“The only entrance. There’s a back way out through the kitchen if you need it.”
“I’m meeting someone.”
I knew who she was and suddenly it seemed important not to let her know that. I remembered seeing her in Transmission, Stiletto, and I Can’t Help You, all of them on DVD while killing time at various spots around the Middle East. None more recent than five years ago. In the movies, Addie Tarrant wore thigh-high boots with six-inch heels and eyelashes almost that long, and delivered devastating kicks to guys who just couldn’t decide to shoot her quickly enough. She drove fast, wore shiny dresses with slits up the side, flirted with confidence and impunity, and mastered many exotic and arcane weapons. She posed in colorful wigs. She purred.
She looked around for a moment, then said, “I’ve had a house in Connecticut, just down the road, for five, six years, and never knew we had off-track betting. I suppose most of the towns would rather we didn’t know.”
“Well, there’re casinos up the road and hedge funds down. This is just sort of a rest stop. I suggested they put that on the sign, but...”
The place sat next to I-95. It had been built for smokers, a big barn with a thirty-foot ceiling that dwarfed the enormous screens lining the catwalk and walls. Not that it mattered: the world’s biggest screen, curved with ten trillion pixels, wouldn’t have moved the plungers to a show of awe or appreciation. No matter the size of the presentation, they managed to find the exact dose of hope and disappointment required to keep them upright.
Jerry signaled for another beer. I brought it and said, “That’s number five, Jerry.”
“Thanks, Pete. Listen...” Instead of grabbing the beer as he usually did, he grabbed my wrist. His watery eyes oozed hope, the way they did when he touted a horse based on his great insight and drunken perspicacity. “That’s your girl, right?”
I shook my head. “But leave her alone anyway, Jerry.”
“Really?” He turned to Lou. “She went right to him.”
“That’s number five, Jerry.”
He nodded, obedient now because of my apparent magnetism, and limped to the men’s room. The signal inside him had been permanently muted, and a bartender who relied on Jerry’s own tally was usually sorry.
Addie Tarrant had barely touched her beer. I offered to replace it. She shook her head. “Can you show me how to bet?”
“Sure. There’re two ways to do this: you can open an account and place bets using your phone, or you can use cash.”
“What do you recommend?”
“Are you lonely enough to want to spend five or six hours on the phone with a guy not named Joe Smith in Mumbai?”
“So, cash?”
The screen to my left showed the feed from Santa Anita. Next to it was Golden Gate Fields. I laid out a racing form and turned to the Santa Anita pages. The fourth was going off in a few minutes. I began explaining how to read the form, check the past results, the class, the opening odds versus the real-time odds on the screen, the jockey and trainer standings.
She was watching me.
“Or you could simply choose a name you like. It works just as well.”
“I’d like to pick a sure thing,” she said.
“Doesn’t exist.”
“One of them is going to win.”
“You’re an optimist. There are no winners. There are horses that pay off, but the money just goes back in the system. You just prolong the agony.”
“A philosopher too.”
I walked her over to the teller and she bet a hundred dollars on Holyshirt to win. The odds were 25–1. As she slid over the money and waited for the ticket, she put her hand on my arm as if to steady herself.
“What do you usually do for good luck?”
“I kiss the ticket.” I hesitated and said unhappily, “I never told anyone that.”
She kissed the ticket and then made me do it.
“Do you really do that?” she asked.
“No.”
She looked me up and down as if she were considering casting me in one of her B movies. “You’re confident, aren’t you?”
“Not enough to keep me from wondering where that came from.”
“Too strong? It’s just that I’m around people faking it for a living, so when I see the real thing, I’m impressed.”
Real or fake, the openness and honesty was drowning my skepticism. Maybe she was a better actress than she was given credit for. When we turned we bumped against each other. She was looking at the ticket and I was looking back at the bar, so I saw the guy she was waiting for before she did. He was short, about her height. Muscles under a T-shirt and a tight cream-colored sport coat. His hair was carefully tousled.
He stopped and waited until she spotted him. She went to him quickly.
“What’s this?” His voice was breathy and low as if he had to struggle to get the words out.
“I just bet on a race at Santa Anita.”
“I’ve been waiting for you outside. I’ve been sitting there like an asshole.”
“I just assumed...”
He took her arm roughly and guided her to a table by the far wall. Then he turned and barked something at Shannon, the waitress, who promptly came to her station with the order. I went back and filled it and watched while she delivered it. The man swigged his drink. He said something and smiled with his mouth closed and his eyes narrowed. I lifted the gate to the bar. Addie stood. The man stood too and grabbed her. Addie slapped him and the man slapped her back. She staggered but caught herself and moved at him, pushing with two hands against his chest.
I caught his arm before he could slap again. I twisted it behind his back and pulled hard so it hurt. With my other hand I gripped his throat. I liked the sound of him straining to breathe and pressed for more. I was just pointing him toward the door when I felt the pounding on my back and heard her voice, shrill now and angry.
“Let him go! Let him go!”
Still holding him, I turned to her dumbly. She hit me on the jaw, but I hardly felt it. I let him go. She stepped past me and put an arm around him while he squeezed out a few curses in my direction. They were gone by the time I got back behind the bar.
I don’t know what anyone else saw, but I saw my anger get ahold of me and I didn’t like it. I knew that for the second time that night eyeballs had detached from the screens, all except mine. I glanced up at the finish of the fourth at Santa Anita.
“You gonna see her again? ’Cause they didn’t pay me,” Shannon said.
I laid a twenty down on her tray.
By dawn I was able to close my eyes and I pretended to sleep until morning passed me by. I deleted two messages from my day-job employer and went for a run. The black sedan settled in behind me not long after I passed the train station. I led it under the highway down to the water. It’s a filthy run. The path along the harbor — what the city of New Haven calls Long Wharf Park — is just an open trash can. The tide was out and seagulls stood on the marshy mud which somehow never clung to their feet or delayed their takeoffs. I ran west to the end of the path and turned back toward the pier. The sedan passed me and parked. There were three other cars in the lot, all empty. I ignored the sedan, ran until I reached the pier, then walked out past the Amistad to the end.
Two men got out of the sedan. They hesitated at the beginning of the pier. Behind them was the highway and beyond that, to the right, loomed the big red Sports Haven sign. If anyone was watching I should have been able to spot them. But no cars so much as slowed down. It took almost a minute for the men to reach a decision; one came toward me, one stayed put.