The Trojan Colt (24 page)

“This is Officer Paxton, sir,” she said.

A handsome man in his late forties or early fifties with a head of wavy gray hair stood up. “Thanks, Linda,” he said in a voice that had the faintest trace of a Southern accent. “I'll take it from here.”

She nodded and left without a word, closing the door behind her.

“Have a seat, Lieutenant,” he said, indicating a comfortable chair opposite his desk. “Or is it Captain?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Neither,” I replied. “I'm not a cop; I'm a private detective. I can show you my license if you'd like.”

“I don't think that'll be necessary, as long as we're not being arrested.”

“You're not,” I assured him.

“All right, Mr. Paxton.”

“Eli,” I said.

“All right, Eli. And I'm Jason. What can I do for you?”

I pulled the photo Chessman had sent to Billy Paulson of himself and Tyrone out of the envelope and laid it on his desk. “Do you recognize this picture?”

He studied it for a moment, then looked up, frowning. “Should I?”

“That's what I'm asking you.”

“I don't want to sound careless or uninterested, Eli,” he said, “but we get hundreds of photos in every week. Between races and ads, we probably run close to eighty, maybe even more in the summer, in each issue of the magazine.”

“Take a good look,” I said. “Take as long as you need.”

He stared at it intently. “It looks like the sales topper, that Trojan colt, but I don't know if I've seen this particular photo before. I don't recognize the young man who's holding him.”

“The groom's name is Billy Paulson,” I said, making very sure not to say that it was Billy Paulson, in the past tense. “Let me ask you one more question about it. Why do you think it's the Trojan colt?”

“Right conformation, right color, and the scar is a dead giveaway.”

“I agree,” I said.

He looked puzzled. “And that's it?”

“Not quite,” I said. I pulled the December issue out of the envelope, opened it to the page I'd marked by folding its upper corner, and pushed it across the desk to him. “How about this one?”

“Same colt,” he said instantly.

“You're sure?”

He nodded his head. “Hell, I think it's even the same photo, except that the groom's been cut out.”

“I think it's the same photo, too,” I said. “Would you have a copy of the photo on file here?”

“Certainly. If not the actual photo, than a high-resolution scan of it. We keep every photo that comes in here.” A quick smile. “Thanks to computers, what used to fill four storage rooms now fits in one tower and a couple of externals.”

“And you don't see anything peculiar about the photo you ran?”

He looked again and shook his head. “Not a bit,” he said easily. “Look, Eli, if a world-famous trainer like Todd Pletcher or Bob Baffert was at the other end of the rope, of course we'd have left him in, but no one wants to see a kid who just rubs down the horse.”

I shook my head impatiently. “That's not what I'm talking about. Look again.”

Kent looked and shrugged. “Same picture, absolutely.”

“But in the magazine the scar's on the right side of his neck, and in the original it's on the left side,” I half-yelled.

“Is that what this is all about?” he asked with a smile.

“Absolutely.”

“I can see that an explanation is in order,” he said.

I nodded my head. “It sure as hell is,” I said. “I want to know why you reversed the photo.”

He frowned. “Reversed?” he repeated, and then seemed to relax again. “Let me initiate you into the terminology of the publishing business, Eli. Reverse would be to change something that was white on black to something that was black on white. What we did with this photo was to flop it. That's the term: to flop an image. Right becomes left, left becomes right.”

“You make it sound like it's a standard practice,” I said.

“It is.”

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, no disrespect, but a horse is a horse. Who cares which way he's facing?”

“Mr. Geller—he's our publisher—cares,” answered Kent. “It's our policy—well, his policy, which makes it our policy—that whenever possible the horse should be looking off the page, to the open spaces, which he's theoretically going to run through any second. So if he's on a left-hand page, he faces left, and if he's on a right-hand page, he faces right. We try not to have him facing the middle of the magazine; no wide open spaces there.”

I thumbed through the magazine, and in another three pages I found a horse on a left-hand page racing hell for leather toward the center of the magazine.

“Then explain this, please,” I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice.

He looked at it and smiled.

“What do you see, Eli?”

“Same as you,” I said. “I see a horse and jockey crossing the finish line and heading right for the middle of the magazine.”

“You see a filly with the number ‘4' on her saddlecloth winning the Santa Ynez Stakes at Santa Anita. We try to have them all look off into the distance beyond the magazine, but we run dozens of photos of races, and it would look damned silly to flop the photo if it meant we flopped the saddlecloth number and the figures on the tote board in the infield. Even Mr. Geller understands there are limitations to flopping photos.”

I thought about what he said. I was about to apologize for taking up his time and was preparing to go back to square one of the whole damned problem, when something else occurred to me.

“You say you have the original photo, a duplicate of this one”—I indicated Billy's photo—“on file here?”

“Yes.”

“Probably on your computer?”

“Definitely on our computer.”

“Would it be flopped?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, it would be preserved exactly the way it came in. If this colt goes out and wins the Derby or the Breeders' Cup, we may do a retrospective of him, but we can't know now whether he'll be on an odd-numbered or even-numbered page.”

“I see,” I said. “I have one last favor to ask. Can you pull up the original and make absolutely sure it was the same as the one I brought in, that indeed you flopped it?”

“I can tell you right now that it'll be the same,” he said, and I caught a little annoyance creeping into his voice. “I don't know what grand conspiracy you were imagining, but I assure you again that there is absolutely nothing unusual about flopping a photo of a horse, a dog, a Playmate, anything where the flopping doesn't make the viewer do a double-take, such as when letters or numbers are included.”

“I know, and I believe you,” I said. “But if I can just see it, I'll be out of your hair forever.”

He grimaced and sighed. “All right. It'll take a couple of minutes.”

He reached for the issue, got the date from the cover, picked up his phone, and punched in some numbers.

“Hello, Bill?” he said. “This is Jason. In the December 23rd issue we ran a spread of photos on potential auction yearlings from the first crops of Trojan and Morpheus. Print out the photo of Bigelow's Trojan colt, the one who just topped the sale, and bring it in, would you, please? Yes, right away, thanks.”

He hung up the phone and looked at me, not without a degree of pity.

“I'm sorry to destroy your big case for you,” he said. “You saw the flopped photo and thought someone ran a ringer through the sales ring.” He shook his head. “Too bad. It would have made a helluva story.”

A minute later a young black man entered the office with a sheet of paper and laid it on Kent's desk.

“Thanks, Bill,” said Kent.

“Anything else?” asked Bill.

“No, that'll be it.”

The young man left the office. Kent looked at the printout of the photo and passed it across the desk to me.

“Same photo,” he said. “Facing the same way as your photo, with the same kid holding him in the same pose. Satisfied?”

I gave him a huge grin. “More than satisfied,” I said. “Elated.”

He looked puzzled. “I don't follow you, Eli,” he said. “What do you think you know that I don't know?”

I kept grinning. “Tell me again why there are some photos you can't flop.”

“Like I said, if they've got letters or numbers, they come out backward.”

I tossed the current issue of
Thoroughbred Weekly
onto his desk. “Tell me what you see.”

“The Trojan colt. Scar's on the right side, so we probably flopped it again. There are less people off to the right, so we had him look that way.”

“You didn't flop it,” I told him.

“What makes you think not?”

I pointed to the “213” on his hip.

“If the scar is on his left side, those numbers would be flopped too—and they're not,” I said. “You ever hear of a scar migrating from one side of a horse's neck to another?”

He picked up the magazine and held it side-by-side with the photo.

“Well, I'll be damned!” he muttered.

Kent was silent for a long minute as the revelation sank in. Finally he came back to life.

“My God, Eli, what a story you've uncovered! Even before we print it, I've got to talk to the TOBA—that's the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association—and tell them what's happened! Oh, and Fasig-Tipton! They've got to know too!”

“They'll all know,” I assured him. “But not yet.”

He stared at me. “I can't keep something like this quiet. I mean, you're talking about a three-million-dollar scam!”

“That's just the tip of the iceberg,” I said.

He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

“There is almost certainly a murder connected with this, and probably two,” I explained. “You've got to keep this quiet until I can piece together the evidence I need to nail the killer.”

“Eli, this is more than my profession,” said Kent. “The racing industry is my life. I can't stand by quietly now that I'm aware of what may be the biggest single fraud ever perpetrated on it! They have to be informed, to be warned!”

“It should just be for a few more days,” I said. “But if word gets out that we know what happened, the people I'm after are going to start running. And off the record, they've already started shooting.”

His face reflected his indecision. “I don't know . . .” he began.

I could sympathize with him. He wasn't looking to beat his competition for a Pulitzer Prize. He was concerned with the integrity of the industry he loved and to which he'd devoted his life.

“All right,” I said. “I gave you the story of the decade. Now I want you to do me a favor.”

“What?” he asked suspiciously.

“Come for a ten-minute ride with me.”

“Where?”

“I'm cooperating with the cops at a local police station. You know nothing about me, and you probably distrust my motives, or maybe you think I'm out for some personal glory, and I'm probably not going to convince you otherwise by myself. But if the Lexington police explain why this has to be kept secret for a few more days, that we are after more than a crooked consignor, and that we'll give you all the details first when we break the case, will you listen to them?”

He stared at me for a minute, then got to his feet. “Let's go.”

He stopped by the reception desk to explain that he'd be gone for an hour, and then we went out to the parking lot. I led him to the Camry. He took one look and walked over to a silver Lincoln.

“Let's use this one,” he suggested.

I had no problem with that, and a moment later we were on our way to “my” police station, passing two others along the way. He tried to start a conversation about the upcoming weekend races, and when that didn't work, about which European horses figured to ship here for the Breeders' Cup races in the fall, and when that didn't work either, he began diagnosing the strengths and weaknesses of the Kentucky Wildcats'—excuse me: Big Blue's—basketball team. I began to get the distinct impression that he lived, breathed, ate, and slept horse racing and beyond that was interested in very little else.

We pulled into the police station and got out of the car. We entered the building and were greeted by Bernice.

“Hi, Eli,” she said.

“Bernice, this is Jason Kent, the editor of the
Thoroughbred Weekly
. Is Lou in?”

“Yes.”

“And alone?”

“I think so, yes.”

“We'd like to see him.”

“You know the way,” she said.

“You've been involved in this too,” I said. “I'd be happy to have you in there.”

“You go ahead,” she said. “I'll be along in a minute or two, as soon as I get someone to watch the desk here.”