“Good point, Big. What about you?” Wheeler checked her notes. “You’re supposed to snoop around the racetrack and find out what people are saying about Shorty.”
“I’m heading up there this afternoon. It’s already set up with Debi.”
“Fine. As for me, I’ve already talked to Summer Caldwell, but I’ve still got Myrtle Sweet to do. Have your reports on my desk in two days. That means Friday, before you go home. Any questions?”
Big Urmson said, “What about Mahmoud Khan and Percy Ball? Sarge was going to do them.”
“And what about Doug Buckley?” Barkas asked. “Who’s got him?”
Wheeler said, “Just do the ones you’ve got for now. If anyone finds himself with time on his hands, let me know and you can have your pick. Anything else?”
Trick said, “Who’s going to look after his dog?”
“Good question. I’d do it, but I don’t think Misty would like having a bulldog in the apartment.”
“Misty a cat?”
“Yes, a lilac point Siamese. What about you? I could pick Reg up and bring him to your place. There’s a nice little parkette right across from your building, isn’t there?”
Young was alone on a bed in a dark room. The pain was very bad. He was so frightened he couldn’t stop shaking. He tried to think about the things he loved. It was difficult to concentrate, but he came up with a list of fourteen items and put them in alphabetical order: baseball, beer, Bob Seger, bourbon, Debi, dogs (in general, Reg in particular), Hawkins Cheezies, hockey, horse racing, Jamal, Jessy, movies, Trick, Wheeler.
Then he made a list of his favourite movies: All Quiet on the Western Front, Apocalypse Now, City Slickers, The Deer Hunter, Dog Day Afternoon, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, The Maltese Falcon, a Paul Newman movie he’d just seen a year ago called Nobody’s Fool, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Serpico, and another one whose title he couldn’t remember about a group of college friends who reunite at the funeral of a classmate; the theme song was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and William Hurt was in it, and Glenn Close, and Kevin Kline.
Later, he dreamed he was in a forest cutting wood with a chainsaw, and the saw bucked off a knot and cut through the sleeve of his lumberjack shirt and through his forearm, dropping it like a length of stovewood into the dead leaves at his feet. He fell onto his back, the lifeblood spilling, and told Mahmoud Khan—who appeared out of nowhere and knelt over him like a priest—to tell Wheeler he would always love her and to tell Myrtle Sweet that he wanted to fuck her, and could she hurry over before he died.
Debi met Big Urmson at the backstretch gate. Only minutes before his arrival, she had been informed of her father’s hospitalization in a phone call from Staff Inspector Bateman. He’d assured her there was nothing to be done until after the operation, and he’d asked if she would still be willing to meet Big Urmson and get him into Shedrow.
“You’re lucky you didn’t come yesterday,” she said when Big Urmson arrived. “Tuesdays are dark, and there’s no one around.”
“Dark?” Big Urmson asked.
“There’s no racing on dark days.”
Big Urmson visited the cafeteria. He talked to two trainers, several grooms, and some of the kitchen staff. The woman who dolloped out the mashed potatoes was convinced Shorty had been murdered by the Russian Mafia. The cashier claimed his death was divine retribution for past sins.
Big Urmson left the kitchen and wandered around outside. One of the grooms, an old man with shifty eyes, argued that Shorty’s murder had never happened, it was all a hoax, the body found in the stall was someone else’s, and Shorty himself would reappear next February during the winter meet at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Florida.
Another groom, a young black man with cornrows in his hair who was sweeping inside Barn 1, said maybe it had something to do with The Butcher.
Big Urmson said, “What butcher?”
The young man shrugged and said, “The guy that kills horses.”
Big Urmson pressed the young man for more information, but he claimed he didn’t know anything else, that he’d only heard of him, and Big Urmson was unable to find anyone else who would admit to any knowledge of The Butcher.
The most popular and most credible theory concerning Shorty’s death was that he owed somebody money, but here again Big Urmson was stonewalled because no one promoting this theory was willing or able to identify anyone to whom Shorty might have been in debt.
Trick was sitting in his wheelchair at the desk that had been set up for him opposite Wheeler’s. He took a deep breath and picked up the phone. He dialed the number scribbled on the piece of paper in front of him.
A female voice answered. “Ontario Avian Protection Association. Consuela speaking.”
Trick cleared his throat. “Consuela, good morning. Is Mr. Smith-Gower available?”
“No, I’m sorry, he’s out of town. Would you care to leave a message?”
For a moment the wind left Trick’s sails. “Is there any way to reach him?”
She laughed. “No, I’m afraid not. He’s birding in Brazil. He’s after a particularly elusive life-bird, the Hyacinth macaw. When he goes on trips like this he doesn’t even leave a number where we can reach him. The last thing he wants is contact with the outside world.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“Next Wednesday. A week today. But you never know with him.”
“I see. Well, thank you.”
“Would you care to leave a message?”
Trick thought for a moment. “Yes, would you have him phone Arthur Trick at Homicide. I just need to ask him—”
“Homicide?”
“Yes, I just need to ask him a few questions.”
“But—”
“Mr. Smith-Gower is not in any trouble, I assure you, Consuela, but he might have information which could be of use to us.”
After he’d given Consuela his phone number and hung up, Trick sat immobile. Camp gives me a job, he thought, and I can’t even get started. He shook his head. Maybe I should phone Boum-Boum and get him to take me home.
“Lynn,” he said.
Across from him, Wheeler looked up from her paperwork. “Yes?”
“You still need someone to look into Percy Ball and Mahmoud Khan?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Camp thinks Khan’s in financial trouble and Percy’s hiding something, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Let me take a shot at them.”
The orderly parked the stretcher, with Young on it, in a corridor outside the door to Operating Theatre 2. Then, without saying a word, he turned and walked away.
Young was shivering. His whole body was shaking, and his teeth were chattering. He lay like this for several minutes until a passing nurse noticed him. “My goodness, look at you,” she said. She walked over to a compartment in the wall and opened the door to it. It looked like a body drawer in a morgue. Young half-expected her to pull out a frozen corpse. But when she returned she had a white blanket in her arms. As she spread it over Young, she looked like an angel. The blanket was warm, almost hot. Young felt delicious, like a child being tucked in. “It’s just nerves,” the nurse said. “You’ll be fine.”