Читать книгу Campbell Young Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - J.D. Carpenter - Страница 6

Like Wheeler, Young was supposed to have the weekend off, but Saturday morning he went to work anyway. He began to research the people Shorty trained horses for: the old lady, the Internet king, the lottery winner.

The old lady was revealed to be Helen McDonagh, a wealthy spinster who had maintained a small stable of racehorses for over thirty years. In her youth she had been a champion tennis player. She was a member of the Granite Club and lived with a companion in an old house in the affluent Willowdale area of the city.

Young was about to shift his focus to the Internet king, but something that Percy Ball had said as he stood in the doorway of JJ Muggs tweaked Young’s interest in the third owner, the lottery winner: “All’s I know is Shorty didn’t like the man.” The man, a former junior high schoolteacher named Douglas Buckley, turned out to have a CV not nearly so straightforward as the old lady’s. In his former life, before he won $8 million by selecting numbers that corresponded to the birthdays of his three children, Buckley had taught physical education and had been a Cub Scout leader, a sports card collector, and a scratch golfer. In those days, he’d driven a station wagon. In his new life, he drove a sports utility vehicle. Young learned some of this information in a phone call to Debi late that morning, but most of it he reconstructed during an afternoon visit he paid to Kathy Buckley, Doug’s wife, in her pleasant, post-war, suburban brick bungalow in the Don Mills area of Toronto. There were beds of white hydrangea out front, the grass had recently been cut, one of the children—a boy—passed through the neatly appointed living room looking like he hated the world, and Kathy herself appeared ready to unravel.

The day after he won the lottery, according to Kathy, Doug took a leave of absence from Berrywood Middle School—he wanted to resign outright, but she put her foot down—and began spending his afternoons at Caledonia Downs. Although his friends and neighbours were unaware of it, Doug had a gambling problem. And although his children—Jason, fifteen, Jennifer, thirteen, and Jessica, seven—knew nothing of their father’s compulsion, Kathy knew. She had seen him in action during their annual getaways to Las Vegas. “A light came into his eyes,” she said, serving Young a glass of lemonade, “as soon as he stepped into a casino. Myself, I hate casinos—the crazy carpets, the noise. There isn’t a clock anywhere. I’d spend my time shopping or going to shows, but I always knew where to find Doug. He loved the slots, but what he really loved was the horse race room at Bally’s, where he could bet tracks all over North America and watch the races on huge telescreens while young women with hardly any clothes on brought him drinks.” After he won the lottery, again according to Kathy, Doug’s enthusiasm for Scout jamborees waned, and within months of his windfall he had dyed his mouse-brown Brillo-Pad hair jet black, had taken to wearing orange aviator glasses and a diamond ear stud, and had purchased, without Kathy’s knowledge, a three-year-old thoroughbred racing colt named Someday Prince. When Kathy found out about the horse—Doug carelessly left a vet’s bill in a shirt pocket—she demanded an explanation. Doug admitted that several months earlier he had talked to a horse racing writer named Priam Harvey. Harvey, Doug told her, had put him onto a trainer named Shorty Rogers. When Kathy ordered Doug to sell the horse and terminate his relationship with Rogers, Doug simply smiled at her, turned and walked out the front door, climbed into his fully loaded, cowcatchered, pewter-coloured Ford Expedition, drove to the Airport Hilton a mile from the racetrack, and moved in.

Young asked if Kathy had any photographs of Doug that she could show him. “Jessica has one in her room,” she said. “I’ll get it.” When she returned, she polished the glass of the frame with the elbow of her sweater before showing it to him. The photograph revealed Doug to be muscular, baby-faced, and—Young thought—full of himself.

As Young was standing up to leave, Kathy asked if he would be speaking to her husband in the near future.

“I haven’t actually met him yet,” Young said.

“Well, when you do meet him,” Kathy said evenly, “tell him to drop by sometime and pick up his belongings. They’re in the garage.”

Young found a phone booth outside a Sunoco station a short distance from Kathy Buckley’s house. He phoned the offices of Sport of Kings magazine and asked to speak to Priam Harvey. He was informed by a receptionist that Mr. Harvey no longer worked there.

Young phoned McCully’s Tavern. Dexter, the bartender, answered. “Dexter,” Young said, “is Mr. Harvey there?”

“Right here, Sarge. You want to talk to him, I’ll have to wake him up.”

“Wake him up.”

Thirty seconds passed, and a groggy voice said, “Priam Harvey, at your service.”

“Were you really sleeping?”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“Young. Dexter said you were sleeping.”

“I may have been having a little rest, but I certainly wasn’t asleep. Dexter was exaggerating.” Harvey paused to cough. “What can I do for you?”

“I need some information on a man named Douglas Buckley.”

“Never heard of him.”

“A few months ago he asked you to recommend a trainer, and you gave him Shorty Rogers.”

“Oh, poor Shorty. I just heard this morning.”

“Yes, well, it looks like foul play, Mr. Harvey, so I’m doing a little research on his owners, and Doug Buckley was one of them.”

There was a pause as Harvey lit a cigarette. “Won the lottery, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s right.”

“I never met him, but I remember he sounded very bubbly over the phone. I guess I’d sound bubbly, too, if I won the lottery. Said he was interested in getting into the racing game, but didn’t know anyone in the business, so he called me. Claimed he devoured every issue of Sport of Kings, and my column in particular. He wanted the name of a good trainer. I asked him how big a stable he wanted and how much money he wanted to spend, and he said just one horse to start, twenty to thirty thousand dollars. I told him I had just the man for him and gave him Shorty’s number.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, about a week later, I bumped into Shorty at JJ Muggs and he thanked me for sending a new client his way. By that time, he already had his eye on a horse.”

“Someday Prince.”

“That’s right. I know that Shorty himself had coveted the colt since watching him as a two-year-old the previous fall. He’d finished third twice, and Shorty felt he could be a late-kick sprinter. Trouble was he didn’t have anywhere near the money it would take to buy him. The arrival on the scene of Doug Buckley and his fat purse was timely indeed.” Harvey inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

“Then what?”

“In late May, Someday Prince made his first start as a three-year-old, running for a tag—thirty-two thousand—and Shorty claimed him. The jockey took him immediately to the lead and, as Shorty predicted, he faded in the stretch. Finished eighth. Buckley, who was sitting with Shorty in the clubhouse, was disturbed by the horse’s poor showing. Shorty told me later he had been quite firm with Buckley. Told him the colt would prove out, but to show how strongly he felt, he would buy a twenty-five percent interest in him. So Doug kicked in twenty-four thousand, and Shorty, by begging and borrowing and maybe a little stealing, scraped together eight, and three weeks later, in his first race for his new owners, Someday Prince came from off the pace in a special weight maiden race and won handily.”

Young said, “He’s entered Sunday.”

“Well, if he wins, he’ll have more than recouped the original investment.”

“Too bad Shorty won’t be around to enjoy it.”

Next, Young phoned the Airport Hilton, had his call transferred to Doug Buckley’s room, found him in, and, after a few minutes of introduction and explanation, succeeded in persuading Doug to meet him in the dining room a half-hour later, at five-thirty.

Young wove in and out of traffic all the way up the Don Valley Parkway and across Highway 401 to the hotel, flipped his keys to a valet, and found Doug—as advertised, muscular and baby-faced—standing at the entrance to the dining room, shooting the cuffs of his powder blue leisure suit and smoothing his coiffure.

Young said, “I thought those outfits went out of style about 1979.”

“It’s retro,” Doug said, colouring slightly.

The maitre d’ seated them at a corner table and gave them menus. When the waiter arrived, Doug ordered a half-litre of gewurtztraminer and the fettucine alfredo. Young ordered two bottles of Labatt’s Blue. “No glass,” he told the waiter, “and no food.”

Young began the conversation by asking Doug about his new life. “It must have been hard to leave the wife and kids.”

Doug nodded. “It’s not something you do every day, but I’d just made a fortune, and it turned out to be a very liberating experience. It taught me that I was not a prisoner of my marriage or my job or my role as a father. I was a free agent. I could do all the things I’d always wanted to do.”

“Like what, for instance?”

Doug looked around. “Like pay cash for a top-ofthe-line car. Like buy a new wardrobe.” He fingered the lapels of his leisure suit. “Like buy a racehorse, or move out of suburbia and into a nice hotel where you can get a massage at three in the morning, if that’s what turns you on.”

“Speaking of racehorses,” Young said, “Shorty Rogers was your trainer, right?”

Doug lifted his napkin from his lap to his lips and patted them. “I’m sure you already know that.”

“Him and you get along okay? I mean, you were his boss, right? No problems between you two?”

Young’s first impression was that Doug was not the sort of man who would look you in the eye at the best of times, and he seemed particularly evasive right now. “I hardly knew him,” he said. “He’d only been training for me for a few weeks. I’ve been told that he drank too much, but I really wouldn’t know.”

“You got his name through Priam Harvey at Sport of Kings, right?”

Doug shifted in his chair. “That’s right.”

Young examined his fingernails. “That’s kind of interesting about Priam Harvey. He happens to be a friend of mine. As a matter of fact, when my daughter was looking for a job a few years ago, Mr. Harvey told me I should talk to Shorty.”

“Your daughter worked for Shorty?”

Young looked back at Doug. “She’s taken over his horses for the time being. Debi Young? You should know her, she’s looking after your horse.”

Doug’s brow furrowed and he peered into his wine-glass. “I think I met her when Shorty claimed Someday Prince, and I went to the backstretch to see him up close.” He looked back up at Young. “So that’s your daughter? His groom?”

“That’s my daughter. She’s heard from the other owners, but not from you. They want her to stay on as trainer.”

Doug couldn’t contain a smile. “Big girl?”

Young smiled, too. “Well, look who her father is.” He stood up to his full height, leaned across the table towards Doug, and extended his hand. “You going to be around for a while?”

Hesitantly, Doug lifted his hand. “When, tonight?”

Young took Doug’s hand and squeezed. “I mean are you likely to stay in this hotel for a while? No second thoughts about going back home to the wife and kids?”

Doug shook his head. “No, I’m not going back.”

“No plans to move over to the Holiday Inn next door?”

“Hey,” Doug laughed nervously, beginning to blanch in Young’s grip, “massages at 3:00 a.m. Why would I leave?”

At 9:00 p.m., Young was at home and happily ensconced in his La-Z-Boy, which was so impregnated with back sweat and whose crannies were so littered with loose change and pens and pencils and balled-up Kleenexes and dusty kernels of popcorn and worms of cheesies that it resembled a stork’s nest more than it did a chair.

Jamal was on Young’s lap. Jamal’s favourite place in the world was his grandfather’s lap; at age two he would sit facing his grandfather, pulling his lips, tugging his ears, whacking his forehead with a tiny fist while Young was trying to watch TV. Now, almost six, Jamal faced the same direction his grandfather did, and together they watched TV sports. Tonight, they were watching baseball. When a batter rapped a grounder to short with a runner on first and nobody out, Young shouted, “Two, two!” and Jamal yelled, “Two, two!” in a serious little-boy voice, and when the throw to first beat the batter by two steps, Young shouted, “Got him!” and Jamal yelled, “Got him!”

As she did every time voices were raised, Reg struggled to her feet from her ragged mat in the middle of the living room carpet. Raised voices in Young’s apartment were always sports-related. Sometimes Reg would bark if there was too much commotion, and Young would take her outside and put her in the front seat of the minivan, which was Reg’s favourite place in the world, reasoning, Young figured, that if she was in the minivan she could-n’t be left behind. How many times, after all, had he seen her silhouetted in the living room window as he drove away? But on this occasion she simply limped over to the La-Z-Boy and nosed under Young’s wrist. He patted her head, saying, “That’s okay, you old smelly thing, you stinky girl.” Then he said, “She wants you to pet her, too, honey,” and Jamal leaned over and patted her, saying, “That’s okay, you old fatty,” his small mocha hand on top of his grandfather’s great freckled white slab of a hand, and after a minute or so Reg returned to her mat, sniffed a bit, and with a soft grunt lay back down.

Young often babysat Jamal, especially Wednesday and Saturday nights when Debi and her live-in boyfriend, Eldridge, went bowling. Eldridge was a jockey, but even though he wasn’t Jamal’s father—he and Debi had only been together a year and a half—and even though Debi was eight inches taller and eighty pounds heavier, they seemed to get along. They bowled in a league of racetrack employees—trainers and grooms and jockeys and jockeys’ agents and valets and kitchen staff. They bowled year-round, and on Saturday evenings in the winter Young and Jamal would watch their favourite hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. When a Leaf winger would cut from the boards across the slot, Young would shout “Shoot!” and Jamal would echo him, and if the puck found its mark they would shout “Yaaaaayyy!” and Jamal would swivel and high-five his grandfather.

One of the stories Young was most fond of telling, in his cups at McCully’s Tavern, to anyone who would listen—especially complete strangers since his friends would howl in protest when they recognized what he was launching into, having already heard it themselves innumerable times—concerned the evening when Jamal, only three years of age, was sitting on Young’s lap watching the Leafs play New Jersey, and Toronto tough guy Wendel Clark fought Devils left winger Mike Peluso. After the bout was over and the sticks and gloves had been picked up off the ice, Young listened intently as the penalties were announced. Clark was given a five-minute fighting major and a game misconduct. The TV commentator said, “That’s all for Wendel Clark,” and Jamal looked up at his grandfather and solemnly repeated, “That’s all for Wendel Clark.” Young would shake his head and laugh and then set off in search of someone else to tell the story to. People who knew him would see him coming and look for a place to hide. They knew that if he buttonholed them and started in on one of his stories, there was no escape. They would have to listen to the story all the way through. Even if they interrupted him partway into the story and said, “Stop right there, Camp, I’ve heard this one before, it’s the one where Jamal makes some cute comment about Wendel Clark, right? It’s a great story but I’ve heard it six or seven thousand times!” it wouldn’t do any good. Young would simply stand there, stone-faced and single-minded, and wait until they were done protesting and then pick up the story at the point at which he’d been interrupted and tell it right through to the end.

An hour later Young realized that Jamal, still in his lap, had not uttered a sound for at least an inning. Gently, he hefted the boy and could tell by the limpness of the small body that he was sound asleep.

Young adjusted his chair to its upright position, extricated himself as quietly as possible, and carried his grandson into the bedroom. Young laid him down on the king-sized bed, and as he constructed a rectangle of pillows around him, Jamal opened his eyes and said, “Tell me a story, Poppy?” Young lowered his weight onto the creaking bed and smoothed the curls off the boy’s forehead. “The Adventures of Bert and Ernie,” Young said. “Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four. Bert and Ernie Take Riding Lessons.” Young could still do Bert and Ernie’s voices convincingly, just as he could when Debi was little and he told her similar stories. He made them up as he told them, lying there in the dark beside the child, and no two were ever the same.

Partway into the story, Jamal said, “I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute, but I won’t be asleep.” Young continued with the story until the boy’s breathing changed, then he carefully raised himself off the bed and tiptoed out of the bedroom.

In the living room the telephone was ringing. Young picked up the TV remote, hit “mute,” and picked up the phone. “What?” he said.

“Young?” a voice said.

“Who’s this?”

“Percy Ball. I wanted—”

“How’d you get my number?”

“I uh ... I asked your daughter for it. Debi. I seen her at the bowling alley. She gave it to me.”

“Well, she shouldn’t be doing that. What do you want?”

“I have some information I think you might want to know about.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, um, before I tell you what I know, I think there oughta be somethin’ in it for me.”

“Oh,” said Young, “a shakedown.”

“Man’s gotta eat.”

“I have to tell you, I’m a little disappointed. Making money off the death of your drinking buddy. Shame on you.”

“I need the money. Shorty was the only one who’d let me work their horses, and now that he’s gone—”

“I’ll give you fifty dollars.”

Percy stopped. “Make it a hundred and—”

“It’s fifty, Percy, or you can stick your priceless information up your hole.”

“Okay, okay, when can I get it?”

“I’ll give it to Debi, and you can pick it up from her on Tuesday. Barn 7. Now spill.”

Young heard the flare of a match and Percy pulling on a cigarette. “When me and Shorty were sittin’ in JJ Muggs that last time, he told me that new owner I told you about—”

“The Saturday Night Fever guy?”

“That’s right, the guy that won the lottery.”

“His name’s Buckley.”

“Fine, okay. The point is Shorty told me this Buckley guy was offered a hundred thou’ for Someday Prince.”

Young’s eyebrows lifted. “On the basis of that one win?”

“That’s right, but you have to remember he won very impressive, and it seems some Jap interests caught wind of it. But Shorty didn’t want no part of it. Just tellin’ me about it in the bar there, he got seriously agitated. He said he told Buckley the colt was gonna be a champion, he was gonna run him in the fall classics, maybe even the Breeder’s Cup. Buckley told him he was a fool to hire him in the first place, he was a drunk and a loser, and if he wasn’t part owner of the horse he’d fire him, and he’d fire him in any case if he didn’t watch out.”

“What did Shorty say to that?”

“He said, ‘That’s right, I own part of the horse, one quarter to be exact, and you can’t do nothin’ without my say-so. Even if you fire me,’ he told him, ‘I still own one quarter of the horse.’”

“Shorty told you all this?”

“That’s right,” said Percy. “At JJ Muggs. Last time I seen him alive. Then the next day he shows up dead.”

“So when I talked to you the other day, you already knew all this.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I bought you a couple of beers, and you still held out on me?”

Percy dragged on his cigarette, then in a grave tone said, “Never show your cards before you have to, what I say.”

Young phoned the Airport Hilton and asked for Doug Buckley’s room. The concierge at the front desk told him that Mr. Buckley was no longer a guest at the hotel.

“When did he check out?” Young asked.

The concierge paused, checking the register. “Mr. Buckley checked out about an hour ago.”

“Did he leave a forwarding address?”

“No sir. He paid his bill and left.”

“Listen,” Young said, “maybe you can help me. My name’s Michael Hunt, I’m Mr. Buckley’s brother-in-law, he’s married to my sister, see, and he’s run out on her, and if there’s anything else you could tell me, I’d be awful grateful. He’s a deadbeat dad is what he is, and we’re trying to catch up with him. He hasn’t paid Lisa a cent in alimony, and the little ones ... well, I guess you can see where I’m coming from.”

The concierge paused, and when he spoke again his voice was low and conspiratorial. “Well, Mr. Hunt, I do sympathize because my sister has found herself in very much the same situation.”

“No shit.”

“No, I’m serious, and her husband’s an orthodontist, for God’s sake.”

“It takes all kinds.”

“Exactly my point, Mr. Hunt. Now, while it’s entirely against policy here at the Hilton to divulge information of a personal nature about our guests, I can tell you that I was the one who checked Mr. Buckley out, and, like I said, he paid his bill, I had a valet bring his car around, and all I can really add is that his departure was, well, I guess you could say abrupt. I asked him if he wanted to leave a forwarding address, and he said no. He said he was lighting out. That was the expression he used. Lighting out. It’s a cowboy expression, isn’t it?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Oh, well, I believe it is, but anyway, I asked him where he was lighting out to. I just kind of enjoyed using the expression myself. And he said he was lighting out for greener pastures.”

Young phoned Wheeler. He was several sheets to the wind, as he always was when he made these late-night calls, which he did once or twice a month. “Wheeler,” he said when she picked up, “I got one for you.”

“Sarge, it’s eleven-thirty.”

“Come on, Wheeler, it’s a good one.”

She sighed. “Fine, all right. Wait till I get my drink.”

He was encouraged. “What are you drinking?”

“Warm milk.”

“Get the fuck out of here. Warm milk! It’s June, for fucksake.”

But she had put the phone down. When she came back, she said, “All right, so let’s hear it.”

“Okay, in the final scene of All Quiet on the Western Front, what’s the German kid reaching for when he gets shot?”

“A butterfly. I thought you said it was going to be a good one.”

“I thought it was a good one.”

“Anybody who knows anything about movies knows it was a butterfly. What was the kid’s name?”

“What, the German kid?”

“Yes, the German kid.”

“Lew Ayres.”

“No, Sarge, that’s the actor’s name. What’s the character’s name?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Paul.”

“Okay, that’s one for you.” There was a brief silence, then Young said, “Did you know they’ve started showing commercials when you go to the movies? I went to see a John Goodman movie last week, and the bastards made me sit through ten minutes of commercials. And what’s worse is, I’d seen most of them on TV, except these ones were longer. Jeez, Wheeler, I thought the reason we pay to go to the movies is so we don’t have to watch commercials.”

“You should have stood up and booed.”

“I did.”

She laughed. “You did not.”

“I did! I stood right up and booed. Fucking right I did. But it didn’t do me any good.”

“Nobody paid any attention?”

“Oh yeah, everybody yelled at me to shut up and sit down.”

There was another silence. Then Wheeler said, “Okay, so what’s on your mind, Sarge? You’re not going to ask me to marry you again, are you?”

“No, I’m not going to ask you to marry me again”—Young belched softly—“and do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because it hurts too much when you say no, but I would do it, you know, I would marry you.”

“As soon as I come to my senses and realize I’m not really a lesbian.”

“That’s right. It’s only a matter of time.”

“So why did you phone?”

“Just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Goodnight, Sarge.”

“Goodnight? It’s Saturday night, it’s early, don’t go yet.”

“I’m tired.”

“You gotta get up early?”

“Maybe I do.”

“What for, church? They got a church for dykes?”

She was silent.

“Sorry.”

She said nothing.

“I just wanted to talk some more.”

“About what?”

“About ... I don’t know. John Goodman in Barton Fink.”

“What about it?”

“I didn’t get it. It was too intellectual. I thought maybe you could explain it to me.”

“Goodnight, Sarge.”