Parker said, “How would that work?”
“A fella goes to the track, he bets a thousand dollars on a long shot on every race, he drops eight thousand that day. Just that day. That money stays in the system, because he did it with credit cards, but a lot of little penny ante bets from other people disappear. Bets made with cash. So the guy didn’t give the politician the eight thousand, he just lost it at the track, but a little later it shows up in a politician’s pocket.”
“The horses gave it to him.”
“That’s about it,” Lindahl agreed. “When I found out about it, I was just stunned. We never had dope at the track, we never had fixed races, we never had ringers, we never had the mob, and now this. I talked to one of the execs, he didn’t see the problem. They’re just helping out some friends, nobody from the track is making any money off it. This is just trying to get around some of those stupid pain-in-the-ass regulations from Washington.”
“Makes it sound good,” Parker said.
“But it isn’t good.” Lindahl swigged beer. “This is just corruption everywhere you look, the politicians, the track, the whole idea of sports. I talked it over with my wife, we talked about it for months, she told me it was none of my business, I’d lose my job, I’d lose everything. We never had a lot of money, she said if I threw our life away she wouldn’t stick around. But I couldn’t help it, I finally went to the state police.”
“You wear a wire?”
“Yes, I did.” Lindahl looked agonized. “That’s the part I really regret,” he said. “If I just said look, this is going on, then I’m just the guy who saw it is all. But the prosecutors leaned on me, they got me to help them make their case. And then, at the end, the politics was just too strong for them, it all got swept under the carpet, and nothing happened to anybody but me.”
“You knew that was going to happen.”
“I suppose I did,” Lindahl said, and drank some more of his beer. “They talked me into it, but I suppose I talked myself into it, too. Thinking it was best for the track, can you believe that? Not best for me, best for some goddam racetrack named after cow feed, I should have my head examined.”
“Too late,” Parker said.
Lindahl sighed. “Yes, it is,” he said. “Everybody told me don’t worry, there’s whistle-blower laws, they can’t touch you.” He gestured with the beer bottle, indicating the room. “You see where I am. My wife was true to her word, she went off with her widowed sister. I haven’t had a job for four years. I get a little disability from when a horse rolled over me, years ago, I don’t even limp any more, but I’m the wrong age and the wrong background and in the wrong part of the country to find anybody to hire me to do anything. Even flipping burgers, they don’t want somebody my age.”
“No, they don’t,” Parker said. “So you’ve been kicking yourself that you didn’t get even. Because you think you could get even. How?”
“I ran those buildings for years,” Lindahl said. “I’ve still got up-to-date keys for every door out there. I still go out every once in a while, when there isn’t any meet going on, when it’s shut down like a museum, and I just walk around it. Every once in a while, if I find a door with a new key, I borrow a spare from the rack and make a copy for myself.”
“You can get in and out.”
“I can not only get in and out,” Lindahl said, “I know where to get in and out. I know where the money goes, and where the money waits, and where the money’s loaded up for the bank, and where the money’s stored till the armored car gets there. I know where everything is and how to get to everything. During a meet, the place is guarded 24/7, but I know how to slide a truck in there, three in the morning, no one the wiser. I know how to get in, and then I know how to carry a heavy weight out.”
Lindahl had already carried a heavy weight out of that place, but that wasn’t what he meant. Parker said, “So once they cost you your wife and your job, you decided to rip them off, get a new stake, go away and retire in comfort.”
“That’s right,” Lindahl said. “I’ve been thinking about nothing else for four years.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“Because I’m a useless spineless coward,” Lindahl said, and finished his beer.
3
Or it could be,” Parker said, “you’re just not that dumb.”
Lindahl frowned at him. “In what way?”
“You go in there some night,” Parker said, “three in the morning with your truck and your keys and your inside knowledge, and you load the truck up with their cash, and when they find the cash gone next morning, nothing broken into, what’s the first thing they say? They say, ‘Do we have a disgruntled ex-employee around here?’”
“Oh, I know that,” Lindahl said, and laughed at himself, shaking his head. “That was a part of the whole idea. It wasn’t just the money I wanted, was it? It was revenge. I want them to know I got back at them, and not a goddam thing they can do about it.”
“You’re just gonna disappear.”
“It’s happened.”
“Less than it used to,” Parker told him. “Right now I’m sitting here listening to you instead of getting to some other part of the country because I don’t have any safe ID.”
“Well, you stirred them up,” Lindahl said. “You robbed their bank.”
“Robbing their track will stir them up, too.”
“Let me tell you the idea,” Lindahl said. “The way the track operates, the losers pay the winners, so the track never has to start off with cash. They take in enough from the first race to pay the winners, plus some more, and go from there. The track take is about twenty percent, that’s the piece I’m after. At the end of the day, the cash and the credit card slips are all put in boxes and on carts, and the carts ride down to the basement in the freight elevator. They’re wheeled down the corridor to what they call the safe room, because it’s all concrete block, no windows, and only the one door that’s metal and kept locked. Just past that is the door to the ramp that comes up to ground level at the end of the clubhouse. That door is kept locked, and the gate at the top of the ramp is kept locked. Monday through Friday, the armored car comes an hour after the track closes, backs down the ramp, loads on the day’s take. Saturday and Sunday they don’t come at all, and they don’t show up until eight Monday morning, when they pick up the whole weekend’s take.”
“So your idea,” Parker said, “is go in there Sunday night.”
Lindahl shook his head. “Saturday night,” he said. “Those boxes are heavy. Once the pallet is put down there on Saturday, it isn’t touched again till Monday morning. I go in there Saturday night with boxes look just like their boxes, because I know their boxes. I take the full ones, I leave the empty ones. Now I’ve got thirty-six hours before anybody knows anything. How far could I get in thirty-six hours, spending only cash, leaving no trail?”
Everybody leaves a trail, but there was no point explaining things to Lindahl, since it was all a fantasy, anyway. Parker might be able to make use of Lindahl’s access if things were quieter around here and if he could collect a string of two or three sure guys, but there was no way for Lindahl himself to reach into that particular fire and not get burned.
It wasn’t Parker’s job to tell an amateur he was an amateur, to remind him of things like a driver’s license, license plates, fingerprints, or the suspicions created by spending cash in a credit card economy. So he said, “You gonna take the parrot with you?”
Lindahl was surprised at the abrupt change of subject, and then surprised again when he saw it wasn’t a change of subject, after all. “I never thought about that,” he said, and laughed at himself again. “Be on the lookout for a man and a parrot.” Turning to look at the parrot as though he’d never noticed it before, he said, “That’s who I am these last few years, isn’t it? Who else is gonna get a parrot that doesn’t talk?”