Million Dollar Handle

by Brett Halliday

  “I had it in my hip pocket. I hope to hell it didn’t jump out when I hit the sidewalk, because I had a few hundred bucks in it and I doubt if it would still be there.”

  “I’ll go down to the garage and look.”

  “You don’t have to do that now. When it’s convenient, and I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.”

  “It won’t take more than a minute. Give me your number and I’ll get back to you.”

  He stayed in the booth, and picked up in the middle of the first ring.

  “Success,” she said, out of breath. “Right under the front seat.”

  This was no surprise to Ricardo, as he had put it there. “Lucky! It’s got my driver’s license, so can I come over and get it? You could leave it with the doorman if you’re going out.”

  “No, I’ll be home. You know where I live. There’s blood on the sidewalk.”

  He told her to expect him in twenty minutes. He washed off some of the dog smell and combed his hair carefully. He drove a beat-up Ford sedan, almost as unprepossessing as Mrs. Geary’s Dodge. He would be looking around for something better soon. He parked across from her apartment house, which was neither the crummiest building in Miami Beach nor the most elegant; somewhere in between. There was a pool, of course, in spite of the fact that the Atlantic was only a few steps away.

  The doorman had been alerted, and waved him through. Mrs. Geary was wearing a dress instead of slacks and a sweater. Without the protection of the dark glasses she looked like somebody else, younger in some ways and older in others. She had seemed sure of herself outdoors. Here, in artificial light with her real eyes showing, she looked surprisingly breakable. Ricardo told himself to dig in his heels and go slow.

  “Hi,” she said. “I nearly didn’t recognize you without your shades. Come in.”

  He remembered to limp slightly. There was a man in the living room, soft, bald, wearing a three-piece suit. He was shaped like a pear, and his skin, too, was pear-colored, yellow with rosy patches. An architect’s rendering of a hotel was spread out on the coffee table, kept from rolling by ashtrays at the corners. He started to struggle out of the embrace of the low sofa, but gave it up as too difficult.

  “Harry Zell,” Mrs. Geary said, moving her hand. “This is Ricardo, from the track.”

  The man’s handshake was damp.

  “Well, Charlotte,” he said. “I’ve got investors to see. Do you want me to leave this stuff?”

  “No, take it, Harry, please. If Max saw it when he came back, you know how he is, he’d scream.”

  “I keep hoping he’ll change.”

  “Max? Change? He’s about as changeable as a brick.”

  Zell moved the ashtrays and the drawing rolled up. There were others beneath it. Ricardo didn’t want to peer too closely, but they seemed to be interior scenes in the same dream hotel. All the men looked rich, all the women beautiful. Zell fitted everything into a metal tube. There was a small tic beneath one eye, a sharp vertical line between the eyebrows, though it was a salesman’s face, like Ricardo’s father’s, and it should have been smiling.

  After he left, Ricardo pointed at the table where the drawings had been.

  “We keep hearing rumors. Is it true you’re going to tear down the track and put up another stupid hotel?”

  “Over Max’s dead body.” She picked his wallet off a side table and gave it to him, with a flourish of make-believe trumpets.

  “Da-da! I resisted temptation and didn’t steal any of the money. Now I’m going to claim a reward. Don’t turn right around and leave. Have a drink with me.”

  Ricardo looked a little uncomfortable. “O.K., I guess. I don’t usually, after a matinee, because somebody has to be sober in that kennel.”

  “Is Dee drinking as much as ever?”

  “Not that it’s so much, Mrs. Geary, it’s just steady. By the end of the twelfth race he can’t tell one end of a dog from the other.”

  “Vodka and tonic? I’ll make it weak.”

  “Mostly tonic.”

  While her back was turned and she made the drinks, he sneaked a look into his wallet. Behind the transparent window where people are supposed to carry pictures of their girls or their grandchildren, he had a photograph of two men and a woman, naked, so tangled that you had to look closely to see what they were doing. He had bought it that morning, knowing she was sure to open the wallet. As she came around, she caught him checking. She smiled faintly, and he buttoned the wallet quickly into his pocket.

  “Yeah, thanks,” he said, taking the drink. “But I’ve got to watch the time. I’m due back at quarter to six.”

  “I’ll see that you get there.”

  They sat across from each other and she raised her glass. “Tell me about your afternoon. How did you make out?”

  “I beg pardon?”

  “You said you had some bets you were working on.”

  “I guess I did, but that wasn’t very smart of me. We aren’t supposed to bet. Of course everybody does, one way or another.”

  “I won’t give you away.”

  “I hope not! But before we stop talking about this hotel, what I don’t see—any time anybody asks for money, and I don’t mean just the people like me who do the dirty work, the kennels are always trying to get bigger purses, the story Mr. Geary gives them is that he can’t afford it. I shouldn’t be saying this, probably—”

  “Go right ahead, it gives me ammunition for the next domestic skirmish. I won’t quote you.”

  “We’re only open four months. The other eight the building just sits there. Taxes, insurance, upkeep. One thing about the hotel business, they’re open the year round. I heard the offer was five million.”

  “Not all in cash. In fact, not much in cash.”

  “But if he’s really just breaking even, why doesn’t he jump at the idea? That’s valuable real estate. So I thought I’d ask you.”

  “Whether it’s true the track’s not making money? Ricardo, I can’t tell you. I own forty percent, my daughter Linda owns twenty. Together we have the power to walk in and demand to see every scrap of paper in the office, but we’ve never dared. We talk about it a lot.”

  “I thought you’d be sure to know. Aren’t you secretary, or something?”

  “Supposedly. The accountant brings me the tax returns with a little x where he wants me to sign. There’s never much tax due, which may not mean anything. We already pay that huge percentage, night after night, and the government won’t bother us if we lie a little. All I can say is, if Max is taking any money out, I don’t see much of it. I’ve had the same household allowance for six years, forget about inflation. I think it’s insane not to sell, while the market is high. But Max isn’t rational on the subject. He doesn’t like what’s happened to Collins. He hates those vulgar hotels. The deal would be complicated, and he doesn’t trust Harry Zell. But there’s something deeper. He’s been running that track since he was twenty-five. He took it away from some very tough people who inherited it from Al Capone—”

  “I didn’t know Capone had anything to do with Surfside.”

  “Oh, yes. Max cleaned them all out and made dog racing respectable, and that makes him an important man in Miami. He goes to dinners and gets to eat on the dais. He’s been mentioned for Senator, not too seriously, but he’s been mentioned. If he sells out to Harry, he won’t be a prominent sportsman anymore, he’ll be a middle-aged man with notes and debentures and stock that add up to five million dollars. And of course he’s hopelessly sentimental on the subject of dogs.—Ricardo, it occurs to me that this is your suppertime. I can make you some scrambled eggs.”

  “I’ll eat something at the track.” He took a sip of the drink. Then he took a long breath and held it. Gripping the glass hard and looking at the bubbles and not the woman, he said, “Mrs. Geary, would you be interested in making a quarter of a million dollars?”

  She had been about to pour more vodka, and the neck of the bottle rang against the glass.

  “What are you
talking about?”

  “Not a quarter of a million just once. A quarter of a million a year, from now on.”

  Now he looked at her. Her hand was at her throat, and he thought she looked frightened.

  “Ricardo,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I think you’d better—”

  “No, wait, don’t throw me out yet. All afternoon, I’ve been wondering. Should I, or shouldn’t I? I believe in luck. When something lucky happens, you can’t just back away from it, you have to push it. When will I get a chance like this again? You own forty percent of one of the biggest dog tracks in the country, and that car you knocked me down with is six years old and should have a ring job. That’s ridiculous. How much do you know about pari-mutuel betting?”

  “That’s Max’s department. I cook and vacuum and clean the oven.”

  “Which must get kind of—”

  “Sometimes.”

  A look went with this exchange, and Ricardo sat back and began talking less desperately.

  “The thing to remember, Mrs. Geary, is that you aren’t betting against a roulette ball or a pair of dice, you’re betting against everybody in the grandstand, and that includes people who stick pins in the program or bet on the dogs with the cutest names. There’s no way you can win at a casino because the house cuts a piece out of every play. At the dogs—eight dogs in a race—bet at random, and you ought to average one winner every eight times.”

  “I see that.”

  “But the pool doesn’t pay back the full amount. A seventeen-percent bite—it doesn’t seem like much, but that’s on every race. Figure it out in dollars. Say the customers bet a hundred thousand on the opener. The winners get eighty-three. They dig for seventeen thousand more, and bet another hundred. They get eighty-three. See what I mean? Eight thousand people show up on an average night, and they bet about thirty bucks apiece. They brought two hundred and forty thousand in betting money. They go home with thirty thousand. That’s not seventeen percent, it’s close to ninety.”

  “Ricardo, I never had the illusion that anyone could win in the long run.”

  “You win if you can do seventeen percent better than the schmucks, if you know seventeen percent more about the dogs. And that’s hard. I try to bet three races a program. I’ve got a guy who buys tickets for me. You wouldn’t know him, probably, but he’s a well-known sight at the track. A big winner can’t hide, so we decided to do it right out in front. He does his betting in platforms and big hats, and on a cool night he’ll wear a light fur. If anybody can beat that seventeen percent, it ought to be me and Billy. I know the dogs by their nicknames. When the chart says the track’s fast, I know how fast, because I’ve felt it. A little dampness in the air can slow a dog down by a second, and that’s fourteen lengths. I don’t do any picking at all the first two weeks, until I know the racing pattern. Some dogs are going to start slow and finish fast. Some go wide on the straight and cut inside on the turns. Once they set the pattern they stick to it. I know what the kennelmen are up to. They’re always trying to get a fast dog in a slower class, and so on and so forth.”

  She was beginning to seem more interested. “Are you saying that even you can’t—”

  “I beat it,” Ricardo admitted, “but not by much. I was ahead fourteen thousand last year.” He looked at his watch. “Damn it, I’ve got to go.”

  “Not yet! It’s a long way from fourteen thousand to a quarter of a million.”

  He stood up, leaving his unfinished drink on the table. He had timed this carefully.

  “If I don’t get back, it’s all academic, because I won’t have the job.”

  “Ricardo, it’s unfair. I’m practically rigid.”

  “Can we get together tomorrow?”

  “No, that wouldn’t be so good. Max will be back. We’d better make it tonight after the racing.”

  “Here?”

  “Well—no. On account of the doorman. I’ll pick you up.”

  This was another delicate moment, and Ricardo looked at the floor.

  “How I do with the guy who does my betting, we meet at a motel, to be on the safe side. If you go first and rent the room, I’ll call from a box and get the number. Then we won’t have to be looking over our shoulder all the time.”

  He pulled up suddenly. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said, to make absolutely sure that she did. “I mean, we need a place to talk for half an hour—”

  “Heavens,” she said lightly. “Considering that I’m old enough to be your grandmother—”

  He left it at that, and named an unromantic chain motel on Biscayne Boulevard, near the North Bay Causeway. They shook hands, rather formally. Ricardo was so anxious to get out without breaking the bubble that he forgot to thank her for the wallet and the drink.

  Everything seemed to be clicking nicely. By the same token, he didn’t want it to be too easy; that would be equally unlucky.

  Alone in the elevator, he said thoughtfully to himself, “I don’t know.”

  Chapter 3

  The movement of dogs through the kennel had been carefully choreographed, with a new parade every seventeen minutes. Ricardo kept them moving without thinking about it consciously. Dee left the kennel area once or twice, perhaps to place bets. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. It was all very careless and haphazard, and whenever he seemed to show an interest in a dog, Ricardo stayed out of that race.

  Tonight he sent Billy only one signal. A standout dog had been sneaked into one of the marathon races. They bet him to win, and he won going away.

  He called the motel after clearing the dogs for the last race, and he was told there was no one named Geary registered. She hadn’t showed up!

  “Check again, will you? G-e-a-r-y.”

  “Oh, Geary. Yes, in nine.”

  He was laughing when he walked in. “You decided to come. I was afraid you might think it was all too wild.”

  She had changed back into slacks and sweater, to make it obvious that this wasn’t the usual motel date. They were going to be talking dogs, and after they finished, they would go to separate houses. For the same reason. Ricardo had a bucket of fried chicken. She had brought the vodka bottle, however, and there was a faint sparkle of danger in the air.

  “I’m starving,” he said. “Dee, as usual. I had to do both jobs, and I didn’t get time to eat. Do you want some chicken?”

  “No, I had supper. Shall I make you a drink?”

  “I guess so, but I’m not much of a vodka drinker.”

  “I never used to be either, but it seems to go with the role.”

  It was motel ice and straight vodka, an extremely dry martini. She smoothed the fabric of her slacks and smiled nervously.

  “You were in the middle of telling me something.”

  “Yeah, how to make money on the dogs. Dee’s always telling stories about the old days. To slow a dog down then, all you had to do was overfeed him or fill him with water or sandpaper his toes. Dee used to do it himself, he doesn’t mind telling you. He shot them up or he stuck a hunk of ginger up their backside. It was worth doing when they were betting against bookies. Nowadays, with the machine, you can’t win a fortune on one race because the more money you feed in, the more it shortens the odds. And the track gives pretty good protection against crooked owners or trainers. If a dog varies more than two pounds, it’s an automatic scratch. They’re in isolation two hours before post time, and the only people allowed in the kennel are trustworthy guys like Dee Wynn and myself.”

  “Did you say ginger? He wouldn’t do anything like that now, would he?”

  “Well, anybody who drinks as much as he does is a hard person to handicap. He lays off between meetings, and he can’t keep himself in whiskey year-round on his Surfside salary. He’s careless, is the trouble. There was a dog last year won at a good price, fifteen or something, at about a second and a half faster than his best previous time. He was obviously hopped up—obviously. I don’t know what Dee used, some drugstore amphetamine, but that dog was so high
you could spot it from the grandstand. So the judge asked for a urine sample. We have a little rig we use, put it on the dog and give him a little squirt of electricity. Dee was so drunk he could barely stand up, but he switched samples and turned in the wrong urine.”

  “Ricardo.”

  “I know it sounds funny, but it was so damn crude! Doping’s a felony, and if that sample hadn’t turned out to be clean, I think I know who was elected to get it in the ass. Not Dee. The Latin kennel boy, Ricardo Sanchez. O.K. Last summer I took a backstretch job at Pompano, the harness track. Those horses work all twelve months, and they get tired. They need all kinds of medication to keep them in racing condition. The state and the track don’t have any incentive to keep up with it. They take the same bite whether a race is crooked or honest. So the guys who develop the medicines are always one step ahead of the guys who figure out ways to test for the medicines. You said something about Al Capone. We’re still protecting against Capone. A cousin of mine works at Pompano. He’s just my age, and he showed me a suitcase full of twenty-dollar bills. They use two basic shots. The slow one is a tranquilizer they call Sleepy Time. It was introduced last year, and the great thing about it is that it lasts exactly three hours, to the minute. Give it at six, at nine it’s gone. The dog’s temperature is normal. Nothing in the urine or blood or saliva.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “In the standard tests. The State Testing Lab hasn’t even heard about it yet. The speed-up shot is a vitamin-hormone mixture. That does show up, so you have to be careful with it.”

  “But these are for horses.”

  “Which are bigger than dogs, right. So I rented a schooling track in Broward County and worked out the dosages. I hate to say it, but before I got it right I killed two dogs. With the bomb, you use half a cc in a sugar solution. It doesn’t change the dog’s whole personality. With the right kind of competition, a fourth- or a fifth-place dog has a shot at first. And that’s what I’m talking about. You don’t try to win every race. When you do win, you win at good odds. At Pompano, the shots are administered through the trainer, usually. There’s no point in taking that kind of chance except in the right situation. When it happens, he wants to make sure, and there’s a tendency to overdose. So there’s already talk, and that’s bad. Using these two shots, with the run of the lockup kennel, I could hit the Double Q three times a week. But that would be dumb. I’d have to hire somebody to cash those big tickets, and that’s where most of the horse schemes have fallen apart. I want to be invisible. I won’t stop betting on class and form. I told you I bet about three races a program, and that’s all I can handle. After I make my picks, I’ll slow down one dog and speed up another. Not by much! Four or five lengths. The regular Q odds are good enough. A lot of the time something surprising will happen, and I’ll lose. That’s fine. All I’m trying to get is a little more edge, and average about three thousand a night.”