Two in the Field (36 page)

“How about McDermott instead?” I offered.
“There’s
somebody I wouldn’t mind punching out.”

“You know Red Jim’s not much with his fists.”

“No,” I retorted. “He likes to work from ambush.”

“Whether against Craver or another,” he persisted, “you’d haul away a fine stake.”

I thought at first he meant a cut of meat, which of course was equally apt. “How fine do you have in mind?”

“Oh, say, ten thousand.”

Half the sum I was bent on retrieving for John O’Neill. It gave
me pause. So far I’d come up with zero, and every day away from Cait was making me a little more crazy. Maybe if all else failed.…

“I’ll think it over,” I said; then, “Speaking of McDermott, I haven’t seen him for days.”

“An establishment like this requires many things, Mr. Fowler.” Old Smoke was getting into his crooning thing again, not a good sign. “Some cannot come through normal means. Red Jim helps procure them.”

Just as he did for O’Neill’s Fenian army. I wondered how many of the dirty details he bothered to share with Morrissey. “It’s hard to imagine,” I said, “how he got from a jail in Utah, where I last saw him, to working here.”

Morrissey’s black eyes regarded me with an ominous glint that said he didn’t like the implication. “Perhaps you should ask him that very thing.”

“I intend to.”

“So you’re more interested in settling Red Jim’s hash than in prize stakes?” Stroking his goatee, he stared at me as if trying to reach some conclusion.

Having no idea where he was leading me, I felt myself begin to sweat. In an effort to distract him, I reported that somebody that night had gone up nearly forty thousand dollars at the roulette table. Fortunately for the house, he’d then taken on Baker, who duly reduced his new fortune. But what if he’d kept winning? Had anybody broken the bank?

“Once,” Morrissey recalled. “Gent named Mordecai walked out with $125,000 and we had to close for that night.” He smiled. “We soon got it back off him.”

While I wondered exactly how that had occurred, Morrissey walked over to his enormous iron desk and drummed his knuckles on what looked like drawers. A hollow sound reverberated; inside was a safe.

“Nowadays there’s cash enough here to handle anything that comes,” he boasted, looking me straight in the eye. “And I’m the only one with the combination.”

I’d written Andy to tell him my whereabouts and ask about Tim. His reply arrived on Boston Base Ball Club stationery, a single sheet wrapped around a smaller envelope also addressed to me. My pulse rate seemed to triple as I recognized Cait’s handwriting. I set it aside and read Andy’s first.

I read it again, savoring the word
family
. Andy was the nearest to a sibling I’d ever had. I loved the thought of us being in
Nebraska together. Like Andy, and bereft of my daughters and all else from other life, I had an almost desperate craving for family.

Cait’s three pages were devoted to everyday news of O’Neill City. Descriptions of communal huskings and canning sessions, talk of who had gotten sick, how unpredictable the weather had been, how the soddies were already being prepared for unseasonable storms. I got a momentary glow from learning that Lily now ate great quantities of melon with her hands, and, taught by Linc and Kaija, had learned to say “Sam.”

That was it.

Nothing about how Cait was getting along without Tim. Nothing about her feelings toward me. Even her closing was aggravatingly impersonal:
I remain, as ever, grateful for your services to our family, Caitlin O’Neill
.

Family. There it was again. Cait obviously viewed me as being outside of hers. I reread her paragraphs for the tiniest hint of intimacy, and was left wanting to pound on walls. Distant from her, I’d allowed myself to reconstruct a loving bond where apparently none existed—that is, if I accepted the letter as final evidence.

Which, on prolonged reflection, I did not.

My first reply to her was assertive and almost petulant in tone. I tore it up and penned a softer version that I also tore up. Finally I managed a few bland, chatty paragraphs about some of Saratoga’s sillier extremes. I told her I was intent on recovering the colony’s lost capital, would return as soon as I’d accomplished it, and would enjoy hearing again from her. What I didn’t say could have filled volumes.

Word came that McDermott had returned, but because the horse racing season was on us I didn’t catch sight of him. Morrissey had constructed a racetrack soon after arriving in Saratoga Springs. Offering lavish prizes to attract top competitors, he’d
formed a Racing Association, leased a larger site a few miles outside town, and built a new state-of-the-art track. While he no longer handled gate receipts, he more than made up for it by running auction pools.

Things in town began to look as they had during the regatta, but on a bigger scale. With business soaring at the Club House, Morrissey warned us to be on the lookout for pickpockets, thieves, scam men, low-end prostitutes—anybody who might inconvenience our patrons. Also, he wanted us close by him for security. Betting on the races would reach astronomical heights; on peak days he expected to hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in stakes. He began taking two of us with him whenever he made large deposits in his upstairs safe.

“Turn aside,” he’d say gruffly, and we’d hear the combination lock spin. The action of its dials sounded heavy and well-oiled.

Some afternoons I accompanied Baker in his gray-trimmed carriage with matching sorrel mares to watch the preliminary heats. The man obviously lived in high style, but was tight-lipped about his personal life, especially when it came to women. Although he liked to hint at some great lost love, I suspected the craft of gambling had long since outdistanced the fair sex as an attraction. Still, he was not oblivious.

“I believe that lady is seeking your attention,” he said one afternoon in the racetrack pavilion. I looked and saw, leaning on the rail, gazing up at us from beneath a parasol sunshade, a young woman with perfect-looking complexion and gray eyes that seemed almost violet. As they met mine she twirled the parasol and turned teasingly away.

“Fancy goods,” Baker observed.

I was reminded of a girl who’d been voted homecoming queen at my high school, her beauty so disconcerting that some boys could scarcely face her. This woman had that quality. She
was almost in Cait’s class, in fact, although hers was a more manufactured look.

“She’s got her lamps on you,” Baker said.

“Not likely,” I said. “You’re the glamour boy here.”

But maybe he was right. As we headed toward Baker’s rig, I found her suddenly in my path, her parasol folded, its metal tip slanted casually at my crotch. Prudently, I halted.

“Pardon, sir.” Her accent sounded vaguely French, her voice musical but with a huskiness that suggested … well, sex. She moved aside with a leisurely swirl of her skirts, gray eyes on mine, lips curled at the corners and parted slightly.

Some gallant utterance or dashing bon mot seemed called for. Nothing came to mind. Feeling cloddish, I touched my hat and nodded as I passed.

“Whew,” I said a few seconds later.

“Exactly right,” Baker agreed.

Driving back to town, he said, “You believe you’ve got a good idea of trouble spots at work by now?”

“Pretty good,” I said. “Why?”

“Somebody’s cheating the house,” Baker said. “Winning pretty regular. I’ll give you a brand new double eagle if you can spot the method. I’ll even tell you it’s happening in the poker room. And it’s an inside job.”

“Every night?”

He shook his head. “Maybe three out of five.”

“Been going on long?”

“Couple weeks.”

Since about when McDermott came back
. “I gather you don’t think I’ll be able to spot it.”

“That’s right.” He grinned. “But I’ll give you three days to try.”

 TWENTY-ONE 

The next day we arrived early at the track to check out a horse Baker had gotten a tip on. While he went off in search of tobacco, I headed for the paddock. There I spotted McDermott strutting around as if he owned the thoroughbreds. He saw me coming and said something to a man in a broad-brimmed hat who had been talking to him; the man turned abruptly and walked away. It looked suspicious to me. But then, just about everything about Red Jim looked suspicious.

“Back from procuring?” I said sarcastically. “What’d you get? Drugs for doping racehorses?”

It was a calculated provocation: if Morrissey thought somebody was tampering with his precious races, swift and unpleasant consequences would follow.

Red Jim didn’t look at all concerned.

“I got something for you, Fowler,” he said easily. “A surprise treat.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll find out.”

The cocksure way he said it gave me an uneasy feeling. What the hell was he up to now?

Baker came strolling up to join me and McDermott’s eyes narrowed. I realized that this was the first time he’d seen us together and, judging by his expression, he didn’t like it. Taking me on alone was one thing. The difficulty of it was magnified with Baker, a highly respected figure, as my ally. A subtle calculation went on behind his watery blue eyes as he nodded shortly to Baker, gave me a parting glance, spat in the dirt, and walked away.

“I hate that sonofabitch.”

“Couldn’t have guessed,” Baker said wryly. “You hide it so good.”