A Stone's Throw

by James W. Ziskin

  “Do you think I’d let him ride for me if he was crooked?”

  I moved on. “How was he at dinner last night?”

  “In high spirits. He won two races yesterday.”

  “Was he drinking? To celebrate?”

  “Not Johnny. He has to watch his weight. He allows himself one small glass of wine with his meal—and I mean small. With Johnny, there’s no need to hover over him. He’s a pro. And serious about maintaining his weight. Not like some jockeys who can’t control themselves. They gorge themselves then stick a couple of fingers down their throats afterward.”

  “What about you? Do you eat and drink in front of your jockeys?”

  “Sure,” he said with a grin, patting his belly. “I’m not the one riding the horse.”

  “Even last night?”

  “Normally, I would have stayed in on a Friday. The Sabbath, you know. But last night was a special occasion. Two winners yesterday, so I enjoyed a nice bottle of wine to celebrate. I gave Johnny a bantam portion.”

  “Was there anyone else with you?”

  “Rose didn’t come. It was me and Carl and Johnny. And his date, Micheline.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  Lou gazed into his empty glass, then looked again in vain for a waiter. “He likes the ladies, Johnny does. Problem is they don’t always like him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He smirked at me. “A guy can have all the charm in the world, but if he’s pint-sized . . . Well, the ladies naturally shy away.”

  “Does Johnny have all the charm in the world?”

  “Hardly. Johnny is what fancy people call an ‘acquired taste.’ His personality is not why I keep him around.”

  “Unlikeable?”

  “I wouldn’t argue with that.”

  “What about Micheline? Did she enjoy Johnny’s company?”

  He twitched, his face betraying discomfort. “You understand, young lady, some girls will compromise on height if there’s another incentive.”

  I sipped my drink. “I see.”

  He shook his head. “No. Johnny didn’t pay her nothing. I did.” He glanced around yet again for a waiter. “Jesus, what do I got to do to get a drink in here?”

  “About Micheline?” I prompted.

  “I thought Johnny deserved some pleasant company after his ride yesterday.”

  “Where might I find her?”

  Lou Fleischman mulled it over for a long moment. “You don’t think she was the girl in the barn, do you?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “How much did you win?” I asked Fadge as we filed out the front gate.

  “You’re looking at it the wrong way,” he said. “It’s not about one day. I’ve got a plan for the entire meet. The whole year, really.”

  “Don’t tell me you lost. How is that possible? You were up more than two hundred dollars after the first two races.”

  “I told you no lectures. I’ll win in the end. I take a scientific approach to racing. Not like the rest of these slobs.”

  “Scientific?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got years’ worth of charts and ledgers tracking horses and jockeys and trainers. And I’ve devised situational strategies for betting.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What are a couple of the situations?”

  “Everything from rain to rider. I consider how far the horse has traveled to get here, and how long since his last race. Then there’s starting-gate position and time of day. I even look at the outside temperature. And some stallions react differently when racing next to a filly. Why do you think I’ve kept every edition of the Racing Form for the past fifteen years? I never throw them out in case I need to do a little research.”

  I thought it would take an IBM 1401 mainframe computer to make sense of his situational strategies.

  “I’ve seen your filing system,” I said. “A dozen eight-foot-tall stacks of old newspapers on your back porch. You’re like the third Collyer brother.”

  “I have to keep the papers on the porch. The pantry’s filled with my record collection. And I know where everything is.”

  “Within ten feet, perhaps,” I said as we reached Fadge’s car. “But putting your grubby little hands on what you need is the challenging part.”

  “My hands aren’t little.”

  “Anyway, for all your scientific approach and research, you lost. At least I came away on the plus side today.”

  “You won thirty cents on the first race, and the program cost you a quarter. Congratulations. You won a nickel.”

  “That’s still better than you did.”

  If Fadge thought his bad luck had run its course, he was mistaken. Instead of heading straight back to New Holland, I insisted we take a detour.

  Thanks to Carl Boehringer, I knew that Johnny Dornan was staying at a boarding house on McLean Street in nearby Ballston Spa. A sprawling gray clapboard affair with a wooden staircase running up the side for the convenience of the roomers, Mrs. Russell’s covered much of an entire city block. Not a fancy place, it could have used a couple of coats of new paint and some landscaping. The jungle of grass in front of the house had long since claimed the uneven, crumbling sidewalk in the name of Spain. A sign on the porch advertised the August rate for singles at eight dollars per night, board included.

  Fadge set the brake and huffed a theatrical sigh of impatience, intended to communicate his displeasure at having to endure this errand, especially on the heels of his disappointing day at the races. I patted him on the hand and promised I would be quick.

  “Wait for me,” he said. “You might need my help.”

  “Because Mrs. Russell is so dangerous?”

  If not dangerous, the proprietress was, nevertheless, a tough old bird. We found her in the parlor just to the right of the front hall. She sat perched on the flattened folds of a worn armchair, transfixed by the wrestling on a television whose picture fluttered rhythmically from bottom to top. Hair in curlers, she was puffing on a cigarette and munching on saltines slathered in margarine. She washed down her meal with what was either gin or vodka. As we moved closer, the smell told the tale. Gin.

  “Excuse me, are you Mrs. Russell?” I asked from behind her.

  She threw up a hand, a cigarette pinched between her thumb and forefinger, to silence me. I glanced at Fadge, who seemed to be calculating in his head how long this torture was going to last.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” she said, encouraging the warping image on the screen before her. “Pin him, pin him, you son of a . . . !”

  Fadge rolled his eyes and took a step into the room, perhaps with the idea of imposing on Mrs. Russell to tear herself away from the TV and speak to us.

  “Whoa!” she shouted, then turned to locate Fadge. “That’s perfect. Don’t move a muscle, big boy. You fixed the vertical hold.”

  Indeed, the television picture had stopped its jittering and was now clear and stable. Mrs. Russell whooped and hollered as the match concluded—right on schedule before the half hour—with the referee on all fours pounding his palm thrice on the canvas. Scrambling to his feet, he raised the right hand of the one who looked to me like a garbageman in baggy underwear, and proclaimed him the winner.

  Our hostess pushed herself out of her chair, brushed the cracker crumbs off her lap onto the floor, and turned to face us. She was a giraffe of a woman, at least six feet tall. Somewhere between fifty and eighty years old, impossible to tell for sure. Olive Oyl’s uglier sister, Fadge later described her.

  “I’m gonna have to hire you to stand there, big fella,” she said to Fadge. “Best reception I’ve ever had.”

  On cue, perhaps out of self-consciousness, he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, and the television’s picture went back to its gyrations. Mrs. Russell shrugged an “oh well” and, cheeks hollowing, took a final pull on her cigarette before stubbing it out in the heaping ashtray—still smoldering from her last smoke—next to her chair.

  “What do you two lovebirds want?” she asked
. “A room?”

  Fadge chirped yes before I could respond.

  “Actually, no,” I said, elbowing him in the ribs.

  Mrs. Russell sized us up and granted that it was probably better that way. “Not sure if I could feed this one on eight bucks a night.” She indicated Fadge with a jab of her thumb.

  I snorted. Fadge didn’t find her remark funny, if his bulging eyes and grinding teeth were any indication.

  “My name is Eleonora Stone, Ellie Stone. I’m a reporter for the New Holland Republic.”

  “Congratulations. Now what do you want?”

  “I’m making inquiries into the whereabouts of Johnny Dornan. He’s been staying here, I believe.”

  “Yeah, he’s one of my roomers. Sullen little so-and-so, but he gives me good racing tips now and then. I won eleven bucks last week.”

  I wondered if that might mean he was still in cahoots with gamblers. Or was he simply passing on his own insider observations?

  “Have you seen him today?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a big place. And he’s got the staircase outside if he don’t want to come in this way.”

  “There was a fire last night,” I said. “This morning, really. About fifteen miles from here, on Sixty-Seven near the Montgomery County line.”

  “What’s that got to do with Johnny?”

  I exchanged a glance with Fadge. He blinked, tacitly ceding me the privilege of breaking the news.

  “Two people died in the fire. And a length of racing silk was found in the rubble. The colors and pattern matched Harlequin Stables’ livery. Johnny rides for Harlequin.” I paused for effect before adding that Johnny hadn’t shown up that day at the track.

  Mrs. Russell stared at me for a full ten seconds, then turned to consider the human antenna for five more. She wiped her lips with her long, dry fingers.

  “Are you saying Johnny perished in the fire?” she asked finally.

  “We don’t know. That’s why we’re making inquiries.”

  The old lady staggered backward in a melodramatic manner, bumped into the armchair, and steadied herself against it. “I can’t believe it. Johnny’s one of my boys.” This was a change of tone from her earlier “sullen little so-and-so” remark, but I let it pass. “We’re like a family here. I even looked the other way when he snuck girls into the house.”

  “Can you tell us when you last saw him?” I asked as gently as I knew how, given her newfound affection for the jockey.

  She frowned and waggled her head, as if shaking off a right cross to the chin. “Must have been yesterday morning early. He was on his way over to the track as always. With Mr. Boehringer.”

  “Yes, I’ve met him. Tell me, does Johnny Dornan have a car?”

  “Not that I know. Mr. Boehringer drives him where he needs to go.”

  “Might we have a look in his room?” I asked.

  Mrs. Russell snapped back to life. Aiming a sharp glare at me, she said nothing at first. Then she seemed to be considering it.

  “We won’t touch anything,” said Fadge, beating me to the punch.

  “And we might find something that helps locate him,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t Johnny in the fire.”

  “All right,” she said. Finding her land legs again, she pushed away from the armchair. “And if we find his wallet, he’s a week behind on his rent. I’m sure you won’t object if I settle his bill.”

  Mrs. Russell led the way down a long corridor on the third floor. Jangling a large iron ring of keys, she shuffled along in house slippers. About halfway down the dim hallway, I noticed a ridge in the carpet ahead. Fearing a fall, I reached for her elbow to catch her should she trip. But she cleared the hazard like a hurdler, stepping over it without looking, as if she’d been avoiding it for decades.

  Johnny Dornan’s room was the last one on the right, next to the door that gave access to the outside staircase. After an exhaustive search for the correct key, a process involving visual inspection but no actual insertion into the lock, Mrs. Russell shook her head and announced that she had the wrong key ring.

  “Gotta go get the other one,” she said.

  “What if we try the latch?” asked Fadge, reaching for the brass knob. The door swung open with a creak.

  The landlady seemed spooked, as if there might be someone inside, so Fadge went in first. The room was empty, at least of marauders or burglars. Johnny Dornan’s place was simple, laid out in a crooked rectangle, with an unmade metal-frame bed near the window. There was a water pitcher on the nightstand, braided rug next to the bed, and faded wallpaper above the wainscoting. A simple light in a glass shade hung from the painted wood-paneled ceiling, and the sheer curtains on the windows were surely an afterthought, not a functional or aesthetic choice. They weren’t substantial enough to shut out the sun or the attentions of someone determined to peep inside. And they were ugly to boot. I noticed a couple of dark prints on the walls, depicting street scenes of some bygone era, but nothing else to brighten the décor.

  Johnny had left the room uncluttered if rumpled. It appeared he’d brought little with him for his month-long stay in Saratoga. A suitcase in the corner, a leather satchel hanging on the room’s only chair, and a shaving kit, hair oil, and a toothbrush on an old, chipped washstand in front of a mirror. The bath and toilet were down the hall. Everything pointed to an itinerant, Spartan existence. That made sense to me; he was a jockey, after all, presumably traveling from track to track, barn to barn, following the horses wherever they were running next.

  Mrs. Russell checked the drawers of the dresser, I can only assume, on a quest for Johnny Dornan’s wallet. But from what I could see, all she found was some shirts, underwear, and slacks. Her sour face confirmed my suspicions; she’d struck out, not pay dirt. So much for the past-due rent.

  “Doesn’t look like he lit out,” said Fadge, nudging a copy of the Saratogian on the nightstand with a flick of his forefinger. It was opened to the sports section and the race chart. “I’d say he intended to come back.”

  “A fat lot of good that does me,” said Mrs. Russell. “That little jerk still owes me a week’s rent. Well, you two will have to cover it.”

  “Why would we pay his bill?” I asked, not particularly surprised that Johnny was once again a “little jerk” in her eyes. “We’ve never even met the man.”

  “And his riding cost me a fortune yesterday,” added Fadge.

  “All right, then, out,” she said. “You have no business here if you’re not going to honor his debts. Let’s go, big fella.”

  With no option, we obeyed. Ever the gentleman, Fadge held out a hand, yielding the right of way to me and our hostess. We all tramped out into the hall, and Mrs. Russell shut the door.

  “Let yourselves out that way,” she said, indicating the exit to the external staircase.

  “That wasn’t much help,” I said as we climbed into Fadge’s car. This time he went first, of course, since the driver’s door was dented shut.

  He started the engine and threw the car into gear.

  “Here,” he said, producing the newspaper he’d noticed in Dornan’s room and tossing it to me. “He wrote something I couldn’t quite make out from a distance.”

  “You swiped his newspaper?” I asked.

  “Yeah, the old bag called me ‘big fella’ one too many times.”

  Fadge stopped to phone Mrs. Pindaro from a booth in Ballston Spa. He described her as apoplectic when he returned to the car.

  “I had to bite the bullet,” he explained. “Jeff Zeitner’s been bugging me for over a year to give him a job. I just called him and told him to get down to the store to relieve Mrs. Pindaro.”

  “What happened? I thought she was an old hand at this.”

  “She’s having a breakdown. Probably because someone ordered a black-and-white milkshake, and she’s against integration.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said as he pulled away from the curb. “Isn’t Jeff Zeitner that fourteen-year-old kid who’s always hangin
g around the store? Zeke? The one you’re always yelling at? Is that even legal?”

  “Sure. In India. And I like the kid. I yell at him because I like him.”

  “You’re entrusting your business to a fourteen-year-old kid?”

  “Better Zeke than Mrs. Pindaro. At least the place will be there when I get back.”

  I shook my head again, wondering why he even cared.

  Johnny Dornan had tried his hand at the newspaper’s crossword puzzle but hadn’t gotten very far. And what he’d managed was a mess. I was tempted to scratch out his answers and correct the thing, but I resisted. He’d also written notes in the margins to handicap the horses he’d faced Friday.

  “Strong finisher,” he’d scrawled next to one. “Rabbit,” next to another. He offered an unflattering description of one of the other jockeys in the form of a vulgar slur, and I noted the name, Quesada. All this seemed like preparation for his job. Odious but nothing unusual.

  “Find anything?” asked Fadge as he sped west on Route 67.

  “Why do you suppose there was no Friday paper in his room?” I asked.

  “That’s not Friday’s?”

  “No, Thursday’s. It looks as though Dornan was in the habit of sizing up the competition the night before he rode. So why didn’t he do the same for today’s races?”

  “Because he didn’t race today.”

  “But would he have known that before he died in a broken-down foaling barn on Tempesta Farm?”

  Fadge shrugged. “Maybe he intended to, but someone invited him to a barbecue.”

  I frowned my disapproval at him, but he was watching the road.

  “Anything else in the paper?” he asked. “Where’s Lolita playing? We should go see that.”

  “Pig,” I said, flipping to the next page in the paper. “There’s a corner ripped out in the market ads. And he wrote something there. Only a couple of letters are left.”

  “What’s it say?”

  I squinted at the chicken scratch. “Not sure. But wait a minute. You’re not going to believe this. You know how in the movies, the detective rubs a pencil over the top sheet of paper in a pad, and it reveals what was written on the previous page?”