The way I made out was the side bets. Had a big lop-eared fawn bitch one year, earned close to ten thousand. She never cared to win by more than a point. She’d keep a length ahead of the other dog, to tease him, like, and make him suffer more when he lost. I trained her in the slob, to strengthen the leg muscles. Nobody fools with that kind of nicety anymore. What happened to your arm?”
“Knifed. What happened to your leg?”
The waving hand stopped for an instant.
“Cracked a couple of anklebones, they tell me. They give me a shot and I’m not feeling a thing. I slipped, that’s all in the world it was. A simple slip. That spic bastard said I could make it-he’s after my job, looking for ways to embarrass me. I wanted to get out and talk to the widow. They think that was an accident, don’t they? Sure they do. That was no accident. He thought he could run a dog track honest, old Max. All that bullshit-the man who took dog racing away from Al Capone. Oh, yes, we had many a discussion on the subject. You can’t run a dog track honest, there’s too much temptation, and you’re a damn fool to try. I’m laying here talking with an ankle that’s smashed, you might say, and the reason it don’t hurt me is modern science. I couldn’t walk on it, you know, but I could tell you stories about greyhounds that broke a leg in a race and finished on three. They want to run, you know. They’ll rip the leash out of your hands. Well, do you think a medical doctor is the only person can administer a needle? We didn’t use needles so much in the old days. When we wanted to stop them by a couple of lengths, we’d put a rubber band around a toe. They don’t like that. And the rubber band’s going to break or rub off before the race is over, so there’s nothing to show. Or you wedge in a little pebble. Cinch up the muzzle strap. All kinds of flapping tricks. With a dog that’s known as a good-breaking dog, you want to take off a couple of blinks in that first sixteenth. And that drops you a class, and gets you a better price the next time out.”
“What makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”
“I been getting these spells. One leg just folded up under me, at a bad time.”
“No-Max Geary.”
Dee raised his head to peer at Shayne in the dim shifting light.
“I was in the back seat. I was waiting for him to come out, but he was taking his time about it, and I slipped off to sleep. I wanted to consult him. I’ve got an assistant, name of Ricardo, and I think he’s been wigwagging somebody in the stand. Not that I oppose putting a little spell on a dog when it’ll do him some good. I need something to carry me between meetings. The price of good bourbon! I think too much of my kidneys to drink anything younger than four-year-old. I can remember in Prohibition-yes, sir, I date all the way back-even then I wouldn’t drink none of that rotgut. People could go blind drinking that stuff. Rotgut was the name of the first dog I ever owned. I favor an ugly name for a dog. Give them a pretty handle like Lovely Evening, and the damn-fool public will bet on the name and beat the price down on you. But Max, he didn’t hold with tampering. I got to spit.”
“We’ll be there in a minute.”
“I got to spit now,” Dee said moistly. “If you don’t spit when you got to, it gets in your system and poisons you.”
He lifted his head. “Hand me that pillow slip.”
Shayne took the pillowcase off the second bed. Dee unloaded into it, wadded it up and pushed it under the mattress.
“And he was making it, too,” he said, lying back. “Max. He was running honest and he was making a nickel. That’s when the ticks began eating on him. The politicians. That’s what I call them-ticks. They suck themselves up, and they suck themselves up, until they bleed you white. The only way to get rid of them is to burn them off. And Max got so bitter about it. That’s when he modernized, to get back his dates. Hurdle races. He had many an argument with himself before he put in those hurdle races. And the Hall of the Greyhound. The Hall of the TV is more like it. Gourmet French dinners. Those are hunting dogs out there, coursing dogs. I listened to those stuffed shirts talking tonight, and it made me want to puke up. What those dogs are going after is meat! Meat for the table! We buy our meat nowadays in the Piggly-Wiggly, wrapped up in plastic. I’ll tell you what I think about that-you say you’re interested-”
“I’d like to get back to Max’s accident.”
“I’m telling you something, mister. You know the yell when the dogs break? You don’t hear that yell at the horse tracks. Only reason a horse is running, there’s a man on his back giving him a buzz with a battery. A dog runs because he’s a chaser. A killer. The crowd knows that. They’re yelling for their dog to catch the rabbit and bring him home for supper. A dog’s no good until he’s been schooled on live hares. Sometimes you’ll get a dog that can run but he won’t chase. So you put a rat in a tin can and hang it around his neck. A hole in the can so the rat can bite your dog in the neck, and he’ll bite and bite until the dog is near crazy. Then you let the rat go, and the dog will be on him in a flash, and from that minute on he’s over his namby-pamby ways.”
“You were asleep in the back seat of Max’s car. When did you wake up?”
“You wouldn’t expect me to sleep through, would you? Crash, bang. Then the big whoosh. And that’s all I saw because my big ambition in life, if you want to know, is to stay alive to enjoy the end of it.”
“Did you see the papers today? If Max was so honest, where did he get the money to pay off those people?”
“You don’t know dogs, and you don’t know business. What do you think? He had accountants. What looks like a profit to you or me, they’ll take that figure and move it from here to there, and presto Caruso, it’s a loss. All kinds of ways, like the different ways to slow down a dog. Gypsy ways, we call them, though the only gypsies in dog racing are in England and Ireland. We got an Irish dog in the Classic tomorrow night-no, the night after-and that’s why we call it the International. One hundred thousand in augmented purses. Don’t worry, we got it. It’s in escrow, is the expression they use. One of the things the gypsies would use was a touch of wintergreen. You could tell a wintergreened dog by the bald patches where it took off the hair. Or a piece of chewing gum under the tail. I wouldn’t do nothing like that to a dog.”
“Do you know the name Tony Castle?”
At that the hand stopped moving and fell to his side and gripped his thigh.
“The medicine’s wearing off. I need some more medicine. Nurse!”
“Did Castle loan Max the money for the renovations?”
“Ask the accountants. What have you got in that pocket, a bottle? Because now’s the time! Finish it up. They’ll take it away from you. I been in hospitals before.”
When they pulled up at St. Francis a moment later, Dee was holding his leg with both hands and moaning and complaining. Shayne got out by himself and walked into the emergency room.
“Is Dr. Almani still on nights?” he asked a nurse.
“I think so. I’ll have them give him a call.”
Shayne sat on a bench while the young resident unwrapped Dee’s leg and prepared him for X ray. Before they were ready for Shayne, Rashid Almani came in-a slender, olive-skinned Pakistani who was preparing for a career in forensic medicine after he returned to his native country. His teeth flashed when he saw Shayne on the bench. Shayne had spent ten days in this hospital the previous summer, after a car chase that had ended with three vehicles wrecked and Shayne the only participant still alive.
“Michael! You’ve been staying too healthy. I’ve missed our talks.”
“I’ve got something to talk about now. Can we use this side room?”
“Surely.”
Shayne closed the door after they went in. He sat on the examining table while Rashid looked at the wound.
“It went deep. Lie down, Michael. We have some work to do here.”
“I want to arrange something first. Didn’t you say you’re going home fairly soon?”
“In two weeks. I am looking forward to it, and I’m not looking forward to it.”
“Maybe you’ll be willing to do something for me. I had to shoot somebody, and that always leads to lots of questions. You know Painter.”
“That self-righteous man. I listened to the radio news.”
“I want to be in such bad shape that he can’t get in to talk to me. Besides a knife wound, a gunshot wound in the leg. A. 45-caliber slug, from a distance of two yards. It smashed the main legbone, and you had to do some major stuff to put it all back together. I’m under heavy sedation. Totally out of the picture for the next couple of days.”
“That would be breaking various hospital regulations. I assume you are asking me to do this because it’s
