Max's dark eyes brightened. 'Damn right! I moved left, Salazar moved left. I moved right, he moved right. When I took the inside, son of a bitch whipped my horse and nearly drove me over the rail.'
'A shameful, dreadful decision, or should I say non-decision, by the stewards.' Charlie clucked, pushing all the right buttons.
'Yow, you said it. C'mon. I'll introduce you to the fifty-dollar window. Forget that two-dollar stuff.'
They took off for the stone staircases with the carved balustrades. Purple bougainvillea spun down the mezzanine, clinging to the green-and-white latticework. Hialeah Park was a place of old terrazzo floors and unpretentious lawn chairs, a graceful faded garden of pink flamingos, green shrubs, tropical flowers, and sweet- smelling earth.
I sat on the edge of the fountain next to Citation. He stayed on his pedestal. He was by Bull Lea out of Hydroplane II, bred at Calumet Farm. He won the Triple Crown. I was by a nomad shrimper out of Katy Lassiter, raised by my granny. I was a triple threat, just good enough in baseball, basketball, and football not to get good enough at anything else. By the time I learned that games were not forever, I had a lot of catching up to do.
Maybe I was just a step too slow to ever be good at this. I was starting to feel sorry for myself, which is not the most endearing of my qualities. But let's look at the facts. Nick Fox was right. I'd been spinning webs for Rodriguez and Fox, and they were clean. They said they'd humor me, take the blood tests. They did, and young Dr. Sanford Katzen, mathematician and geneticist, brought his autoradiograms and his scientific mumbo jumbo to my office. I told him to spare me the lecture about chopping up the DNA and he did. He held the X-rays up to the window and showed me, by golly, there wasn't one chance in a quintillion that either man's DNA matched that of the semen from Mary Rosedahl or Priscilla Fox. If that wasn't enough, Fox said, they'd each take polygraph tests. It was enough.
So I asked Charlie Riggs to spend a buck and hop on Metrorail for the ride to Hialeah. He had agreed, and we sat there, gliding above the treetops, past the marble-and-glass skyscrapers of Brickell Avenue, past the downtown government buildings, through the cheerless streets of Overtown, looking down at the tar-patched roofs and asphalt courts where skinny kids dropped a ball through netless rims. From a distance I peered into the Orange Bowl, my own house of pain. We shot by the civic center, Allapattah, Brownsville, and Northside, and came to rest in the parking lot beside the old racetrack.
The winter and spring dates go to Gulfstream and Calder, leaving Hialeah with the stifling summer season, smaller crowds, slower horses. Like many aging institutions of charm and character, the Hialeah track was also going broke. The summer meet would be cut short, closed without ceremony, and already there were plans for plug-ugly condos around the flamingo pond. Inside the clubhouse, amid ragged, curling photos of Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons and the litter of discarded tickets, an elderly barber sat in the reclining chair of his empty shop beneath a stained-glass window of a pink flamingo. He studied the Daily Racing Form. Just memories now, hundred-dollar tips from grateful bettors in need of a shave.
And here I was, trying to bully a tough monkey who used to steer thousand-pound beasts with his knees, and he tells me to shove it where the sun don't shine. But old Charlie Riggs, master of the microscope and the anecdote, found common ground with the little weasel. When they came back from the window, I was sure, Max would be rolling up his sleeve and asking if we wanted a drop or a pint.
And how about my personal relationships, as long as we're engaging in self-flagellation? Ms. Pamela Maxson, where is she now, oh man of many charms? In a hotel room, ocean view. Do not disturb.
I'm sorry, Dr. Maxson is not taking any calls. Would you care to leave a message?
Yeah, tell her she wasn't that great, either. No, never mind.
Okay, Lassiter, you've struck out before. You've had good relationships go bad and bad relationships get worse. There've been lady executives who cared more for their work than you, new-age types who declared you obsolete, touchy-feely artistic types who found you impenetrable, and a couple of cocktail waitresses who thought you had a cute tush.
So don't start romanticizing this one. This was weird from day one. First she stiff-arms and belittles you. Then drops you in the soup with a bunch of sicko killers and gets angry when you fight your way out. Next she shows up under the sheets, then boom, she's furious. She cuddles again, sharing bed and board until she finds someone else. Who was it? A psychiatrist at one of her speeches. Or a beachboy type, Mel Gibson with a deep tan.
Okay, grow up already. She left. Accept it for what it was. ''Sweet love were slain,'' old Tennyson wrote. A meaningless joining of bodies, a sharing of mutual heat, a momentary exchange of breaths. Nothing more.
The ex-coroner and the ex-jockey hadn't come back, so I limped up the stairs to the mezzanine, the left foot still swollen and angry at me. There were cries of joy and anguish from the grandstand, and by the time I got to the bar, the TV monitor was showing the replay, number two, thundering down the stretch, five lengths ahead, Bellasario leaning forward, talking horse talk, I imagined, in Radar Vector's ears. He paid $25.80, $9.80, and $5.20.
I ordered a draft beer and was joined by two elderly men in polo shirts, golf slacks, and sneakers. A second TV was tuned to the Yankees-Red Sox game and it was clear these guys didn't come to drink. One had a hundred bucks on the Yankees at six-to-five.
Five minutes later, Charlie Riggs and Max Blinderman pulled up, laughing, slapping each other on the back, counting their money. Literally counting it, unfolding greenbacks as they walked.
'Jake, buy you a beer?' Charlie thundered.
I didn't say no.
'Never played a perfecta before,' Charlie announced. He dropped two fifties on the bar and stuffed one in the pocket of the old geezer who was polishing glasses. 'But couldn't resist pairing Radar Vector with Internal Medicine. How could I lose?'
How, indeed?
'Paid ninety-eight dollars on a two-dollar bet.'
'Great, you can buy dinner,' I said.
'He can buy more than that,' Max said. 'He bet a hundred bucks. Say, doc, you're not doing anything tomorrow, we'll have breakfast, study the charts.'
'Tomorrow?' Charlie raised an eyebrow.
'Don't worry. I'll be at the lab by eleven, they can stick me, and we'll make the one o'clock post.'
'Done,' Charlie said.
The bartender drew a pitcher of beer for the coroner and the lawyer, then delivered a Preakness-rye and vermouth with a dash of Benedictine-for the jockey.
Max sipped his drink and looked at me, his smile gone. 'Hey, shyster, that English-bred filly of yours came by the other day to sign up. What's the matter, she want to graze in other pastures?'
'Thanks for the news bulletin, Max,' I said. 'Give Bobbie my best.'
He showed me a shit-eating grin. 'Yow, I'll do better than that. I'll give her my best.'
I laughed. Not at him. At us. A couple of immature punks in the school yard insulting each other's prowess with the opposite sex.
'Whaddaya laughing at, shyster?'
'Just wondering. When Bobbie comes sniffing around, should I tell her to skedaddle, go home to Max? Or should I give her a run around the track?'
I don't know why I said that. Stupid and vicious. That wasn't the man Granny Lassiter raised. There was no need to respond in kind to his ridicule. Charlie would tell me later how disappointed he was in me. Max told me something else. He came next to my bar stool and stood, maybe on tiptoes, pressing his face close to mine. His breath smelled of tobacco and whiskey.
'Look, shyster, you try anything with Bobbie, I make you a gelding quicker'n you can say Eddie Arcaro.'
'Eddie Arcaro,' I said.
Oh boy, aren't you big and tough, taunting someone who makes Michael J. Fox look like Rambo. Little guys always want to fight you, to prove something to themselves. If you take them up on it, throw them from here to second base, you're a bully. Get whupped, you're a wimp. Jockeys prove something to themselves squiring six-foot- tall models and driving block-long Lincolns. Don't ask me what or why. Maybe Pam Maxson knows. I'll ask her. Maybe get the promised therapy at the same time.
