She still wasn’t back when I returned to the apartment. I mixed a drink and sat around thinking of the fine time we’d had at Carmel and wondering if it could ever be like that all the time. Maybe when we finished with this…I got up and started pacing the floor again. Maybe when we finished with this we’d be in separate penitentiaries.
It was a little after five when she came in, very happy, and ran to kiss me. They’d had lunch, and then gone for a long drive down toward Half Moon Bay.
I mixed her a drink, and she told me. “He has all the parts now, Mike,” she said, talking very fast and excitedly. She had changed into lounging pajamas and a blue robe and sandals and was curled up in a big chair with the drink. “He got it out of me at last.” She looked across at me and laughed. “I finally told him about the plant that had fascinated you ever since you were a child in Peru and how much research you had done on it. He’d never heard of coca, and the chances are he’s down at the library right now, looking it up in the encyclopedia. And when he finds it, he’s gone.”
That was it. Coca was the detonator, the trigger on this booby trap she had rigged. She’d first learned of it when she was in Peru. Cocaine is derived from it, through an involved chemical process. The Andes Indians chew the dried leaves and it acts as a stimulant. They are able to get by on very little food and can carry tremendous loads for long distances when under the influence of it. Naturally, it’s harmful, as is any system of trying to get something for nothing, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that this was one of a series of deadfalls he should have planted in his mind now, and if he followed the trail she had left he should stumble into every one of them. I was interested in the effect of coca, which was a stimulant; I had been a veterinarian at a South American race track and had become interested in something else that wasn’t part of my job—the saliva tests they give the winners of races to check for illegal drugs or stimulants, and which are a chemist’s job; Benavides had stupidly kept saying something about “long” races while I was trying to shut him up; and last but not least, I had brushed him off and denied very coldly that there could be anything crooked about racing the only time he had mentioned it. All that, plus the fact I apparently had a mysterious source of income I never talked about, was a very neat package.
It should be obvious to anyone who thought about it that if illegal drugs introduced into a race horse would show up in a chemical analysis of his saliva or urine, the same drug would always show up no matter in what form it was used. But with all the overwhelming weight of evidence pointing in the other direction, he could close his eyes to that and come to the only natural conclusion—the one he wanted: that I had worked out a method of getting some form of coca into a horse and giving him enough edge to win a long race at, say, a mile and a quarter or above, without its being detectable in the tests. That was it—that and the fact that he had got all this information out of her instead of from me, had got it because she was a frivolous chatterbox who didn’t have sense enough to keep her mouth shut. He understood Spanish, and he had a way with the ladies. He had put one over on us.
We stayed away from him that night, and we both remained in the apartment until noon the next day. Then I went out alone, picked up the Examiner, and wandered into the bar. It was practically deserted except for the single barman on duty in the afternoon. I sat down in a booth, ordered Scotch and water, and spread the paper open at the sports section. I killed two hours there and then went on back to the apartment without ever seeing him. When I came in she said he had called, wanting us to go out with him and Bobbie Everett again. She had begged off, saying she didn’t feel up to it.
“I think it’s you he’s after,” I said.
“No,” she said. “Wait. Give him time.”
The next afternoon I did the same thing, sitting in the bar with a drink and the morning paper open, reading the racing news from Santa Anita and the Florida tracks. Just before I was ready to take down my props and go home, he came in.
“Oh, hello, Rogers,” he said, with just a shade too much heartiness. “Mind if I sit down?”
I grunted an invitation of sorts and folded up the paper, giving him just a brief glance at what I was reading. “How’s Mrs. Rogers? Hope she’s not feeling bad.”
“No,” I said. “Just a cold.”
His drink came. “Well, here’s to crime,” he said. Maybe that’s the latest thing, I thought. He set his glass down suddenly, as if he had just remembered something. “Damnit,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you something. Thought of it the other day. I remembered you were a fly fisherman, and a friend of mine that’s here in town now has a big ranch up on the Rogue River. He’s always after me to come up when the steelhead are running, but I don’t care anything about that piddling kind of fishing. Thought you might like to meet him, though. I’ll bring him around and introduce him. He’ll fix you up with some fishing, come summer.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot. I’ve heard a lot about the Rogue, but I never had a chance to fish it.”
“Well, that’s what friends are for, the way I see it.”
“That’s right,” I said, without much enthusiasm.
He was silent for a few minutes, apparently thinking about something.
“Say, Rogers...” I looked up.
“Yes?”
“We hit it off pretty well. And we’ve both been around. I’d like to have a little talk with you. The barman can’t hear us over here.”
I tried to keep my face blank and lit a cigarette to cover up my nervousness. “Talk about what?” I asked.
He leaned forward a little and lowered his voice. “As I said, we’re not kids, so you can cut out the innocent talk with me. I know who you are.”
The butterflies were swarming in my stomach, and it was all I could do to stare back at him without any expression at all. If he had our number, what was he going to do? Call the cops? Was it too late now to run?
“Would you mind explaining what you’re talking about?” I asked, as coldly as I could.
“Cut it out,” he said. Then he winked. “There’s just the two of us here, so you can let your hair down. I’ve known all along you were cleaning up some way, but it took me a while to figure it out. How about letting me in on something good?”
I could feel the sigh of relief coming all the way up from the bottom of my lungs and choked it down before it got away from me. It had been a bad moment.
“Look, Lachlan,” I said irritably, now that I had hold of myself again, “what the devil are you talking about, anyway?”
“So you’re going to play it that way?”
“Play what?”
“That hard-to-get stuff. Good God, man, all I want is just a tip now and then. That’s not much to ask, is it?”
“Maybe I’m a little dense today,” I said wearily. “Or I never did learn the English language too well. Would you mind drawing me a picture?”
He leaned back in the seat and watched me for a moment, and then the nasty smile began to spread across his face. He was getting ready to let me know he had me.
“Yeah. If you insist, I’ll draw you a picture, Rogers. You’re a pretty slick customer, but there are others around. I’ll tell you something you didn’t know. I happen to speak Spanish as well as you do. And I heard your little argument with your friend the other night. You remember, the one who used to work for your father?” He chuckled.
I let it hit me in the face, just a glancing blow he would be able to see for an instant; then I went blank again. “All right,” I said, “so you’re a linguist. I still don’t see what you’re driving at.”
He leaned on the table again. “The hell you don’t. That boy was yelling something about ‘long races.’ I couldn’t figure it out at the time, but I’ve got it now. We both know what you’re doing, so why not cut it out and be a good guy and let me in? I know how to keep my mouth shut, if that’s worrying you, and I won’t bet heavy enough to tip anything.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You’re suggesting I’m mixed up in horse racing? Is that it? That I’m getting information of some kind?”
He grinned again. “Now you’re talking sense. Except that I’m not suggesting anything—I know. And I don’t mean ‘information.’ I mean fixed races.”
I stared at him. “Don’t be a fool. There’s no such thing as a fixed race.”
He shook his head. “Boy, you’re a hard nut to crack. Look, Rogers, I not only know you’ve got a way to gimmick a race now and then; I even know the kind you gimmick and the way you do it without getting caught. Now, will you come off it?”
I sighed and put down my glass. “Are you really serious about this, Lachlan, or is it a gag of some kind?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“Well, look. I’ll tell you a few things. I used to work around race tracks as a veterinarian, so maybe I know at least as much about racing as you do. And one of the things I do know is that there is absolutely no such thing as a fixed race. Did you ever stop to figure out how many different and unpredictable factors there are to contend with in just one race? In an average field of eight horses, say? There are eight jockeys, eight horses, eight pole positions, good racing luck, bad racing luck, jams on the turns, injuries and a thousand other things. And if you were fool enough to try bribing riders, there never have been and never will be eight crooked jockeys in one race. The odds against it are astronomical. There might be one you could buy, or even a slim chance of two, but not eight. At least six, and probably all eight, would report you to the stewards, or at least laugh in your face. They make a living riding horses, and if they got caught in something like that they’d be out on their tails in ten minutes.”
“Cut it out,” he interrupted. “I’m not talking about crooked jockeys. Don’t be so pigheaded. I know you hype ‘em. Or your men at the track do.”
“Doping, you mean?” I snorted. “Didn’t you ever hear of the saliva test?”
“Sure.” He had that wise grin on his face again. He looked at me and said slowly, “Sure. I’ve heard of it. And I happen to know you’ve got a way to beat it.”
I got up. “Well, there’s no use arguing with you. I can see that. Think anything you want, but”—I stopped and stared coldly down at him—“don’t bother me with it any more. I don’t go for it.”
I went off and left him sitting there. As I was going up in the elevator it suddenly struck me, that thing she had said a long time ago in Reno. She’d said he would come to me, demanding to be let in on a fixed race, and that the way to convince him there really was such a thing was to deny it could even exist.
* * *
The next move was up to him, and he did exactly what she had said he would. The next morning the telephone rang and she answered it.
“Oh, how are you?” she asked, a little breathlessly. “Why, no, he isn’t in. He went downtown this morning.” She looked across at me and winked, with the deadpan innocence of a child. There was silence for a moment while she listened. “Well, I—I really shouldn’t… Oh, yes, it would be perfectly all right, of course… Well, all right. I’ll meet you there in the bar. But only this once. I’ll leave a note saying I’ve gone to the movies.”
She hung up and looked over at me and grinned. “El Prado, for lunch.”
She was gone until nearly three, and when she came in she didn’t say anything for a moment. I could see she was bursting with something, though, and after she came over and kissed me and rumpled my hair she opened her purse without a word and dropped a sheaf of bills on the sofa. I looked at them. They were century notes, and they came to a thousand dollars.
“All right,” I said, waiting.
“It was just as if I had written the part for him and he’d spent all night memorizing his lines.” She sat down and lit a cigarette. “Mike, it was so easy it wasn’t even any fun. He said he knew what you were doing, and there was no use my trying to cover up any more. Oh, he was quite brutal about it. He had me, you see. I was slipping out and meeting him. I tell you, sweet, that conceit of his is something that has never been approached. It’s awe-inspiring. So I broke down and told him everything. Then he turned on the Lachlan charm, which seems to consist largely of breathing on you and bugling and trampling the shrubbery, and said everything was going to work out fine. We’re going to double-cross you, you see.
“I went on to explain that it wasn’t quite as easy as that. A lot of times I never did know myself when you had a deal coming up or what horse it was. You see, you’re very hard and mean, and you never tell anybody anything. I told him you actually shot at a man once, for talking too much. He should find that easy to believe, after the way you brushed him off yesterday. Oh, I gave him a good story about all the double-frammis times frammis-squared elements that went into it—how you never knew for sure until just a few hours before racetime that it was a deal because they had to wait to get a line on the probable odds, since they never dealt in short-priced horses, and because they didn’t want too much money bet too soon, for some silly reason you had tried to explain to me but which I could never understand. I’m the bird-brain type, you see. Anyway, you usually get the telephone call from the track just in time for you to get your money bet, and most of the time I don’t know anything about it until it’s all over.
“I told him I’d do what I could, and that if I could possibly find out when one was coming off and what the name of the horse was I’d try to get in touch with him without letting you know. All very uncertain and iffy, you understand. Naturally, that wouldn’t do at all, so then he came up with the perfect solution.” She stopped and looked at me with her eyes brimming with laughter. She nodded toward the money. “I’m to get it bet, if I can.”
“O.K.,” I said. “We’ve got him. But there’s one thing. You let him give you too much money.”
“Why?”
“Well, he has to win this one, of course, for the come-on. And to make it look good we’ve got to set up a specific race—a long race, naturally, something a mile and a furlong or over—so you can show him what he won it on. Suppose a real long shot comes in? You may have to fork over fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. That’s pretty big bait.”
She shook her head, gesturing with the cigarette. “Naturally, I’m not going to bet all of it. I just couldn’t get it placed, because there wasn’t enough time. That’s part of the tease, you see. So when I do figure out a way to get past you and make a really good bet for the Happy Conspirator, he’ll unload like a dropped piggie bank.”
“That’s better,” I said.
“But wait,” she went on. “That’s not all. We’re going to carry your idea of a specific race one step further. I’m going to give him the word that I’ve got part of his money bet and tell him the horse, before the results come in over the radio.”
“How?” I asked. “The only way you can do that is to call some bookie for the results. They usually have them a few minutes to a quarter hour before the radio station gets around to them, but it’d be fairly obvious. He’d see through that.”
“Not if I’d been sitting in the bar with him for the past hour or two and he knew I hadn’t called anybody.”
“Fine,” I said. “But if you’d been sitting there with him for that long, why hadn’t you told him the name of the horse before?”
“Because,” she said, grinning, “you were there too. And of course I couldn’t say anything in front of you. The minute you leave, I tell him. And then in maybe ten minutes the results come in over the radio in the bar, and sure enough, the horse has won.”
“It sounds wonderful,” I said. “But how?”
“I’m working on it. The first thing we need is a telegram. You go downtown in the morning and send me one.”
We worked out the details. It was a beautiful piece of skullduggery, but it was going to take very precise timing to make it work. I went down the next morning and sent the telegram, and when it came we steamed it op
en so the envelope could be resealed, and saved it.
To make the whole setup look good we had to make him wait, and the longer he waited, the better it would be. The tension started to build up again as I got to thinking of Bolton and the police, and I was growing jumpy and irritable. He called her twice, wanting to know what was happening, and she stalled him. I kept watching the papers for a spot that looked good, and on the fourth night, when the morning papers hit the street, I found one. The eighth race on the next day’s card at Hialeah was at a mile and a quarter, a claiming affair for cheap horses. I bought a Racing Form and went back to the apartment to check on it.
It looked fine. The horses were a sorry lot, nonwinners since the first of the year, and there was nothing that stood out. The public selectors didn’t agree on anything, and unless the Miami papers all happened to hit on the same horse, there wouldn’t be any outstanding favorite. This was fine, because if there was a standout at a short price and he accidentally stumbled home in front it wouldn’t look too good. We were supposed to be dealing in long shots. It looked as if Country Mile, Sweet Bobo, and Dinny’s Queen would get most of the play, but in a field like that anything could win.
“This is the one,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“How many entries?” she asked.
“Nine. We won’t get the scratches until too late, but we can handle nine all right.”
We wrote them all down, with a code word consisting of a masculine name opposite each horse, and spent an hour memorizing them. There couldn’t be any slip, for if she got the wrong horse the whole thing would blow up. Around ten she called Lachlan, but he wasn’t in.
Nothing In Her Way Page 13