“Terrific. And how do I do that?”
“Just by being your natural Chinese self. Forgive the ethnicity, but you people are supposed to be into high-stakes gambling. It’ll go a long way to sell the cover story.”
“That’s a myth.”
“So what, as long as they believe it.”
He nervously wiped his brow with his napkin.
“Easy, easy. You’re a sophisticated, cool, big roller.”
“I’m going to get my high-stakes Chinese ass sliced up for Irish stew. This is not my idea of a super, can’t-miss plan.”
“Not to worry, Harry. My low-stakes ass will be right up there on the block with yours.”
“Oh, that’s comforting. Could you at least stop calling me ‘Harry’?”
“Not a problem in the world, Harry. Mr. Qian. We have two things on our side. Number one is I’ll do all the talking. You tend to ham it up. Second, we’ll be going in with a gift of twenty thousand euros. Sort of a test I set up to pass. It’ll be duck soup. Eat your breakfast, Harry.”
He flinched.
“I mean, Mr. Qian.”
I left Harry to rest up for our matinee performance while I walked down O’Connell Street to the Ulster Bank. I asked for the manager and was escorted to an upstairs office. Mr. Dwyer welcomed me as if there was no need for an explanation. In fact, there wasn’t. Apparently Colin Fitzpatrick had set everything up for me in advance. From the tone in which Mr. Dwyer spoke of him, Colin Fitzpatrick was a heavier hitter than even I had assumed. Mr. Dwyer seemed tickled to start his day doing business with him.
In any event, I walked out of the bank with an envelope containing exactly twenty thousand euros in cash. Strangely enough, seeing Sweeney’s thug tail me gave me an unexpected sense of security carrying that amount of cash.
At one o’clock sharp, Mr. Qian An-Yong and I stepped out of a cab in front of McShannon’s Pub. At that hour, it looked like a funeral parlor compared to the rocking boom box it had been the night before.
One of the men who had been in the upstairs room during my last visit met us at the door. He led us through the pub and up the stairs to Sweeney’s office. On the way to the staircase, I could see McGuire hunched over a Guinness at the far end of the bar. He gave me a sideways look with a sneering grin that knocked the crap out of the euphoria I had built up in selling the plan to Harry at breakfast. I was back to full-blown reality.
Sweeney was in the chair behind his desk. He was in a welltailored suit with an open-collared shirt. He stood and extended his hand to me for a handshake with a pleasant “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” I introduced Harry as Mr. Qian. Sweeney offered a gracious hand to Harry and they exchanged salutations.
I was slightly rattled by the entire opening scene. First, seeing Sweeney in his current attire and manner dispelled any comforting notion that he was a beer-besotted thug with the IQ of a bar brawler. The idea that that mistaken impression might have been deliberately planted by Sweeney the previous day gave me a double jolt.
The second cause for unease was that good old Harry had responded to Sweeney’s extended hand with a low bow and worse yet, he’d slipped into a Chinese accent. I gave him a hopefully unnoticed jab in the back to tone down his performance. He jumped just enough to make me wish I hadn’t.
I played my best opening card. I placed the envelope holding twenty thousand euros on the desk in front of Sweeney. He eyed it, and looked back at me with either hesitancy or suspicion.
“Please count it, Mr. Sweeney. It’s yours.”
Sweeney leaned forward in his seat and simply lifted the flap on the envelope. With one momentary look, he closed the flap and let the envelope sit there between us. The air of suspicion still hung heavy. It had me off balance.
“You seem unhappy, Mr. Sweeney. I believe I’ve passed the test. I’m sure you know who won the eighth race yesterday. You know I had the winner before the race was run. Unless I misread you, you’re still suspicious. I told you three times yesterday, this can only work on mutual trust. If you’re not capable of trust, we’ll call it a day. I’ve enjoyed seeing Dublin, and you’re up twenty thousand euros. Shall we leave it at that?”
I stood up and gave every indication of walking out the door. Poor Harry was totally confused, but he took his cue from me and stood. The only obstacle to a grand exit was the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound thug standing in the doorway. I thanked God he was there, because if Sweeney had not stopped us from leaving, we were back at ground zero or below.
I turned back to Sweeney and raised my hands in a what’s-with- the-goon-in-the-doorway gesture. Sweeney responded, but the businesslike tone had an unsettling edge to it.
“Please, gentlemen. Sit. Allow me to be curious.”
“About what? I promised you I could get a twenty-to-one return on your bet before the horses even went to the post. I did that. Every dime of it is in that envelope. I assumed that you’d understand that if I could do that with peanuts, I could do it with interesting money. Apparently I was wrong. Is there anything more to say?”
Sweeney smiled from one to the other of us.
“You’re a hell of a puzzle to me. Either you’re a man I could do business with, or you’re—something else.”
I raised my hands again in innocence. “What else?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure. You lay twenty thousand euros on my desk like it’s subway change. Then you’re going to walk away. No one does that.”
I sat down, and poor befuddled Harry followed suit.
“I do, Mr. Sweeney.”
“Why?”
“Because I said I would. I keep my word. I’m entitled to your trust. I hoped this would prove it.”
He looked at me again with those piercing, questioning eyes. He seemed to be on the verge of something, but just couldn’t cross the line to a decision. He looked straight at me.
“I’ll tell you what I can’t figure out, Yank. If you could make twenty thousand overnight, why do you need me?”
I leaned back in the chair and forced a knowing grin.
“You’ve finally asked an interesting question. We spread the bets so thinly with betting syndicates across the United States, we can pluck out twenty thousand on a routine fixed race at Suffolk, and no one notices.”
I came forward with the fire of enthusiasm in my eyes and my elbows on his desk.
“What I have in mind is a real killing. High millions. It can only be done once. The kind of fix that was in on yesterday’s race would be suspect to the people who’d have to pay off large sums of money. They wouldn’t suffer it gladly. They’d work over the jockeys till they got the truth about the fix. We’d all be dead within a week. Or wish we were.”
“So how is this different?”
He was looking at me like a trout eyeing a piece of bait just before he decides to strike. I had to make the trout want to believe.
“You set it up perfectly with Black Diamond. You just don’t know how to use it.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s perfect. We don’t need to fix the race. There’s nothing for the syndicates to detect. Nothing the jockeys can tell them. It’s a normal race. It’s not uncommon for a horse to run routine races and then break out with a convincing win in one race. Horses are animals. They’re not machines. Even the syndicates understand that.”
“But he could still lose the race.”
I sat back and took a breath as if I were looking for the words to simplify it.
“You’ve got a good grip on the obvious. He could break a leg coming out of the starting gate. He could be hit by a flying meteor at the eighth pole. A sinkhole could swallow him up.”
Sweeney was not taking my last comment kindly. I couldn’t let the trout back off the bait.
“Life’s full of crappy accidents. But I’ve seen that horse run. We pick the right race, and I’m willing to bet more of my own money than you’ve seen in a lifetime that he’ll break on top and waltz home. Mr. Qian is willing to put his ent
ire network of contacts and a good bit of his own money on the line. We need you because you control Black Diamond. It’s a one-time thing, Mr. Sweeney. You’re in or you’re out.”
I sat back and made a point of looking at my watch. Sweeney was getting the itches like a man at a major fork in the road. He stood up and swung his chair around. Then he swung it back and sat down again.
“How much are you looking for?”
I scratched my temple and looked at Harry, who, thank God, was keeping his mouth shut. I spoke in a hushed tone to Harry, but just loud enough for Sweeney to hear.
“How much can you handle? I’m in for six million. You? Probably double that.”
Good old Harry refrained from favoring us with his phony Chinese accent. He just nodded in assent.
“So we can let Mr. Sweeney in for what? Remember, it’s his horse.”
Harry had no clue as to what number I was looking for. He just squinted as if he was thinking.
I turned to Sweeney. “You name it, Mr. Sweeney. Give us a number.”
Sweeney looked as perplexed as Harry. He may have been the top dog in the Irish Mafia with his bank robberies and extortion and whatever, but he was on the spot and totally out of his element in this game. Thank God. He finally mumbled a number.
“A hundred thousand.”
He looked like he was going to choke just to say it. I just sat there with my mouth open like I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I looked at Harry who was looking equally shocked. I nearly fell over when Harry stood up and started berating me.
“What you get me over here for? You play some kind of joke?”
I tried to calm him. “Please, Mr. Qian. Let’s give him a chance.”
Harry had the bit in his teeth. There was no turning him off. He was sputtering staccato syllables in fractured English as fast as he could get them out.
“Chance to what? Chance to humiliate me? My people not take this well. Not well at all. I lose face.”
He was wiping his face with a large red silk handkerchief that he probably bought for the occasion. I had totally lost control. The words kept pouring out.
“I tell you this. I don’t know what they do about this man. I try to explain, but I don’t know. They not like this.”
I took Harry by the shoulders and placed him back in the chair. I gave him a look that finally put a cork in it. I turned back to Sweeney, who, for the moment, seemed not to know who was on first.
“Mr. Sweeney, let’s think this thing through. Some serious arrangements have been made by Mr. Qian on the strength of what I assumed you’d commit to. I was told you were a major figure over here. You never denied it. Representations have been made to people who deal on a commission basis. I don’t know how to express this other than directly. We all have a great deal to lose if we pansy out now. I obviously mean more than money. I don’t think I have to explain that to you. Let’s start again. How much can you put into this, remembering that we’re looking for at least a ten-to-one profit?”
He looked no more comfortable than he did a minute ago, but at least he was thinking. He was steering clear of the Chinese firecracker. He looked straight at me.
“How much did you expect?”
I looked back at Harry. It was the right gesture, but I prayed it wouldn’t set him off again. Having my right shoe on his left foot helped. He left the ball in my court.
“I think five million minimum. I’m talking dollars. You’ll walk away with at least fifty million at ten-to-one. I’m hoping for more.”
Sweeney’s Irish complexion had ranged between blanched white and tomato red in the previous ten minutes. It was currently on the blanched side.
“I don’t have five million right now.”
“That’s not the question. Can you raise it?”
He rubbed his face with his hands. The whole thing must have seemed surreal. Drops of sweat were oozing out of every pore.
“I don’t know. It’ll take time.”
I looked at Harry. “When do you have to leave?”
Another unanswerable question. I think Harry went with his most earnest desire. “As soon as possible. Tonight.”
It was a good answer. I nodded in assent, and addressed poor Harry. “I’ll stay one more day for Mr. Sweeney’s answer. You can leave this evening, Mr. Qian.”
I turned back to Sweeney. “I’ll be at the Gresham until tomorrow noon. We’ll need to hear by then. Do what you can. I’ll take your note for as much as you can put together now. You can commit to the rest when you’ve raised the credit. Bear in mind, you don’t give us cash. Not a dime. We don’t deal in cash for obvious reasons. It’s all strictly debt owed to Mr. Qian’s syndicate. You’ll owe nothing until after the race. At that point we simply transfer your winnings electronically to any bank account you name. I’d set up a numbered account in the meantime to receive your winnings. Perhaps in Switzerland.”
I stood and held out my hand to Sweeney. He still looked a bit blank, but he took my hand. Harry rose and bowed at the waist before I could stop him. Sweeney gave him a slight bow in return.
I took Harry’s arm and guided him through the door. I turned for one last word to Sweeney.
“I’ll look for your message by tomorrow noon. I’m at the Gresham, as you know. You can use the name, ‘Alexander Hamilton.’ Just remember that serious commitments have been made. I would not want to disappoint these people for the well-being of all of us.”
Given the business he was in, I was sure he could fill in the implications of that statement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Harry and I caught a quick lunch at the Sports bar in the Gresham before he caught a cab to the Dublin Airport for the flight back to Boston and his safe, comfortable laboratory. Bizarre as his performance had been, it might have been exactly the touch that was needed to edge Sweeney into a decision. At the very least, he left the suggestion that the people he represented could make pot stickers of Sweeney and his army.
In looking around the bar and lobby, I was surprised that my finely tuned antenna for someone on my tail was turning up no signals. If I was right, it left me free to use the afternoon to tend to what Rick McDonough would call a “burr under my saddle.”
I was never comfortable with the official record of Black Diamond’s unimpressive sire and dam. It’s true that occasionally a horse with blazing speed pops out of a line of sluggards. But it’s rare. If I were going to all the deceptive effort it would take to distort the time of every public workout of a two-year-old colt, beginning with the very first, I’d want some high-test blood flowing through that colt’s veins to bank on.
I called Kieran Dowd at the Dubh Crann Stables. He was in his office, planning the morning’s workouts for the fifty or so horses he trained. I got him alone, so I was able to test a theory.
“Kieran, I’m with Martin Sweeney. We have a question for you.” I figured that would imply that Sweeney was right there approving of anything I asked.
“Mr. Schwarzenegger. Or is it your excellency, the governor?”
Thank God he mentioned it. I’d forgotten what name I’d left with him.
“‘Mister’ will do. A question for you. This has both of us curious. There was another horse in the stable that was foaled about the same time as Black Diamond. What’s his name?”
That was a guess.
“What makes you ask that?”
“Curiosity. We have a bet. He told me you’d know.”
There was a hesitation that led me to believe that my shot-in-the-dark suspicions might be on track.
“I think I’d better be speakin’ with Mr. Sweeney himself.”
“Suit yourself. We’re having lunch. He’s gone to the men’s room. He told me to get an answer by the time he gets back. I could call him out of the men’s room, but I don’t know how that would go over.”
Another hesitation.
“Your call, Kieran. Hold the phone. I’ll go get him.”
“Wait a minute. Damn it, you’re al
ways in a hurry. What do ya want to know again?”
“The other two-year-old colt in the Dubh Crann Stables that was born the same time as Black Diamond? It’s a simple question. Mr. Sweeney says he just can’t think of the name.”
“Shannon Moon. Born the same night in March.”
“I’ll tell him. He’ll be pleased. He thought it was the name of a river. Thank you Kieran.”
“Hold the line. I’ll be speaking with him when he comes back if ya please.”
“Here he comes now. I’ll put him on. Oh, wait a minute. He stopped to talk to someone the other side of the room. We’ll have to call you back.”
That was interesting. I went to the guests’ computer room of the Gresham, put in a couple of euros, and got on line. I used Bing.com to get into the registry of Thoroughbred breeding. I typed in the name Shannon Moon and got another interesting bit. The sire of Shannon Moon was listed as an Irish stallion named Knight Thief. His dam was Blue Rose.
I used Bing.com again to find that Knight Thief had won the Irish Derby in his day. He had gone on to sire a number of Grade One stakes winners. Blue Rose was also descended from a line of champions. They were a powerful combination, and each of them had a record for passing their best genes on to their offspring. Another strange coincidence was that both Knight Thief and Blue Rose were owned by and stabled at the Dubh Crann Stables. As Kieran Dowd had mentioned, both Black Diamond and Shannon Moon were foaled the same night in the Dubh Crann foaling barn.
I checked out the track record of Shannon Moon and found that he had run two races in Ireland, coming in at the back of the pack in both.
One last curious bit of information was that every registered son of Knight Thief had the word “Thief” in his name—except Shannon Moon.
I brought up a picture of Shannon Moon and found, to no great surprise at this point, that his markings were not exactly identical, but very similar to those of Black Diamond. They could have passed as brothers.
I recalled the words of Mick, my guide at the National Stud Farm, that a representative of the Irish National Registry was required to be present at the birth of every registered Thoroughbred born in Ireland. The official would insert a chip under the skin behind the foal’s ear. A simple scan of the chip would reveal the sire and dam of the foal from then on.
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