Fifty-to-One

by Charles Ardai

  Tricia watched the construction site loom as she climbed toward it from the subway station.

  One problem with a 200-acre racetrack, of course, is that even when you’ve shut it down you can’t shut it down—you can stop racing horses there, but just try to keep people out. Even if you fenced the thing in, curious neighborhood kids would find a pair of diagonal cutters and make their way inside on a dare. And the construction crew at the Aqueduct hadn’t bothered with a fence, relying instead on the low walls and shrubbery already in place to keep people out.

  Which made it pretty easy for Tricia to enter. The track was surrounded on three sides by huge empty parking lots, all converging on an entry gate to the main building, which looked like it was destined to be a combination clubhouse for high rollers and grandstand for the rank-and-file. The first two stories had been constructed and girders poking out the top showed it was due to keep climbing for at least a few stories more. There was a giant crane standing immobile by the side of the building, its steel cable dangling with a weighted ball at the end to keep it from swinging free. As you’d expect on a Sunday, no one was sitting in the cab of the crane or walking along the girders. At first glance, no one seemed to be on the grounds at all, though Tricia had to assume there was at least some security staff around, maybe making their rounds on the other side of the lot.

  Past the torn-up dirt of the racetrack itself, Tricia saw the dozen wooden buildings of the stable area and she headed over with what she feared was an excessive sense of purpose. Knowing where Barrone had met Coral once a year earlier wasn’t the same as knowing where Nicolazzo was holding her today. But what she did know was that there was a precedent for Nicolazzo going to ground here, and like the proverbial drunk with his missing keys, Tricia figured she had to start searching where the light was best.

  Tricia had to squeeze past a turnstile to get into the main area. She hiked around mounds of dirt and piles of cinderblocks, large spools with thick metal wire coiled around them, pallets filled with sacks of cement baking in the sun. The old, wooden stable buildings stood at the Belt Parkway end of the property and she headed toward them. These would be demolished sometime soon, presumably, but they hadn’t been yet, suggesting that some, at least, were still in use. Perhaps to store tools and supplies, perhaps to stall the horses that would have been housed on premises had the track still been in operation—even if they were doing all their racing at other tracks now, they had to live somewhere, and it wasn’t as though there were a lot of farms in the middle of New York.

  She took the gun out of her pocket, found a comfortable position for it in her palm, and crept up to the nearest of the long, barn-like buildings. Listening at the door, she heard snuffling and neighing inside, then a man’s voice saying something she couldn’t make out. So she wasn’t alone. Just as well to know for sure.

  Staying close to the walls, keeping to the shadows as much as possible and walking softly, she went on to the next building. This time she heard nothing at the door. She continued to a third, lower building, where she heard the ring of metal against metal, and she imagined a burly smith hammering a horseshoe, the sort you might find in an illustrated Longfellow. She peeked inside through a space between two boards, but couldn’t see anything. It was too dark within, too bright outside.

  The taller buildings resumed and she scurried past several of them, scanning the numbers painted beside each door as she went: 4, 5, 6. At the door to Stable 8, she paused to listen, heard no sign of people inside, and carefully slid the door open on its rollers, just wide enough to admit her if she squeezed through sideways. She slipped in through the opening, dragged the door shut behind her.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were stalls along both sides of an open central passage. The roof was high enough overhead that she couldn’t make it out. The only light came through cracks and crevices in the walls, plus one small, high window on the far end that threw a single spot of daylight on the straw-strewn floor. Two long banks of electric lights were turned off, and Tricia wasn’t about to turn them on.

  She passed along the row of stalls on one side, most of them empty. Halfway down she saw a silver horse, a filly two heads taller than her, with fine white hair crisscrossing over her forehead like a lace veil. The filly nickered as Tricia went by. In a wooden rack beside the stall a cardboard placard said Spiderweb and beneath this, on a chalkboard hanging from a nail, were supplied a dozen lines of information in a crabbed cursive handwriting: the horse’s feeding schedule, her training history, her ownership. Tricia peered close to make out this last. Spiderweb was owned by an outfit called the Nickels Group. Nickels—Nicolazzo? Maybe. Tricia moved on.

  The only other horse on this side was a red roan stallion named Make A Wish, also credited to the Nickels Group. She moved to the opposite side and found two more: Braddock’s Bane and Shooting Star. Four Nickels. One more, she thought, and you’d have a quarter. Or a quarterhorse.

  Come on, Tricia. Don’t get loopy.

  She made her way back to the entrance and was about to slide the door open again when she heard a sound outside: footsteps, heavy tramping ones, two men at least, and they were approaching quickly, almost at a run. She glanced around, looking for a place to conceal herself if they came in, but there was nothing—not so much as a bale of hay she could crouch behind, just the stalls themselves, and the nearest one was occupied.

  The footsteps stopped directly outside the door and she heard a voice bark, “Where is she? Where did you say you saw her?”

  Tricia’s heart stopped. She felt the weight of the gun in her hand, the pressure of the trigger against her finger. At least two men—and she had just the one bullet.

  “She was right here, goin’ from building to building,” came a voice Tricia recognized with dread as Bruno’s. “Right here,” he said again.

  Tricia heard the door’s rollers creak and shift in their track, saw the crack of daylight at the door’s edge begin widening. There was no time to think. She turned, ran to the chest-high door of the stall behind her and, climbing on the groom’s stool beside it, pushed herself over the top. She toppled onto the ground beside Shooting Star, a tall black horse with a deep chest and white markings on his lower legs. The horse shifted nervously and neighed as she gathered herself and brushed urine-scented straw off her knees. At the risk of being seen, she stood up, held one hand to the horse’s cheek and the other to his neck, and stroked gently, whispering, “Sh...sh...” She thought back to childhood and the first stable she’d ever been in, just outside Aberdeen, one Coral had taken her to when she’d been little. The horses had frightened her then. It wasn’t the horses that frightened her now.

  Shooting Star whinnied and Tricia redoubled her efforts to calm him. The door, meanwhile, had slid open to its full width, letting in a wide slash of sunlight that fell across the floor like a guillotine blade. Through the open top portion of the stall door, Tricia could see a long shadow step forward, one arm bent at the elbow and holding a pistol before it. She dropped back to a crouch. She heard the man go by, followed a moment later by a second.

  Tricia inched over to the corner of the stall beside the door and then, with her back pressed against the wall, stood once more. There was a wide wooden post here at the border between this stall and the next that topped out around seven feet, and standing behind it she was fairly sure they couldn’t see her. She’d stopped whispering to the horse once the men came in and now she was too far away to stroke him, but from her hiding place in the corner she held him with her eyes, and though it felt foolish she raised one index finger to her lips. Would it help? Who could say? But Shooting Star stared back and stayed quiet. All Tricia could hear were the steps of the men as they walked to the far end of the barn and came back—that, and the thudding of her pulse in her ears.

  “Hey,” one of the men called, the one who wasn’t Bruno. His back was to her at the moment—both men’s were. “We know you’re in here. We won’t hurt you if you
come out.” The false friendliness in his voice was chilling. He made almost no effort at all to sound as though he meant it.

  Tricia tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, making no sound. She raised the gun, shrank into the shadow.

  “Come on,” the man said, “don’t make us do this the hard way. You’re just going to make us mad.”

  When they got no response, Bruno said, “Maybe it was the next stable over.”

  “You said this one.”

  “I thought it was this one,” Bruno said, “but maybe it was the next.”

  “Well, why don’t you go look there then.” The other man sounded annoyed. “If she’s here, I’ll flush her out. If you see her, yell.”

  “Okay,” Bruno said. Then: “Remember, she’s got a gun now.”

  “You really think I’d forget that?” the other man said. “Now get over there.”

  “Okay,” Bruno said again, and Tricia heard him leaving.

  Remember, she’s got a gun—well, of course Bruno would know that. But now the other guy did, too, which was a shame. On the positive side, the odds had just improved: There was now only one man here, which lined up better with the one bullet. Except that the sound of a gunshot would surely bring Bruno running right back in...

  “I’ll count to three,” the remaining man said, his voice fading as he paced further away and then growing louder as he returned. “If you’re not out here by the time I reach three...” He stopped pacing and his voice grew darker, nastier. “Let’s just say you’ll be sorry. We understand each other, right? Uncle Nick wants you alive—but that leaves me plenty of options. Plenty. You’ve only gotten a little taste so far.”

  Tricia stood in the darkness, shaking. There was a part of her that wanted to step out, gun blazing, take this man down before he knew what hit him. But could she hit him? It was far from certain. She’d fired guns before, every kid in South Dakota did, but not for a while now, and not in a darkened barn, and never at a target that was armed and ready to shoot back.

  Meanwhile, there was another part of her that wanted to surrender—drop the gun, step out with her hands up, tell the guy she had Nicolazzo’s photos and demand that he take her to him unharmed, untouched. It might work. It might. But it might not. And even if it did, then what? Nicolazzo would have his pictures back and she’d have no gun and no way out, nor any way to help Coral get out.

  “If you’re in here,” the man bellowed, “I’m going to find you. You can’t get away.”

  Tricia heard the door to one of the stalls—it sounded far enough away to be the one on the other end—swing open and slam against the stable wall. A few footsteps, then another door swung and slammed, this one a little nearer. “There’s nowhere you can hide. Don’t you understand that?”

  She understood. She understood it fine.

  At the rate he was going, he’d reach her end of the row in seconds—thirty seconds? Forty-five? And then she’d be forced to make a decision. A terrible decision with terrible consequences, whichever way she decided it.

  Another door slammed and she heard the man leap into the newly opened stall with a loud “Hah!” A moment later he stepped out again.

  “You are making me very angry,” he said, and he certainly sounded it. Almost to himself, he added, “I’m gonna make you hurt real bad.” Less a threat than a promise.

  He was just two stalls away now.

  Tricia tried to will her right hand to stop shaking. She steadied it with her left, held the gun between both, fit both index fingers inside the trigger guard. Her breath was coming fast now, and she could hardly believe he couldn’t hear it, that and the pounding of her heart. It was a cacophony to her. Shooting Star whinnied beside her—he probably smells the fear on me, Tricia thought, and why not? I must stink of it.

  “Shut up, you nag,” the man said. He stopped at the stall beside Tricia’s, put his hand on the door latch.

  He yanked it open, let the door swing free, and began another exclamation—Hah! or Huh! or something of that sort—but just what it was Tricia would never find out since from inside the stall came the explosion of a gunshot and the man fell backwards clutching his chest.

  35.

  Kill Now, Pay Later

  Shooting Star reared up and bucked wildly; the other three horses sounded like they were doing the same. Dodging the horse’s flailing hooves, Tricia flung herself at the door to the stall, scrabbled up and over and landed in a heap on the ground. She saw the man lying there, blood pooling around him, just a few feet away. From the open stall a figure came forward, gun in hand—

  “Don’t shoot!” Tricia screamed and swung her hands up, thinking too late that maybe she should have dropped her gun first. That would’ve made for a more convincing surrender. But instead of blasting her, the figure lowered its own gun.

  “Trixie?” Erin said. “Is that you?”

  “Erin?” Tricia said. “How did you—never mind, you’ll tell me later. We’ve got to get out of here before Bruno comes back.”

  “Hold on,” Erin said, and bending over the fallen man, calmly put another pair of bullets into him. Judging by his lack of any reaction, they were superfluous; but judging by the clicking of Erin’s gun she would gladly have given him more if she hadn’t run out of bullets. “There,” she said, to the corpse. “How’s that for a little taste?”

  “Jesus, Erin!” Tricia stood up, pulled at Erin’s arm. “Come—”

  But Bruno was filling the doorway now, silhouetted in the light from outside. They ducked to either side as a twin-barreled shotgun gun swung up and spat flame at them. The hammering of the horses’ hooves against the stall doors echoed like a further fusillade.

  Bruno ran between them to where his fellow gunman lay. “What did you do?” he shouted, swinging his shotgun back around, trying to find them in the shadows. With his other hand he pulled a second gun from his belt, a handgun. “If you...if you killed him, you’ll pay for it!”

  “Probably,” Tricia heard Erin say, “but not today.” Then came the sound of a door being unlatched and swinging open, followed by a half-ton of angry horse erupting from the stall.

  Tricia felt a hand on her arm, pulling her toward the entrance, saw Bruno, illuminated by brief flashes of gunfire, shooting point-blank into the horse’s pale brown torso but making not the slightest dent in his momentum. She saw Bruno go down, still firing, saw Braddock’s Bane tumble onto him; then Erin pulled her out into daylight and they both began running at full speed, arms and legs pumping hard, toward the front gate in the distance.

  ‘There!” someone behind them shouted, and a pair of gunshots chased them across the gravel walk and onto the track. Tricia expected a bullet to catch her at any instant.

  “You! Stop!”

  More shots whizzed by, one tearing up the dirt by their feet and spattering clods against their shins.

  The turnstile seemed very far off. And past it was the largest of the parking lots—nothing but blank concrete there, nothing to hide behind: not trees, not cars, nothing. If they could make it through the lot to the sidewalk they’d have a better chance, but even there...

  And that was assuming they made it to and through the turnstile. Doing so would require them to get past this no man’s land in the center of the track, half planted with trees and shrubs, half empty soil. On the barren side, Tricia saw an earth grader standing silent and unhelpful; on the other, a paddock where a track walker with remarkably bad timing was trying to keep the bay stallion he’d brought out for a trot from running each time a gunshot split the air.

  Erin, meanwhile, was falling behind—she didn’t have the benefit of dancing two shows a night to build up her stamina and endurance, not to mention the lingering effects of whatever mistreatment she’d suffered at the hands of Nicolazzo and the gunman she’d put down back in the stable.

  “Can you make it?” Tricia said.

  “Do I have a choice?” Erin said. She stumbled and almost fell, but she caught and righted herself, kept goin
g.

  Behind them, Tricia heard the pounding of feet, the heavy breathing and cursing of their pursuers. There were at least three of them, maybe four, and no more than forty yards away.

  “Is there a car somewhere?” Tricia said. “Something we could use...?”

  “Just that thing,” Erin said, jerking her head toward the grader. “If you know how to jumpstart it.”

  She didn’t—but glancing over the opposite way, Tricia had another thought. She angled off to the left, running along a line of low bushes.

  “Trixie! It’s—it’s longer that way—”

  It was. But it also intersected the paddock where the walker was working, with some success, to calm his horse. He looked up as they burst in on him.

  “We need that horse,” Tricia said, gesturing with her gun. His mouth opened, but before he could say anything she grabbed the reins out of his hands and hoisted herself up onto the horse’s back, bunching her dress around her waist, modesty be damned. She kept the gun trained on the man with her other hand.