Her Winning Ways

by J. M. Bronston

  The waitress, too, was Irish and friendly. She put a basket of soda bread between them and handed them each a menu. Before she could even look at it, Bart took it from Annie’s hand.

  “We’ll have the shepherd’s pie,” he told the waitress. “And a Guinness.”

  What!?

  Annie’s mouth fell open, but no word came out.

  “And a green salad on the side.” He handed the menus to the waitress. “And how are you doing, Katie? And the kids?”

  “We’re good. And how’s yourself? And your mom?”

  “All good.”

  “And that noble horse of yours?” She smiled at Annie, including her in the talk. “When am I going to see him around here? You’re always keeping him across town at Times Square.”

  “I go where they send me. But we were just here yesterday—that demonstration over by the UN.”

  “Oh, the kids saw that on the TV. Was that you?”

  “Were we on the news? I didn’t see. But then, maybe they saw Annie here. She got herself caught up in it. Needed a bit of rescuing from those bozos.”

  “Ooh.” She turned a kind eye on Annie. “Not hurt, I hope?”

  “I don’t—”

  But again, before she could answer, Bart was speaking for her.

  “Oh, she’s all right. Just shaken up a bit.”

  Annie’s indignation was beginning to show.

  But this time it was Katie’s turn to break in. She turned sharply on Bart.

  “The girl does have a mouth, Bart. She doesn’t need you to speak for her.” She turned again to Annie. “You can speak, can’t you, dear?”

  “Of course I can speak. I do just fine on my own.”

  “Sorry about that,” Bart said briefly, not at all sorry. “Katie, this is Annie, visiting from Wyoming and new to the city.”

  “And obviously in need of some big lummox to do her talking for her.” Katie smiled affectionately at him and then, to Annie, said, “Don’t mind this big ox. He gets so used to being in charge, he forgets his manners.” She tapped Bart’s arm with the menus. “Shame on you, Bart Hardin. If I tell your mother on you, you know what she’ll say.”

  “Katie’s a neighbor from way back,” Bart explained. “Three houses down from us in Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn. She’s known me since I was a little tad and she gets to scold me when I’m out of line. I wasn’t out of line, was I?” He expected no answer and turned to Katie. “I’m just seeing to it that she gets a better impression of our city than she had yesterday.”

  And who appointed you? Annie thought, but she kept her mouth shut. He was among friends and she wouldn’t embarrass him by arguing with him here.

  “Well, Annie. Bart’s a good one to show you around, so long as he behaves.” And to Bart, she added, “You see you behave, you hear me. No getting all bossy, like you do. Let the girl enjoy herself, you hear,” and she gave him another parting tap on the shoulder with the menus. “Glad to meet you, Annie. You two have a good evening, now.” And she was off.

  “I really could have ordered for myself, you know,” Annie said quietly, glad that it was now just the two of them. “We do have restaurants in Laramie and I’ve been reading from menus ever since I became a big girl.”

  “Ah, but you wouldn’t have known about the shepherd’s pie. The best in town, here at Keenan’s. I couldn’t let you go back to Laramie without ever trying the shepherd’s pie at Keenan’s.”

  Bossy is right, she thought. Look at him. Sitting there, like all’s right with his world. Just so full of himself.

  It was true; Bart was sitting back in the booth, expansive, self-satisfied, the king of the hill.

  And looking at me like I’m a chocolate chip cookie and he’s the five-year-old who’s going to eat me up. The nerve of him. I ought to—

  But before she could decide what she ought to do, Bart interrupted her thought.

  “So tell me, Annie Cornell. Shouldn’t you be wearing glasses and have your hair in a bun?”

  Omigod! I can’t believe he said that!

  “Just kidding,” he added, laughing. “But you are an innocent librarian from Laramie, aren’t you? And I worry about you wandering around this city without a proper escort. Look at what happened to you yesterday. You don’t know your way around here. You could have been really hurt. And not only from crazy street protesters; there are plenty of bad guys around just waiting to take advantage. You need a man like me to keep an eye on you, see that you’re safe—”

  “Now wait a minute, Mr. Big-City Policeman! I’m sure I could get around perfectly safely without needing a special police patrol to take care of me. And what’s more, whatever you think of librarians, I promise you, you got it wrong. You think we’re prissy old maids with horn-rimmed glasses, saying ‘Shhh!’ all the time. That’s so old!” She could feel her hackles rising. “That’s so wrong! It’s such a stupid stereotype!”

  “But I was just—” he tried to break in.

  “And furthermore—”

  “Whoa, there! Hold your horses! I didn’t mean to get you all ruffled.” He’d come forward in his seat, leaning toward her. “I don’t see what I said that was so awful. I wasn’t trying to put down librarians. I’ve got nothing against librarians. I think librarians are just swell. A bad joke, I guess. But really, I was serious about—I mean, I just meant that you don’t know your way around here, being new to the city and all, and I didn’t want you to get yourself into another bad situation. And I’d kind of like to be the one who—the one to—I mean—”

  Now he was getting tangled up in his apology.

  She was still rankled about the librarian thing but was calming down.

  Well, so what. Not my business to educate the world.

  She told herself to ease up—to remember that he actually had come to her rescue (was it only yesterday?) and after all, he was being generous with his time and attention. Obviously, he liked her, and there was no need for her to be ungracious. And he looked so earnest, with the light from the little candle on the table adding a cherub-like glow to his face, and the light sandiness of his hair darkened a couple of tones in the pub’s soft lighting, he seemed to have an air of almost little-boy innocence. Not quite little boy, of course, but if she looked closely, she could see the younger version of him. Maybe the one Katie could see. Not the uniformed mounted rescuer he’d been yesterday, and not the one across the table from her with the holstered sidearm she’d spotted under his jacket, but the boy who would one day grow into that man.

  Enough of snap judgments, she decided. And, with a sly little smile deep down inside herself, she remembered the warm buzz she’d felt on the ride across town. The feelings she’d had then certainly earned him a few more points.

  Maybe she ought to get to know him better.

  She broke off a bit of the soda bread, put a bit of butter on it and nibbled at it thoughtfully.

  “Okay,” she said, taking off on a new tack. “I guess we could start over.” She leaned back in the booth, letting herself relax.

  And as though on cue, Katie arrived just at that moment with their beers.

  “Glad to see you two getting along so well,” she said, putting their glasses on the table. “Enjoy your Guinness,” she said cheerily. “I’ll be back with your dinner in a few.” And she was gone.

  “So,” Annie restarted the conversation, “tell me more about that wonderful horse of yours. Why is he so wonderful? And how did he get his name? Was he named for the Lindy Hop?”

  Bart leaned back, too, glad to see that the storm clouds had passed and that the subject had been changed to one he really loved to talk about.

  “No, it was nothing like that. Though I guess he could have been, come to think of it. The choice of his name does kind of go back to the swing era.”

  He raised his glass toward Annie in a gesture that acknowledged her—and his subject—and he began.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lindy’s Story

  Monday Evening

&nbs
p; “Lindy is well known around town, especially in the theater district, around Times Square. He’s a big favorite with the actors—they like to stop by before a performance and chat with him a little. They say he brings them good luck. They give him treats and they teach him tricks, and have their pictures taken with him. And the tourists, too. They all stop and ask about him. My mom keeps a scrapbook of his photos and his newspaper clippings.”

  “He’s a beautiful animal,” Annie said. “And I could see he’s well-schooled.”

  “I’m guessing you know something about horses—I saw the ranch address on your license. So you know a good quarter horse when you see one, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. And I saw your work with the crowd yesterday. Just like our horses—trained for cutting and herding, which is really no different from crowd control. Just that here in New York, it’s people instead of steers.”

  “Well, yes. Similar. Except Lindy has to deal with maybe a little more danger. Armed attackers. Terrorists. Crazy people.” He laughed. “And the press. And TV personalities. He gets interviewed a lot. And photographed. So he has to know how to be polite and how to show off for the public.”

  “On the TV, they said something about an award you both got. I didn’t get to hear the whole story, but I had the impression it was for something heroic.”

  Bart looked both embarrassed and a little proud. “Oh, that.” He made a face, as if to say it was all in a day’s work. “It was really Lindy, more than me. Back in February, I guess it was. There’d been a fire, in one of those old brownstones just off Broadway. Some of those houses and hotels have been there a long time and are pretty run down. I was patrolling along Ninth Avenue and Lindy smelled smoke down the street. He knows to signal me when there’s danger—he kind of pulls his head up and bares his teeth—and he led me to this place where a fire had started in the basement. I got there fast as I could but it was already moving to the floors above. I called for police backup and the fire trucks. But in the meantime, I heard kids crying inside. The front door was locked and the smoke coming out from under was black and thick, and the kids were screaming so I had to work fast. Most of us cops wear a quick-deploy survival bracelet, so I had about twenty feet of paracord. Just pulled it loose real fast, knotted it round the doorknob and then to the saddle and Lindy pulled that door right off the frame. I got right inside and found those kids, four little ones, all hanging on to each other, screaming and so scared. Got ’em out right away, piled ’em up on Lindy and by the time the fire trucks arrived, Lindy and I had those kids out of there and up the street. Turned out their mom had gone to the corner to buy some groceries and she’d locked them in so they’d be safe. Almost lost them all. There were some folks upstairs, too, but the firemen got them out in time. I figured Lindy was the hero that day, and the media was all over the story.”

  “That’s very impressive,” Annie said. “So along with all his charm, he’s also got a good story to tell his kids.” She laughed and corrected herself. “I mean, for you to tell your kids.”

  Bart paused. Then, quietly, he said. “Lindy’s a good police horse. That story is just the most recent. There have been others. He knows how to do his job.”

  Annie sensed that something had stopped the flow. So she tried a different tack.

  “So how did Lindy come by that name?”

  Bart’s attention returned to her.

  “Lindy?”

  Again he paused, as though deciding where to start.

  “Well, to begin with, this Lindy used to be my dad’s horse. And there were other Lindys before this one. ”

  He saw she was surprised.

  “Oh, you didn’t know, of course. See, my dad was a mounted policeman before me. The first Lindy was a gift to him and the others just followed naturally after. It’s a long story.”

  They both got ready for the long story. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hand. He stretched his arms expansively along the back of the booth, as though he was about to take in years of history. His eyes took on a storyteller’s distant gaze.

  “Back when my dad was a kid, there was a restaurant on Broadway, in Times Square, that was owned by a guy named Gus Lindberg. Now, everyone called him Lindy, so when he opened the restaurant, he decided to call it by his nickname. Now, I’m not saying Lindy Lindberg was a shady character, because I don’t know that for sure. But I do know he opened the original place during the speakeasy days, back in the twenties, during Prohibition, so he must have had the right connections. And I know the place was popular with the old-time Broadway crowd, including gamblers and mob types. Also, theater people, the old vaudeville acts, comics. Newspaper people, too, the theater critics and sports writers. And later on, when television came in, the TV producers, too. They came to hang out with each other, to trade jokes and stories and catch up on the latest gossip.

  “And they also came to Lindy’s for the cheesecake Lindy’s wife made. Lily Lindberg’s cheesecake was something special and pretty soon Broadway folks were all fans of the cheesecake at Lindy’s. In fact, I think it was Lindy’s cheesecake that started America eating cheesecake.”

  Annie looked quizzically at him.

  “Really?”

  “Really! You could Google it.”

  “Okay. If you say so.” She made a mental note to do a little research on the subject.

  Bart continued, past the interruption.

  “Now, when Prohibition ended, Lindy continued to run it as a regular restaurant. And it continued to be a hangout for the Broadway regulars—shady and otherwise. And, like I said, that included sports writers. And it just so happens that one of the very best sports writers of that time was my mom’s dad, my granddad Malone. Jimmy Malone wrote for one of the old New York newspapers, long gone now, like most of the old great ones. Maybe you’ve heard of some of them—like the Journal-American, the World Telegram, the New York Herald-Tribune. Well, sometimes Granddad Malone’s columns were about Lindy’s and the guys—and the dolls—that hung out there. And because they were a very mixed and interesting bunch of people, and because the stories my granddad wrote were so great, the columns got a lot of attention for the restaurant and Lindy was convinced my granddad’s stories were what made it the famous place it became. And, being an honorable man, Lindy figured he owed Granddad a special thank you. So right around that time was when my dad was born, in 1950, and old Lindy was so grateful, he wanted to give the baby—my dad—a special present, something that would live on, long into the future. And what he did was he wrote in his will that when the baby grew up, on his twenty-fifth birthday, he would receive a sum of money, held in trust for him, which was to be used to help him in whatever career he would have chosen for his life’s work. It was a hefty sum, and of course it had accrued interest over the years. By the time my dad was twenty-five, he was already in training to be a mounted cop, and he knew how he wanted to use that money. What he wanted was to have his own horse.

  “Now it just so happens that when my mom’s family, the Malones, came to this country way back in the early 1800s, they’d settled out west, in Wyoming, up north of where you’re from, up by Casper.”

  That took Annie by surprise. “So of course,” she said, “you noticed right away that I’m from Laramie—not far from your people. Small world.” She made another mental note to check out the Malone ranch—see just how close these “neighbors” were. “Is the ranch still operating?”

  “Sure is. When I was a kid, we used to go out there every year. I spent most of my summers on the Malone ranch. And my dad did, too. So he knew, if he was going to get his own horse, he couldn’t do better than to head out to Wyoming and get one out of that herd. So he went and chose what turned out to be the first of the Lindy horses, a beautiful, smart bay yearling, and of course he named him Lindy, after his benefactor. He brought that Lindy back to New York, and donated him to the force to be trained for police work. When that one—the first Lindy—was too old for police work, Dad returned him
to stand at stud on the ranch. And he sired the Lindy I’m riding now.”

  “That’s a real coincidence. So you’ve got Wyoming roots, too,” Annie said.

  “That’s why I noticed right away from your driver’s license that you were a Wyoming girl. And that your home address was a local ranch near Laramie. So I figure you know horses.”

  Annie smiled. “We’re a cattle ranch, but of course we have some horses. Good quarter horses. Like Lindy. Maybe, if it’s okay, I could—oh wait—”

  She was interrupted by the arrival of Katie and their food.

  “You could what?”

  “Never mind. It can wait.”

  Katie set down their plates. “Enjoy,” she said, and she was off.

  The aroma of savory lamb stew under the browned topping of mashed potatoes replaced all thought of horses and ranches and police work. She’d save her question till later.

  “This looks great,” Annie said, “and it smells great.”

  “I promise you,” Bart said, “this is the best you’ll get anywhere in New York.” He held up his glass of beer. “And here’s a toast to your visit, and to your winning that contest. And maybe to more visits some time.”

  They clinked glasses. She smiled, he smiled, they tucked into their shepherd pies, and a few minutes passed before Annie said anything.

  “Do you suppose I could get the recipe?”