I found Jimmy Cox at track security. He had Arnie’s check from the bookkeeper. I jammed it in my rear pocket. It was about two hours before the banks closed; after that, everything would be buttoned up awaiting Buford. I headed down the shed row to Arnie’s barn. I propositioned everybody loading a horse. There were a couple of vacancies going to Monmouth but nothing else. And nobody was heading for Fairgrounds.
Arnie had one stall converted for use as a feed room. It contained some feed and hay along with assorted training paraphernalia. Tack adorned one wall. In addition there was a small table with a single chair. I plopped down to ponder my next move. A sign to the right of the stall opening, at eye level, caught my attention:
No good deed goes unpunished.
Anonymous.
I read it several times. There aren’t many things certain in this world, but if there is one universal truth, Anonymous has grasped the essence of it. Anybody in the P.I. business will testify to that. Anybody in any business, I suspect, would agree. You want tangible proof, look at my current good deed status.
I checked the two colts in the next stalls over. They seemed okay. I went back to the tiny table to study the situation. I didn’t want to let Arnie down, but I was clearly out of options. I put my head in my hands and cogitated over my next move.
“This is a stickup!”
I uncovered my eyes to behold a husky fellow with a bent nose standing in the stall entrance with an adhesive-backed deodorant in hand.
“Who are you?” the visitor asked. “Where’s Arnie?”
I explained my presence in the stall, which I noticed did have a subtle stench about it. I asked the stickup man to respond in kind.
“George Foreman,” he said, extending his hand.
“Hold on,” I said. “You ain’t George Foreman, you don’t look nothin’ like him.”
“Not the boxing George Foreman,” he explained. “I’m the horse training George Foreman. I keep my string a coupla stalls down the shedrow.”
George asked after Arnie’s health and then explained that his dog Alfred had wandered off earlier and had elected to dump a load in the corner of Arnie’s office stall. Unfortunately, some of it went up under the stall partition and couldn’t be retrieved; hence, the stickup.
“In the supermarket I had to fight off several thousand crazed women swinging water jugs and flashlights to get this deodorant,” George said. “I hope Arnie appreciates it.”
George and his string were leaving within the hour for Belmont in New York. He was sympathetic to my plight but could offer little help. He prepared the deodorant and pressed it onto the back wall under a nylon halter. He wished me good luck and disappeared through the stall opening.
A few seconds later he returned. “I just remembered something,” he said. “My sister lives in West Palm Beach, about fifty miles up the road. She has a few hunter jumpers she keeps up there. She’s got a two-horse trailer she almost never uses. She might let you use it if you have some way to get it. If you want, I’ll give her a call.”
I tossed this idea about. Arnie had a half-ton pickup, but he had the keys at the hospital, and all the car switching and the drive to West Palm would eat up a lot of time and time was quickly running out. Besides, who would drive the truck to Louisiana? Then I had my inspiration: Tommy Brokenbridge. He had a van with a V8 and a trailer hitch. He could really use seven hundred and fifty dollars. I know what you’re thinking, but I had to toss something to George’s sister for the trailer and I deserved something for my anguish. Besides, I knew Tommy was desperate enough to work cheap. And best of all, him and the evil accordion would be out of my fife. I made a mental note to give Tommy only half up front — three hundred fifty. That would give him some incentive not to sell the trailer before he started back. There was little doubt he would return. Florida numbers betting was the only fife he knew. It was a lifestyle not easily accommodated elsewhere.
George cleared it with his sister and gave me written directions to her place in Wellington, a horse community in West Palm Beach. Swine agreed to check on Arnie’s colts while I enlisted Tommy’s aid.
Going south was a breeze, just a few cars. A check issued on Calder Race Course is solid gold at any bank in Florida, but I’ve suffered a few unfortunate setbacks in my banking career over time. In the interest of haste and to avoid problems I bypassed my own bank and cashed it at the bank it was written on. With the money warming my pocket, I headed back to the office and the Sunbelt parking lot to look for my musical friend Tommy.
I could see a problem developing. Tommy was no doubt the most ceaseless nitwit I’d ever run across in my travels. But he was psychotic in his habits. He did everything by the numbers. He was methodical in the time and sequence of his bets. He timed his trip to the corner store for lottery tickets to the second. What I’m saying is, he’s predictable. Tommy runs a tighter schedule than the airlines. When I had left earlier, he’d started an early accordion night. If anything, he should be staggering around with the accordion or passed out in his van by now. But the van was gone. Something was amiss. Then came more trouble: Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
At least that’s what everybody called them behind their backs. Humbierto, Diaz, and Louis ran the Cuban bolita in Little Havana. Never was clear who the big cheese was, but I always suspected Huey. Diaz and Louis always dressed elegantly — suit and tie, shined shoes, the whole gangster bit. Huey was different. Braced on either side by the well-manicured Dewey and Louie, Huey stood before me in my own office smiling at me under his ragged, burrito-infested mustache, sporting ragged denim shorts and shower thongs. His English was pretty good.
“Where he es, Brokenbreedge?” Huey wanted to know.
I went around my desk and sat down. “I got one word for you guys: Adios!”
I knew they probably wouldn’t mess with me. They were businessmen first. As such, they were aware of my own reputation and connections. They commenced to argue among themselves in Spanish. Even in Spanish the word relámpago is tough to mistake. As the argument heated up, relámpago seemed to punctuate every other sentence.
It didn’t take long to figure out what was happening here. The head office of the Cuban bolita wouldn’t be out trying to collect from Tommy. They had knucklebusters for that. They were looking for Lightning Rod. That could only mean one thing. Lightning had made off with their collection money.
It fit together. Lightning was terrified of the coming hurricane, and Tommy was near broke. It seemed pretty clear that Tommy and Lightning had absconded with the swag.
Huey then asked me if I had seen Lightning Rod lately. I told him the truth: that Lightning and Tommy were here earlier but not now. The group pondered that for a bit, then left. They were still discussing the situation at the top of their collective voices well into the parking lot. There was no chance that Huey and company would bring the cops into this. Lightning was away clean, or so it seemed.
None of this was helping me at all. I made a call to George’s sister and told her I wouldn’t be coming for the trailer. I guessed the only thing left was to sit and brave it out. I made a call to Calder and talked to Jimmy Cox in security. I told him that Arnie’s horses were staying.
“We’re putting all the horses still here into the receiving barns where we can button up and keep an eye on them,” he told me. “You want me to have Swine take Arnie’s horses over now?” he asked.