Win, Place, and Die! Page 6

  “Don’t hit him, Hank,” Nancy said in a whisper. She was standing beside me, her face unmoved by the public frenzy. “Don’t hit him,” she said again.

  Approaching the backstretch, Arcturus made his bid. He flew off the rail and entered the last turn on the outside, but alive with a fresh burst of speed. Calliope’s driver snapped the whip. There was nothing left in his nag. Arcturus entered the stretch and pulled away. The big black pacer began to fly. He was a good six lengths ahead of Calliope at the wire, an easy winner. The time was 2:054.

  “A wonderful, wonderful animal,” Nancy said.

  “He beat his last best time,” I said.

  “And he can do better than this. We’ve clocked him in the workouts at a flat 2:05.” She was as calm and matter-of-fact as a statistician. “Arcturus has plenty of heart. He’s going to reward his backers handsomely. Look—he’s paying off $11.20 in the mutuel. Shall we go? I’ve really earned myself some fodder for Buffo’s.”

  “Buffo’s can wait,” I told her. “We have some unfinished business, Nancy. Nickles Shuba, remember?”

  “Business?” She perused her bag and the money in her hand. “I don’t remember any.”

  “I’ll refresh your memory. I wanted you to tell me more about Nickles. Anything you might know. Even the smallest crumb could help me. He may be the key to my uncle’s murderer.”

  “You don’t really think Nickles had anything to do with it?” Nancy asked incredulously. “You don’t think that he—?”

  “Why not?”

  “He just isn’t the type, that’s all.”

  “Tell me what type he is.”

  “He’s an adolescent, really. He’s an overgrown boy. Perfectly harmless, and living in a fantasy.”

  “You’ve been out with him?”

  “A few times,” she admitted wearily. “But it was nothing, Dave, believe me. Don’t go looking for mysterious and clandestine meetings. Don’t build it into anything big and important in your mind. Nickles interested me. He’s a handsome sort of lout and I was curious to see what might happen on a date with him.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Nothing. He’s all puff and bluff. Up close, he was like a frightened schoolboy. Handsome, but harmless.”

  “And how was he last night?”

  The question shocked her, as I thought it would. For a long moment she seemed to hesitate and adjust her mind to me, searching my eyes for the direction she must take now. If she allowed too much time to pass, this little scene between us might blossom with hostility. The elements of her zany personality battled for supremacy here. She could come alive with carefully contrived anger. Or she could settle down and discuss my question intelligently. She chose the latter course.

  “How did you know about last night?” she asked.

  “You were at the Sulky Inn with him?”

  “Only for a few minutes.”

  “You had a drink with Jake West?”

  Nancy nodded, upset by my purposeful questioning. “Jake was with us for a little bit, Dave, but only for a few words, believe me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell this to the police?”

  “I was afraid. I didn’t want the publicity.”

  “You might get it now,” I said. “Suppose I tell MacGruder?”

  “You wouldn’t,” she said, holding my hand. “My date with Nickles wasn’t important. Let me tell you about it. Nickles was interested in what I knew about Lisa Varick, that was all. He asked me all sorts of silly questions about my dad, too. After a while, I told him to mind his own business.”

  “And after that?”

  “Your uncle left. He called Nickles to him at the door and they talked for a while. Your uncle handed something to Nickles.”

  “Something?” I asked. “Money?”

  “I couldn’t see.”

  “Nickles didn’t mention it when he returned?”

  “Nickle’s said good night and I left him.”

  “You didn’t see where he went?” Something of my frustration came through to her. She was leading me up another blind alley. “You left immediately?”

  “Immediately.” She softened as she said the word. “Listen, Dave, I’ve given you my all.”

  “Not quite,” I waited for her to finish stuffing the bills away in her bag. “I want you to tell me about Jake West’s last drive. Why did he lose with Bully Boy?”

  “That isn’t any easy question.”

  “You saw the race from up here,” I said. “And you know harness racing well. How did it seem to you?”

  “Just another race,” she said. She thought for a moment, remembering the race. When she began to speak, her voice seemed softer and milder. “Jake was boxed in at the rail, of course. You knew that?”

  “Tell me all about it.”

  “You know as well as I that sometimes it’s really impossible to estimate why a driver loses with a favorite. Certainly we all expected Jake to bring in Bully Boy last night. The horse had the speed. He should have finished just the way Hank Luchon worked Arcturus tonight. But Jake’s race was different. He went off out of the seventh post position. You remember Jake’s theory about that type of start. He brought Bully Boy in at the rail around the first turn. Jake always maintained that if he could hold the rail for the first three quarters of the race, he could bring a good horse out for the final brush and win running wide on the outside. That’s exactly how he ran the race. Cashinhand rushed out in front, exactly the way Calliope did tonight, But Cashinhand was joined by another front-running pacer: Lucas Boy. It seemed to me that Jake West was pocketed by these two in the last quarter mile. They ran up alongside Cashinhand and stayed there. They just wouldn’t let Jake out of the hole. And when they were all in the stretch, when Jake finally saw a gap and brought Bully Boy out, it was too late. He was simply boxed all the way.”

  “And after the race,” I said. “What did Jake have to say?”

  “He didn’t mention the race.”

  “He must have been broken up about it.”

  “He might have been broken up,” Nancy said, “before the race. Did that ever occur to you?”

  CHAPTER 7

  I thought about it on the way to Buffo’s. Nancy’s words made some sense. I could remember Uncle Jake’s intimate talks about the problems of sulky racing; the luck of the draw on post positions; the more important element of “racing luck.” Good harness drivers are supposed to manufacture their own lucky breaks. A driver with savvy can cut down the odds against bad racing luck. It is this quality of performance, night in and night out, that makes for top sulky records. And Jake West had such a record. What, then, had held him in the hole with Arcturus?

  My car hummed along the quiet highway. I followed her Minx through the still back roads. She drove well. She gave me time to move into the past again, to revive another memory of Uncle Jake. He had been almost scientific in his dissertations on the art of driving a sulky. There was a time, long ago, when he had sat in the sun with me, watching the horses work out and expounding on the chores of a racing man. “There are all kinds of elements tied up in a race, Dave. Always remember that. It isn’t only the horse who’s mixed up in the deal. All things being equal, a poor driver can knock a favorite into the cellar. Just look at the elements. Just remember the fact that eight men go off with one object in view. To win. And sometimes they do crumby things to bring in a winner. They box you and they try to break you. They rush you and they squeeze you. And while you’re behind that horse, you’ve got to keep all these things in mind. It isn’t easy sometimes. You got to have a clear head. There’s been many a race lost because the horse was ready and the driver just couldn’t perform. A sick and worried driver can kill the best horse on earth. A man with no mind to win can always lose easily.”

  Nancy’s little Hillman Minx turned sharply off the concrete. She swung it up a stee
p hill and under a canopy of ancient oaks. Through the bushes along the side, far up beyond a grassy hill, a house sat in the darkness. It could have been a millionaire’s summer home, wide open for a lawn party. The mansion was designed at the turn of the century, a combination of high French architecture and upper-class American theories on what it should look like. The result was something for the guidebooks. The tall doors on the broad porch looked out on a formal garden, a hedged display of tailored clumps of floral elegance. Behind the gardens a pebbled driveway led to the main entrance. A uniformed lackey, outfitted in a rig appropriate to the court of Louis the Fourteenth, opened Nancy’s car door. Two other menials drove our cars off into the shadowed parking lot. The air was ripe with the fragrance of a thousand buds. From deep inside the establishment came the strains of a tinkling tune. A few voices hummed in there, at the quiet tables. A delightful smell of spiced food hung in the air. Over the broad door, on a silver plate, etched in a graceful swirl of curlicues, was the name: Buffo.

  “This way, Miss Blackburn.”

  The uniformed general broke my reverie. He beamed at Nancy. She returned his cordiality, together with a bill. He nodded and swung the big door open.

  “Buffo,” she told him. “Tell him I’m here, John.”

  “Right away, Miss Blackburn.”

  “Buffo usually greets you at the door?” I asked.

  “There are two ways into this den,” Nancy laughed. “If we enter without Buffo, we are going inside to dine. He’s scrupulously careful to separate the wheat from the chaff from among his customers. Buffo is careful, but Buffo is wise. He doesn’t want to convert his place into the usual casino type of restaurant. He limits the gaming rooms to those he knows.” She made a sharp and theatrical face for me. She was imitating Buffo. She held up a finger and shut one eye. “Only Buffo’s deep and personal friends are allowed to lose their shekels in his gambling rooms.”

  Buffo came out to us. He was a shock to me.

  “My dear Miss Blackburn,” he said in a whisper. He bent over her hand and kissed it daintily.

  Buffo shook my hand. He was a big man, square in the shoulders and square in the head. There was a bright reflection on the top of his pate, as hairless as an ivory in a pool hall. He had a ridge of pale freckles along his brow, a few of which had dropped to his firm cheeks. He could have been a featured wrestler, built for angle shots in television. His clothes hung loosely on his ample frame, the tailoring lost against the obvious bulk of his figure, the sort of man who would never look good in anything but a loincloth. He had soft eyes, set deep inside the ridges under his pale brows. The eyes glowed and glimmered with an indefinite spark.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” I said.

  “The best, I hope?”

  “This is Dave West,” Nancy said. “Jake West’s nephew.”

  “Ah?” Buffo sighed lustily. His alert eyes blinked sympathy. He gripped my hand with a firm handshake. He had strong, steel fingers. “It was a real tragedy, your uncle’s death. A great driver, indeed. One of the greatest.”

  “You knew my uncle?”

  “I knew him slightly,” Buffo said. “He won me many a bet at Long Island.”

  “I’ll bet he liked your food,” I said.

  “Perhaps not enough,” said Buffo. “He didn’t come here very often.” Buffo seemed lost in thought. He came out of his personal trance smoothly. He shifted his weight and turned to Nancy. “I have a wonderful table for you tonight, Miss Blackburn. Out near the garden. Cool and nice.”

  “We don’t want to dine, Buffo,” Nancy said.

  “Ah, but you must try my soufflé Rothschild. And a demitasse à la Drambuie—something new and different. An invention of the late Jimmy Walker. There was a man. There was a person who knew life and lived life. You will like his invention, it is novel, something new and different. Your father is mad about it.”

  “My father and I don’t agree on lots of things.”

  Toward the rear of the room, a waiter fussed over a flaming saucepan. Back there the shadows were deep. But the quick burst of light etched the faces of the diners. Especially the two men he was serving. One of them turned his head and blinked and grinned at the sudden pyrotechnics. His grin was broad and loose. He had a tanned face, as handsome as a movie hero. But he was no movie hero. He wore a blue linen jacket and a bowtie, as casual as the perennial college boy. But he was no college boy.

  He was Larry Seff. And the man across the table from Seff smiled at something his companion said. The smile was only a brief and unsubstantial curve in the small hard line of his mouth. I recognized him at once. He had the type of face you can never forget. His head was moulded in classic lines; a long blade of a nose on which perched his inevitable spectacles, complete with the thin silk cord attached to his lapel. He wore a plain blue business suit. He wore a plain black tie. He was as neat and prim and officious as the head teller in a great bank. Yet, this man was no banker. This was Chester Leech, the first assistant to the great Larry Seff, the official alter ego, the shadow of the general.

  “Your father is quite the gourmet,” Buffo was saying. He had his back to Seff. From where I stood, Seff could see us clearly. His keen eyes studied us. He abandoned us and watched Leech produce a small piece of paper and a pen. Then Seff dictated something to Leech. The tableau was almost comic. Seff mouthed his dictation with the aplomb of an executive in a major corporation. And Leech penned his words and handed back the memo and put his pen away and snapped his fingers for the waiter. Leech handed the waiter the note. Seff and Leech arose and disappeared through the French door to the terrace.

  “Your father is indeed a man of perception,” Buffo was saying. “Do you know that one of his favorite recipes is now the specialty of the house? On my menu? Permanently?”

  “Dad knows good food,” Nancy said.

  The waiter with the note crossed the room and slid in alongside Buffo.

  “Also, your father’s choice of horses.” Buffo laughed, running his quick eyes over the note and stuffing it away in his pocket. “The best, isn’t that right? Did Arcturus win tonight?”

  “I’m here to spend my winnings,” Nancy laughed.

  “He won it easily?”

  “You can read about it in the papers, Buffo. Right now, I want to gamble.”

  “As you like.”

  He led us through the main dining room and out beyond a terrace festooned with much elaborate furniture and few diners. He walked us around the side of the house and beyond the noise of the music. He bowed us through a door into a great room. Here only a handful of people stood around a roulette table. The sound of canned but excellent music filled the air, something light and gay and paced to suit the mood. He escorted us to a corner where a few chairs and a table formed a cozy nook. On the table, a large silver coffee urn sat, surrounded by a variety of fancy canapés and a mixture of small and delicate cakes. He bowed us to the chairs and stood back and went through the motions of pouring coffee for us.

  “Later, perhaps, you will have my soufflé Rothschild?”

  “Later, perhaps,” said Nancy.

  He bowed and retreated. I saw him move off into the broad hall outside. There was an oversized door on the far side of the place. Buffo opened the door and disappeared.

  “The great Buffo,” I said. “He’s quite a character, isn’t he?”

  “He works too hard at it,” Nancy said.

  “You don’t like him?”

  “Not in large doses. He’s really a bore.”

  “One of the most successful bores in the business.”

  We crossed the room to the big roulette table.

  “That still doesn’t make him palatable,” Nancy said. She handed the croupier a bundle of bills. He slid three stacks of chips across the table. She dropped five blues on the number two. The wheel spun. “I’m playing a hunch,” she explained. “Arcturus
ran out of number two post tonight.”

  The little ball clinked around the rim of the wheel. The wheel slowed. The ball bounced and rolled. It skipped and skittered and hopped into a notch marked 16. Nancy made a face at the little white ball. She deposited another small stack of chips on the same number.

  “Stubborn,” she said. “But my hunch is strong.”

  “I’ll be back to check you later,” I said.

  “You don’t gamble?”

  “Only on horses.”

  Before I reached the main door, there was a thin squeal of delight from the table, followed by a mumble from the knot of onlookers. Nancy must have hit. Her voice rose above the others. She giggled and said something funny to the crowd. Everybody was gay. I passed out of range of the hilarity. The square hall was lit with more discreet lighting. Here I moved in a paneled lobby, all mahogany and old hunting prints, probably one of the original rooms in the old place and left as it had always been. The door ahead of me was carved in a rococo design. A crowd of angels floated on wooden clouds over an ancient city, probably Venice. There were assorted wormholes. I knocked, rapping my knuckles on an angel’s fanny.

  The door opened at once. It opened quickly and smoothly, wide enough to allow a man to slide through. He fixed himself before the closed door, staring at me with the quiet belligerence of a professional watchman.

  “You can’t go in there,” he said. “If you’re looking for the men’s room, it’s down the hall.”

  “The man I want to see is in there,” I said. “Isn’t that Buffo’s office?”