The Stars Shine Bright

by Sibella Giorello

  “I want a full autopsy.” She plunked the glass on the desk, stood up, then wavered a moment. Tipsy. “Did he suffer?”

  “I thought you didn’t care about the horses.”

  “You’ve misunderstood. I don’t want to care. That is entirely different from not caring. Tell me what happened.”

  I described the events in the clinic, and the wound. “The vet seemed suspicious about the injury. He took samples. Without my asking.”

  “That old coot is a good vet.”

  “In all your years of racing, have you ever seen the starting gate malfunction like that?”

  “Never. But it has tires, doesn’t it?”

  The starting gate did have wheels. It was rolled to different places on the track, depending on a race’s length. “What do the tires have to do with anything?”

  “Life has taught me a valuable lesson,” she said. “If something has tires or testicles, it’s going to cause trouble.” She swayed again. “Take my elbow. I’m drunk.”

  We walked from Cooper’s small office into the stables. The moist air was dusted with alfalfa.

  I said, “Did you notice who won that first race?”

  “The long shot. Cuppa Joe only placed.”

  He was the black horse, the one that jumped out as though clearing a hurdle. “Convenient results,” I said. “The favorite didn’t win.”

  “Especially good for a certain bookie. How much did you wager?”

  “Two grand.”

  “I’ll consider it tuition.”

  Juan carried water buckets toward the stalls. He glanced our way, paused, nodded at Eleanor, then lowered his eyes. He did not acknowledge me.

  “They think you’re bad luck,” Eleanor said.

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Why should you? For that matter, why should I?”

  As we were crossing under the eaves, I saw his narrow shoulders coming toward us. Like a mouse sniffing for good cheese, Tony Not Tony tiptoed forward. He wore rubber slip-ons over his tasseled leather loafers. I decided he was coming to see if I wanted to place another bet. To make up for the 2K I blew on “the favorite.”

  “Eleanor,” he breathed.

  “What is it, Anthony?” She sounded irritable.

  “I thought you should know, I heard something. But maybe not.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Spit it out!”

  “Mr. Yuck.” Tony Not Tony smiled. “He would like to see you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  A security guard stood outside an unmarked door inside the betting office building. He was tall and black with pale green eyes. When he saw Eleanor, he touched the brim of his cap.

  “Sorry ’bout your horse, Mrs. Anderson.”

  “Thank you, Lou. Now could you please tell me where I might find that creature from the deep?”

  Lou’s mouth tightened, fighting a smile. He reached for the door, twisting the knob. “Here you go.”

  The room was square and bland, the walls white and empty. An oblong table was encircled by chairs, but nobody was sitting in them. Not Sal Gagliardo, who stood next to the one window. Not his trainer, a belligerent man named Jimmy Bello, who was muttering under his breath. And not the only other female who owned her own barn at Emerald Meadows, Claire Manchester.

  They each faced the track’s head of security, a man known as Mr. Yuck.

  “Eleanor,” he said, “how nice you could join us.”

  He extended his hand to me. It was wide, almost square, like the defibrillator paddles used on SunTzu. “We haven’t met,” he said. “Charles Babbitt.”

  We hadn’t met, but I knew a bit about Mr. Babbitt. For more than fifteen years he had run the security at Emerald Meadows. His tenure raised a red flag with the FBI. For all we knew, he kept his job by looking the other way. Or even by staying tucked into Sal Gag’s pocket.

  Shaking the paddle, I decided either theory could be right. There was something definitely creepy about the guy.

  “Raleigh David,” I lied. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Pleasure,” he said.

  Placing his hands behind his back, he turned to the gathering.

  “Three horses were clearly affected by the bad start this morning,” he said. “I’ve called you here because each of you owns one of those horses. Cuppa Joe, Loosey Goosey, and SunTzu.”

  “Yo, Perry Madison,” said Jimmy Bello, the trainer. “You want to fast-forward to some kinda point? I don’t have all day.”

  The security chief swiveled his head. It was a large head, hemispheric and balding. The forehead’s wide plane was punctuated by furrowed black brows that slanted over ever-narrowing eyes. The nose was flat, almost topographically insignificant, but the mouth was full and provided the most clues regarding his nickname. Moist as torn fruit, the red lips pulled down at the corners in an expression of permanent distaste, like a man ingesting poison. Charles Babbitt’s face looked like the sticker that poison control centers placed on medicine bottles to warn children that the contents would make them very sick.

  “Mr. Gagliardo.”

  Sal Gag gazed out the window, looking bored. The unlit cigar waggled between his fingers, and outside, jockeys were leading horses down the backstretch by their bridles, returning to the barns after the last race. The horses kept their heads down; the rain had returned.

  “Mr. Gagliardo.”

  Sal Gag hoisted his heavy brows. “Yeah.”

  “There is one crucial difference here. Unlike the other two horses, your barn benefited from the bad start.”

  “What benefit? My horse didn’t win.”

  Mr. Yuck turned toward the door. As if hearing a cue, the guard named Lou appeared. He had with him the nervous man from this morning, the one who reminded me of a rodeo clown.

  “I believe you know Harrold Moser.”

  The guard escorted Harrold Moser to a chair; Harrold dropped into it. The guard stood behind him.

  Mr. Yuck gave me a dour smile. “Harrold runs the start.”

  Harrold had long legs and they were bouncing on the balls of his feet. Mr. Yuck scooped two remote controls from the conference table and moved his thumbs over the buttons, closing the slatted blinds, darkening the room, and clicking on a flat-screen television that hung on the wall behind us.

  “Harrold has offered to describe for us exactly what he saw,” Mr. Yuck intoned. “I wanted all significant parties to be present for this information. Simultaneously. This place runs on rumors.” He looked directly at Sal Gag and offered another dour smile. “And speculations.”

  But the bookie was staring at Harrold with a dark and unrelenting gaze. I suddenly wondered whether Mr. Yuck really was in the mobster’s pocket.

  “I already told you,” Harrold said, much too loudly. “Everything looked normal.”

  “Everything?” asked Mr. Yuck.

  “Okay, not everything.” Harrold’s legs beat a fast rhythm, and his sudden capitulation made me even more suspicious. Liars enjoyed throwing false crumbs down dead-end trails.

  “Go on,” said Mr. Yuck.

  “One thing was Cuppa Joe.”

  “Please, tell us about it.”

  “He’s a fighter, you know.” Harrold continued to speak too loudly, as though he wanted to transmit the words to somebody in the next room. “That horse, he likes to mess with his competition. Last week he bit a filly in the next gate.”

  “My filly,” said Claire Manchester. She was small and tan, almost elfin. “My best runner. She’s traumatized. It was total male harassment.”

  “Yo, toots,” said Jimmy Bellow. “Enough with the women’s rights.”

  “Harrold.” Mr. Yuck paced in front of the chair. “Did Cuppa Joe indulge in any harassments before this morning’s race?”

  “No. Not that I saw. But maybe the jockeys saw something.”

  “Not going with that one,” said Bello. “No hablo español. And I ain’t trusting no translations.”

  “So the horses were in the gate.” Mr.
Yuck’s hands circled around his back again, his mouth drawing down at the corners. “Take us through the next moments.”

  “Okay, so, you know, I stare down the line from the cage.”

  I cleared my throat. “What’s ‘the cage’?”

  Mr. Yuck turned professorial. “The cage is a three-foot box positioned perpendicular to the starting gates. It allows the starter, in this case Harrold, to look at the line of horses before the race begins.”

  I stared at Harrold. He wasn’t the guy I’d pick for that job. Not only was he too tall for a three-foot cage, he had the nervous system of a caffeinated fruit fly. The long, skinny legs kept rattling up and down, thin as sabers, slicing the tension in the air.

  “So, okay, I had my eyes on Cuppa Joe, you know, to see what he was gonna do. But all the horses seemed skittish. The rain. Horses, you know—you never know. But I just need one second. And there it was, everything fine. I heard the electric arm lock the back gates—”

  I cleared my throat again. Their faces turned toward me.

  “The back door is locked?” I asked.

  Claire Manchester sighed. She wore a sleeveless shirt, her arms tightly muscled. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Maybe it was a stupid question, but Raleigh David wouldn’t know. And Raleigh Harmon needed to know.

  “If you need some kind of tutorial,” Claire said, “go get one. And while you’re at it, find somebody to work that bad luck off you.” She looked at Eleanor. “Sorry, Eleanor, but it’s true.”

  Eleanor raised her chin. “All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”

  Claire frowned, annoyed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Eleanor squeezed my hand. “Mrs. Goforth again, scene two.”

  “Back to Harrold,” said Mr. Yuck gloomily. “Please explain to Miss David how the gates work.”

  “It’s just a word, locked. The gates aren’t locked. I don’t know why we say that. Because horses, you know, they can bolt. Freak out. They get all these weird signals, stuff that doesn’t even make sense to us people. If you locked ’em in there, somebody’d get hurt.”

  Claire said, “Somebody did get hurt, moron.”

  “Oh, the mendacity,” Eleanor said. “I need to sit down.”

  I helped her into a chair.

  Harrold said, even louder, “Is anybody listening? I’m trying to tell you guys, everything looked okay. You know, with some tension. Because it’s the first race. And the track’s wet. But Cuppa Joe, he—”

  Suddenly Harrold stopped.

  “Ye-es?” intoned Mr. Yuck.

  “I was gonna say, you know, Cuppa Joe was dying to run.”

  “Interesting choice of words. Do continue.”

  Harrold’s eyes flitted around the faces in the room, searching for sympathy. But Sal Gag looked like he wanted to light his Havana so he could stick it in one of Harrold’s nervous eyes. Jimmy Bello was sneering, and Claire Manchester began tapping soiled fingers on her cell phone, texting someone. Harrold looked at Eleanor. She wore the expression of an actress who feared the play was going to close after the first performance. And her chin was rising.

  But Harrold got there first. “The horses, you know, were all in place. The back gate locked—closed. And I hit the button.”

  Mr. Yuck turned toward me, sensing another question. The dismal smile spread across his doughy face. “The button to which Harrold is referring opens each gate simultaneously. All at once,” he added, as if the word was beyond my comprehension. “That button also freezes the totalizator.”

  “Totalizator?” I asked.

  “Hey, Kojak.” Bello again. “It’s the tote board. Nobody calls it the Totalizator.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bello. But I prefer real names.” His ominous tone implied he knew his own nickname. “That same button also triggers the bell that can be heard at any public location on track property.”

  The bell. Harrold’s loud voice. I suddenly realized the man was going deaf. If he sat next to that bell, he heard it five times a day, six days a week.

  “But when all the horses didn’t take off,” Harrold said, “I thought maybe the doors got stuck. I leaned over the line, trying to see the gates.” He stretched his neck out over his jiggling legs, demonstrating for us. “And then I saw, you know . . .”

  “No, we don’t know.” Mr. Yuck aimed the second remote at the television. “But this is what you saw.”

  An image of the starting gate flashed on the screen. It showed the empty gates from a side view. Mr. Yuck clicked through stilled video images, showing the horses entering the gate, one by one. Jockeys adjusted grips and helmets, or made the sign of the cross over their bright silks. And the horses’ faces—brown and bay, black and chestnut—were as beautiful as marble busts. The gates blew open.

  In slow motion, the animals’ long heads seemed to stretch out. The front legs kicked forward. Shiny coats shimmered over rippling muscles.

  Cuppa Joe hesitated. Loosey Goosey didn’t move. And SunTzu . . .

  Eleanor placed the back of her hand across her forehead. “I can’t bear to watch this again.”

  I glanced at the people in the room. Watching the images, Sal Gag’s face seemed as implacable as stone. Jimmy Bello scowled. But Claire Manchester’s dark blue eyes were shifting between the two Italian men. Her shrewd expression suggested she sensed a traitor.

  When I glanced back at the television, Cuppa Joe was proving his competitive streak. Though he didn’t leave the gate for several frames, when he finally took off he leaped like a standing long jumper, and that first stride drew a moment of silence in the room. It was sheer appreciation for a curvet of power, the absolute might of a horse that could cover fifteen feet from a stationary position. Clinging to his back in Abbondanza’s bright pink silks, the jockey looked like a tropical fish holding on to a black leviathan.

  Mr. Yuck nodded. “That horse seems suspiciously healthy, Mr. Gagliardo.”

  “Everything’s suspicious to you.” Sal Gag tugged back his cuff-linked shirtsleeve, exposing a gold Rolex, and checked the time. “How long you plan to string this out?”

  Mr. Yuck hit the remote again. “Let us examine those horses left behind.”

  The images shifted to normal speed. Cuppa Joe was tearing up the muddy track. But when the picture returned to the starting gate, the jockey riding Loosey Goosey had already jumped from his saddle. His face looked familiar—the rider who translated for the vet this morning—and in the next gate SunTzu was pitching forward, dragging the jockey down. Watching it again, I felt the futile pain of seeing a car crash in slow motion. And I didn’t want to see the jockey’s face again, that look of shock, that realization of defeat in his soul. Lowering my gaze, I stared at the bottom of the screen. The groomed turf had the soothing appearance of a mandala, all the soil combed into fine rows still untouched by the horse. I could even see the drops of rain, clinging to the grains of sand.

  “Harrold,” said Mr. Yuck, “how much money did you put on Cuppa Joe?”

  The silence that fell on the room felt like the moment just before a bomb detonates.

  “How much?” Mr. Yuck repeated.

  “I didn’t place a bet.” Harrold wiped his forehead. “That would be illegal.”

  “Yes. It would. How much?”

  “My sister placed the bet.”

  Mr. Yuck gave his sick smile. “Fifty dollars on Cuppa Joe, wasn’t it? Not to win, even though the horse was the favorite. But fifty dollars to place. Did you know something, Harrold?”

  Harrold looked at his jiggling legs, staring at them as if they belonged to another man.

  Claire Manchester almost spit. “I knew it. Abbondanza’s as crooked as cat poo.”

  “Poo?” said Jimmy Bello. “What is this, kindergarten?”

  But Mr. Yuck had turned his gloomy gaze on Sal Gag. “When Harrold placed that bet on Cuppa Joe—”

  Harrold jumped in. “My sister—”

  “Doesn’t matter.
” Mr. Yuck hit the remote, backing up the film to the first tragic images. Then he zoomed in on the three gates. “The track’s rules specifically state that Emerald Meadows employees are prohibited from betting on races in which they are working. Tell me, Harrold, what did you plan to do with your two hundred dollars?”

  Sal Gag made a guttural sound, deep in his throat. “Two hundred bucks? You hauled me in here for a measly two hundred bucks?”

  Mr. Yuck had placed a paddle hand on Harrold’s shoulder and squeezed. Harrold winced.

  “While Harrold broke the rules to make some money,” Mr. Yuck said, “I am certain that you, Mr. Gagliardo, and you, Mr. Bello, and perhaps even you, Miss Manchester, have profited even more handsomely. The only person who lost in this instance was Eleanor.”

  “Mendacity,” she said as her chin came up. “Mendacity’s the system we live in. Liquor is one way out and death’s the other.” She sighed. “Brick said that, in act two.”

  But I was the only person who heard her. The other three erupted with a round of protests: Sal Gag saying it wasn’t his problem that Harrold bet on the race, Bello tossing out insults, and Claire accusing them both of equine abuse. Mr. Yuck gave a dour retort, but his exact words passed me by because I was looking at the image on the television. Specifically, the turf soil. It looked like mud rubbed across the screen with a dark line bisecting the brown area. I stepped closer. It looked like some kind of shadow. Maybe. But it was raining then. No sun. When I turned around, Jimmy Bello was leaning into Mr. Yuck. And the security chief wore a weird smile, like that involuntary rictus gripping a person’s mouth right before they vomit.

  I waved my hand. “Excuse me.” The next words required effort. “Gentlemen. I have another question. Did anyone look at the turf?”

  “Yeah, it’s mud,” Bello said. “And if your horse is a pansy, that’s your problem. Cuppa Joe’s a mudder. So shoot me.”

  Tempted, I turned to Mr. Yuck. “Could you reverse the film, back to where the doors open?”

  “Gates,” he corrected, putting me in my place.

  “Yes, the gates.” I pretended to be embarrassed. “And would it be possible to zoom in on SunTzu’s gate?”

  He clicked and clicked until SunTzu’s beautiful face pierced my heart. The horse looked confident in the gate, completely unaware that the next seconds would finish him.