Nice Fillies Finish Last

by Brett Halliday

  The apron was jammed with homeward-bound horse-players, that vast majority with no winnings to collect from the cashiers. Shayne vaulted the rail onto the track. The official sign was up on the board and the horses had turned and were coming back. He kept close to the rail. Fussbudget turned toward the judges’ tower to have her picture taken. A guard shouted at Shayne; the redhead lengthened his stride. At the gap leading to the paddock, he ducked back under the rail and waited.

  When he saw Franklin Brossard bringing in My Treat, he went under the rail again and grabbed the curved bar over Brossard’s sulky wheel. The horse felt the drag on the sulky and stopped at once.

  “Take your hands off my bike,” Brossard said evenly.

  “I want to talk to you, Frank. Do you recognize me? You crowded me off the road outside Lauderdale this afternoon.”

  Brossard glanced at the paddock judge, who was watching like a vulture, his eyes hooded. Moving nothing but his right wrist, Brossard flicked the point of his whip across his body at Shayne. The redhead was waiting for it. He came up fast, let the whip wrap itself around his forearm, and pulled. He grabbed Brossard’s wrist as it came across. Brossard’s body was as tough and resilient as a twist of bridge cable, but balancing as he was on the precarious little seat, his feet up in the foot-brackets, he had no leverage.

  The judge shouted, “Get your sulky out of the gap!”

  Brossard’s mean eyes glittered at Shayne. “OK, tough guy. I’ll meet you in front of the Domaine barn as soon as I get a swipe to tend the horse.”

  “We’re doing this my way,” Shayne said. “Don’t try to hurry your horse or I’ll pull you out on the ground.”

  Two uniformed Pinkertons ran out of the paddock.

  “Any trouble, Frank?” one of them said.

  Brossard spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the dirt. Without replying he flicked the reins and the horse began to move. Shayne let go of Brossard’s wrist but kept a firm grasp on the bar. The big paddock barn was emptying. They went through at a walk. In the stable area, horses under blankets were being led around the walking circle. In front of some of the stalls, grooms worked on tack or washed bandages. A fluttery old man stepped out from under an overhanging shed roof, under a wrought-iron sign reading, “DOMAINE,” and took My Treat by the head harness.

  “Baby doll,” he said sadly, “you lost me a five spot.”

  Brossard swung down stiffly, rubbing the grayish stubble on his lantern jaw. “Your name’s Shayne, right? I didn’t make it an issue out there on the strip because I don’t know if Mr. Domaine—”

  The rest of his breath came out in a puff as Shayne’s fist hit him above the belt buckle and dumped him backward against the shed rail and over it into the dirt. Shayne vaulted the rail after him. Brossard kicked out viciously, grazing Shayne’s kneecap, then shifted balance and came up at a slant, his folded arms protecting his face from a sudden jerk of Shayne’s knee, and tried to butt the detective in the stomach. Shayne caught his bristly chin in both hands, went backward a step, then dug in, brought his hands up and spilled Brossard back against the stall door. For an instant the driver hung there, and Shayne pumped a hard right against the side of his head, dropping him. He rolled, shook his head to clear it, and came to his feet with a short club that had a leather thong looped from one end, apparently some kind of instrument used to control horses. He was still groggy from Shayne’s right, and he moved in slow motion, like the horses Shayne had watched on tape in the racing secretary’s office. Shayne chopped at the big muscle of his arm and picked the club out of his numbed fingers.

  A man came running across the wide dirt road from another stable. Shayne looked at him, the club in his hand. He stopped abruptly at the rail.

  “Inside,” Shayne said to Brossard. “You’re going to tell me some of your boss’s secrets, and it’s too public out here.”

  The driver gave him an evil look and went into the tack-room. Shayne followed.

  “Take off your boots,” he snapped. Brossard looked surprised. “What do you mean, take off my boots?”

  Shayne rapped the back of his knees with the club and Brossard sat down abruptly on the floor. He had lost his cap in the fight. Without it, he looked older.

  “The Pinks are going to be along in a minute, and if you think you’re going to break my toes or anything—” Shayne slammed the door and locked it. He made a menacing gesture with the hardwood club and Brossard started pulling at his boots. Shayne picked up the first one that came off, turned it upside down and shook it. A twin double ticket fluttered out.

  “That’s where I thought you’d be carrying it,” he said. “I didn’t see any pockets in those silks.”

  “I thought I’d keep it for a souvenir,” Brossard sneered, “but if you want it that much you can have it.”

  “Six and four,” Shayne said, reading the numbers on the ticket. “Six and eight was the winning combination. Who’s the four horse?”

  Brossard looked at him curiously. “My Treat. The Domaine mare, for the love of God. Is that the reason for this punch in the belly? You thought I was faking it in the stretch?”

  “She ran out of steam awfully fast.”

  “You never saw that happen with a horse? I didn’t expect it with this baby, but she had that close scrape in the backstretch and I guess she didn’t have nothing left. The way she was fading there, I was lucky to bring her in third. But they don’t pay off in the twin on thirds. Give me my goddamn boot.”

  Shayne tossed it to him and he yanked it on angrily. He came to his feet, brushing straw and dirt off his pink pants.

  “After driving four races in three hours, I just love a good brawl before I go to bed,” he said. He felt his long jaw. “You pack quite a right hand, mister. Jesus, I could understand it if you’d broke any bones when I ran you off the road, but I hear you didn’t even have to put on a bandaid.”

  He took a cigarette from a pack on a shelf and looked for matches. He opened a drawer in a workbench and whirled with a pair of brass knuckles on his fist. Shayne had been watching his movements closely, and crowded him with the short club. Brossard gauged his chances. Sneering, he tossed the knuckles back in the drawer.

  “Give me a light.”

  Shayne ignored the request. “Did you know Joey Dolan told somebody he was going to the Belle Mark an hour or two before he was killed?”

  Brossard’s eyelids twitched. He said hoarsely, “Did you say killed?”

  “You didn’t think that was going to be called an accident, did you?”

  “Damn right it was an accident! Joey was no ordinary rummy. He wouldn’t drink wood alcohol unless he didn’t know what he—”

  He looked sharply at Shayne and clamped his mouth shut. Somebody outside rattled the knob of the locked door. Brossard went to the door, looked at Shayne for an instant, then unlocked the door and opened it. Two of the track Pinkertons were outside. One had a gun showing.

  “Beat it,” Brossard said with a jerk of his head.

  “They said somebody was kicking you around, Frank—”

  “Any time anybody wants to kick me around, they’re welcome to try. Go back to sleep.”

  He slammed the door and found a match. “You said Joey told somebody. What does that mean, you don’t know who?”

  “If we lit enough fires under people, we could find out. You didn’t kill him, did you, Brossard?”

  “Why would I want to kill Joey? I liked the guy. But I don’t like that crap about my apartment. It makes me wonder if somebody’s trying to frame me.”

  “Does Paul Thorne still have a key to it?”

  “You pick up things, don’t you, Shamus? He gave me back the key I let him have. That don’t mean he didn’t have another one made, cost him a quarter. I slept in the bunkhouse last night. Four guys to a room. That gives me three witnesses.”

  “Is this the tack-room where Joey was going to sleep last night?”

  “Yeah. I don’t mind, I let him, but nobody’s supposed to kno
w about it. He gets out a cot and puts it away again before anybody shows up in the morning. That was the idea.”

  “Did you pay for that twin-double ticket with your own dough?”

  “Why not? Domaine’s not too bad a boss. Most of the time he leaves the stable alone. When he tells me to do something, I do it, and I don’t ask why. Today he told me he wanted to win with My Treat, and then he told me he’d heard that Thorne had a winner in the sixth. He didn’t have to draw a diagram.”

  “You hadn’t heard anything about Fussbudget?”

  “Does it look as though? The bastards have been hiding her. She never did a thing before tonight. We’ve been hiding My Treat, and it’s a piece of crummy luck that the office dropped both horses in the same race.”

  “Domaine definitely wanted you to win with My Treat?”

  “Christ, that was the object, Shayne. We’ve been bringing her along bit by bit. I raced her a couple of times when I had to fake her condition to get her past the vet. She was way below par, three or four seconds slow, at four lengths a second. That set up her classification. The next time out she was feeling feisty. I held her to fifth but next morning my shoulders were sore. Last time she was really ready but we were waiting for a twin-double race to turn her loose. I gave her a bad drive that time, went out on the rim with her and died on the last turn. Tonight I don’t know what. She just didn’t have it. All of a sudden it was like she was up to her knees in sand.”

  “Did Mrs. Moon talk to you before the race?”

  “Mrs. Moon!” His surprise seemed real. “Why should Mrs. Moon talk to me? Probably what you heard about was Mrs. Domaine.”

  Shayne pulled at his earlobe. “What did she want?”

  Brossard hesitated. “I wouldn’t tell you as a rule, but that thing about my apartment really bothers the hell out of me. She wanted me to pull My Treat. There are things going on around here I don’t want to know about. If you can figure them out, fine. The boss said win. The boss’s wife said lose, and she said she’d feed me five hundred bucks if I did. I didn’t say yes or no. Nothing like that ever happened before. No matter which way, I was behind the eight ball. You can’t win and lose both. Maybe now she owes me five hundred bucks. And maybe I hadn’t better try to collect, too, what do you think, Shayne?”

  “What happened to Don J., Brossard?”

  “Thorne’s colt? The one that was killed?” He took another puff on his cigarette and ground it out. “Let’s forget about Don J. That’s history.”

  Shayne tossed the club onto the workbench with a clatter. “All right, so long as I know you killed the horse, I don’t care about the details.”

  CHAPTER 18

  TOO MANY PEOPLE had seen him in Domaine’s Cadillac, so after retrieving his brown-paper bag of tools, Shayne took a cab.

  “The Golden Crest Motel on Al A. I’m in a hurry.”

  He waited till they were halfway there before asking, “You didn’t make this same run earlier tonight, did you?”

  “Hell, no,” the driver said. “I was too busy losing money. Do you know I went into the ninth with five tickets? Fussbudget,” he said with disgust. “Where did she come from?”

  Shayne told him to let him out on the highway. He saw Tim’s rusted-out Ford, a few cars away from Claire Domaine’s Mercedes. He went up the outside staircase and tapped on the door of Room 17. There was no response. After a moment he tapped again, more impatiently, and the door was opened by Miss Mallinson. Her cheeks seemed flushed. She was smoothing her hair. Shayne shot a quick glance at Rourke, who was sitting back against the headboard of the bed, whistling softly. The bedspread was rumpled.

  “Next time I’ll tell them to put you in a body cast,” Shayne said.

  “I was feeling weak,” Rourke said innocently. “Naturally I lay down. What’s in the paper bag? Something to drink?”

  “Be patient. We have work to do first.”

  He found the wire he had snaked through the hole in the baseboard and tied in a little transistor speaker.

  “—that you, Mike?” Claire’s voice said. “Mike. Please. I have to talk to you. Is it connected yet? Can you hear me? Hurry.”

  Shayne straightened decisively. “Now listen to me, Sandra,” he told the nurse over Claire’s pleas from the little speaker. “Turn out the lights and wait at the window. The second you see a car come in from the highway, knock twice on the wall. If it’s a red convertible, knock three times.”

  He snapped the spring lock on the door so he could open it from the outside and knocked on the door of Number 18. It opened and Claire came into his arms. He moved her out of the lighted doorway and closed the door. She was breathing shallowly and seemed close to hysteria.

  “I can’t go through with it, Mike. He’ll kill me. I know it. I’ll be lying on the floor dead before you can get in to help me. He’ll be out of his mind with disappointment. I won’t have a chance to ask him about Joey, so there’s no point in it now. Don’t make me do it.”

  She was pulling at the front of his shirt, looking up at him. “Stay with me. You ask him. He won’t know what he’s saying. He’ll blurt something out.”

  Applying a slow, powerful pressure, he broke her grip. His eyes drilled into hers and made her listen.

  “Are you sure he’ll be here?”

  “Yes! He hurt his leg when he fell. Larry sent him a message in the infirmary. Mike, I told Brossard to lose! I thought of that loan shark Paul borrowed from, and suddenly it hit me—if Paul can’t pay, he’ll get some of the same treatment he’s been dishing out to other people. I’ll be free of him.”

  “Brossard didn’t pull My Treat,” Shayne said impatiently, still holding her wrists. “What message did your husband send Thorne?”

  “That he was sorry, and he’d advance him a thousand dollars in cash to pay off the loan. But I’m not staying unless you do too. I mean that, Mike.”

  “You said you’d trust me,” Shayne said. “Goddamn it, trust me! It’s too bad it turned out like this, but we still have a chance to get him for Joey if he does enough talking. Don’t try to steer him. Just let him rave.”

  There were three raps on the wall.

  Shayne let her go and said hurriedly, “It’s going to be all right, Claire. Believe me.”

  She stepped back, very pale. She said levelly, “Go ahead. I can take care of myself.”

  Something final and deadly in her voice stopped him at the door. He let go of the doorknob and came back fast. “Claire, goddamn it, I wish you’d stop thinking for yourself.”

  He wrenched her black bag off her shoulder. The long strap caught. He knew he had hardly any time. He yanked hard. Holding her off with one elbow, he took out her .38 and broke it. There were two live rounds in the cylinder, as well as the three blanks he had put there earlier. He swore savagely, shucked out the live rounds and spun the cylinder.

  “Stop trying to get yourself killed.”

  He thrust the gun back in her bag. Reaching the window in two long strides, he looked down carefully. Thorne’s red convertible, the top up, skidded into a parking slot. Thorne flung out of the front seat, leaving the headlights on.

  “Tim,” Shayne said sharply. “Pay attention. Don’t come in unless I call you. Rap on the wall if you can hear me.”

  Two quick raps answered.

  Shayne heard Thorne’s clumping step on the stairs. Going quickly to the bathroom, he stepped into the shower stall and pulled the curtain across.

  “Mike, please,” Claire said faintly from the bedroom.

  The overhead outlet dripped cold water on Shayne. He tightened both faucets, but the drip continued. He heard the outer door open.

  “Paul, don’t!” Claire cried.

  There was the sound of a hard blow. “You think I’m going to hold still for this, you bitch?” Thorne shouted. “I want half.”

  “Half of what?” Claire said suspiciously.

  “Half the payoff! What kind of a jerk do you think I am?”

  “There isn’t any pay
off. You knew there was a chance it wouldn’t work. We always knew that.”

  “Yeah!” Thorne said scornfully. “If the mare broke a leg or some other horse surprised us, OK. I’d have to pack up and run, and run a long way, but that was the chance I took when I borrowed from that guy. But this was no accident. This was planned. The trouble is, I know you. I know you all the way through.”

  Claire had lost some of her fear of him, now that they were face to face. “There must be something behind this clamor,” she said with a return to her habitual coolness. “Some terrible suspicion is working in that pea-sized brain. You must think I told Frank to hold her in.”

  “I know when Frank’s trying and when he only wants the grandstand to think he’s trying. He gave the mare a real heads-up drive. But the times! That was how you suckered me. That My Treat is no 2:04 pacer. I should have taken her out and timed her myself.”

  “I timed her.”

  “That’s what I mean! You timed her, and then you conned me into throwing away a thousand bucks I don’t have. You wanted to cut me up like confetti so I’d blow away. But I don’t blow so easy! How many winning tickets did you end up with?”

  “If it gives you any satisfaction to think I rigged this, go ahead and think it. Larry says he’ll loan you a thousand, on your IOU. Out of the goodness of his heart, I don’t know why. Do you want it or don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take the thousand. That’s not all I’ll take. Why didn’t you wait a couple of days to cash in? I’ll tell you why, kid. I didn’t get through high school, but that doesn’t make me a moron, either. You wanted to be sure I’d know what a genius you are. You wanted to rub it in that I’m dirt, nothing but dirt.”

  “That’s exactly what I think you are. What’s rankling with you, Paul? That you killed Joey Dolan, and you’re no better off than you were before?”

  “I didn’t!” he shouted. He repeated in a lower voice, “I didn’t kill Joey. That’s more your style. I’d guess he found out about Fussbudget, and that might have spoiled your nice little double-cross. You had to get back at me for walking out on you. First you set a world’s record for getting in bed with me—”