Shadow Roll (15 page)

Not being a jock made me feel better.  I didn’t want a jock killing jocks.  In the sport I loved, those I loved best—after the horses—were the jockeys.

There was a discreet little sign next to the spiked iron gate of the pink hotel.  Shaded by petunias, it said:
No Pets.  Thank you for your understanding
.

Understanding but not giving a shit, I wrapped Jane up in the car blanket and smuggled her into my room.  A little water in a saucer, a can of dog food I’d bought at a corner store dumped into a decorative bowl (had to dump the flowers out, float ‘em in a skillet I found in my kitchenette), and she was set for the night.

Then I was back out the door and on the prowl.

I admitted it if only to myself.  That great gumshoe, Sam Russo, needed to talk to someone.

Chapter 29

Fifteen minutes of slow walking, hat on the back of my head, hands shoved in my pants pockets, and once again packing heat, I was back in the Grand Union Hotel.  Specifically I was back in the opulent gents of the Grand Union Hotel with the only sane person I’d met in Saratoga Springs.  Or, for that matter, pretty much anywhere else.  In the world I knew, sanity was a rare thing,  Most people acted sane, doing their best to get through the average man’s average day.  But under the skull they were a stew of fruit and nuts.

That included yours truly.

If nothing else, I’m a quick study.  I stopped going anywhere in Saratoga Springs without a gun.

Thomas Clay Jefferson was wearing what he’d worn the last time I saw him: his Grand Union Hotel uniform.  On me, I’d look like Haile Selassie on one of his over-dressed days.  On Clay, it looked just fine.  It helped he’d left off the feathered hat and the bogus medals.

If I’d made any real headway on my first real case, you couldn’t prove it by me.  S’why I was seeking out the only person besides Paul I felt I could talk to.  Talking to myself was getting confusing.  Talking to Jane maybe didn’t confuse her, but listening to her talk to me was turning into a headache.  She talked more than Walter Winchell talked, and made about as much sense.

Talking to Clay felt like I was talking to someone like Ghandi—a real crime some pill of a Hindu gunsel’d just shot the fellow.  The things people do to each other far far away, like New Jersey for example, didn’t really get to me.  Ghandi getting mortally plugged did.

All the more reason to value Thomas Clay Jefferson.

He was busy shining some smooth twit’s shoes.  No chitchat: Clay was a menial.  He was a wall-eyed colored man.  A twit like the current twit didn’t even see him.  The shoes were nothing much either—just your usual pair that could of fed a family of four for a week.  Nothing unusual about the twit either.  Half the men at the bar could change places and who would know?  The man in the chair flipped Clay a nickel, then bounced out of the gents feeling like the soul of generosity.  This I noticed by the smile he gave himself passing the full length mirror.  Why the mirror smiled back was something for someone like Einstein to figure out.  But why it quickly sucked in its belly was something even I could figure out.  In a year, maybe two, the guy would be sporting a girdle.

That left me on some sort of horsehair covered couch people perched on when women wore bustles, and Clay on the upright gilded chair he sat on when he wasn’t shining shoes.

I’d brought a little something in a hip flask and offered it to him.  He took it, but not before checking we were alone.

His swallow was dainty but it took in a lot of hootch.  I didn’t mind if he drank the whole thing.  That’s why I brought it.

“Now sir, that was mighty fine bourbon.  And I know my bourbon.”

“You’re welcome, Clay.”

I had a lot more to say than that, but couldn’t think how to get started.  So instead of talking I smoked the Grand Union’s free tobacco, although I lit it with my own match.  Clay, being Clay, figured I was struggling with my opening line about the same time I did.

“Alfonzo said you talked to him.”

“I did.”

“He told you about the big man.”

“He did.”

“Then you know that poor rider didn’t take himself for a ride?”

“I do.”

“Ah!  Have you formed an opinion yet?  Come to any conclusions?”

“You want the truth, Clay?”

“’Course I do.  Got no interest in anything but.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“Thought that might be the case.”

“Some shamus I am.  Not one of those deaths was an accident.  I’ve worked how they were done.  I’ve met a girl, sings like Heidi, who knows who killed Babe.  But I don’t know why.  Motive’s everything.  Any PI and most cops could tell you that.”

One eye closed in deep satisfaction, the other surveying the ceiling, Clay was knocking back another slug of bourbon.  With great care he removed a showy hanky from his pocket and with greater care wiped his mouth and then the flask.  “This girl you talkin’ about— ”

“Jane.  Babe Duffy’s dog.  She saw everything.  Today she proved whoever it was, it wasn’t a jock.”

“You malign yourself, sir.  You have made much progress.  As much as I have.”

“You have?”

“I do not spend my life, Mr. Russo, in a jumped-up toilet.”

“Right.  Sorry.”

“Perhaps you know things I do not know, and I perhaps know things you do not know.  Get up in that chair and let me shine them shoes.  People might wonder otherwise.”

For the next half hour, I mostly listened to Clay.  His family and his friends were spread out all over the Spa, working in every conceivable job, except of course those offering power and money.  What they didn’t know wasn’t much, although they still didn’t know the actual name of the killer.  Turns out Clay’s family and friends had five major suspects but none pinned down yet.

“And the one they like the most?”

“Well, sir, the one most seem to agree on is a certain employee of the track, a Mr.… ”

“Hutsell?”

“The very one.  But I imagine that like you, I can’t think why he or his employers would want fine young jockeys out of this world.”

“You imagine correctly.  You’d think they’d want more on the ground.  They’d breed ‘em like the horses if they could.”

“They used to, sir, they used to.”

“You’re referring to when most jocks were slaves.”

“You know your history.  I thought you might.”

“I try and keep up.”

“Now, the one I like the most has to do with Mrs. Willingford.”

“Why her?”

“As old as a tale in the good book, sir.  Who doesn’t think she wants rid of the old man for his money?”

“And how would killing jockeys get rid of the old man?  Why not just kill the old man?”

“Well, I been thinkin’ on that.  First part’s easy.  Po-lice would right away look to her for the deed.  Besides, that old man is so old, he’ll be gone on his own soon enough.  Second part’s where it gets tricky.  What if she wanted a certain man who didn’t want her?  A poor man by her standards but much more to her likin’.  If she could make him dependant on her— ”

“Having a hard time following your thoughts, Clay.”

“As am I.  I’m workin’ on the idea of making a man need you for his livin’.  And if she can get him that way, tie him up tight, why then, he’d be hers.”

“You are talking about a particular man, aren’t you Clay?  One you know.”

“Could be.  Could be.  Now sir, I know that’s not much of a reason for killing three young men, but the way I see it is they had to go to get this other man closer.  And when it comes to what she wants, I think that woman is as mean as a cat tossed inna well— ”

The door to the gents slammed open and in came two gents who might as well of been the one gent who’d left last.

“There you go, sir.  All done.”

Clay ran his cloth across my over-shined shoes one more time, and turned to smile at the newcomers.  His right eye looked at the swell on the right, his left eye looked at me.  Either eye, I had no idea what they saw.

“Is there something I can do for you two gentl’men?”

“Is there something he can do, Charlie?”

“What’s a cockeyed nigger for, Bert?”

That was the end of that.  I went away seething.  For one thing, I couldn’t just stick around waiting for the two crumbs to leave.  For another, if I stuck around I’d plug both of ‘em in the foot, one in the left foot and one in the right.

I’d still be risking Clay’s job.  And he’d be the poor sap to clean it up.

But oh yes, it was hard walking away nice and quiet.  It was real hard.

Chapter 30

In a mood fit for nobody, I walked past the bar of the Grand Union headed for the big front door and home.  If I stuck around, no telling what damage I’d do.

But even mad as hell I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the mirrors the Grand Union lobby was full of.  The place was like a fun house.

No girdle for me.  I couldn’t see myself getting fat as a PI.  There wasn’t enough money in it.  But I could see myself getting old real fast.  The people you met were those kinds of people.

“Always running away, that’s you.”

The voice was like ice cream.  Cold and sweet at the same time.  I had to stop and face her.  If I didn’t, she’d be right.  I’d be running away.

“Something I can do for you, Mrs. Willingford?”

“You?  What could you ever do for me?”

“Work up a snappier routine?”

For that I came this close to a slap in the face.  I noticed her hands.  Mrs. Willingford had hands like the rest of her, beautiful.  I thought of Clay’s one dollar win bet, the one he’d just put down on Mrs. Willingford’s nose.  Could she of hauled Walker out of bed, thrown him across the back of a horse, and dumped him in the lake?  If she dressed right, wore a disguise, would Alonzo see her as a big guy?  Alonzo was small.  No telling what he saw big as.  Was she strong enough to shove a sandwich down Babe’s throat and hold it there until he died?  Not on your life.  But could she hire someone to do all that?  You bet she could.

Why?  I wish to hell I’d had time to hear more of Clay’s reasoning.  More time to talk it over with him.  We were bound to get somewhere, even to where he was wrong.  But no going back now.  For some damn reason, the gents was suddenly looking popular and for another I had to get away from anywhere Mrs. Willingford was.  That meant out of the Grand Union Hotel.

I turned my back and walked away.  I’d read somewhere that you never turn your back on a suspect, but the way I was feeling, I would of turned my back on Billy the Kid.

Walking home took less time than walking to the Grand Union.  I was dog tired.  Not so much from what I’d been doing; I was tired of not knowing why I was doing it, I was tired of running into closed doors.

When I got back to my own door in the pink hotel, it was open.

Damn it all to hell.  That was a real kick in the head, the imperfect end to an imperfect day.  Jane must of got out.

I went in expecting nothing more than no dog and a hard night’s sleep.  What I got almost killed me.  It sure killed Jane.

I’d never met my mother, never seen a photograph.  All the same I had a picture in my head, a girl I’d made up, one I’d see now and then when I thought about her.  I saw her now.  Like my mother, my borrowed dog hadn’t left at all.  Someone’d paid a call while I was out messing around in the can of the Grand Union Hotel.

My place was torn to pieces.  Dishes smashed on the floor, forks and spoons and knives scattered from one baseboard to another.  Whoever showed up met Jane.  Meeting Jane must of been one hell of a nasty surprise.  She’d gone for him with everything she had—and he’d fought back.

Whatever she did to the guy, however bad it was, Jane lost in the end.  She was lying on her side, half in and half out of the bathroom, stabbed I don’t know how many times, blood all over her and most of the room.

The knife was one of mine.  I mean it was one of the steak knives that belonged in the kitchenette.  Now it was lying on the floor where she was lying.  Looked like it was dropped there, like whenever whoever got through doing such a damned cowardly thing, he just let it go, let it land where it would.

But oh, for such a small dog, there was so much blood.

Someone killed my dog.  She
was
my dog.  No one else wanted her.  Not even me, but somehow I’d known ever since I saw the grief in her eyes we were stuck with each other.

Thinking I’d sit for a minute, thinking my heart would slow down, thinking I could stop thinking and maybe even stop feeling, I missed the end of the bed.  Clutching the thing for balance, I cursed, and when I cursed, I heard the smallest sound, a hint of a yodel.  It was coming from over where Jane lay.  Coming from Jane.

I was with her, my hand on her heart faster than the great Salvator reached the finish line on his best day.

The beat was slow and it was faint, but it was there.  I was on the room phone and calling an old friend I’d known was here in Saratoga, the track vet.  I dialed without even knowing I knew his number.  It was just there, in my head, as perfect as a petunia.

“Hank.  Don’t ask.  Don’t argue.  Don’t say no.  Be here before I hang up.  Bring everything you’d need for the worst.  No.  Not me and not sick.  Cut up.  Bad.  And bring blood.”

His voice was tinny over the hotel line.  “What kind of blood?”

“Dog blood.”

“I work on horses.  Not dogs.”

“Sure.  But sometimes one of the horses has a dog.  And it needs blood.”

“True.  So where are you?”

“The pink joint on Case Street.  Right, that one—the Pascal House.”

I’d known Hank Hanson since he was a newsie with a spot by “Patience,” the south side lion on the steps of the New York City Public Library.  How he got to be a vet beat me (it’s so easy to lose track of people), but I always knew that like me, he was one for the ponies.  His way turned out a little different than Paul’s or mine.  If I said that again, I’d exchange the word “little” for the words “a lot.”  His way was a lot different.

Hank looked like a picture I once saw in a magazine, someone’s idea of what early man might have been like.  Hank Hanson was exactly the kind of fella the military would of tried to get killed as soon as possible.  But Hank, besides being as hairy as Flo’s best coat, had bad eyes and flat feet.  So there went his chance to meet Hitler.  Or Emperor Hirohito.