Two in the Field

by Darryl Brock

  I said it was surprising from somebody like Morrissey.

  “Maybe not,” said Baker. “He wants people to see him as a sharp, crafty player, but not reckless. All in keeping with his banker’s style.” He leveled a forefinger at me. “Anyhow, keep your wits about you. Smoke will test your mettle one way or another.”

  Whether testing or not, every few nights Morrissey summoned me upstairs to his office, generally toward the end of my shift. Leaning back in his monogrammed chair, a log blazing in the fireplace no matter how mild the night, he grilled me on details of the care and handling of his richest patrons. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the old Commodore’s second son, was a particular high-maintenance concern. Besides finding tactful ways to keep his gambling losses within acceptable limits, I had to be prepared in case he threw an epileptic fit, something young Corney was prone to. Morrissey employed a physician, but he wasn’t always on hand. In his absence it was up to me to prevent a disaster.

  Morrissey made me nervous by posing numerous questions about my past. I fabricated a ball-playing career in San Francisco that was fading into journalism by the time I’d subbed for the Red Stockings. I hinted at darker activities in which I’d picked up my fighting skills. I sensed that he didn’t buy all of it, but apparently he didn’t know the West Coast well enough to probe my story deeply.

  One night he mentioned rumors that three exalted war heroes, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, were planning to visit the Club House together. Trying to picture the dour president at a roulette wheel, I said casually that I’d once met Grant.

  Morrissey didn’t appreciate being one-upped. “Where?” he demanded.

  “In the White House,” I said, “with the ball club.”

  “Well, I did too,” he snapped.

  Sure, I thought, but you were in Congress. I’d heard that in Morrissey’s solitary House speech, he’d challenged any ten Representatives to fight him. But that was a while back. Now the one-time street fighter yearned for Establishment acceptance. He loved to describe all the palm-greasing and back-scratching he engaged in, and how his web of connections and favors extended throughout the state.

  “Why does he pick on me for those late-night sessions?” I complained to Baker.

  “Simple,” he replied. “You’re the only one who ever sent him to the floor in one of those try-outs in his office. Some others gave him a tussle, but they couldn’t do what you did. And you a college man, too. He’s fascinated by all that—and now he’s studying you for weaknesses.”

  Wonderful, I thought.

  “There could be another reason,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “He seems to have no real friends.”

  “That’s how he’s survived.” Baker snorted. “I wouldn’t put any stock in his lookin’ to you for it.”

  “A smile wouldn’t be amiss when treating with the ladies,” Morrissey said one night. “That mug of yours is enough to pitch them into sinking swoons.”

  I thought that was pretty funny, coming from the owner of one of the most menacing faces in the whole country.

  “People are taking an interest in you, Fowler,” he rasped. “I’ve told ’em about your base-balling days. Those Red Stockings captured people’s fancy. I’m thinking of making something of your tussle with Will Craver.”

  “What do you mean?” I said uneasily.

  “Why, stage a second match! It’d bring in every betting man around. We’d use the grandstand by the lake, make thousands on the tickets, thousands more holding stakes.”

  I should have anticipated it. Trying to market me was exactly the sort of thing that would occur to Morrissey. “I’m too old for that stuff,” I told him.

  “You weren’t too old against me,” he retorted, “and there’d be time for a bit of training. Bully Will plays for Philadelphia now, but I could get him here in short order. We’d puff you as the ‘diamond pugilists.’ ” He gave me a sharp look. “Not afeard, are you?”

  “I beat him before,” I said, mindful that I’d been a wreck for a week afterward.

  “Oh, but there was … confusion on that ballfield. This’d be just the two of you, face to face.” Morrissey smiled, rarely a pleasant thing to see. “Maybe Will’s learned a trick or two.”

  “How about McDermott instead?” I offered. “There’s somebody I wouldn’t mind punching out.”

  “You know Red Jim’s not much with his fists.”

  “No,” I retorted. “He likes to work from ambush.”

  “Whether against Craver or another,” he persisted, “you’d haul away a fine stake.”

  I thought at first he meant a cut of meat, which of course was equally apt. “How fine do you have in mind?”

  “Oh, say, ten thousand.”

  Half the sum I was bent on retrieving for John O’Neill. It gave me pause. So far I’d come up with zero, and every day away from Cait was making me a little more crazy. Maybe if all else failed.…

  “I’ll think it over,” I said; then, “Speaking of McDermott, I haven’t seen him for days.”

  “An establishment like this requires many things, Mr. Fowler.” Old Smoke was getting into his crooning thing again, not a good sign. “Some cannot come through normal means. Red Jim helps procure them.”

  Just as he did for O’Neill’s Fenian army. I wondered how many of the dirty details he bothered to share with Morrissey. “It’s hard to imagine,” I said, “how he got from a jail in Utah, where I last saw him, to working here.”

  Morrissey’s black eyes regarded me with an ominous glint that said he didn’t like the implication. “Perhaps you should ask him that very thing.”

  “I intend to.”

  “So you’re more interested in settling Red Jim’s hash than in prize stakes?” Stroking his goatee, he stared at me as if trying to reach some conclusion.

  Having no idea where he was leading me, I felt myself begin to sweat. In an effort to distract him, I reported that somebody that night had gone up nearly forty thousand dollars at the roulette table. Fortunately for the house, he’d then taken on Baker, who duly reduced his new fortune. But what if he’d kept winning? Had anybody broken the bank?

  “Once,” Morrissey recalled. “Gent named Mordecai walked out with $125,000 and we had to close for that night.” He smiled. “We soon got it back off him.”

  While I wondered exactly how that had occurred, Morrissey walked over to his enormous iron desk and drummed his knuckles on what looked like drawers. A hollow sound reverberated; inside was a safe.

  “Nowadays there’s cash enough here to handle anything that comes,” he boasted, looking me straight in the eye. “And I’m the only one with the combination.”

  I’d written Andy to tell him my whereabouts and ask about Tim. His reply arrived on Boston Base Ball Club stationery, a single sheet wrapped around a smaller envelope also addressed to me. My pulse rate seemed to triple as I recognized Cait’s handwriting. I set it aside and read Andy’s first.

  Sam’l,

  Harry wouldn’t like me writing to a gambling house employee (ha!) so I’ll keep this short. Tim is a good worker at the sporting goods store. He loves playing ball and takes my coaching points to heart.

  It’s too soon to see how good he can be, and he knows that. We’ve had talks about Cait. He’s surprised howmuch he misses her. If there was a way to do it, I think he’d fancy going home until he’s of age for the Juniors. My eyes have been bothering me and my play has not been the best. I could give Tim an easy way by going to visit his Ma. When you’re ready maybe we could all go at once.

  In friendship,

  Andy

  P.S. Alice loves Tim being here. Now we surely know how important a family is and we want our own more than ever.

  I read it again, savoring the word family. Andy was the nearest to a sibling I’d ever had. I loved the thought of us being in Nebraska together. Like Andy, and bereft of my daughters and all else from other life, I had an almost desperate craving for family.

 
Cait’s three pages were devoted to everyday news of O’Neill City. Descriptions of communal huskings and canning sessions, talk of who had gotten sick, how unpredictable the weather had been, how the soddies were already being prepared for unseasonable storms. I got a momentary glow from learning that Lily now ate great quantities of melon with her hands, and, taught by Linc and Kaija, had learned to say “Sam.”

  That was it.

  Nothing about how Cait was getting along without Tim. Nothing about her feelings toward me. Even her closing was aggravatingly impersonal: I remain, as ever, grateful for your services to our family, Caitlin O’Neill.

  Family. There it was again. Cait obviously viewed me as being outside of hers. I reread her paragraphs for the tiniest hint of intimacy, and was left wanting to pound on walls. Distant from her, I’d allowed myself to reconstruct a loving bond where apparently none existed—that is, if I accepted the letter as final evidence.

  Which, on prolonged reflection, I did not.

  My first reply to her was assertive and almost petulant in tone. I tore it up and penned a softer version that I also tore up. Finally I managed a few bland, chatty paragraphs about some of Saratoga’s sillier extremes. I told her I was intent on recovering the colony’s lost capital, would return as soon as I’d accomplished it, and would enjoy hearing again from her. What I didn’t say could have filled volumes.

  Word came that McDermott had returned, but because the horse racing season was on us I didn’t catch sight of him. Morrissey had constructed a racetrack soon after arriving in Saratoga Springs. Offering lavish prizes to attract top competitors, he’d formed a Racing Association, leased a larger site a few miles outside town, and built a new state-of-the-art track. While he no longer handled gate receipts, he more than made up for it by running auction pools.

  Things in town began to look as they had during the regatta, but on a bigger scale. With business soaring at the Club House, Morrissey warned us to be on the lookout for pickpockets, thieves, scam men, low-end prostitutes—anybody who might inconvenience our patrons. Also, he wanted us close by him for security. Betting on the races would reach astronomical heights; on peak days he expected to hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in stakes. He began taking two of us with him whenever he made large deposits in his upstairs safe.

  “Turn aside,” he’d say gruffly, and we’d hear the combination lock spin. The action of its dials sounded heavy and well-oiled.

  Some afternoons I accompanied Baker in his gray-trimmed carriage with matching sorrel mares to watch the preliminary heats. The man obviously lived in high style, but was tight-lipped about his personal life, especially when it came to women. Although he liked to hint at some great lost love, I suspected the craft of gambling had long since outdistanced the fair sex as an attraction. Still, he was not oblivious.

  “I believe that lady is seeking your attention,” he said one afternoon in the racetrack pavilion. I looked and saw, leaning on the rail, gazing up at us from beneath a parasol sunshade, a young woman with perfect-looking complexion and gray eyes that seemed almost violet. As they met mine she twirled the parasol and turned teasingly away.

  “Fancy goods,” Baker observed.

  I was reminded of a girl who’d been voted homecoming queen at my high school, her beauty so disconcerting that some boys could scarcely face her. This woman had that quality. She was almost in Cait’s class, in fact, although hers was a more manufactured look.

  “She’s got her lamps on you,” Baker said.

  “Not likely,” I said. “You’re the glamour boy here.”

  But maybe he was right. As we headed toward Baker’s rig, I found her suddenly in my path, her parasol folded, its metal tip slanted casually at my crotch. Prudently, I halted.

  “Pardon, sir.” Her accent sounded vaguely French, her voice musical but with a huskiness that suggested … well, sex. She moved aside with a leisurely swirl of her skirts, gray eyes on mine, lips curled at the corners and parted slightly.

  Some gallant utterance or dashing bon mot seemed called for. Nothing came to mind. Feeling cloddish, I touched my hat and nodded as I passed.

  “Whew,” I said a few seconds later.

  “Exactly right,” Baker agreed.

  Driving back to town, he said, “You believe you’ve got a good idea of trouble spots at work by now?”

  “Pretty good,” I said. “Why?”

  “Somebody’s cheating the house,” Baker said. “Winning pretty regular. I’ll give you a brand new double eagle if you can spot the method. I’ll even tell you it’s happening in the poker room. And it’s an inside job.”

  “Every night?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe three out of five.”

  “Been going on long?”

  “Couple weeks.”

  Since about when McDermott came back. “I gather you don’t think I’ll be able to spot it.”

  “That’s right.” He grinned. “But I’ll give you three days to try.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The next day we arrived early at the track to check out a horse Baker had gotten a tip on. While he went off in search of tobacco, I headed for the paddock. There I spotted McDermott strutting around as if he owned the thoroughbreds. He saw me coming and said something to a man in a broad-brimmed hat who had been talking to him; the man turned abruptly and walked away. It looked suspicious to me. But then, just about everything about Red Jim looked suspicious.

  “Back from procuring?” I said sarcastically. “What’d you get? Drugs for doping racehorses?”

  It was a calculated provocation: if Morrissey thought somebody was tampering with his precious races, swift and unpleasant consequences would follow.

  Red Jim didn’t look at all concerned.

  “I got something for you, Fowler,” he said easily. “A surprise treat.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  The cocksure way he said it gave me an uneasy feeling. What the hell was he up to now?

  Baker came strolling up to join me and McDermott’s eyes narrowed. I realized that this was the first time he’d seen us together and, judging by his expression, he didn’t like it. Taking me on alone was one thing. The difficulty of it was magnified with Baker, a highly respected figure, as my ally. A subtle calculation went on behind his watery blue eyes as he nodded shortly to Baker, gave me a parting glance, spat in the dirt, and walked away.

  “I hate that sonofabitch.”

  “Couldn’t have guessed,” Baker said wryly. “You hide it so good.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, “something tells me you aren’t exactly wild about him either.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Five-card draw was the only poker permitted in the high-stakes room. A simple game with two betting rounds. I drifted upstairs as often as I could and tried to be inconspicuous while looking on. Nothing extraordinary happened the first night. The second night, I got distracted. After helping Grogan roust a drunk, I was passing the billiards table on my way upstairs when I heard a throaty, familiar voice.

  “Would you be so kind, good sir …” French accents, sexy undertone … “as to carombole with me?” No parasol now. She held a cue as if she knew what to do with it, and it wasn’t pointed at my crotch.

  “I’m afraid ladies aren’t allowed at tables without escorts,” I began, “and so—”

  “My companion is detained,” she said smoothly. “Will you keep me company so that I won’t be forced to fend off …” She waved a slender arm to suggest a menagerie of lurking menaces.

  I suspected she was expert at fending off. “Well …” I said uncertainly. My god, she was something: auburn hair piled up in an elaborate coiffeur, those gray eyes with thick lashes, flawless skin, a corseted waist that looked no more than ten inches wide and swelled into an ample bosom accentuated with yards of fabric and lace. What the hell. Old Smoke wanted me to smile more around the ladies, and I was allowed an occasional game of billiards, so long as I stayed alert an
d didn’t take customers’ money—that was the exclusive role of Baker and the other dealers.

  “Okay, but just one game,” I said, and chalked a cue.

  I figured I’d show her how it worked, give her a few tips on her stroke, and be on my way. Instead, she bent over the table and the balls clicked smartly as she made combination after combination.

  “I believe I have won.” She racked the balls for a new game. “Will you play again, Mr. Fowler?”

  “You know my name?”

  She smiled. “Mine is Ophelia Dupree.” Big on the French. Dew-PRAY.

  She sounded so stagey saying it that I considered replying, Sure, and I’m Rhett Butler. But I didn’t. She extended her hand, apparently expecting me to bend over it like a courtier, and damned if I didn’t do it. And then I stuck around to play again. This time she let me have a turn before running up a winning score.

  “Got to get back to work.”

  “I’ve enjoyed your company.”

  She smiled and then made a little cute little moue with her lips, which looked quite inviting. Twenty minutes later, when I returned after looking in on the poker action, she was gone.

  The following night I found her at the same table, and inquired if her “companion” had abandoned her again. Smiling mischievously, she said, “Oh, but tonight I have permission.” I went off to check with Grogan, who informed me that she’d been approved “from the top.” Morrissey. This had to be the setup Baker had warned of.

  We played again. Showing me how to line up a difficult shot, she leaned close. “Number four cottage,” she whispered. “Come for brandy.”

  The situation came into sharper perspective. Morrissey had constructed a handful of cottages among his elms, discreetly shielded from the public and from each other. They were for favored patrons who, for whatever reasons, required privacy. The cottages were a source of scandal among the town’s bluenosed set. Ophelia Dupree’s presence in one could mean only that somebody very powerful was keeping her there.