A Stone's Throw

by James W. Ziskin

  “And you didn’t feel any guilt about cheating?” I asked, returning to the nine-year-old race-fixing scandal. “You must have realized it could end your career or land you in jail if you got caught.”

  “All I could see was her eyes. And the rest of her. She got under my skin. I wanted her. So when she laid it all out and promised me it was a lead-pipe cinch, I said sure. I told myself it would just be that one time. Lou was on board, too. How could we get caught? And I figured I wasn’t hurting anyone.”

  “What about the bettors?”

  He shrugged indifference. “So what if a couple of guys lost a few bucks? No big deal, right? And I did it for love, not money. I got nothing more than my rider’s fee and the promise of more rides.” He frowned. “And that never happened.”

  If Johnny was expecting absolution from me, he’d mistaken me for a priest. And he showed little remorse besides.

  “I should’ve expected it,” he mused with regret. “Someone was bound to recognize me. But I thought I could plead coincidence, say I wasn’t Johnny Sprague, and point to my new driver’s license as proof. But then I ran into Bruce Robertson. I never thought he’d show up at Aqueduct a year ago last spring. He always worked the South. And he knew me too well to be fooled.”

  “So he approached you to blackmail you?”

  “He said he’d keep quiet in exchange for a favor now and then.” “And did you agree?”

  “I didn’t even have the chance. He turned around and sold the information that I was riding again to Mack Hodges. Out of the blue, Mack turned up and asked me if I’d be interested in saving my career from ruin.”

  “Then Mack had the good manners to die in a fire,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t have been smoking in bed.”

  “Didn’t that solve your problem?”

  “It’s like one of those monsters from Greek stories. You cut off one head and another sprouts up.”

  “The hydra.”

  “That’s right,” he said, reflecting with a glossy look in his eyes. “Nine heads. Nine years. Nine races on a race card. My unlucky number.”

  “And after Mack went up in smoke, it was Vivian and Ledoux’s turn to squeeze you?”

  He nodded and sipped the beer. “That started here in Saratoga, at the beginning of the meet. I got a message from Viv. She wanted to see me again. To make things right.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Maybe I was in love with her once, but I’m not stupid. I knew she was the same lying tramp as before. But I also figured her and Ledoux were the only people left who were part of the fix. So, if they were out of the picture . . .”

  “Aren’t you forgetting Lou Fleischman? He was there at Hagerstown, too.”

  “Lou’s no risk to me. He’s a businessman, and I’m good for business. He never double-crossed me, and I never did anything but make money for him.”

  I wanted to know exactly how deep into the mud Lou had waded. “Does he know you’re alive?”

  Johnny shook his head but said nothing. His mood soured. The beer must’ve tasted bitter on his tongue because he made a face as he took a sip. He stood and began to pace the room, his heavy boots clopping across the floor like a plow horse. He put my question to one side for the moment. Apparently he preferred to defend his actions first.

  “Do you have any idea what my life was like after Mack and Ledoux started the rumors that I threw that race?”

  I nearly corrected him by pointing out that he had indeed thrown that race, but thought better of it in light of his agitated state and the long knife in his hand.

  “They blackened my name throughout racing. Even without any proof, the racing commission banned me for life. It took about two minutes for every other state to do the same.”

  “How did you get by?” Keep him talking, I thought.

  “I mucked out stables, worked as a farmhand, gave riding lessons to little girls. And when things got real bad, I stole. Armed robbery, burglary, even blackmail.”

  “And you never got caught? Never went to jail?”

  He stopped his pacing. “I’m too smart to get caught. And no one’s catching me this time either. I’m going to clean up this mess and get out. Go back to Manitoba and start over.”

  “Why haven’t you left already? Why stick around?”

  “I had to take care of Bruce Robertson once and for all. Then you stuck your nose into it, and I knew I couldn’t leave until I was sure of what you had on me.”

  I gulped. He knew now exactly what I had on him. Everything.

  He resumed his pacing. And I considered my options. As things stood, I had no weapons, no defense, and little hope of finding any at my kitchen table. The only thing within arm’s length was the bottle of Dewar’s. What was I going to do with that? Drink him under the table?

  “They took everything from me,” he continued. “I did what they wanted, and still they ruined me. I had to work as a goddamn rodeo clown! Because of them. Because of her.”

  His voice boomed through the house, practically rattling the windows. He paced faster now, waving the knife in the air as if cutting a path for himself. Where was Fadge?

  The telephone rang. Johnny stopped and looked to me. Did he think I knew who was on the other end of the line?

  “Don’t answer it,” he said. “It’s a little late for people to be telephoning.”

  I sat on my hands, and we waited ten rings before whoever was calling gave up. But fifteen seconds later the phone rang again. And again we waited nearly a minute for the caller to hang up.

  Johnny seemed annoyed by the interruption, and clearly he blamed me. The calls stopped after the second try, and he returned to his pacing, this time less frantically.

  “So Vivian contacted you,” I said. “Then what?”

  “I was on the road to getting my life and career back. I had a good meet going this year. Fourth most wins among the jockeys at Saratoga. I was making money again, and Lou was happy.”

  “What did Vivian offer you?”

  He stopped in his heavy boots again and gazed off into space. “She said she loved me. That it wasn’t her fault what happened. I told her to get lost. Then Ledoux came into the picture. He showed up at the boarding house where I was staying in Ballston Spa and made me a proposition. Acted like it was just business. Like him and his whore hadn’t ruined my life and trampled my heart.”

  “What was the proposition?”

  “I was supposed to throw a race for them, only this time Lou wouldn’t be in on the fix.”

  “So you decided to get them out of the way once and for all?”

  “No. I had to plan things first. Like where to do it, when, and how to make sure no one suspected me. I let them think I was considering it.”

  “What was in it for you this time?”

  “Ten thousand dollars. At least that’s what I asked for. They said they could get me five, and we set up the Friday midnight meeting.”

  “Why Tempesta?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “That was their idea. They thought it was safe. And it turned out to be the perfect spot for me to hide out afterward.”

  “You didn’t think it was a little risky? Staying so close to the place where the bodies were found?”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think anyone would ever find anything. I figured someone would come and snoop around, see a burned-down old barn, and move on. You ruined that for me.”

  I doubted an apology would satisfy him at that point.

  “But after the first couple of days, the sheriff left the place alone anyway,” he said. “I stashed my car a couple of miles away and moved into the caretaker’s house.”

  This was news to me. I was under the impression that Johnny had no car. But I figured this wasn’t the moment to interrupt and ask him.

  As he recounted the details of his revenge, he relaxed. He must have been at peace with his decision to murder the people who’d ruined his career. And his own voice must have distracted him because he d
idn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs. I’d become quite expert at detecting visitors climbing up to my landing, even when they were trying to be quiet, as was the case now. Johnny was still unawares, but my pulse quickened. I had no doubts that Fadge could dispatch the diminutive jockey without breaking a sweat, but I worried about Johnny’s knife. How could I warn my friend in time?

  If Johnny had missed the noise coming up the stairs, the knock at the kitchen door attracted his attention straightaway. He reeled around and assumed a defensive posture, his weapon poised to strike at whoever came through the door. I didn’t move. Neither did Johnny. He stood there, his breath short and tense, ready to attack. There was another knock, and then Mrs. Giannetti’s falsetto voice called through the door.

  “Are you in there, Eleonora?” she asked.

  Johnny turned to me. He repeated the gesture ordering me to maintain silence. I mouthed the word “landlady,” and he turned back to watch the door. Mrs. Giannetti knocked a third time. There was nothing for almost a minute until we heard a faint rustling noise from the landing. Johnny’s stance slackened somewhat, as if he thought the worst had passed and Mrs. Giannetti had given up. Then we heard the key in the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  What happened next took all of three seconds. Mrs. Giannetti opened the door, Johnny took a step toward her, and I bashed him on the back of the head with the bottle of Dewar’s. He fell to the floor, dropped the knife, and I threw myself on top of him. We struggled for control of the knife as Mrs. Giannetti screamed bloody murder. Actually. She was already halfway down the stairs, shrieking, “Murder! Murder! Murder!”

  Johnny was stunned and sluggish, but still conscious. And strong. We weighed about the same, were the same height more or less, but he was a trained athlete, after all. The only advantage I had over him was his dazed state, the result of the blow from my trusty bottle of Dewar’s, which lay intact and unharmed on the floor next to our wrestling bodies. Still, I managed to push the knife away, through the open door onto the landing. Johnny grabbed my right arm and twisted, turning the tables on me as his wits returned. Like a wrestler, he wriggled out from his position beneath me and, though woozy, took control. Not quite up to punching or throttling me, he squeezed me in a suffocating bear hug. Now I could see him shaking the cobwebs from his head, swearing a blue streak as he did, and I bit him. Hard. On the shoulder. Then he flipped off of me and stood. I reached for the bottle of Scotch, managed to wrap my fingers around the neck, and swung it at him, clipping his nose. He staggered backward, holding his wounded shoulder and broken nose, all the while treating me to a catalogue of unflattering names. Then he turned and darted down the stairs.

  I heard a grunt, a rustling, and some swearing; then Fadge appeared in the doorway, holding Johnny Dornan aloft by the collar. Johnny kicked and flailed in vain, scratching and swinging at the big guy. In return, the jockey got a thorough shaking for his trouble.

  Fadge dragged him like a rag doll into my parlor and threw him onto the sofa. Then, as I live and breathe, he sat on him, thus putting an end to the struggle. Johnny wasn’t about to move the mountain of a man who outweighed him by more than two hundred pounds.

  I phoned the city police and then Frank Olney at his home number. Then I called an ambulance. If Johnny didn’t need a doctor for his injuries, I was sure Mrs. Giannetti would for the stroke she must have suffered. Last, I dialed Charlie Reese’s number and, of course, got his wife on the line. She read me the riot act until Charlie wrenched the phone out of her hands.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I demanded of Fadge when I hung up.

  “I was watching the late show at the store when I heard Mrs. Giannetti screaming.”

  I glared at him, huffing for breath.

  “Hey, would you mind getting me a beer from the fridge?” he asked. “I’m a little dry after my exertions.”

  I complied gladly, ignoring Johnny’s muffled cries from beneath Fadge’s rear end.

  When the police arrived, they relieved Fadge of his duties and took the suspect down to a squad car in the street. At first they refused to accept my explanation that it was Johnny Dornan whom my large friend in the parlor had squashed to within an inch of his life.

  “Johnny Dornan’s dead,” insisted Sergeant Philbin, an officer I’d had the displeasure of meeting on a previous occasion a year and a half earlier. He’d kicked out one of my brake lights and given me a ticket for it.

  Frank Olney showed up and shoved the cop aside. “I spoke to Chief Finn on the phone ten minutes ago,” he told Philbin. “This is connected to the Charbonneau murder out on Route Sixty-Seven. I’m taking over here.”

  Philbin tucked his chin into his collar and let Frank assume control, standing off to the side and listening, but asking no more questions.

  I told Frank I could use a drink, and he ordered Deputy Halvey to pour me some whiskey from the bottle rolling around on the kitchen floor.

  “Not that one,” I said. “It’s evidence. That’s the bottle I used to bash his head in. There’s a fresh one in the hutch in the parlor.”

  I explained the events of the past hour to the sheriff, who was as surprised as I’d been that Johnny Dornan was alive. He complimented me, nevertheless, on my fine work.

  “What do you mean, fine work?” I asked. “I thought Dan Ledoux was the murderer. I was sure Johnny Dornan was dead.”

  “Look,” said Frank. “You painted him into a corner. Made him think you were onto him. That’s why he showed up here.”

  I wasn’t convinced.

  “Each case is different,” he continued. “Some are obvious. The husband. The lover. The gangster. Others take more time to figure out. Some you never do. And every now and then, you get a little lucky. And this time, you made your own luck.”

  I felt like a fraud.

  With all the commotion of police and deputies tramping around my apartment, along with Mrs. Giannetti’s panic and my own nerves, I accepted Fadge’s generous offer to put me up for the night at his place. He had a spare room that used to belong to his late brother, Robert. It was now filled from floor to ceiling with records. Robert, who’d contracted polio as a small boy, had been a collector. He’d died of some kind of congenital heart disease before his eighteenth birthday. Fadge often played his older brother’s music, which was mostly jazz and big band, with some classical mixed in.

  But that night, I was too agitated to listen to music. I just wanted to calm down and spend some time with my pal and a quiet drink. We sat in his parlor, talking about my close call until four.

  “What did you want to tell me that was so important?” I asked.

  “Remember that car that followed us Friday night? Benny Arnold from the DMV got me the name and address of the owner.”

  “Let me guess. John Dornan.”

  “Close. John Sprague, of Yonkers, New York.”

  “I wished you’d written it in the note you shoved through my door. I never would have gone upstairs.”

  Fadge refilled our drinks.

  “What I don’t get is why he killed that Canadian girl,” he said, handing me my glass.

  “We may never know. Mrs. Giannetti showed up before I could ask him. Who knows if he’ll talk to the police?”

  “He’ll probably make a deal to avoid the chair.”

  I sipped my drink. “My God, I could have killed him with that bottle.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t even break. You owe your life to your drinking habit.”

  That provoked a soft chuckle from me. “And to Mrs. Giannetti. I don’t know what would have happened to me if she hadn’t heard Johnny stomping around the kitchen in those boots of his. She’s warned me so many times to have my guests remove their shoes. But she actually had the nerve to open the door with her key. What if I’d been standing there in the nude?”

  Fadge’s eyes glazed over for a moment, seemingly conjuring a mental image. Then he took a sip of beer and noted that Mrs. Giannetti was a nosy old broad. “And if i
t makes you feel any better, you can take off your clothes and stand in my kitchen in the nude anytime. I won’t judge you.”

  EPILOGUE

  Freddie Whitcomb contacted me several times after my Saturday night humiliation at the gala fundraiser. In fact, we had a coffee together on the terrace of the Gideon Putnam Hotel the day before he was to leave for Virginia. If I’m honest with myself, I’ll admit that I agreed to meet there in the hopes that his mother might stumble upon us. I even entertained the idea of letting him have his way with me in his room, on the off chance Georgina might catch us in flagrante. But, in the end, I liked Freddie too much to toy with him that way. I preferred to think of myself as a generous soul when it came to forgiving the shortcomings of others, but I knew that I granted few second chances. Especially to men who’d had their wicked will of me. But maybe someday, I thought as I watched him sip his tea on that late-August afternoon. That made me smile.

  “So when will I see you again?” he asked as I climbed into my car in front of the hotel.

  “How about Friday afternoon?”

  “Sure,” he said, positively beaming at me. “I can delay my departure. Where are we going?”

  “To services at the Congregation of Israel in New Holland,” I said, thinking of Issur Jacobs and his invitation.

  Freddie turned white. Whiter than a ghost. Whiter than a WASP. I patted his hand and said I was only kidding. Then I caught a glimpse of him in my rearview mirror as I drove off. He looked perplexed. And miserable, poor thing. I certainly wished him no pain, even if our affair had ended up hurting me more than he would ever know. I wondered how I would react if I ran into him the following August at the racecourse.

  I dragged Fadge along on a mission to Saratoga a few days after the August meet ended. As he zoomed along Route 67, past Tempesta Farm, I asked him how he’d fared for the month.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.