Down Here

it? We get a statement. Same pattern, right down to the mouthpiece.

“Then, a week or so later, out of the blue, the vic calls up, says she doesn’t want to ‘press charges.’ Like it was some bitch-slap incident or something.

“Okay, so the plainclothes guys go to see her, too. A total washout. She’s not talking. Not saying it didn’t happen, just saying she’s not going to cooperate.”

“So they figured she probably knew the perp?” I said.

“That is what they figured. And we were going to put surveillance on her. If she was covering for the guy, or, better yet, blackmailing him, we could end up with a solid ID.”

“What happened?”

“She moved. To fucking Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Lock, stock, and barrel. They tried to get a wiretap going, but the judge laughed at them, said they were a mile short of probable cause. And what was the crime, anyway?”

“Maybe she just wanted out of New York,” I said. “Some people do that, put a lot of distance between themselves and . . . whatever happened to them.”

“I don’t know,” Sands said.

“You said three.”

“Yeah. The first one, who denied anything happened? She turned up, later. Dead.”

“You think it was Wychek?”

“He was already locked up by then,” Sands said. “For the one Wolfe nailed him on. Besides, something else was going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was tortured,” Sands said, voice flat and hard, a shield against his feelings, like the booze. “Somebody worked her over with a stun gun. Or electricity. Had those burn marks all over her . . . in the worst spots.”

“In her own apartment?”

“Nobody knows where it was done. Where they found her was in a building that was getting rehabbed over in Williamsburg. One of the workers spotted her, hanging, when he opened up in the morning. It was in the papers.”

“She was hung?”

“Not to kill her. They did that with a bullet. Two of them, one in each eye.”

“A message.”

“Yeah. Maybe it was for the third one.”

“Huh?”

“Her best friend. Roommate. Wasn’t home when the rape—the one she said never happened—went down. That one—the third one— just plain disappeared. The detectives looked for her as soon as the original vic wouldn’t cooperate. On the books, she’s a missing person.”

“Missing and presumed.”

“Yeah.”

“So the homicide case is still open, too?”

“Yeah.”

“You got names and—?”

“I see you already got a pen,” he said, nodding toward the program.

Max nudged my shoulder, bringing me back from wherever I’d gone. I looked up at the board. The third race was two minutes to post.

Max pointed to the info I’d jotted down, held up three fingers, made a questioning gesture.

“I don’t know,” I told him. I drew a stick figure of a man, surrounded by a ring of swastikas. “But it looks like Wychek’s friends may have started taking care of him earlier than we thought.”

Max hadn’t left my side, so I knew he hadn’t gotten a bet down since the second race. I turned to that page in the program, made a “What happened?” gesture.

He held up the ticket. All the answer I needed. If my horse hadn’t gotten home first, he would have torn it up.

I found a place in the program with some white space showing, handed it to Max. He diagrammed the race for me in increments, drawing it as clear as a video.

My mare had left hard, cranked off a good first quarter, put some real distance on the field without a challenge, and maintained strong fractions until her second time past the clubhouse turn. Then they all came at her, slingshotting around at the top of the stretch. She was fading fast, but still game, staggering home a half-length ahead of the nearest horse. Paid $8.80 to win, anchoring our four- hundred-and-change Double, a personal record.

Max held up his hand, fingers spread, to emphasize that we didn’t just have it, we had it five times!

Neither of us wanted to stay around after that. The minute they get ahead, suckers say they’re “playing with the track’s money.” That’s why they’re called suckers.

^“Anything new?”

“Stone-fucking-wall,” Davidson said. “Cocksuckers must think they’re playing with an amateur.”

“I spoke to Wolfe; she doesn’t seem worried.”

“I wouldn’t play poker with her, I was you.”

“Yeah, I know. So you’re saying . . . ?”

“I’m saying that somebody’s cooking up something. I don’t give an obese rodent’s rump what that is, so long as it isn’t my client on the burner.”

“I’m still with it,” I promised.

“You maybe got something?”

“Maybe. A long maybe.”

“Want to tell me?”

“I’m your investigator,” I said, “not your client.”

^“No, no, no,” Michelle said, hands on hips. “You cannot wear that same jacket.”

“But you said it would be like a—”

“Never mind what I said. This is different.”

“How?”

“Stop being such a dolt, Burke! We already went over this. That girl wants something. And if I’m right, we have to go for it.”

“I don’t see why I can’t wear the—”

“She’s a money-girl, right?”

“I . . . No, I don’t think so. Everything we have about her background says middle-class.”

“Give me strength,” Michelle muttered. “Sweetheart,” she said, her voice a mockery of patience, “I don’t mean a from-money girl, like a trust-funder. I mean she works with money. That’s her thing.”

“So?”

“So I’m guessing she wants to see you know how to make some. Or you already have.”

“Maybe she just wants to go slumming.”

“That could be,” Michelle admitted. “But any woman who’s willing to buy a man a cell phone and let him use her credit card can get all the downmarket action she wants. We play it like it’s something else,” she said, firmly.

“What do I have to buy this goddamned time?”

“You don’t have to buy anything,” she said, triumphantly. “Remember that beautiful Bally jacket I got you when we were working that movie scam?”

“How could I forget? It cost—”

“Well, maybe now you see the value of the classics,” she said. “You wear that number over a nice shirt with a plain tie. . . .”

“A tie now?”

“She said dinner, am I right?”