by Barry, Mike
Santa Anita. It was the richest racetrack in America, that was what he had read. The purse distributions were the highest, the per capita daily attendance and handle were on top now that the New York circuit had collapsed under the same government that had given New York the drug law, and Santa Anita stood or squatted alone, huddled in the mists around the valley, a vast pocket in which thirty-five thousand men, women, and children, most of them wearing dark glasses, came every weekday to throw their money against the tote, screaming. It meant very little to Wulff, horse-racing. Never had, never could now, but pacing here looking at the track, waiting for Williams, the son of a bitch, to show or not show, he could understand a little of what was going on here, what drove people to the track. Craziness. They were beating at the cage of possibility, the cages of the windows here, like insects. Heightened to rage, these people discolored the voice of the track announcer heard through all the megaphones. For all the information it was giving on weight changes, change of jockeys, scratches it could be giving out funeral information.
Well, it was very much like heroin. Then again, it was nothing like heroin but maybe it had the same outcome. People were looking for the same things from both: a passage out of the world and into some space where possibilities and accomplishments could be spliced, no difficult passage, easy conjoinment. Wulff did not want to think about that too much, standing under the tote hung from the ceiling of the grandstand, horseplayers scurrying around him, the heat and noise of the track rising to clamor now with ten minutes to post. The horses first taking the track, he was thinking, instead of the sack of heroin, rolled up, stuffed into the trunk of the Cadillac in the parking lot a quarter of a mile from here. That was probably stupid, bringing it out into plain daylight if even under cover; a clear target where anyone could get a shot at it, but on the other hand what the hell could he do? He sure as hell could not go lumbering around the grandstand of Santa carrying a sack like Santa Claus nor could he leave it in the trailer at the Idle Hour. That would have been classically stupid because Wulff was pretty sure that back at the Idle Hour trailers were ransacked in the owner’s absence, possessions were gone through pretty quickly by the staff there. It was a police state was the Idle Hour, tight surveillance, all lights out at ten o’clock, stiff deposits paid when entering, a penalty fee paid as removal charge if one wanted to get out before the end of the month, and a list of rules and regulations which as far as Wulff could deduce made anything impermissible, gave the owner all the options and the residents simply one … to pay and pay subject to the whims of the owner. It was a nice, tight little slum there all right; a slum with the further virtues of a jail. That was an American characteristic anyway; there was something about people in this country that made them enjoy putting themselves in jail, made them delight in the restrictions they imposed upon themselves. Americans, it seemed, only derived their sense of identity from being imprisoned. The Idle Hour, a perfect little South American nation carved out of the ruined landscape of California, was as perfect a working example of oppression as Wulff had ever seen. There was a whole generation of people now who were living this way, living in the Idle Hours of the country, and although they grumbled and complained a bit the Idle Hours were flourishing. The trailer park business was certainly a growth industry. What it came down to, Wulff thought, was that people liked it. If they had not had the abuse they would have taken to thinking of all that space, all that possibility, and the human mind, or at least the human American mind, was not equipped to take it. A man was looking at him.
Odd that even in all this heat, this swirl of crowd, Wulff could pick up one clear focus of attention, but police training, whether you wanted to remember it or not, was always there. Leaning against a shutdown fifty dollar window about ten yards away, a tall man wearing a hat, a Racing Form folded and shoved into his armpit, was looking at Wulff with a steady and rising interest, a glare of attention so pure and clear that Wulff knew that he had been recognized. Slowly he adjusted his position under the tote, then turned and went into the line behind the five dollar window. The man’s eyes followed him. Seeing Wulff’s sudden reaction to him, the man very slowly took the newspaper from under his arm and feigned reading it, his eyes peering out above the paper with intense interest. There was a slight bulge on the left side of the jacket near the heart. The man was armed.
Well, Wulff thought, that was wonderful. That was just wonderful, but then what had he expected? A disguise was only as good as the degree of interest you had aroused and he had aroused a good deal. The tall man seemed to know exactly who he was. Standing there, the line shuffling forward slowly to the window like a group of penitents waiting for assembly-line communion. Wulff instinctively patted his own inner pocket where the point thirty-eight caliber rested. It was no defense. Assuming that the man was after what he supposed he was, you could not take out a pistol in the grandstand at Santa and start shooting. That kind of thing just wasn’t done. Also, there was no assurance that the man was working alone.
There were three people ahead of him now in the line. Wulff looked up at the tote; three minutes now until post time. If he and Williams had worked it out properly Williams would almost be down at the finish line now, would almost be ready for the meet, but he resisted the impulses to lunge from the line and walk down there. One had to remain cool; one had to force a sense of control of the situation even if that control did not truly exist, because if you lost the handle, if everything came apart inside, then it would come apart on the outside with the same alacrity. The owners of the Idle Hour knew all about that kind of control. A small man shambled away from the window looking at the tickets he had bought with a bemused air as if not sure that he even remembered having done this, and Wulff told the seller, “Number five,” and put a ten down on the counter. Five was as good a number as any, he supposed; he was at the five dollar window, wasn’t he? The man over by the closed fifty window had now put away his newspaper and was slowly ambling toward Wulff. The ticket came out of the machine, lay in front of him. With a kind of exhausted tilt to his head the clerk slowly counted out five singles, held them, finally put them down next to the ticket when it became apparent that Wulff was not going to leave. Behind him, with the flash down to two minutes to post (but the tote always worked a minute ahead to build the action of the last-minute bettors to early frenzy) the crowd was mumbling and cursing. Wulff took the ticket, took the singles, stuffed it all into his right pocket and began to move slowly toward the great doors that opened out to the concrete lawn, the lawn running up to the rail and beyond that to the earth of the track. It was cool and pleasant today but it had rained the day before; that meant that the track was a holding, hard surface bad for come-from-behind horses, good for early speed, or so Wulff had heard around the grandstand. He did not give a damn. Horseracing meant nothing to him; he was dealing with a much deeper, darker history of chances. The man was still behind him as he worked his way through the crowd toward the finish line.
No doubt about it now; he had been spotted. There was always that small possibility up until the moment that they pursued you that it was all in your mind, that he had been functioning at the edges of attention for so long that innocent people, innocent gestures, became transmuted to menace. But this was unmistakable; as Wulff increased his pace dodging through the crowd, the man behind him, afraid that he might lose the trail, also extended his own stride. For the first time Wulff could see, looking back in little glances that the man had abandoned his posture of inattention and was pushing, really pushing frantically, trying to keep him in sight. Wulff put a hand inside his jacket pocket, checked the point thirty-eight. To use it in the infield would be crazy, of course; he simply could not do it. But would the tall man have similar consideration?
He did not know. Down at the finish line where the rail of the infield joined that of the paddock there was a crush of bodies, hundreds of people leaning against the rail staring out at the horses, who were now dots on the backstretch wheeling to turn int
o the starting gate for the six-furlong sprint. Wulff could not see Williams. For a moment he thought that it had all gone to pieces—there was also the chance that Williams, similarly spotted, might have been intercepted—but then he saw him, the tall black man at the furthest point of the conjoinment wedged tightly into the spot where the rails met, looking back at the crowd with bright, staring eyes. They must have recognized one another at the same instant; then Wulff was using his elbows to prod his way through the crowd, really shoving now. Williams extended a hand, and then his reserve returning at that instant, elaborately turned and looked back toward the track. The tall man was somewhere behind Wulff now but he could not for the moment see him. Momentary respite, that was all. He was closing in.
He poked through bodies, then came against Williams. The man was looking out at the track, still with that elaborate unconcern, but the fingers of his left hand were jumping and there was a tremor in his cheek. “Yeah,” he said quietly as Wulff came against him, “yeah,” a short emission of breath making the word a sigh…. He smiled in an intensely private way and then wedged himself yet deeper into the rail, looking out at the backstretch. “Who do you like, man?” he said. “I think the one horse has got this; he’s got the early speed for the conditions but seven to five is no bargain, not for cheap shit like this. I’ve been making a study of the conditions,” Williams said quietly.
“I’m being followed.”
“Oh,” Williams said. He held himself steadly against the rail. “Oh, shit.”
“Somebody in the grandstand spotted me.”
“That stands to reason,” Williams said very quietly. The track announcer said something about post-time. “Just one of them?”
“So far. Maybe he’s a spotter, maybe he’s got partners. Don’t know.”
“You’re in deep, man. You’re in very deep.”
“I told you that over the phone. You get some stuff?”
“Yes,” Williams said quietly, looking in his cop’s way carefully through the crowd without his eyes lighting on any specific individual; it was clever, the rookie was a good man. Always had been. “I got a lot of stuff. I don’t see anyone looking at you.”
“Can’t tell,” Wulff said quietly, head down, hands in pockets. Through the megaphones Wulff could hear a thump, and then the black dots, far in the distance were moving freely, scurrying down the backstretch. The noise level around the two of them began to build; they were able to talk under it, moving close together. A fat woman to Wulff’s right was jumping up and down, cascading sweat. Wulff flicked the drops of him. The five horse seemed to have taken the early lead.
“Let’s get out of here,” Wulff said.
“No point,” said Williams. “Couldn’t move in this, anyway.” The noise level was terrific, waves of sound beating at them like surf. “Wait till the race is over, then they scatter.”
“Let’s go now.”
“You don’t know shit about racetracks, do you?” Williams said with a little smile. “When the race is on nobody moves. Somebody spotting us, he’ll pick us up right away. After the race there’s plenty of movement, we can get lost.” The five horse was still holding the lead coming into the stretch. Williams leaned over, grasped the rail, inclined his head down the track surface. He seemed to be saying something but with the noise Wulff could not hear. Come on, one, he lip-read. The son of a bitch had a bet down.
Well, that was his business. In the fifteen seconds during which the last furlong and a half was run Wulff suspended his attention, turned on the crowd, saw in that crest of faces all of them pointed toward the track: begging, pleading, shouting. He saw that the man who had pursued him down to the rail had vanished. There was no doubt of that whatsoever; he had positioned the man in his mind, known exactly where he had been standing, understood his intention … but in those moments since he had made the meet with Williams the man had somehow ducked out, gone away from there. It would not have been difficult. As Williams had said, who during the running of a race watched anything but the race?
They should have gotten the hell out of there already.
The horses had gone by; Wulff turned, saw their rumps passing the finish line, some bunched together, a few strung out. From this angle there was no indication who had won but Williams, hunched over the rail, had taken a ticket out of his pocket and was busily shredding it, cursing. “Fucking one,” he said. “Fucking son of a bitch lays off the pace; if he had only chased that cheap speed—”
“Let’s get out of here,” Wulff said.
Williams jerked his head up, his eyes round. The idea of getting out seemed to be a new one to his consciousness. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I guess we could do that.”
“He must have thought he blew his cover,” Wulff said. “He’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone? Oh, you mean the guy—”
Something seemed to have happened to Williams’ cerebral faculties. Call it the racetrack itself, he guessed. “Look,” he said, putting a hand on the rail, then gesturing as numbers started to appear on the tote, as the announcer began to babble something about the results not yet being official. “Look at that. The five horse won it.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Wulff said. “I think that we’ve got a few minutes’ grace; I don’t know who the guy is with though, or what he might be carrying—”
“Yeah,” Williams said. He shrugged rapidly several times as if cold, “yeah, we ought to get out of here. Okay. The five horse won it A forty, fifty to one shot.” He squinted, looked at the tote. “Fifty to one on the last flash,” he said, “that means a minimum of a hundred and two dollars. That’s wild.”
“All right,” Wulff said, putting a hand on his partner’s shoulder, guiding him through the crowd which was indeed breaking up into little clumps, most of them babbling curses. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” A continent, four months, three thousand miles for this reunion … and all Williams could talk about was the five horse. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got,” he said. “They’re closing in. It’s bad.”
“I know it’s bad,” Williams said, following Wulff now in a rapid scuttle, pulling alongside of him when they broke into an open area under the grandstand, damp gusts of air propelled by fans hitting them. He was not walking quite normally, Wulff noticed, the knife wound that Williams had taken had hurt him obscurely, badly, changed him. Williams no longer looked twenty-four; he might have been forty. “Don’t tell me how bad it is. I almost got fucking knocked off in Nebraska.”
“Yeah,” Wulff said, “I almost bought it in a few places too.” The announcer was now saying that the result was official, dim groans were coming up like steam around them as they walked rapidly downstairs to ground level toward the parking lot. “Quite a few places.” He looked around him. The tall spotter was nowhere in sight. All right. All right, then, he had been right; there were at least a few minutes lead time. “Let’s get back and unload,” he said, “you got the stuff?”
“In the parking lot. Oh my, yes indeed, I would say that I have the stuff.”
“Good,” Wulff said, “good,” throwing his ticket onto the concrete of the parking lot, the ticket fluttering behind them. It only occurred to him a little later when they were already on the road toward the Idle Hour, forming a little caravan, Williams trailing him tight, the U-haul wobbling in his rear vision, that he had bought a ticket on the five. The five had won the race. He spliced the two facts dimly, obscurely; in this gelatinous mix they moved together. What had Williams said? Fifty to one? One hundred and two dollars minimum?
Well, how about that, he thought, fighting the wheel of the diseased Cadillac. Son of a bitch, they talked about Onan casting his seed upon the ground. What would they say about him?
Probably very damned little. There wasn’t going to be much of a history. And since the guys from the winning side wrote the history books, there probably wouldn’t even be a mention of it.
The hell with it, anyway.
X
Billing
s was willing to be patient. The plan to Billings was beautiful; two million dollars worth of shit, if that was what the guy had on him, was certainly worth a hell of a lot more than fifty thousand bounty or whatever crumbs Calabrese would throw at him. Probably not even that; the old man was a cheap bastard. Better go after the shit, he thought, even if possible try to make contact with the guy, arrange a straight split of some sort in return for Billings’s advice and counsel. Wulff would have to know by now that he was a dead man. Everybody in and out of the country, every organization man, every freelancer was out to get him. The guy would surely have to be at the point of listening to reason now. He was a tiger but there were limits.
