Hooligans

by William Diehl

  "How's he doing?" I yelled, unable to make one horse from the other on the backstretch.

  "Off the rail and fourth going into the turn," Callahan yelled. "Got a bad break coming out of the gate . . . making up for it . . . Scoot's laying it on . . . on the outside now, moving into third. Scoot isn't letting him out full yet . . . passing the three-quarter post . . . Scoot still holding him back . . . running him to win, all right. Not gonna let him out until the stretch . . . there he goes into third place . . . he's moving for the inside now . . . "

  I could see the horses clearly as they came around the clubhouse turn. Disaway was running hard, challenging the two horse, Johnny's Girl. I could feel the excitement of the crowd as they started down the last five hundred yards.

  Callahan continued his running commentary.

  "He's on the rail now . . . pushing for second. He's a nose out of second place now . . . and Scoot's letting him out! Look at that horse go! Damn, does he like that mud . . . "

  Disaway nosed past the two horse and challenged the leader. I could feel the thunder of their hoofs as they stormed toward the finish line, the jockeys' livid colors splattered with mud.

  Callahan's voice began to rise as he, too, was caught up in the excitement of the finish.

  "Disaway's going for it. They're neck and neck coming down the stretch, and there he goes, he's pulling away, he's got the lead by a head and romping."

  Suddenly Callahan stopped for a second, and then he cried out, "Jesus!"

  As they approached the wire, Disaway suddenly swerved away from the rail and headed diagonally across the track, his left front leg dangling crazily as he made the erratic move. The two horse behind him tried to cut inside but it was too late. They collided, hard, neck on neck. Disaway was thrown back toward the rail as the two horse went down, chin into dirt, rolling over its hapless jockey. Disaway was totally out of control and Impastato was trying vainly to keep him on his feet, but the three horse was charging for the wire and they hit with a sickening thud. Scoot Impastato was vaulted from the saddle, spinning end over end into the rail, followed immediately by Disaway. The rail shattered and Disaway, Impastato, the three horse and jockey, and the horse behind it all went down in a horrifying jumble of legs and torsos and racing colors and mud.

  The crowd shrieked in horror.

  Then, just as suddenly, it was deathly still.

  From the infield I heard a voice cry out, "Get him off me, please get him off me!"

  One of the horses was trying to get up, its legs scrambling in the dirt.

  One of the three jocks was on his knees, clawing at his safety helmet.

  The two horse and rider were as still as death in midtrack.

  Sirens. An ambulance. People running across the infield.

  The place was chaotic.

  "Let's get the hell over there," Callahan said, and we jumped the rail and headed for the infield.

  57

  RAINES GETS TOUGH

  It was a bizarre sight: Disaway was spread out on an enormous metal table, three legs askew, his head dangling awkwardly over one side, his bulging eyes terrified in death, his foreleg split wide open and its muscles and tendons clamped back, revealing the shattered bone. The vet, whose name was Shuster and who was younger than I had pictured him, a short man in his midthirties who had lost most of his hair, was leaning over the leg with a magnifying glass, and Callahan, dressed in a white gown, was leaning right along with him. Both gowns were amply bloodstained. I walked to within three or four feet and watched and listened, keeping my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open.

  So far, two horses were dead, a third might have to be destroyed, and two jockeys were in the hospital, Scoot Impastato with a fractured skull and a broken leg.

  "I've never seen a break quite this bad," Shuster was saying.

  "The other horses could've done some damage when they ran over him," Callahan answered.

  "I think not. The pastern bone broke inward here . . . and here. No chips or other evidence of impact. This is what interests me. See? Right here and then down here, at the bottom of the break."

  Callahan leaned closer and nodded.

  "Yeah. Maybe it splintered when the bone broke."

  "Maybe . . . "

  Shuster took a pair of micrometers and leaned back over the carcass.

  "Less than half a millimeter," he said. He took a scalpel and scraped something from the edge of the fractured bone into a test tube.

  "Calcium?" Callahan said.

  "We'll see."

  "Butes did this," Callahan said.

  "I'd have to agree. The horse was coming up lame. He should have been scratched."

  "What was the trainer's excuse for dosing him?"

  "Runny nose."

  "Yeah, ran all the way down his leg."

  "I couldn't argue," Shuster said apologetically. "It's a perfectly legitimate excuse."

  "Nobody's blaming you. This isn't the first time a pony with a bad leg has been Buted up."

  The door opened behind me and Harry Raines came in. His kelly-green steward's jacket seemed out of place in the sterile white room, but my rumpled sports jacket didn't add anything either.

  A barrage of emotions hit me the instant he entered the room. In forty-one years I had never made love to another man's wife, and suddenly I was standing ten feet away from a man whom I had dishonored and toward whom I felt resentment and anger. I wanted to disappear, I felt that uncomfortable when he entered.

  I had a fleeting thought that perhaps he knew about Doe and me, that maybe one of the Tagliani gang had anonymously informed on us. Too many people either knew or had guessed about us, Harry Nesbitt had made that clear to me. I almost expected Raines to point an accusing finger at me, perhaps draw an "A" on my forehead with his fountain pen. I could feel sweat popping out of my neck around my collar and for an instant I blamed Doe for my discomfort, transferring my anger and jealously to her because she had married him.

  All that in just a moment, and then the feelings vanished when I got a good look at him. I was shocked at what I saw. He seemed not as tall as when I had seen him at the track two days earlier, as if he were being crushed by an invisible weight. His face was drawn and haggard, his office pallor had changed to a pasty gray. Dark circles underlined his eyes. The man seemed to have aged a dozen years in two days.

  Is he really the success-driven robot others have made him out to be? I wondered. He looked more like a man hanging over a cliff, waiting for the rope to break.

  Quite suddenly he no longer threatened me.

  My fears were unfounded. He didn't pay any attention to me at first. He was more concerned with the dead horse. When he did notice me, he was simply annoyed and somewhat perplexed by my presence.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, looking at Callahan as he said it, as if he didn't think I knew the answer.

  "That's Jake Kilmer. We're working on this thing together" was all the big cop told him.

  "Jake, this is Harry Raines." That seemed to satisfy Raines who dismissed it from his mind. If he recognized my name he didn't show it. He turned his attention back to the business at hand. "I don't mean to push you, Doc. Did he just break a leg?"

  "Two places. He was also on Butes."

  "What!"

  "He had a cold."

  "According to who?"

  "Thibideau."

  "Damn it!" Raines snapped, and his vehemence startled me.

  "Uh, there could be something else," Callahan said. He came over to us and took off the gown. "There's a crack in the pastern leading out of the fracture. It appears to be slightly calcified, which means it's been there a while. A few days, at least."

  "So it wasn't a cold."

  "I'm telling you this because Doc here can't say anything until he finishes his tests. But I'd say this animal was on Butazolidin because he was gimpy after the race on Sunday."

  "Where did you get that information?"

  "The jock, Impastato. But he didn't have anything
to do with this I don't think. He quit Thibideau Sunday because he'd been made to break the horse out at the five-eighths and the horse was strictly a stretch runner, which is another reason he lost Sunday."

  "The trainer's Smokey Barton, right?"

  Callahan nodded.

  "He'll go to the wall for this."

  "It's done a lot," Callahan said.

  "Not at this track," Raines growled. "Not anymore."

  Shuster went back to work and Callahan nodded for me to follow him out of the room. We went outside and leaned against the side of the building in the hot afternoon sun. Callahan didn't say anything. A few moments later Raines came out.

  Callahan said, "Mr. Raines, think we need to talk."

  Raines cocked his head to one side for a beat or two and then said, "Here?"

  "Preferably not."

  "My office then. We'll go in my car."

  He drove around the track without saying a word and parked in his marked stall. We took the elevator to the top floor of the stadium, then headed down a broad, cool hallway to his office.

  It was a large room, dark-paneled and decorated completely in antiques, down to the leatherbound volumes in its recessed bookcases. Ordinarily the room would have been dark and rather oppressive, except that the entire wall facing us as we walked in was of tinted glass and overlooked the track. The effect was both startling and elegant.

  His desk was genuine something-or-other and was big enough to play basketball on. Executives in Doomstown seemed to have a penchant for big desks. This one was covered with memorabilia. It sat to one side and was angled so that Raines could see the track and conduct business at the same time. The view was breathtaking.

  There were three paintings on the walls, two Remingtons and a Degas, all originals. There were only two photographs in the room, both on his desk. One was a black-and-white snapshot of an older couple I guessed were his mother and father. The other one was a color photograph of Doe, cheek to cheek with a black horse who must have been Firefoot.

  I had a hard time keeping my eyes off her.

  "Is this going to call for a drink?" Raines asked.

  Callahan hesitated for a moment or two and then said, "I could do with a bit of brandy, thanks."

  "Kilmer?"

  "Sounds good to me," I said.

  The wet bar was hidden behind mahogany shutters that swung away with a touch. Raines took down three snifters that looked as fragile as dewdrops and poured generous shots from a bottle that was old enough to have served the czar. The brandy burned the toes off my socks.

  "Have a seat and tell me what's on your mind," he said in a flat, no-nonsense voice.

  The leather sofa was softer than any bed I'd been in lately. He sat behind his desk with a sigh and rubbed his eyes.

  I was beginning to like him in spite of myself. I had remembered him as just another football jock, but Raines had about him the charisma of authority, even as weary as he seemed to be. He dominated the office, not an easy thing to do considering the view.

  "This thing with Disaway," said Callahan, "it goes a little deeper than splitting a foreleg because of Butes."

  Raines swirled his brandy around, took a whiff, then a sip, and waited.

  "Disaway was favored to win a race this past Sunday—"

  "He dragged in eighth," Raines said, cutting him off.

  "Yeah, right, well, we have what I would call very reliable information that the race was fixed for Disaway to lose. Would you say the information is good, Jake?"

  "I'd say it's irrefutable," I said.

  The muscles in Raines' jaws got the jitters.

  "I can't tell you exactly how it was done," Callahan went on. "Probably cut back his feed for a couple of days and overworked him a little, raced him a little too much, then probably gave him a bag of oats and a bucket of water a couple of hours before the race and he was lucky to make the finish line. But there's no doubt that he was meant to lose. Money was made on it."

  "By who?" Raines demanded.

  Callahan hesitated for several moments. He was in a tight spot. To tell Raines about the recording was to admit that there was an illegal tape in Tagliani's house.

  "I'm sorry, sir," Callahan said, firmly but pleasantly, "I can't tell you that. Not right now. The thing is, it worked as a double. He lost so big Sunday, his odds were way up for today's race."

  "He went off at about fifteen to one," Raines said. He took another sip of brandy but his dark eyes never left Callahan's face.

  "That's right, but he was posting $33.05 until a few minutes before post time. According to your man at the hundred-dollar window, a bundle was laid off on him just before the bell and his odds dipped to $26.00 and change."

  "Do you know who placed the bundle?" Raines asked.

  Callahan shook his head. "It was several people, spread across both windows."

  "Who was responsible?"

  "Could've been anybody from the groom to the owner. Thing is, sir, we can't prove any of this. Except we know the loss on Sunday was fixed."

  "We can prove the horse was dosed with Butes," Raines said angrily.

  "Yeah," said Callahan, "except it isn't against the law in this state."

  "Well, it's going to be," stormed Raines. "I've always been against the use of Butazolidin on any horse up to forty-eight hours before a race. I know horses, Callahan."

  "I know that," the big man answered.

  "But I don't know the kind of people that fix horse races and you do. I need some proof to use on Thibideau so this won't happen again."

  I decided to break in at this point. Callahan was playing it too close to the vest.

  "Mr. Raines, Pancho here's reluctant to discuss this because it involves some illegal evidence-gathering. I trust you'll keep this confidential, but the fact is, we know the race was fixed, but we are powerless to say anything about it. The proof is on a tape which is nonadmissible."

  He stared at both of us for a few moments, toyed with a pipe on his desk, finally scratched his chin with the stem.

  "Can you tell me who was involved?"

  "A man named Tagliani," I said. If he knew the name, he had either forgotten it or was one of the better actors I had ever seen in action. There was not a hint of recognition.

  "I don't think I'm familiar with—"

  "How about Frank Turner?" I said. "That's the name he was using here."

  I could see Callahan's startled look from the side of my eye but I ignored it.

  The question brought a verbal response from Raines.

  "Good God!" he said. "Is this fix tied up in some way with the homicides in town?"

  It was obvious that he had bought the soft-pedal from the press just as everyone else in town had. Just as obviously, he was totally in the dark about who Tagliani really was and the ramifications of the assassinations.

  "Not exactly," Callahan answered, still trying to be cautious.

  I decided it was time to let the skeleton out of the closet. I told him the whole Tagliani story, starting in Ohio and ending in the Dunetown morgue. I told him about Chevos, the friendly dope runner, his assassin, Nance, and their front man, Bronicata. I told him about the Cherry McGee-Longnose Graves war, a harbinger of what was to come. The more I talked, the more surprised Callahan looked.

  Surprised was hardly the word to describe Raines. He was appalled.

  I was like a crap shooter on a roll. The more aghast they got, the more I unloaded. I watched Raines' every muscle, trying to decide whether he had truly been misled by Titan and the others, or whether he was one of the greatest actors of all time. I decided he had been duped. Whatever had been weighing on his mind earlier in the day probably seemed insignificant compared to what I was telling him. I saved my best shot until last.

  "I'm surprised Titan, Seaborn, Donleavy, or the fellow who owns the newspaper and TV station—what's his name . . . ?"

  "Sutter," he said hoarsely.

  "Yeah. He's handling the cover-up. I'm surprised one of your associat
es didn't tell you before this," I said.

  Pause.

  "They've known about it for several weeks."

  Callahan looked like he had swallowed his tongue.

  Raines got another five years older in ten seconds.

  I'm not sure to this day whether I was venting my anger toward the Committee, Chief, and the rest of the Dunetown crowd, or telling the man something he should know, whether it was a petty move on my part because I wanted his wife, or a keen piece of strategy. That's what I wrote it off as, even though it was still a reckless thing to do. Whatever my motives were, I knew one thing for sure: A lot of hell was going to be raised. Some rocks would certainly be overturned. I was anxious to see who came running out.

  By the time I was finished, he knew I knew who was on the Committee and the extent of its power, and I did it all by innuendo, a casual mention of Titan here, of Seaborn there, none of it incriminating. I stopped short of that.

  I was having a hell of a time. It was the Irish in me: don't get mad, get even. I was doing both.

  "Anyway," I said, summing it all up, "the fix wasn't part of this other mess, it's just indicative of what was happening here. Uh . . . " I tried to think of a delicate way of putting it. " . . . A change of values in the city since the old days."

  His cold dark eyes shifted to me and he stared at me for several seconds although his mind still seemed to be wandering. Then he nodded very slowly.

  "Yes," he said sadly. "That's well put, Kilmer. A change of values."

  It was then that I realized how deeply hurt he was. Bad enough to find out you have been lied to by your best friends, but to get the information from your wife's old boyfriend went a little beyond insulting. I stopped having a good time and started feeling sorry for him. A lot of Harry Raines' dreams had been destroyed in a very few minutes.

  Pancho Callahan stared out the window at the racetrack. He had less to say than usual—nothing.

  Raines got up, poured another round of brandy, and slumped on the corner of his desk.