Shadow Roll (16 page)

Ten minutes later, when Hank slammed open the door to room number 3, he found me on the floor holding Jane.  Both of us were covered in blood.  A dog’s blood is no different than human blood.  It’s red and it’s wet and it’s sticky.  It’s life.  This blood was Jane’s life.  And it was running out.

Not a word of greeting or asking what happened, Hank knelt down, adjusted his glasses, lenses like the bottom of a bottle of Dr. Pepper, and went to work, muttering.  “Nine, ten, eleven wounds.  A knife.  What the fucking hell?  Why?  A dog?  Comes in here and stabs a dog to death?  Sonofabitch could of shot her.  But too much noise.  That’s why.  Too much noise.  But look at this place.  Look at this place.  She fought and that must have made one hell of a racket.  Oh hell, this one is deep.”

I heard all this.  I understood it.  I didn’t care.  Not then.  But I finally caught his eye and when I did I hated what I saw.  There was no hope in it.  Not even a hope of a hope.

“But she’s not dead, Hank.”

“She will be.  And soon.”

“You can’t do a thing?”

“Sure.  I can patch her up.  But I don’t give her the chance whoever did this gave her.”

“Try!”

“Oh, I’ll try.  I always try.  That’s what I do.  But there’s no time to take her anywhere.  Clear off that desktop and do it now.  You’re my nurse.”

I was up and shoving things off the hotel’s dainty desk before he finished telling me to.  Smashed a pink glass ashtray on the floor, lost the writing paper and the ink pen between the wall and the desk.  Hank had Jane lying on it a second later.  While he hooked up a drip feed, I pressed my hand over the deepest cut.

“Keep the pressure on until I tell you to stop.”

“You bet.”

And so Hank Hanson began the hopeless task of saving Babe Duffy’s dog.  Only she wasn’t Babe Duffy’s dog anymore; she was mine.

Someone killed my dog.  Which meant someone knew she knew them.  They knew, alive, she would find them.  Which meant I was close.

At that moment, I didn’t care.  All I could think of was my singing dog dying on the top of a flimsy decorative desk in a pink hotel that told her through me, and in the nicest possible way: “Keep Out.”

Chapter 31

I was standing over Hank, asking him the kind of stupid questions anxious people ask, sweating through my shirt but not smoking or drinking as I watched him work on the worst of the stab wounds.

“You think he came for her, not for me?”

“Who’s he?”

“The jockey killer.”

“You know who did it?”

“No.  But I think Jane did.”

“You’ve answered your own question.  Could you shut up?  I need to concentrate.”

Hank was right.  I needed to shut up.  I was right too.  Someone came to kill Jane.  Hank was also right about a gun; guns make the sort of noise people notice.  But he didn’t bring a knife.  The steak knife I’d found in Jane was already here, in a drawer, provided by my pink hotel.  What was the plan here?  Choke her?  Poison her?  Whatever it was, he didn’t know who he was dealing with.  That explained why so many wounds.

Hank said, “For pete’s sake, Russo, go do some detecting.  Knock on the other doors, find out if someone saw something.”

Good thinking.  I was a detective.  Time to detect.  And then the room phone rang.

Scared the spinach out of me.  I answered with a clipped and shaky, “What!”

It was Marshall Hutsell, the man who’d called me back on Staten Island, the man who’d hired me for whoever he hired me for.  All along, I’d assumed it was the track management.  Now I was sure it was the track management.

I had no time for any of ‘em.

“Hang up, Hutsell.  I’m busy here.”

He acted like I’d just sung him
Yes, We Have No Bananas.
  “Mr. Russo.  Please come to the Saratoga Jockey Club immediately.”

I winced.  Not because of Hutsell.  I’d caught a clear view of Hank rearranging something inside Jane.  I said, “Where the hell is that?”

He said, “You’re a detective.  Find it.”

Then he hung up.

“Hank, where’s The Jockey Club?”

“In New York City.”

“Excuse me?”

“In Saratoga, a smaller bunch meets wherever they feel like meeting.  I imagine tonight it’s at the track.  Get out of the light.  She’s dying but I’d still like to try.”

“Dying?”

“Haven’t you been listening?”

“Jane isn’t dying.”

“Sam, you have to be all grown-up now.”

“Who says?  Can you do without me?  I won’t go if you can’t.  They can fire me.  Hell, they can fuck themselves.”

“She can do without you.  I can do without you.  I’ve already done most of what I can do.  Now she has to do what she’s going to do.”

“But she’ll be all alone.”

“Nah, she won’t.  This place is perfect.  Who would think to look for me here?  And brother, do I need the rest.  I’ll stay and watch her.  Maybe get a little sleep.  My line of work, I’m a light sleeper.”

I should of hugged him for that.  I babbled my thanks instead.

“Go.  Sooner you go.  Sooner you’re back.”

I washed my bloody body, changed my bloody clothes, and then I was gone.

Washing, I thought of something.  Mrs. Willingford was at the Grand Union bar when Jane was attacked.  Unless she could run faster than Fleeting Fancy, not to mention, wash and change her clothes even faster, Willingford could not have kill… stabbed my dog.

The man behind the big leather topped desk in the high-ceilinged room where the walls were like my walls back in Room 4-A: smothered under framed photos of horses and jocks, stood to shake my hand.

His frames were gold.  Mine were just frames.  But the horses were the same horses.

The desk was all show and no substance—like the smile that went with the handshake.  That smile must of earned some dentist somewhere enough to buy his own island.

To one side of him, a second man sat in a button-backed burgundy leather chair.  He needed the chair.  The chair, not used to holding up that much weight, could of done without him.  He shook my hand.  His hand was wet.  A third man, the one lighting a Havana stogie over by the drinks display, was Marshall Hutsell.  I could tell he was going to shake my hand too, but I’d had enough of hand shaking.

“Forget all the hand jobs.  Why am I here?”

That made the man with the terrific choppers laugh.  “Good one, good one.”

That made the fat man mad.  I think he expected what he said next to come out nice, but it came out in a long snaky wheezy hiss.  “You’re here so we can thank you in person for the great job you’ve done—”

“Done?”

“And to wish you every success in the future.”

“You mean I really
am
fired?”

The man behind the desk wrenched the conversation back from the fat man.  If I’d made the fat man angry, the fat man had made the big cheese—after all, he did occupy the bigger chair and the great big desk—angrier.  “No, of course not.  We’re merely telling you that it’s over.  The deaths were accidents.  Therefore your services will no longer be required.  Marshall?”

Marshall, making himself what looked like a martini, turned around to face the man behind the desk.  “Yeah, Harold?”

“Please get out the club checkbook.”

I said, “They weren’t accidents.”

The fat man leaned forward as far as his stomach allowed, which wasn’t far.  “My name is Richard Dickman Todd the Third.  I own more horses than you’ll ever manage to bet on.  Would you like to make a wager on that?”

“I never bet on the chalk.”

That made the dentist’s best friend laugh again.

Still laughing, Harold said, “Never place a bet on the favorite, eh?  You are a wise man, Mr. Russo.  And a wise man knows when to bet and when to let a race go.  I think this man, gentlemen, is a wise man.  He deserves a bonus, don’t you agree, Richard?”

“I do indeed, Harold,” hissed the fat man who was the third Richard in whatever unlucky family was stuck with him.  In the hog business, would be my guess.  I also loved his middle name.  “I’ve always believed in paying the help well.  It makes them more—helpful.”

I stood there, feeling as fizzy as the Big Red Spring that bubbled up out of the racetrack’s picnic grounds, while Marshall slapped a huge leather-bound checkbook on the big leather covered desk so that Harold, whose last name had not been mentioned, could begin writing what I hoped was a nice big check made out to me.  For what?  I knew for what.  To send me off happy.  To make me quit like a good boy.

I took the check.  I took it for Jane.  I needed to pay Hank.  I took it because now I also needed to pay my own hotel bill.  But not at the little pink place.  I was thinking more along the lines of some place more expensive.  Somewhere closer to where Mrs. Willingford spent a lot of her time.  Somewhere I could find most of the people I needed to find by merely leaning on a pillar in the lobby.

Whether these guys liked it or not, I was solving these three cases in one—for Jane.  And for the kids someone killed.  As for Saratoga’s Jockey Club, it could go jump in Walker’s lake or crash its cars in McBartle’s tree or choke on Duffy’s finger food for all I cared.

Before I left, I had a good look at Marshall.  Not a hair out of place, not a spot of blood on his tailored jacket.  But the pink hotel was no real distance from the track.

I’d spent my time talking to Clay about what could be going on while at the same time more of it was going on.

Getting fired by these guys was like getting laid off by a sweat shop.  The relief felt like a bath.  I felt clean again.  All I cared about was getting back to that bloody room in the pink hotel (“No Dogs Allowed”) to see if I still had a dog.  I didn’t know why.  I’d never given dogs much thought, not even when I was a kid and liked Asta in
The Thin Man
movies.  But Jane wasn’t just a dog.  She was a talking dog.  I liked her.  I liked her a lot.

Pocketing the check, I read the name on the brass plaque bolted to a block of teak or whatever wood was going dear this year.  Harold George Whitman.

I’d heard of him.  He didn’t actually own Saratoga Springs, but he might as well have.

Opening my own door was hard.  I was afraid.  Something important was on the other side.

Fully clothed in an old long sleeved shirt and a new vet’s coat, Hank was sound asleep on my bed.  It didn’t look like he’d merely lain down.  It looked like he’d collapsed.  Before that, he’d cleaned up my little kitchen, put things away, wiped up most of the blood from the floor and walls.

With him, snuggled in the crook of his arm and wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy, was Jane.  Breathing.

I sat in a chair smoking one cigarette after another for hours and thought and watched a dog breathe and thought some more.  Clay had left a little bourbon in my hip flask, but I ran out of that long before I figured things out.

Three, maybe three-fifteen in the morning, I shook Hank awake.  He wasn’t pleased until he remembered where he was and why.  “Jane dead?”

“No.  But someone thinks she is, wouldn’t you agree?”

Hank sat up, slapping the top of my night table trying to find his glasses.  “Makes sense.”

I found them for him.  “Here.  So if that someone finds out she isn’t dead, they’ll try again.  You agree with that too?”

By now, Hank had his glasses on and was smacking his lips.  “Water.  I need water.”

I got him a glass of water.  He’d rolled over and was checking on Jane before he drank it, then it went down in one long gulp.  “Didn’t expect her to last this long.  Tough little doggie.”

“Did you hear what I said, Hank?”

“Sure.  If Jane survives this, you want her to be dead to whoever killed her.”

“Exactly.  So she can’t stay here and neither can I.  Whoever did this, did a thorough job of it.  Right now the killer’s sound asleep assuming the best.  But if you, an animal doc, stay here, he’ll get the picture soon enough.”

“So true.”

“So you’re both leaving.”

“Where we going?”

“You’re going back to work—”

“Damn.”

“Jane’s going with you.  We’ll take her out now.  Like she’d died.  I’ll find some old box.  And you’ll go home where you’ll hide her until she gets well.”

“Ah gee, Sam.  She isn’t gonna— ”

“I’m leaving too.”

“Leaving?  Where you going?”

“I am now unemployed.”

“So that’s why they called.  You got thrown out on your ear.”

“You got that right.  But they gave me a nice fat bonus for nothing.  Some of which is yours for Jane.

“I don’t want— ”

“Shaddup.  And some of which is going to get me a room in the Grand Union Hotel.  Two nights maybe.”

“What the hell for?”

“To make a spectacle of myself.”

Chapter 32

I’d snuck out of hotels at five a.m.  I’d never checked into one that early—and never one so grand as the Grand Union.

The desk clerk was there, just as I expected he’d be.  I don’t think he was supposed to be sleeping upright in his chair.  I hated to wake him but I needed a room.  Hitting the solid brass desk bell, the guy came awake so fast he smacked himself in the forehead with the side of his hand.  Shit.  He was saluting.  Like me, the poor guy had seen his share of the war.

I wondered when he’d get over it.  I wondered when I’d get over it.  Maybe we never would.

I got a ride in elevator number 9, me cracking my jaw, I was yawning so hard.  If not for Alonzo, I don’t think I’d of made it to my room on the third floor.  Being the season, it was about the last one they had, small and at the back.  If I’d looked, I’d find a nice view of the parking lot and all those parked cars, each one a dream.  Not my dream.  I didn’t dream about cars.

I didn’t look out the window.  Holding on to the wall, I asked Alonzo if he’d mention to the right people, the kind of people who would mention it to the other right people, that I was in the hotel.  He said of course he would.  He said it would be his great pleasure.  I tipped him well.  Unlike Clay, he kept it all just like the last time I’d tipped him.

I was out of my clothes, my clothes landed wherever they landed—I was asleep in seconds.