The Last Private Eye

by John Birkett

  McGraw shook her head. “Nothing but classy drinks tonight.” She smiled at Rhineheart. “I’m surprised you and the waitress aren’t old friends.”

  “Actually,” Rhineheart said, “she looks familiar.”

  McGraw was gazing past his shoulder. “Somebody’s heading our way. He looks important.”

  Rhineheart turned around. Duke Kingston was making his way toward their table. “It’s our host,” Rhineheart told McGraw.

  “Isn’t he a handsome devil.”

  Kingston came up to the table. He didn’t offer to shake hands, but he was friendly enough. “Mr. Rhineheart, good to see you.” He turned to McGraw. “Who’s this lovely lady?”

  Rhineheart did the honors. “Sally McGraw . . . Duke Kingston.”

  “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Are you enjoying the party?”

  “It’s very nice,” McGraw said.

  “Supah. Supah.” Kingston turned back to Rhineheart. “Understand the police found Walsh’s body in the river. Said he was drunk. Said it was an accident.” He paused. “What do you think, Mr. Rhineheart?”

  Rhineheart shrugged. “What do I know?”

  Kingston smiled. “You not a big talker, are you? Well,” he added, “why should you be, huh?” He looked around the room, beaming.

  The equivalent of a flashbulb went off inside Rhineheart’s head. “Tell me something,” he said to Kingston.

  “Sho.”

  “Who’s your vet?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The veterinarian for Cresthill Farms. Who is it?”

  “Dr. Harrison Gilmore. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Rhineheart said. It was a question he should have asked someone days ago. He hadn’t been thinking. He should have known that most vets worked for more than one farm.

  Kingston took his arm. “It’s too bad about the ten thousand dollars, but look here, Mr. Rhineheart, you enjoy yourself tonight. Feel free to mingle about and party to your heart’s content. I don’t want you or your lady-friend to feel like you’re out of your element one bit. We’re all just folks around here.” He patted Rhineheart on the shoulder and strode off.

  Rhineheart looked at McGraw. “He doesn’t want us to feel out of our element.”

  “He’s a real prince,” McGraw said. She took a hit of her julep. “I’m gonna mingle about and party some. You want to come?”

  “You go ahead,” Rhineheart said. “But keep your eye on Kingston. If he leaves the party, let me know.”

  McGraw drifted away, Rhineheart sat there staring down into his drink, as if there were a message in there, among the rocks of ice and the oily dregs of booze. A notion was starting to take shape in his brain. It had nothing to do with logic or deduction, it was nothing clear and sharp and definite. It was more like a pattern emerging against a background of facts. His mind was running through connections, links between a veterinarian, a chemist, a gambler, a couple of stable hands who worked for different stables, Derby horses, and owners. In this context it seemed that the most important question was not necessarily who had killed Carl Walsh, but why had he been killed? Maybe he’d known something. And maybe that something concerned one of the horses in the Derby. Rhineheart sat there, rapt in thought, oblivious to the scene around him.

  A hand touched his arm.

  “Michael.”

  He looked up, and Jessica Kingston was standing there. He looked at her face and realized that in some corner of his mind he had been thinking about her all day, and his throat filled up and his chest began to hurt. She was no one-night lady and she was lovely beyond all saying. She was wearing a full-length dress. Her arms and shoulders were bare. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a knot. Her eyes were clear, her gaze was serene.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “You look so lonely sitting here, Michael. Are you all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “It’s a nice party.”

  “Thank you. I was hoping you’d be here. Hoping I’d see you.”

  “What about you?” Rhineheart said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Would you like me to introduce you to the duchess?”

  “Who?”

  “The guest of honor, the Duchess of Sussex.”

  “Naw, I don’t think so.” He stood up. “What about a dance?”

  She smiled. “Yes, that would be nice.”

  Rhineheart took her hand and led her out onto the floor. Half a dozen couples were dancing. He took Jessica in his arms and they began to dance slowly in a small space on the floor. She fit into his arms perfectly. The band was playing some romantic ballad in the blandest way imaginable. They were playing it all wrong, but it didn’t matter to Rhineheart. All that counted was that her head came to rest against his chest and they were in each other’s arms and moving together in rhythm to the music.

  She whispered something he couldn’t quite understand. He asked her to repeat it, but she just shook her head and smiled.

  When the song ended, she looked at him and said, “Thank you for asking me, Michael. It was nice.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  “I have to get back to my guests.”

  “I understand.”

  She disappeared into a crowd of people. Rhineheart looked around. McGraw was standing there on the edge of the floor. He walked over and borrowed a cigarette from her.

  “You better watch yourself,” McGraw said. “You’ve got it bad.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “I know so. And so does everyone else who saw you two on the floor.” She shook her head. “Rhineheart, it’s an awful big jump from waitresses to socialites.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Rhineheart said. He looked around the room. “Where’s Kingston?”

  “He left about five minutes ago,” McGraw said. “You were dancing. I followed him outside. He got in a car and drove up to the mansion.”

  “I’m going to take a little stroll,” Rhineheart said. “Hang around here and see what you can see.”

  “Be careful.”

  As he was walking away, an overdressed matronly lady seized McGraw by the arm.

  “Oh God,” she said. “I love your gown. Is it a Halston?”

  McGraw nodded. “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “Who are you?” the woman said. “Are you famous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh God, I knew it. Are you an actress? Movies or TV?”

  “TV.”

  Rhineheart wandered slowly over to an exit, checked to see if anyone was watching him, then stepped outside and headed across the grounds toward the mansion. It was a cloudy cool night. The grass was wet with dew. He made a wide circle through a grove of trees, stopping every now and then to see if he was being followed. He had the sense that someone was behind him, but he couldn’t spot anyone. It was probably nerves. He came out of the trees on the far side of the house.

  He was fifty feet from the house, and across the garden, through the windows of the French doors, he could see a group of figures inside the house—seated in the library. Keeping low to the ground, he moved slowly across the garden.

  He edged up to the windows and looked inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Six men were seated around the large conference table near the fireplace. They were grouped around the far end of the table. On one side—Duke Kingston, Angelo Corrati, and Gilmore. On the other—Hughes, the redheaded chemist Lewis, and Calvin Clark. Clark was the only real surprise. Not a big one, but still a surprise.

  The others, yeah, he had stirred their names into the pot that had been stewing in his head for the past couple of days. But he had not considered Clark. He’d felt, he guessed, that Clark was too powerful, too important, and above all too slick to let himself get involved in something as crude and ordinary as a stable hand’s murder. Clark’s presence indicated that it was something more than that.

  From wh
ere he stood he could see everyone clearly, but their voices were indistinct, muffled by the thick glass of the French doors.

  Corrati was speaking. On the table in front of him sat an open briefcase. It was full of stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

  Rhineheart had to strain to hear, but he caught some of the words and phrases: “track odds . . . seven to one . . . a sixteen-dollar bill . . . two hundred thousand times . . . 2.8 million . . . stopover in . . . arrive four, four-thirty . . . Vegas . . . ”

  Kingston stood up and said something to the effect that although Corrati had joined their little group late and through the back door so to speak, he was nevertheless, “a valuable addition, a man from whom we can all learn something.” Then Kingston said something to Lewis, who stood up, his back to the windows, and began to speak in a low voice. The only words Rhineheart could make out were dosage and untraceability.

  He was going to have to get closer. There was a window opposite the far end of the table. It was next to the fireplace on the west side of the house. He backed away from the French doors, moved to his right through some flower beds, and found a path that led alongside the house. He followed it until the window was ten feet ahead and on his left. He was heading for it when a man stepped out from behind a hedge, pointed a gun at him, and said, “Freeze.”

  Rhineheart froze. The moon was a bright yellow ball that hung in the sky above the treetops. By its light, he could see that the man with the gun was wearing the same dark blue police-style uniform as the men at the farm entrance. A tag above the pocket said WILSON.

  “Put your hands up,” the man told Rhineheart.

  Rhineheart put his hands up.

  The guard gestured with the gun. “Turn around.”

  Rhineheart did as he was told; then something cold and hard slammed against the back of his head. He felt himself falling forward and blacking out.

  When he opened his eyes he was lying facedown in a flower bed. Voices drifted down to him.

  Kingston: “Take him down to the old stallion barn. We’re getting ready to tear it down. It’s off by itself and deserted. We’ll have to finish him there.”

  Clark: “Duke! There are three people already dead. This thing is getting out of hand.”

  Kingston: “What choice do we have, Calvin? Tell me that.”

  There was no reply.

  Tell him a choice, Calvin, Rhineheart wanted to say. Think up something.

  Kingston: “We’ll make it look like an accident. Get Doc to give him an injection of something.”

  Rhineheart tried to raise his head. A voice he didn’t recognize said, “He’s starting to wake up.”

  “Hit him again,” Kingston said. “Harder this time.”

  The blow wasn’t any harder than the first one, but it was enough to put him under: the world faded out. When it faded back in, he was sitting in a circle of light on the dirt floor of a barn, his back against a horse stall.

  Duke Kingston, Clark, Gilmore, and Kingston’s goon Borchek were standing a few feet away, staring down at him. Borchek was holding the Python, pointing it at Rhineheart, whose hands were bound behind his back with baling wire. His feet were untied. Free, in a manner of speaking. Maybe, he thought, I can tap-dance my way out of here.

  He squinted up at the source of the light, a naked bulb that dangled from a chain attached to a roof beam. The bulb cast a harsh half-circle of light that extended out for twenty feet or so. Then it ended and the rest of the barn was dark.

  For a moment Rhineheart thought he saw something, a figure, a shape, move in the darkness behind the light. Then he decided it was his imagination, or plain old fear, or both. The boogie man coming to get him.

  He looked over at Clark. “What does this do to the job offer?”

  Kingston showed Rhineheart his teeth. “Still joking, eh? Well, you goin’ to need that sense of humor, Mr. Rhineheart. Considering what we got planned for you.”

  Borchek glowered. “You want me to shut him up, Mr. Kingston?”

  Kingston shook his head. “Just watch him, Borchek. If I want anything done, I’ll let you know.”

  “I just thought—”

  Kingston silenced him with a look.

  “It’s what you get for hiring retards,” Rhineheart said.

  “Keep on with the jokes, Mr. Rhineheart. Your time is running out.”

  “How about answering a few questions before it does?”

  Kingston shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “Come on. You’re the ace when it comes to press conferences, Kingston. Just confirm a couple of things for me. Lewis discovered some kind of untraceable super drug. Brought it to you and Gilmore. You tested it on Royal Dancer in Florida. It worked. You tested it again in Arkansas by not giving it to Royal Dancer. And he lost. You tested it again on Lancelot. And somewhere along in there, Carl Walsh found out about your plot. So you killed him. And his friend Sanchez. And his girl friend. And you would have killed his wife if you could have found her. How am I doing so far?”

  “Not bad, Mr. Rhineheart. But like I say, you’re about to run out of time.”

  “How did Corrati get involved? Did Walsh go to him thinking Corrati’d help him blackmail you all? Didn’t he know that Corrati wouldn’t want any partners? I guess what I’m asking is who killed Walsh? You guys or Corrati?”

  “Does it really make any difference, Mr. Rhineheart?”

  “Let’s get this over with,” Clark said nervously.

  Kingston turned to Gilmore. “Harrison?”

  Gilmore dropped to one knee and opened the top of his medical bag. He withdrew a long, wicked-looking syringe from the bag. It was filled with a milky fluid.

  “This ought to do the job,” he said.

  Rhineheart wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he asked anyway. “What is it?”

  “It’s sodium potassinate,” Gilmore said in a flat, even voice.

  “I think I’m allergic to it,” Rhineheart said.

  No one laughed.

  “Plus,” he said, “I’m not big on needles either.”

  Gilmore stood up, holding the needle upright in the manner of a medical professional, and walked toward him.

  Rhineheart didn’t have a plan. Every private eye was supposed to have a plan for moments like this one, but he couldn’t think of one. His mind was blank.

  Gilmore moved closer.

  The way Rhineheart saw it, he could do one of two things: he could start crying and sniveling and beg Gilmore not to kill him, or he could kick the good doctor in the balls.

  Rhineheart decided to kick him in the balls. As far as plans go, it wasn’t hitting on much. It didn’t address the question of what to do with Kingston, Clark, or Borchek, who was bigger than Too Tall Jones and had a gun to boot.

  But it was something to do. Which, Rhineheart said to himself, is always better than nothing. Maybe.

  He drew his feet back as Gilmore came near, and at that moment, a familiar voice came booming out of the darkness:

  “Faaareeeze!”

  Gilmore froze. So did Borchek and Clark. Kingston spun around and faced Farnsworth, the old pro, whose shadowy outline could be seen in the darkness, poised in the classic two-handed firing stance, his weapon trained in their direction. Farnsworth had been his plan. All along. Rhineheart hadn’t known it, but the old bastard had been following him around all day, backing him up.

  “You okay, kid?”

  “I’m okay, old man.”

  Farnsworth spoke to Kingston. “Tell the big jamoke to drop the gun. Tell the horse doctor to throw away the needle. And tell both of them to do it quick, or I’ll blow a hole through all of your asses.”

  Kingston said, “You heard the man.”

  The Colt made a loud thump on the hay-strewn ground. Gilmore tossed the syringe toward the wall.

  “Untie my associate, horse doctor, and be quick about it.”

  It took Gilmore several minutes to untie Rhineheart, whose hands had gone numb from the tightness of the bonds. He rubb
ed them together as he went over and picked up his weapon.

  Farnsworth said, “Check and make sure that baby’s loaded, Rhineheart.”

  Rhineheart spun the chamber. The weapon was loaded. “It’s full,” he told Farnsworth.

  “Whhheeeewwwww.” Farnsworth let out his breath in a long sigh, and stepped forward into the light. He was smiling and there was a look of relief on his long thin face. He held up his hand to show Rhineheart his weapon. It was a thick twig. “I ain’t carried a gun since 1957,” he said and cackled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “What are we gonna do with them?” Farnsworth asked Rhineheart.

  It was a good question. Were they going to take them in? If so, where was “in”? Cresthill Farms was in Fayette County. Who had jurisdiction here? The state cops or the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office? How would either group react when a couple of gumshoes from a different part of the state walked in with one of the commonwealth’s leading citizens and an incredible story about a plot to fix the Derby? Rhineheart didn’t know for sure, but he had an idea.

  “I don’t know,” he said to Farnsworth. “Maybe we ought to kill them.”

  Duke Kingston shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you’re built that way, Mr. Rhineheart.”

  “No?” Rhineheart squeezed off a shot that whistled past Kingston’s right ear. Kingston turned pale, but didn’t flinch. He even managed a tight smile. “Maybe I was wrong,” he said.

  But he wasn’t. Rhineheart couldn’t kill the son of a bitch. Not cold like that. He gestured at the other three with the weapon. “Lie down. Next to each other. On your stomachs.”

  After some scrambling around, they did so. Rhineheart leaned over and gave each of them a little tap with the butt of the gun just below the occipital bone. It took them out. He had to tap Borchek, who had a head like a cement block, twice.

  “Wonder it didn’t dent the gun butt” was Farnsworth’s comment.

  Rhineheart waved the gun at Kingston. “Move. You’re going to be our way out of here.”

  A white pickup truck stood idling on the road outside the barn. Its lights were out. The words CRESTHILL FARMS were painted on the door.

  “Looky here,” Farnsworth said. “Isn’t that thoughtful?”