The Trojan Colt (27 page)

He shook his head. “Blue Banner Farm supports the Saratoga Sale. We didn't have any yearlings up at Keeneland, so I didn't see any reason to go. Besides, yearlings are another union at Blue Banner; I'm the stallion manager.”

“One more question,” I said. “When is the last time you saw the sales topper?”

“You mean Tyrone?” he said. “Probably about Christmas, give or take a few days. Why?”

“That was a ringer they sold at Keeneland,” I told him.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded in loud tones, and a couple of diners turned to stare at us. “

“Lower your voice,” I said. “This isn't for public consumption.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Now tell me about this.”

“Something happened to the real Trojan colt between when you left Mill Creek and Frank Standish arrived,” I said. “It's almost certain that he died in the interim.”

“But that's crazy!” said Chessman.

“It's true,” I insisted.

“What makes you think so?”

I told him how I'd doped it out. He interrupted once to explain about how flopping photos was a common practice at the magazine. When I told him the kicker, that the hip numbers weren't flopped and that meant the cover photo wasn't flopped, he had to agree.

“I'll be damned!” he said. “It's no secret that Travis is hurting for money. His one way out was that colt, and then it breaks something or dies from colic. He's in a blind panic, and then it occurs to him: he's got a look-alike chestnut colt, no white markings anywhere, same as Tyrone, and he figures: why not substitute it? I've already gone, almost all my staff has come away with me, and Frank Standish hasn't arrived yet. Probably the only guy who knows is Billy.” Suddenly he stopped and blinked his eyes very rapidly for a few seconds. “Oh, shit! Billy had to be in on it, didn't he?”

I nodded my agreement. “He couldn't have pulled it off if Billy wasn't a coconspirator.”

“Billy didn't run away,” said Chessman firmly. “That bastard killed him.”

“That's the way it figures,” I agreed.

“So is your kid dead too?”

“You mean Tony Sanders?” I asked. “Yeah, I think so.”

“These kids get so greedy today . . .” His voice trailed off and he shook his head sadly.

“I don't think Tony was in on it,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I spent a few days with him during the sale,” I said. “The kid was happy, carefree, lived for the sport. Then I go out for dinner the night before the ringer's sold, I'm gone half an hour, forty minutes tops, I come back, and suddenly Tony's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. He's worried as hell, anyone can see that. He knows I'm a detective, and he says he wants to tell me about it.”

“So did he?”

I shook my head. “He said he had to talk to someone first, and that we'd discuss it in the morning. He was still up and still worried when I went to bed in the tack room, and he was gone when I woke up the next morning.”

“What the hell happened while you were out for dinner?”

“I don't know,” I said. “It stands to reason that he got suspicious about Tyrone. He couldn't have doped it out from the photos, because he never saw the one you sent to Billy Paulson. All I can come up with is that someone said something to him. It obviously wasn't Bigelow, and I don't think Frank Standish knows to this day that it wasn't the real Trojan colt.”

“Who else would talk to him about it?” asked Chessman.

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me,” I said.

A suspicious look crossed his pudgy face. “Just a minute,” he growled. “Are you accusing me?”

“No, I'm not,” I said. “I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction.”

He lowered his head in thought for a moment, then looked up. “It's got to be a vet,” he said. “The Trojan colt probably had to be euthanized, though it's always possible he got hit by lightning or ran head-first into a tree or a building in the dark. So there are some circumstances under which you didn't have to have a vet to put him down. But you'd need an experienced vet to duplicate the scar.”

“I agree.”

Suddenly he smiled. “And one more thing.”

“What?”

“It can't be Lucius McGowan.”

“Who's Lucius McGowan?” I asked.

“My vet. Mill Creek was one of his clients when I was there, but Frank wanted his own vet, the guy he'd been working with, and we had an opening for a full-timer here. I mean, hell, we're standing Pit Boss and Marauder, which comes to about fifty or sixty million dollars' worth for just those two.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why couldn't it be McGowan?”

He grinned again. “Because McGowan patched up the real Trojan colt while I was at Mill Creek. He knows which side the scar was on. Whoever put the scar on the ringer never saw the colt but worked from the flopped photo.”

“Goddamn!” I said, returning his smile. “I should have talked to you about this sooner! Except that I hadn't doped out that it was a ringer until this morning.”

He shook his head in wonderment. “A ringer at the Select Sale. No one in the world would have thought it. These are blue-blooded people selling their blue-blooded horses.” He paused. “Well, all you have to do is find the vet.”

“How many are there in the Lexington area?”

“Oh, Lord, I don't know,” he said. “Five hundred? A thousand? With the billions of dollars of horseflesh in this area, this is the one spot in the country where it can be a big-money job for a lot of them.”

“Makes finding a needle in a haystack seem easy,” I said, and then a thought struck me. “There's something I haven't mentioned.”

“What is it?”

“The night Tony disappeared he drove his car over to the Leestown Road Kroger.”

“The supermarket?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And here's the interesting thing. It had rained on his way there and was clearly going to rain on and off all night—but he left the top down on his convertible, as if whatever he was doing only figured to take a couple of minutes.”

“Now, that's interesting.”

“I'll tell you something else interesting,” I said. “A couple of days later I was shot at by a guy who was parked about two blocks from there.”

“Same case?” he asked.

I nodded. “Same case.”

“Let me guess,” said Chessman. “Was he parked in front of a red brick condo complex?” He gave me the name of the nearest cross street.

“How did you know?”

“Didn't you check who lives there?”

“A couple of doctors, a lawyer, and a banker, or something like that.”

Chessman smiled again. “Yeah? Well, one of those doctors is . . . well, was . . . a horse doctor.”

“Oh?”

“Not anymore,” said Chessman. “His name's Tobias Branson. He got ruled off the track and lost his license for supplying some very illegal performance-enhancing drugs to some very unethical trainers. He can't practice in any of the fifty states. Which, I might add, doesn't prevent him from making a good living off the industry.”

“Explain,” I said, starting to get very excited.

“Well, for example, the Jockey Club won't recognize artificial insemination. You can't register a foal that's conceived that way. But if you're an unethical breeder, and some mare has shipped in and either she doesn't like your stallion or he doesn't like her, and you don't want to kiss the stud fee good-bye, you might wait until three in the morning, put the mare in the stallion's proximity, collect the sperm, administer it to the mare, and voilà.”

He paused and took a sip of his beer. “You want another?” He continued. “You know how Olympic distance runners oxygenate their blood? It's illegal, but it doesn't show up on tests, because it's nothing but blood and oxygen. Take a colt that keeps fading seventy yards from the wire, oxygenate his blood, and if things go right you not only win a purse but collect some heavy winnings at the window.”

“Fascinating,” I said as dinner arrived.

His face hardened. “Now you have to understand, Eli: this guy is a pariah. No one knows him, no one talks to him, no one acknowledges his existence . . . until they need him, and there are always a few unethical scumbags in every sport and every business who have no regard for the rules and make everyone else look bad. What I'm saying is that I know who he is, but that neither I, nor Frank Standish, nor anyone we associate with has anything to do with Branson or anyone like him. The reason I know his address is because one of the first things everyone in the business learns is to steer clear of it.”

I signaled to Tilly for another beer.

“I need a minute to consider this and dope it all out,” I said to Chessman.

“Just dope it out right. There are two nice kids who aren't celebrating any more birthdays. I want that bastard I used to work for brought down, and brought down hard.”

I juggled it all around in my mind for a few minutes while Tilly brought me my beer and I downed about half of it.

“You know what I think?” I said.

“What?”

“According to Combes, the guard, the horse had a visitor, a potential buyer, while I was gone for dinner,” I said. “A fat guy with white hair.”

“Could be Branson,” said Chessman. “The description fits.”

“I think the one who had the visitor was Tony. I think it was Branson. He operates on the wrong side of the tracks. He knew what the colt would be worth, and he's probably been bleeding Bigelow ever since he put the scar on the ringer. Maybe he thought the horse would bring two million; that's the figure I heard when I was hired to provide security. But let's say the new owner or the underbidder mentions that they'll go to three million for him, and Branson finds out. He goes to Bigelow and asks for an extra hundred grand or so. And Bigelow stalls . . . and suddenly, the day before the auction, Branson figures out that Bigelow has got him targeted. So he tells Tony the truth, and says to make it public if anything happens to him.”

“I don't buy that at all,” said Chessman.

“It makes sense,” I insisted.

“Maybe for a normal man,” replied Chessman. “But not for Branson. You know how he got ruled off? The track vets never spotted what he'd done. He got caught because he couldn't keep his mouth shut about what a genius he is. He told one too many people about how his oxygenated blood and various drugs escaped detection.” He smiled at me. “You want a more likely scenario? He stopped by to see his handiwork on the colt's neck and had to brag about it, had to say something about how his handiwork made him the Leonardo of the veterinary trade.”

“And loyal, honest Tony challenges it, and Branson drops his name and credentials,” I said excitedly. “Tony's so protective of the sport and of his employer that he won't discuss it with me until he can verify what he's heard. So after I go to sleep, he looks up Branson's address in a phone book or gets it from someone else—after all, from what you say, Branson's not making any effort to keep it secret. So Tony drives over to his place to make sure he was telling the truth—and then, if he was, Tony would report it. Yeah, I can buy that.”

“Are you saying Branson killed both kids? Hell, he didn't even know Billy.”

I thought about it for a few seconds. “Okay, it makes even more sense this way. Bigelow's run through all the normal channels to raise money, so he borrows it from the mob, and the Trojan colt is his collateral. Then the colt dies, he sees he's got another chestnut that's a look-alike, he tells them his plan. Maybe it's even the mob that suggests Branson.”

“Go on,” said Chessman, leaning forward.

“When Billy Paulsen tries to extort more money, Bigelow doesn't have to lift a finger himself. He just tells the mob, and they send a hitter named Horatio Jimenez here to kill him and protect their investment.”

“Why do you think it was that particular killer?”

“Because he's the one who shot at me near Branson's condo,” I answered. Anyway, maybe Branson just shoots off his mouth to Tony. Or maybe he spots Jimenez and figures the mob is going to take care of any loose ends, which means Jimenez is here to kill him before he can open his big mouth. It makes no difference.”

“Why not?”

“Because both ways work, which is to say, they both lead to the same thing. Let's say Branson spots Jimenez at the sale. He has no place to run—like you say, he's a pariah—and he tells Tony that the colt's a ringer and to tell the cops and the Jockey Club if anything happens to him. But it works out the same way if he has no idea who Jimenez is, he doesn't know there's a hit on him, and he just says a little more than he should to Tony. Either way he goes home, Tony's a moral kid who loves the sport and wants to make his living in it. He decides to make sure that Branson wasn't just drunk or bullshitting before he goes to the authorities, so he goes to Branson's condo to confront him. Jimenez is hiding there. Either he overhears Tony and realizes that he has to kill them both, or else Tony walks in on the killing and Branson can't let an eyewitness walk.”

“My God!” whispered Chessman. “That sounds so damned believable!”

“Was Branson married?” I asked.

“Not for years. She couldn't stand the bastard either.”

“Okay,” I said. “But Jimenez doesn't know it. He moves the bodies out of there—it's dark and it's raining, and if he wraps each of them in a big plastic garbage bag, who'd know what the hell they were? And since he doesn't know if there's a Mrs. Branson, or a young son home from college or the army, his employers tell him to station himself there for a few days, just in case—and when I spot his car and slow down almost to a stop to write down his plate number he starts shooting.”