Shadow Roll (20 page)

I heard something—the sound of a stall door opening.  Could be anyone.  Could be nothing.  I took my gun out of my pocket.  I pointed it in the right direction.  I watched a booted foot step out from a stall, followed by the rest of the leg, and then the man who owned both.  His head looked first one way.  It looked the other.  Neither the man nor his head were large.  He wasn’t tall either.

What he was, was furtive.

The first way he looked didn’t bother him.  All he saw was a nice long dark and empty shed row.  He didn’t seem to be leaving; he seemed to be having a look around before he did whatever he was there to do.

But looking the other way included me and Mrs. Willingford who’d made it halfway down the row and were still coming.  I had a gun out and was pointing it right at him.

We all stopped in the dark.  Him, me, her.  For what seemed like ages, we all stayed right where we were.  Then I woke up.

“You!” I yelled, “Get away from that horse!”

At that point, a lot more than two things happened.  First, the guy bolted.  The other way.  Second, I bolted after him.  Third, Mrs. Willingford ran straight down the shed row and into the stall the guy had just run out of.  And lastly, and by no means least, everything woke up at once and began making one holy hell of a racket.  Cats, dogs, goats, horses, chickens, roosters, pigs.

The guy was fast.  He was really fast.  But I wasn’t all that bad myself.  Hadn’t completely gone to seed since the last time I found myself running.  Back then I was running away from a whole platoon of little people who wanted to kill me in the worst way, but I could be just as fast running towards something.  And I was catching up fast, catching up enough to grab hold of him.  Problem was my shoes.  They weren’t on my feet, they were in my pockets.  At least one was.  The other had already fallen out.  I’d heard it go.  Running barefoot on hard ground where any number of things could be lying around slowed me down just enough so when my bare foot came down on a pointed bit of metal, I went down too.

He was sprinting away.

There was no way I was just going to shoot the guy.  I hadn’t seen his face.  I didn’t know what he’d left behind where Ace Admiral bedded down.  Who knows?  I could be shooting his trainer or… hell, I just couldn’t shoot him.

So I lost him.

Found my shoe on the way back to Ace Admiral and Mrs. Willingford.  By the time I got there, I was limping.

She was standing by Ace who was also standing.  He looked fine.  Arching his neck and nudging Mrs. Willingford for candy.  She looked fine.  Arching her own neck as she ran her hands over his body looking for anything wrong.  At least from what I could see of them in the dark.  What didn’t look fine was the groom.  He looked like he’d been hit and hit hard.

“I’ll watch the horse,” she said, “go get a doctor for this poor man.  He get away?”

I was putting on my shoes as fast as I could.  “He got away.  He had shoes.  How’s the horse?”

“I think we got here just in time.  Just like I thought, the sonofabitch was just about to drug him.  Look.”

She held out a syringe full of what was probably a narcotic of some sort.  “Found it on the shelf over there, all ready to go.  Poor horse would have lost by a mile.”

“And your horse would of won.”

“Probably by daylight.”

The groom was coming round.  Time for me to fetch a doc.

“See if he can talk,” I said.  “If he can, ask what happened.  Get every detail.”

All I got for that was a slap on the arm.  “And you thought if you didn’t tell me that, I would what?”

“Forget it.  I’ll be back faster than Fancy.”

And I would be.  The closest doc, even if he was a vet, was Hank.  I had to go to Hank’s.  I couldn’t avoid it.

The guy I’d chased wasn’t the big man Alonzo had seen.  He wasn’t the killer.  I knew who he was by smell alone.  Old Crow wasn’t hard to mistake.

OK, so I knew who I’d run after—which was a nice little piece to fit together with all the others—but what was running off to Hank going to look like to the man who’d hired Carroll Goose to dope a horse?  That man was watching from somewhere nearby.  He had to be.  He’d be a fool not to.  He knew how things were going.

Would it cross his mind Jane wasn’t dead, that she was alive at Hank’s clinic?  I had to trust it wouldn’t.  Jane was dead.  A groom was hurt.  What else would I do but run for the nearest medical help?

Sure I was watched every step of the way, I thought fast.  The big man had just made his first big mistake.  Hiring help was never a good idea when you were killing people.  Or horses.  Hiring Carroll Goose was his worst choice; Goose wasn’t one to keep his mouth shut.  He may not know the fella who’d hired him to get at Ace Admiral was the same fella who’d killed three young jockeys, but he knew what he knew.

Carroll was a dead goose by morning.

Worse than that thought was this one: I’d done all I could not to worry about Jane.  It hadn’t worked.  I worried about Jane.  Right now Jane was all I was worried about.  Fuck Carroll Goose.  Fuck who hired Carroll Goose.  Fuck who killed three jocks.  Fuck why they’d done it.  For the mount?  For the money they make betting on Fancy?  For the sick thrill of it?  Mrs. Willingford thought she knew.  She was just waiting for me to catch on.  I thought I knew, but it was only a thought.  Jane was real.  I had to know about Jane.

I had my excuse.  The groom needed Hank Hanson.

Hank lived and worked in a small house on the track, not far as the crow flew.  And every running step I took—painful steps, even fully shod—made my heart beat that much faster.  I couldn’t hear she was dead.  I wasn’t built for that kind of guilt.

Hank wasn’t asleep.  He was working on a horse’s front foot.  I rushed in; he didn’t even look up.  “Rotation.  If I get it now, I might stop it.  What you want?”

“A groom.  He’s been sapped.”

Hank gentled the horse’s hoof into a bucket of slurried ice.  “What?  When?  Where?”

“Here.  Just now.”

He had an assistant, a young woman built like a silo but with eyes full of life and caring.  She held the horse’s leg in the bucket, cooing to it all along, as Hank grabbed his bag to run after me.  I was already moving fast, back towards the right shed row.

Hank caught up, running silently beside me.  He did that for ten long strides before he said, “You want to ask about Jane?”

“No.”

“You might as well.”

“I don’t want to hear.”

“I would.”

“I’m not you.”

“She’s alive, Sam.  I don’t know how, but she is, and she might even make it.”

I would of stopped, but I couldn’t.  How bad was the groom hurt?  How was Mrs. Willingford doing on her own?  Then, a sudden gut-punch of a thought: what if the big man wasn’t watching me, but instead waiting for just this thing, for me to leave so he could come back and finish the job?  If he was smart—and he was smart—he’d be careful of Mrs. Willingford.  But being smart, he’d figure a way.

I couldn’t stop.  All I could do was turn my head and gift Hank with the biggest smile I’d managed in years.

Chapter 38

Mrs. Willingford was fine.

Ace Admiral was fine.  Maine Chance Farm was hovering round him in force.  He wouldn’t be alone again until he caught his train out of Saratoga Springs, and not then either.  I could of had that talk with his trainer Jimmy Smith if I’d wanted to.  Hell, I
did
want to, but I had so many other things to do.  Not one of ‘em was talking horses.

No one would ever know it but me—but that night I had a moment to be proud of: Sam Russo acted like a PI, not a racing fan.

Ace Admiral’s groom was alright, if getting smacked hard on the back of the head could be called “alright.”

I’ve watched actors in movies get hit or socked or sapped or gut punched or shot somewhere that doesn’t kill ‘em.  They come round pretty fast.  They keep on going, maybe with a bandage or two, maybe a wince now and then, but they just keep doing whatever they were doing before they got clobbered.  Out here, in real life, these things hurt.  They hurt bad.  No coming round fast from any of ‘em.  What really happens is you groan a lot, maybe throw up, maybe get dizzy and fall over—you sure wanna touch where it hurts which only makes it hurt worse.  Then you get poked and prodded by a doc.  If the doc thinks you ought to, a loud ambulance comes along to take you away to get your head examined.

That’s what happened to the groom.

Before he was bundled off, he came round enough to answer a few questions.  First the light outside went out, the dim one left on all night, every night.  Then someone called his name.

I said, “Your actual name—so he knew you?”

“Well, nah.  I didn’t mean that.  I mean someone called out sort of quiet like.  You know, inna kind of a loud whisper.  He said: hey you.  So I got up from where I was lying and trying to get some shuteye and went on over to the door.  But nobody was there.  Couldn’t see anything anyway with the light gone.  So I shrugged like you do when you think you been hearing things, and turned around to go back and lie down.  That’s when I got hit on the head.”

“So you heard nothing?”

“Nope.  Come to think, yes.  I heard a whistley kind of noise just before I got hit.  And I saw a lot of stars.  So now my head feels like a cracked egg.  I’m gonna be all right, right Hank?”

“You’ll be fine.”

OK, so where was I?  The groom saw nothing.  What Mrs. Willingford and I saw, we saw in the dark.  But I knew who I’d chased.  It wasn’t who I thought I’d be chasing, but it still fit.  It had to.  Otherwise my whole beautiful idea fell off its horse in the last furlong.  I honestly didn’t think that was going to happen.  The idea was too good.

I hoped.

But to be really sure, I needed my dog.  I needed Jane.

I got this moment to savor what Hank said. 
She’s alive, Sam.  I don’t know how, but she is, and she’ll make it. 
OK, so I’d left off a few words.  I had to.

When the groom was gone, and with Mrs. Willingford busy bossing the track workers into getting lights fixed faster, at the same time chewing out the night watchman for not doing his job, I took Hank aside.  Figuring we were watched, I whispered: “Who knows about Jane?”

Hank, catching on, whispered back: “First me.  And now you.”

“What about the girl I just saw, the one working with you.”

“Maisie’s never seen Jane.  I keep the dog in my own personal quarters.”

“You don’t think she’s ever snuck in, had a look around?”

His “no” was emphatic, even irritated.  And a little loud.  But a PI’s gotta ask what a PI’s gotta ask.

“I was just asking.”

He said, “I get it.  I know as well as you do, Jane needs to be dead or he’ll try again.  She should be dead now.  But she isn’t.”

“How long before she can move around?”

“Not for a long time, Sam.  You want her to sniff someone, you’ll have to bring that someone to her, not her to him.”

“Right.”

I now needed to do two things.  I had to talk to Mrs. Willingford, privately.  Then I had to go have a talk with a fella who was by now wondering if he should make a run for it, or just sit tight until things blew over.

First time I met Mrs. Willingford, getting her alone seemed as easy as playing chess with Lino Morelli.  Now it was as hard as playing chess with Lino Morelli.  Playing with Lino was painful.  It hurt to sit and wait for a guy so dumb.  Mrs. Willingford was as far from dumb as Lino was from smart.  Tonight she was busy.  Once she was sure Maine Chance wasn’t taking any more chances, that every track official she could find had a piece of her mind, she was off to her own barn, me following like maybe Jane would one day follow me.

Fleeting Fancy was asleep.  Her groom was asleep.  All the dim lights in her shed row were on.

It was one in the morning and it was now or never.

I got in her way.  It was the first time we’d made eye contact since I don’t know when.  “You think you know,” I said, “don’t you?  You think you know who’s doing all this.  Just like you knew what had to happen tonight to make the whole nasty thing a sure bet.  Or as near as.”

“You bet your ass, I know.  Just like I figure you know who tried to dope Ace Admiral.  So go catch the bastard while I wake up the Racing Secretary and scratch Fancy.”

I was ten feet away before I turned back.  “Why are you scratching Fleeting Fancy?”

“I’ll make you a deal.”

“OK.”

“You catch the killer and I’ll tell you why I’m taking Fancy out of the Travers.”

Chapter 39

A room came with Carroll’s security job, one even smaller than mine back in Stapleton.  But it had a better view: the backstretch of the Saratoga racecourse.

I figured Carroll Goose was too dumb to make a run for it.  He probably thought all he was doing was a job for some guy, a nasty job, true, illegal for sure, but it paid and was nothing to work up a sweat about.  So it went haywire, so what?  But I could of figured wrong.  Goose wasn’t smart, but like all men, from top to bottom, there’s a built-in sense of survival, a sense that yells: hey, slub, you’re in danger here.

So maybe Goose
would
make a run for it.

But first he’d go back to his room for his things.  People do that, and that’s where people go wrong.  I’d learned that one with Lino.  Police drive directly to your house or your room or your shack or your cave.  They send another unit to your mother’s house.  Or your girlfriend’s house.  Or your ex-wife’s.  And so do the bad guys.  Never go back.  Cut your losses and leave.

Carroll Goose went back.

When I got there, the door to his room was closed.  I expected that.  But it wasn’t locked.  I also expected that.  So I walked right in.  Goose wasn’t there, but he had been.  Probably got there right after he lost me—which was right after I stepped on whatever I stepped on.