But it wasn't even the price that troubled Two-Tie. The game was funny, not funny ha-ha, funny like green lunchmeat. It had to be tainted, maybe not for everybody but for him, Two-Tie, personally. By the time she left Baltimore, Lillian did not wish him well. And the grownup boy, her son, Donald, still did not wish him well. He don't come by or even call, though Two-Tie hears he's been at the Mound three days already.
Then he sees Donald in the Polky Dot Cafe last night. They didn't expect to meet and suddenly they're face to face, each of them with a round plate of meatloaf in his hand. And the look in Donald's eyes was terrible, before he checked it. Then he grinned, a big freckle-face grin. Say, Two-Tie, how's it kicking? A cowboy, straight out of South Baltimore. It wasn't Irish, smiling like that when you hated somebody-the boy's father might of been part Italian.
Moreover last night Two-Tie hears from Deucey and others that Standish Chenille himself had come out of the racing secretary's office to pump the kid's hand when he rolled in with that museum piece of a horse. True, Lord of Misrule was a great horse in his day, but only a individual who was fundamentally cold, very cold would still be throwing the horse out on the track and racing him. It was different when they first found out Misrule had bum seed and brung him back to racing. Then he was only five, six years old and had plenty of tread left, and he liked to run, anyway that was the story, which some horses do. But after a while he got sorer, and slower, and his bigtime owner fell on hard times and the horse passed from hand to hand. Ever downward, of course. Two-Tie had figured Donald must be in some kind of dire personal need, but no-the word was that Donald was doing good, very good, at Aksarben where he had ended up. At Aksarben, alone on the planet, bute was a mitzvah, one hundred per cent legal. The boy didn't have to come here to play his hole card, that was clear, so why did he? Keep away from that race, Two-Tie advised himself out loud. It was a funny feeling he had. Elizabeth in the rough grass picked her head up off her paws and gave him a worried glance. He could fly down to Gulfstream for a couple weeks, or show his face at Fort Erie, or catch the end of the meeting at Ruidoso Downs. Anymore nobody knew him from Adam at those tracks. But what would he do with Elizabeth? He picked himself up off the concrete bench, brushed off his trousers and set out for home.
Now it was hot, and Elizabeth was poorly, dragging two lengths behind as they crossed the sun-bleached ferry landing, but as soon as they turned onto Ohio Avenue she passed him at a trot. He had to whistle to make her wait at B Street and then she was off again, with even some creaky lightness in her hocks, some remnant of a coltish bounce in the way her old feet touched pavement and curled up behind her. She was always faster back to the barn.
She turned the corner of the alley by the Ritzy Lunch and when he caught up, she was climbing in the open door of Roy's Taxicab, which sat idling by the garbage cans as usual. Elizabeth putting herself in the taxi coulda been a sign, if you believed in signs, if you were a prophet instead of a businessman. But he was no prophet, and he had definitely made up his mind not to ride one dime on the horse, nor even to go by the Polky Dot and find out, if he could, which way the action was going. Come on, Elizabeth, let's go home, he said without conviction. For he was interested, his niece to say nutting of the whole mutt pack was in it one way or another, he had some other people's dough to lay off, and Elizabeth was always up for a taxi ride. But no, he had a funny feeling about the race. Stay away. He whistled sharply. Elizabeth still didn't come. It was a fact her hearing wasn't what it used to be. Time was she could hear him peel a banana two rooms away-strangely enough the dog liked bananas, whatever he ate she wanted to eat, with the exception of pickles-but she wasn't above playing his sympathy now and then and pretending she didn't hear him when she did. If some suggestion didn't suit her. He leaned inside the taxi. Come on out of there, Elizabeth.
Can't you see the dog likes it where he is? A heavy body was pushing him from behind. But you get in. That's right, get in the car. He felt a hardness against his kishkes that he knew was a gun. It wasn't too late to get away, he could twist clear of the door or fall down in the gutter where he was, even a bulvan like Biggy-it was Biggy he saw over his shoulder-wouldn't shoot him in the public street, not in Carbonport. The moron would have strict instructions. Biggy and who else? Two-Tie peered into the inner shadows of the sunlit cab. Only Roy. He saw Elizabeth sitting up at the far window, panting happily, ready for a ride. Roy was leaning over the driver's seat, patting her, sliding his hand under her collar-fucking faithless mutts the both of em-just in case she decided to listen to Two-Tie, for once, and get out of the car. Only it wasn't Roy. It was Roy's cap and jacket on D'Ambrisi. Elizabeth lets that ten-cent nutting make up to her, he thought jealously, and at the same time: It's all over for both of us. He realized he had been expecting this. He couldn't believe that such inconsequential lowlifes like these two would be the ones to take him out. But they had Elizabeth. He got in the car.
Nice doggy, D'Ambrisi said, nice dog, and Two-Tie saw that his hands were trembling as he twisted them in her collar.
She ain't gonna hurt you, Two-Tie said. Let her alone.
I swear it wasn't my idea, D'Ambrisi whined.
What's it about?
Shut up, Biggy said, and nudged Two-Tie with the barrel of whatever he was packing.
Possibly it was only a warning, not that he was taking any warnings, not from these two, not from nobody. Maybe they were supposed to bring him to Joe Dale, or to Donald. He would have thought that Donald, or Joe Dale, being the type of men they were, would wish to take care of such a thing themselves. Sew the matter up with their own hands, so to speak. Tell him in his face where he had went wrong, try to make him whine how sorry he was, let him beg for a break, now that he was a dead man, then burn him anyway. He had been expecting this for some time now. He sat back in the back seat of Roy's Taxicab and watched the blue cables of Powhatan Point Bridge dip down and tick by, one by one, like magic wands that weren't working. He didn't want a break. He didn't have to degrade himself. Only, there was Elizabeth to think about.
In the crack at the bottom of its steel-plate railing, the river glittered like broiler paper. Then they were off the bridge. Bushes whizzed by, and trees. If this was what he thought it was, he should be looking at Nature for the last time. But, maybe he was a klutz at heart, Nature didn't interest him. Even when he was a young man, what he liked was taking care of somebody. The big picture wasn't like a painted picture on a wall, it was more like a scroll, an ever unfolding piece of goods, pulling forward so many lives, the living threads. He liked to be the shuttle what touched them all and brought them together, whether they knew it or not. When he was young he had never really moved out of his family, not even once he hooked up with Lillian and settled her in an apartment. By then his parents were old and they needed him and he had the money from his finance business, so he never even noticed he was doing it, taking care of somebody. Maybe he didn't do that good a job of it, Lillian would have said so, she did say so, but still it must be what he was put on earth to do, considering how much he'd ended up doing it, one way or the other. Then Mickey went to jail and Lillian took Donald and flew the coop, not that he blamed her for quitting him, and pretty soon Alvin was dead and his mother in Levindale and his sisters scattered. After that it was just the money, his various partners and business deals, his protection, the tarnish odor of money and the mutt pack for company. For a few years he had low-grade muscle around him all the time, getting into scrapes in bars, bad crap games, brainless rhubarbs and shoving matches in his kitchen. The boys didn't have enough to do. After a while, around when Ike was elected the second time, he let the protection go.