Читать книгу Campbell Young Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - J.D. Carpenter - Страница 14

Four races in, Young and Debi and Trick were up almost a thousand dollars. They had boxed three horses in the third race triactor, and the horses had finished in the optimum order: the 12-1 long shot had won, a 5-1 overlay finished second, and the 9-5 favourite was third. Furthermore, Young was happy because Trick was officially on board with the Shorty Rogers case. Young had phoned Staff Inspector Bateman early that morning and caught him just as he and his wife were going out the door to church. He spoke to him of Trick’s willingness to help out with the investigation, as well as Trick’s need to feel useful and productive. Bateman said that although Trick’s acceptance of the long-term disability package prevented him from being rehired by the Force, he could work in an advisory capacity, and he okayed Young’s request for a consultancy contract and computer training for Trick.

When Young mentioned all of this as the three of them were sitting down to eat their lunch in the clubhouse, Trick just nodded. Debi clapped her hands, came around the table, hugged her father, and kissed Trick’s cheek. “That’s wonderful news!”

“Yup,” said Young, “your uncle’s back in the world again.”

After the fourth race, Debi left. Bing Crosby was running in the seventh, and she had to meet Mrs. McDonagh at the backstretch gate. Before each of Bing Crosby’s races, Mrs. McDonagh visited him in his stall and gave him a brandy-soaked sugar cube. It was one of those extra little indulgences good trainers allow their more eccentric owners.

Shortly after Debi left, Young stood up to use the men’s room. Just inside the entrance, a man in a wheel-chair was urinating into a plastic bottle, which made Young think of the Maxwell House jar wrapped in silver duct tape that Trick kept in the backpack he carried on his wheelchair. Another man was standing bare-assed at the urinals, his pants down around his ankles. Young took a spot three down from the bare-assed man and unzipped. He heard the man in the wheelchair fussing with his paraphernalia and then heard him propel himself out of the men’s room. The bare-assed man looked over at Young and said, “Fix was in on that last one, eh. Fuckin’ jock on the seven rode right into traffic.” Young stared at the white ceramic tiles in front of his face and said, “Maybe you just picked the wrong horse.” He waited for the bare-assed man to say something back, but he didn’t. A few seconds later the bare-assed man pulled up his pants and wandered off. Young heard the door swing to behind him, and he started thinking about the whole hand-washing thing, how neither the man in the wheelchair nor the bare-assed man had washed his hands, but really why should they if they didn’t get piss on them—after all, their dicks were probably as clean as any other part of their bodies; well, maybe not the bare-assed man’s dick, he definitely needed a bath, nor, for that matter, the other man’s dick, because sometimes personal hygiene can be a challenge for the handicapped—when he sensed that someone was standing behind him.

“Don’t turn around.”

Young felt something hard press into his back, just behind his heart. Startled, he suddenly had urine on his pants and on his hand.

“I got some advice for you, mister, and it be free so you better listen.”

The pressure was removed from his back, and Young relaxed slightly. He could hear the man’s breathing, shallow and rapid, behind him. The man’s breathing sped up, then stopped. Young stepped quickly to his left, spun, and assumed a defensive posture, his knees bent, arms spread, hands fisted. In front of him stood a black man with one arm frozen in mid-air like a pitcher halfway through his delivery. The hand at the end of the arm held a crowbar. The man’s eyes locked on Young’s, then panned slowly downward. When they reached Young’s still exposed penis, they widened, then panned back up to Young’s face.

The man lowered the crowbar and slapped it against his palm. He smiled and shook his head in apparent good humour. “You wet yourself, man. And look how small it be. How come it so small?”

The door to the men’s room swung open and in wheeled Trick. As soon as he saw the man with the crowbar and Young in a linebacker’s stance, he steered his wheelchair around behind the man.

The man’s head swivelled from Young to Trick.

Young eased himself away from the man, his back to the bank of urinals.

Trick stopped and aimed his wheelchair at the back of the man’s legs. He said, “What up, motherfucker?”

“It okay, mister, I got it covered.”

Trick said to Young, “What’s going on?”

The man looked from Trick back to Young.

“Gentleman’s got some advice for me,” Young said, still in his crouch, still moving, “but I don’t believe him. I think he just wants to suck my cock.”

“That right, motherfucker?” Trick said. “You want to suck his cock?”

The man looked back at Trick. “Stay away from me.”

Young took two steps and lunged. The man spun and slashed at him with the crowbar. Young felt a glancing blow to the side of his head and a flash of pain. His face smacked the white tiles of the floor. He rolled, and there was a dwoing and a spray of white shards beside his head. The crowbar leapt from the man’s hand and cartwheeled through the open door of a cubicle. Trick rammed his wheelchair into the backs of the man’s legs. The man yelled and fell to his knees. Still on his stomach, Young reached for him, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pulled him flat. Prone, the man swung around on one hip and brought his knee up between Young’s legs. Young gasped and let go his grip, and the man jumped to his feet and ran out of the men’s room.

The seventh race of the Sunday afternoon card of thor-oughbred horse racing at Caledonia Downs was won by Mrs. Helen McDonagh’s Bing Crosby, an eight-year-old bay gelding by Distinctive Pro out of the Fire Dancer mare Torch Singer. When Debi Young and Mrs. McDonagh reached the winner’s circle for the photograph, Debi scanned the stands for her father and Trick. She was hoping they would come down and be part of the photo. After all, this was her first win as a trainer. Maybe they were shy because they didn’t know Mrs. McDonagh very well—at all, for that matter—but Mrs. McDonagh had said, “Of course, the more the merrier,” when Debi had asked if her father and his friend could join them in the winner’s circle. At least they would wave, she thought, still searching the stands.

But they weren’t there. They were on their way to Emergency at Etobicoke General Hospital. Young wasn’t badly hurt, but Trick’s assessment—completed as he wound several yards of linen hand towel he’d Swiss Army–knifed from the dispenser in the men’s room around Young’s head—was bruised balls and three or four stitches.

Trick used his manual wheelchair whenever he went to the racetrack because he had Young to propel him through the crowds, and Young, despite his injuries, was able to lift Trick into the front seat of his minivan and stow the wheelchair, unfolded, where the missing middle seat belonged. As Young drove, only slightly woozy, only slightly inconvenienced by the slipping of his turban, Trick couldn’t stop talking. “It was beautiful, man. We routed the bastard!”

“Who was he?” Young asked. “That’s what I want to know. And what did he want?”

“What did he want? He wanted your wallet. Blew his hard-earned welfare check on the last race. Needed some get-even money. Some start-up money.”

“Muggers pick their spots. They don’t go after somebody my size.”

“Hey, you were alone in the men’s room. It was his main chance.”

“I never got to hear his advice.”

“Probably, ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll hand over your wallet,’ that kind of thing.”

“I don’t know. He had a crowbar. He just happen to bring it in from the parking lot?”

“Whatever, but that’s the good news because we got his prints all over it. We’ll make this guy, Camp.”

“At first I thought it was the bare-assed guy.”

“What bare-assed guy?”

“There was this bare-assed guy taking a leak when I walked into the john. Pants down around his ankles. Said the last race was fixed. I get sick of that. People can’t accept that they just picked the wrong horse, it was their own fucking fault they blew the grocery money. I told him as much. I thought maybe it was him behind me.”

“It wasn’t him, unless he was a bare-assed black guy.”

“No, it wasn’t him.” They were silent for a moment as Young concentrated on his driving, and then he said, “You were good in there. You were very fucking good in there.”

“Just like old times, brother. The adrenalin. Fuck!”

“Very fucking good you were.”

At the same time that Young was being attacked in the men’s room of the clubhouse at Caledonia Downs, Doug Buckley was only a short distance away, sitting at the bar in the owners’ lounge in his salmon leisure suit, and that’s where Mahmoud Khan found him.

“When I first met you,” Khan said, seating himself on the stool to Doug’s left, “at the meeting at Morley Rogers’ house, I sensed what kind of man you were. I knew you wanted to become a player.”

Doug, halfway through a rye and ginger, nodded. “When you spoke to me as we were leaving Mr. Rogers’ house, you said we might see more of each other.”

Khan smiled. “That’s right, my friend. You have a good memory. You know, I must say that you strike me as an enterprising fellow, a fellow with a future in the more elevated business and cultural circles. And, if you’re interested, I would be pleased to sponsor your application to the King County Golf and Country Club.”

Doug was taken aback. “Thank you, Mr. Khan. I don’t know what to say.”

“It would be an important addition to your profile. It would mean that you are well-connected, that you associate with the inner circle.”

“Yes, I understand, thank you.”

“But there is one small favour I was hoping you might do for me,” Khan said, smiling.

“Name it,” said Doug.

It was a busy night in the Emergency Ward, and Young had to wait almost two hours before a doctor could look at him. When the doctor asked Young what had happened, Young looked at Trick, and Trick said, “He’s so tall, Doc, he’s always bumping into things. We were at the hardware store to get some briquettes for the barbecue, and he bumped into one of those big round shoplifter mirrors.”

It was almost seven and raining heavily when Young and Trick returned to the minivan. Young had six stitches and several Steri-Strips across his left cheekbone. After stopping at Trick’s building, unloading him, and getting him as far as the lobby, Young was driving home when he decided on a nightcap at McCully’s. His head didn’t hurt that badly.

Standing inside the doorway, shaking the rain off the shoulders of his windbreaker, the first thing Young registered was the dirty white linen of Priam Harvey’s plantation suit.

As Young approached the bar, Dexter saw him. It was clear from the expression on his face that Dexter hadn’t forgotten Saturday night’s incident. Young held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Two Blue, please, Dexter.”

Harvey turned and stared at him unsteadily. His head bobbed this way and that as if it rested on a spring. He made an effort to focus. “What happened to your face?”

“Bumped into a mirror. What have you got on Percy Ball?”

“That’s a nasty gash. You should get it looked at.”

“It’s been looked at. It’s got stitches in it, for fuck-sake. Tell me about Percy Ball.”

Harvey gave him a crafty look. “Tell you what. Instead of you asking the questions, I’ll ask the questions. What do you think of that?”

“Are we supposed to be working a case together, or aren’t we?”

Harvey raised a forefinger and held it unsteadily in front of Young’s nose. “One question.”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

Harvey cleared his throat, his fist at his mouth, then smiled. “Why did you knock me down the other night?”

Young looked at him. “In the first place, I didn’t knock you down. I picked you up and dropped you. Anyway, you know why. You were making fun of Jessy, you insulted her, then you asked me if I was fucking her.”

Harvey’s jaw fell. “I did?”

“Yes, you did.” Young chugged his first beer and started on the second. “But I’m sorry if I hurt you. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m a lot bigger than you are.”

“No, no, you were perfectly within your rights. I have no recollection of saying those things, but if you say I did, then I must have. I’m sorry and ashamed. Jessy is a most esti ... a most estimal—”

“What about Percy Ball?”

Harvey paused for a moment. He began to fumble through his pockets for cigarettes. “I have not yet had an opportunity to pay Mr. Ball a visit,” he said slowly, deliberately, “but you shall be the first to know when I do.”

“You working on something for the magazine?”

“That’s right, old boy. Profile of a rich bitch. Wants to see her name in print.”

“Funny thing, Mr. Harvey, but I got a suspicion you’re not working on anything right now.”

Harvey continued to fumble for his cigarettes, his eyes lowered. “That’s ridiculous. Where the hell are my cigarettes?”

“My guess is you got canned. Month or two ago? Come clean, Mr. Harvey.”

Harvey sighed and lifted his head. “It’s true I’m not working for Sport of Kings at the moment. It’s all free-lance I’m doing right now.”

“Bullshit, you’re not doing anything right now.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Oh, for fucksake.”

Young’s stomach ache had been in remission for most of the day, but now it was starting up again. I’ve got to get something to eat, he thought. He stopped at a Chinese takeout place on his way home.

Standing on her tiptoes at the jukebox, a little girl with a ruined face was making her selections. She was dressed in pink overalls, a yellow T-shirt, and yellow sneakers. She had platinum hair that bounced off her shoulders as she danced back to the table where a woman and a man were sitting. Young guessed that the woman was her mother and the man was the mother’s boyfriend. He wondered what had happened to the little girl’s face. Was it a car accident? Did she hit the dashboard? Was that why the left side of her face was off-kilter, indented, the cheekbone gone, the eye sunken and dead? Was that why her nose looked reconstructed and the left corner of her mouth was twisted into a permanent smile? Young touched a fingertip to the Steri-Strips on his cheekbone. The mother kept repeating, “Missy, come on, I’ve got to get to work,” and the man would say, “Missy, get your raincoat,” but neither of them made any move to leave, even though the server had already placed their bag of takeout in front of them. The man was smoking a cigarette.

Young wanted to comfort the girl. He wanted to tell her we all have scars, even though you can’t see most of them. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, he wanted to tell her.

Young ordered soo guy, orange beef, shrimp with garlic and green pepper, and steamed rice. “Give me a Blue while I’m waiting,” he said to the waiter.

At a table behind Young sat a fat man wearing a filthy Blue Jays cap. The man announced, to no one in particular, “I’m five foot seven, three hundred thirty-eight pounds.”

Young turned and looked at him. From the lilt in his voice Young judged the man to be Irish.

The man said, “My doctor says for my weight I should be eleven feet tall.”

“Where you from?” Young said.

“Belfast,” the man said. “I’ve been married thirty-three years. In prison, I should say. I’ve been in prison thirty-three years.”

The waiter brought Young his bottle of beer and, fifteen minutes later, his bag of takeout. As Young pulled on his windbreaker, he heard the mother say, “I’ve got to get to work,” and the girl with the ruined face in a little, pleading half-voice say, “Just one more song, please, Mommy. Back Street Boys?”

Young plodded along the sidewalk. The rain was falling heavily. He turned up the collar of his coat. The liquor store was still open, so he went in. His stomach was hurting seriously now, and he was either out of Jack or close to it, he couldn’t remember which.

“We deal in lead, friend,” Young said into his portable phone.

“Sarge, is that you? Where are you?”

“We deal in lead, friend.”

Then she caught on. “Oh,” she said. “That’s an easy one. The Magnificent Seven. Steve McQueen to Eli Wallach when the bad guys ride into the village. Give me a hard one.”

“Okay, smartass,” Young said. “How many of them die?” Young had finished his Chinese food, his stomach ache had taken a breather, and he was sitting on a hardback dining room chair turned backwards in front of the open closet door in his bedroom. Except for his underpants, he was naked. He had a harness arrangement attached to his head, with a cord leading up to and over the top of the door and down the other side to a plastic bag containing fifteen pounds of water. A quarter of a century earlier, Young had pinched a nerve in his neck playing football, and once in a while it still gave him trouble; lunging at the man with the crow-bar had aggravated it. The idea of this apparatus—recommended by his chiropractor—was that the weight of the water would pull his head upward and, by creating more space between his vertebrae, relieve the pressure.

Wheeler said, “Four died. Robert Vaughn, who played the southern dandy, he died. James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and ... don’t tell me.”

“Can’t remember?”

“Give me a minute.”

“Want a clue?”

“Quiet.” Wheeler was curled up on the sofa in the living room of her apartment. There was a cat in her lap. “It’s the one no one can ever remember, right?”

“That’s right.” Young had decided not to tell Wheeler about the attack at the racetrack. It was Sunday night. She sounded relaxed, and he didn’t want to upset her. Monday would come soon enough. With his free hand, Young took a hairbrush from the bedside table. He reached over his shoulder and scratched his back with it. Its bristles were very stiff, which was why he had stolen it from Debi when she was living with him. It was the best back-scratcher he had ever owned.

“Let me go over them,” Wheeler said. “Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, the horrible Horst Buchholz as the kid—”

“I thought he was good in Tiger Bay, with Hayley Mills.”

“—Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Charles Bronson as Bernardo Reilly—”

“And one more.” Young owned a copy of the movie; he watched it three or four times a year. He had two VCRs, one on top of the other in his living room. The bottom VCR played his videotapes, but wouldn’t rewind them. The one on top wouldn’t play them, but rewound beautifully. On his days off, Young liked to watch movies in segments—half an hour at breakfast, an hour at lunch, the rest at suppertime. “Give up?”

“No, I don’t give up.” Wheeler pushed the cat from her lap, stood up from the sofa, and, carrying her portable phone with her, padded across the broadloom to her bookshelves. She took down the Film Guide and flipped through it silently.

“For fucksake, Wheeler, I haven’t got all day.”

“It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“Or all night.”

“You haven’t got all night? You called me, remember. What’s the matter, you got a date? You all dressed up? What are you wearing, Sarge? You want to know what I’m wearing?”

“I couldn’t care less what you’re wearing.”

“Pajamas with feet.”

Young put down the hairbrush and worked a finger under his head harness. Gingerly, he patted his Steri-Strips. “Really? Pajamas with feet?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, you wouldn’t believe what I’m wearing, but I’m not going to get into one of those kinky conversations where you tell me what you’re wearing and then I tell you what I’m wearing and pretty soon we’re both slapping the monkey.”

“But I’m a dyke, Sarge.”

“So you say. What of it?”

“Well, I’m sure you don’t want your buds to know you get aroused by a dyke.”

“You see, Wheeler, what I think is you’re one of these elective dykes.” Young could lean over just far enough to pick up the bottle of Jack Daniel’s by its neck.

“Elective dykes? Oh, you mean a girl who’s straight, but can’t attract men so she does the next best thing.”

“That’s right.” He took a swig of the sour mash, sloshed it around a bit, and swallowed. “One of these days you’ll see the light and realize I’m the man for you. You attract me, Wheeler, and if you could see me now, you wouldn’t be able to resist me.”

“You look that good?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Brad Dexter.”

“What?”

She closed the book and put it back on the shelf. “Brad Dexter. The one no one can ever remember. He got killed, too.”

Young grunted.

“It’s late, Sarge. Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sometime later he phoned Debi. He was sitting at the table in his breakfast nook with all the lights on. He had detached himself from the water bag and had removed the head harness and was now wearing a dirty pair of work socks, old gray sweatpants, an oversized navy blue T-shirt, and the green and black, triple-X lumberjack shirt he’d found at a Big ‘n’ Tall in the shopping mall across from the racetrack. He had a drinking glass with one ice cube in it and the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in front of him. Reg was on the floor at his feet. Young’s stomach was killing him.

“Hello?”

“Hello, sweetie.”

“Daddy, is that you?” Her voice was groggy. “Daddy, it’s midnight. What is it?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I didn’t mean to wake you. I didn’t realize how late it was. I just wanted to find out how your horse did.”

“We won. Bing came from way out of it and won by two. Where did you and Uncle Artie get to? Me and Mrs. McDonagh, we were waiting for you in the winner’s circle. I was worried. I called earlier. Didn’t you check your messages?”

“It was police business, sweetie. We had to hurry out. I’m sorry.”

“Daddy, you all right? Have you been drinking?”

“I’ve had a couple, but I’m fine. Is Jamal there?”

“Of course he’s here, where else would he be?”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Daddy, it’s midnight. You are drunk. I’m not going to wake him up in the middle of the night—”

“It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay, I just wanted to make sure he was safe.”

“Why wouldn’t he be safe? Did something happen to you today? Are you all right?”

“I love that little boy.”

“I know you do, Daddy.” Young could hear Eldridge say something in the background, then Debi said, “Daddy, you’re scaring me, are you okay?”

Young didn’t know what to say.

“Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here, I’m just being stupid. I’m sorry I woke you up. Just go back to sleep. Tell Eldridge I’m sorry.”