GET ME MR. SMITHERS, DEAR.
Suitcase. Suitcase! the girl screeched. I don't think he can hear me, Mr. Two-Tie, she said, he just went out the office in a big hurry. He didn't even stop to put on his coat.
I can wait. Run after him, dear. Two-Tie gazed out his back window at the stale snow, which molded a bunch of junked counter stools from the Ritzy Lunch into giant egg cups. When his mother went into Levindale at the age of 92, the last year of her life, they used to bring her an egg every morning in an egg cup like that. He liked to come in at six a.m. and be the one to feed it to her, when he was in the city. He liked taking care of some living thing he loved. Why hadn't he seen that when he was still with Lillian? By the time he knew that about himself, it was too late.
He would take the back road out of the racetrack and cross over the parkway to Levindale as soon as the dawn workouts were over. The colored attendant was glad to let him take his mother's tray off the loaded cart. There was something satisfying about tapping in the crown of the pure white shell with a small spoon, dipping the spoon in the tidy hole and carrying the gold-and-white pulp to his mother's still oddly pretty mouth, a little bow-shaped flapper's mouth at the bottom of a dense nest of wrinkles. But sometimes he opened a hole in the egg and the clear slimy liquid ran all over his hand. The egg was raw. He would be disgusted. His mother had given up her last dime to Jewish charities to get in Levindale. Why couldn't they get a little thing like that right every time? These are helpless people in here, he would think. And then he would speak to the management.
Hello? hello? the girl said.
I'm still here, dear.
Ain't he picked up yet? I don't know where he went now.
I got all morning. You go tell Mr. Smithers I'm on the line. The phone bonked down again.
Elizabeth groaned patiently and dropped at his feet. She had been expecting to go on a walk. Now that she was old, he noticed her gray speckled cheeks puffed in and out a tiny bit, like a curtain in a breeze, with every breath she took. Two-Tie lifted Elizabeth's lip with a finger. On the two longest teeth there was a deposit of yellow crud like amber up by the gum, but the points were clean. Haslipp, the racetrack vet, had told him to have her teeth scraped before the gums started to bleed, but Haslipp wouldn't try it himself on a wide-awake eighty-pound dog, and Two-Tie didn't want to put her under just for her teeth. He knew that once they knock you out, you ain't yourself for five, six weeks at least, and once in a long while somebody don't wake up at all. Which admittedly it's rare, but it happens, and there's no telling which player is going to draw the old maid. He scratched the long gulch under Elizabeth's chin with one finger.
Two-Tie? you there?
I'm here.
I was going to call you before, Suitcase said, but something come up.
So talk, Two-Tie said coldly. He waited.
I got some bad news. In the third last night? Hickok's old horse Pelter win for two thousand for Hansel. The horse win going away but he got claimed. That little fucker D'Ambrisi took him.
That sit?
That's it.
How about you tell me something I don't know, Vernon?
Like what? Suitcase whined with faint defiance, you said you want to know everything that goes down with Hansel, your niece and that horse. So I'm telling you.
The claim is twelve hours old already, Vernon. I got to wait twelve hours for news like this, what do I need you for? I can read it in the Telegraph.
Hey, last night I know you're going to hear about it. I know Jojo's going over there to play cards. Tell you the truth, I figure it's taken care of.
Jojo? What does Jojo have to do with it? What does Jojo know? Nutting. And Jojo don't owe me no explanations.
What's to explain? Suitcase asked peevishly. I put the word around like you said. I done what I could, Two-Tie. There ain't no law against claiming Pelter. D'Ambrisi run a horse already in the meeting, so how can I stop him if he really wants that horse?
Don't tell me why you couldn't stop that nobody. Tell me what I don't know. Who bought that horse?
D'Ambrisi bought him.
Who paid?
D'Ambrisi paid cash, twenty nice new hundred-dollar bills.
Yeah, well, where did he get it? Who put him up to it? Who paid him?
Suitcase said nothing.
All right, Vernon. It's gotta be Joe Dale. You wouldn't cover up for nobody else but Joe Dale. Just tell me why? What does he get out of it? What the hell does Bigg want with a used-up old stakes horse? A sentimental claim like that, I don't see it. Why he's insulting me like this?
Suitcase said: Aaaay, let it go, Two-Tie-I mean who believed you could really give a fuck about that horse when you don't even own a piece of him?
Maybe you think I'm slipping and I don't mean what I say no more.
Come on, don't get excited. It's not that big.
You'll find out if I mean what I say, Two-Tie promised, panting slightly. I'll talk to Baltimore. That sweet young woman will have her horse back tomorrow night latest. You think D'Ambrisi could cooperate before, you watch him turn somersaults for Posner. He's got a spine made out of silly putty, that two-dollar tout.
You're calling Posner? Suitcase said mournfully, after a pause. Over this? You honestly think it's worth it?
What I think ain't nothing. My niece is no racetracker. She needs to be protected from sharks and loonies. And vicious assholes. And thieves. That was your job, Vernon.
My job.
Ain't the happiness of your family worth more than money to you? Don't you do what you can?
Sure, Suitcase said dispiritedly.
If you can't do your job, if I got to do your job for you from this side of the river, I need help.
The niece better be very very grateful for the trouble she's causing, Suitcase muttered.
Umbeschrien, Two-Tie said. God forbid she should be grateful. She don't know nothing about it.
The telephone went dead, except for the two men's heavy sighs. Finally Suitcase changed the subject.
On that other matter. Lord of Misrule. Summer meeting, August 1. Maybe I can do sumpm for you after all.
Oh. Is that so?
Standish come up with some Drillers and Dredgers Association dough-the bargeman, like you mentioned.
You don't say.
How about we write an allowance race with a fancy name and make it the feature and jack up the purse five grand?
Good, good, Two-Tie said. I was beginning to wonder if we couldn't do business no more. All of a sudden we seemed to had a wrong number. Or a bad connection or sumpm.
The Low River Ramble-how does that sound?
Call it whatever you damn please, Two-Tie said.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON Medicine Ed seen the frizzly hair girl laying there in the straw in Pelter's old stall, with her arms folded under her head and her face long as the busride home. She was dreaming on the cobwebs up by the roof, looking at the long beards that hung out of last year's nests, and that's when a hurtful remembrance come over him, no rest, no peace. He thought of that tough little filly Broomstick he worked on at Santa Anita, a ink-black two-year-old they were schooling for the Venus, a grass runner with ankles like champagne glasses. He used to whistle for her whenever he come on the shedrow, she would poke her head out the stall and nod her head up and down at him, where you been? At night he liked to drink and and lay down in the stall with her in the good smelling straw. She was the onliest horse he ever felt tied to in that way. Then he got in a deep hole-shooting crap was his downfall in them days, when he still drank-and he went to the goofer powder for the third time. He was in the van with Broomstick when she snapped her leg, coming home from her last race before the Venus, a tightening mile she win going away at Hollywood Park.