Shadow Roll (24 page)

So Goose got caught in the act and Goose ran.  And I saw Goose run so I chased him.  I lost him but who could miss the smell?  A rummy like Carroll Goose?  If I’d been down with flu, I could still smell him.

But the big guy was watching.  He wouldn’t just trust Goose to get it right, or even, come to think, to do it at all.  So he was watching.  And Goose knew he was watching.  He’d probably been told he’d be watched.

That meant the big man knew things had gone all to hell and blooey.  At that point, what else could he do?  Go see his hired boob before anyone else saw him, me for instance, and shut him up.  Knowing my guy, I bet he didn’t intend to kill Goose.  Knowing Goose, I’d bet he got himself killed by his own big fat mouth.

I could hear him now.  “But I got seen, ya hear me?  So now I gotta get away.  Doping a horse in a big race gets a guy in whole lotta dutch.  I heard things.  I been keeping my ears open.  So maybe, say just maybe, if I go to the track guys and confess, alls I’ll do is lose my job.  Hey, the season is over up here, all but the shoutin’.  I’m gonna hafta find another job anyways.  Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.  If I don’t, I could do time or something.  Won’t I do time?”

What could my guy do?  If Goose talked, the big man’d lose his reputation.  Without his good name, he didn’t have a job.  So he tried to talk Goose out of his usual bone-headed idea.  All Goose had to do, he would of told him, was to keep his mouth shut and deny deny deny.  He wasn’t caught, was he?  No.  He got away.  No one could prove it was him in the stall.  But no, Carroll Goose wouldn’t listen.  Goose was scared.  And time was fleeting, just like the big man’s dream.  So he hit Goose and when Goose hit back, which he was bound to do, the big man probably found himself with his hands round the dummy’s throat squeezing the life out of him.

And there he was standing over a dead body.  He wasn’t Adlai E. Stevenson who could of talked his way out of anything, but he wasn’t Goose either.  Goose talked his way right into things, usually for the worst.  So the big man hid the body.  He’d expect he was safe until it was found, and by then, like most everyone working the track, he’d be gone, working some other track.

Some track as far from Saratoga as he could get.

But for now, he had to get through the Travers Stakes Day.  If he fled too soon, it wouldn’t look good, not to anyone keeping an eye out.  He had a bunch of eyes watching.  But if he went about his usual business, who would suspect him?  Of what?  Ace Admiral was fine.  Goose wouldn’t be missed until he began to stink up his room.

The big man must already know the horse he was counting on to save his butt was scratched.  So he was probably doing what Goose would of been doing if Goose’d had a brain in his head.  He’d be in bed.  He probably hadn’t slept.  He’d probably been thinking.  All night I bet he lay there, planning out every move he had to make next.

He’d get up at his usual time.  It was the biggest day in Saratoga’s racing season.  The Travers Stakes was going off; he had to be there.  He had to look like every other race goer looked, do what every other race goer did.  Being a professional, he had to carry that off too—do his job like it was any other race day at any other track.

Like millions of other people, he’d eat his breakfast just like he did every day.

I knew when he ate his bacon and eggs in the morning and I knew where he ate ‘em.

No leaving my gun behind this time.  A man who killed a man, even if he hadn’t planned to, might kill again, even if he didn’t want to.  The law of self preservation was a strong law, the strongest.

I knew that as well as anyone.

Chapter 45

I was headed for
The Bent Spoon
.  It was across the street from the Grand Union and up a bit, a little place on the corner of Broadway Street and Lake Avenue. 
The Bent Spoon
.  Odd name for the gaggle of little old ladies who sat at the back poring over their racing forms and who’d bet a buck every other race, if that.  Great name for the queer ducks who used it as an eye on Broadway.  In front it was all windows and everyone at a window seat was looking for another likely brightly feathered nance.  Saratoga in the season attracted fags from Manhattan like Staten Island at any time attracted, well, pretty much nothing.

It was an even better name for the fella who was sitting with his back to the door, his elbows on a checkered table cloth, a pot of tea steaming in front of him, leaning over his own racing form.

Today the Travers was running and I’d bet none of ‘em knew Fleeting Fancy was scratched.  If they had, the whole place would of been funereal.  A filly beating the colts was exactly what the kind of people in
The Bent Spoon
lived for.  When they came to the races, that is.

I’d bet my guy knew she was scratched.

Even from the back, it was him all right, nose in the paper with a pencil in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

He was wearing his worst Hawaiian shirt yet—mustard yellow all over with gigantic puce shapes that might have been grey flowers, and then again might have been the world’s ugliest mushrooms.

I said, “Mind if I join you?”  I was already pulling out a chair and seating myself across from him.

Paul Jarrett looked up, saw who’d taken the liberty, and for the flash of a second, his baby blues widened while the corners of his mouth tightened—until he covered whatever it was he felt with one of his terrific Gable grins.

You had to give it to him, Paul really had a lot of charm.

Funny thing was, even knowing what I knew and having seen what I’d seen, I hated this part.  It was
The Maltese Falcon
and Bogie all over again.  Hot for the two-timing schemer of a twisted dame, his heart broken but his backbone unbent, when the time comes to turn her in, he does what he has to do—he turns her in.  Like he says—well he doesn’t say it at all, but like he means: an old friend was an old friend, one he’d grown up with, one he’d climbed down handmade ropes with, one he’d admired, but when a PIs reputation is on the line, it was on the line.  Would Bogie pull his hat down over his eyes and his trench coat collar up and just walk away?  Would he whistle like it had nothing to do with him?  You bet he wouldn’t.  And neither would Sam Russo.

I picked up a piece of his toast and bit it.  Chewing, I said, “I found him, Paul.”

“Oh yeah?  Found who?”

“Goose.”

“Why in the world would you wanna find Goose?”

“To stop what was gonna happen to him.  Only I was too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“To keep you from killing him.”

Paul poured himself some tea.  He pointed at the pot.  “You want some of this?  It’s right off the boat from India.”

“Coffee’s more my speed.”

“Suit yourself.  But anytime you change your mind.”  And with that he went right back to his racing form.

“Fleeting Fancy’s been scratched.”

“I know.  I was out at the track at dawn.  It was all they were talking about.  But there she was, warming up anyway, running away from Ace Admiral in first light.  Me and a load of other fellas made a hell of lot of noise when we heard.  Bad luck all around and mostly for me.  I gotta ask, was it Scratch again?”

“No.  Not this time.  It was Mrs. Willingford.”

“Her!  Why?  We all saw there was nothing wrong with the horse.  It’s not raining.  Or snowing.  It’s not even too hot.  And after I get my jockey the mount and all.  That filly winning would of been the making of me.  And Toby Tyrrell too.”

“It certainly would of been the saving of you, Paul.  They still want their grand?”

“By the end of the day.  I told ‘em Toby winning the Travers would do it.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen, is it?  You got a nice bolt-hole all picked out?”

“Like I’d tell you.  So why’d she scratch?”

“She did it so you wouldn’t profit from trying to dope Ace Admiral.  Or from choking the life out of Carroll Goose.”

Paul finally looked at me.  And then he did what I was used to him doing.  He put his elbows on the table and leaned in close.  “I’ve taken this pretty well, you comin’ in here and ruining my breakfast on a day already pretty much beat to hell.  You got proof of all this guff, old friend?”

I looked right back at him like I’d shot a feature film of the main events.  Of course I had no proof.  “What do you think I’m doing here?”

“Shucking and jiving.  If you had proof, you wouldn’t be here.  The cops would be here.”

Good point.

“Haven’t gone to the cops yet.  Wanted to talk to you first.”

“Old times sake, eh Sam?”

“Sort of like that.”

Paul laughed, a real laugh.  “You really believe all you’re saying Sammy, and you can prove it, I’m sure to get some hot tips in the slammer.”

“I can really prove all this.”  I couldn’t prove it, and since I couldn’t prove it, might as well really go for broke.  “I found a witness.”

For the first time, shadows darkened the planes of his face.  For the first time, it looked like doubt might have entered his heart.

“Fuck you, you fucking snoop.  You always been a snoop, all our lives.  Funny you being such a great snoop, you never caught on to Mister.”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew Mister done your mom since, Jesus, since forever.  I even knew which mound we played on was hers.”

From one second to the next, things over at our table had turned dark.  I wasn’t feeling so good, not that I’d begun by feeling good.  But now I was feeling bad.  Crazy bad.  “You knew and you never—.”

“Told you?  Why should I?  I thought it was funny.”

I stood so suddenly my chair fell backward, instantly shutting up every startled soul in
The Bent Spoon
.  Something had snapped in me, something I didn’t know could break.  Without thinking twice, I was reaching for my gun, right side jacket pocket.

But Paul beat me to it.  He had his own gun.  He shot me three times.

I’m pretty sure I only shot him once.

Chapter 46

I opened my eyes.  Blurry.  Not getting less blurry.  But I knew I wasn’t in the Murphy bed in Stapleton.  I wasn’t in the pink hotel or the Grand Union Hotel.  I wasn’t in a coffin, buried or unburied.  Where the hell was I?

I didn’t think I was dead.  Wherever dead people wake up, I was sure they didn’t have tubes sticking out of them, or Thomas Jefferson Clay’s walleyed face a few inches from theirs.  Him, I could see.

“What you doing here?”

“Been here off and on ever since I heard.”

“Really?”

“Have I ever lied to you?  But I was wrong about Mrs. Willingford, and that’s a fact.”

“That’s a fact.”

“Mrs. Willingford!”  That was Clay doing the yelling.  “Sorry, Mr. Russo.  She can’t hear me, I guess.  I’ll have to go get her.”

Then off he galloped like Bucephalus while I stayed where I was, feeling just fine.  Immobile but fine.  Must be as doped as Paul meant Ace Admiral to be.

Mrs. Willingford was back with Clay soon enough to make me think she’d been right outside the door.

“You’re in a hospital, Sam.  The best of everything.  You had a close— ”

“Who won the Travers?”

“Ace Admiral.”

“Damn.  We could of won it.”

“We?”

“Me and Fancy.”

“You’ll win the next one.  She’s entered in the Alabama Stakes.”

“The Alabama?  But that’s just fillies.”

“She’ll get another chance at the boys.  Speaking of boys, Toby’s riding.  Guess what he told me.”

“Can’t.  Guessers out of order.”

“Confessed he knew Paul intended doing something to the Admiral.  Said he wasn’t worthy of Fancy.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said, get yourself a new agent.”

And with that I remembered.

“Paul?  Is he… did I… ?”

“He is and you didn’t.  Although he almost did you.  Right this minute, he’s down the hall.  They won’t let me pull out his tubes.”

I shut up for a minute, getting my bearings.  What a dick I was.  I hadn’t proved anything.  Paul gave himself away.  Now I was awake, the police were sure to come calling and I’d tell ‘em about Goose.  They’d go get the dumb slob out of that lonely bed and do what they do to murder victims.  But it was the Saratoga cops who’d have to make the case against Paul, not me.  Or maybe the guys he owed a grand to would beat ‘em to him.  I should of felt sorry, but I didn’t care much anymore.  After all, not so long ago Paul Jarrett was one of my best friends.

Come to that, so was Hank Hanson.

I was losing friends faster than the usual mug at a track lost money.

I should of cared.  I didn’t care.  Maybe that would wear off when the dope wore off.  Maybe it wouldn’t.  Not after what Paul said about my mother.

The case they had against him shooting me was easy.  The whole of the café on Broadway Street saw Paul get the draw on me.  What I did was in self defense.  Of course if he’d waited just a second or two more, the gunfight at
The Bent Spoon
would of been in reverse.

No movie stuff for me.  Shot three times but pulling out the drip feed and throwing back the covers so I could crawl out of my death bed and still keep going.  I could tell if I tried that, I’d kill myself.  So no proving Hank’s murders either.  The case I was hired to solve, wasn’t solved by me.  The other case I was hired to solve would have to wait until I was out of a hospital bed.  Whenever that might be.

No one but me and Mrs. Willingford and Hank knew about Hank.  And Jane.

“Lois, how’s Jane?”

If she noticed I’d called her Lois, she didn’t make a move to say so, not even a twitch of the eye.

“Jane will live.  Just like you.  You’re meant for each other.  Stabbed and shot, and you’re still here.  Which reminds me.”

Mrs. Willingford was in another one of those outfits of hers.  Hat like a wagon wheel, suit like a man’s including the slacks, shoes like an ancient torture device, mouth like a bleeding heart, and eyes like Boston’s.  She was reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out an envelope.

“Hank left this at the Grand Union.  They gave it to me to give to you.”