Nice Fillies Finish Last

by Brett Halliday

  “I’m in a breakable condition right now, Mike,” she whispered. “But I have to trust you. I don’t have any alternative. Tell me one thing. Do you think I poisoned Joey?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Truthfully? Because you might think that the only way I could really close the door on Paul Thorne, so he’d never bother me again, would be to win a big sum of money for him. He still has that stupid letter I sent him, and if he feels pressed enough I know he’ll use it. Not for any rational reason, just for the pleasure of smashing me. Would I let an insignificant drunk like Joey stand in my way?”

  “Yes, Claire,” he said seriously. “I think you would.”

  She slipped her arms around his neck. “Then we’re really on the same side?”

  “It looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  Her wrists locked and she pulled his face down. Her mouth opened to his and they came together hard. She made a small sound of surprise and alarm, as though she didn’t know what to make of what had happened.

  “Mike, I’ve been so frightened.” She kissed the corners of his mouth. “Now I have something I can count on. Mike, hold me. Tighter.”

  His embrace tightened, but he could hear a clock ticking inside his head, the same clock that operated the time announcements on the big number-board in the infield at the track. They had wasted too much time in Pompano Beach. The twin-double betting must have closed and the sixth race was underway. If Paul Thorne won it, the machinery would be in motion.

  She went on kissing him, and it seemed for a moment that the clock would stop. The bed was only a step from the window. They turned together, without words. Her knees struck the edge of the bed and she sank down on it, drawing him after her. Her mouth and tongue never left him. Her hard, frozen surface had splintered into a thousand fragments, and it might never be put back together again. The jacket of her suit had opened. She was far from skinny, he found; the people who thought so were out of their mind. Her hand was inside his shirt, moving against him.

  An instant more and they would have reached a point from which there would be no turning back. Then a siren wailed on the highway. It had nothing to do with them, but it brought the outside world into the motel room for long enough so Shayne heard the ticking again. This time it was coming from his own watch. He turned his arm and looked at the time.

  “Please, Mike,” Claire whispered. “I want you to. I know it’s unfair. I don’t mean anything to you. But if you were inside me for a moment, I think I could get through the rest of this awful night. I’ve kept myself—so separate from life. All at once I feel—”

  He said gently, “We have to get back. We have to do everything exactly right, or there won’t be one chance in ten thousand of finding out what happened with Dolan.”

  “Ten minutes. Five.”

  He kissed her and began to move away. She held on.

  “Mike, I’ll try to do what you told me, but it’s going to be so scarey. Even without any bullets in the gun. Everything’s changed. I was so blithe about it this afternoon—I thought all I had to do was show the gun to him and he’d start being sensible.” She let him go, her hand sliding along his arm. “Six hours ago I thought I could take care of myself. Up to that point I always had. One kiss from you, and I turn into the kind of female who throws herself at men to get them to take over her problems.”

  Shayne smiled in the darkness. “We came pretty close there for a minute.”

  “Didn’t we? It crossed my mind that there was really only one way to get the after-lovemaking look, and that was to make love. The next thing I knew I’d stopped thinking. You do everything so well. I knew this would be no exception.”

  She pulled him down and kissed him lightly. “God, my life’s a mess.”

  “I think it may be less of a mess after the dust settles,” he said. Reaching out, he turned on the bedside lamp. “How much of your lipstick do I have on?”

  She looked him over critically. “Mike, none!”

  Rolling over, she took out her lipstick and used it on herself, then kissed him carefully. The result satisfied her.

  “Now you look like a satyr. You’ve been kissing a married woman in a motel, you scoundrel.”

  She stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of her skirt “Well?” she said, pivoting. “Have we been using the Golden Crest Motel for immoral purposes, or not?”

  “You look as elegant as always,” he said with a grin. “Even your hair doesn’t need combing. Be combing it anyway when we go out. We’ve suddenly realized how late it is, and we had to throw our clothes on in a rush.”

  He pulled off his necktie and waited for her by the light switch. She touched his face quickly.

  “You’re a comfort, Mike. I feel enormously better. I meant everything I said on the bed, but at the same time naturally I’m glad I didn’t succeed in taking advantage of you. I would have worried afterward. I don’t know anything about you! Except that you’re quite a guy.”

  He snapped off the light, then took her hand and walked quickly to the outside stairs. The Yellow Cab hadn’t moved. Claire was laughing, taking rapid steps in her tight skirt, trying to comb her hair with her free hand.

  “Whoa! Not so fast, darling. If I break a leg, we will be in trouble.”

  “Damn it,” Shayne said between his teeth, but loudly enough to be heard in the gas station. “They’ll be sending out search parties in another few minutes.”

  “Relax,” she told him laughingly. “Everything’s under control. Nobody’s that interested. Mike, baby, do something about camouflaging that lipstick.”

  “Oh, God.”

  When he reached the Cadillac he turned the fender mirror so he could see what had to be done. She passed him a Kleenex from the front seat, and he scrubbed at the reddish smears on his cheeks and chin.

  “What kind of lipstick do you use, for God’s sake? This just makes it worse. I’ll hit the men’s room after we get back.” He added soberly, “We shouldn’t have done this, Claire.”

  “Why, darling! Who suggested it, after all?”

  He started the motor and came back fast. He cramped the wheel, bent forward angrily, and didn’t glance at the cab on the way out.

  CHAPTER 17

  SHAYNE DROPPED Claire at the clubhouse entrance and put the Cadillac in its old place in the parking lot. When he came out of the men’s room after washing off the lipstick, the crowd was roaring and the public-address announcer was calling the order in which a field of trotters was rounding into the stretch. This was the eighth race, Shayne discovered from the board as he came out on the ramp. He was back just in time. He waited till the horses completed their stretch run, turned, and came jogging back toward the paddock, blowing. Then, as the crowd patterns changed, he began looking for Rourke’s head bandage.

  “Mike, I was afraid you wouldn’t get here,” Rourke said, as Shayne came up to him. “I saw you and the Domaine dame take off in that big Cad. Sandra tells me Mrs. Domaine’s the one who put sleeping pills in my soup—and I didn’t want to drink that soup, you may recall,” he told the nurse. “You made me. Mike, what have you been doing? Putting on pressure?”

  “I put on a little. How’s the twin-double investment?”

  “Going according to plan, according to plan. Things are getting tense.”

  The nurse was on the edge of her seat, clutching her bag. “I had no idea harness racing was so interesting, Mr. Shayne. The picture the horses make coming around that turn!”

  “And especially when it’s your horse that’s out in front,” Rourke said.

  “I see you’ve got binoculars,” Shayne said, taking them. “You had a ticket on all the horses in the eighth?”

  “That’s what we decided. Thorne’s trotter took the sixth, very well behaved, didn’t work up a sweat. Paid us lucky bettors $54 for two. I had ten bucks on the nose, besides all the twin tickets on him. I cashed that $10 ticket for $270, and that gives us our capital.”

  “Who do you mean by us?”

&nb
sp; “Me and Sandra. You didn’t want in, and I’m not cutting you in when we’re three-quarters of the way home. I had Thorne’s trotter wheeled in the first half, and that brought us out of the seventh with sixteen live tickets.”

  “It’s complicated, isn’t it?” Miss Mallinson said.

  “It’s not complicated at all!” Rourke insisted. “What the hell, I’ll explain it again. Thorne’s trotter was Number Three. We combined Number Three with every horse in the seventh—eight separate tickets at two bucks apiece. But that would only give us one live ticket at the end of the half, to turn in for our pick, in the eighth and ninth. So we bet that same combination sixteen times. Cost $256. What’s hard to understand about that? The Number Two horse won the seventh. All right, we had sixteen tickets that said Number Three and Number Two, and we traded those in for two sets of tickets combining My Treat, the Domaine horse in the ninth, with all the horses in the eighth. The Number One horse just won the eighth. So now we have two tickets that are still live—Number One in the eighth and Number Four in the ninth, and if Number Four comes in, baby, we’ve cracked the twin double!”

  “I’ll believe it when it happens, Tim. You know it isn’t good for you to get excited.”

  “One ticket is yours and one’s mine. How can you be so calm?”

  Shayne swung the binoculars toward the clubhouse, thumbing the focusing knob as he hunted for the Domaines.

  “Too bad I couldn’t bring you up to date before you spent all that money, Tim,” he remarked. “One or two things have changed.”

  “I knew it!” Rourke exclaimed after a stunned silence. “My Treat isn’t going to win.”

  “Let’s say I wouldn’t bet any money on it.”

  “But I already have!”

  The nurse stroked his shoulder, as though gentling an excited horse. “It’s only money, Tim.”

  “Only!” he said, outraged.

  Shayne picked up Larry Domaine’s table. The crowd shifted and he saw Claire, as lovely as ever, her face composed and self-assured, showing nothing but pleasure in her youth and good looks and good fortune. She didn’t look like the same person who had been on the bed with Shayne at the motel. Shayne’s arm was joggled and he lost her briefly. She was smiling at her husband when he picked her up again. Domaine turned his head. Shayne might have missed it if he had been half a dozen tables away, but through the binoculars there was no mistaking the fact that Domaine was angry. The painful little line over the bridge of his nose gave him away, and there was a sparkle in his mild pale eyes.

  Moving the binoculars, Shayne saw Mrs. Moon at the same table. She was talking to people nearby, laughing in her usual glittering way.

  After a brief fanfare, the hard metallic voice of the public address called out, “The pacers for the ninth race are on the track.”

  Shayne turned to watch them pass the grandstand. The horse Paul Thorne was driving, Famous Son, was small and shaggy, with a mean look, and didn’t seem fast. Thorne was applauded; in addition to winning with his own trotter, he had had another first and a third. My Treat, the Domaine mare being driven by Brossard, had a long, pretty stride. Mrs. Moon’s Fussbudget, a medium-sized, undistinguished-looking roan, was listed at eighteen to one on the board. The lights blinked as more money was bet on the other horses, and the odds on Fussbudget lengthened to twenty. Famous Son was the favorite, at five to two. My Treat was getting new backing from people who went by a horse’s looks rather than its record. It was now fourteen to one.

  “I’m going to use the glasses to watch the clubhouse,” Shayne said. “You watch the race and tell me what’s happening. I’ll see how they react. Keep an eye on Fussbudget.”

  “This is one hell of a time to tell me to keep an eye on Fussbudget,” Rourke said. “We could have protected ourselves by taking one ticket on her and one on My Treat. I’ll have to report back to the hospital when this is over. I’m in agony.”

  “I don’t think you’re in agony at all,” Miss Mallinson said. “I think you’re enjoying every minute of it.”

  The public address cried, “The marshals call the pacers!” Two girls on ponies, in fake cowgirl outfits, began lining up the sulkies in the back stretch behind the starting car, a long white convertible supporting a wide folding gate. As the car moved toward the turn at ten miles an hour, the drivers brought their horses’ heads up to the gate and the announcer called, “The field is in the hands of the starter.”

  A moment later: “The field is in motion!”

  The car gained speed gradually. Bettors hurried back from the galleries. A yell arose, the starter shouted “Go!”, the gate folded in and the car swooped away. Shayne checked the final odds and swung his binoculars to the clubhouse.

  Excited people lined the railing. Everybody who had stayed for the last race had money on it, and a handful still held valid tickets in the twin double. This group was close to hysteria, seeing visions of one of the rich payoffs that had been making headlines lately. The Domaines and Mrs. Moon had risen, Domaine between the two women. Claire’s clenched fists were pressed hard against her breast as she watched the rush for the turn. It was obvious to Shayne that she thought the whole course of her life would be determined by the outcome of the race.

  “It’s Speedy Lad at the turn,” the announcer called. “Famous Son is second, Hurricane Edna on the rail, Painted Lady is fourth, then it’s My Treat, Fussbudget. Fussbudget moving up. Now it’s Speedy Lad, Famous Son—”

  Rourke said prayerfully, “Come on, My Treat. Move.”

  “Don’t talk to the horses, talk to me,” Shayne told him.

  Of the three people he was watching, Mrs. Moon was screaming advice to her horse, Claire stood rigid and silent, Domaine watched the track with a faint smile. He glanced down at his left hand, where he held a stopwatch. Without hurrying, he took off his pince-nez and raised his binoculars to watch the horses go into the turn coming out of the backstretch.

  “My Treat’s got an opening,” Rourke said. “There’s a cranny there she can get through. She’s coming out. She’s going to take that next horse. There she goes.”

  Shayne heard the rattle of hoofs through the crowd-roar and turned to watch the horses come past the grandstand. Thorne had lost his cap. His long black hair was flying in the breeze. He was using his whip. The head of his horse, Famous Son, came abreast of the leading driver. The horse in first place was beginning to fade.

  The announcer called, “And now it’s Speedy Lad, it’s Famous Son, Painted Lady is third—

  Claire was pressing her fingertips against her temples. Domaine still had his binoculars up. He was no longer smiling.

  “I can’t stand it,” Rourke moaned. “What’s the matter with that driver? Come on, My Treat! Get going, will you, Brossard? He’s relaxed! He doesn’t care if he wins or not! Well, finally. He’s brushing her now. That’s right, sweetheart, go. No—Painted Lady’s carrying her out, Mike! The driver’s lost a rein.” He howled. “She squeaked past, My Treat barely squeaked past. That was nice driving, but God it was close.”

  In the clubhouse, Domaine had taken the binoculars down and snapped his pince-nez back on. His eyes were narrow. Mrs. Moon seized his arm in her excitement.

  The announcer called, “Going into the back-stretch, it’s Famous Son first, then it’s Speedy Lad—”

  “My Treat’s fourth,” Rourke said, “coming up fast on the outside. Fussbudget’s still hanging in there, damn her. It’s those four horses. Hey! Hurricane Edna broke. Pulled to the outside. Thorne’s whipping Famous Son again.” He said suddenly, “They bumped! Thorne wobbled, collided with Speedy Lad—I don’t know what happened. Maybe he did it deliberately to let My Treat through—”

  The crowd was roaring insanely. Claire had her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, but Shayne couldn’t see enough of her face to gauge the expression. Domaine was smiling again.

  Rourke said, “They’re both out of the race. That was a rough piece of driving, Mike. Thorne and the other horse are out of it,
their equipment is jammed together. And there goes My Treat!”

  The announcer: “Now it’s My Treat first as they come into the stretch, it’s Fussbudget, it’s Painted Lady third by two lengths—”

  “Thorne’s out of his sulky,” Rourke said. “His horse is dragging him.”

  Domaine’s binoculars, Shayne saw, weren’t aimed at the front-running horses, but at Thorne. His front teeth were bared.

  “Brossard’s trying,” Rourke said. “I’ll say that for him. He’s whipping his horse. Fussbudget’s coming up fast. My Treat is tiring. Now they’re neck and neck. Mike, we’re going to lose! Fussbudget’s past. Running strong. My Treat’s all done. She’s laboring.”

  The announcer: “And now in the stretch it’s Fussbudget by a length, it’s My Treat second, it’s Painted Lady. Coming down to the wire it’s Fussbudget, it’s Painted Lady, it’s My Treat. Fussbudget wins it by two lengths, Painted Lady is second, My Treat third—”

  Mrs. Moon, in the clubhouse, was jumping up and down, necklaces and bracelets flying, her hair wild. Claire was rigid again, but it seemed to Shayne that her eyes were shining. An odd expression moved across Domaine’s face, an expression of satisfaction and triumph. By the way they looked, they all three had a winner. Domaine raised the binoculars and looked off toward the turn, where Thorne had fallen. His lips came back again, showing his teeth.

  Rourke moaned. “What the hell happened? She quit in the stretch. Half a furlong to go. I’ll never come that close to winning a twin.”

  Shayne pulled out the key to Room 17 at the motel, the room he had rented that afternoon. “Stop thinking about money, Tim. Now the important things start happening. This is the Golden Crest Motel, on the ocean, between Pompano Beach and Lauderdale. Go there right away. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

  “Jesus, will you look at that payoff,” Rourke groaned as the unofficial twin-double winner was flashed—6 and 8, pays 22,717.80. “Twenty-two thousand bucks. You knew about Fussbudget and didn’t tell me. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.”