Ricardo unwrapped a piece of gum. That was the two dog. He put his hand in his left pants pocket-the six. Then he touched the rail lightly-the four. That combination of signals meant that he wanted Billy to box three dogs in the quinella. If any two of those three finished first and second, regardless of order, he would have a winner.
The crowd made more noise on the first race than any other. The sapling, Tell Me True, was caught rocking when the box sprang open, and she came out late. She went to the outside on the turn, but overtook the field in the backstretch. She went wide again on the far turn and finished fourth. Of his other two picks, the six dog won the race on the inside, laughing, but number four had trouble and was never in contention. Ricardo had lost $400.
He lost another $400 on the sixth. Then, in the eighth, he wheeled the number one dog and scored for $1700. He ended the afternoon $900 up, twenty-five percent of which would remain with Billy.
Chapter 2
Dee only left his office once, to go to the bathroom, and Ricardo had to wait till after the last race to call Mrs. Geary.
“Oh, this is Ricardo,” he said when she answered. “From this morning?”
“Of course. How’s the leg?”
“Pretty good, I think, Mrs. Geary. It stiffened up on me, but the doctor said to expect that. What I’m calling about, did you find my wallet, by any chance?”
“No. You mean in the car?”
“I had it in my hip pocket. I hope to hell it didn’t jump out when I hit the sidewalk, because I had a few hundred bucks in it and I doubt if it would still be there.”
“I’ll go down to the garage and look.”
“You don’t have to do that now. When it’s convenient, and I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.”
“It won’t take more than a minute. Give me your number and I’ll get back to you.”
He stayed in the booth, and picked up in the middle of the first ring.
“Success,” she said, out of breath. “Right under the front seat.”
This was no surprise to Ricardo, as he had put it there. “Lucky! It’s got my driver’s license, so can I come over and get it? You could leave it with the doorman if you’re going out.”
“No, I’ll be home. You know where I live. There’s blood on the sidewalk.”
He told her to expect him in twenty minutes. He washed off some of the dog smell and combed his hair carefully. He drove a beat-up Ford sedan, almost as unprepossessing as Mrs. Geary’s Dodge. He would be looking around for something better soon. He parked across from her apartment house, which was neither the crummiest building in Miami Beach nor the most elegant; somewhere in between. There was a pool, of course, in spite of the fact that the Atlantic was only a few steps away.
The doorman had been alerted, and waved him through. Mrs. Geary was wearing a dress instead of slacks and a sweater. Without the protection of the dark glasses she looked like somebody else, younger in some ways and older in others. She had seemed sure of herself outdoors. Here, in artificial light with her real eyes showing, she looked surprisingly breakable. Ricardo told himself to dig in his heels and go slow.
“Hi,” she said. “I nearly didn’t recognize you without your shades. Come in.”
He remembered to limp slightly. There was a man in the living room, soft, bald, wearing a three-piece suit. He was shaped like a pear, and his skin, too, was pear-colored, yellow with rosy patches. An architect’s rendering of a hotel was spread out on the coffee table, kept from rolling by ashtrays at the corners. He started to struggle out of the embrace of the low sofa, but gave it up as too difficult.
“Harry Zell,” Mrs. Geary said, moving her hand. “This is Ricardo, from the track.”
The man’s handshake was damp.
“Well, Charlotte,” he said. “I’ve got investors to see. Do you want me to leave this stuff?”
“No, take it, Harry, please. If Max saw it when he came back, you know how he is, he’d scream.”
“I keep hoping he’ll change.”
“Max? Change? He’s about as changeable as a brick.”
Zell moved the ashtrays and the drawing rolled up. There were others beneath it. Ricardo didn’t want to peer too closely, but they seemed to be interior scenes in the same dream hotel. All the men looked rich, all the women beautiful. Zell fitted everything into a metal tube. There was a small tic beneath one eye, a sharp vertical line between the eyebrows, though it was a salesman’s face, like Ricardo’s father’s, and it should have been smiling.
After he left, Ricardo pointed at the table where the drawings had been.
“We keep hearing rumors. Is it true you’re going to tear down the track and put up another stupid hotel?”
“Over Max’s dead body.” She picked his wallet off a side table and gave it to him, with a flourish of make-believe trumpets.
“Da-da! I resisted temptation and didn’t steal any of the money. Now I’m going to claim a reward. Don’t turn right around and leave. Have a drink with me.”
Ricardo looked a little uncomfortable. “O.K., I guess. I don’t usually, after a matinee, because somebody has to be sober in that kennel.”
“Is Dee drinking as much as ever?”
“Not that it’s so much, Mrs. Geary, it’s just steady. By the end of the twelfth race he can’t tell one end of a dog from the other.”
“Vodka and tonic? I’ll make it weak.”
“Mostly tonic.”
While her back was turned and she made the drinks, he sneaked a look into his wallet. Behind the transparent window where people are supposed to carry pictures of their girls or their grandchildren, he had a photograph of two men and a woman, naked, so tangled that you had to look closely to see what they were doing. He had bought it that morning, knowing she was sure to open the wallet. As she came around, she caught him checking. She smiled faintly, and he buttoned the wallet quickly into his pocket.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, taking the drink. “But I’ve got to watch the time. I’m due back at quarter to six.”
“I’ll see that you get there.”
They sat across from each other and she raised her glass. “Tell me about your afternoon. How did you make out?”
“I beg pardon?”
“You said you had some bets you were working on.”
“I guess I did, but that wasn’t very smart of me. We aren’t supposed to bet. Of course everybody does, one way or another.”
“I won’t give you away.”
“I hope not! But before we stop talking about this hotel, what I don’t see-any time anybody asks for money, and I don’t mean just the people like me who do the dirty work, the kennels are always trying to get bigger purses, the story Mr. Geary gives them is that he can’t afford it. I shouldn’t be saying this, probably-”
“Go right ahead, it gives me ammunition for the next domestic skirmish. I won’t quote you.”
“We’re only open four months. The other eight the building just sits there. Taxes, insurance, upkeep. One thing about the hotel business, they’re open the year round. I heard the offer was five million.”
“Not all in cash. In fact, not much in cash.”
“But if he’s really just breaking even, why doesn’t he jump at the idea? That’s valuable real estate. So I thought I’d ask you.”
“Whether it’s true the track’s not making money? Ricardo, I can’t tell you. I own forty percent, my daughter Linda owns twenty. Together we have the power to walk in and demand to see every scrap of paper in the office, but we’ve never dared. We talk about it a lot.”