by Feliz Faber
Copyright
Published by
Dreamspinner Press
5032 Capital Circle SW
Ste 2, PMB# 279
Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886
USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Thorns
Copyright © 2013 by Feliz Faber
Cover Art by Reese Dante
http://www.reesedante.com
Cover content is being used for illustrative purposes only
and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
ISBN: 978-1-62380-937-9
Digital ISBN: 978-1-62380-938-6
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
July 2013
To Eden, for unerring support and encouragement.
To Val, for playing an invaluable devil’s advocate and for providing crucial insight.
To Petra, for patiently putting up with reading first, second, third… nth drafts and for amicably kicking my three letters whenever she felt I needed it (she was always right).
It’s the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance
And it’s high time you joined in the dance
—Dan Fogelberg
“Run For The Roses”
from the album The Innocent Age (1981)
One
Los Angeles, California—Monday, January 31, 2005
FOR William “Will” Yeats (No, not related!) it all began on a smoggy Monday morning at his desk in the LA editorial office of the Flag. He’d been busy with an article about a well-known baseball trainer’s wife who left her husband for another woman when Trevor Haussman, the Flag’s chief editor, planted his voluminous behind in Will’s visitor chair. “Yeats. What do you know about gay jockeys?”
His thoughts still miles away, Will answered, “Guess they’d be rainbow-patterned. What’s the matter?”
“Nonsense! I’m not talking underwear.” Trevor slapped down the latest issue of a popular glossy magazine on Will’s keyboard and tapped it with his manicured forefinger. “Horses, cupcake. Horseracing. Take a look at that!”
Will skimmed over the article. An actor who was going to play a horse-racing jockey in his next film had recently come out as bisexual. Not particularly impressed, Will looked up. “Why’d you show me this?”
Trevor’s eyes widened behind his designer glasses. “Are you my sportswriter or not? Can’t you see a story when it bites you in the ass? Think, baby. How often have you heard about gays in horseracing? Well?”
“Come to think of it….” Will read through the article again, a bit slower this time. He shook his head.
Resting one polished Italian shoe on the knee of his tailored slacks, Trevor leaned back and tented his hands. “See? We have people coming out in all kinds of sports recently. Football, wrestling, pro tennis, swimming—you name it, we have it.” He gave a slack-wristed flourish. “But what about the gayest sport of all? Where are our brothers and sisters in horseracing?”
Staring at his chief editor, Will tried to think of an answer fast. This was clearly Trevor on one of his brainwaves again, which usually amounted to a wild goose chase for one of his scribes. Then again, Trevor’s lateral thinking provided shining—and hugely profitable—gems on occasion. Not long ago, one of his seemingly nutty investigations on the harassment of gay officers in a certain police department had made national news in the end, earning Trevor his fifteen minutes of fame on the box, which in turn had resulted in an inquiry by Congress, no less. There was a reason why the small e-zine Trevor started five years ago was now a monthly print magazine with a run of twenty-five thousand copies—at six bucks apiece, at that. Not to mention the website, which got approximately two million hits a day, or the good dozen head of permanent staff to which Will was the latest addition.
“Isn’t there a gay Olympic dressage rider?” Will offered hesitantly. “The one who is with this show jumper. They run some AIDS charity together, don’t they?”
Trevor gave him an approving smile. “I knew I hadn’t hired you only for your pretty face, Willy-boy. Yes, of course, equestrian sports are brimming with gays when it comes to show jumping and dressage. But that isn’t sexy, baby. It’s boring compared to horseracing. Just picture it!” He sat upright, gesticulating as he went on. “The adrenaline! The speed! A dozen half-ton animals thundering past the cheering crowd, making or losing fortunes in bets in a matter of minutes! And right in the thick of it those tiny, tough jockey dudes in their garish outfits. Doesn’t that give you a hard-on? If that isn’t sexy, I don’t know what is!”
Will blinked. “I didn’t know you were so much into horseracing,” he said, bringing forth a chuckle from Trevor.
“We’re all entitled our little secrets. But this isn’t my point.” He nodded at the article again. “See why they brought this up just now? This upcoming movie, it’s said to be the next big thing. My point is, I had this guy’s sweet ass hooked for an exclusive already, but top bananas bid more than I could. They stole him from me, and I’m not about to put up with that kind of shit.” He jumped to his feet and leaned in across the desk, grinning broadly into Will’s perplexed face. “I want a real queer real jockey. I want sex and scandal and drama, and you’re gonna give it to me, Willy-Boy.”
Will swallowed hard. “Why me, boss? I don’t know the first thing about horses. Let alone horseracing, for that matter.”
“Ah, come on, don’t be like this.” Trevor pouted, then smiled again, batting his lashes at Will. “Show me you’re really behind our publishing policy! Show me I had good instincts in hiring a greenhorn like you. I have yet to see that great research talent you boasted about in your application. Aren’t you from Louisville, even? You’re perfectly suited for the job. Bring me a story, the mushier, the better.” Waggling his fingers, he stood and made to leave.
“But I haven’t lived in Kentucky since I was a kid!” Will protested. Trevor turned to face him again, all put-up old fairy-queen attitude suddenly gone.
“You’d better not let me down, Yeats. Those bigwigs think the sun shines from their asses, and I’m not fond of being led a merry dance. What’s so special about an actor musing about his sex life anyway? Gay or bi actors are a dime a dozen, after all. I’ll have something better. I want something to make them gape. The human touch, that’s what people are keen on, and I’m going to give it to them. As for you—you better give me something good if you want a cover story anytime soon. The Santa Anita Derby’s in April, and May would be the Kentucky Derby. I don’t care which, but you better make one of those. Got me? You don’t have much time, baby. Use it wisely.”
A cover story after only six months on the job? Talk about motivation. Will couldn’t start early enough after that.
SINCE it was what he felt at least remotely familiar with, he decided to start his search around the Kentucky Derby. To him personally, Derby Day was mostly a shady childhood memory of his school being closed for it. Will had never cared much for horses, never been to an actual race, and he was amazed at how much he learned about his native town�
��s big annual festival through a simple Google search. However, aside from more mint julep recipes than he ever cared about knowing and pictures of funnily dressed race visitors, all he could find was information about horses, how much they’d won for their owners, at what prices they’d been sold, and to whom. There was much less data on trainers or breeders, and next to nothing about jockeys except for which horses they’d ridden.
Disheartened, he widened his search, rifling through loads and loads of online book and article excerpts, which only provided him with a gay Canadian horse trainer who had died a decade ago. Using some contacts Trevor gave him, Will made his way through calling several national horse-racing periodicals next, which brought him another bucketful of outlandish knowledge but nothing useful. There didn’t seem to be much human-touch gossip in the horse-racing world apart from the usual crap centered around horse-owning celebrities.
Finally, after a week of fruitless research, Will hit pay dirt on Friday afternoon in the form of Teddy Sampson, a retired scribe from a Louisville local paper.
“You’re looking for what? A queer jockey? Um, if that doesn’t ring a bell…. Lemme find my notes,” the rusty voice on the other end of the telephone line drawled. Will heard paper rustling, the sound of ring binders being opened. “When was that again, in the eighties? Oh yeah, the race that filly won, Winning Colors. Sweet little girl, balls the size of melons. Outran all those colts… eighty-eight, yes, that’s it, the 114th Derby. Anyhow, there was some kinda scandal too, something with a colt that shouldn’t’ve run and did anyway. Croaked, yes, he did. Trainer blamed his own assistant, or was it the jockey? Didn’t I write about that? Something with a song…. Melody, yes, that’s the name. Melody something or other,” he said contentedly.
“The jockey was a woman?” Will asked, eliciting a snort from Sampson.
“No, boy, of course not! The colt was called Melody! Who’d be dumb enough to let a woman ride in the Derby?”
From what Will had learned during the past week, he could have said a thing or two to that, but it would’ve been pearls before swine, most likely. “You just said something about a scandal,” he reminded the old man instead.
“Getting to that. Soon as you stop buttin’ in,” Sampson muttered, accompanied by more paper-rustling. Determined to remain patient, Will kept his mouth shut.
“That race was a big deal, y’know? With a filly winning it and all. ’S why anything else that happened kinda went unnoticed. Like that dead colt, Melody, and he’d actually been a favorite.” Sampson’s voice became firmer as he obviously backed his memories up with notes. “Ah, there it is. He was owned by some Whisky distillery, trained by Art Carrick, from Rainway Stables. The whole thing caused him a lot of trouble—Carrick, I mean. Cost him a shitload of money, the nag, what with the insurance company refusing to pay or something. Well. Where was I?”
“The Derby. A horse named Melody,” Will prompted. Sampson harrumphed.
“Brian’s Melody. That was his name. That horse was bad luck, I say, should’ve guessed with a name like this. Bernie was supposed to ride him, Bernie McCall, but he broke his arm in Keeneland three weeks before the Derby, and they had to find a replacement. There was this assistant trainer Carrick had at that time, some Frenchman…. Peters?” More page-turning. “No, not Peters, it was Pet… Pit…. Damn crackjaw name. No wonder they called him Frenchy. Anyway, the replacement jockey he and Carrick came up with was a Frenchman too, and not half-bad, actually. Won the prep race, and Carrick hired him for the Derby on the spot. Everything looked golden until the rumors started.” Sampson chuckled. “That’s where your sort comes into play. Reckon you’re a queer, too? Coming out of the woodwork everywhere these days, aren’t you? No offense,” he added hastily.
“None taken,” Will said evenly, even though he rather felt like slamming the receiver down at that point. “Please, go on.”
“Where was I? Ah, yes. That jockey, word was he had a thing going on with that Frenchy guy, which was how he got the ride in Keeneland in the first place. Nothing was ever proven, of course, or they’d have been laid off, the whole shebang, ’cause that would’ve been bribery. My editor wouldn’t let me come clear about them being cocksuckers; had to gloss it over some, but I bet my left nut they were.”
The old man paused with a sigh, and Will held his breath, biting his lip from the effort to keep silent and let Sampson tell his tale.
“Didn’t matter in the end, since everything went tits-up for them anyway,” Sampson went on, livelier now as if he saw the scene play again in front of his inner eye. Will felt as if he were listening to a sportscaster. “The horses line up for the warm-up, and there’s Frenchy, turning up out of the blue and putting out word that Melody’s scratched. The odds plummet like crazy, but then Carrick comes running and makes them put the horse back in. The horses go their warm-up round and step into the starting gates. The bell rings, and they’re off! Melody makes good pace for about thirty seconds and then just folds, and half the field goes over him. I honestly thought both horse and rider had bitten the dust, but the jockey came off with hardly a scratch. The horse was a goner, though. Turned out he’d broken his hind leg, and they put him down right there on the track. A shame.” He fell silent. Will waited, listening to the muffled rustling on Sampson’s end.
Just when Will opened his mouth to say something, Sampson let out a triumphant whoop. “Ha! I knew I had it somewhere. When I wrote that article, they were still busy throwing blames at each other, Carrick, Frenchy, and the horse’s owners. Far as I know, the mess was never wholly sorted out. All the same, Carrick got a fine, and the other two were banned nationally afterwards. Served them right.”
“What were they banned for? Because the horse broke down? I can’t quite believe that,” Will protested. “I’ve read about these things. A horse looks perfectly normal, and then, boom, some bone gives under the stress of the race. So what do you think it was?”
“Make an educated guess,” the old man groused. “Trainer’s supposed to know if his horse’s fit for racing. And if he doesn’t, the jockey’s supposed to pick up on the tells, that’s what warm-up rounds are for. Hard to pay attention to a horse if you’d rather play hide the sausage.”
Too much. “What the—” Only just in time Will remembered the old man was the best source he had so far—the only one, actually—and he toned it down to a sharp “What was that you said?” So what if Sampson heard him bristle. Asshole.
To his surprise, Sampson’s answer sounded somewhat amused. “You asked what I thought, sonny. No law says you gotta like it.”
Will’s knuckles turned white from how hard he clutched the receiver. Only source, he reminded himself. Unfazed, Sampson went on. “Tell you what, young shaver. You know what it’s all about—horseracing, I mean? It’s all about money, that’s what. So if a jockey’s too busy checking out the ass of the guy riding in front of him to take proper care of the money I backed his horse with, I care. Unless he doesn’t have anyone else riding in front of him. In which case I couldn’t care less.”
He paused again. Glass clicked against teeth.
“Right,” Will said curtly. “Go on, please.”
“Try’n stop me.” After another slurp, Sampson resumed. “Word was, they were all in cahoots together and did it for betting fraud. Word was, they orchestrated the whole thing. They could’ve gotten away with it, even, if Frenchy hadn’t gotten cold feet at the last minute and cooked up that stink. Guess he was afraid his precious piece of ass could get hurt. Pity for Carrick, though. I say’t was them pair of fags all the way, and it was Carrick’s shitty luck got him tangled into their mess. Then again, come to think of it, who knows? Maybe he was deeper into the whole thing than he let out, if you know what I mean.” His last words were accompanied by a dirty chuckle.
Will’s jaws hurt from the effort to keep a civil tone. “You don’t happen to have a copy of your article handy, do you?”
“Why yes, sure I do,” Sampson said cheerfully. “Yo
u’ll want my original draft, though—piece wasn’t worth the paper after my editor had at it with the red pen, may he rot in hell. They didn’t even print the pictures I took. Do you want them, too?”
Did he want pictures? Of course he did. Who knew, they might even be worth putting up with the old bastard. “Yes, please,” he said, trying to sound not too eager. “Wait, I’ll give you my e-mail address….”
“E-mail?” Sampson cackled. “Wouldn’t do me any good, sonny, I ain’t got a computer. We didn’t need that newfangled crap in my times. Don’t you kids use faxes anymore?”
A homophobe and a technophobe. What next? Barely suppressing an annoyed sigh, Will dictated the Flag’s fax number to Sampson.
Once they were done clearing the formalities, Will asked, “Do you happen to know what became of them after they were banned, the trainer and the jockey?”
“No, and I don’t give a flying monkey’s. Perhaps they let the likes of them ride in Europe, I wouldn’t know. All right, then, I’ll fax you anything I have on the matter.”
Will issued his thanks, bringing forth another chuckle from the older man. “No, thank you, sonny. ’T was sure nice dusting off the old stuff with someone. Keep me in the loop, will you?”
Dream on, old fart. Will would’ve loved to voice that sentiment, but he gritted his teeth and kept his tone polite. Only fucking lead, damn you. For the time being, at least. “Yes, sure, and thanks again,” Will said, ending the call. Then he jumped from his chair and did a little dance regardless of the bemused looks his coworkers shot him.
He could see a story when it bit him in the ass, after all, and he’d be damned if this one wasn’t cover-worthy.
THE pictures weren’t much to speak of. Sampson’s disgruntlement aside, Will could see why a photo editor wouldn’t have printed them. One was a bland picture of a dark horse grazing in a paddock, the other a grainy shot of the dead horse’s bulk on the ground, saddle still attached, with some people in the background. However, when Will took a closer look at the second picture, two shadowy figures caught his attention. A magnifying glass helped him identify two men, one much taller than the other, embracing so closely they almost appeared as one. Thoughtfully, Will put the picture back and turned to the news cutting.