The Bookwoman's Last Fling (24 page)

“Well, you've got time to think on it. She's not going anywhere.”

His eyes were open wide now. “Jesus,” he said. “After Candice married Geiger, we never saw each other much at all. Except in the stable area…in the distance sometimes I'd see her and she'd wave. Like I was any old friend.”

I leaned up and tried to encourage him with a hand gesture.

“It was hard for her to get away, but she did come to see me a few times when Geiger went off from the barn for an afternoon. Just to talk, like the old days.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing. Everything. All the storybook stuff we had always talked about. But it was different then. I knew she wasn't happy.”

“Did you ever ask her?”

“Oh sure. And one day she got teary and said, ‘I've really made a mess of things, Ricky. I never should've…'”

“What?”

“I don't know. Can't remember. Maybe she never finished what she was saying.”

“Then guess. What do you think she'd say?”

“She never should've married Geiger.”

“What might you have said to that?”

“What I did say. I told her what a great girl she was; how she didn't have to stay with anybody if he made her unhappy.” He looked as if another thought had come to him. “Geiger was a rigid taskmaster, almost from day one. He had to run everything. If you want to know why his sons turned out like they did, it was old man Geiger. Acorns don't fall far from the old tree after all. You had to know him; he was just a dominant man. Even with all her money Candice couldn't stand up to him. Once they married she was his and after a while I knew she'd never leave him.”

Then he said, “Sometimes I thought of killing him.”

“Seriously?”

“No, but I thought of it. She needed to be set free again.”

“Maybe someone killed
her
in a rage. Did you ever think of that?” I looked at him keenly, but he only shook his head, and then, a long moment later, said, “Man, I can't see that.”

But maybe he did see it. “There was a guy who hung around her here for a while.”

“What guy?…You mean a fortune-hunter type?”

“I never knew who he was or what he wanted. I saw him a few times from a distance.”

“Saw him how? When? Under what circumstances?”

“Jesus, I don't know. I can't remember.”

“Was he a racetracker?”

He shook his head. “I remember every little thing about her, but I haven't given him more than a passing thought in years.”

“This might be important. Was it maybe Sandy Standish?”

“No. I know Sandy and this wasn't him.” He leaned over and looked down at his feet. “I guess I'm not much help after all.”

“Don't write yourself off too soon.” I leaned forward and looked at him seriously. “Did you ever hear her refer to anybody as the Mad Hatter?”

“No. Doesn't sound like one of her whimsical names, does it? Sounds dark…crazy.”

“If you remember it, I'd like to know. It may be important.”

“Right now I'm getting a helluva headache. Just want to lie down somewhere.”

I took the hundred out of my wallet. “No,” he said. “You don't owe me anything.”

I stuck it in his shirt pocket as he hurried out. I hoped he wouldn't drink it away. But he did.

This time he went to a new place where I couldn't easily find him. It took me most of the night, tramping along San Pablo, asking questions, chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, but I got a few leads and went quickly from one bar to another. I found him sometime after midnight, bleary-eyed in a dive down toward Oakland. This was long and thankless work, but I pulled him out of there, and got him in my car, and finally got him back to the racetrack. I left him in his tack room, went back to my own, and two hours later I was up and walking.

Sandy came in at five, Ms. Patterson materialized out of some ether-like fog; we walked half the stable, sent the rest to the track, and by nine-thirty I was finished.

I walked over to Cappy Wilson's barn. He was an old man with stooped shoulders, thin white hair, pale gray eyes, and gray stubble on his chin.

“Rick around?”

“He's sleepin'. If you want him, take him on out of here. I got no more use for him.”

I followed him up the shedrow. At the tack room he turned and said, “You his friend?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Look, I don't want to fire him, but I can't put up with this shit.”

“No,” I said, but I didn't go away.

He looked at me with sad eyes and said, “What does he want from me? I already gave him more chances than anybody on the racetrack. This is a tough business, son. I gotta have people I can count on.”

“Sure you do,” I said. “It's just that I think he's trying now. I know last night was bad, but how about one more chance? I'll pay his salary for two weeks; it won't cost you anything.”

“Now why the hell would you do that?”

“Because he's at the end of his rope. And maybe I just think he's worth saving.”

He stood there shaking his head. “By God, you're crazier than he is.”

“That's a strong possibility, Mr. Wilson.”

“Call me Cap. But don't try to pay me anything, I'll give him one more chance on my own. But I'm gonna make it clear to him; another slip and his ass is gone for good.”

“Thanks, Cap.”

I called Sharon and left her a message, recapping the news.

Called Erin's room number downtown but no one answered. Left a message that I would get back with her tonight.

Walked through the stable area and talked to people. Today no one I met remembered Candice or the old man except in general terms that didn't add anything to what I already knew. I was beginning to see the end of the trail. Same old faces: nobody new, nobody interesting, nobody who cared. I had covered a lot of ground in two days.

I was eating a late lunch in the kitchen when some racetrackers I knew came in, three old-timers I had talked to yesterday. One nodded vaguely my way and I raised my coffee cup. He looked like he wanted to say something but I didn't push him and I didn't rush away. They got some food and sat one table over. “Hey,” the one finally said. “You ever find out what you wanted about them Geigers?”

“A little but it's slow work. You remember something?”

“Not much.”

I waited but he didn't seem inclined to go into it. They ate and talked about horses long dead, about lost times and mythic stretch drives and faraway races.
Ghost riders in the sky.
They looked at each other and watched life slipping away, and after a while they began to leave. But the one lingered and I felt his eyes, and that hunch kept growing. There was something I had missed, some fact or impression perhaps hidden for years. Again I asked him if he remembered anything new; again he said not much and smiled. I put my wallet on the table and said, “I don't want to insult you, friend…”

“Hey, I don't get insulted. Knock yourself out.”

“Twenty-five bucks no matter what it is. More if it helps.”

“How much more?”

“We'll have to see about that.”

He smiled easily. “There was a rumor goin' around about Geiger's wife. Didn't want to say nuthin' yesterday, but then I thought, hell…”

“What about her?”

“She was kinda his own last hoo-rah, if you know what I mean.”

“Really? I always heard he was a slick old cocksman.”

“Them's the worst kind, when the old pencil runs out of lead. The guys that used to be red-hot papas but ain't so red hot anymore.”

He moved over to my table. “When Geiger was young he'd take on anything. Guys used to say,
Lock up your mares, boys, old Geiger's in town.
Then his motor just stopped, if you know what I mean.”

“Like many aging men.”

“Don't look at me when you say that, son, I can still do a night's work between the sheets. But everybody my age can't, and some a helluva lot younger. It hits some of 'em pretty hard, and Geiger was one of 'em that got hit hardest. But he wanted something to show people, and she was it. She was something special.”

“Did you know Geiger had a daughter with Candice?”

“That's what I heard. I guess somebody must have.”

“How'd you know all this?”

“Couple of women of our mutual acquaintance, old drinking pals of mine, bed pals with Geiger.”

“So when did all this talk begin?”

“Oh, at least a year or two before he brought Ms. Candice around.”

We lingered over our coffee and I gave him a fifty.

I walked over to Cappy's shedrow and found Rick up, mucking a stall. He was still green around the gills and he didn't want to talk, especially to me. But I stood there looking over his shoulder until he began to squirm.

“Go away,” he said. “You don't need to say anything, I know I screwed up.”

“I try not to say the obvious. Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don't.”

“I don't know why but Cappy's giving me one more chance.”

“Maybe because he's a good guy. Now you pay him back by making the most of it. You don't get many extra chances in life.”

“I know, I know, even low in life. Where the
hell
am I gonna go if I lose this job? I'll be out on the street. I'll be in the gutter.”

“Don't lose it, Rick.”

“Cappy wants me to make it, but he can't be stupid about it. I understand where he's coming from.”

“Then hold that thought. You got any money left?”

“Nothing from the hundred, some from the other day—eighty dollars maybe.”

“Give it to me if you want, I'll hold it for you.”

He surprised me by digging it out right there. “Ninety-two bucks. More than I thought.”

“Better keep some for food.”

He kept out a sawbuck, then changed his mind and took just three dollars. “Can't have much of a drunk on three bucks.”

“Can't get much dinner either.”

We sat quietly for a while. At some point I eased him back into our discussion of Candice, Sharon, and old Geiger. “You been giving it any more thought?”

“I had a dream about them last night.”

“Feel like sharing it?”

“If you want to hear it, but it's like a lot of dreams, it doesn't make much sense.”

I nodded and he said, “We were all in some shedrow together…Geiger, Candice, and some grown girl I knew was her daughter. You were there too, but you must've been working in one of the stalls; I couldn't see you but I knew you were there. I don't know where I was, but I could see and hear everything that went on, close-up like I was in everybody's face at the same time. Geiger was angry; I could see that right away. He was furious with Candice, and the daughter—Sharon, you said—was standing up to him, telling him to leave her alone. He seemed to be on the edge of some violent outburst; had this cruel smirk on his face the whole time. Finally he looked at Sharon and said, ‘You just shut up. I know what you are and you got nothing to say about anything we do.' And Sharon faced him down and said, ‘What am I? Tell them all if you know so much.' She looked at Candice and said, ‘Mamma?' but Candice only shook her head. ‘Tell them, Mamma,' Sharon said. ‘I'm not ashamed of who or what I am.' I said, ‘Why should you be?' and suddenly Geiger exploded. ‘You stay out of this, Lawrence. If you know what's good for you, you'll keep quiet about it.'”

I spoke into the sudden quiet. “About what?”

“Apparently something I was supposed to know. I have no idea what.”

“Think about it.”

“What do you think I've been doing? It was just one of those screwy dreams.”

We sat some more.

“Sharon was his daughter…wasn't she?”

I shrugged. “All I can tell you for sure is, Sharon was
her
daughter.”

He blinked at me. “You're saying Candice was screwing around? Christ, I don't believe it.”

We lapsed into another long silence. His eyes flitted around the stall, then he closed them, then he opened them and stared at nothing. Another long minute passed.

“This is totally unlike her. Not Candice…she wouldn't…”

“You're still thinking of her as a child, afraid and under the thumb of her father.”

“Just because a person grows up, her whole personality doesn't change.”

“Sometimes it does, Rick. Sometimes she discovers what was hidden there all along.”

He looked anguished. “Why the hell didn't she come to me?” he said.

I shrugged, but the message was there anyway.
She tried but you had fantasized her. You had idealized her like her father. Maybe all she ever wanted was to be a woman.

“
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,
” he said bitterly.

 

I drifted across the stable area and I talked to people. I asked my questions and got nowhere new. Old Geiger and his young, rich bride were slipping from the backstretch consciousness. I felt unusually dejected as the day waned.

Erin finally answered the phone late that afternoon. I told her the developments on my end and I asked how Gail was doing.

“She feels better now. This is something she's been carrying around a long time.”

This was all very good, we agreed. I told her I might be going south.

“As in San Diego, Mexico, or the South Pole?”

“I think I'm going to Santa Anita with Sandy and Barbara Patterson.”

“When might this happen?” she asked.

“Maybe early next week.”

“Okay. What for?”

“Things are winding down here and my main people are heading that way. This is just one of those times when I don't know what's right. I can't split myself and be in both places at once, and I'm starting to feel like this place is tapped out.”

“So what am I supposed to do if you leave me here? Play solitaire?”

“I wouldn't leave you, tootsie.”

“
Toot
sie?”

“You could go home if you want.”

“That's right, cast me aside now that I have done my heavy work in the trenches.” I heard her sigh. “What are you plotting, Janeway?”

“Right now, just following my nose. Don't you need to be back in Denver?”

“They're not gonna fire me, if that's what you're asking.”

“And if they did, then what?”

“Then screw 'em.”

“What about tonight?” she asked.

“I want to see Rick again if that's okay with you.”

“I never tell you what to do, Cliff, I wouldn't even try.”

“I know. I do hate to leave you, but there's a desperation in his face that's hard to forget.”

“Stay with him, then. Hold his hand. You'll have plenty of time later to hold mine.”

A moment passed. Neither of us wanted to let go.

“What would you do if you were me?”

“Shake things up,” she said. “Be decisive. Be the old Janeway. Let whoever he is think we know much more than we do and then be a moving target.”

I didn't like the “we” business and of course she knew that. “I don't mean to be one more problem for you, Cliff,” she said, “but I'm not going back to Denver until you can come too.”

 

I went over to Cappy's shedrow to pick up Rick. We walked up between the barns toward the kitchen. “I guess I'm leaving next week for Santa Anita.”

“I've never been to Santa Anita. All the years I've been out here and I've done nothing but the northern tracks and the fairs.”

“You hang tough with Cappy, Rick, he's a good man.”

“Yeah, I know. He's probably the only person anywhere who cares if I live or die.” He looked up. “Him and maybe you.”