Shadow Roll (6 page)

“So guess what the job is?  Say barman, you wanna pour me another?  And top him up too.”

This made them both laugh so hard—the idea a man would drink water when he could be knocking back watered down hootch—they doubled over, and I was headed for the men’s room.

My new friend, the ex-flatfoot, straightened up, coughing.  “Wait!  I haven’t told you what the job is.”

I had to know.  So I stopped.  “OK.  What’s the job?”

“Day off today, but usually I’m track security.  Don’t that beat all?  I get paid to wander around the Saratoga racetrack inna uniform checking people ain’t sneakin’ in and keepin’ an eye out for pickpockets.”

“Lucky you.  So you saw Gallorette win the Whitney?”

“Who?  What?”

“A great horse in a great race.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.  Right now I gotta see a guy about a tree.”

Chapter 11

I was out the back door, around a corner, and up an alley fast, then quickly across Congress Street where I did a kind of first base slide into a lot full of parked cars.  Me and the cars were all behind the biggest hotel I’d ever seen.  The “lot” had to of been the stable yard where the guests of a hotel big enough to house Versailles, and all its wigs, once kept their fine carriages and fine horses—but now kept their cars.  And what cars.  It was a glittering metallic sea of snazzy cars.  A brand new Cadillac wouldn’t merit a second glance.

Forget the hotel.  Who cared about a hotel full of swells?  I was supposed to be working here.  So far all I’d done was read library books and buy an idiot in a green suit a couple of cheap shots of Old Crow.

Out of the parking lot and down the street I found the newspaper office.  It was a nice place for a mostly nice town, and there I read a two week old newspaper report on the accidental drowning of Manny Walker.  Walker’d been twenty years old, a native of Troy, New York, a professional jockey for two years, and moving up fast in the riding stats.  In fact, one more win and he’d of topped the list.  This was mostly due to his getting the ride on Fleeting Fancy, this year’s sensational three-year-old filly, another female up against the boys in Saratoga’s Mid-Summer Derby, aka the Travers Stakes.  Paper said the official cause was drowning by accident while swimming.  As Walker was known to keep in shape by swimming before a day’s races (he was found by some old guy named Herb Bedwell out rowing around looking for a place to do some quiet early morning fishing), the fact of his being alone, not five feet from the lake’s small dock, face down in the water weeds with a snapping turtle waiting to sun itself on his cold dead back, surprised no one.  There’d been some talk of how a lad so fit and so able could drown at all, but these things could happen to anyone.  Especially the water weeds part.  Even the best swimmer, once tangled up in that stuff, could get into trouble.  And I oughta know; I got stuck once myself.  Good old Lino Morelli pulled me out.  He was also the one pushed me in.

Two days later,
The
Saratogian
was writing about Matthew Mark McBartle.  McBartle, born in Scottsboro, Alabama, won two graded stakes in one day at Belmont, was among the top three winning riders at Atlantic City Race Track, and like every other top American jock, showed up in Saratoga for its short rich season of racing.  McBartle had the mount on Court’n Spark, a highly regarded entry in the upcoming Travers Stakes.

For reasons unknown, M. M. McBartle had gone for a spin in his brand new Mercury convertible in the middle of the night.  He was twenty one years old, he’d been alone, had not been drinking, had not been out earlier with the boys, and from all accounts was up in his room at the Grand Union by 9 p.m.  Hours later, he got up, got dressed, and went out.  He left the hotel at 3:15 a.m. exactly.  The time was noted by the night elevator operator.  A short while later, on a small country road headed north to Glens Falls, his sleek little convertible slammed into a huge sycamore tree.  Both car and driver were write-offs.  There were no skid marks, no other cars on the road, no house nearby, no dead deer, mangled moose, crushed caribou or deranged dog he might have tried to avoid.  There was nothing but a dead jockey.  The police concluded that young McBartle had fallen asleep at the wheel.  Verdict: automobile accident.

The last death happened only two days before my arrival, which was one day before the guy who knew some guys made a long distance call all the way to Stapleton, Staten Island, to hire me to make sure the police had got it right.

The third kid was 17, was raised in the stables of one of the flashier Lexington, Kentucky, horse farms, and before he died was running neck and neck with Manny Walker for top honors at Belmont.  Babe Duffy, Manny Walker and Matthew Mark McBartle were all three trying to outride each other at Saratoga’s short meet before each met his “accident.”

The last, Babe Duffy and his barkless dog, Jane, had hiked out to one of Saratoga’s mineral springs—when the wind was just right, the whole city stank of ‘em—and sat himself down on a nice shiny rock.  The paper assumed he was there for a picnic.  Some picnic, his ham sandwich went down the wrong way, or wouldn’t go down at all, or something, and with Jane helpless beside him, he died of asphyxiation.  Slumped there, his hands clutching his swollen neck, his face the color of a ripe eggplant, a couple of tourists stumbled over them.  It took a trained member of the local pound to get past Duffy’s dog Jane so they could take the body away.

For the third time, the verdict was accidental death.

Babe Duffy was the regular rider of Hornet’s Nest, a flashy grey gelding who was on a roll: eight solid wins at three different tracks.  Hornet’s Nest was also a Travers entry.

All three were young, all three were promising first rate jockeys, all three died within a little over a week of each other during the Saratoga season, all three had mounts in the Travers—and all three were accidents.

Right.  If that was true, and I had to admit it could be, Lino Morelli understood the Theory of Relativity.

Chapter 12

She was everything I thought she’d be.  Tall, sleek, legs that wouldn’t stop, enormous soft eyes that didn’t miss a trick.  Dark glasses pushed up on my head, I first saw her standing in the morning sun like a Lincoln penny fresh from the mint.  She was looking at me just like I was looking at her.  But what she had to be seeing wasn’t a patch on what I was seeing.  I was looking at years of breeding.  I was looking at dreams come true.  I was looking at a million bucks.  She was looking at a guy who was piecing his life together from books he’d read and movies he’d seen.  A guy who thought the shadows on a big screen were talking to him.  Why she was looking at me, I couldn’t say.  If I were her, I wouldn’t be.  But she was.  Both of us were staring like what we were seeing was all there was in the world to see.

She broke the spell first.  I could of kept it up for hours.  But when she did, I finally noticed that the woman who stood at her perfect head, a slender brown leather gloved hand holding her halter, wasn’t half bad either.

The big difference was in the eyes.  Fleeting Fancy’s eyes were honest and kind.  You couldn’t say the same for Mrs. Willingford, third wife of old man “Joker” Willingford, fourth generation owner of one of Kentucky’s biggest distilleries (
Joker’s Special Blend
), fourth generation breeder of some of Kentucky’s best horseflesh, and owner as well of the venerable Beeswing Farm.  He’d also bred and still owned Fleeting Fancy, the glorious three-year-old filly who’d won everything a two- and three-year-old filly could win.  The only two fillies came close to her were Honeymoon, but Honeymoon was cleaning up out in California, missing—or avoiding—the big Eastern races.  And then there was Gallorette.  Gallorette, at age 4, was certainly the bee’s knees.  She was also here in Saratoga having just beaten the boys—again—in the Whitney.  Racing in stakes events open to both male and female horses was the only way to make good money with a great female since the races restricted to fillies and mares offered smaller purses.  Same thing went for the up and coming Fleeting Fancy.  That is, it would be soon as they found Fancy another jockey, one at least as good as Manny Walker was turning out to be.  Going on two weeks since the kid’d met with his swimming accident and neither Scratch Mason, the Willingford’s trainer (so named because he’d scratch a horse for a puddle on the track or three crows on a railing), or the Willingfords themselves had come up with a replacement.

The old guys standing over by the fence, the ones who never placed a bet before having a good look at the horse, top, bottom and sideways, were saying Fancy’s people had seen every jock from here to Paris.  No one was taking chances her new jock would get her beat.

I’d seen Gallorette.  Gallorette was something to see.  But Fleeting Fancy.  There was just something about her, something I’d never seen in a horse before.  The look in her eye.  The arch of her neck.  The way she used her feet, like a dancer.  I couldn’t imagine anything beating her.

Getting back to eyes, Mrs. Willingford had a pair like a famous old nag called Boston.  I’d always liked the sound of Boston.  I wish I’d met him.  I didn’t think I’d like meeting Mrs. Willingford.  Her baby blues didn’t miss a trick, but what the eyes didn’t miss, her perfect California teeth looked like they wanted to bite.  She was as like Boston as Boston’d been.  Boston bit.  Boston kicked.  Boston bucked.  Boston raised a hell of a fuss.  To tame the beast, for a whole year, his trainer turned him into a hack between the traces of a cab.  It worked, but only well enough to race him.  He still bit man and beast, kicked anything got near enough, and until the day he died raised a racket all by himself in his own stall.  Mrs. Willingford was smart enough to know all that wouldn’t work for her, not half as well as cunning.  That was what I saw in her eyes: more cunning than Flo Zawadzki ever dredged up.

Looking at Joker Willingford’s wife, in the back of my head I heard Brigid O’Shaughnessy playing Sam Spade within an inch of his life.  She said, “I haven’t lived a good life.  I’ve been bad.  Worse than you could know.”

Spade bought it.  But when push came to shove, he turned her in at the end.  Would I of done the same?  Getting an eyeful of Mrs. Willingford, she was everything money could buy.  Which, no matter what wise guys and philosophers say, was quite a lot.  So yes, no, yes—honestly, I didn’t know.  All I knew was sometimes my imagination got the best of me.

Like Fleeting Fancy had stared, Mrs. Willingford was staring at me.  I looked both sides, no one was standing near.  I looked behind me.  No one there either.  Sam Russo wasn’t a world beater when it came to looks, but I wasn’t too bad either.  I’d had my share of the finer females.  Nothing had stuck.  So far, it was me who didn’t do the sticking because so far it wasn’t worth the trouble a woman brought a man.  Speaking of trouble, that’s what Mrs. Willingford looked like—a beautiful blonde bundle of bother.  In other words, trouble.  Alluring trouble, true, but the kind of trouble it didn’t pay a guy to mess with.

That Mrs. Willingford (first name Lois, but known to most as Mrs. Willingford—I knew because I’d asked around about the owners of Fleeting Fancy) was also getting an eyeful of me didn’t make me bolt for cover.  What did surprise me was how open she was about it.  Like I was in a sales ring with a number slapped on my rump.

Standing next to both filly and woman was a kid could pass for maybe fourteen, but I knew he had to be sixteen at least.  Looked like a bug boy, but he’d paid his dues, he was a working jockey, no question about it.

The kid was looking at Fleeting Fancy like she was the second coming—which for someone like him starting out in the game, she was.  Fleeting Fancy could make him a star in one race.  That is, if he could get the mount.  Days and days of looking for a jock by Scratch and the Willingfords, he probably thought maybe they were getting a little desperate.  And they probably were.  My guess was this kid was hoping they’d be desperate enough to pick him.

I asked a guy by the fence if he knew the kid’s name.  Nothing doing.  I asked another guy.  It took a few more guys before someone could name the kid we were looking at.  He was Toby Tyrrell all the way from some Podunk dump in Florida.  To the railbirds, Tyrrell was another kid with loads of promise like Manny Walker, Matthew Mark McBartle and Babe Duffy.  Only difference was, he hadn’t won anything worth getting excited about.

“I seen him race,” said a fellow who probably had two eyes.  It was hard to tell under more eyebrows than most men had hair.  “Down in Florida.  Hialeah to be exact.”

“And?”  That’s the question I would of asked if his friend hadn’t beat me to it.

“Just an overnighter,” he said, “but I tell ya, the kid’s got hands on him like George Woolf.”

“G’wan.  He’s just a boy.”

“I seen the Iceman ride.  I know what I’m sayin’.”

At this, every eye in every head had another look at Toby Tyrrell.  Including mine.  Which meant I was looking at an eager hopeful kid and didn’t notice until I could smell her scent that Mrs. Willingford was holding out a cigarette (hers was already lit, its end blooded with red lipstick) offering it to me.

As I took it, she leaned in close, clogging my nose with heavy scent.  “You like it?  It’s called
L’air du Temps. 
No one has it yet but me.  Joker bought me a crateful.”  And then in a deep brown voice she said, “You look like someone who needs to relax.”

I took the cigarette.  I let her light it for me.  If I hadn’t, would things have happened the way they did?  Who knows?  Another thing I’ve learned: the universe is full of surprises—and not all of them get a man where he wants to go.  Of course, it’s a rare man who knows where he wants to go.  He just thinks he does.  Not the same thing at all.

I thought I wanted to go where Mrs. Willingford was willing to take me.

Chapter 13

We took her car.  Sitting on the caramel colored leather passenger seat, watching the scenery go by, I told myself I was working the case.  What I didn’t tell myself was how.  It didn’t matter.  There’s this thing about us men.  Where a fine looking woman is concerned, even a smart guy’s brains ooze out his ears.