Shadow Roll (8 page)

Paul, easy with his hands and feet, drove with a lot more care than Mrs. Willingford, and while he drove he gave me the low down.  “Word’s out, some of the types hang out at the tracks don’t want good security.  They have about two dozen scams in play at any given time on which good security could put the dampers.  So they go looking for two-bit half wits to hire.  Like Goose.”

I had a moment’s horror wondering if I was one of those two-bit half wits.  But I shoved that into some part of my brain I seldom visited—and held it there, waiting for it to shut up.

Until getting hired by a track, all I knew about track management was what everyone else thought they knew about track management.  They were men (a few rich widows and wives thrown in to make it interesting) who had a lot of money (don’t ask how they got it; the answers you’d hear would be about as straight as a shell game on the Atlantic City boardwalk), and who liked to invest that money in pedigree horseflesh.  For longer than the U.S. was the U.S., they formed jockey clubs (which your usual jockey never saw the inside of) and built race tracks where highbred horses competed in races of various sorts for various trophies and various purses (real purses, made of silk and hung on a line across the track for the winner to snatch).

In the beginning most of the jocks were rich guys like our first president.  Old George, sitting bolt upright in the English style, competed up hill and down dale against other rich guys like himself.  And then they all figured less weight was better and stuck their smallest black slaves on the back of their horses.  Slaves began the style of riding crouched over and high on a horse’s withers, and maybe they’d get a cut of their winnings and maybe they wouldn’t.  Some of ‘em got so famous they were still names today: Isaac Murphy and Jimmy Winkfield and Willie Simms.  But then the white kids noticed how good some of the black kids had it, so horned in on the action until every single black was cut out of the game.  That was years ago.

What I really knew about was you might have a ticket on the one horse that came in first.  Or the one that placed, which meant came in second.  Or more often—a
lot
more often—you had a ticket that got tossed over your shoulder as you headed to the window for another hopeless bet.  Come to think, I knew a great deal more than that about the sport.  I knew about the trainers and the horses and the jocks and the races.

If I learned about the racetrack itself, I’d have the game covered.

Which is why I asked the question I now asked.  “Some of the types?  How can ‘types’ hire security?”

Paul laughed.  “By some of the types, I included some of the types in the management category.”

I’d been through one hell of a war.  The scams that went on had once surprised and shocked me.  You’d think I’d be beyond that kind of reaction.  “You’re telling me even management cheats their patrons?”

“I’m telling you even the owners of a track get involved.  Not all, not all by any means, but a few.  I’m telling you that Saratoga ain’t immune.  Although it’s cleaner than most.”

“So Goose got chosen because he’s dumb?”

“Hell no!  You have to be more than dumb to work security for these guys.  You have to be greedy as well.  And before you get the wrong idea, just like all the owners ain’t in it, all management ain’t in it either.  And not every guy working as security is in their pocket.  Like most things, it gets tricky to know who’s what and how’s that.”

I sat in my seat for awhile, looking out at the trees and the little houses I’d never see the insides of and the farms where I’d never feed a chicken or milk a goat and just generally felt glum.  “Great,” I finally said.

“Great?”

“So who hired me?  The good guys or the bad guys?”

“Beats me.  A good guy can be a bad guy on any given day, and a bad guy can turn good on you when you least expect it.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.  And now let me ask you one.”

“Shoot.”

“What are you doing up here?  I know it’s not about the little scams always going on.”

“Dead jocks.”

“You’re kidding.  Me and everybody I know knows they’re accidents.”

“Everybody?”

Paul turned to give me one of his Clark Gable grins as we cruised into town and were passing all these swell American houses with their swell American front yards as we steered for Case Street.  “Well, some of the jockeys aren’t so sure, but you can’t blame a jock for a little worry.  Not when it’s them doing the dying.  But I tell my guys, and any of the others’ll listen, bad luck always comes in threes.”

“You believe that?”

“Of course not.  But I do think three poor kids got into three stupid scrapes and I wish it hadn’t happened to a single one of ‘em, but there you go, these things happen.”

I nodded.  He could be right.  It’s certainly what the track officials wanted to hear.  And I was pretty sure that’s what I’d be telling them.  But still.  Three?  Plus, there was something about the way Paul pronounced the word “scrapes” that made me wonder if he was also wondering, or if he was doing what everyone else was doing: humming along to Cole Porter’s
It Was Just One of Those Things
.

“Any one of them yours?”

He turned away when I asked him this.  So I wouldn’t see the pain in his eyes?  So I wouldn’t see the relief?

“God willing, no.  And God willing not one of mine’ll ever go down on the track either.”

Amen to that one.

Paul dropped me off at my pink hotel and drove off like a mother with kids in the car.  Jarrett had turned into a careful man.  At least while driving.

He was headed for the racetrack.  Guys like Paul Jarrett lived at whatever track they were working.

We were still seeing each other at eight, some place he knew where all the heavy handicappers ate.  But just for a bite.  No time to waste.  I had to get some results here.  So far, all I’d learned was that I had an old school tie at the Saratoga meet, that like at any track there were scams galore, that Mrs. Willingford could be had (although no longer by me; I couldn’t say it broke my heart), and that the cop who’d stood over Pamela Teager was called Carroll Goose.

It didn’t seem like much.  And it wasn’t.

There was a message waiting for me at the desk.  It had its own little light brown envelope and the envelope was sealed.  Nice touch.  The kid at the desk didn’t get to read it.  If I were the kid at the desk, that would of ruined my day.  Reading other people’s mail had to be about the only perk he got.  There couldn’t be much else going on at the Pascal House.  Pink houses, pink hotels, pink petunias didn’t attract that kind of action.

All it said on the envelope was “Russo.”  It was written in pencil.

Chapter 16

I threw my hat on the bed and loosened my tie.  The tie was a sort of muddy greeny brown with little white flecks scattered over it—like lint.  A present from a woman I once knew.  Looking down at it, I wasn’t sure she’d liked me all that much.  I opened a window to get some air—catching a glimpse of the track through a mass of tiny climbing roses, tiny pink roses—took off my shoes, shook out a cigarette, threw myself in an easy chair, lit up and smoked.  I looked at my envelope.  Cheap.  Thin.  Common.  You could buy hundreds of ‘em for a quarter at your local five & dime.  Too small for a letter or a bill, too big for those envelopes that come tucked away in a bunch of flowers.  More than anything, it reminded me of a pay packet from one of those dying places that paid their employees in cash.

I didn’t know why I wasn’t just tearing it open.  How often did I get notes in sealed envelopes.  So far?  Never.  Maybe that’s why I sat in a wingback chair upholstered in what looked like rosy cabbages in a pink room in a pink hotel, fouling up the hot summer air with cigarette smoke, and turning the thing round and round in my hands.

Then, with one quick move, I had it open and a small piece of torn newspaper fell in my lap.  I didn’t have to pick it up to read what it said—also in pencil.

33 Beekman Street.  Room 7.  Soon as you get this.  It’s worth your while.

I turned the bit of newspaper over.  On the back I was offered an ice cold beer at the Tin ‘N’ Lint.  Nothing else in pencil.

Worth my while?  I wondered what that meant, but not for long.  Anything was worth my while at the moment since as far as I could see, which was about as far as my feet, nothing had been so far.  As for the address on Beekman Street, it wasn’t too far from the Gideon Putnam Burying Ground where, a long time ago, everyone who was no one got permanently planted.  Among the nobodies was one certain somebody; the actual Gideon Putnam who founded Saratoga Springs as well as the Grand Union Hotel.  He’d managed to become the first resident of his new graveyard by taking an accidental header off a scaffold in the middle of founding some other first thing in Saratoga Springs.  That was back in 1812.  Since then, pretty much no one had cared for the place which made it the perfect setting for a Boris Karloff movie.  Graves were overgrown, gravestones overturned, sections of the surrounding wall either crumbled away or missing.  As an area, everything west of Broadway was in the same fix.  33 Beekman Street was some address—if a guy needed a rat hole to hide in.

I learned all this at the library.  I really was a curious guy.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t wait to have my time not wasted.

Hat back on, ugly tie straightened, I was out the door half an hour after I walked in.

33 Beekman Street was everything I expected it to be.  Even in nice towns, rich towns, special towns like Saratoga Springs where some of the most important, if not the smartest or most honest, people hang their hats, there’s always an area like the area Beekman ran through.  There had to be someplace for the hired help to live, for the drunks and the deadbeats and the family man with too much family and too little job.  The building I walked towards fit the bill perfectly.

I rang the buzzer next to a crudely drawn 7 and was buzzed in as fast as everything else was happening.

The guy behind the barely opened door was small.  Really small.  Jockey small.  The room behind the small guy had just enough furniture to suit someone who had nothing to do and thick enough curtains to make sure no one saw him not doing it.

I got my sleeve grabbed and was in the room before I could get my gun out.  But since my gun was still in my suitcase back at my pretty pink palace, it didn’t much matter.

“You wanna drink?” said the little man.

Before I could answer, he was drinking straight from the bottle, a half full pint—or half empty if you’re one of those kind of people.  Whichever, I passed on his offer.

“Sit down.  Sit down.  I can’t sit down.  Can’t sit still for that long.  Be nice to see someone else doin’ it.  What was I saying?”

“Sit down.”

“Nah.  Before that.”

“I wasn’t here before that.”

“You weren’t?”  He gave his bottle a look like it was up to no good, then took another pull.

I sat on the only chair in the room, one never made to actually sit on.  Unless it was designed for slow torture.  That lasted maybe ten seconds and I was up and walking around with him.

“Listen, shamus.”  And with that crack he was pointing one of his tiny fingers at me.  I had no idea why.  I just let him do it.  “Don’t ask how I know you’re a snoop, everyone knows you’re a snoop for the track bigwigs.  And everyone knows they want you to smooth things over and then beat it back to the hole you crawled out of.”

I flicked something off my sleeve.  I thought it was a bug.  I hoped it was a bug.  “No need to get nasty, chum.  I am, after all, an invited guest in your lovely home.”

One of his eyes focused.  “Sorry.  I’m jumpy is all.  Can you imagine?  I got a mount in the third and the fifth today.”

All I could imagine, watching him put away the hard stuff, is what us poor saps at the betting windows never get to know.

“Did I tell you my name?”

“If so, I missed it.”

“I’m Mash Mooney.”

“Mooney!  I’ve bet on you.  More than once.”

“You have?”  Mash said that like he’d just won the Belmont Stakes.  “Then I got no call to be doing you down.  But still I gotta know.  You in their pocket or you really lookin’?”

“I don’t know where
they
think I am, but I’m really looking.”

“How do I believe you?”

“No idea.  You do or you don’t.  You wrote the note.”

“Right.  The note.”  He pointed at me with his pint of rye or whatever it was.  Maybe a spoonful of it landed on the worn carpet between us.  “I wrote you so’s you’d come here and I could tell you what I know.”

“What do you know?”

“Manny Walker din’t drown.”

“How’s that?”

“He din’t drown.  He didn’t even go swimmin’.  I mean he usually went swimmin’, but that morning he din’t.”

Right there, I could of asked him all kinds of questions but it seemed best to let him talk.  Especially since he was talking more to his bottle than to me and to some guys bottles make the best listeners.

“Him and me, we was out all night at the Tin ‘N’ Lint, even with the races comin’ up, and when we got back, it was too late for that swimmin’ he liked to do.  So he din’t do it.  Instead, we just thought we’d get some shuteye at our bunks at the track and he could swim twice as long the next day.  Only Manny didn’t get a next day, did he?”

“If you have a bunk at the track, why are you here?”

“Hiding.  Whatchoo think?  I don’t wanna wind up like Manny.”

“Right.  How do you know Manny didn’t get up anyway after you were asleep and go off by himself?”

“‘Cause he was gone as soon as he hit the mattress, and I mean gone, like nuthin’ could of woke him.  Me, it couldn’t have taken much longer.  But it’s a twenty minute drive out to the lake if you go the way he’d always go.  Which, by the way, you have to go because that’s where the county road goes.  When I woke up, his car was still outside our shed.  He din’t borrow nobody else’s.  I asked.  So it’s like this.  We bunk down, plastered as a coupla walls, at 4:29 a.m.  Manny’s asleep at 4:30 a.m.  I know.  I got this watch— ”