Lord of Misrule (20 page)

O
YES, PELTER WIN
. Ain’t paid much of nothing even for 2000 but he win. At Two-Tie’s back door, where he had come to pay off a small loan, Medicine Ed took off his shapeless felt hat, and went on with his speech: Horse lay back there for three fourths of a mile like the six horse shadow, and at the sixteenth pole he just slip on by like evening coming on. My, my, wasn’t it pretty, he make it look so easy, then I see him in the winner’s circle, he can’t hardly catch his wind. He a old horse all right. Pelter. Just baldhead class, that’s all he know.

He run like an angel, Jojo Wood said. I didn’t have to call on him for nothing. You won’t believe it but when it come time to make his move, he showed
me
what to do.

We believe it, Deucey said, and nobody sniggered.

It was a pleasure to watch, Kidstuff said. The horse run like old times. So maybe it’s just for two grand, but he still come up through the money to get there, and it had something classic about it, the way he win, like a great old athlete showing you how it’s done—you shoulda been there.

Umbeschrien
, said Two-Tie, and watch that two-bit tout lead that nice young woman’s horse away? I might of threw up on myself.

Worst of it is, Deucey said, it almost makes Breezy look smart, claiming a nine-year-old horse.

D’Ambrisi is not smart, Two-Tie said. He’s dumb, very dumb. He’ll find out soon how dumb he is.

I wonder how long it will take him to ruin that horse, Deucey said.

He won’t get no run out of the horse like Hansel could, that’s a lock, said Kidstuff.

So you think that Hansel is a horseman, do you? Two-Tie asked the blacksmith, pouring himself warm orange soda with a small, plump, slightly shaking hand. Certain people that know what’s what tell me that young man has got a excellent chance of running himself amok. And tonight he claims back that four-year-old from Jim Hamm in the sixth—I hear it was like a … like a hallucination or something with him.

That four-year-old ain’t no hallucination, Kidstuff said. That was a helluva horse for twelve fifty, and Hansel picked him first. Course he paid two thousand to get him back and that wasn’t sensible—that tells you something.

Talk about who’s a horseman, Deucey said. If D’Ambrisi’s a horseman, then I’m Eleanor Roosevelt. I bet he never worked a horse in his life. Somebody explain to me how a nitwit like that gets a trainer’s license.

Somebody buys it for him, that’s how, Kidstuff said.

D’Ambrisi will never run that horse at any racetrack, don’t you worry about that, Two-Tie said. He’s going to give the horse back to that young lady with ribbons on. He’s going to tell her he’s sorry, and he ain’t even going to ask for his two grand back. You hear?

Everyone at the table was silent, for from Two-Tie such an announcement was amazingly indiscreet. Maybe he was slipping. Either he was getting shmaltzy about a broke-down old stakes horse, or he had a soft spot for the girl, Hansel’s woman. Why
should he care? Why did it matter at all? They shifted uneasily in their chairs and beer bottles clinked.

How did she take it, Edward? Two-Tie asked.

She doing all right, Medicine Ed replied, dropping his eyes.

And still the old man wasn’t finished; Two-Tie said in a wheeze that for him was almost a shout: He’s gonna beg her,
beg her
, to keep the change. The little goniff!

The company exchanged furtive glances, then Deucey dared to say: It might not be his two grand to give up. Like Kidstuff says, D’Ambrisi never had two nickels to rub together unless somebody gave it to him.

The word be round to leave that horse alone, Medicine Ed said. D’Ambrisi too weak to go in your face lessen somebody be leaning on him. And you know he ain’t gone train that horse hisself. Somebody got to tell him what to do.

So who? Two-Tie said. They blinked at each other. Nobody knew.

Two-Tie pushed off the table and scuffed up and down the room, scratching wildly at the thin strands on his forehead. Elizabeth sat up and followed him with her eyes, her head waving left and right each time he passed. Kidstuff, Deucey and Medicine Ed looked away, embarrassed. Two-Tie was a great gentleman. Others thought of him that way and so did he himself. As a gentleman he was supposed to be punctilious about the old ways and above all unexcitable. He was not supposed to beat the bushes for his enemies. He didn’t have enemies. From the little wars of territory that happened all around him, he had always stayed aloof. He didn’t pretend he was better than he was and he had no private attachments, other than to his dog. And so the big question was, what did he care about that old horse? But having come across something truly shadowy and strange in
the old gentleman, nobody wanted to ask. Two-Tie dealt a few hands, but nobody took fire, nobody felt lucky, and before the game ever got going, this one and that one remembered some reason they had to be back wherever they came from, and by three in the morning, they were all gone.

G
ET ME MR. SMITHERS, DEAR
.

Suitcase.
Suitcase!
the girl screeched. I don’t think he can hear me, Mr. Two-Tie, she said, he just went out the office in a big hurry. He didn’t even stop to put on his coat.

I can wait. Run after him, dear. Two-Tie gazed out his back window at the stale snow, which molded a bunch of junked counter stools from the Ritzy Lunch into giant egg cups. When his mother went into Levindale at the age of 92, the last year of her life, they used to bring her an egg every morning in an egg cup like that. He liked to come in at six a.m. and be the one to feed it to her, when he was in the city. He liked taking care of some living thing he loved. Why hadn’t he seen that when he was still with Lillian? By the time he knew that about himself, it was too late.

He would take the back road out of the racetrack and cross over the parkway to Levindale as soon as the dawn workouts were over. The colored attendant was glad to let him take his mother’s tray off the loaded cart. There was something satisfying about tapping in the crown of the pure white shell with a small spoon, dipping the spoon in the tidy hole and carrying the gold-and-white pulp to his mother’s still oddly pretty mouth, a little bow-shaped flapper’s mouth at the bottom of a dense nest of wrinkles. But sometimes he opened a hole in the egg and the
clear slimy liquid ran all over his hand. The egg was raw. He would be disgusted. His mother had given up her last dime to Jewish charities to get in Levindale. Why couldn’t they get a little thing like that right every time?
These are helpless people in here
, he would think. And then he would speak to the management.

Hello? hello? the girl said.

I’m still here, dear.

Ain’t he picked up yet? I don’t know where he went now.

I got all morning. You go tell Mr. Smithers I’m on the line. The phone bonked down again.

Elizabeth groaned patiently and dropped at his feet. She had been expecting to go on a walk. Now that she was old, he noticed her gray speckled cheeks puffed in and out a tiny bit, like a curtain in a breeze, with every breath she took. Two-Tie lifted Elizabeth’s lip with a finger. On the two longest teeth there was a deposit of yellow crud like amber up by the gum, but the points were clean. Haslipp, the racetrack vet, had told him to have her teeth scraped before the gums started to bleed, but Haslipp wouldn’t try it himself on a wide-awake eighty-pound dog, and Two-Tie didn’t want to put her under just for her teeth. He knew that once they knock you out, you ain’t yourself for five, six weeks at least, and once in a long while somebody don’t wake up at all. Which admittedly it’s rare, but it happens, and there’s no telling which player is going to draw the old maid. He scratched the long gulch under Elizabeth’s chin with one finger.

Two-Tie? you there?

I’m here.

I was going to call you before, Suitcase said, but something come up.

So talk, Two-Tie said coldly. He waited.

I got some bad news. In the third last night? Hickok’s old
horse Pelter win for two thousand for Hansel. The horse win going away but he got claimed. That little fucker D’Ambrisi took him.

That sit?

That’s it.

How about you tell me something I don’t know, Vernon?

Like what? Suitcase whined with faint defiance, you said you want to know everything that goes down with Hansel, your niece and that horse. So I’m telling you.

The claim is twelve hours old already, Vernon. I got to wait twelve hours for news like this, what do I need you for? I can read it in the
Telegraph
.

Hey, last night I know you’re going to hear about it. I know Jojo’s going over there to play cards. Tell you the truth, I figure it’s taken care of.

Jojo? What does Jojo have to do with it? What does Jojo know? Nutting. And Jojo don’t owe me no explanations.

What’s to explain? Suitcase asked peevishly. I put the word around like you said. I done what I could, Two-Tie. There ain’t no law against claiming Pelter. D’Ambrisi run a horse already in the meeting, so how can I stop him if he really wants that horse?

Don’t tell me why you couldn’t stop that nobody. Tell me what I don’t know.
Who bought that horse?

D’Ambrisi bought him.

Who paid?

D’Ambrisi paid cash, twenty nice new hundred-dollar bills.

Yeah, well, where did he get it? Who put him up to it? Who paid
him?

Suitcase said nothing.

All right, Vernon. It’s gotta be Joe Dale. You wouldn’t cover up for nobody else but Joe Dale. Just tell me why? What does he
get out of it? What the hell does Bigg want with a used-up old stakes horse? A sentimental claim like that, I don’t see it. Why he’s insulting me like this?

Suitcase said: Aaaay, let it go, Two-Tie—I mean who believed you could really give a fuck about that horse when you don’t even own a piece of him?

Maybe you think I’m slipping and I don’t mean what I say no more.

Come on, don’t get excited. It’s not that big.

You’ll find out if I mean what I say, Two-Tie promised, panting slightly. I’ll talk to Baltimore. That sweet young woman will have her horse back tomorrow night latest. You think D’Ambrisi could cooperate before, you watch him turn somersaults for Posner. He’s got a spine made out of silly putty, that two-dollar tout.

You’re calling Posner? Suitcase said mournfully, after a pause. Over this? You honestly think it’s worth it?

What I think ain’t nothing. My niece is no racetracker. She needs to be protected from sharks and loonies. And vicious assholes. And thieves. That was your job, Vernon.

My job.

Ain’t the happiness of your family worth more than money to you? Don’t you do what you can?

Sure, Suitcase said dispiritedly.

If you can’t do your job, if I got to do your job for you from this side of the river, I need help.

The niece better be very very grateful for the trouble she’s causing, Suitcase muttered.

Umbeschrien
, Two-Tie said. God forbid she should be grateful. She don’t know nothing about it.

The telephone went dead, except for the two men’s heavy sighs. Finally Suitcase changed the subject.

On that other matter. Lord of Misrule. Summer meeting, August 1. Maybe I can do sumpm for you after all.

Oh. Is that so?

Standish come up with some Drillers and Dredgers Association dough—the bargeman, like you mentioned.

You don’t say.

How about we write an allowance race with a fancy name and make it the feature and jack up the purse five grand?

Good, good, Two-Tie said. I was beginning to wonder if we couldn’t do business no more. All of a sudden we seemed to had a wrong number. Or a bad connection or sumpm.

The Low River Ramble—how does that sound?

Call it whatever you damn please, Two-Tie said.