Queens Noir (4 page)

I was just about to take pity on Clayton and show him
how to read the Form when Big Fred appeared and sat down
at one of the extra chairs at our table.

"You see this piece of shit Pletcher's running in the fifth
race?" Fred wanted to know. Big Fred, who weighs 110 pounds
tops, isn't one for pleasantries. He had no interest in being
introduced to Clayton, probably hadn't even noticed I was
with someone; he just wanted confirmation that the Todd
Pletcher-trained colt in the fifth race was a piece of shit in
spite of having cost 2.4 million at the Keeneland yearling sale
and having won all three races he'd run in.

"Yeah," I said, nodding gravely. "He'll be 1-9."

"He's a flea," said Fred.

"Yeah. Well. I wouldn't throw him out on a Pick 6 ticket."

"I'm throwing him out."

"Okay," I said.

"He hasn't faced shit and he's never gone two turns. And
there's that nice little horse of Nick's that's a closer."

"Right," I said.

"I'm using Nick's horse. Singling him."

"I wouldn't throw out the Pletcher horse."

"Fuck him," said Fred, getting up and storming off to the
other end of the place, where I saw him take a seat with some
guys from the Daily Racing Form.

"Friend of yours?" asked Clayton.

I nodded. "Big Fred. He's a good guy."

"He is?"

"Sure."

I could tell Clayton wanted to go somewhere with that
one. Wanted to ask why I thought some strange little guy who
just sat down and started cursing out horses was a good guy.
Another reason Clayton had to be gotten rid of.

One of the waiters came and took our omelette order.
Since I'd mapped out most of my bets, I took ten minutes
and gave Clayton a cursory introduction to reading horses'
past performances. I was leaning in close, my finger tracing
one of the horse's running lines, when Clayton kissed my
ear.

"I love you, Alice," he said.

"Jesus, Clayton," I said. "What the fuck?"

Clayton looked like a kicked puppy.

"I brought you here because I thought it'd be a nice way
to spend our last day together but, fuck me, why do you have
to get ridiculous?"

"I don't want it to end. You're all I've got."

"You don't have me."

"What do you mean?"

"Clayton, there's no future. No mas," I said.

"No who?"

"No mas," I repeated. "No more. Spanish."

"Are You Spanish?"

"No, Clayton, I'm not Spanish. Shit, will you let me fucking work?"

"Everything okay over here?"

I looked up and saw Vito looming over the table. Vito is
a stocky, hairy man who is some kind of low-level mafioso or mafioso-wannabe who owns a few cheap horses and fancies
himself a gifted horseplayer.

"Everything's fine," I said, scowling at Vito. Much as Clayton was pissing me off, it wasn't any of Vito's business. But
that's the thing with these Vito-type guys at the track: What
with my being a presentable woman under the age of eighty,
a real rarity at Aqueduct, these guys get all protective of me.
It might have been vaguely heartwarming if Vito wasn't so
smarmy.

Vito furrowed his monobrow. He was sweating profusely
even though it was cool inside the restaurant.

"I'm Vito," he said, aggressively extending his hand to
Clayton, "and you are ... ?"

"Clayton," said my soon-to-be-ex paramour, tentatively
shaking Vito's oily paw.

"We all look out for Alice around here," Vito said.

Go fuck yourself, Vito, I thought, but didn't say. There
might be a time when I needed him for something.

"Oh," said Clayton, confused, "that's good. I look out for
her too."

Vito narrowed his already small eyes, looked from me to
Clayton and back, then turned on his heels.

"See ya, Vito," I said as the tubby man headed out of the
restaurant, presumably going down to the paddock-viewing
area to volubly express his opinions about the contestants in
the first race.

A few races passed. I made a nice little score on a mare
shipping in from Philadelphia Park. She was trained by some
obscure woman trainer, ridden by some obscure apprentice
jockey, and had only ever raced at Philadelphia Park, so, in
spite of a nice batch of past performances, she was being ignored on the tote board and went off at 14-1. 1 had $200 on her to win and wheeled her on top of all the logical horses in
an exacta. I made out nicely and that put me slightly at ease
and reduced some of the Clayton-induced aggravation that
had gotten so severe I hadn't been able to eat my omelette
and had started fantasizing about asking Vito to take Clayton
out. Not Take Him Out take him out, I didn't want the guy
dead or anything, just put a scare into him. But that would
have entailed asking a favor of Vito and I had no interest in
establishing that kind of dynamic with that kind of guy.

The fifth race came and I watched with interest to see
how the colt Big Fred liked fared. The Todd Pletcher-trained
horse Fred hated, who did in fact go off at 1-9, broke alertly
from the six hole and tucked nicely just off the pace that was
being set by a longshot with early speed. Gang of Seven, the
horse Big Fred liked, was at the back of the pack, biding his
time. With a quarter of a mile to go, Gang of Seven started
making his move four wide, picking off his opponents until
he was within spitting distance of the Pletcher horse. Gang of
Seven and the Pletcher trainee dueled to the wire and both
appeared to get their noses there at the same time.

"Too close to call," said the track announcer. A few min
utes later, the photo was posted and the Pletcher horse had
beat Big Fred's by a whisker.

"I'm a fucking idiot!" I heard Fred cry out from four tables away. I saw him get up and storm out of the restaurant,
probably heading to the back patio to chain-smoke and make
phone calls to twenty of his closest horseplaying friends, announcing his own idiocy.

"Guy's got a problem," Clayton said.

"No he doesn't," I replied, aggravated. While it was true
that Big Fred had a little trouble with anger management, he
was, at heart, a very decent human being.

I got up and walked away, leaving Clayton to stare after
me with those dinner plate-sized eyes.

I went down to the paddock, hoping that Clayton wouldn't
follow me. I saw Vito there staring out the big viewing window, his huge belly pressing against the glass. As I went to find
a spot as far away as possible from Vito, I craned my neck just
to check that Clayton hadn't followed me. He had. I saw him
lumbering around near the betting windows, looking left and
right. He'd find me at any minute.

So I did something a little crazy.

"Vito," I said, coming up behind him.

"Huh?" He turned around.

"Favor?" I asked.

His tiny black eyes glittered. "Anything, baby," he purred.

I already regretted what I was doing. "Can you scare that
guy I was sitting with? Just make him a little nervous? Make
him go home?"

Vito's tiny eyes got bigger, like someone had just dangled
a bleeding hunk of filet mignon in front of him.

"You serious?" He stood closer to me.

I had a moment's hesitation. Then thought of Clayton's
love pronouncements. "Yeah."

"Sure. Where is he?"

I glanced back and didn't see Clayton. "Somewhere
around here, let's look."

Vito lumbered at my side. We searched all around the
betting windows of the ground floor, but no Clayton. Then
I glanced outside and spotted him standing near an empty
bench, hunched and cold and lost-looking under the dovegray sky.

"There," I said.

"You got it, baby," said Vito. Without another word, he marched outside. I saw him accost Clayton. I saw Clayton tilt
his head left and right like a confused dog would. I thought
of Candy. Later this afternoon, I'd go home to her and just
maybe, thanks to Vito, I wouldn't have to worry about the big
oaf turning up with his big eyes and his inane declarations. Me
and Candy could have some peace and quiet.

Now Clayton and Vito had come back inside and were
walking together. They passed not far from where I was standing. Where was Vito taking him? I figured he'd just say a few
choice words and that would be that. But they seemed to be
going somewhere.

I followed them at a slight distance. I didn't really care if
Clayton saw me at this point. They went down the escalator
and out the front door. Vito was only wearing a thin buttondown shirt but he didn't seem to register the bite of the February air. Clayton pulled his coat up around his ears.

They headed over to the subway platform. I saw Clayton
pull out his MetroCard and go through the turnstile. Then
he handed his card back to Vito, who went through after
him.

What the fuck?

I stopped walking and stayed where I was in the middle of
the ramp leading to the turnstiles. The two men were about a
hundred yards in front of me but they had their backs to me.
There wasn't anyone else on the platform.

They started raising their voices. I couldn't hear what was
being said. There was wind and a big airplane with its belly
low against the sky. Then the sound of an oncoming train and
a blur of movement. A body falling down onto the tracks just
as the train came. I braced myself for some sort of screeching
of brakes. There wasn't any. The train charged into the station. The doors opened then closed. No one got on or off. The train pulled away. There was just one guy left standing on the
platform. He was staring down at the tracks.

My fingers were numb.

I slowly walked up the platform. Found my MetroCard in
my coat. Slid it in and went through the turnstile. I walked
to the edge and looked down at the tracks. There was an arm
separated from the rest of the body. Blood pouring out of the
shoulder. The head twisted at an angle you never saw in life.
I wasn't sure how the train conductor had failed to notice.
The MTA has been very proud of its new One-Person Train
Operation system that requires just one human to run the
entire train. Maybe that's not enough to keep an eye out for
falling bodies.

I felt nauseous. I started to black out and then he steadied
me, putting his hands at the small of my back.

"He was talking about you," said Clayton, staring down
at Vito's big mangled body. "Said you were going to blow him
in exchange for him getting rid of me. He was just trying to
upset me but it was disrespectful to you. I wanted to scare him
but he fell onto the tracks." Clayton spoke so calmly. "He was
talking shit about you, Alice," he added, raising his voice a
little.

"Well," I said, "that wasn't very nice of him, was it?"

Clayton smiled.

He really wasn't a bad-looking guy.

imes change, she thought. People don't.

Nikki reread the last of three diaries written by a dead
woman named Eileen Lavin, took a deep breath, and
spied Dr. George Sheridan through the Zhumell Spotting
Scope mounted on a tripod in front of her sixteenth-floor window in her Bayside condo. He was leaving his luxury shorefront home over in Douglaston.

It was 8:55 a.m. on a sunny Mother's Day in Queens. Dr.
Sheridan was dressed in his blue and white Abercrombie &
Fitch tracksuit and Nikki's zoom lens was so powerful that
even clear across the half-mile of Little Neck Bay she could
see the double-G imprinted on his $375 dark-blue Gucci
sneakers. She knew from watching him since New Year's that
he wore a different tracksuit and rotated his designer sneakers
every day.

"Mmmm-hmmm," Nikki whispered, knotting her yellow
cotton tank top at her sternum and tying the laces on her
New Balance sneakers, sweat socks bunched at the tops. Her
white spandex shorts could not have been any tighter, accentuating her twenty-five-year-old ass that she'd slaved to sculpt
into bubble perfection on the butt buster, StairMaster, and at
the aerobics dance classes in the gym in the Bayview condo
complex where she'd rented an apartment for six months.

Two things she'd noticed about all the women Dr. Sheridan chased-all were in their twenties and all had bubble
butts.

Several minutes later, Nikki peered through the telescope
again. The sun twinkled on the blue eye of Little Neck Bay
as Sheridan boarded his forty-two-foot Silverton bearing the
name The Dog's Life at his private dock behind his modernized
Queen Anne-style house on a cul-de-sac off Shore Road. He
climbed to the fly deck, fired up the twin engines, and aimed
straight at Bayside Marina a half-mile across the water. Nikki
knew Dr. Sheridan would moor The Dog's Life there before
moving down the marina walkway to the jogging path. He
would run south to the end of the asphalt path at Northern
Boulevard, then make a U-turn and jog three miles north to
Fort Totten, where he'd turn and head back to the marina to
complete his daily six-mile route along one of the most idyllic
stretches of waterfront in New York City.