Fifty-to-One

by Charles Ardai

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Because we can go there and see if we can find anyone else who remembers these guys.”

  “It was a month ago!”

  “What bar was it, Renata?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “It was a month ago. I had a couple of drinks in me. Maybe more than a couple.” Tricia kept staring at her and so did the gun. “One of the ones on the west side, maybe Royal’s Brew or the Rusty Bucket. Probably the Bucket. I’m not sure.”

  “You’re not sure.”

  She shook her head. “They pretty much all look alike. My father used the same crew to build them all.”

  “You know what I think?” Tricia said. “I think these two men in this mysterious bar are like the three men you said were watching us just now on the street, the ones who were supposed to kill me when you dropped your cigarette. You’re a liar, Renata, and not even a good one.”

  Tricia stood.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” Renata said.

  Tricia put the gun in her pocket, but kept her hand in there.

  “Let’s see this bar of yours,” she said. “Then I’ll decide.”

  41.

  Zero Cool

  The Rusty Bucket was a wood-paneled bar, inside and out, and at first glance it did look a lot like every other dark, nondescript bar in the city: high stools, low lights, assorted pictures and gewgaws hanging from the walls. But when you walked through the door you realized the place had a certain atmosphere of its own, less the result of its décor than of the people clustered around its tables and in the booths against the back wall. They were young, for one thing, many just a year or two older than Tricia and some of the girls not even that. The men wore striped t-shirts and worn dungarees and tennis shoes or moccasins with no socks; one had kicked his off and was barefoot. Only a few were entirely clean-shaven, the rest sporting combinations of sideburns and goatees and unkempt half beards. The girls wore their hair in horsetails or just hanging straight to their shoulders, with no makeup on and hand-rolled cigarettes burning between their fingers.

  There was no jukebox; instead, a small stage had been constructed out of low wooden blocks, and a combo—two men and a woman—sat on chairs there, sluggishly stroking their instruments. The woman pulled a low, slow melody out of her guitar while the men accompanied her on bongos and bass.

  “What kind of place is this?” Tricia whispered, feeling self conscious.

  “It’s where the far out crowd gathers,” Renata said, her voice rich with contempt. “Especially on weekends, when they’re not in the fancy schools mommy and daddy are shelling out for.”

  “It’s different during the week?”

  “During the day it is. Then it’s just a bar. The rest of the time, it’s—well, you can see.” She folded her sunglasses and put them away in her purse.

  The girl stopped strumming and the crowd gave her performance a light spray of applause, some murmurs of approval. In the silence that followed, glasses were emptied and filled, voices raised and lowered. Tricia heard a match flare and then smelled the cloying odor she remembered from the artists’ house in Brooklyn.

  “So this is the place,” Tricia said, “where you heard your two master criminals plotting?”

  “I told you, I’m not sure. You remember every place you’ve ever been?”

  “The important ones I do.” She prodded Renata in the back. “Let’s see if the bartender remembers anything.”

  “He’s probably not even here during the week.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The bartender was a slope-shouldered, narrow-faced character with long arms and long skinny fingers and black Buddy Holly glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Behind them, his eyes were red.

  “Can I ask you something?” Tricia said.

  “Lay it on me,” the bartender said.

  “You work here during the week, or only weekends?”

  “Only when I need bread,” the man said with a grin, “which means I slave all seven, sister.”

  “Well, my friend here,” Tricia said, “tells me she was in a couple of weeks back, saw two guys here, sitting in one of those booths, talking about something pretty important. We’re trying to track them down.”

  “All right,” the bartender said. “I dig. What’d they look like?”

  Through her pocket, Tricia nudged Renata with the gun.

  “I don’t know...one was about your height,” Renata said, “but a little bigger around, huskier. He had a beard, or the start of one, anyway.”

  “You just described half the people here,” the bartender said. “And the other?”

  “A few years older, a little smaller, a little thinner. Less hair—like maybe he was starting to lose it. No beard.”

  “You’re putting me on, right? You want to know if I’ve seen a couple of guys, one’s taller, one’s shorter, one’s heavier, one’s skinnier. Well, sure I have, and so’s everyone else who’s ever been to an Abbott and Costello picture.”

  “Thanks, mister,” Tricia said. “That’s a lot of help.”

  “Cool down, mama, don’t you blow your top,” the bartender said. “I didn’t say I couldn’t help, you just got to give me more than that to chew on. You remember anything else?” he asked Renata. “What those cats were wearing? What they sounded like?”

  “They sounded like New Yorkers. The older one might have been from Brooklyn, it sounded like. The other one, the bigger one with the beard...I don’t know, could’ve been from upstate somewhere. Sort of a flat voice, like Warren Spahn—you know what he sounds like? The ballplayer?” The bartender shook his head. “You ever hear Harold Arlen, when he sings his own stuff?”

  The bartender nodded this time. “Strictly dullsville—not my scene at all. But yeah, I’ve heard his sides.”

  “Well, like that.”

  He mulled it over.

  “You remember what they were having?”

  “No.”

  “What day it was?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “But what day of the week?”

  “No.”

  “What time of day?”

  “Lunchtime. A little after noon.”

  “Two guys a month ago at lunchtime? That’s all you’ve got?”

  “That’s all.”

  He mulled some more.

  “Strikeout,” he said finally. “Sorry, baby. I come up dry.”

  “Well,” Tricia said, “there you go.”

  “I told you—” Renata said.

  “You told me lots of things,” Tricia said.

  The bartender waved at the selection of liquor behind him. “Can I get you wrens anything else? Something to drink?”

  “Thanks, but no. We’ve got another bar to try. My friend’s got one more shot to get this right.” Tricia started to pull Renata away. But Renata yanked her arm out of Tricia’s grip, and sat down firmly on one of the stools.

  “Actually,” she said, smiling up at the bartender, “I’d love a drink.”

  He looked from one of them to the other. “Fine,” he said, a little uneasily. “What’s your kick?”

  “Nothing,” Tricia said. “We’ve got somewhere to be.”

  “I’m staying,” Renata said. “You run along. I’ll see you later.”

  “No, Renata, we’re leaving.”

  “Or what?” Renata said. She turned to the bartender: “You won’t believe what this one’s been telling me she’d do to me if I don’t do what she says.”

  “What’s that?”

  “See how she’s got her hand in her pocket there?” Renata said. “She says—”

  “Renata,” Tricia said.

  “She says,” Renata said, “that she’s got a gun in there.”

  “Renata—”

  “A gun?” the bartender said and laughed. Then he saw Renata wasn’t laughing. “Man, that’s not cool.”

  “She’s joking,” Tricia said.

  “I’m not joking,” Renata said. �
�She said she’d shoot me if I didn’t do what she says.”

  “You said that to her? That you’d plug her? That’s not cool at all.”

  “Of course I didn’t say that,” Tricia said.

  “You got a rod in there?”

  Tricia smiled weakly. She pulled her hand out of her pocket, empty.

  “No rod,” Tricia said.

  “I’ve got eyes,” the bartender said. “I see it there in your pocket.”

  Sure enough, the outline was showing, plain as day.

  Some of the other people sitting at the bar were looking at her now.

  “It’s not a real gun,” Tricia said. “It’s just a prop, from this show we’re doing.”

  “We’re not in any show,” Renata said. “That’s a lie.”

  “Listen,” the bartender said, “I don’t know what’s going on here—but when you start bringing firepower into it, that’s a matter for the Man.” He lifted a black telephone onto the bar from underneath.

  She didn’t know which ‘Man’ he meant—the police or his employer. Either way, though—

  “That’s not necessary,” Tricia said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Better believe you are,” the bartender said as she backed away, keeping her hands in the air. He kept his on the telephone receiver. “Bringing a piece into the Rusty Bucket. That’s way uncool. That’s zero cool. That’s negative cool.”

  He patted Renata’s hand and she put on a hurt-and-frightened face to suit.

  “Okay, Renata,” Tricia said, “you win. But what exactly do you expect me to tell your uncle?”

  “Anything you want, long as it’s not about me.”

  “And why shouldn’t I tell him about you?”

  “I didn’t take his money,” Renata said. “That’s the truth. I didn’t take it and I don’t have it. You tell him otherwise and you’ll get a second innocent person killed.”

  “Innocent!” Tricia barked. “You’re about as innocent as Mamie Van Doren.”

  The bartender lifted the telephone receiver. They could all hear the dial tone.

  He said, “If you’re not gone in five—”

  She was gone in two.

  42.

  Shooting Star and Spiderweb

  “Great,” Mike said. “Just great.” He turned to Erin. “And you—did you get the call?”

  “Like Billy Sunday on a Saturday night.” Erin lifted a cocktail napkin from the bar. She’d scrawled an address on it. Mike took one look at it and said, “That’s the pier. Where the boat was tied up.”

  “Well, it’s where they want you to bring the money,” Erin said, to Tricia. “And the pictures.”

  “The pictures are easy.” She patted her pocket. “The money—that’s another story.”

  “It sure is,” Erin said. “But I haven’t exactly been sitting on my rump while the two of you went all over town chasing wild geese. I’ve made arrangements.”

  “What arrangements?”

  “We need three million dollars, right? Or anyway a box that looks like it’s got three million dollars in it. You’d think the box would be the easy part, but actually that wasn’t so. Hope you don’t mind that I emptied this.” She dragged a footlocker out from behind the bar.

  “Fine with me,” Mike said.

  “Now for the three million dollars part.” She swung the lid open.

  No one would have mistaken the contents for money—the hand-cut slips of paper were the right size and shape but they’d clearly been cut out of newsprint or, in some cases, what looked like pages of the phone book. “That’s not going to fool anyone,” Tricia said.

  “Not the way it is now, it won’t,” Erin said. “But with enough layers of actual bills on top it’ll pass inspection.”

  “You want to tell me where these layers of actual bills are going to come from?” Tricia said.

  “By all means,” Erin said. “They’re going to come from a Mister Reynaldo Bruges.”

  “And who is mister...?”

  “Bruges,” she said, pronouncing it like she was clearing her throat. “He’s a fine Argentine gentleman who sometimes calls Madame Helga to book a model or two for a party he’s throwing. For some high roller.”

  “ ‘High roller’ meaning—”

  “The man’s a bookie,” Erin said. “Takes bets, makes book. Hands over layers of actual bills when one of your bets comes in.”

  “That’s your plan? Place some bets and hope one of them comes in?”

  “Who said anything about hoping? I’m talking about a sure thing.”

  Tricia saw Mike nodding out of the corner of her eye. “What? What am I missing here? What’s this sure thing you’re so...sure about?”

  “The third race at Belmont,” Erin said, handing over a copy of the Racing Form. There were a batch of bill-sized holes in the front page, but the “Races of the Week” listings on the next page were intact. There were a dozen horses listed for the third race. Ten of the names she didn’t recognize. Two she did. She’d briefly shared a stall with one of them.

  “Uncle Nick’s not going to leave anything to chance,” Erin said. “If he’s got people sticking around to pick up the purse, he knows there’s going to be a purse for them to pick up.”

  “You’re devious,” Mike said.

  “Why, thank you,” Erin said. “I try.”

  “How much money did you put down?” Mike asked.

  “All that Reynaldo was willing to float me, or more precisely all he was willing to float Charley. I told him I was putting the bet on for him.”

  Tricia said, “And you put it on...”

  “Shooting Star and Spiderweb, each to win and then the two of them to win and place, either combination. We’ll clear more than eleven thousand dollars if they do. That’ll fill the box nicely.”

  “And if they don’t win?”

  “Then Charley owes some money he can’t afford to pay,” Erin said. “It won’t be the first time. I’d say he’s got bigger worries right now than that.” She took Tricia by the shoulder. “But they will win. Nicolazzo’s not a gambling man, not with his own horses on his own track.”

  “You think Belmont’s his track?” Mike said.

  “His and his friends.” She turned the knob on the old RCA Mike kept beside the cash register. With a soft crackle the sound faded in. She tuned it, stations passing in a blur till she got to the far end of the dial. “...and it’s Curtain Call and Rented A Tent, Curtain Call coming up on the outside, Curtain Call taking the lead—no, it’s Rented A Tent, Curtain Call and Rented A Tent, they’re neck-and-neck, I’m telling you, this one’s gonna be close, it’s—it’s—It’s Curtain Call, folks. Followed by Rented A Tent, and Brassy Lady coming in to show. Those are your results, folks, coming to you live from the Belmont Race Track, where every race is a winner.” A trumpeter played a few notes of “Off to the Races” and the program went to commercial.

  “How many more to go?” Tricia asked.

  Erin looked at the paper. “Two. That was the first.”

  They sat impatiently through the second race, which took a while to get started and another while in the post-race analysis afterwards. Then came some more words from the sponsor. But eventually the horses were at the starting gate for the third race. The tension couldn’t have been any worse at the track than it was in Mike’s bar.

  “And...” came the announcer’s voice, “they’re off!”

  Tricia found her palms sweating, her nails biting into the flesh as the horses rounded the first turn. You could barely hear the hoofbeats in the background behind the sound of the announcer’s yammering, but they were there, like her own thundering heartbeat. The horses’ names became part of the general din, a swarm of unfamiliar sounds among which she desperately tried to catch the ones she knew.

  “It’s Will She Shine in the lead, well ahead of the pack, Shooting Star behind her, two lengths back, King’s Ransom and Sun Tomorrow and Spiderweb tussling for the number three spot...it’s Will She Shine and will she ev
er, this race is hers to lose, gentlemen, Shooting Star’s coming up but they’ve passed the halfway mark, there’s no way he’ll catch her—”

  Tricia had never been to a horse race in her life, had never listened to one on the radio before, never watched one on television; she’d ridden, like every other kid in South Dakota, but this was new to her, and she didn’t care for it. It was too frenzied, too loud, too desperate—and there was too much at stake.

  “...the race to place is opening up as Spiderweb pulls out in front, she’s coming up from behind...Shooting Star’s falling back, it’s Spiderweb and Shooting Star, Will She Shine out in front, then Spiderweb and Shooting Star, no, no, Shooting Star and Spiderweb—wait—” A sudden roar rose from the crowd. “Will She Shine is down, folks, she’s fallen, it’s a bad one—” The announcer was shouting now. “And Shooting Star takes the lead—it’s Shooting Star and Spiderweb, now Sun Tomorrow’s making a move, it’s Shooting Star and Spiderweb and Sun Tomorrow, Sun Tomorrow’s coming up, it’s Shooting Star and Sun Tomorrow, no, no, now Spiderweb—” He fell silent for a moment and you could hear the clatter as the horses hit the finish line. “My gosh, what a race. It’s Shooting Star, Spiderweb by a nose, and Sun Tomorrow, followed by King’s Ransom in fourth, and poor, poor Will She Shine out of the action, still lying in the track, the medics are coming over—call her Will She Race now, folks, or Will She Even Walk. The jury’s out on what this means for this golden, golden horse. It’s a sad day at the Belmont Race Track, listeners, a tremendous upset. Your final results: Shooting Star, Spiderweb, Sun Tomorrow. More in a moment.”

  The trumpets blared, and then a Pall Mall jingle began.

  Tricia felt her breath coming fast. Her face felt flushed. “That poor horse,” she said. “You think Nicolazzo could possibly have known she’d fall...?”

  “Possibly known?” Erin said. “I’m sure he paid the jockey to do it.”

  “That’s sickening,” Tricia said.

  “Add it to his tab,” Erin said, picking up the phone. “Now let’s get our money.”

  43.

  The Murderer Vine

  The taxi let them out at the foot of the Flatiron Building, just a mile or so south of Mike’s place.