Saratoga Payback

by Stephen Dobyns

  “He snitched.”

  Charlie could barely hear what Cracker said. A man behind the counter asked if he could get Charlie anything. He and Cracker were his only customers.

  “You want another beer?” said Charlie.

  Cracker didn’t respond and Charlie ordered a Budweiser for himself.

  Accepting the beer from the counterman, Charlie took a slow drink and considered what to say next. But Cracker spoke first.

  “You’re a scaredy-cat, ain’t you.”

  At first Charlie didn’t answer, and then he said, “Look, I’m here to ask you a few questions. When we’re done, I’ll give you fifty bucks. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Cracker grinned. His knuckles were oversized, as if arthritic.

  “Okay, tell me about the snitching. What happened?”

  Charlie wasn’t sure that Cracker would speak, but then, slowly, he uttered several scattered words. Then he began to speak more easily.

  “Drugs, a whole operation. A guard was bribed. Pills, mostly, some cocaine.”

  “Were you involved in it?”

  “Not me. I don’t use that shit. I got mixed up later.”

  What Cracker meant was that he’d become Mickey’s bodyguard after the business was broken up and ten guys were busted. Mickey had gotten drugs from the outside and sold them on the inside, delivering them with the help of another inmate. After six months, Mickey went to the superintendent and told him about the drug use. He said he’d give him the names of the men involved if the superintendent would make a deal. But Mickey didn’t say he’d been running the operation himself; hardly anybody knew that. So he’d both started it and ended it. And he didn’t snitch on his accomplice or the crooked guard. Mickey was a good talker. After all, he was a con man. He sounded plausible.

  From then on, Mickey wore a wire, and after his last delivery, he gave the names of the drug users to the superintendent, who called for a full lockdown. Cells were searched; arrests were made. The big question was who had told.

  Before suspicion could land on Mickey, he accused another man: Matthew Durkin, a small-time user and dealer in prison for larceny. For two days Durkin scurried around like a chased rabbit. Then he was found dead.

  Charlie repeated Durkin’s name to himself. It seemed familiar. “Where was Durkin from?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe around Saratoga. He’d worked at the track.”

  “You ever talk to him? You know what he did?”

  Cracker shook his head. “I never talked to him. I never talked to nobody if I could help it.”

  After Matthew Durkin had been killed, Mickey hired Cracker Johnson to protect him, as well as his accomplice. Cracker couldn’t remember his name.

  “And did you have to do anything?” asked Charlie.

  “I hung around. I’d been in fights at Adirondack. Guys knew me. A few guys blamed Mickey, but they didn’t think it worth doing anything. It wasn’t worth the hurt I’d hand out. And Mickey kept talking about Durkin; he sold them a whole package. His friend talked about it too. Two or three guys thought Mickey and his friend killed Durkin. He’d been knifed in the laundry. I convinced them they were wrong. Want to know how I did it?”

  A little smile hovered over Cracker’s lips like a butterfly over a flower.

  “Not particularly.” Charlie drank some beer and worked on his sleepy look.

  Cracker seemed disappointed. In any case, Durkin’s killers weren’t found. The men who’d been busted were transferred to other prisons. Cracker got paid. A month later Mickey was sent to the Albany County Correctional Facility.

  “What about the guy who helped him?”

  “He went down a few months after that, but he’d almost finished his sentence anyway. Albany’s where they try to civilize you, get you ready for the outside.”

  “Who were the men who were busted?”

  “Just guys. Losers.” Cracker stared at Charlie’s eyes. He never seemed to blink.

  “You see Mickey once you got out?”

  Cracker shook his head. “Our business was done.”

  “What did you think when you heard Mickey was dead?”

  “One of those guys must’ve caught up with him. Getting his tongue cut out, that’s what you do to a snitch.”

  “And Mickey’s friend in Adirondack, the accomplice?”

  “They weren’t real friends, they were business friends.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t recollect, like I said. It had something to do with cemeteries: graves or coffins. Something like that.”

  “Could he have killed Mickey?”

  Cracker shrugged. “Dunno. Mickey might’ve tried to blackmail him.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was about forty, just regular looking.” Cracker paused. “He had little ears, ears like pink silver dollars stuck to the side of his head.”

  —

  Charlie left about five minutes later. Cracker turned down his offer of a ride, which Charlie was glad of. A compound bow, a quiver full of arrows and a small backpack had been leaning against the wall. Cracker had picked them up, opened the door and disappeared without looking back at Charlie. The door banged shut.

  Driving back down south, Charlie was sweating as if he’d run five miles. Sociopaths gave him the creeps. As for who killed Mickey, it must have been one of the guys who’d been busted, or maybe Mickey’s accomplice, the one with little ears.

  It was past five and the sun was beginning to set. Charlie called Shawn Smith at the Racing Protective Bureau, wanting to catch him before he left the office.

  “So what have you got to tell me?” said Smith, after cool greetings had been exchanged. “And, no, I don’t know anything new.”

  “I’ve got some information about Mickey, about how he got out of prison. I thought you’d want to know.” The cell phone reception was weak with brief lapses in service, voices reduced to a crackling. Charlie told Smith what he’d learned from Cracker Johnson, though he didn’t tell him his source of information. Because of the poor reception, he had to raise his voice. He was a little hoarse when he was done.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Smith, “a dozen guys got busted. So far we’ve tracked down eight. And the guy you said was Coffin or Graves, his name’s Toombs, Rodger Toombs. He’s around Albany someplace. We’ve been looking for him.”

  Charlie stared out at the darkening pines. The sun must have set, but Charlie couldn’t tell. The sky was uniformly gray—light gray to the west, dark to the east. He considered what to say, but he didn’t feel like saying much of anything.

  “No offense, Charlie,” said Smith, “you put a lot of legwork into this. But why spend time finding out what we already know? Who’s the guy that told you this?”

  But Charlie, who wished to retain a smidgen of self-respect, said: “I’m sorry, Shawn, that’s confidential information.”

  After hanging up, Charlie thought of Coffin, Graves and Toombs. For some reason, it reminded him of Artemis. Then he realized why. He called her as he was entering Saratoga. “That groom you fired for stealing eight years ago, you thought his name was Matthew Perkins. Could it have been Durkin, Matthew Durkin?”

  “Oh, Charlie, of course it was: Matthew Durkin. How clever you are. Where is he now? I hope he’s all right.”

  “He’s dead, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, no, what a shame. How did he die?”

  “Cancer, I think.”

  Next Charlie called Fletcher Campbell. Had it been Matthew Durkin who was arrested eight years ago for stealing tack from Campbell’s barn? But Campbell was in Miami and wouldn’t be home until the weekend.

  Sixteen

  In early February, Artemis decided to have a small dinner party to celebrate having escaped the burdens of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Sh
e invited Charlie, Janey and Emma. Emma, who was mad about horses, could ride Artemis’s safest horse: a gelding called Feather-Foot that she had ridden before. Other people were coming as well, including Fletcher Campbell.

  “I didn’t know you cooked,” said Charlie over the phone.

  “I don’t,” said Artemis. “I’m having it catered.”

  Friday evening, Janey asked: “You’re not taking that gun, are you?”

  “I thought I’d pop it in the back of the car.”

  They sat at the kitchen table waiting for Emma, who was upstairs getting ready. Freezing rain spattered against the window. Soon it would turn to snow.

  “If it goes,” said Janey, “I’m not.”

  “I might need it. Anything could happen.” His disquiet about future dangers had increased after having met Cracker Johnson.

  Janey sipped her coffee and looked at the rain. “Charlie, did you have a favorite doll you dragged around when you were a kid?”

  “A Raggedy Andy.” Charlie distrusted Janey’s abrupt change of topic. “He had bright blue eyes on one side, closed eyes on the other and a fringe of red yarn for the hair—I took it everyplace.”

  “That shotgun’s your Raggedy Andy, isn’t it? And you want to take it everywhere. Think about it, Charlie: If it goes, I don’t.”

  “I think you’re being overdramatic.”

  “Charlie, I’m not the one carrying the shotgun.”

  “I keep telling you we’re still in danger. It makes sense to keep it nearby.”

  “Nothing’s happened for months.”

  Charlie was unhappy with the conversation. He felt hurt and misunderstood. First Victor had called the Benelli his “blankie” and now this. But he left the hard case in the bedroom closet.

  Because he was annoyed, Charlie said little to Janey on the way over. Instead, he and Emma discussed horses. She had ridden horses at Artemis’s stable six or seven times and wanted to take lessons. Though Charlie had ridden, he’d never felt comfortable on a horse. There was something about him that horses didn’t like. Maybe a smell, or perhaps they could sense his discomfort. They exuded antipathy; they rolled their eyes in an unfriendly manner. He wasn’t disappointed by this; rather, he understood that some relationships weren’t meant to blossom. But for Emma the opposite was true. She now knew all the horses in Artemis’s stable, knew their names and favorite treats, knew their little idiosyncrasies, how one would nuzzle a pocket in search of a carrot, how another might try to step on her foot.

  Victor came with Rosemary, who wore a red satin dress cut so low that Charlie guessed he could lob hot rolls into her cleavage. She was a woman composed entirely of curves, hence the name the Queen of Softness. Sometimes she was blond, sometimes a brunette, but today her hair was red. She had long red fingernails and on the tip of each was painted a miniature heart in light pink, which everyone was called upon to inspect. “Cool,” said Emma.

  Fletcher Campbell came with his wife, Ursula, twenty years younger than her husband, with blond hair that didn’t come from a bottle. She had a slight accent, which Charlie guessed was German. They had flown in from their condo in Miami Beach earlier that day and their skin was golden. Campbell spoke loudly as always, as if speaking into a stiff wind. He wore tweeds and a dark leather vest. At some point, Charlie meant to talk to him.

  Three other couples, whom Charlie had never met, had also been invited: middle-aged horse lovers who lived nearby. And there was also a man visiting from Vienna: a horse trainer whom Artemis had worked with for many years. He was about sixty, wore a dark gray suit with a bright red vest and was very thin. Had he been a dog, he’d have been a whippet. Servers wound through the large living room with drinks and interesting tidbits on silver trays.

  “You seem subdued,” said Charlie to Victor, who stood by the fireplace with a bacon-wrapped scallop in either hand.

  “I’ve been warned.”

  “How so?”

  “If I raise my voice or don’t behave myself, I sleep on the couch till Valentine’s Day. She’s squashed my natural exuberance; she’s tied a string around my balls and wound me in like a trout. I’m only lucky she doesn’t make me take Valium. I like a little abuse in my sexual life, but this is excessive.”

  Shortly before they sat down at the table, Campbell approached Charlie. “Well, have you learned who stole my horse?” When Campbell chuckled, his heavy white moustache moved up and down.

  “You know about Mickey Martin’s involvement, of course,” said Charlie, who hated being patronized. “The man who picked up the money in Albany was Rodger Toombs. Do you recognize the name? He and Mickey were in prison together.”

  Campbell tilted his head. “No, I don’t think I do.”

  “A third guy was in prison with them who you might recall: Matthew Durkin.”

  Campbell was silent a moment as he tried to remember. “It rings a bell, but I can’t place him. Was he also mixed up with stealing Bengal Lancer?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No, he died in prison. But he’s the guy I caught stealing tack from your barn eight years ago.”

  Campbell grinned. “Damn it, Charlie, you’re a hotshot. Yeah, Durkin, that’s right. He would have been out by now. I wonder what happened to him.”

  “Heart attack, I think.” Charlie decided not to say that Durkin had been stabbed to death in the prison laundry.

  “Well, at least he won’t be stealing shit from my barn anymore. What about this Toombs character?”

  “I’ve been looking for him in the Albany area. If we hadn’t come here today, I’d have found him this afternoon or tomorrow at the latest.”

  This was a complete lie. Ever since Shawn Smith had told him about Toombs, Charlie hadn’t felt like leaving the house. He was divided between resignation and chagrin. Why had he thought he could make the least bit of difference in learning who had killed Mickey? Even so, he kept thinking of Matthew Durkin’s murder in the Adirondack Correctional Facility. Mickey was responsible for that and so Mickey’s death might be the result of Durkin’s murder, but Charlie couldn’t imagine the connection.

  His conversation with Campbell was interrupted by Emma, who came hurrying over. Her face shone. “Artemis said she’d give me lessons for free if I worked two afternoons a week after school. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Whenever one of his stepdaughters announced some future undertaking, Charlie imagined the worst: broken bones, loitering sex-crazed deviants, car crashes. Now he pictured Emma being trampled by a horse in the dark stable, or maybe a fire, or a deadly germ picked up from the manure. He considered her eager expression. “That’s great,” he said. “When do you start?”

  “As soon as I want.”

  “Doesn’t she have some guys already working for her?”

  “She has two, but she said there’d be work for me as well.”

  “Do you know these guys?”

  “I’ve seen them, but I haven’t met them.”

  Charlie wondered if he should run a check on them. Then he told himself he was being foolish. Moments later, Artemis called them to dinner.

  —

  Years before, Charlie had had three or four dinners at Artemis’s house before she moved to Europe. He was living out at the lake at that time and hadn’t met Janey. Recalling those occasions, he thought of who had been there, what they’d eaten, who was still living and who, more likely, was dead. For a moment he felt caught up in a swirl of multiple occasions, but then the present moment reasserted itself and he got ready to enjoy the evening.

  Campbell Fletcher wanted to say grace and recited the Lord’s Prayer taken from the Massachusetts Indian Bible: “Nooshun kesukqut, wunneetupantamuch koowesuounk. Peyamooutch kukkeitasootamounk . . .”

  “Give me a fucking break,” whispered Victor.

  “It’s one of the Algonquin languages,” continued Fletcher. “In point of f
act, the Mohawks were the Indians who lived in our own neighborhood. I can recite a bit of their language, if you’d like . . .”

  Campbell’s young wife touched a hand to his wrist. “Darling, the food will get cold.”

  “You ever noticed,” whispered Victor to Charlie, “that women like to begin a complaint with an endearment?”

  The fifteen people at the table alternated man, woman, man, woman, but Charlie had been placed next to Victor. It made him realize that his job was to keep Victor under control. He nudged Victor’s arm. “Lower your voice.”

  The Viennese horse trainer, Heinrich Bernhardt, was seated next to Ursula Campbell and they spoke quietly to each other in German. Victor said they were criticizing the manners of the American guests, and again Charlie shushed him. There was roast lamb with mint jelly, small red potatoes, a spinach soufflé and a green salad. Victor spilled a splop of mint jelly on his burlesque-dancer necktie: turn to the right she was clothed; turn to the left she was naked. Now she had a large green spot where her face should be.

  “Can someone please pass me some of that spinach stuff,” said Victor, raising his voice, “and a couple of those toy potatoes?”

  Inevitably, horses were the main topic of conversation, though movies came in for their share of chat. Victor tried to introduce the subject of Jane Russell’s blouse, or the lack of it, in The Outlaw: a movie in which there’d been plenty of horses. Rosemary elbowed him in the ribs. Because she was blessed, as Victor liked to say, with “considerable heft,” he lurched to his left into Charlie’s shoulder.

  “You see,” said Victor, “if I keep my trap shut, I get ignored. It’s better to be noisy and disliked than silent and overlooked. For fuck’s sake, Charlie, other than tits, crime and getting rich, what’s there to talk about?”

  “Do you ever worry about all the Americans suffering from food insecurities?” said a young woman to Victor, rather coolly. Charlie thought she meant people who were gluten sensitive.

  Victor said to Charlie in a stage whisper, “She means hungry.” And then, to the young woman: “Every frigging waking hour!” Again Rosemary nudged Victor, this time harder, and he grunted.