Win, Place, and Die! Read online

  I said: “That baby can move, Luchon.”

  The driver busied himself with his cap, rubbing a handkerchief around the sweat band. He looked up to study me. He had sharp black eyes. He seemed friendly enough, a smile creasing his tanned face. He had the ability to hold a stranger away from himself without antagonism. He would talk when he was ready. He wasn’t quite ready yet.

  “Don’t you remember me?” I asked.

  “I don’t recollect meeting you,” Luchon said after another pause.

  “About six years ago? You were driving Coldham Chase. You ran third to Gwen Fiske.”

  “I remember that race mister.”

  “My name is Dave West.”

  He had been standing at an angle from the fence. He turned now, studying me again. He only smiled slowly. But his eyes brightened as he held out his hand. “Now it hits me,” Luchon said. “You changed quite a bit since then. You were a kid then. It’s been a long time, Dave.”

  “And a lot has happened,” I said.

  “So it has,” Luchon said. He eased himself against the rail. He had the natural grace of an athlete. He busied himself with a cigarette, offering me one politely. This was a quiet man. I estimated his age as early in the thirties. His lean neck was unwrinkled. His eyes squinted, but not from any strain. He had the bright-eyed faraway keenness of a sea captain or a cowboy or a mountain guide. Whatever sadness he felt about Jake West came through in his obvious sympathy for me. He said: “Must have been quite a shock for you. The way old Jake was done in. Nobody around here can understand it.”

  “Neither can I, Luchon. Jake West never hit me as the kind of man who had enemies.”

  “That’s right. Everybody liked Jake.”

  “Yet he was murdered.”

  Hank Luchon said nothing for a while. He seemed lost in dreamy contemplation of the gray pacer. His eyes followed the horse around the workout oval. “Jake West was a fine man. Always nice to me. He taught me a lot when I was breaking in. Not a bad bone in that man’s body. Friendly as your own brother. And one of the smartest men I ever met. Especially in the sulky.”

  “I was wondering about Jake’s last race,” I said.

  The gray pacer passed us with a rush. His blowout would be finished soon. The horse had a mouthful of lather now. The sweat foamed on his withers and back. He had strange markings, a high full stocking on all his legs. The white area made him seem to float when he moved. He would be a striking sight for the fans in the stands tonight.

  “What about his last race?” Luchon said quietly.

  “You saw it?”

  “Jake did all right with Bully Boy.”

  “He lost the race.”

  Luchon shrugged. “Jake was boxed. He did his best. He figured to bring Bully Boy out in the stretch. The horse just couldn’t make it. That kind of stuff happens all the time. To the best of us. Even to Jake West.”

  “Did you see Jake after the race?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “And before the race,” I said. “Did you see Jake?”

  Luchon considered the gray horse again. He waved idly to the driver, who shouted a greeting to him. The pacer came around once more and then pulled up near us, at the gate. The driver yelled something about the heat and then went through the gate toward the stables. Luchon didn’t take his eyes off the sulky until it disappeared back there.

  “In the afternoon, I did,” Luchon said. “Jake was here, blowing out Billy Boy.”

  “Alone?”

  “Why no, he wasn’t. Nancy was here, Nancy Blackburn. She was timing the horse.”

  “You know Nancy?”

  “Why sure I know Nancy.” His tone hesitated between shy admission and artful belligerence. He was a simple character, this Luchon. He would be open and obvious about his likes and dislikes. The way he mouthed her name told me that he was more than casually interested in her. The way he lowered his eyes when he mentioned her tossed me a fresh clue to his inner man. “Nancy and I are real good friends, you might say.”

  “Just how good?”

  “Aren’t you getting a bit personal?”

  “I mean no harm,” I said. “I’m just gathering information.”

  “Well, it don’t sound right, asking me about Nancy.” He soft-pedaled his annoyance. He wanted to cooperate with me. Yet, his own laws of ethics seemed violated by my steady inquiry about Nancy Blackburn. “She’s a good girl. A swell kid.”

  “Sure she is, Luchon, Let’s forget about her. Let’s talk about Jake. You saw him yesterday. How did he seem? How was his mood?”

  He tried scratching the answer out of his scalp. “That’s an odd one, that question, Jake seemed quiet, you might say.”

  “Unusually quiet?”

  “Well, Jake always had a word for everybody.”

  “Depressed?” I asked. “Try to remember, Luchon. It may be important.”

  “Just quiet,” he said thoughtfully. “Nothing extra.”

  “And how about Nickles?”

  Luchon slapped the dust off his shoe with his whip. “Lord help me, Dave, I never pay much attention to Shuba. He may be old man Blackburn’s manager here at the track, but he and I don’t ever mix. Ever find it that way with a man? We just don’t see eye to eye on anything, that’s all.”

  “Where might I find him?”

  Luchon shrugged. “He’s usually around somewhere.”

  But Nickles Shuba wasn’t around. I tramped the long rows of stalls and asked a dozen questions. Sometimes a casual inquiry can start a line of thought. Sometimes patience pays off for the diligent pursuer. I had made it happen that way many times in fiction. The detective must follow every strange thread. He must be geared for the long wait, the sifting of truths and half-truths. But I was no normal detective. I searched with a high pitch of frustration and anger. I burned to get on with my hunt, tormented by tender memories at every turn in the great racing park. Jake and I had lived in this atmosphere not too long ago. It was an effort to hold myself to the task at hand, to enter this arena of his activities, to see all the familiar sights again. Somewhere among these people there could be a man who hated Jake West. Nickles Shuba?

  But the path to Shuba lay cluttered with the vague and contradictory impressions of the track employees:

  A groom: “Nickles? We don’t talk much. He’s too big for his britches since Blackburn made him manager around here.”

  An attendant: “Shuba is in hock all the time. You can’t trust a man who bets more’n he earns in a place like this.”

  A parking attendant: “Nickles spends all his scratch on the broads, that’s his trouble. They take him for a ride every time.”

  A driver: “Shuba don’t mean any harm, I guess. He’s always hanging around to sneak information from the stables. Why? Because he’s a betting man, I guess. Aside from that, he takes care of Blackburn’s business okay. Strictly okay.”

  A waitress: “Nick? Sure I call him Nick. That’s what he likes to be called, mister. The Nickles business is something the track boys hung on him. They figure him a chiseler … But when he takes a girl out, he spends plenty. I call him Nick. He’s a good egg.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The Sulky Inn sat on a small and decorative hill, a picture-book hostel surrounded by many trees and squatting on a rolling lawn that faced the side road leading into Westbury. I had been here often with my uncle. This was an exclusive spot, reserved for the racing gentry; the drivers and owners and assorted track officials who journeyed here for small talk, good liquor and fine food. Horace Edge, an ex-driver, owned the layout. The place sang with racing atmosphere, skillfully planted by Horace’s wife, a lady horse lover, who knew her way around in the antique business. The main dining room could seat a few dozen. The tables were cozy and the lighting warm and soft. Around the walls, ancient prints decorated the white-washed boards. Trotters and pa
cers came at you from all directions. An old harness hung in a corner, complete with the smell of archaic leather. On each table sat a specially designed ash tray, a racing shoe set around a wooden bowl. The food was well known for its simplicity. Several familiar racing folk sat around gnawing and gossiping, even at this early hour.

  I went into the tiny bar. Horace Edge greeted me with his usual joviality. He had small eyes, set in great cushions of fat. His mouth was out of key with his flabby face. He had a woman’s lips, thin and delicate. He used them to tell me of his concern.

  “Back again, Dave?” he asked. “Anything new?”

  “I’m getting nowhere. In a hurry.”

  “Did you see MacGruder?”

  “I’ve seen all the cops,” I said. “They don’t know much.”

  “Well, of course, MacGruder was here, several times,” Edge said. “He came back to look at Jake’s room upstairs again. He was up there for a long time. Longer than you were. But he didn’t seem to find anything up there. Not that I can figure out what he was looking for. The big mystery is the fact that Jake didn’t stay in his room last night. Now a man like Jake West, you could set your clock by him. Yet, he must have left by the side door last night, instead of going up to his room.”

  He went through it again. The fact that Jake West always went up to bed after his nightcap. The fact that Jake West was a steady and reliable man. The fact that everybody loved Jake West.

  I said: “I’ll have a Bourbon, Horace.”

  The pause fractured his line of chatter. He needed complete concentration for the chore of pouring a jigger. His big hands were unsteady on the bottle. Some of the liquor slopped over the bar. He diligently mopped it up.

  “My uncle always stayed here for the Roosevelt season, didn’t he?” I asked.

  “It’s almost six years now, Dave. Jake liked it here.”

  “And he always had the same room?”

  “It’s the best room in the house. Light and cool.”

  “And he was alone?”

  “Jake was always alone.”

  “Upstairs, too?”

  “Always alone.” The larded brow was creased with corrugations. Horace Edge had a boy’s mind. Now he seemed to hear bells ringing. His eyes sought the source of the distant music, somewhere up on the ceiling. “You know something, Dave, I never thought about it before. But your uncle never had a visitor. Not once that I saw, on the record. Not a single, solitary visitor up in his little room.”

  “I was thinking of women,” I said.

  “Never,” said Horace Edge. “Not a single time in all the years he lived here. Not one solitary soul. Funny thing, for a man everybody liked so much.”

  “But he might have had visitors,” I suggested. “By way of the side door?”

  “It wouldn’t be Jake West to bring them in that way.”

  “Still, it was possible.”

  “If he wanted to do it, yes.” Horace clucked, shaking his head at the idea. “But that wouldn’t be Jake West.”

  “He might have wanted privacy.”

  “Anything’s possible, Dave. But I don’t believe it,” Horace said, with deep and sorrowful undertones. He leaned heavily on the bar top. He stared at the bowl of pretzels, his foggy eyes empty. “Jake was a steady man. He came back here every night, after the races. He had his whiskey and soda and read his paper and went up to bed. You could set your clock by Jake West. That man lived by a timetable. Everything on schedule.”

  “Yet the schedule was broken last night?”

  “Well, yes. But that must have been the only night.”

  “How can you be sure?” I asked. “Jake might have pulled the same gag on you time after time. He might have come back from the races, had his nightcap and then strolled over here to say good night to you. But after that, he could have strolled out through the side door and driven his car out of the dark end of your parking lot. He could have returned early in the morning. He had a key to the side door, didn’t he?”

  “He didn’t need one,” Edge said, amazed. “Because that door is always open.”

  “And you wouldn’t have heard him come in?”

  “Neither me nor Molly. We sleep tight and hard.” But he refused to accept any small part of my theorizing. He shook his head steadily at the thought. He rejected it completely, his little mind upset by the challenge of the idea. “But Jake didn’t operate that way, Dave. You knew your uncle pretty well. He was a man of strict habits.”

  Horace was right, of course. My Uncle Jake lived in a tight world of his own scheming. He lived a plan. It was part of his temperament to follow a rigid routine, moving through the day with clocklike punctuality. He had many of the traits and habits taken on by the middle-aged or the very old. Yet, Uncle Jake was not old at all. He was my father’s younger brother, a man who always seemed young enough for me to worship as a contemporary. He would have been forty on his next birthday. Yet, over the years of our companionship, I had always thought of him as close to me in age, despite the fifteen-year gap. Uncle Jake had always been completely alive. His body, strong and hard and muscular, his brain keen and alert and loaded with intelligence. He was an avid student of his chosen profession.

  Yet, there were gaps in my knowledge of him. Part of his secret world, his intimate world, must now be laid open. We never talked of his choice of women. His bachelorhood formed part of a background of unexplored research. He was handsome enough to be popular with all manner of femininity. He had a lean and attractive face. He would be a generous and thoughtful lover. But who were his distaff friends? How far back must I go to discover his hidden life?

  “Tell me about the last time you saw Jake,” I said.

  “There’s not much to tell, Dave. He came in for his nightcap at midnight.”

  “He came in alone?”

  “As usual.”

  “He drank alone?”

  Horace Edge closed his eyes. Something was happening behind his polished brow. Above his eyes, the corrugations of deep thought made a small wave of flesh. The wave died. “He was at the corner table,” Horace said slowly. “He was sitting with Nickles and a girl.”

  “Wasn’t that unusual?”

  “Why would it be unusual? What the hell, wasn’t it Jake who got him the job with Blackburn?”

  “How did that happen?”

  Edge built up the background for me. The story suited the pattern of Jake West’s personality; Jake had brought Nickles Shuba up from the Varian Farm Stables in Virginia. Shuba had held a minor job with Tom Gordon, the head of Varian’s mighty horse empire. When Blackburn needed a manager in the field, Jake had recommended Shuba and helped Nickles during his early days at work for Blackburn.

  “Jake liked Shuba?” I asked.

  “He sure enough did.”

  “And you? Do you like him?”

  “Nickles is all right, I guess.” Edge struggled with his lower lip, searching for more commentary. “Maybe a little too ambitious, but otherwise an all right guy.”

  “A devil with the ladies?”

  “He doesn’t seem to have much trouble.”

  “The girl he brought here,” I asked. “What did she look like?”

  “Pretty.”

  “Tell me about the girl,” I said.

  “Dark,” said Edge. “Dark hair and very pretty. Maybe in her early twenties. Maybe younger. It just so happens my glasses were being fixed that night. I can’t see anything important beyond ten feet without them.”

  “She couldn’t have been Nancy Blackburn?”

  “I don’t know Nancy Blackburn.”

  “Did you talk to Nickles at all that night?”

  “Only to say hello.”

  “And Uncle Jake?”

  “I waved to him, like I always do,” Edge said. “After all, I didn’t pay much attention to Jake. You know how it
is when you get used to a man. Jake was a member of our family, really. We didn’t knock each other out being careful about hellos and goodbyes.”

  “Then you didn’t see Jake leave?”

  “Never noticed. Took it for granted he went up to bed.”

  “But Nickles stayed around with the girl?”

  “So he did,” Edge said. “He had folding money, seemed to me.”

  “More so than usual?”

  “He had a bundle. Must have made a killing over at Buffo’s, I guess.”

  “Buffo, the restaurant man?”

  Edge laughed. “Buffo, the casino man. He’s got a dump out here on the Island that’s supposed to be terrific. Me, I never been there. You know why? Because Buffo only lets the big-dough boys into his place. He’s got a special list supposed to read like something out of the four hundred. Only lets in the special customers.”

  “And Nickles Shuba is one of them?”

  “Nickles talked a lot about the wheel at Buffo’s. Must have been there.” Edge caught a vagrant thought and leaned in over the bar top to whisper his conspiratorial information. “Fellow like Nickles wouldn’t have any trouble getting into Buffo’s. What the hell, he could spill a few tips on the trots and have them eating out of his hand.”

  “You’re talking silly,” I said. “You know as well as I do that those races are straight.”

  “Well, there’s been talk, lately.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Only rumors, Dave.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “There’s Seff, for instance. He’s got himself a stable, you know.”

  “I’ve heard. You think Seff’s been fixing a few drivers?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Edge began to polish the bar top. He rubbed away vigorously. The bar was smooth and slick. But Edge seemed to find flaws in the mahogany that didn’t please his eye. He rubbed and rubbed. “I’m only giving you the gossip.”