Hooligans Part 52

"Kilmer?"

"Sounds good to me," I said.

The wet bar was hidden behind mahogany shutters that swung away with a touch. Raines took down three snifters that looked as fragile as dewdrops and poured generous shots from a bottle that was old enough to have served the czar. The brandy burned the toes off my socks.

"Have a seat and tell me what's on your mind," he said in a flat, no-nonsense voice.

The leather sofa was softer than any bed I'd been in lately. He sat behind his desk with a sigh and rubbed his eyes.

I was beginning to like him in spite of myself. I had remembered him as just another football jock, but Raines had about him the charisma of authority, even as weary as he seemed to be. He dominated the office, not an easy thing to do considering the view.

"This thing with Disaway," said Callahan, "it goes a little deeper than splitting a foreleg because of Butes."

Raines swirled his brandy around, took a whiff, then a sip, and waited.

"Disaway was favored to win a race this past Sunday-"

"He dragged in eighth," Raines said, cutting him off.

"Yeah, right, well, we have what I would call very reliable information that the race was fixed for Disaway to lose. Would you say the information is good, Jake?"

"I'd say it's irrefutable," I said.

The muscles in Raines' jaws got the jitters.

"I can't tell you exactly how it was done," Callahan went on. "Probably cut back his feed for a couple of days and overworked him a little, raced him a little too much, then probably gave him a bag of oats and a bucket of water a couple of hours before the race and he was lucky to make the finish line. But there's no doubt that he was meant to lose. Money was made on it."

"By who?" Raines demanded.

Callahan hesitated for several moments. He was in a tight spot. To tell Raines about the recording was to admit that there was an illegal tape in Tagliani's house.

"I'm sorry, sir," Callahan said, firmly but pleasantly, "I can't tell you that. Not right now. The thing is, it worked as a double. He lost so big Sunday, his odds were way up for today's race."

"He went off at about fifteen to one," Raines said. He took another sip of brandy but his dark eyes never left Callahan's face.

"That's right, but he was posting $33.05 until a few minutes before post time. According to your man at the hundred-dollar window, a bundle was laid off on him just before the bell and his odds dipped to $26.00 and change."

"Do you know who placed the bundle?" Raines asked.

Callahan shook his head. "It was several people, spread across both windows."

"Who was responsible?"

"Could've been anybody from the groom to the owner. Thing is, sir, we can't prove any of this. Except we know the loss on Sunday was fixed."

"We can prove the horse was dosed with Butes," Raines said angrily.

"Yeah," said Callahan, "except it isn't against the law in this state."

"Well, it's going to be," stormed Raines. "I've always been against the use of Butazolidin on any horse up to forty-eight hours before a race. I know horses, Callahan."

"I know that," the big man answered.

"But I don't know the kind of people that fix horse races and you do. I need some proof to use on Thibideau so this won't happen again."

I decided to break in at this point. Callahan was playing it too close to the vest.

"Mr. Raines, Pancho here's reluctant to discuss this because it involves some illegal evidence-gathering. I trust you'll keep this confidential, but the fact is, we know the race was fixed, but we are powerless to say anything about it. The proof is on a tape which is nonadmissible."

He stared at both of us for a few moments, toyed with a pipe on his desk, finally scratched his chin with the stem.

"Can you tell me who was involved?"

"A man named Tagliani," I said. If he knew the name, he had either forgotten it or was one of the better actors I had ever seen in action. There was not a hint of recognition.

"I don't think I'm familiar with-"

"How about Frank Turner?" I said. "That's the name he was using here."

I could see Callahan's startled look from the side of my eye but I ignored it.

The question brought a verbal response from Raines.

"Good G.o.d!" he said. "Is this fix tied up in some way with the homicides in town?"

It was obvious that he had bought the soft-pedal from the press just as everyone else in town had. Just as obviously, he was totally in the dark about who Tagliani really was and the ramifications of the a.s.sa.s.sinations.

"Not exactly," Callahan answered, still trying to be cautious.

I decided it was time to let the skeleton out of the closet. I told him the whole Tagliani story, starting in Ohio and ending in the Dunetown morgue. I told him about Chevos, the friendly dope runner, his a.s.sa.s.sin, Nance, and their front man, Bronicata. I told him about the Cherry McGee-Longnose Graves war, a harbinger of what was to come. The more I talked, the more surprised Callahan looked.

Surprised was hardly the word to describe Raines. He was appalled.

I was like a c.r.a.p shooter on a roll. The more aghast they got, the more I unloaded. I watched Raines' every muscle, trying to decide whether he had truly been misled by t.i.tan and the others, or whether he was one of the greatest actors of all time. I decided he had been duped. Whatever had been weighing on his mind earlier in the day probably seemed insignificant compared to what I was telling him. I saved my best shot until last.

"I'm surprised t.i.tan, Seaborn, Donleavy, or the fellow who owns the newspaper and TV station-what's his name . . . ?"

"Sutter," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"Yeah. He's handling the cover-up. I'm surprised one of your a.s.sociates didn't tell you before this," I said.

Pause.

"They've known about it for several weeks."

Callahan looked like he had swallowed his tongue.

Raines got another five years older in ten seconds.

I'm not sure to this day whether I was venting my anger toward the Committee, Chief, and the rest of the Dunetown crowd, or telling the man something he should know, whether it was a petty move on my part because I wanted his wife, or a keen piece of strategy. That's what I wrote it off as, even though it was still a reckless thing to do. Whatever my motives were, I knew one thing for sure: A lot of h.e.l.l was going to be raised. Some rocks would certainly be overturned. I was anxious to see who came running out.

By the time I was finished, he knew I knew who was on the Committee and the extent of its power, and I did it all by innuendo, a casual mention of t.i.tan here, of Seaborn there, none of it incriminating. I stopped short of that.

I was having a h.e.l.l of a time. It was the Irish in me: don't get mad, get even. I was doing both.

"Anyway," I said, summing it all up, "the fix wasn't part of this other mess, it's just indicative of what was happening here. Uh . . . " I tried to think of a delicate way of putting it. " . . . A change of values in the city since the old days."

His cold dark eyes s.h.i.+fted to me and he stared at me for several seconds although his mind still seemed to be wandering. Then he nodded very slowly.

"Yes," he said sadly. "That's well put, Kilmer. A change of values."

It was then that I realized how deeply hurt he was. Bad enough to find out you have been lied to by your best friends, but to get the information from your wife's old boyfriend went a little beyond insulting. I stopped having a good time and started feeling sorry for him. A lot of Harry Raines' dreams had been destroyed in a very few minutes.

Pancho Callahan stared out the window at the racetrack. He had less to say than usual-nothing.

Raines got up, poured another round of brandy, and slumped on the corner of his desk.

"I appreciate your candor," he said, stopping to clear his voice halfway through the sentence. "I understand about your . . . previous ties to Dunetown. All this is probably difficult for you, too."

He wasn't doing bad at the innuendo himself. A lot of information was bouncing back and forth between us, a lot of it tacitly. I almost asked him what had been troubling him.

Instead, I dug it in a little deeper.

"It hasn't got anything to do with old ties, Mr. Raines," I said. "I'm an investigator for the government. I came to help clean up your town. I've been here five days and I only know one thing for sure. Everybody of importance I turn to for help, kicks me in the s.h.i.+ns instead. Callahan wouldn't have told you all this. He wouldn't be that inconsiderate. I, on the other hand, have never scored too well in diplomacy. It doesn't work in my job."

I stopped talking. The dialogue was beginning to sound defensive.

Raines looked at Callahan. "Can you confirm this?" he asked quietly.

Callahan nodded slowly.

"My G.o.d," Raines said again. And then suddenly he turned his attention back to Pancho Callahan.

"The blame rests squarely with the trainer," Raines snapped, almost as if he had forgotten the conversation moments before. It was as if it had given him some inner strength. The weight seemed to be gone. Fire and steel slowly replaced it, as if he'd made a final judgment and it was time to move on. "I'll have Barton's a.s.s. I'll get him out of here along with that d.a.m.n Butazolidin."

Callahan chimed in: "Seems to me, sir, we're talking about two different things here. Buting up the horse today and fixing the race on Sunday. They're connected this time, but they're two different problems."

"Yes, I understand that," he said. He braced his shoulders like a marine on parade and ground his fist into the palm of his other hand.

"We talked to the jockey . . . "

"Impastato," Raines said, letting us know he knew his track.

"Right. Impastato got chewed out by Smokey Barton for letting Disaway out at the five-furlong post-he usually goes at the three-quarter. Anyway, it was Thibideau who told him to run the race that way."

"That happens; it's not uncommon," Raines said, attempting to be fair.

"No. But it's usually not done in a race where the horse is favored and the track is right for him."

"I agree," said Raines, who was turning out to be n.o.body's fool, "but it's not enough to prove the race was a fix."

"No, but there's something else. The last race Disaway ran, Impastato says the horse was shying to the left going out of the backstretch. Started running wide."

"Look, I'm sorry, Callahan," Raines said impatiently, "but I need to know where you got this thing about the race being fixed. I can't go to the stewards and tell them I heard it around the track."

"You can't take it to the stewards at all . . . or the Jockey Club," Callahan said, looking to me for support.

"And why not?"

"We can't prove any of it," I said. "You're a lawyer. All of this is expert conjecture. You could get your tail in as big a crack as ours would be."

"My tail's already in a crack," he growled.

Callahan said, "What Jake means is, we can't prove the horse was burned out so he wouldn't run well. We can't prove Thibideau put the final touch on it by opening him up too early. We can't even prove it was Thibideau. Fact is, we can't even prove for sure the horse has been running with a hairline crack in his foreleg."

Raines' anger was turning to frustration.

"Why don't you just spell it out for me," he said.

"Okay," said Callahan. "The way I see it, they couldn't Bute him on Sunday because there's a little kick to Butes; the horse might just have done the job anyway, and he was favored. The fix was for Disaway to lose. They had to Bute him today because he was going lame after the workouts, and today was his day to win. So Disaway ran like a cheetah, couldn't feel the pain in his foreleg until he went down. What I think is that Thibideau set up the loss on Sunday. Smokey's only sin was not pulling the pony because he was going lame. h.e.l.l, you could run a lot of trainers off the track for doing that."

"Then I'll run 'em off," Raines said angrily. He finished his second brandy and stood with his back to us, staring down at the track. "An owner's greed, a trainer's stupidity, and two horses are dead. One jockey may never ride again, and another is lying in pain in the hospital." He turned back to face us.

"To my knowledge, there's never been a fix at this track, not in almost three years."

"Well," Callahan said, "it was well thought out and impossible to prove. Would've worked like a Turkish charm, too, except the leg was weaker than they thought, which is always the case when a horse breaks a leg in a race."

"Then just what the h.e.l.l can I do?" Raines roared, and for a moment he sounded like Chief Findley.

Callahan finished his drink and stood up.

"About this one? Nothing. Thibideau lost his horse; he's paid a price. The other two horses and jockeys? Don't know what to say. It'll go down in the books, just another accident. I don't think-see, the reason we told you this, it isn't the last time it's going to be tried. I know how you feel about the track and the horses. It's something you needed to know."

Raines sighed and sat back in his chair and pinched his lower lip.

"I appreciate it, thanks," he said. But he was distracted. His gaze once again was focused somewhere far away.

"Mr. Raines, it wouldn't help us-Callahan here, myself, and the rest of Morehead's people-for you to talk about this fix business. Not for just now. Maybe in a day or two, okay?"

He could hardly refuse the request and didn't.

"I respect your confidence," he said, without looking at either of us. "Will forty-eight hours be enough?"

Callahan looked at me and I shrugged. "Sure," I said, "that'll be fine. We'll be checking with you."

We left him sitting there, staring out at the track he had created and which he obviously loved and cherished and felt protective of, the same way Chief felt about Dunetown. I felt sorry for him; he was like a schoolboy who had just discovered some ugly fact of life. Callahan didn't say anything until we were outside the building and walking back around the infield to the car.

"You were pretty tough in there," he said.