by Rick Polad
“Stay put. I’ll be there as soon as I can. It will probably take me forty-five minutes. Make sure you stay with a crowd. I’ll call Stosh and make sure he knows if he hasn’t already heard. Stay where the police are. I’ll find you.”
“Spencer, he was such a sweet boy,” she said as she started to cry.
“I know. I’m so sorry, Kelly. Will you be okay till I get there?”
“Yes. But hurry.”
“I will.”
I hung up and called Stosh’s private number. He answered on the fourth ring. He was just leaving for the track. He said he’d be there in ten minutes. I heard him yell something that I didn’t understand. Then there was a dead line.
I found Kathleen, interrupted politely and quickly explained that I’d received an emergency call and I would try to get back to her. With people surrounding her, she didn’t have a chance to respond. The last impression I had of Kathleen was the hurt look on her face.
Chapter 34
In late afternoon traffic, it took me almost an hour to get to the track.
The place was crawling with police and flashing lights. The entrance to the stables was cordoned off and the patrol officer standing at the yellow tape wouldn’t let me in based on my good looks. I started to explain I was looking for Stosh when Rosie drove up. I waited and walked in with her.
Stosh was halfway down the row of stalls which were on both sides of a hayed pathway covered by a roof. Kelly was standing with a group of about ten people in a paddock area next to the stables talking with detectives. When she saw me she ran over, put her arms around my neck, and started to cry. Rosie squeezed my arm and walked to where Stosh was giving orders.
I held Kelly for a minute and then asked if I could take a few minutes to talk to Stosh. She nodded and said she’d wait there.
I walked through little clouds of dust swirling in the light filtering in through cracks in the wooden roof. Most stalls were occupied. The horses didn’t care what was going on. They were either eating or asleep or swatting flies with their tails.
Several evidence techs were sifting through the hay in the stall where Bobby lay. He was crumpled against the left side of the stall. The top of his head was caved in and was matted in blood and lay nestled on a pillow of red hay. A medical bag sat open on the other side of the stall where Stosh stood talking with a gray-haired man that I assumed was the coroner. Stosh saw me standing outside the stall and held up a finger. A minute later he finished talking and joined me, shaking his head. A uniformed policeman started unzipping a body bag.
“What do you think, Stosh?” I asked.
“I don’t think, kid. I just do my job.”
“What does the coroner think?”
“Says he was killed anywhere from two to four hours ago. Death caused by a blow to the head.”
“Any idea what caused that blow to the head?”
“We didn’t find the murder weapon, if that’s what you mean.”
“Was there a horse in the stall?”
He gave me a “why are you being such a pain in the ass?” look. “Why am I talking to you? You become a detective when I wasn’t looking?”
I stared at him and chewed my bottom lip.
“Aw, what the hell. Full of Pride was in the stall. We had him removed after the techs were done with him.”
“So the horse is a suspect?”
“Could be. Blood on his front left foot and shoe.”
I watched four cops carry the body bag out of the stall. They were all sweating. The crowd of people gathered at the entrance to the stable parted to let the police through. I watched Kelly as Bobby’s body went by. She shuddered and her eyes welled up.
“Stosh, you know as well as I do that the horse didn’t do this.”
“No? You here when it happened?”
I gave him a disgusted look and said, “I don’t like coincidences.”
He kicked up a dirt cloud. “I don’t either, kid. But I need some evidence and till I get some I don’t want to scare anybody away.”
“You know who is guilty. You should be able to lock ‘em up.”
“Sure. But we’re not the gestapo. We do it the legal way so guys like you don’t get rounded up too. Although with you, maybe it would be a good idea.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Somebody wanted it to look like Bobby got kicked in the head. That is possible, but not likely. Maybe Kelly can help me find out something about this horse. Would you see if she is up to talking?”
“Sure.” Leaving me standing alone, Stosh turned and walked back into the stall.
Kelly was glad to help. She didn’t say anything about Bobby, but she held my hand tightly. She told Stosh that Full of Pride was ornery if he was treated poorly. But Bobby would never have treated him unkindly. I could tell she was struggling to keep her composure. Stosh thanked her and we headed back toward the paddock.
Halfway through the stables, she said, “Spencer, Bobby was a nice kid. What kind of person would do that?”
“A mean one—a desperate one.”
We walked in silence till she said, “Ronny has to be involved in this. And he gets to walk around like nothing happened. It doesn’t make sense. He should be in jail, or, or...”
“Yeah, “ I sighed. “I agree with the ‘or’ part. But Stosh’s hands are tied by the law. He needs evidence.”
“I hope he finds some.”
“Me too. Maybe he needs some help.”
She stopped and looked up at me. “Meaning?”
“Nothing. Just that citizens sometimes provide information that leads to convictions.”
“By citizen, do you mean you?”
“Maybe.”
“Spencer, you stay away from this. I don’t want you...”
“Don’t worry. I like breathing. But maybe I can help with the evidence.”
“You know something about the murder?”
“I know who’s involved. So do you and Stosh. But, no I don’t have any evidence.”
“So how are you going to help?”
“Well, maybe I can help with the drug smuggling.”
“And how is that going to help with the murder?”
“Directly, not at all. But, as Stosh pointed out to me, Capone went to prison for tax evasion. Prison is prison.”
“Spencer...”
“I’ll be careful, Kelly. But I have several scores to settle. I don’t like sitting back and waiting for the wheels of justice to turn. Sometimes they need some grease.” I walked her to her car, warned her to be careful and to make sure she wasn’t followed. I got the name of her new hotel and told her I’d pick her up at seven for dinner.
A hot wind was blowing the dust around in the parking lot. Looking into the glare of the sun in a cloudless sky, I watched Kelly pull away and then stared into the blue until perspiration started to bead on my forehead. The guy who killed my parents was dead, but that gave me no solace. I didn’t blame Bobby. I blamed whoever used him to do their dirty work and they were still walking around. I waited till one of the beads ran down my nose, then wiped my forehead with my forearm and made my way back to the stable. I met Stosh at the paddock.
“Thought you left, kid.”
“About to. Question.”
“Shoot.”
“When you do surveillance, do you watch the front and back?”
He gave me a long stare and then answered. “That would be the preferred method. But it also depends on how important it is and how much personnel I can free up.”
“Well, how much personnel do you have freed up these days?”
Another look. He said “Things are tight,” turned, and walked away.
I watched him go, then slowly walked to my Mustang. After cranking up the air all the way, I drove to the front gate where there was a pay phone and made a call to the Blue Note. I drove away slowly so I wouldn’t raise too much gravel dust. When I hit the blacktop, my tires screeched as I made the turn around the corner of the grandstands.
Chapter 35
After I left the track, I stopped at my office to shower and change and then headed for Kelly. We didn’t talk much all through dinner. When we did, it was about the weather.
At ten, I parked a block away from Ronny’s apartment and was again waiting for Jesse. He tapped on my window fifteen minutes later. We both made our way to the rear of the building and a few seconds later were back inside Ronny’s apartment. It looked as though nothing had changed.
I was looking for a list of future races hoping to find one with some indication of a horse that would be getting a haybale full of cocaine. This time I’d brought gloves. Old racing forms were strewn across the kitchen table and were spattered with what looked to be spaghetti sauce. I moved dirty plates and found nothing but more mess. The telephone was on the back corner of the table. Next to it was a phone book. I picked up the phone book and under it were four sheets of paper. They all had dates starting with Monday and lists of horses. Monday’s sheet and several others had a horse circled. Tipsy on Monday. I reburied the sheets under the phone book and we left as quietly as we had come.
I called Stosh and a half hour later parked in his drive. He was sitting on the front porch waiting. He had on baggy yellow shorts and a t-shirt and had a fat cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth. He was not happy, but then again neither was I. Maybe he had stubbed his toe getting up to answer the phone. That’s the worst. There’s that split second of wait between when you know you stubbed your toe and when the nerves finally transmit the pain to the brain. You just stand there and grit your teeth and wait for it. Or maybe he wanted to lock me up and throw away the key. Or just maybe he was angry because his hands were tied behind his back by the law that paid his salary. Whichever, he looked like my dad the first time I was an hour late getting home from a date. He stared out at the street.
“Okay kid, give it to me.”
“Monday. Horse named Tipsy. I talked to Kelly. She says his stall is four to the west of Full of Pride. ”
He nodded. “So, for a horse’s name, you risk your career, not to mention your life.”
I knew he was angry, but I wasn’t sure at who, or what. “Nope. To see these guys in hell I risked my career. And if I could trade my career for their arrest, I’d rip up my license right now.”
A car drove by, slowed, and pulled into the drive four doors away. Stosh yawned, stretched, and took a long puff on his cigar, exhaling the smoke very slowly. After studying the ash on the end of the cigar, he said, “So the way you see it, somehow the hay is marked. The bales with the stuff get into a prearranged stall. This time it’s Tipsy’s. Then Ronny retrieves the stuff and a bunch of guys get rich.”
“That’s my guess.” I tried to lean back in the white plastic chair. It wouldn’t lean. “I figure you get some people in there to watch the stall and wait for Ronny to show.”
He slowly turned to look at me for the first time since I got there. “No shit.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you hadn’t thought of that, just that maybe you would have trouble actually doing it. Sometimes it seems like there’s a lot you can’t do cuz you have to follow the rules.”
He spat out a piece of leaf. “Yeah, I guess it would seem like that. But not everything we do is readily visible. I’ll let our guys at the track know. You said there were four sheets of paper. What were the dates?”
I told him. They were all about six weeks apart.
“No wonder we haven’t noticed anything. With that frequency, the odds are against us catching them at random. Now that we have where and when maybe we can make something happen.”
I thought about it. It was like having an intermittent electrical problem with your car. Whenever you take it to the mechanic it works fine. “So where do we go from here?”
“You go home and forget you were ever here. I’ll try and do the same.” We stood up. “I’m going to bed and dream about making it through a night without being woken up by you.” He poked me in the chest with his forefinger and pointed at my car.
I nodded and walked away.
As I opened the door, he said, “Hey, Spencer. Thanks.”
I nodded again. He was still standing on the porch as I drove away.
My building looked lonely. There wasn’t even one light on. I creaked up the stairs and let myself into my humble abode.
My answering machine was flashing. Two messages. They were both from Kathleen hoping I was okay and asking if we could get together before she left on Friday. I was glad we couldn’t. She was still too tempting. But I’d at least call before I left for Wisconsin in the morning to let her know I was okay.
I splashed some water on my face, stripped off my pants and shirt and fell onto the bed hoping I was tired enough to skip the dreams.
Chapter 36
The sound of someone yelling down the hall woke me up a little before seven. I considered going back to sleep, but I had a five-hour drive in front of me and wanted to get there with plenty of daylight left.
I was very familiar with the area around Algoma. It was the last town before Sturgeon Bay and Door County. It took a little longer but I usually drove the lake route up Highway 42 through Algoma when I went to Door. The drive along the lake was always breathtaking. This time was no different. I stopped and got a hot dog at Manny’s and ate it sitting on the concrete breakwater that was on the south side of the little harbor. It was about three feet wide and extended out a couple hundred feet into the lake and then turned north for another hundred feet. Across the harbor mouth, about another hundred feet away, was a bright red breakwater light.
It was a warm, sunny day. A sapphire-blue sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds. A few years ago, things had been a bit different. I had walked out on the breakwater and, after getting about halfway out, the fog horn had started to sound. Thirty seconds later, I was completely engulfed in fog and couldn’t see two feet in front of me. I immediately felt panic as I lost my visual bearings. Even though I knew I would get back to shore if I just turned around, it was still unnerving.
Just north of Algoma, Highway 42 turned northwest. I took the right turn onto County Highway S, which followed the lakeshore. Farmers worked fields to my left and the blue water of Lake Michigan sparkled to my right. It was a pleasure to be out of the city. I glanced at the map and watched my odometer for the five mile mark and a grove of trees on my right. As I drove up a little hill, I slowed and turned onto a dirt road just past the trees. It was not marked. The mayor said they had not improved or marked it so people would not know the house sat tucked in behind the trees. They had succeeded. There was no hint of the house from the road.
The road wound back into the trees and came out of the relative darkness into bright sunshine and a spectacular view. Ahead on my left was a sprawling ranch house. To the right of the house was a wide view of the lake. As the road exited the trees it became a blacktop driveway. Pulling off onto a bricked pad, I parked the car. At the end of the circular drive, a flagstone pathway, flanked with limestone boulders, led to the front door about fifty feet away. The large entryway was flanked on both sides by wings of the cedar-sided house. The trees formed a large horseshoe around the house, hiding whatever neighbors were on either side. But up here there tended to be quite a bit of room between neighbors. Without the security system Ronny could have taken his time getting in the house.
I decided to walk down to the lake before going into the house. A newly-mown grassy area behind and to the south of the house gave way to knee-high wild grasses and shrubs that grew at the top of a fifty-foot high cliff. At the far corner of the grassy area a screened gazebo marked the top of a set of wooden stairs that descended straight down the cliff face to the water. A few lonely birch trees somehow held on to a perch on the cliff. A cool breeze off the lake cut into the midday heat. From the top of the cliff, I scanned the beach. There was very little sand; mostly boulders and driftwood bleached white from the sun. A couple hundred feet offshore a group of gulls playe
d above the waves.
I could hear the rumble of a passing semi as I walked back to the front of the house where I punched the code I had memorized into the security pad. The message changed from armed to disabled and I unlocked the door. A marble entryway blended into thick carpet of almost the same gray color and led into a large living area. The far side was almost all glass and afforded a beautiful view over the lake. Three brightly colored sails billowed their way south toward Algoma.
Standing in front of the center window, I thought about the man who owned this house: mayor of one of the most important cities in the world and all the power that goes with that, married to a rich woman, two splendid houses, more than enough money to satisfy him, influential friends. He had it all, yet he had nothing. I suddenly remembered his eyes. They were empty; emptied by a father who’d beaten him and a mother who’d stood by helplessly and watched; by a half-brother whom he’d tried to protect and turned out to be a bum; by a life that took more than it gave where important things were concerned; and by a woman he loved but couldn’t have. Most people probably envied him. But if you looked into his eyes, there was only sadness. He was worn out by the fight, worn down by life. He wasn’t Marty’s father. That was too bad, for both of them. I think he wanted to be somebody’s father and perhaps he’d have made a good one if life hadn’t cut out his heart. Not that he wasn’t a kind man. He just didn’t have what it took to go after what was truly important. The power wasn’t—Elizabeth was. If he’d had some guts, she would be alive today. Instead, he’d sat by and watched her ruin her life. I wasn’t sure whether I despised the man or felt sorry for him, or both. The view here was spectacular, but he would never see it with all that sadness blurring his view.
A sound like the muffled snap of a breaking twig made me turn quickly to my left. I listened, but heard nothing but the whoosh of the air conditioner. I walked toward where the sound had come from and found the bedrooms off to the left of the living area. There was no one there. Must have been the house creaking as it reacted to the heat outside and the cold inside. Suddenly, I felt uneasy being there and got on with my search.