Authors: Ki Longfellow
He showed me his watch. Pretty nice watch.
“Plus, I saw him and it wasn’t some fake. Why should he fake? Who could fake that loud? Yet that old man in the rowboat found him face down without a snorkel at 4:45 a.m. That’s gotta mean he gets up immediately he’s asleep, not to mention me being asleep a foot away and I don’t notice a thing, gets his trunks on, doesn’t take a towel, they didn’t find no towel, doesn’t drive to the lake which he can’t make in that kind of time without his car, and which is hard enough to do even in something like some of these rich dames drive, and somehow winds up dead all in less than 15 minutes. You tell me how that could happen?”
Chapter 17
I stood there in Mash’s crummy room looking down at Mash who was looking up at me. Truth was, he’d just described a magic trick. Even if it was an accident, how the hell did Manny get found dead in a lake before he had time to get to it?
This was looking like a case for Sherlock Holmes, or at least someone with more brains than I had.
Inside and out, Saratoga Springs was beginning to get hot and the heat was creating a lot of humidity. The town was water water everywhere: lakes, springs, rivers, and all that water was mixing with the air. Time to stop wearing a hat and tie. Time for a sport shirt and loafers. Or maybe a pair of swim trunks. Only I didn’t bring any.
So I walked around the room with Mash and I sweated for a while thinking about how Manny Walker could be sound asleep in bed at the Saratoga race track one minute and then floating in pond weed fifteen minutes later. For the life of me, I couldn’t work it out.
Mash had finished the pint of rye. I could tell if he had another bottle, he’d be working on that one. But he didn’t, so he played with the empty he had. Rubbing it like Aladdin’s lantern, sticking his finger in it, then pulling it out. That much booze in his system, I would of thought he’d be cockeyed, but he seemed sober as a nightclub bouncer. Even so, the kid was beginning to get on my nerves.
“You expect to ride full of hootch?”
“No one kills me, I can ride any old way.”
Before they fully formed, I banished the voices I suddenly heard in my head.
We’ll get the little bastards.
No one can kill me. No one can kill my horse
. Until we ourselves killed our horses for food, horses that had gallantly carried us to victory against the first Japanese attempt against Bataan. For about a second, I came close to lapping up Mash’s spilled hootch. I had a lot of bad memories—the Bataan Death March for instance—but coming
this
close to making that march myself took the prize for bad memories. “That’s good to hear. Now how about Babe Duffy? You think he really choked to death on his lunch? Or McBartle. He drives into a tree completely sober and never even tries to brake?”
Mash hadn’t stopped pacing for a minute. When he answered, he was behind the straight backed chair I started out suffering on. “I don’t know. I don’t know. All I know is all three of ‘em had mounts in the Travers and now they don’t. And I didn’t have a mount in the Travers and now I do. The trainer of Hornet’s Nest asked my agent for me. He had to ask George—”
“George Labold.” I wasn’t asking. I was just thinking out loud.
“Yeah, him. So I get the ride ‘cause the leading jocks are already booked—or dead. And as for McBartle’s Court’n Spark, George had to actually dig up a jockey who’d gone and retired. Jimmy Sparkle, a great rider.”
“Damn. I remember Sparkle. He won practically everything in his time.”
“You said it. And he can still win.”
“Labold’s McBartle’s agent too?”
“Uhuh. But Manny was up on Fleeting Fancy and Fleeting Fancy is as good as they come. She can beat the colts most anytime. Like that big filly, Gallorette, the one Kirkland just rode even though they had her weighted down like they think she’s Beldame or somethin’. But as for Fleeting Fancy, her people ain’t found their rider yet. You can bet every kid like me from here to California is begging for that ride.”
I thought of the boy with the moon in his eyes I saw standing looking at Fancy when I was doing the exact same thing. What was his name? Toby something or other. No longer a bug boy, but a legit jock.
“Anyway, you’d think all this was a great break for me. You know, Babe Duffy losing the mount I now got, but somehow it makes me sick in the guts. It don’t smell right and I couldn’t say why. Which is why I’m here. I ain’t hanging around the track unless I got to ride, and I’m gone as soon as I win or lose.”
Mash threw himself on the lumpy bed which made one hell of a lot of creaking when he did it, while I did some thinking. He was right. Something not only didn’t smell right, it stank. And if Manny wasn’t an accident, then the odds were pretty good that the other two weren’t accidents either.
But if they weren’t accidents, then what were they?
Murder? Why murder three young promising jockeys?
I needed something really simple, something any cop or PI needed, and that was called a motive. I didn’t have a motive. Although I did have a glimmer of an idea how Manny could of drowned in a lake that took fifteen minutes to get to by car.
I looked around. What a location. What a room. What a chair. I didn’t envy Mash Mooney hiding out in it. But I understood it.
I finally asked the obvious question. “You’ve told the police all this?”
In return I received a look you’d see on a guy paying good money for a freak show and getting a faceful of cats with six toes. “Are you nuts? You think the cops want to hear what I got to say? This town don’t believe in murder. Besides, I
did
say it. Or at least I started to. Some badge came by later on the day Manny died and asked a question or two. I tried to answer, but right out of the gate I could tell he wasn’t listenin’, so I shut up.”
That made sense. I’d seen Lino do that a few times. Once he thought he had a case solved, it was solved. And once he thought there was no case, it disappeared. Another reason I wanted to be a PI and not a cop. Also why I hadn’t bothered any of Saratoga’s finest. I already knew this kind of thing went on. If whoever was paying for my time wanted three murders to be three accidents, then it only followed the police wanted the same thing.
I was really on my own here. Very comforting. Very Bogie.
“Listen kid. Do what you have to do. You know where I am if you need me. But right now I have to check something out.”
“You’re saying you believe me?”
“I’m saying I wish I didn’t.”
“Damn damn and double damn.” With that, he turned on his side and curled up with his empty bottle like a little kid afraid of the dark.
I left him there like that. I was a private investigator, not a babysitter.
Chapter 18
From Beekman, I caught a cab to the track. Nothing’s too far from anything else in the Spa, not if you’re only there for the racing, so there aren’t that many cabs needed, but I required all the time I could get and, what do you know, cruising Washington Street was a rare and empty cab—so I grabbed it.
I’d heard from someone who’d heard it from someone that Carl Hessing was up here running horses in a couple of the claiming races. Hessing owed me a favor. It wasn’t a big favor, but calling in any size marker on Hessing wasn’t easy. Sam Russo, Staten Island’s greatest—and only Private Eye—needed to try.
Hessing was the only guy I knew in Saratoga who had what I needed to work out how Manny Walker could get from a bed where he’d passed out stinking drunk, and into an off-track lake faster than Jesse Owens in the 100 meter dash. And how he wouldn’t wake the fuck up from the shock of it and not swim the easy three feet back to shore.
All I needed was two things. The first was a good map of Saratoga Springs. That part was easy. My little hotel gave ‘em out for free. The second part wasn’t so easy. I had to get my hands on one of Carl’s claiming horses. It didn’t have to be a world beater—which was good since Carl didn’t have any world beaters. But it did have to be agile and fearless and I had to convince Carl he’d get it back in the same shape it started out in. If not, he had to trust I’d somehow replace it with a horse of equal quality. Knowing Carl Hessing, “equal” meant he’d expect me to show up with Exterminator.
All Carl cared about were
his
horses. Nothing sentimental about it. Carl was a mercenary. If a nag was never in the money, he sold said nag to a slaughter house. I never got round to hating people. Hate took too much energy. But I disliked a lot of ‘em. I disliked Carl Hessing like I disliked the Zawadzkis.
Standing there, looking at the condition of his animals, I got to disliking him more than the Zawadzkis. Flo and Mister were nuts. Carl was a snake.
Too bad. I needed him.
It took half an hour to persuade him. I told him how good I’d once been as his exercise rider. And I had been. Exercising a horse took skill. Horses would lean on the bit. Or they’d buck. Or they’d lug in or lug out, tossing their heads. Sometimes they’d jump a rail or run through an opening not big enough for them, much less for me. Carl wasn’t listening. So I threw in the charge on horseback against the Japanese at Bataan. Carl liked the war since he hadn’t seen it.
I ended up giving him ten bucks to rent what had to be War Admiral’s worst son, a dark bay gelding called Skysail.
War Admiral was not only the son of Man o’ War, he’d won the 1937 Kentucky Derby, the 1937 Preakness, the 1937 Belmont Stakes, the 1938 Whitney Handicap, and the 1938 Jockey Club Gold Cup. He lost his match race with Seabiscuit, but you can’t win ‘em all. Not even Man o’ War won ‘em all. The Admiral’s son, Skysail, started 12 times with a record of no wins, one third, and the rest out of the money. War Admiral’s get was a 5 year old gelding and rode like a kid’s soapbox cart. No one called him Skysail—a name I might of bet on back when my idea of handicapping was a “lucky” number and a name that caught my eye. I was nine.
Carl called him Abandon Ship, or Shippy for short. Shippy and I didn’t start off well. Why, I couldn’t say. Hell, I liked horses. Shippy tried bucking me off, then he tried scraping me off against the side of a barn, then knocking me off under a low hanging branch. No dice. I was still there. So he gave up, settled down, and agreed to join me on this idea I had, one I got listening to Mash Mooney.
When he rode during the Saratoga season—only twice; the kid was still so young—Manny Walker drove out the back gate of the track, along a short country road, before taking a right onto a decent dirt road through dense woods that gradually got less and less drivable, until he had to park and walk a few hundred feet to the lake of his choice. There were three of ‘em in the woods southeast of the racecourse. No matter how fast he drove and no matter if the road was paved right up to the water’s edge, he couldn’t of got there in time. Forget getting dead. He had no time for dying at all. But, if someone had gone behind the barns, opened a little used side gate in the track’s main fence, and rode through on a horse, it could of been done easily—with time to spare.
Even Shippy made the distance without half trying. We found out by doing it. If we’d wanted to go, there were narrow deer trails through the trees that could of taken us to town, to any one of the three lakes, even to the neighboring state of Vermont. All we wanted to do was canter to the right lake, mess around for a few minutes, and canter back. No one, unless they were also on the deer trail, would of seen us in full daylight, much less in the dark. It hadn’t been totally dark. I’d checked. That night, the moon had been a waning gibbous. I had to look that up. It meant the moon was still large but getting smaller. It meant there was light enough to see in the woods if a guy was careful. And a horse can see a lot better than a man can.
It took us five minutes to get to the lake. It would of taken another three or four minutes for whoever had Manny slung over his saddle to get the kid into his swim trunks so he could toss him in the drink. Manny was drunk. He’d passed out in bed. I doubt he woke up on the ride. If the shock of cold water brought him round, he’d still be drunk, disoriented and scared. He could be pushed back under until it was all over.
It didn’t matter too much how long it took his killer to get back to the track because however long it was, he was gone from the lake five minutes at least before Herb Bedwell, the old duffer out predawn rowboat fishing, paddled up. If it was me, I’d know it was a good idea to get whatever horse I used back before all the other horses and their stable-mates started to wake up—which could start as early as 5 a.m. If a horse woke up earlier, along with its stable boy or its donkey or its chicken or its goat or whatever kept it company, I’d say I’d had the horse out of his stall for an early morning walk.
That didn’t happen because if it did, you’d think someone would of said so.
Shippy and me, we learned this much: whoever was doing what they were doing was one lucky killer. You could be smart as Capablanca the chess player (though why playing chess was considered smart beats me; even I can play chess and I play it well—all it takes is the ability to think ahead and stay awake), but to kill three people, hell, to kill even one person, takes a thick dusting of luck.
What we didn’t find were tracks. But no tracks didn’t bother me too much. It was summer. The ground was hard. If anything, the hooves of the other horse would of done only what Shippy’s hooves had done: kick up the leaves. Any killer worth his salt had plenty of time and privacy to walk along the same path and brush everything back into place. As for there being no horse tracks by the edge of the lake, the killer probably stopped before he got there, then carried Manny, no bigger than a 15 year old kid and weighing no more than a hundred and fifteen pounds, tops, out onto the small dock at the edge of the water. No need to get his (or her) feet wet, no need to disturb the muck on the bottom of the lake.