by Marc Behm
That’s how he discovered the Golden Gate Track.
He’d never been interested in racing. He’d gone to Hollywood Park with Maxie a few times when they were living in Santa Monica, but the imponderables of horses had always baffled him.
Now he found himself fascinated by them. Especially their names. Green Past, Golden Hawk, Steeple Dancer, Lady Ruby, Magic Pie, Drugstore, Moon Knife.
He was there every day, betting once in a while, winning and losing, but mostly just watching the races and prowling through the crowds.
On the 4th of July he ran into Milch. He was in drag, standing by the paddock, eating a hot dog.
They had a drink in the bar.
‘I had to get out-out-outta Vegas,’ he stammered. ‘She kept callin me up. Every day. Every night.’ He looked hideous, his turtle’s face streaked with lipstick, his eyelids painted violet, his wig lopsided. And enunciating had become a major problem. ‘I-I-I told her you was livin with Maxie. I had to to to get her off my back. Then she called me again. “He is no longer with Maxie,” she said. “Where is he now?” And she-s-she said, “Don’t forget our pact, Mr. Milch.” What did she mean by that? Pact pact? What pact?’
‘Remember when she came to see you in the hospital? She told you you weren’t going to die.’
‘Yeah.’
‘She meant you’d stay alive until you found me.’
‘Huh?’
‘That was the pact.’
‘What’re you talkin about?’
‘Don’t you know who she is, Milch?’
‘Just some crazy no-good broad. The world’s full o’them. See? A couple of drinks and I can speak great. Well, when I run into her again I’m goin to tell her you’re here. Fuck this ramshit.’
‘I hope for your sake, asshole, that you never see her again.’
‘I seen her last Saturday. In Berkeley, on Ashby Avenue. She was on a bus. She waved to me.’
An hour later Joe was on a plane, flying to Seattle.
He spent the night there, then flew, first to Phoenix to have a look at the Paradise Race Track there, then, two weeks later, to Arkansas, to the Oaklawn Track in Hot Springs.
This sudden obsession with tracks wasn’t really serious, but it gave him something else to do besides playing poker and climbing up the walls.
Next came the Keystone and Liberty Bell races in Philadelphia. Then on to Hazel Park in Detroit. This was the briefest of visits. On the third night there he saw a poster announcing a concert at the Cultural Center. Brahms’ Requiem! He fled to the airport and flew to West Virginia.
He spent a whole month hanging around Wheeling Downs. He began betting more heavily, trying to put some savor into these crazy trips. He studied the Racing Form. He bought an expensive pair of field glasses. He talked to bookies and jockeys and touts and trainers. The secrets of horseracing still eluded him. The only killing he ever made was on an outsider named Kismet. 30 to 1. He pocketed ten thousand dollars.
When the turf crowds began migrating to Churchill Downs in Louisville, he followed them like a lemming.
He left the glasses behind in his hotel room.
45
‘Oh, by the way, I got a postcard from Leopold,’ Maxie said. ‘He’s in Paris. He beat the rap, the maggot! I miss you, Joe, honestly I really do. But … Oh, by the way again …’ she unbuttoned her shirt and showed him her bosom. ‘I stopped wearing Catapres patches again. My blood pressure is nifty-peachy. You’re just too unstable. Instability is so tiresome and maddening. I want to lead a quiet life, without bumps.’
In Louisville, the first person he’d seen when he came into the lobby of the Floyd-Taylor Hotel was little Roscoe, the dwarf from the 4 Straight Club.
‘Your Majesty the King!’ he shouted. ‘Noblesse oblige!’ He spelled it. ‘N-o-b-l-e-s-s-e-o-b-l-i-g-e! The taproom’s this way, follow me!’
He was retired now, in his nineties – at least – tinier and more buffoonish than ever, resembling a fossilized pygmy.
‘The club’s closed down,’ he lamented. ‘All boarded-up. The roof caving in. Everybody gone away, scattered to the four winds. All those wonderful people. Nothing left but nostalgia and Heimweh. H-e-i-m-w-r-no!-w-e-h. Did you know Maxie’s here?’
He called up her room and she came downstairs and joined them in the bar.
‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘This looks like a reunion of the Santa Monica goon squad!’
The three of them had lunch in a pub called ‘The Merry Jarvey.’ It was packed with racing fans and as usual she knew everybody there.
‘If you come back,’ she told Joe, ‘you’ll have to promise me you’ll try to behave normally for a change, instead of freaking out all the time. I just can’t deal with your goofiness any more.’
It was an ultimatum and an invitation. He was tempted to accept. It would give him a few days’ rest. He could always sneak away later. But no … that wouldn’t be fair to her. She deserved better than that.
‘I can’t come back, Maxie.’
‘Speaking of goofiness,’ Roscoe said, ‘do you recall our dear friend the Movie Star? He cracked up. Coke and pills and scotch. The last picture he made was never released. They say he was stoned in every scene, babbling like a madman, tripping over the decor. Then he tried to cut off his wife’s nose with a razor. She had him committed, poor fellow.’
‘Why can’t you come back?’ Maxie asked.
‘No wait,’ Roscoe snapped his minuscule fingers. ‘It was that sailorboy. Remember him? The one who was building a yacht. His wife had him committed. He went bankrupt and sold his yacht then started acting ding-dong. Like throwing flowerplants out the window and setting fire to the furniture and such. The Movie Star’s in Hawaii, I think.’
‘Oh, brother,’ Maxie sighed. ‘There’s Milch.’
It was Milch indeed, dressed as a male today, wearing his cowboy hat and his stained and wrinkled yellow suit. He was drunk.
‘Louisville phooeyville!’ he yelled. ‘All the races are fixed!’ He came wobbling over to their table.
‘I dropped a grand already and I only been here two days. Is it true, Roscoe, you gotta normal-sized cock?’
‘Keep your voice down, you vulgar motherfucker!’ Roscoe was blushing. ‘I’ve knocked bigger dudes than you on their ass for talking to me like that! Drunken sot!’
‘I gotta drink,’ Milch whined. ‘Otherwise I start stutterin like I was retarded. It’s called ophasier.’ He sneered at Joe. ‘We gotta have a talk, smartass.’
‘Aphasia,’ Roscoe corrected him. ‘A-p-h-a-s-i-a.’
‘Shit,’ Maxie groaned. ‘S-h-i-t.’
Joe lit a cigar. What an odd quartette they were! His only friends. God! It was true. They were his only friends. The realization jarred him. He had no one else in the world to talk to, to have lunch with, to argue with, to like or dislike. Everyone else on earth was an alien stranger. These three wandering vagrants were the sum total of his entire life.
‘Joe.’ Maxie poked his arm with her finger. ‘Come back.’
‘I wish I could,’ he said.
‘What room are you in?’
‘I haven’t even checked in yet.’
‘Don’t bother. Move in with me. I’m in 232.’
‘Okay.’ He thought about it. 232. That was on the second floor. Not too high up. In an emergency, he could always climb down a drainpipe or something.
They all went to the track together.
A horse named Crimewave won the first race. Roscoe knew the owner and they’d all bet on him. Except Milch. He knew the jockey riding Junk Dealer and risked four hundred on him. And lost.
‘That’s the s-s-s-story of my life,’ he hissed, sobering up. ‘The jock’s a f-f-fag. He wears p-pantyhose. I got news for you, sh-shithead. Come ’ere.’
He led Joe behind a stairway, sweaty with excitement.
‘I sewer again,’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘The blonde!’ He pulled out a flask, took a swig. ‘I sewer again.’
‘You told me. In Berkeley.’
‘N-n-n-no! Right here in Louisville. Yesterday at the airport.’
Joe began to sweat too. He thought he was going to black-out. Dots and flashes invaded his eyes. He wiped them away.
‘Did she say anything, Milch?’
‘Yup, we talked about you. She said you might be comin here …’ He belched. ‘She said you was in Wheeling last week and won ten big ones. Is it true?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You lucky prick! I want twenty-five percent. Otherwise I’ll tell her where you are. She gave me another number to call.’
With an effort, Joe forced all his muscles to relax. She didn’t know he was in Louisville. She said he might be coming here. So she wasn’t sure. There was time to lose her. All he had to do was stall greedy Milch.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Twenty-five percent. You got a deal. Meet me at the hotel tonight. Maxie’s room. 232.’
‘Joe!’ Maxie found them. ‘Come on! Hurry up! Roscoe says there’s a sure thing in the next race. A horse called Morgan.’
46
He escaped during the third race and took a taxi to Standiford.
‘How’d Morgan do?’ the driver asked.
‘He won,’ Joe told him.
‘No shit? Way to go! I bet ten bucks on him. My wife heard Little Orphan Annie singing “Tomorrow Tomorrow” on the radio and she says, “Hey! That’s a sign! There’s a horse in the second race named Morgan.” “So what?” I ask her. “Morgan means tomorrow in German,” she says. So I said what the hell. Give it a shot. Five to one.’
Joe glanced out the rear window. There was another taxi just behind them.
Who’s there? Is that you, Sergeant?
No, sir. Corporal of the guard.
Where’s the Sergeant, Corporal?
He’s gone, Lieutenant.
Gone where? I have to talk to him.
I think he deserted, sir.
Deserted? That’s impossible! Why would he desert?
He said he was tired of your bullshit. He wanted to go home. We all do, the whole troop. We’ve had enough of this fucking around.
You’re insubordinate, soldier. Stand at attention when I’m talking to you.
Up your ass!
The other taxi followed them for three blocks, then turned into the Coliseum. He watched the streets. He saw blonds everywhere – standing at bus stops, sitting on benches, walking on the pavements, shopping in the malls, parking their cars. How had she found out he’d been in Wheeling Downs and won ten grand?
‘That’s my old lady all over,’ the driver was saying. ‘She reads her horrorscope every day in the papers. If it’s a bad day, she just stays home. Won’t leave the house. “Let’s go bowling,” I tell her. “No way,” she says, “my horrorscope says don’t take no unnecessary risks.”’
At the airport, Joe walked around the terminal lot, checking the signs on the parked buses. ‘Radcliff,’ ‘New Albany,’ ‘Bardstown,’ ‘St. Matthews.’ He found a mini-shuttle going to Lexington and climbed aboard.
He still had his old 4 Straight ‘Royal Golden’ card in his belt. It entitled a crowned king to honorary status in any private gambling club in the country. There was a Syndicate casino somewhere in Lexington. If he could find it, and if they’d let him in, he’d be safe there – for how long? A while. At least until tomorrow.
For five dollars a bum led him to the building. It was on High Street, a sandstone blockhouse with a bronze front door. In the vestibule, a blowsy-faced hood in a dinner jacket took the card and picked up the phone.
‘Please wait,’ he said.
‘A hard place to get into.’ Joe prayed to be admitted, to have that big bronze barricade close behind him, snugly isolating him from the outside world.
‘We’re selective.’ Blowsy-Face handed back the card. ‘It’s the only way to keep the riffraff out.’
An inner door opened, another dinner jacket appeared, beckoning. Joe followed him inside.
He immediately felt sheltered. The walls were all marble and glass, the carpets like dark grass, the lights subdued, the shadows protective.
A waiter asked him if he wanted a drink. He ordered an Irish whisky.
In the front of the room, under lamps, were several blackjack games. The bankers were all girls in blue jeans and sweaters.
Farther on, under a spotlight, was a roulette table. The croupier was a braless Japanese girl wearing an open leather vest and tights, a monocle in her eye.
In the back, miles away, was a poker enclave, enclosed in a colonade of stainless steel poles.
And best of all, off to one side, was an emergency exit.
He sank into a deep couch and sipped his drink. He felt more and more secure. The place was a bunker. Fort Invincible. She’d never get in here. He’d stay until they closed, if they ever closed.
But he missed the sergeant.
Corporal!
What do you want, Lieutenant?
Send out a patrol. Five men. Bring him back.
Forget it, man. They’d never find him. They’d just desert too. Sooner or later everybody’ll be gone. Then what will you do? Fort Invincible! Hah! hah! hah! You gotta be kidding! What’s the date?
A man in a scarlet jacket was sitting beside him, filling out a check. ‘Did I wake you? Sorry. What’s the date?’
‘The twenty-third.’
‘Not any more. It’s twelve-thirty. Tomorrow. The twenty-fourth.’
‘Oh right.’
He got up and walked over to the roulette table. He bought some hundred dollar chips and smiled at the Japanese croupier.
‘How many times has the black come up in the last hour?’ he asked her.
She scowled at him, her monocle blazing in the spotlight. ‘Fifteen times, sir.’
‘Ah hah! That’s what I’ve been waiting for!’ He put all his chips on the red. And won.
The other players gazed at him, intrigued.
‘It never fails,’ he told them. He gathered up his winnings and moved on to the blackjack games.
The fellow in the scarlet jacket was there, looking haggard and frantic, darting from one table to another, playing wherever there was an opening.
Joe watched the punters. They were young, ravishing, alert. He saw one of them wink at a passing waiter. Why did he always see things no one else saw? Why was he always watching?
He ordered another drink.
He was fully at home here now. He began giving names to the people around him, as if they were horses at the track. Scarlet Jacket, Fatass, Shorty, Big Boobs, Hog Face, El Creepo, Dashing Playboy, Frankenstein.
That had been a mistake, going to all those races. A fatal error. That’s how she’d found him. He’d established a pattern. He’d have to make a clean break now. Switch channels. There were clubs like this everywhere. Secret, secluded, ‘highly selective.’ He knew of one in Topeka, Kansas, another in Augusta, Maine, two of them in Baltimore, another in Minneapolis. His gold card could get him into any of them. He’d make a grand tour, visit them all, one after the other, state by state …
No … hold it. That would only be establishing another pattern. Sooner or later she’d intercept him. He had to be more unpredictable than that.
Maybe he’d buy a backpack and a tent and go camping in Montana. There were forests there, endless forests, trees higher than the Eiffel Tower. He’d fly to Great Falls tomorrow – today – then hike up into the Rocky Mountains and sleep on the banks of the Flathead River and the Bitterroot and …
Shit.
He didn’t feel like playing blackjack. He wandered into the enclave and watched the poker games. What the fuck was he doing here anyway? Chicago. That’s where he should go. Population 4,000,000. He’d be just one more non-person in the multitude. He’d rent a loft and write a book. A novel. No, not a novel. A treatise, a thesis, a monograph. On poker. No, on Hannibal. Why hadn’t he marched to Rome after his victory at Cannes? Maharbal asked him, ‘So what now, boss?’ And Ha
nnibal replied, ‘I’ll think it over.’ Here was a general who’d just defeated two enemy armies and instead of winning the war he just climbed on his elephant and went sightseeing. Why?
‘I don’t know,’ Joe said.
Scarlet Jacket passed him. He stopped, turned.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘I was just wondering … uhh when this place closed.’
‘Five p.m.’
‘Thanks.’
So he didn’t have all night after all. It was three o’clock. He had two hours to figure out something. To come to a decision, to get off his ass.
He had to take a leak.
He went into the men’s room. It was a long, dim, marble vault lined with sinks and booths.
He was washing his hands when he heard a muffled shot. Pocoom.
He knew instantly what it was. It usually only happened in old movies about Monte Carlo. The ruined nobleman loses everything at the chemin-de-fer tables, then comes strolling out of the casino and stands for a moment on the terrace staring at the Mediterranean. He takes a tiny pearl-handled revolver from his pocket …
Now it had happened for real.
He ran over to the last booth, opened the door. A man was sitting on the floor holding a .32. His face was gone.
Joe turned away, sickened. Then he saw the scarlet jacket hanging on the inside of the door.
So simple! He pulled off his own coat, hung it open. Simple and foolproof. No face. It would be – what? – two or three days before they identified him. Time enough to be long gone. Meanwhile, Joe Egan had bid this world goodnight. He took down the scarlet jacket, pulled it on. A size too large. No matter.
He closed the booth and went back out into the casino.
He stopped at the colonnade, glanced at the clock on the wall. 3.10. Did Scarlet smoke? He searched his pockets, found a silver cigarette case filled with Fine 120s. He lit one. In another pocket was a pair of dark glasses. And a Jaguar keyring. A car! Jesus! A Jag! This was too good to be true. Goodbye, Kentucky.
He donned the glasses, started across the room to the exit.
He saw her just in time.
She was standing on the rim of the crowd around the roulette table, watching the spinning wheel.