Black Diamond

by John F. Dobbyn

“Turn the card over, Mr. Boyle.”

  He did. He glanced at the two words I had written on the back—Erin Ryan.

  I figured that would lead to a rush of comprehension and we’d get down to business. I could not have misfigured more completely. There was not a glimmer of recognition.

  “So? Who the hell is this?”

  I could feel my heart physically fall to the pit of my stomach. I had hoped as never before that I could make the deal for Erin’s release on the spot. The total brick wall I ran into caused a dizziness that made it difficult to go on standing. Worse than that, this absurd scene that I had promoted could result in harm to Erin and Colleen. In my silence, Boyle turned to Scully behind me. He held up the card.

  “You know who the hell this is, Scully?”

  I was snapped back into the game when I put two realizations together. Scully was clearly up to his ears in the kidnapping. He had been the surveillance at Colleen’s home all afternoon. Match that with the total oblivion of his boss, and you got the inkling that Mr. Scully was playing his own game behind Boyle’s back.

  Scully’s nerves must have been a bit strung out. There was a slight hesitation before he shot back a quick shrug. “No, Mr. Boyle.”

  I picked up the flash of a look in Boyle’s eyes before he turned back to me.

  “So what the hell is this about, Knight?”

  “It’s about a mistaken identity. My mistake. It’s a business matter. I jumped to the conclusion that you were one of the parties involved. You can consider yourself fortunate that you’re not. It’s about to fall apart. There’ll probably be indictments for anyone connected.”

  Of all of the words I could have used, that one struck home. All of a sudden this lawyer and his deal that was about to bring indictments were the last things he wanted in his office. He saw what I’d hoped – that his safest move was to clean house.

  “Get this bum the hell out of here, Scully. Then come back.”

  I took that as an exit line. I walked through the bar and out to the sidewalk. Scully was one pace behind. When I cleared the door, I felt an iron grip on the back collar of my coat. It practically lifted me off the sidewalk and slammed me into the brick wall of the building and held me fast. Scully’s face was an inch from mine. He spit the words through his teeth.

  “You’ve got a death wish, lawyer. I’m going to grant your wish.”

  I could hardly get the words out of my constricted throat, but I knew it might be my last chance to say them.

  “It’ll be the last thing you’ll ever do, Scully. You screwed up, and you know it.”

  That bought me a couple of seconds of silence, but not a loosening of the grip.

  “You saw it. You saw that look. He asked if you knew the name on the card. You denied it without even reading it. You couldn’t have read it from across the room, but you knew who it was. Boyle picked it up. Good luck when you go back in there.”

  I heard a click down around my belt. I felt the grip tighten. Something sharp was penetrating just below my ribs. I realized that his other hand was holding a knife.

  “You going to kill me here? How are you going to explain that to Boyle? Right now you can say you saw the card when I gave it to the bartender. You kill me, and Boyle’s going to want some answers.”

  It was my best shot. I could only hope that Scully was a reasoning animal. During the next five seconds I could feel moisture run from the point of the knife. I knew he was drawing blood. I’d given up hope, when slowly the pain of the steel point lessened.

  I used the moment to try to make sense.

  “There are no police involved, Scully. You or whoever you’re working for can have the ten thousand. I just want to end it.”

  The fist that gripped my collar banged my forehead against the brick wall with a crack. His mouth was next to my ear. “Then get your nose out of places it doesn’t belong.”

  The grip on my collar tightened again. I gagged as I felt my breath cut off at the throat. He finally used the grip to throw me to the sidewalk like a rag doll.

  Scully turned and walked back to the door of the pub. Before he disappeared inside, he looked down at me and made a gun of his fingers. He cocked his thumb and fired an imaginary bullet between my eyes. Imaginary or not, I thought I heard the angel choir.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By the time I got back to my apartment, the temple bells in my head were putting on a recital. I doubled the usual recipe for Motrin and wolfed down four. Within ten minutes the constant gongs were down to an occasional ding-dong. A butterfly bandage stemmed the trickle still oozing from the puncture below the ribs. A couple of squirts of Bactine soothed concerns about where Scully’s knife might have been previously.

  Before calling it a day, I called Mr. Devlin. I filled him in on my tête-à-tête with Binney O’Toole. That went well. He was less tickled, as was I, with my blundering into Boyle’s den half-cocked.

  “What in the name of the saints did you think, Michael? That he’d give you a receipt for the ten thousand and take the girl out of the closet?”

  I had to admit that that was pretty much what I’d hoped. I guess I was counting on my boyish frankness to convince Boyle that after the wished-for exchange, I could guarantee no repercussions.

  I decided there was no point in mentioning my little encounter with Scully on the way out. It would be like the kid who gets reamed by the teacher and then gets it again from his father when he gets home. I was more in need of a night’s sleep than another pummeling.

  The morning alarm at five thirty brought back reminders from previously silent muscles that Mr. Scully had gotten the best of me in the set-to. Added to that, it was two hours earlier than my usual wake-up call.

  I made a brief stop at Starbuck’s for a black eye. This little known Bucky special, strong black coffee with two shots of espresso, is guaranteed to rip out the most persistent cobwebs. Combine it with a couple of Motrin and you have the true breakfast of champions, and one I hope never to have to repeat.

  After the previous day, I decided to follow the physicians’ oath to the letter—first do no harm. Rather than exacerbate Colleen’s situation further, I focused on the case against our client Hector Vasquez.

  The backstretch at Suffolk Downs, as with any horse track, is a self-contained world. Life among the trainers’ barns begins sometime before dawn. Grooms, stall muckers, feeders, hot-walkers, all go into their well-practiced routines like an ant colony. The buzz and hum that thirty years ago had a southern African-American accent is now uniformly in Mexican Spanish.

  Trainers move from stall to stall to check legs and ankles for heat and decide on the regimen of the day’s training for each horse before the exercise riders check in for instructions.

  On the drive to Suffolk Downs, I called Rick McDonough, Black Diamond’s trainer, on his cell phone and asked him to leave my name with security at the gate. That greased my path directly to barn 23.

  I found Rick with a cluster of riders outside the stalls where grooms were tacking up for the morning ride-outs. He was giving specific instructions to the riders for each mount when he saw me. He pointed toward the coffee shack and gestured an invitation for a cup. I nodded acceptance and went to the shack to wait.

  I had two cups waiting when he ambled up with a walking gait that could only be produced by bone breaks he had suffered as a saddle bronc rider in Montana in his youth. Rick was somewhere between fifty and eighty years old. It was hard to tell, since the creased, weather-worn skin of his face and the angular mismatch of all of his limbs could have passed for ninety.

  Rick had trained racehorses for my adopted father, Miles O’Connor, back when my days began with mucking out the Augean stables on Miles’s estate. They made a hell of a pair. Miles was the personification of the Harvard-trained, elite Boston trial lawyer, and Rick was a horse whisperer of mythic insights who was probably still wearing the jeans and boots he had worn when I was a stableboy. What linked them was a consummate trust and belief in the
depth and truth of the character of each other. I don’t think Miles had a closer friend than Rick, and it was mutual.

  Rick accepted the cup of strong black caffeine I offered and leaned against the counter. He looked a good deal more life-worn and tired than the last time I saw him.

  His only greeting was a shake of the head. “Hell of a thing about Danny.”

  I knew he felt it as deeply as I did. He had trained both Danny and me to breeze horses in the morning workouts. I did it until I passed a hundred and twenty pounds. Danny was smaller, so he kept on until Rick had given him every trick and nuance of riding a jockey can use. Rick believed in Danny through all of the pitfalls of money and the fast life that Danny fell into. Rick was there with an offer of a mount on Black Diamond when Danny finally climbed out of the pit.

  “A hell of a thing indeed, Rick.”

  He just nodded.

  “I better tell you up front. Hector Vasquez is being charged with his murder. I took on his defense.”

  He glanced over at me with one of those looks only a face like Rick’s could give.

  “There’s a reason, Rick. I think he’s innocent. It also gives me a chance to find out what happened to Danny.”

  It took him a second, but he nodded again and turned back to the cup. I understood him well enough to know he was saying it was all right. He accepted my decision.

  “Tell me about Black Diamond. What was going on in that race?”

  He picked up his cup and turned to lean his back against the counter.

  “’Bout two months ago. I got a call. Some Irish guy. He has a breeding farm somewhere in Ireland. He was sending this horse over. Wanted me to train him.”

  He walked a ways away from the counter to stand beside the track rail with no one in earshot.

  “I’m gonna tell you this ’cause it might help clear Danny.”

  “Clear him of what, Rick?”

  “Just listen, Mike. Danny came by to give the Diamond a light gallop about this time the morning of the race. Danny seemed good.”

  “Was Erin with him?”

  “Yeah. She liked to watch from the rail. All the riders spoke to her. Anyway, Danny left the track about nine thirty.”

  “And Erin was with him?”

  “Sure. Anyway, that afternoon, I’m saddling the Diamond in the paddock for the fourth race. Danny walks up for the mount. He knows my instructions. Let the Diamond run his race. Only thing different, I told him we needed this win for the stable. Things have been a little tight.”

  “So?”

  “He didn’t say anything. That’s not like Danny. He just took the reins for a leg up, like he wanted to get it over with. Just before the pony led him off to the track, he turns around and looks at me like he’s gonna say something. Only he doesn’t.”

  I could feel the tumblers click. I figured by that time Erin had been taken. But Rick didn’t know about Erin, and I couldn’t tell him. Rick looked over at me for an explanation. I had no words.

  “Damn, Mike. I think the race was fixed and maybe Danny knew it. I think he knew someone was going to get him during the race. If he’d told me, I’d have scratched the horse on the spot.”

  “Not your fault. I guess Danny was right. How do you think they did it? Danny didn’t just fall off that horse.”

  Rick rubbed the random strands of his hair and shook his head. “I’ve watched that damn race on the film a hundred times. Two hundred in my mind. Whatever the hell they did, I can’t see it. One thing’s for damn sure. You’re right. Danny doesn’t just fall off a horse.”

  He finished the coffee and tossed the paper cup in the basket to get back to work. I had one more nagging question. “You saw Black Diamond’s workout times before the race. Pathetic. Where’d he get the speed he showed in that race?”

  Rick wiped his leathery face with a hand that was more callous than skin. He looked back at the track. “Horses are like people. Some days they want to run. Some days they don’t.”

  “Yeah, Rick, and pigs are like dragonflies.”

  I didn’t actually say that. I didn’t say anything, which probably meant to Rick just what I was thinking. Bull. I had checked the Daily Racing Form fractions for that race. The first three furlongs had been run in blazing speed, and Black Diamond was close to the pace. It was as if the Diamond had been reborn that day as an athlete.

  About that time, the exercise riders began to ride their mounts out to the track. A fair number of the regular Suffolk Downs jockeys were there to exercise horses in the morning workouts. Some do it to make extra money, some to get the feel of a horse they’re going to ride in an afternoon race, and some just to be where they’d rather be than anywhere else on earth—hanging with the real horse people.

  I was there to find out who was pulling whose strings in that race that ended Danny’s life. I wore jeans and boots and a denim jacket, the better to blend in like a piece of wallpaper. Given my early Puerto Rican upbringing, there were two doors open to me. I could approach the Anglo jockeys or the Latinos. I chose the latter for no better reason than that there are more of them.

  By about seven thirty, a number of Latino riders had finished the first ride and were clustered with coffee by the rail. I spotted several who had ridden in Danny’s race.

  The trick, since I’d be walking on tender ground, was to break the seal of secrecy. I knew they’d be cordial to any stranger, friendly to anyone who spoke Spanish without an accent, and hopefully willing to open the store to one of their own who had taken on representation of a Dominican jockey as a client.

  I exchanged holas and got a warm reception as anticipated. We coasted harmoniously through such sensitive topics as the weather, the track condition, and whether Big Papi Ortiz of the Red Sox would break his slump. With a bit of false confidence, I decided to wade into deeper waters before they disbanded for another ride-out.

  “My name’s Michael Knight. I’m a lawyer. I’m defending Hector Vasquez. He’s charged with the murder of Danny Ryan.”

  That’s a translation from Spanish. Needless to say, I had their full attention. The translation continues, “I need your help. The D.A.’s going after Hector with all guns blazing. I think she’s after a lot bigger fish than Hector, but she’s going to use him as a weapon to get them. I think that puts Hector not only in trouble but also in danger. Do you hear me?”

  I got nods all around, but also a lot of foot shuffling that I took as a desire to relocate quickly. I needed a hook.

  “What I need is information. Right now, the D.A. knows a hell of a lot more about that race than I do. That could be a fatal disadvantage in defending Hector. I know that race was sour one way or another. I need you to tell me how.”

  I looked from face to face. All I could see was tight lips and look-away head shakes.

  “Just tell me this. Did Danny Ryan and Hector ever have any problems?”

  One of the riders, the youngest by appearance, started to say something about an argument. The jockey beside him gave him a jolt with his fist behind his back. It stemmed the flow of words like shutting off a valve. I lost eye contact and a wall of silence slammed into place.

  “Let me lay it out for you, gentlemen. If you stick together and help, we stand a chance of pulling Hector out of the fire. If you stay in your shell, the D.A.’ll pick you off one at a time till she gets what she wants. Please tell me what you know about that race.”

  The glow of collegiality I rode in on had drained to the last drop. One by one they had to “see a trainer about the next ride.”

  The last one to walk away was Vinnie Hernandez. When he walked close to me to throw his cup in the basket, I barely heard the words, “Go down to the starting gate.”

  I stayed by the rail for a few minutes in the unlikely event that anyone heard what Vinnie said. Then I walked the quarter of a mile to the left down the rail to where a starting gate had been set in position across the track. A few riders were taking their mounts to the gate for training in entering one of the nar
row compartments and breaking smoothly when the steel doors swung open at the start of a race.

  In about ten minutes, I saw Vinnie riding a dappled gray along the rail toward the gate. I stayed about thirty yards up from the gate to be out of earshot of the assistant starters on foot who guided, cajoled, or shoved recalcitrant starters into a compartment in the gate and held their bridles to keep their heads straight for the start.

  Vinnie’s horse was prancing sideways with a wide eye on that green steel monster that would soon swallow him up. I could see Vinnie working his left rein and right boot to have the gray pass me as close to the rail as he could. The rapid snorting breath of the colt all but covered up the words Vinnie forced through his unmoving lips.

  “Alberto Ibanez. See him alone. Tell him I said this may be the time we talked about.”

  I was surprised that he said it in English, but then I noticed three Latino riders twenty yards behind him. He never looked at me, but his last words were, “¿me comprendes?”

  “Sí,Vinnie.”

  “Buena suerte, amigo.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was a little before eleven when I pulled into Colleen’s driveway. There was no need to play hide-and-seek. Scully and anyone he reported to knew I was in the game on Colleen’s side. They apparently realized that we had still not gone to the police since nothing catastrophic seemed to have occurred since the previous day.

  This time when I rang the bell, Colleen took my hand and led me into the house. It was dark and silent as a tomb without Danny’s laugh and the constant jabber of little Erin. The wet droplets in each of Colleen’s road-mapped eyes told me how much sleep she’d had.

  “Anything new?”

  She just shook her head, holding back the torrent that needed to escape. I took her by the arms and put her head on my shoulder. That did it. The floodgates burst. She sobbed until her entire body shook. I could feel the moisture seep through the shoulder of my shirt. She let it pour out of her until she had no more strength to sob.