by Otto Penzler
It took him two good sobbing, breath-seeking minutes to recover. Then awkwardly he scrabbled to his feet, took a look at the corner of the church wall behind them, saw the sixpences and started desperately scraping some of them up, brought out chokingly once more the words “Silver Blaze” and began a tottering attempt at a run toward the phone box.
“I’m afraid you’ll be too late,” old Lady Bentt, who in her day had gone racing at Goodwood with the best of them, called out to him in her little piping voice. “And I
think we had better ask the policeman to go and see your friend with that walkie-talkie.” She turned away. “Mrs. Capper, if you would… ?” Then she had a last word for the Fox’s friend, the Cub. “The man in the betting-shop there in Kemp Town will be sure the race is well over now, so he can’t take any bets on it, even if his clock is still five minutes slow.”
THE COVER STROY
IS ALWAYS A LIE
John Lescroart
I swear to God, Cal, it was like he was talkin’ to me.”
“The dead guy?”
“The dead guy, who else?”
Cal rolled her eyes, but she was faced away from her husband in the bed, and Arnie didn’t see it. Since he’d been forced to take early retirement from the police force, she’d been fairly sure she’d recognized a decline that she’d been mostly unwilling to acknowledge. The possibility that Arnie had even the beginnings of any type of dementia was terrifying in itself, but more so because her own father had started down that road at the not very ripe age of fifty-six and she’d nursed him solo until he blessedly passed at sixty-eight.
And now her own husband, also fifty-six, was talking about communicating with the dead. And this after he’d only been off work a few months, during which there had been a proliferating number of other worrying signs. Depression. Too much drinking. Insomnia. General lack of interest in life.
227
Or—be honest—she told herself. The lack of interest showed itself most clearly around sex. They’d been married for thirty-three years and if there had been one constant through the ups and downs of a life together and raising a family of two boys and two girls, it was their love life. Even right up until last year, just before he got the word about his pink slip, they were good for two, three, sometimes four times a week. They would privately marvel at the more and more common admissions of their friends over the years, joking about getting it once a month, where they knew there was truth in it.
They couldn’t imagine. Once a month? How did they live? Kids, fatigue, blah blah blah. What was the matter with them? Cal and Arnie were both appalled—hadn’t any of them heard of the nooner?
But since Arnie had been retired, they themselves had only gotten together three times so far, and none of them in Cal’s opinion even up to snuff, much less worth remembering. This from the guy who, when they were first together, considered anything above forty-five minutes a critical dry spell.
She scarcely allowed the word impotence to cross her brain, but it deeply worried her. He wouldn’t talk about it, had flown into a rage when she’d breathed a mention of Viagra. There wasn’t anything wrong, goddammit, he was just tired.
Always tired, he told her. Tired and re-tired, get it?
And this living at the racetrack. Arnie, who had never shown the slightest interest in horses or gambling or the attendant characters who didn’t seem especially savory, now spent at least three afternoons a week at Golden Gate Fields or Bay Meadows and came home trailing the sour smell of beer. Now her highly decorated San Francisco inspector husband was hanging out, she imagined, with many of the very lowlifes he used to arrest.
Her inclination was to ignore this latest frightening admission about communing with the dead, but suddenly her own denial scared her even more. At least he’d started a conversation, something had caught his interest. Cal rolled over, got up on an elbow. “You’re scaring me, Arnie. Dead guys don’t talk. Please don’t tell me you heard him talk.”
He humphhed. “I said it was ’like.’”
“What was like it? You’ve been a cop for thirty years, I never heard you say anything like that. What was like the dead guy talking?”
“His brother. Jason.”
“He’s got a brother now? Who is this guy again?” When Arnie had started in on the dead guy talking, she had barely heard, didn’t want to hear.
“Les Frankel.”
“Okay, I’ve heard the name. I don’t remember he died.”
“Last week. At the track. Les was my age and died of a heart attack. I told you.”
“All right. It’s coming back. I’m listening. Jason the brother, I take it, was at the track, too?”
“No.” Arnie paused. “At the funeral.”
It was Cal’s turn to pause, but just for an instant before she sat up completely, pulling the blankets up around her legs. She reached behind herself and flicked on the bedside light. “You were at a funeral today?”
“I told you that, too. You weren’t listening. How do you think I got to talking about the dead guy, Les?” He lowered his voice, not really accusing her of anything directly. He might have been talking to himself. But in a bitter and angry tone.
“Naturally. I don’t have a job anymore, you still do. So what I do isn’t important.”
Suddenly, this was getting to something near the nub of it, and her eyes flashed. “That’s not fair, Arnie.”
“Pretty close, though.”
He got up, threw his own blankets off and, wearing his old man’s red plaid pajamas, yanked his bathrobe off the peg in the wall and stalked out of the room.
Cal sat there in the dim light for a minute. Could what Arnie was saying be true? Was some of this her doing as well? Maybe, in fact, she wasn’t taking him seriously enough anymore, the experience she’d had with her own father making her close up to him. In fact, was she beginning to see his life now and his concerns as not as important as they once were?
Was some part of her giving him the message that she thought that the real work of raising their family was done, and now he was out to pasture, although not put out to stud, but to wither?
She slipped out of the bed, pulled the afghan around her, and went after him.
Like the rest of the downstairs, the television room was in near total darkness. The outlines of things were only visible because of the LED glow of the digital clock on the TV. It was 11:42.
Arnie sat in his chair and she heard his breathing and the ice tinkling in his glass. Pulling the afghan around her shoulders, she settled into the couch across the room.
“I’m sorry. I want to hear,” she said. “What was Jason saying at the funeral?”
“Just a story.” She heard her husband take a pull at his drink. “Nothing.”
“Arn. Come on.”
He sighed deeply. She waited him out. Finally he sighed again and spoke. “Probably nothing. Things didn’t quite fit, or fit too good. Whatever happened, it didn’t seem to have occurred to Jason, or even to Les, for that matter, that anything might have been wrong. It’s just my guts.”
“And what are they telling you?”
He seemed reluctant to say it, but then it came out. “I was thinking it sounded maybe like it could be a skull case, that’s all.”
A skull case was a crime that remained unsolved, especially one that had occurred long ago. One way or another, most murders got solved or didn’t in under a week, and either way there was a steady enough stream of new ones to keep big-city homicide inspectors busy. The old ones that remained unsolved for too long simply faded into the past and most of them remained technically open, but no one investigated them.
“How old?” Cal asked.
“Twenty-eight years. Jason said Les was twenty-three when it happened, and that was in seventy-four.”
“Twenty-eight years,” she said. “What was it, the crime?”
“Might have been nothing.”
In the dark, she smiled. “You already said that. But pretending for a
moment that it wasn’t nothing, that your guts are right.”
“If it was something, it was a murder.”
She realized she’d been holding her breath. Now she let it out, spoke casually. “I hear you used to do those.”
“From time to time.”
“Used to be pretty good at them.”
“I’d win a few, yeah.”
For this moment, then, right now, her husband was back. The low-key banter, a voice with no trace of boredom or fatigue. No tiredness. She wanted to keep him here, feed his interest. “I’m getting a glass of wine. Are you good? What are you having?”
“Scotch.” He paused. “But I’m fine.” It was the first time in months that he’d refused a refresher on his drink. “In fact, you can dump this.” He started to roust himself. “I’ll get some water.”
“I’ll get it. I’m up.”
“Such service.” He turned on the light by his chair and smiled at her when she took his glass, all but untouched. “You sure you want to hear about this? You’ve got to get up tomorrow.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked. “I love a murder story.”
When she got back, she gave him his water, walked back to the couch, curled her feet up under her, and wrapped the afghan over her shoulders. She took a sip of her wine. “So talk to me,” she said.
“You’ve got to remember this is all second-hand, so it’s hearsay at best.”
“All right.” He still looked great, she thought. Not just great for fifty-six, but plain old great for anybody. Always strongly built—big shoulders, no fat—and bullet-headed, now his face exuded a natural authority that went well with the buzz cut and the trim waist. He might, she thought, be an aging officer in the active marines. What fools the bureaucrats in the city had been to let him go! No, not just let him go— force him to leave. “Hit me with some hearsay.”
“Okay. Four guys, pretty good friends, all lived in apartments in the same building on Bush in the city. Les Frankel, Peter Grant, Jose Ropa, Jeff Vaughn.”
“You got the names, I notice. No notes.”
He shrugged, but she could tell the comment pleased him. “That’s who they were. Four friends, all in their early twenties, all struggling financially since they all wanted to be artists of some kind.”
“All of them?”
“We’re talking early seventies. What are you gonna do? I think they put something in the water back then.”
But Cal sat straight up. “Wait a minute. Peter Grant? The TV anchor?”
“Ten points. One of them made it anyway, huh?” He shrugged. “But anyway, Les and the other two had high hopes, too. Ropa and Vaughn were in a band together, evidently close to getting a record deal. Les was painting—he wound up in advertising specialties, selling them—you know, pens with your company’s name on ’em, magnets for your refrigerator, calendars…” The subject seemed to depress Arnie. “I guess he made a living.”
“But not a good one?”
A shrug. “He and his wife live—lived—in a trailer park in Daly City. God knows what’s going to happen to her now. Jason sure didn’t, and he didn’t seem the picture of wealth himself.”
“No kids to help?”
Arnie shook his head dejectedly. “No kids. No insurance. Les evidently chose to believe that he and Lora were going to die on the same day. But they didn’t. Bad luck for her.”
She sipped at her wine. “So was it Vaughn or Ropa? The one that got killed?”
Arnie smiled at her, then nodded. “You’re paying attention.”
“Always. So what’s Jason’s story?”
“The four of them went down to Bay Meadows, taking a day off from whatever it was they did. Each of them brought twenty dollars to bet, total, and they decided they’d get more bang for the buck if they pooled their money and bet as a unit. So now they had eighty bucks.”
“Big spenders.”
Arnie shrugged. “They were starving artists, all of them. But eighty dollars back in the early seventies—you remember—was probably close to five hundred today, maybe more, so it wasn’t peanuts. And I guess what made it worse is that this was one of those desperation moves for all of them. No other money, no hopes. Rent was coming due. They had to hit something.”
“So they went to the track? Smart.”
“They were kids.” Arnie sighed. “Anyway, they put together their forty bets for the day and sent Vaughn to the window.”
“One guy? Why didn’t they all go?”
Arnie shrugged. “Two of them were getting beer, one was holding their seats. Vaughn just happened to be the one.”
“Okay.”
“Well, as it turns out, Cal, not so okay. They’d all decided, out of their forty two-dollar bets, to bet eight combinations for the Daily Double—high odds, big return if they hit. But while Vaughn was waiting in line, the guy behind him was jawin’ about the Six horse in the first race, how he’d heard he’d pulled up lame. He was still on the card, going out at a hundred-and-ten-to-one, but he had no chance. If Vaughn was smart, he’d bet another horse.”
“But they—the four of them?—they had decided to bet the Six horse?”
“Right. As half of a major long shot daily double. Jason had heard the story often enough from Les, he even remembered the thoroughbred’s name—Steppin’ Pretty. Well, long story short, they’re watching the first race and Steppin’ Pretty comes in first…”
“And Vaughn hadn’t bet it?”
“You’re psychic. He thought he was doing them a favor, saving the two bucks for a better horse. He told them right after the race. Like, ’Uh, hey guys, sorry, but…’”
“So they killed him right then.”
“No. They waited until the second horse came in at sixty-five-to-one. Then they stomped him to death.” He smiled now over his water. “Not really. But it wasn’t a pretty moment.”
“How much would they have gotten? If Vaughn had bet Steppin’ Pretty?”
“You know how a daily double works?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s what’s called a paramutuel bet, so the odds the horses go out at aren’t really the crucial element. Like, say, a five-to-one and a three-to-one hit, the amount each winner gets isn’t five times three or anything like that. It’s the total amount everybody at the track bet on the double, divided by everybody who bet the winning combination, less about twenty percent that the track keeps for expenses. The good news about two long shots winning the double is that fewer people wind up betting the winning combination.” Arnie came forward, his eyes alight. “Evidently, this one, there was one winning ticket. So these guys, theirs would have made two.”
“How much?” Cal asked.
“Twenty-one thousand, one hundred twenty dollars.”
“Oh my God. On a two-dollar bet?”
Arnie nodded. “That’s five thousand, two hundred eighty bucks each.”
Cal had recovered from her immediate shock and now whistled. “And this was when eighty dollars was a lot of money? That was a fortune, then.”
“Yep.”
“They must have been devastated.”
Arnie had put his glass down now and chewed at the inside of his cheek. His eyes rested on a spot in the air over his wife’s head. He came back down to her. “Evidently it hit them all like an act of God. They were all doomed to fail at everything they tried. Jason said Les never really recovered.”
“Never?”
“That’s what his brother said. He was this close. They were all right there. He’d done everything he was supposed to do and fate just came by and screwed him for the fun of it. And it always would.”
“Well, maybe that’s a little extreme.”
“Wait. Maybe not. Listen. In the next couple of weeks, the whole world of these guys went nuts on them and just fell apart. It turns out that Les’s wife—Lora?—was six months’ pregnant with twins at the time. Couple of days later, she miscarries. And p.s., it turns out her insides get so messed up she can’t have kids at a
ll. Ever.”
“Not because this boy Vaughn didn’t bet Steppin’ Pretty.”
“No, of course not. But that with the proximity of the betting disaster… Jason told me that was why Les was still so hooked on the track to this day. Someday, somehow, it had to give him back some of what he’d lost. And of course he bet long shots over and over and just lost and lost and lost. He also gave up on painting, on his dreams. It wouldn’t matter what he did, or how well he did it, fate was going to get him and make him fail.”
“The poor man.”
“Yeah. But not only him. Listen to this. Not even a week after Lora’s miscarriage, and apparently no relation to any of this, Vaughn turns up mugged and dead.”
“Dead? Lord!”
“No kidding. So there goes the record contract for Ropa as well, and Grant freaks out, can’t handle the vibe, everything in the world going to hell, he splits for LA. Bottom line is a month after the fine day these four guys spent at the track, their lives are ruined. Three of them—Vaughn, Ropa, and Frankel—pretty much forever.”
“So what are you thinking?” Cal asked.
“I wouldn’t say it was all the way to a thought, yet. Just a little itch. It’s all kind of pat, don’t you think?”
“What is? Vaughn not making the bet and everything falling apart?”
“Not so much that,” Arnie said. “But what if he had made it after all?”
• • •
Mostly out of habit, Arnie had asked Jason for his card at his brother’s funeral, and first thing the next morning he called him, trying to pin down the day and year of the original horse race a little more clearly. Arnie still had friends at the Hall of Justice. He got to the building by 9:30 and told them he was working on his memoirs and after giving him ten minutes of pro forma grief, the lieutenant okayed his admission to records in the building’s basement—shelves and shelves of evidence and folders on cases going back fifty years and more.
Jeffrey Vaughn had been killed in October 1974. He had gone out to get a six-pack of beer at a convenience store three blocks from his apartment building—a rough three blocks near Fillmore, Arnie knew. Still rough now nearly thirty years later, even with all the gentrification. As Jason had told him, the crime had never been solved.
