Night-Bloom (17 page)

The second race was a repetition of the first. This time it was $600 she won on a horse that Mooney would not have touched with a bargepole—Fife and Drum—while he himself dropped $100 on a three-year-old called Seraphim that he’d been watching his last five times out and had looked upon as a solid blue chip.

Whenever the lady won she had the disconcerting habit of jabbing her elbow into Mooney’s rib. When she hit the third race exacta she took down over $5000. By that time Mooney was out roughly $500 and the rib closest to the redhead was badly bruised. Despite that, over the past several races, he had begun cautiously, albeit begrudgingly, to look upon her with a new and somewhat heightened sense of regard.

A loss of $500 in the face of such clear-cut blatant success had shaken his self-confidence, so when she offered to buy him a drink at the break before the fourth race, he was somewhat astonished to find himself accepting.

They edged their way through the crowd down to the field bar and commandeered a small table. Her name was Mrs. Baumholz she told him right off. “Frances Baumholz. But my friends call me Fritzi.”

“Fritzi?” Mooney made a face of delighted scorn. “Kind of a nickname. My husband gave it to me years ago, and I guess it stuck. What might your name be?”

“Mooney.”

She waited as though expecting more. “Mooney?”

“Francis. Like you. But my friends call me Frank.” She leaned back in her seat and gave him a long, unflinching stare. “You look like a cop.”

“What was your first clue?”

Mrs. Baumholz pointed to his shoes. “The shoes. Those shiny oxfords. They’re a dead giveaway.”

“Remarkable,” Mooney muttered sourly.

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-eight.” He couldn’t understand for the life of him why he lied.

“You’re pretty worn round the ears for fifty-eight, aren’t you, Mooney?” she went on.

“I’ve lived hard.”

“And you’re far too heavy for a man that age.”

“And you’ve got lipstick smeared all over your incisors,” he snapped right back.

Just then the waiter came and served them their bourbon old-fashioneds. She was a widow, she told him. Her husband had died several years ago and left her with a small but prosperous little pub called Fritzi’s Balloon up on Lexington Avenue at Ninety-first. She lived around Yorkville. Her only real pleasure in life now was the horses. She and her husband used to go to the track all the time and they developed this system, you see.

Mooney stared disconsolately down at the limp fruit rinds at the bottom of his drink, listening with martyred patience as she proceeded to explain.

“I call it the N Gambit,” she said. “Starting strong, fading back, then coming on in the finish. Gaining three, maybe four lengths in the stretch. Have you ever seen horses like that? It’s beautiful. You can see it in the running lines if you look for that pattern. And if the horse finished out of the money his last one or two times out, that’s a good sign. That means he’s ready to go cash on you.” Mooney’s stubby fingers drummed the tabletop, full of sticky rings left by innumerable other glasses. He was staring abstractedly out into the middle distance where a hoard of grounds keepers were sweeping the badly churned track. “You done pretty good so far by it today,” he said. “So why the hell you tellin’ me all this?”

The question appeared to surprise her. “I see no reason why I shouldn’t share good fortune with friends. The track cashier has more than enough for the two of us.” Her large merry eyes challenged his.

Mooney continued to study the orange rinds at the bottom of his glass as though he were reading auguries. “Want another?”

“Sure. There’s time.”

Mooney signaled the waiter for refills, then with chin cradled in his palm, he fretted vaguely. “So what does this system of yours pick for the fourth?” he asked with cool disinterest.

“Not Too Well.”

Mooney shook his head despairingly. “What virtue can you possibly see in an animal that’s lost each of his last eight races by a dozen lengths or more?”

“That’s just it,” Mrs. Baumholz accepted her second old-fashioned from the waiter and waxed enthusiastic. “Don’t you see that the jockey and the trainer have just been holding him back till the price is right? Remember the N Gambit. Take it from me, Mooney, the odds are going to be at least twenty to one if not better. That horse is ready. Who are you betting?”

Mooney hesitated. It was unheard of for him to share information. “I kind of liked Doctor Dallas.” Her arms rose heavenward in a gesture of futility. “Pathetic.”

“What’s pathetic?”

“It’s so obvious. So he’s finished third seven times in his first nine starts. But he’s never won. Either he can’t or he’s unwilling. He’s got no guts.”

“No guts? Come on. He earned $26,000 last year. You call that pathetic? That’s plenty guts enough for me, sister. What the hell do you know anyway?”

Mrs. Baumholz opened her purse a crack, revealing wads of large-denomination bills crammed in up to the gunnels.

“So you got lucky,” Mooney fumed. “That won’t last.”

She shrugged her shoulders and tossed off her drink. “Suit yourself, my friend.”

Just then the warning buzzer flashed. Mooney reached for their tab, but Mrs. Baumholz insisted upon paying, and Mooney didn’t protest too long. They rushed up to the windows to place their bets. Mrs. Baumholz bet a hundred on Not Too Well to win and another hundred to place.

Mooney standing behind her with his last $200 was going through a crisis of confidence. Stepping up to the window he peered hard into the face of the cashier behind the cage—a small, troll-like creature with a high voice and disapproving eyes.

“Yes?”

Mooney stood there, speechless, gaping at the man.

“Your horse, sir. Horse, please. There are people waiting.”

Mooney stood there swelling visibly beneath his clothing, his mouth and jaws working uselessly. “Not Too Well,” he blurted out at last. “A hundred to win, a hundred to show.”

When he turned again, Mrs. Baumholz was waiting there, grinning triumphantly. “Now that didn’t hurt, did it?” She took his arm as they hurried back to their seats.

As the horses moved up to the post, Mooney had his first intimation of disaster. Not Too Well was in the extreme outside position. His ears were down. His coat was wet. His tail drooped and he was bucking slightly, giving his jockey a difficult time nosing him into the gate.

“Relax, Mooney.” Mrs. Baumholz quickly caught in him the signs of premature regret. “That’s high spirits. Nothing more.”

He whimpered slightly to himself.

“Look at those odds.” She jabbed him in the rib cage with her elbow, directing his gaze to the tote board. “Twenty-six to one. I told you. Didn’t I tell you, Mooney? Remember the N.”

“Right, right. Remember the N,” Mooney muttered morosely. He tried to capture some of her self-assurance.

There was a loud crack. The gates went up. The field surged out in a cloud of dust and thundered up the track. All except Not Too Well who lumbered out, appeared to have regretted his decision and started back. He had the look of a person who discovers he’s boarded the wrong train just as the doors are closing.

The jockey atop him, a tiny doll-like figure in red silks, flailed his arms wildly and kicked his heels into the animal. A high, falsetto burst of Puerto Rican obscenities wafted up at them from the track below as Not Too Well cantered into a side rail and caromed off. Next he proceeded to rotate.

Mooney glared incredibly down at the spectacle on the track. Roars of laughter rippled all about them in the stands. Mrs. Baumholz’s characteristic animation had deserted her. Instead, she had grown very pensive. Staring dead ahead at the horse still spinning circles near the gate, the jockey lurching about on his back, Mooney watched his last $200 fly off into the sunset. When at last he spoke, his voice was civil and very quiet. “It looks like Not Too Well ain’t too well, don’t it?”

Mrs. Baumholz attempted to muster up some of her unfailing good cheer. “Well, can you beat that?”

“No, ma’m.” Mooney shook his head in baffled wonderment. “I can’t beat that. If I lived for the next thousand years, I don’t believe I could beat that. It’s very rare one is ever privileged to witness anything quite like that.”

For the first time that day Fritzi Baumholz was speechless. The rest of the field was now going into the final stretch. From where they sat they couldn’t see who was leading the pack, but Tribal Code was the name that kept crackling over the loudspeaker. “Tribal Code … Tribal Code … And it’s Tribal Code … followed by …”

A loud roar went up as they tried to hear the second name. The tote board, however, was flashing a red light like an arterial pulse—number 9, Doctor Dallas, paying $9.40.

Mooney lumbered heavily to his feet and stood glowering down at Mrs. Baumholz. He swelled visibly, a balloon dangerously inflating. His brow was dark and fearsome.

There was nothing much Mrs. Baumholz could do but stare back and giggle a bit queasily. “Well, those things do happen.”

Vile words racketed about in Mooney’s head. They struggled to make their way past his lips, only to emerge in a series of breathy gasps.

When it became apparent that he was on the verge of suffocation, he snatched up his coat, cast a final withering glance at Mrs. Baumholz, then crashed heavily out the aisle, trampling anything unfortunate enough to be in his path.

“Mr. Mooney, Mr. Mooney,” he heard her cry after him several times above the roar of the crowd. He would not deign to turn. He just kept moving ahead with the most disdainful bearing he could muster as he made his clumsy outraged way toward the exits.

It was nearly dusk when he reached the house. The street outside was gray and bleak. The branches of trees dark and full-leafed looked like thumb smears on the gray chalk sky.

He had come on the subway from the Port Authority Building. Walking from Queens Boulevard, then rounding the corner from Continental Avenue to Sutter Street, he experienced a sharp visceral spasm, like the cramps he used to feel as a child before school examinations. His tread slowed and his eyes squinted against the swiftly descending light. He was certain that the police patrol car that had been staked out there, awaiting him ten months earlier, would undoubtedly still be there now.

His heel aching from where it had been pinned, he limped down Hauser Street to number 724. The house was there, seemingly just as he’d left it, but with that forlorn and vaguely sinister air of vacancy. In his absence the little patch of front lawn had run amok. On the front door, stuck under the brass knocker, was an invoice for a recent oil delivery. A variety of circulars and throwaways were stuffed beneath the jamb. When he turned the key in the triple lock and opened the door, it stuck for having been shut so long. Only when he leaned a shoulder against it and heaved, did it yield with a harsh ripping sound. The door swung open and the momentum of his force propelled him inward, into the dank, musty gloom.

The house had been shut for nearly a year, and something in it smelled faintly of sewerage. Wavering on the threshold, slightly winded from his exertions, he stood peering upward at the rooms above, as if he half-expected some cheerful voice of greeting—“Charley dear, is that you?” The echo of his mother’s voice trilled ghostly and musical through the vacant rooms. “How was school, darling?”

Something in him, something foreboding and wary, made him linger on the threshold. He was not afraid of the ghosts that dwelled there. On the contrary, he yearned for some kind of reunion with them. No, this was more a sinking feeling—some presentiment of failing fortune. The desolation he felt sprang from an awareness that for him there were no more places left to go. With a sigh of resignation, he flicked the hall light on and stepped inside.

There was not much to do once the water and heat were turned on. He heard the old furnace kick over in the basement, followed by the cozy rumble of the motor starting to heat water and fire up the boiler.

In the kitchen he discovered that one of the glass panes in the back door had been broken. Shards of glass lay shattered on the linoleum floor, beneath the door, and for a moment he imagined that the house had been burgled. The door itself remained locked, however, and so he concluded that the breakage had been due to wind or, possibly, a rock thrown by a child.

In the refrigerator he found an open jar of pickles that had gone soft and disintegrated in their brine. In addition, there was an opened jar of raspberry preserves, and a half pack of Tip Top bread mantled over with a lacy green furze. The freezer compartment was crystaled with ice run rampant. Several cartons of instant suppers lay about entombed in frost. Watford prized one out from behind the stalactites by means of a screwdriver, then left it on the sink top to defrost.

Even before he changed clothes and unpacked his few belongings, he went about the tiresome, but to him almost habitual, routine of winding and setting the clocks—a routine that had been his job since boyhood when his father had assigned him the task of keeping all the clocks in his collection running. Why he still felt an obligation to do so, nearly twenty years after his father’s death, was a mystery to him. At one time there had been nearly two hundred such clocks, but since the elder Watford’s death the number had dwindled to possibly twenty-five of his very favorites, the others having been sold off from time to time as a means of raising money. Still, there were old French and English clocks, fine antique German and Italian timepieces, a venerable Yankee grandfather clock, hewn of polished oak and honeyed chestnut, that bonged its stately horary out of a noble brass throat. Other clocks were wrought of marble and prophyry, doré, jade and malachite.