Murder at the Racetrack (24 page)

“If you want to shoot for twenty, that’s all right with me,” the old man said.

“No. We’ll make it fifty, old man.”

The old man bent over the table and sighted the one ball. It was a straight shot into the corner pocket. He rammed the cue
ball so hard into the one that the one hit the leather back of the pocket and bounced out.

The
melanzana
grinned. “Heh, relax old man. You’re too tight.” He leaned over the table and pocketed the one, then the two and three. The
four was a difficult cut shot into a side pocket. The
melanzana
cut it too much and it bounced off the rail. “Damn!” he said.

The old man made the four, an easy straight-in shot into the side pocket, but his cue ball froze against the rail. The six
was across the table against the rail, too. A tough bank shot. The old man hit the six too softly. It bounced off the rail,
went to the pocket on the opposite side of the table, and stopped inches from the pocket.

“Either too hard, or too easy, old man,” the black man said. “You ain’t got your rhythm yet.” He pocketed the six but left
himself a long shot for the seven. He missed it, sending the seven bouncing off cushions until it came to rest only a few
inches from the corner pocket. The cue ball was in the middle of the table.

The black man was shaking his head. “Set it right up for you, old man. A blind man could make that shot.”

“You want to give it to me?” the old man said.

The black man laughed, flashing his gold teeth. “No siree, pops. I’m gonna make you earn it.”

The old man pointed his stick at the pocket behind the seven. “Straight-in,” he said. He bent over and sighted the seven.
He hit it hard, slightly off-center, so that the seven hit the corner of the pocket, ricocheted off the opposite corner, came
the full length of the table, hit the two far corners and then rolled back toward the pocket the old man had called, and dropped
in.

“Damn!” the black man said. “I told you it was your lucky day. Miss you an easy one and turn it into a trick shot.” He reached
into his pants pocket for his money.

“That’s not necessary,” the old man said. “We’ll pay up at the end of the day.”

“Suit yourself, old man.”

The old man lost the second and third games, then he won the fourth when he made the seven ball on the break.

“Man, you’s lucky today,” the black man said.

“Winners are always lucky to losers,” the old man said.

The black man blinked, once, twice, then said, “What you say, old man?”

The old man put his head down and chalked the tip of his cue stick. “I said, you got to be lucky to win.”

The black man looked at him. “That’s what I thought you said.”

The old man lost the fourth game when he scratched on an easy shot on the seven. The black man ran out the seven, eight, and
nine.

The old man shook his head. “Like I said. Lucky.”

“Lucky!” the black man said. “I run three balls to win and you call it luck?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have had the chance, if I didn’t scratch on the seven.”

“Shiiit! Loser like you, old man, that’s always your alibi. The other guy was lucky.”

The old man bent over the table and racked the balls. He felt his face get hot. Fired by a fucking retard! Condescended to
by a fucking
melanzana
asshole! He straightened up and said, “How about we play for a coupla hundred dollars a game. See if my luck can change.”

“Hot damn! You hear that, Reeshaad! The old man loses a game and he wants to raise the bet. A real hustler, ain’t he? Why
not, huh? What you got to lose, old man. Nuthin’ but money ain’t gonna do you no good, the time you got left. Shit, yeah,
we’ll play for a hundred.” He bent over the table while the old man fumbled with the rack. “You gonna take all day, old man,”
the black man said. The old man racked the balls loosely, not tight. When the black man fired the cue ball into the rack,
only two balls broke loose. The black man straightened up and banged his cue stick on the floor.

“Now you go give me a fuckin’ house rack! Or is you just too old to rack the balls tight?”

The old man said nothing. He bent over the table, sank the one ball, and sent the cue ball ricocheting around the table until
it landed against the unbroken rack, and split the balls apart.

“Another lucky fuckin’ shot,” the black man said.

The old man looked up at the grinning black man, his flashing gold teeth, his stupid grin, not getting it. He smiled at the
black man, chalked the tip of his cue stick, and bent over the table. The two ball was tight against the rail far from the
corner pocket. The old man sighted his cue ball, then cut it into the two ball so delicately that he almost missed it. The
two ball began moving slowly down the table, hugging the rail, and fell into the corner pocket. The three ball was only inches
from another corner pocket, but the cue ball was behind the four ball, blocking his shot on the three.

“Tough break, old man. You’s snookered,” the black man said.

The old man didn’t hear him. He was standing straight up, aiming the tip of his cue stick down at the cue ball. He stabbed
down at the cue ball with a short stroke. The cue ball squirted around the four ball, then curved back toward the three ball
and knocked it into the pocket.

Before the black man could say anything, the old man was sighting the four ball. A long straight-in shot. He eased back the
cue stick, once, twice, three times, and then with a smooth, maddeningly methodical stroke, sent the cue ball straight into
the four. The cue ball stopped on a dime and the four went straight into the pocket. The old man felt his heart beating in
his breast now that he was playing the way he used to. Hard and ruthless. He pocketed the five ball in the side pocket, drew
the cue ball back off the opposite rail until it was only inches from the six, a short straight-in shot. The seven was against
the rail at the far end of the table. The old man hit the cue ball very low, rifling the six into the pocket, and drawing
the cue ball back the full length of the table until it, too, was against the rail a few inches away from the seven. A straight-in
shot, but very difficult because both balls hugged the rail. The old man sighted his shot. He aimed the tip of his cue stick
high and to the right on the cue ball so that it would hug the rail when it hit the seven. Then, before he shot, he looked
up at the black man and smiled. He was still smiling at the black man, not even looking at his shot, when his stick swung
smoothly forward. The cue ball rolled against the rail, tapped the seven ball, stopped, while the seven ball rolled slowly
toward the pocket and dropped in.

The old man straightened up. The black man was staring at him. The old man noticed, for the first time in an hour, the younger
black man staring at him, too, through his dark sunglasses.

“You hustlin’ me, old man,” the older black man said.

The old man looked at him in the eye. “We gonna play, or what?”

The black man began to unscrew his stick. “I don’t think so, old man. I ain’t no fool.”

“Quitting?”

The black man gave him a faint smile and shook his head. “You tryin’ to rile me, old man? Damn, you be an old white dude,
but you got a young man’s balls.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You got balls, or what?”

The black man glared at him. “Yeah, I got balls, old man. But I got me some brains, too. I ain’t playin’ with you no eight
and nine spot.”

“I don’t need your spot,” the old man said. “I’ll play you straight up.”

“I said, I got brains, old man. I know when I’m in over my head.” He put the two pieces of his elaborately carved cue stick
into his black leather case, and snapped it shut.

“All right,” the old man said. “You win. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll play you jack up. I’ll shoot one-handed. Is that
enough of a spot for you?”

The black man shook his head and smiled across at his friend. “You hear that, Reeshaad? Fuckin’ old white dude tryin’ to embarrass
me. Play one-handed, thinks he can still beat me.” He looked back at the old man as he opened his case again and began screwing
his cue stick together. He went to the end of the table and began racking the balls.

“Your break, old man.”

The old man put one hand behind his back and held the end of the cue stick with his other hand. He balanced the cue stick
on the edge of the table. He jabbed the stick forward. The cue ball rolled down the table, hit the rack without force, and
knocked out only a few balls. One of them was the nine. It stopped in front of the corner pocket. The one ball was only inches
in front of it. An easy combination shot.

The black man stepped up to the table, sighted his shot, sent the cue ball into the one which hit the nine which dropped in.

They played in silence now. The black man won two games in a row. Then the old man won a game. The black man won the next
three games and then the old man won a game. Neither of them spoke. They moved around the table in silent concentration. The
old man felt his arm getting tired. He miscued on an easy straight-in shot on the nine and lost. He scratched on the eight
ball in the next game, and lost. He felt his one-handed stroke getting shaky, his arm heavy, numb. He could sustain his stroke
for a shot or two but then he could feel his arm tremble with fatigue. He was breathing heavily. His head was swimming. How
much was he down? Five hundred, a thousand? He couldn’t keep track. He wanted to be home in bed, resting. He was so tired.

The black man was preparing to break the balls again. He looked at the old man, and said, “What say we play for two hundred
a game, old man? Give you a chance to win back your money.”

The old man nodded. “Fine with me,” he said. He laid his cue stick on the table. “Where’s the John?”

The black man pointed his stick at a door marked GENTS. The old man shuffled toward the door. Just as he opened it he heard
the black man call out from behind him.

“Don’t you be takin’ too long, old man. I have to be sendin’ Reeshaad in there lookin’ for you.”

The old man sat down on the toilet seat to catch his breath. He felt sick to his stomach, light-headed, dizzy. He couldn’t
focus. Everything was swimming before his eyes, spinning around him as if he were on the merry-go-round at the fair where
he used to work. He tried to force everything to stop spinning. Things began to slow down, the urinals, the mirror, the sink,
the old metal steam radiator up against one wall. He stared at the radiator for a long moment until it had stopped moving.
He saw, high above the radiator, a window covered with grime. He tried to remember something from his past. He forced himself
to remember. Then he stood up. His legs were shaky. He took a few deep breaths until his legs stopped shaking, then he walked
over to the radiator. He raised one leg and put his foot on the radiator. He held it there a moment as he looked for something
to grab on to so he could hoist himself up. Once he was standing on the radiator he could open the window, crawl out, and
get to his car. But there was nothing for the old man to grab on to. And even if he could stand on the radiator, what would
he do? Pull himself up to the window with his arms? He was an old man, for Chrissakes. He had no strength left. He took his
foot off the radiator and sat down on the toilet seat. He stared into the dirty mirror over the sink. Images began to form
in the mirror. Blurry-gray at first, and then more sharply defined. He stared into the mirror at the faces from his past.
They were smiling at him. His cronies. Mustache Pete. The French Canadian. The rednecked farmers. The Hialeah blonde. The
bearded lady and the Geek. His mother. Rose. He smiled back at them all, long gone, waiting…

H.R.F. Keating

G
oodwood racecourse, set amid the Sussex Downs, which are of course gently rolling hills, Ups rather than Downs, has been in
existence since 1801. It was then that the Duke of Richmond, one of the Great of the land, offered the use of his huge park
surrounding Goodwood House to the officers of the Sussex Regiment, of which he happened to be colonel, when they needed somewhere
to race their horses. As the years went by, successive Dukes improved and improved the course until Glorious Goodwood, as
they call it, rose to be one of the most delightful of all England’s race meetings. Perhaps, however, jockeys and trainers
may secretly think of it as Would-it-were-good because the course, running as it does not on the ideal level but over a distinctly
undulating track with some sharp bends in it, can put even the most fancied runner into an ignominious last place.

But back in 1952 the then holder of the dukedom permitted the first public-address race commentary anywhere in Britain to
boom out across his private park. And it was at that time—if the following account is true—that the Not-so-good came on to
the scene. Luckily, however, 1952 can also be called the Year of the Seven Old Ladies, who, although they had their faults
like all of us, could reasonably be called, too, the Seven Good Old Ladies.

They all lived in a village at some little distance from the racecourse, a flourishing place with its green large enough for
games of cricket, two pubs and even, modern miracle tucked away behind the ancient village church, a bright and shiny red
telephone box. Whenever the weather was fine enough it was their custom to come out and sit in a row on two benches that were
set side by side at the edge of the green almost in the shadow of the church and opposite the pub called the Fox Goes Free,
which—if that indeed is the pub in question—was decidedly appropriate because it was thanks to these old ladies that one cunning
fox, of the two-legged variety, failed in the end to go free.

Every day that it didn’t rain, and sometimes even when it did, well wrapped in macintoshes, the seven of them would sit, morning
and afternoon, chattering away, ignoring, when there was a cricket match on the green, any of the red leather balls that occasionally
whizzed over their heads and equally ignoring, as they were on this day, the streams of motor cars clattering past in clouds
of exhaust fumes on their way to the start of the five-day race meeting in the grounds of their distant ducal neighbor. Nothing
disturbed them as they talked and talked.