Field of Thirteen

by Dick Francis

  Marius saw the impulse and said smoothly, ‘Did you give any thought to a diversion on Crinkle Cut?’

  Piper Boles hesitated.

  ‘It’ll cost you,’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ Marius agreed easily. ‘How about another ten thousand, on top?’

  ‘Used bills. Half before.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Piper Boles shrugged off his conscience, tossed out the last of his integrity.

  ‘OK,’ he said, and sauntered away to his car as if all his nerves weren’t stretched and screaming.

  Fred Collyer had heard every word, and he knew, without having to look, that one of the voices was Marius Tollman’s. Impossible for anyone long in the racing game not to recognise that wheezy Boston accent. He understood that Marius had been fixing up a swindle, and also that a good little swindle would fill his column nicely. He thought fuzzily that it was necessary to know who Marius had been talking to, and that as the voices had been behind him he had better turn round and find out.

  Time however was disjointed for him, and when he pushed himself off the wall and made an effort to focus in the right direction, both men had gone.

  ‘Bastards,’ he said aloud to the empty night, and another late homegoer, leaving the hotel, took him compassionately by the elbow and led him to a taxi. He made it safely back to his own room before he passed out.

  Since leaving LaGuardia that morning he had drunk six beers, four brandies, one double Scotch (by mistake), and nearly three litres of bourbon.

  He woke at eleven the next morning, and couldn’t believe it. He stared at the bedside clock.

  Eleven.

  He had missed the barns and the whole morning merry-go-round on the track. A shiver chilled him at that first realisation, but there was worse to come. When he tried to sit up, the room whirled and his head thumped like a pile-driver. When he stripped back the sheet he found he had been sleeping in bed fully clothed with his shoes on. When he tried to remember how he had returned the previous evening, he could not do so.

  He tottered into the bathroom. His face looked back at him like a nightmare from the mirror, wrinkled and red-eyed, ten years older overnight. Hung-over he had been any number of times, but this felt like no ordinary morning-after. A sense of irretrievable disaster hovered somewhere behind the acute physical misery of his head and stomach, but it was not until he had taken off his coat and shirt and pants, and scraped off his shoes, and lain down again weakly on the crumpled bed. that he discovered its nature.

  Then he realised with a jolt that not only had he no recollection of the journey back to his motel, he could recall practically nothing of the entire evening. Snatches of conversation from the first hour came back to him, and he remembered sitting at table between a cross old writer from the Baltimore Sun and an earnest woman breeder from Lexington, neither of whom he liked; but an uninterrupted blank started from halfway through the fried chicken.

  He had heard of alcoholic blackouts, but supposed they only happened to alcoholics; and he, Fred Collyer, was not one of those. Of course, he would concede that he did drink a little. Well, a lot, then. But he could stop any time he liked. Naturally he could.

  He lay on the bed and sweated, facing the stark thought that one blackout might lead to another, until blackouts gave way to pink panthers climbing the walls. The Sports Editor’s warning came back with a bang, and for the first time, uncomfortably remembering that twice he had missed his column, he felt a shade of anxiety about his job. Within five minutes he had reassured himself that they would never fire Fred Collyer, but all the same he would for the paper’s sake lay off the drink until after he had written his piece on the Derby. This resolve gave him a glowing feeling of selfless virtue, which at least helped him through the shivering fits and pulsating headaches of an extremely wretched day.

  Out at Churchill Downs three other men were just as worried. Piper Boles kicked his horse forward into the starting stalls and worried about what George Highbury, the Somerset Farms trainer, had said when he went to scale at two pounds overweight. George Highbury thought himself superior to all jocks and spoke to them curtly, win or lose.

  ‘Don’t give me that crap,’ he said to Boles’ excuses. ‘You went to the Turfwriters’ dinner last night, what do you expect?’

  Piper Boles looked bleakly back over his hungry evening with its single martini and said he’d had a session in the sweat-box that morning.

  Highbury scowled. ‘You keep your fat ass away from the table tonight and tomorrow if you want to make Crinkle Cut in the Derby.’

  Piper Boles badly needed to ride Crinkle Cut in the Derby. He nodded meekly to Highbury with downcast eyes, and swung unhappily into the saddle.

  Instead of bracing him, the threat of losing the ride on Crinkle Cut took the edge off his concentration, so that he came out of the stalls slowly, streaked the first quarter too fast to reach third place, swung wide at the bend and lost his stride straightening out. He finished sixth. He was a totally experienced jockey of above average ability. It was not one of his days.

  On the grandstand, Marius Tollman put down his race glasses shaking his head and clicking his tongue. If Piper Boles couldn’t ride a better race than that when he was supposed to be trying to win, what sort of a goddam hash would he make of losing on Crinkle Cut?

  Marius thought about the very many thousands he was staking on Saturday’s little caper. He had not yet decided whether to tip off certain guys in organised crime, in which case they would cover the stake at no risk to himself, or to gamble on the bigger profit of going it alone. He lowered his wheezy bulk onto his seat and worried about the ease with which a fixed race could unfix itself.

  Blisters Schultz worried about the state of his trade, which was suffering a severe recession.

  Blisters Schultz picked pockets for a living, and was fed up with credit cards. In the old days, when he’d learned the skill at his grandfather’s knee, men carried their billfolds in their rear pants’ pockets, neatly outlined for all the world to see. Nowadays all these smash-and-grab muggers had ruined the market: few people carried more than a handful of dollars around with them, and those who did tended to divide it into two portions, with the heavy dough hidden away beneath zips.

  Fifty-three years Blisters had survived: forty-five of them by stealing. Several shortish sessions behind bars had been regarded as bad luck, but not as a good reason for not nicking the first wallet he saw when he got out. He had tried to go straight once, but he hadn’t liked it: couldn’t face the regular hours and the awful feeling of working. After six weeks he had left his well-paid job and gone back thankfully to insecurity. He felt happier stealing ten dollars than earning fifty.

  For the best haul at racemeets, you either had to spot the big wads before they were gambled away, or follow a big winner away from the pay-out window. In either case, it meant hanging around the pari-mutuel with your eyes open. The trouble was, too many racecourse cops had cottoned to his modus op, and were apt to stand around looking at people who were just standing there looking.

  Blisters had had a bad week. The most promisingly fat wallet had proved, after half an hour’s careful stalking, to contain little in money but a lot in pornography. Blisters, having a weak sex drive, was disgusted on both counts.

  For his first two days’ labour he had only fifty-three dollars to show, and five of these he had found on a stairway. His meagre back-street room in Louisville was costing him forty a night, and with transport and eating to take into account, he reckoned he’d have to clear eight hundred to make the trip worthwhile.

  Always an optimist, he brightened at the thought of Derby day. The pickings would certainly be easier once the real crowd arrived.

  Fred Collyer’s private Prohibition lasted intact through Friday. Feeling better when he woke, he cabbed out to Churchill Downs at seven-thirty, writing his expenses on the way. They included many mythical items for the previous day, on the basis that it was better for the office not to know he had bee
n paralytic on Wednesday night. He upped the inflated total a bunch more: after all, bourbon was expensive, and he would be off the wagon by Sunday.

  The initial shock of the blackout had worn off, because during his day in bed he had remembered bits and pieces which he was certain were later in time than the fried chicken. The journey from dinner to bed was still a blank, but the blank had stopped frightening him. At times he felt there was something vital about it he ought to remember, but he persuaded himself that if it had been really important, he wouldn’t have forgotten.

  Out by the barns the groups of pressmen had already formed round the trainers of the most fancied Derby runners. Fred Collyer sauntered to the outskirts of Harbourne Cressie, and his colleagues made room for him with no reference to his previous day’s absence. It reassured him: whatever he had done on Wednesday night, it couldn’t have been scandalous.

  The notebooks were out. Harbourne Cressie, long practised and fond of publicity, paused between every sentence to give time for all to be written down.

  ‘Pincer Movement ate well last evening and is calm and cool this a.m. On the book we should hold Salad Bowl, unless the track is sloppy by Saturday.’

  Smiles all round. The sky blue, the forecast fair.

  Fred Collyer listened without attention. He’d heard it all before. They’d all heard it all before. And who the hell cared?

  In a rival group two barns away the trainer of Salad Bowl was saying his colt had the beating of Pincer Movement on the Hialeah form, and could run on any going, sloppy or not.

  George Highbury attracted fewer newsmen, as he hadn’t much to say about Crinkle Cut. The three-year-old had been beaten by both Pincer Movement and Salad Bowl on separate occasions, and was not expected to reverse things.

  On Friday afternoon Fred Collyer spent his time up in the press room and manfully refused a couple of free beers. (Entertaining various owners at track, $52.)

  Piper Boles rode a hard finish in the sixth race, lost by a short head, and almost passed out from hunger-induced weakness in the jocks’ room afterwards. George Highbury, unaware of this, merely noted sourly that Boles had made the weight, and confirmed that he would ride Crinkle Cut on the morrow.

  Various friends of Piper Boles, supporting him towards a daybed, asked anxiously in his ear whether tomorrow’s scheme was still on. Piper Boles nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said faintly. ‘All the way.’

  Marius Tollman was relieved to see Boles riding better, but decided anyway to hedge his bet by letting the syndicate in on the action.

  Blisters Schultz lifted two billfolds, containing respectively fourteen and twenty-two dollars. He lost ten of them backing a certainty in the last race.

  Pincer Movement, Salad Bowl and Crinkle Cut, guarded by uniformed men with guns at their waists, looked over the stable doors and with small quivers in their tuned-up muscles watched other horses go out to the track. All three would have chosen to go, too. All three knew well enough what the trumpet was sounding for, on the other side.

  Saturday morning, fine and clear.

  Crowds in their thousands converged on Churchill Downs. Eager, expectant, chattering, dressed in bright colours and buying mint juleps in take-away souvenir glasses, they poured through the gates and over the in-field, reading the latest sports columns on Pincer Movement versus Salad Bowl, and dreaming of picking outsiders that came up at fifty to one.

  Blisters Schultz had scraped together just enough to pay his motel bill, but self-esteem depended on better luck with the hoists. His small lined face with its busy eyes wore a look near to desperation, and the long predatory fingers clenched and unclenched convulsively in his pockets.

  Piper Boles, with one-twenty-six to do on Crinkle Cut, allowed himself an egg for breakfast and decided what to buy with the bundle of used notes which had been delivered by hand the previous evening, and with the gains (both legal and illegal) he should add to them that day. If he cleaned up safely that afternoon, he thought, there was no obvious reason why he shouldn’t set up the same scheme again, even after he had retired from riding. He hardly noticed the shift in his mind from reluctant dishonesty to habitual fraud.

  Marius Tollman spent the morning telephoning to various acquaintances, offering profit. His offers were accepted. Marius Tollman felt a load lift from his spirits and with a spring in his step took his two-sixty pounds downtown a few blocks, where a careful gentleman counted out one hundred thousand dollars in untraceable notes. Marius Tollman gave him a receipt, properly signed. Business was business.

  Fred Collyer wanted a drink. One, he thought, wouldn’t hurt. It would pep him up a bit, put him on his toes. One little drink in the morning would certainly not stop him writing a punchy piece that evening. The Star couldn’t possibly frown on just one drink before he went to the races, especially not as he had managed to keep clear of the bar the previous evening by going to bed at nine. His abstinence had involved a great effort of will: it would be right to reward such virtue with just one drink.

  He had, however, finished on Wednesday night the bottle he had brought with him to Louisville. He fished out his wallet to check how much he had in it: eighty-three dollars, plenty after expenses to cover a fresh bottle for later as well as a quick one in the bar before he left.

  He went downstairs. In the lobby, however, his colleague Clay Petrovitch again offered a free ride in his Hertz car to Churchill Downs, so he decided he could postpone his one drink for half an hour. He gave himself little mental pats on the back all the way to the racecourse.

  *

  Blisters Schultz, circulating among the clusters of people at the rear of the grandstand, saw Marius Tollman going by in the sunshine, leaning backwards to support the weight in front and wheezing audibly in the growing heat.

  Blisters Schultz licked his lips. He knew the fat man by sight: knew that somewhere around that gross body might be stacked enough lolly to see him through the summer. Marius Tollman would never come to the Derby with empty pockets.

  Two thoughts made Blisters hesitate as he slid like an eel in the fat man’s wake. The first was that Tollman was too old a hand to let himself be robbed. The second, that he was known to have friends in organised places, and if Tollman was carrying organisation money Blisters wasn’t going to burn his fingers stealing it, which was how he got his nickname in the first place.

  Regretfully Blisters peeled off from the quarry, and returned to the throng in the comforting shadows under the grandstand.

  At twelve seventeen he infiltrated a close-packed bunch of people waiting for an elevator.

  At twelve eighteen he stole Fred Collyer’s wallet.

  Marius Tollman carried his money in cunning underarm pockets which he clamped to his sides in a crowd, for fear of pickpockets. When the time was due, he would visit as many different selling windows as possible, inconspicuously distributing the stake. He would give Piper Boles almost half the tickets (along with the second bunch of used notes), and keep the other half for himself.

  A nice tidy little killing, he thought complacently. And no reason why he shouldn’t set it up sometime again.

  He bought a mint julep and smiled kindly at a girl showing more bosom than bashfulness.

  The sun stoked up the day. The preliminary contests rolled over one by one with waves of cheering, each hard-ridden finish merely a sideshow attending on the big one, the Derby, the climax, the ninth race, the one they called the Roses, because of the blanket of red flowers that would be draped in triumph over the withers of the winner.

  In the jocks’ room, Piper Boles changed into the silks for Crinkle Cut and began to sweat. The nearer he came to the race the more he wished it was an ordinary Derby day like any other. He steadied his nerves by reading the Financial Times.

  Fred Collyer discovered the loss of his wallet upstairs in the press room when he tried to pay for a beer. He cursed, searched all his pockets, turned the press room upside down, got the keys of the Hertz car from Clay Petrovitch and trailed all the way back to
the car park. After a fruitless search there he strode furiously back to the grandstands, violently throttling in his mind the lousy stinking son of a bitch who had stolen his money. He guessed it had been an old hand; an old man, even. The new vicious young lot relied on muscle, not skill.

  His practical problems were not too great. He needed little cash. Clay Petrovitch was taking him back to town, the motel bill was going direct to the Manhattan Star, and his plane ticket was safely lying on the chest of drawers in his bedroom. He could borrow fifty bucks or so, maybe, from Clay or others in the press room, to cover essentials.

  Going up in the elevator he thought that the loss of his money was like a sign from heaven; no money, no drink.

  Blisters Schultz kept Fred Collyer sober the whole afternoon.

  Pincer Movement, Salad Bowl and Crinkle Cut were led from their barns, into the tunnel under the cars and crowds, and out again onto the track in front of the grandstands. They walked loosely, casually, used to the limelight but knowing from experience that this was only a foretaste. The first sight of the day’s princes galvanised the crowds towards the pari-mutuel window-like shoals of multicoloured fish.

  Piper Boles walked out with the other jockeys towards the wire-meshed enclosure where horses, trainers and owners stood in a group in each stall. He had begun to suffer from a feeling of detachment and unreality: he could not believe that he, a basically honest jockey, was about to make a hash of the Kentucky Derby.

  George Highbury repeated for about the fortieth time the tactics they had agreed on. Piper Boles nodded seriously, as if he had every intention of carrying them out. He actually heard scarcely a word; and he was deaf also to the massed bands and the singing when the Derby runners were led out to the track. ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ swelled the emotions of a multitude and brought out a flutter of eye-wiping handkerchiefs, but in Piper Boles it raised not a blink.

  Through the parade, the canter down, the circling round, and even into the starting stalls, the detachment persisted. Only then, with the tension showing plain on the faces of the other riders, did he click back to realisation. His heart-rate nearly doubled and energy flooded into his brain.