, they were covered with dirt and sweat.  Jocks using the one telephone to call in bets on other races, other sports.  Jocks pushing each other around for bad riding, deliberate or otherwise.  Jocks yelling at their agents.  Lockers opening and closing and always loud.  Every now and then a jock tried looking at me in a way I wasn’t supposed to notice.  I noticed.  I’d also been thinking.  This wasn’t the greatest idea in the world, and it wasn’t the worst.  But while I’d been sitting there acting like I knew something no one else knew, I’d had another idea.  This idea was a good one.  A really good one.  If the police had taken any of this seriously from the beginning, some bright spark would already of thought of it, and then followed it up.  But they weren’t taking it seriously so even if it had been thought of, it hadn’t gotten any further.