Uncommon Assassins

by F. Paul Wilson

  But what a One—the blue-blooded phenom, Avatar. Mickey went in on the horse with some pals as a lark, and the animal turned out to be a world-beater. Better yet, Avatar was great in the sack, siring a dynasty of speedy racehorses with just enough stamina to get them through the lucrative spring prep races before they went lame. After that it was on to the breeding shed, where they passed on their unsoundness to future yearling sales toppers.

  Avatar’s stud fee was $200,000 a pop. Mickey Finn kept a good-sized chunk of him, which was the smartest thing he ever did.

  But he continued to run a platoon of broken-down claiming horses. In sheer numbers, his horses dominated every low-level track in the nation’s breadbasket, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars and making him all-time leading money-winning owner at five different tracks. His theory was, you put a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters and even if you don’t get Shakespeare, you can eventually hit the Pick 6. Plus, Mickey was a ladies’ man, and the girls loved hanging off his arm in the winner’s circle.

  All this Cyril Landry knew as he parked on the cobblestones outside Finn’s red-brick colonial-style mansion. Nice day, a postcard of Kentucky in the spring. Blue skies, chestnut trees throwing down dark shawls on a green lawn. Mickey’s house was on a hill, of course, overlooking miles of pasture. Landry knew the stallion, Avatar, was not in any of the fields here. He lived just down the road at Stoney Bridge Farm. Even though Stoney Bridge Farm wasn’t open to the public, Landry had taken the tour. Avatar didn’t look any different from any of the other stallions at the stud farm. He was fat like the rest of them and bay-colored. No markings to distinguish him and not much personality, either.

  Mickey Finn answered the bell. Landry knew he would, because Mickey prided himself on running his own show. He had bodyguards, but they were discreet. Had to be, so as not to scare Mickey’s girls. Mickey told the blonde who was with him to “go shopping or something,” and they sat on the wide veranda overlooking the gamboling mares and foals.

  “You said you had a prospect for me,” Mickey said.

  “Actually, that’s not really true.”

  “It’s not? I thought you were a bloodstock agent.”

  “No, I’m actually not.” Landry crossed one knee over the other. “I’m here to talk about Therese Hill.”

  First, a look of alarm. “What is this? Are you a reporter or something? A blogger? I’m too busy for this kind of thing. You’re out of here, bud. Raul!”

  “Raul’s busy.”

  Mickey Finn had one thing going for him—a certain animalistic cunning. He figured out pretty quickly that Raul wasn’t coming. He knew Teddy wasn’t coming, either. Pure instinct—Landry could see it in his eyes.

  “What do you want?” Mickey demanded.

  “First, let me give you the stakes.” Landry switched one knee over the other. Aware of a twinge in his back. For all that money, Mickey Finn didn’t bother with comfortable chairs. “Are you familiar with The Godfather?”

  “The movie?” Mickey’s small eyes flitted around his plump face like goldfish in a bowl. “Are you threatening me?”

  Landry said nothing.

  “You trying to scare me by threatening my life? Let me tell you, pally, I don’t scare.”

  Landry said nothing.

  “Don’t you friggin’ threaten me. The last person who did that ended up in the hospital.”

  Landry reminded him, “Therese Hill.”

  Mickey Finn went quiet. Eyes jiggling right and left.

  “Therese,” Landry said again, his voice neutral. “Hill.”

  “Nothing to talk about. I’m not responsible for every spill that happens at Dogwood Park, no matter what you’ve heard. It’s a shame, it really is, and I feel sorry for her and her family. But it has nothing to do with me.”

  “She has hospital bills.”

  “I guess she would. These people, they don’t have health insurance. They don’t think ahead. They just live from hand to mouth, from ride to ride, and all of ’em think they’re going to be the next Jerry Bailey. But they won’t be. They’re a dime a dozen.”

  “You know she has a little girl?”

  Finn’s face suffused with red, like mercury climbing up a thermometer. “Plenty of race riders have little girls. So what? She made the wrong move, she gambled and she lost. It happens. You don’t see the stewards coming after me. The horse was vet-ready. End of story. Time for you to go, pal.”

  “I will after you wire $400,000 to Therese Hill.”

  “Are you nuts? No way I’m doing that! You’re crazy to even say such a thing.”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars. That’s how much one mating to Avatar is. Just one. I figure he services about 200 mares here in Kentucky, and then he’s shuttled down to the southern hemisphere for another 200. That’s a lot of $200,000 checks. I think you can spare just two. One for each hemisphere.”

  “It’s not all my money! Don’t you understand finances? I can’t lay my hands on that kind of money, and I wouldn’t lay my hands on that kind of money. Not for some lowlife girl jockey who got herself into trouble because she tried to go through the wrong hole! Teddy! Get your ass out here! Teddy! Where the hell are you? Come here!” He reached for his cell phone.

  Landry pulled a key with a plastic tag on it from his pocket. On the tag was a number and the words LAKELAND STORAGE, Versailles, Kentucky. “If you’re looking for Raul and Teddy, you’ll need this.”

  Finn blanched. “They’re dead?”

  Landry looked at his watch. “It’s ten a.m. now. I’ll be back sometime tomorrow. By then I’ll have the account for the wire transfer—$400,000.”

  He walked down the cobblestone drive. Finn was stabbing numbers into his phone. He was also looking at the license plate, prominently displayed on the Touareg Landry was driving.

  But no one would ever see the Touareg again, nor find its owner, and Mickey Finn could call God himself and it wouldn’t get him out of this fix.

  “The police are on their way!” Finn yelled as Landry ducked into the Touareg. “You’ll be caught before you leave this property!”

  “See you tomorrow,” Landry said. “Don’t forget.”

  Landry’s brother stabled his horses nearest the Horseman’s Entrance at Dogwood Park. There was a little swatch of grass where he took his horses out to graze in the afternoons, and a picnic table where Therese Hill—“Terry”—liked to have a smoke while she waited for her little girl to come back from school.

  She and Landry were sitting there now. Terry wanted to introduce him to someone she’d met the day before.

  The guy’s name was Steve. He was an exercise rider at Ellis Park.

  “Tell him what you told me,” Terry said.

  “I heard about the spill,” Steve said. “But I didn’t know or maybe I just forgot who the horse was. Then when I came here, I realized who it was.”

  Terry blew smoke, her eyes drifting to the horseman’s gate, searching for the school bus. Her daughter, Moira, would be coming any minute. “Tell him how you knew the horse.”

  Steve flicked an ash from his cigarette and rubbed it into his jeans. “I rode him in the mornings. He was a nice horse. Greg Snipes, the trainer, was also the owner. Horse was on his way up the claiming ranks. He had a nice turn of foot.”

  Terry nodded. “I liked him. I got on him and he just turned his head around and looked at me, like, ’hello.’ I wasn’t on him long, but he tried hard and I knew he was honest. I thought we were gonna win.”

  She stood up. She had to stand up from time to time. Sitting down hurt her. Standing up hurt her, too, so she had to do both to even everything out. Walking hurt her, but that was her living now, walking hots for Landry’s brother.

  Newcomers to the backside stared at her at first, until they found out what happened. Or they came within cursing distance. She didn’t suffer fools gladly, or any other way.

  Terry took another drag. “What’s keeping them?” she said, looking for the yellow on
the street beyond the chain link, looking for the school bus. She jittered with nervous energy, even though her synapses were like tangled wires. She swore she’d get back in the saddle again. Looking at her damaged body, her dragging leg, her lack of basic coordination, Landry didn’t think it possible. But if determination could do it …

  His brother said she’d improved. Said she didn’t lurch as much.

  Landry said to Steve, “So you rode him?”

  “In the mornings. I’m too heavy to be a jock.”

  And too old, Landry thought. “Did he win a lot?”

  Steve smiled, showed yellow teeth. Baby boomer teeth. Tetracycline from back in the day, a whole generation of people who ended up with yellow teeth. Guy was probably ten years older than Landry. Suffered plenty of wear and tear, but he looked spry as a cricket.

  “Oh, he won a few. Last race he ran, back in the fall, was a $65,000 optional claiming. Won it laughing. He was on his way up, all right. Until he was on his way down.”

  “What happened?”

  “Tendon.”

  “Tendon?” Landry knew that tendon injuries were pernicious.

  “Yeah, that was all she wrote. He was off to the farm, just like that.”

  “Then they tried to bring him back?”

  “I dunno. What I heard was, Greg said the horse was so good to him, winning some nice races, he was going to either give him away or retrain him for his son to ride.”

  “When was this? When did he go to the farm?”

  “Last fall. He ran his last race in October, and that was the one where he must’ve injured it. Or reinjured it.”

  “It was bad before?”

  “Greg’s been known to block a joint or two on race day. Never thought he’d do it with a good horse like that, though. But you know how it goes. Run ’em on a wing and a prayer, hold it all together with front wraps, you got a horse going up the ranks and he can make some real money. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt!”

  Terry glared at Steve.

  He looked defensive. “I never felt anything. He went like a Cadillac for me. Never put in a bad work.”

  “If the horse went to the farm—if he was retired—how come he went down with me in February?” demanded Terry.

  “I’m as surprised as you are. I thought he was all done. Stick a fork in him.” He winced at his own expression, considering the horse was dead.

  Terry looked at Landry, her expression triumphant. “Here’s the kicker. Steve, tell him who owned him before Greg Snipes.”

  “Mickey Finn.”

  “I knew it!” Terry said, slamming her hand down on the picnic table. Steve had left them by then.

  Landry had made the same connection she had.

  Why would Snipes bring the horse out of retirement? A horse with a severe tendon injury? In many ways, a soft tissue injury was worse than a clean break. A break could heal, depending on where it was, and a horse could race again. A horse could be absolutely sound. But a tendon, once damaged, was tricky. Connective tissue, the tendon bound muscle to bone. Without good support, a catastrophic injury was likely at some juncture, and that likelihood was enhanced when the injured area was anesthetized before a race. When a twelve-hundred-pound horse puts all his weight on one foot the size of a teacup, and there’s nothing there to support the bone, the result can be disastrous.

  But you couldn’t prove intent. For the bottom-feeders in this game, cutting corners was routine. The track stewards, in their wisdom, didn’t bother to test BlueLight Special for drugs after the fact. There was no outside body that could force them to.

  “You know they were gunning for me,” Terry said. “I was too much trouble, so they set me up. I was the rabble-rouser. It was me who got all the jocks to go on strike. Me and my big damn mouth!” She glared at the horseman’s gate as if it had done something to her.

  Landry knew what she said was true. He’d had confirmation of that this morning, when Finn said the stewards didn’t come after him. He said it like he still owned the horse. He said it as if it were common knowledge.

  Landry’s brother told him the story. Despite the fact that Finn’s horses had broken down on the track seven times over a two-week period—three horses dead, two jockeys hurt—he was still the most powerful presence in the Midwest. He had enough horses to fill the races and keep the small tracks going. The jockeys were afraid of injury, sure, but Terry pushed them to the edge when she talked strike. The choice was stark. A jock riding in a low-level claiming race risked his life for $45 a ride—along with ten percent of the purse, if he won, placed, or showed. Riding in a $5,000 claiming race wasn’t going to make anyone rich.

  Terry became the lightning rod.

  “You know what really pisses me off?” Terry jabbed her cigarette into the ashtray on the picnic table. “They killed that poor horse to get at me! What did he do to anybody except make them money?” She was up again, like a jack-in-the-box. Seeing her, the fierce way she moved, despite her injuries, despite her awkwardness, Landry began to think she might ride again. Impossible. But miracles happened.

  Terry folded her arms tightly to her chest. Fuming. “Minute I got on that horse I knew he was a good one. The way he moved. It was like he trusted me. I could feel it, like he was telling me, I swear to GOD, he would take care of me. We’d win it together!”

  She swiped at her eyes, turned away. “He trusted me.”

  Just then Landry heard the school bus. Terry started toward the horseman’s gate.

  It happened fast. Moira running through the gate, waving to her mother. Her enormous pink backpack bumping as she ran. Beaming, two green barrettes clipping up her hair on either side, like the little kid in a Dr. Seuss book.

  The two big guys behind her, walking through the gate, right past the guard booth. Right past the guard.

  One of them grabbing Moira’s arm. The other hunkering down to talk to her. Raul. Or was it Teddy?

  Mickey must have taken them out of storage.

  Something whizzed by him—Terry. She was damn fast for a cripple, homing in on the intruders like a heat-seeking missile. In her hand was a pitchfork from his brother’s barn.

  Landry caught her in three strides, because he was fast, too. But by then she had one of them—Teddy?—up against the chain link fence, the tines of the pitchfork at his throat.

  “You come near my baby and I will kill you!” she yelled.

  The majority of stud farms are notoriously lax in their security. Landry grew up on the racetrack and knew how most barns did business, which was hardly any business at all.

  Instead of criss-cross cameras—one camera sweeping left to right at timed intervals and another camera sweeping right to left—Stoney Bridge Farm had static cameras on the stall interiors themselves. Simple to circumvent.

  Landry depended on human nature to do the rest of his work for him. From two previous nights of surveilling the property, Landry knew the guard made rounds every hour on the hour. In between, he sat in a comfy chair in a room off the feed shed and looked at the cameras. Staring at a camera feed is a stultifying job. According to research studies, a person tasked with watching a camera screen maintains his attention span for approximately twenty minutes. After that boredom sets in and the mind strays.

  Landry went in at 3:30 a.m. The guard didn’t see or hear him. He was reading a magazine. A simple job to grab him from behind, administer a light tranquilizer by hypodermic, and disable the camera feed to Avatar’s stall.

  Unlike most stallions, Avatar was docile. He didn’t try to bite. Didn’t snake his head, didn’t pin his ears, didn’t flash his teeth. Just stood there like the big, overfed hog he was, placidly awaiting his fate. Landry inserted the hypodermic into the jugular and pushed the plunger, then stood back quickly. Most times, horses fall down fast.

  The stallion’s hind legs folded like a card table and he sat down hard and fell over into the sawdust like a derailed train.

  Landry pulled a cruel-looking implement from his back poc
ket. It looked like the meanest set of pliers in the world.

  On the way out, Landry checked the guard. Out cold.

  He walked off the farm, straight up the lane to the entrance and down the road to his car. Twenty-five minutes, from start to finish.

  The second day Landry went to visit Mickey Finn was almost identical to the first. The same blue sky, the same bluegrass pastures, the identical chestnut trees spreading their shade. The brick colonial house, white columns. Beautiful.

  This time he drove a sedan. The Touareg was long gone.

  And this time, he had a plastic bag with him.

  Earlier, Landry had Googled the expression BlueLight Special. Officially, a BlueLight Special was a discount at K-Mart. But the BlueLight Special was also slang for cops. In this case, the cops weren’t interested in what Mickey Finn did on the racetrack. He skated just at the edge of the law and knew the line well. He had the track vets and the stewards in his pocket. So, no help there.

  The last definition of a BlueLight Special was a “white trash girl.” Landry supposed the term could apply to a single mother on the backside, willing to hop up on the back of any cheap horse and risk her life to keep her kid in shoes and food and cute pink backpacks. It wasn’t accurate, but there were plenty of people in the world who thought that way.

  A BlueLight Special of a woman with a little kid wasn’t going to do anybody any good. And a damaged, broken BlueLight Special of a woman, no matter how feisty and determined, really wasn’t going to do anybody any good.

  Landry had been in a lot of places and seen a great deal of the world. He knew justice was decided on a sliding scale.

  When Manfred Finn answered the bell, his two security guys were ranked behind him.

  Landry ignored them. “Call your stud manager,” he said to Mickey.

  “Why should I?”

  “Call your stud manager.”

  Finn stepped back. Uncertainty crossed his features. “If you killed that horse—”