Million Dollar Handle

Chapter 6

It cost more to get into the clubhouse than the grandstand, but compared to competing forms of entertainment, the price was still low. Drinks were a dime more, and the seats were more comfortable. There was a window selling $100 wheels and boxes.

When the bartender brought Shayne the drink he had ordered, Shayne said, “Linda Geary. Can you point her out to me?”

“Bound to be here somewhere.” He looked around. “Down there in the corner box. Aren’t you Mike Shayne?”

“I’ll have a statement on that after I talk to my lawyer.”

“Smart man. You got the only way to beat the house odds, that’s own a piece of the wheel.”

The speakers eulogizing Max Geary were running out of things to say, and the bettors were getting restless. Taking his drink, Shayne moved through the crowd to get a better look at Geary’s daughter. A man was beside her. He stood up, and Shayne saw that it was Harry Zell.

Shayne circled, intercepting Zell at the top of the aisle. He looked as though he was mourning something, but probably not the dead race-track owner. As soon as he saw Shayne his expression brightened drastically, going all the way back to normal without passing through any intermediate stages. Then he remembered the context, and he looked sharper and slightly hostile.

“We’ve been hearing about you.”

“Let’s not talk about it, O.K.?” Shayne said. “I’ve been standing here thinking what a great spot for a hotel.”

Zell looked at him suspiciously. “You’re touching a nerve, you know that? I’m trying to figure out how that payoff book fits in with the way Max always refused to listen to my presentation. No track, no payoffs. Look at all the money he’d save.”

“That’s true, Harry, but if he sold out to you, what would he do with his evenings? It’s funny, I don’t think I ever saw Mrs. Geary here before tonight. Have you got her signature yet?”

“We’re negotiating,” Zell said abruptly. “Excuse me, I’m getting a lady a drink.”

“I’ll take it down to her. What’s she drinking?”

“Scotch. But I’m the one she sent for it.”

“We’re all supposed to be grieving for a dead benefactor, not talking real estate with the benefactor’s daughter. For the first few days, the survivors should be thinking about higher things, and I don’t mean a high-rise hotel. Bow out, Harry. I’ll take it to her.”

“God knows I can’t stop talking about it. It’s been dragging on so goddamn long.” He came up to Shayne’s level, and said in a lowered voice, “How do you stand on the question, dog track or hotel?”

“I can’t get excited about it. Harry, you’re in the business, you ought to know. Who put up the money to rebuild? Was it Tony Castle?”

Zell stepped back, to bring Shayne’s face into better focus. “Max hated those people, with a passion. Castle? What is this?”

“To be honest with you, I’m feeling my way. I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. With Max dead, the situation is going to be different.”

“Is it? I hope so. This is definitely the queerest deal I was ever involved in. Tell Linda I had to make some phone calls.” He smiled suddenly, with what seemed to be real warmth, going back to his usual business manner. “Friend or foe, Mike? I wish I knew.”

He moved off at an angle, his big head down. Shayne worked his way back to the crowded bar and ordered a Scotch and water, which he took to Linda Geary’s box. The infield ceremony was ending, ahead of schedule because of the missing speakers. The crowd came to its feet for the final prayer, led by the rosy-faced monsignor.

Linda accepted the glass without looking at Shayne. Shayne studied her while the benediction echoed out of the PA outlets. Her cheeks were wet. She was a tall girl with long straight hair to her shoulders. She had her father’s nose and slightly protuberant eyes. She would have been handsomer weighing twenty pounds less. Her clothing was disarranged in various small ways, as though to show that she knew she was plain and too heavy, and there was no point in bothering. Her blouse was partly out of her skirt, and a button was missing.

Her lips were trembling when the prayer ended. “I think I’m sorry the bastard’s dead.”

She turned. Seeing Shayne instead of Harry Zell, she reared back, her face darkening.

“You killed him, you bloodsucker,” she cried, and threw the drink at Shayne.

One of the ice cubes caught him under an eye. “What did I do, get the wrong brand of Scotch?”

They had the full attention of the nearby box-holders. Shayne saw a waiter looking their way, and he signaled for another drink. She tried to get past him into the aisle, but he blocked her.

“Harry gave me a message for you.”

“All right, what?”

He sat down, his knees high. The mourners were beginning to file off the stand. One of the politicians helped Charlotte Geary down the steep stairs. Shayne said nothing, and after a moment’s puffing and flouncing, Linda sat down beside him.

“Well, damn it, what’s the message?”

“I only said that to get you to stop blocking the sightlines. He has to make some calls, and he asked me to carry your drink. What makes you think I had anything to do with killing your father? I thought the idea was that he took care of that himself.”

“You’re enormously sure of yourself, aren’t you?” The waiter handed in the new drink. She seized it and drank. “You and the rest. Hasn’t it struck you that maybe you overdid it a little? You killed the goose. Now no more of those golden eggs.”

“I’d say there are still a few money-making possibilities. Even if Harry’s deal goes through, and it seemed to me he was looking a little pessimistic. How much do you know about the way your father did business?”

“Me?” she said bitterly. “His only child? I’m the PR girl. I handle the press passes and get the puffs in the papers. Of course I’m also a minority stockholder, so what aspect of the business did you have in mind?”

“Were you surprised to hear he was paying off that many people?”

The Scotch had soothed her slightly. “Oh, somewhat, I guess. I knew about it in general. That was his excuse for keeping me on a dollar-a-week allowance, practically. To get any money at all out of the King of Miami Dog Racing, I had to go down on my knees and sing “Swannee River.” Everybody else was getting rich out of Surfside, but not Max Geary, and God knows, not Max Geary’s daughter.”

“Then why didn’t he sell?”

“Because he was an idiot! A stubborn, sentimental idiot! He got his back up and he wouldn’t listen. He was the world’s most infuriating man, and what the hell am I talking to you about him for?”

“Because you think there’s a chance you might be able to use me.”

She swung around, her eyes still moist and nearly overflowing. “What do you mean, use you?”

“Why is Harry having such a hard time smiling tonight? What did your mother do, stall him?”

“How did you know that? It only happened two hours ago. Oh, yes. Dog racing was so important to Max. Surfside is his monument. She can’t bring herself to sign it away before his body is cold. Of course that’s not the real reason. The real reason is lust, and in case you didn’t hear me, I’ll spell it for you. L-u-s-t. Do you know what it means? It’s a word you hardly ever hear anymore.”

“I know what it means, but how does it connect with dog racing?”

“It’s intimately connected with dog racing. Not that I blame her too much, except that it’s just so-I don’t know, so humiliating. And so damn inconvenient right now. Max always had girls on the side, even when we were months behind on the electric bill. But Mother? Another man? Never. Do you want to look at him?” She reached around and took a pair of binoculars off the rail. “Can I borrow these? All right, at the front of the paddock. He’s younger than I am, for goodness’ sake.”

Two men were standing together at the front of the enclosure, watching the dogs being made ready for the fifth-race parade. One, resting against the rail, was in his sixties, with a deeply lined face and thin hair, the prim mouth of a snuff-user. He directed a stream of tobacco juice onto the track and drank from an open Coke bottle. Shayne adjusted the focussing knob. The liquid in the bottle was too pale for Coke.

The young man at his elbow was built like a jai alai player, slight but muscular. He put a stick of gum in his mouth and moved back toward the kennel, with the ease and sureness of someone who knows precisely where he is and what he is doing.

“Good-looking kid,” Shayne commented, returning the binoculars.

“Oh, smashing. Poor Mother has been playing golf and doing the housework all these years, and that doesn’t prepare you for real life. She didn’t have a chance. Honest to God,” she burst out, “if I told you how we had to cut corners and make do while that ocean of payoff money was pouring out month after month… And then to have to listen to this hypocrisy, this bullshit about the money he raised for the Boy Scouts. They wanted me to get up on that platform in a black dress, with a little lace hanky so I could touch my eyes when they said something especially affecting. But not me. I wouldn’t have any part of it. So he got plastered, so his car got away from him. I knew it was going to happen. I even knew it was going to happen in just that way.”

The bugle sounded, and the dogs left the enclosure.

“I know what people thought of him. A maudlin, sloppy old bore. Do you know he never used to take more than one or two sociable drinks before we enlarged? Before we added the quote Hall of the Greyhound, unquote? The scale of everything changed. A bigger handle. Ten drinks for Daddy a night instead of two. We had to do it. The washrooms-my God, they were foul. We had to put in hurdle races. That just about killed Max, all by itself. Because when the good old boys in Kansas course their greyhounds, they don’t make them jump over sawed-off broomsticks, do they? Honest, traditional dog racing isn’t enough in this day and age. It has to be fancied up. You don’t watch the dogs, you watch the TV.”

The marshal lifted each dog’s chin and tweaked its blanket, to make it look like a winner, when the caller announced its name and weight. The numbers were dancing on the tote board.

“Oh, God,” Linda said, weeping. “When I was about seven he used to take me hunting and fishing. Those were the great times. When his trouble began, he didn’t even know I was alive. I’m the unluckiest person. Look around you. Everybody’s got a fistful of bills. The kennelmaster’s an old friend of mine, I do his betting for him. I thought I could piggyback on his bets and come out ahead, but I can’t even seem to do that. Whenever he tells me he has something that’s absolutely sure, that’s the night I can’t spare more than a few lousy bucks. It’s a money-making machine, but I’ve never been able to get it to perform for me.”

At the rate she was drinking, she would need another Scotch in a minute. Shayne waved at a waiter. She blew her nose hard.

“I thought I owed it to Max’s memory to get drunk tonight, but now I don’t think it was such a good-” She turned suddenly, and her hand closed on Shayne’s arm. “That’s a divine muscle. Is that what you used to put Max in the hospital? Or a baseball bat?”

“Would you like an explanation of that?”

“Oh, never mind, I don’t think I’d believe it. I know he was impossible sometimes. I had enough fights with him myself. I threw a platter of chicken at him once. Shayne, I need some help.”

“What kind?”

“I think it was tetrazini, what difference does it make?”

“I mean what kind of help?”

“Not psychiatric. Maybe the kind of help you could give me with that hard right arm. Go back a few minutes. You asked me a question, and now I think I’ll answer it. How much did I know about the business? Thanks,” she said to the waiter as he passed in a drink. “Officially, not a hell of a lot. But unofficially-well, I made it a point to nose around, because some day all this was going to be mine, was the idea. None of the dog people pay any attention to me-I’m part of the wallpaper. And one of the things I’ve found out, one of the major things, is why he paid you three thousand a month.”

“He had every reason to keep that confidential.”

“He thought he was keeping it confidential. I pieced it together.”

“I think you’re trying to bluff me, Linda. Tell me your theory.”

“No, I don’t think I will. You play this game all the time. I’m new at it. I don’t want to hear you tell me how wrong I am. Because I know, and you’d better believe it. And this gives me a little muscle, even though I’m really only a frail girl. I think I’m going to hire you, Shayne, you corrupt son of a bitch. Mike Shayne, yeah! But I’m not going to pay you any money. I couldn’t afford your fees. This time your fee is going to be silence.” She put her finger to her lips. “Do me a favor, and I won’t explain that three thousand to the cops, or the newspapers, or the state’s attorney.”

Shayne continued to look at her steadily, and she went on, “I’m in a position to lay you waste, will you admit that?”

“Probably, if you have any evidence at all.”

“Pooh, evidence. I don’t need it. I’m the daughter. Do you want to take a chance? Go ahead. You may think you’re in trouble now, but wait till I’m done talking.”

“Who do you want me to work on, the kid in the kennel?”

“Exactly. His name is Ricardo Sanchez, and I’ll give you five days to get him off the track and out of Miami. Am I wrong in thinking that’s the kind of work you do?”

“I’ve done it,” Shayne said shortly. “But it can backfire. If your mother gets the idea you’re persecuting him, you’ll be worse off than you are now.”

She touched his arm again, this time running her palm along its full length to the wrist. “You can control that. I like competent people, and I have a feeling you’re competent. They’ve got an apartment in the Fanchon Towers. She rented it for him. Mother and I don’t have those long girl-to-girl talks anymore, and I had to follow her one night, which made me feel very crummy. I kind of sympathize with the old girl, but you have to admit it’s grotesque. He’s completely uneducated. Just because he has that great smile and that neat little Cuban ass.”

“You want to break it up for her own good, so she won’t be hurt.”

“So she won’t change her mind about selling Surfside! For the last year we’ve been conspirators. How were we going to make that drunken madman listen to reason? Then all of a sudden, a hundred-and-eighty-degree switch. North to south, uptown to downtown. And why? So she can make her Latin boyfriend racing secretary, or something even more grand, general manager, whatever his heart desires.”

“Has she definitely said she won’t sell, in those words?”

“She sent back Harry’s purchase agreement, with no explanation. But I know the explanation. It’s that Cuban stud, who no doubt is giving her the first satisfactory humping of her adult life. Get something on him,” she said viciously, “and if there’s nothing to get, invent something. But I know that look, the sassy way he moves. There’s larceny there somewhere. Talk to his Cuban girlfriends and find out what he does when it’s siesta time in the barrio. And then pound him with it! Catch an outgoing bus, Ricardo, or that Latin American ass will end up on a slab.”

“You really want to go that far?”

“I want you to break it up, and break it up fast, and don’t tell me how you did it if it embarrasses you. In five days. Oh, she’ll sell eventually. No other move makes sense. But I want that Cuban to be a thing of the past before there are any loose piles of cash lying around.”

The woman they were talking about was still huddled with the mayor and other dignitaries in the infield. From this angle, the pool beyond, set in loose blue gravel, looked like a dog biscuit. The dogs were yipping in the starting box.

The announcer cried, “And heeeeere comes Speedy.” The artificial rabbit, a two-foot length of spring steel wrapped in sheepskin, with bright inflamed eyes, whipped around the turn, releasing the lid of the starting box. The dogs poured out.

“Dee!” Linda cried in alarm. “Dee Wynn. What’s the damn fool doing?”

The older man Shayne had seen in the paddock had wandered out on the track. He was wavering, holding the Coke bottle the way a tightrope walker uses his pole, for balance. The pack pounded hard toward the turn. These first moments were the most important part of the race, for in three races out of four, the dog that leads at the first call will go on to win. The bettors in the clubhouse boxes were yelling encouragement to the dogs they had money on, addressing them not by name but by number.

“Go back, Dee!” Linda called. “Oh, my God. Dee, go back, you’ll be massacred-”

Suddenly, the old man realized that in a moment he and eight charging dogs would be contending for the same stretch of track. He gestured with the half-empty bottle.

The announcer, above on the control deck, had seen him. “Dee-leave the track.”

The kennelmaster hesitated, and made the wrong choice. The lure operator was leading the dogs by forty feet. He came back on the rheostat handle, and the lure slowed. In a moment the leading greyhound was only a few lengths behind it. Wynn jumped toward the infield. A yell went up. He was a half step from safety, in the air in the middle of his final bound, when the lure arm struck his ankle. Both legs flew up, the bottle went sailing, his arms flailed like an off-center windmill, and he came down hard on the seat of his pants. It was a spectacular spill.

And an instant later the dogs were on him.

The board flashed: “No Race. No Race.”

The pack split. A few dogs continued after the rabbit, which was now far ahead around the turn, but the others wheeled and broke, and two headed back toward the starting boxes. The lure folded inward and disappeared.

The announcer was calling, “No race. No race. The fifth race will be rescheduled later in the program, hold your tickets, ladies and gentlemen, hold your tickets.”

The decoy, a replica of the lure with the same startled eyes, was leaping up and down behind the wire screen, further distracting the dogs. Some turned in and allowed themselves to be captured. Others were already past.

Usually an aborted race is greeted with resentment from the customers, especially those whose dogs are leading at the moment the sign is flashed, but Wynn’s fall had been so wildly comic that everyone was laughing.

“You cretins,” Linda cried furiously. “Can’t you see he’s hurt?”

She pushed past Shayne. Wynn was still down on the track, his legs splayed, supporting himself on his hands, while the handlers and dogs raced around him. He felt the need to spit. His mouth worked, and a stream of juice jetted out halfway to the paddock entrance.

“You see such wonderful backwoods types here,” a heavily jeweled woman said in the box above Shayne. “I mean, it’s America, isn’t it?”