The Disappearance of Penny Page 14

  “What happens if the mounts stop coming?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “They can stop coming just as easily as they started coming, Danny,” I warned him.

  Obviously, someone named Gordie had offered to hand him the breaks in his career in exchange for some kind of service. Talent is talent, but it’s useless without opportunities. He was being supplied with the opportunities to show his talent, but whoever the supplier was could cut off that supply as quickly as they turned it on.

  And Danny knew it.

  He slumped into a chair and stared at the floor sullenly.

  “What does Gordie want me to do now?”

  “You feel like picking any more fights?”

  “With who? Mapes is dead. Besides, I could’ve gotten seriously hurt last time,” he whined. “I would’ve, too, if some guy hadn’t — hey, wait a minute!”

  That was it.

  He’d made me.

  I was blown.

  “You ain’t from Gordie.” He stood up, stretching himself to his full sixty-one inches. “You’re the guy who broke up the fight between me and Mapes.”

  “That’s right, Danny, but I’m still the guy who’s going to boot you around this room if you don’t talk to me.”

  “Shit, man, I ain’t telling you nothing.”

  “You’ve told me quite a bit already, haven’t you, Danny boy? All about Gordie, and murder — ”

  “I’m leaving,” he stated and proceeded to try and walk past me to the door.

  I grabbed his arm and literally threw him back the way he had come. He ended up on top of Spencer’s desk, scattering papers and paraphernalia about the room.

  That’s when Spencer chose to enter the office.

  “Heah!” he shouted. “What the hell is going on here?” He all but forgot his accent with that last demand.

  “I’m having a private conversation with Danny boy, Mr. Spencer. I’d appreciate it if you would leave the room.”

  “This is my office,” he told me. “I don’t have to — ”

  I turned around and shouted, “Get the hell out!”

  The next thing I knew I was being pushed into him from behind. While we attempted to disentangle ourselves, Aiello took off out the door like a mugger with a cop on his tail.

  “Damn!” I pushed past the old man and took off after the kid.

  The jockey had short legs, but man he could motor. I wasn’t gaining any ground on him and was, in fact, losing ground when he turned to see how close or far I was and ran smack into the side of one of the biggest horses I’d ever seen. If it had been any bigger the little guy might have run right under it. As it was he went down like a felled tree and landed on his back, but his adrenaline must have enabled him to get back up as quickly as he did and start running again considerably slower than before and in not quite as straight a course.

  He was stunned, but his little legs were still moving. I was gaining on him now and people were turning to stare.

  His head must have cleared some because just as I was almost on him he accelerated again and pulled away. He leaped a short fence and I followed and suddenly we were two thoroughbreds, running on the Island Downs training track.

  We were running down the backstretch toward the turn when I realized that I was in better shape than he was, I had more staying power. I still felt pretty fresh, but his strides were shortening up. He was the sprinter and I was the closer.

  As we broke out of the turn into the stretch, I knew I was going to catch him before we reached the finish line, and it gave me the exhilaration a rider must feel when he’s pounding down the stretch and knows he’s got the front runner measured.

  I guess I must have gotten carried away by where we were because once I caught up to him, I just kept going past him until I crossed the finish line. I turned and was waiting for him when he crossed it. Second, and dead last.

  He lost his balance and fell to the ground, trying desperately to catch his breath.

  “You lose, Danny,” I told him. I was panting too, but was still on my feet. He was all in. That’s what you get for letting a horse do all of your running for you.

  “W-what do you want, man?” he gasped.

  “I want some answers, Danny. I want to know who Gordie is, and where he is. Is that the guy I saw you with before your fight with Eddie Mapes? Did he put you up to it?”

  He tried to speak, but ended up just nodding breathlessly.

  “Gordie — Gordie said he didn’t want Mapes to have his mind on racing for a while. He told me to keep digging — digging at him for — for being on Donero’s payroll.”

  “And who killed him?”

  “Man, I don’t know that. All I know is that Gordie told me that if I — if I played along with him and kept harassing Mapes he’d make — make sure I got some good mounts.”

  “What’s Gordie’s last name?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. Nobody was around, so I stepped in and kicked him in the side. He must have had a stitch in that side from all the running, because he jumped and yelped more than the actual kick was worth.

  “I swear, he never told me his last name or how to get in touch with him. I swear, man!”

  That could have been the truth.

  “C’mon, get up,” I told him.

  “W-why? W-where are we going?”

  “We’re going for a ride, Danny, to see a friend of mine who wants to talk to you.”

  “I can’t. I’ll lose my mounts. I gotta ride today,” he complained.

  I reached down, grabbed him by the arm and yanked him to his feet.

  “Not today you don’t, Danny boy. Today you talk, you don’t ride.”

  I took him to see Diver.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “So?” I asked Diver, after he’d spent about half an hour with Aiello.

  “The kid claims he knows nothing about Mapes’ murder, nothing about Penny Hopkins’ disappearance and murder, and nothing further on this guy Gordie. The only thing he admits to is harassment.”

  “Do you buy all that?”

  Diver shrugged one shoulder. “He says all he was doing was giving a favor to get a favor. He picked on Mapes and in return got quality mounts. That means that whoever this guy Gordie is, he’s got some juice in the racing world, right?”

  “Or the guy he works for does,” I added. “What are you going to do with Aiello?”

  “I think we’ll hold him, go over his story two or three hundred times. Maybe it’ll change.”

  “I’ll keep in touch. I’d like to know if he does change it, in any way” I started to walk away, then turned back. “You know, if that doesn’t work, it would be interesting to see who comes to get him out.”

  “Where will you be?” he asked.

  “At the track. That’s where it all started, I think that’s where it all has to end.”

  “Good luck,” he called. I waved a hand behind me and left.

  The first thing I wanted to do when I got back to the Downs was find Lassiter. It was time for us to have another talk. I also wanted to talk to Hopkins, as violently opposed to such a conversation as he might be.

  I didn’t intend to give either one of them a choice in the matter.

  I went back to the track, and Sally’s, which always seemed to be my starting point. With all the breakfasts I’ve had at Sally’s I never once had lunch there, so that’s what I did.

  The talk in the place was about Penny Hopkins and Eddie Mapes, as you might expect. They said the usual about Penny, that she was a great-looking broad and it was a shame. The talk about Eddie was new to me, though, especially the two guys at the next table. I don’t know exactly who or what they were, but they were obviously track people, so what they said had to have some validity.

  They were talking about how Mapes had been slipping toward the end. He wasn’t the rider he had once been. It seemed, they said, as if his concentration was gone.

  Thanks to Danny Aiello, I thought.

&n
bsp; And Willy Donero.

  And a couple of mugs after him, to beat him up, to kill him.

  How could he concentrate on horse racing?

  I grabbed a scratch sheet off an empty table and checked to see how many horses Lassiter and Hopkins had entered. Hopkins had a horse in almost every race, Lassiter in five. Neither of them had a horse in the first race, Lassiter hadn’t one in the second. That meant my first visit would be to Lassiter.

  Outside in the parking lot I spotted Brandy across the road and called out to her. She was dressed in green and pink silks and was obviously ready to ride. When she saw me she stopped and waited for me to cross over.

  “Hi, Hank.” She treated me to a big smile.

  “Hello, Brandy. How many mounts you got today?”

  “I was listed for four, but picked up two more when Danny Aiello didn’t show up.” Her own words struck a chord suddenly, because she squinted up at me and asked, “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “Yeah, I turned him over to the cops for questioning, and had to run him around the training track to do it. Brandy, do you know a tall, slim, dark-haired man named Gordie something-or-other?”

  “Is that your tall man’s name?” she asked.

  “That’s it. Ring any bells?”

  She shook her head. “Not for me, it doesn’t. Sorry, Hank, but there are so many people I see every day, every week.”

  She made an effort to think about it again, then shook her head in annoyance. “Let me think about it and get back to you if it clicks, okay? I gotta go win a race.”

  I put my hand on her arm. “Good luck.”

  She hesitated a moment, looked around, then said, “Oh, what the hell,” and got up on her toes to kiss me on the mouth.

  “See ya,” she called, and trotted off.

  I decided not to watch her and dwell on how much I found myself liking her. Instead, I started for Lassiter’s barn, wondering if his wife had mentioned my visit. Considering her invitation while exiting from my car, I thought not.

  Lassiter was in one of his stalls, checking out what was probably his entry for the third race.

  “Lassiter,” I called from outside.

  He was bent over, checking the left foreleg of his charge, and turned his head to see who was calling. He didn’t look pleased when he saw it was me.

  “Po,” he said flatly He went back to checking the horse’s foot, checked the other one, then stood up and said to someone I couldn’t see, “Okay.”

  He turned around and asked me, “What do you want, Po?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “I heard about Penny. I don’t particularly want to talk to you about it, and furthermore, I don’t see why I should.”

  I took out my N.Y.S.R.C. identification and showed it to him.

  “Oh, so that’s it. You’re one of Biel’s boys.”

  “Is that what they call us?” I asked. It was the second time I’d heard it that day. Shukey was going to love that.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were with the N.Y.S.R.C. when you first came to see me?” he asked, opening the door and coming out of the stall.

  I smiled at him and said, “I thought it might be better to play it that way.”

  “Why the change of heart?”

  “Well, that was a missing persons’ case. Now, it’s a murder — in fact, it’s two murders.”

  “You mean Mapes? Are you working on that, too. I would think the police — ”

  “I’m working with the police,” I told him.

  “Oh, I see. Double the authority, huh. You work for Biel and with the police, so I better talk to you, is that it?”

  “Unless you’d rather I think of a different way to persuade you.”

  He looked at me for a few minutes, a big man, wide in the shoulders. Big on brawn, small on guts. You can always tell. They flex the muscles, and when you don’t react, they change their tune.

  He flexed, then said, “Look, Po, I’m very busy. Just what is it you want?”

  “I want some cooperation. I want to know exactly what your relationship with Penny Hopkins was.”

  “An occasional roll between the sheets, that’s all. She had big tits and a lot of energy, but out of bed I couldn’t stand her.”

  He raised his hands, held his palms out and said, “That’s it.”

  “She was in love with you. Didn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Nothing at all,” he admitted.

  “You strung her along because she was good in bed?” He shook his head. “Adequate.”

  “How about, you strung her along just to piss off her father?”

  He gave me a disgusted look, then seemed to change whatever he was thinking.

  “Okay, Po, Benny and I are rivals, we compete for almost anything. I admit it. Maybe we did compete for Penny. It’s all academic now, isn’t it?”

  He started to walk away from me and I grabbed his arm.

  “Doesn’t that strike you as being just a little bit cruel to that girl?” I asked him. “She thought you both loved her.”

  “Hey, that was her problem. What are you, some kind of bleeding heart? The girl was a little nuts anyway. Benny knew that, too.”

  I got angry, openly angry.

  “Okay, Mr. Trainer, you want tough, I’ll be tough.” I poked him a good one in the chest, drove him back a couple of steps.

  “What do you know about Eddie Mapes’ murder?”

  “Mapes? What the fuck are you asking me about that for?”

  “What about a tall, dark-haired man named Gordie somebody? Do you know him?”

  He swung at me because he thought I wasn’t ready. I was mad, so instead of just ducking, I stepped inside of it and pushed a short right into his stomach. He was in pretty good shape, so I added a second shot, with my left, in the same place. He was a big man and he seemed to take a long time to fall, but when he did it knocked the rest of the wind out of him.

  I straddled him, grabbed him by his shirt and shook him.

  “Damnit, who is Gordie?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know any Gordie,” he yelled back at me. “Let me go, are you crazy?”

  No, not crazy, but I was just about out of control, which was totally unlike me.

  I let him go and stepped back.

  “You swung on me first, man, remember?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, well,” he began, getting up and dusting himself off, “you do kind of get on a guy’s nerves, you know?”

  We’d attracted a small audience by this time and I was starting to feel uncomfortable, even embarrassed by the whole incident.

  “Let’s walk,” I told him.

  “Man, you hit hard,” he said, rubbing his stomach. We started walking toward his office.

  “You know Danny Aiello?” I asked him.

  “Sure I know him. He’s ridden a few of my horses. He’s a talented kid. I heard he was in line for the mount of Penny’s Penny.”

  “Hopkins was going to pull Mapes off?” I asked, surprised.

  “Mapes hasn’t been riding that well this year, Po. A lot of people think he was losing it.”

  “Sure, because he was being hounded,” I replied.

  “What?”

  We were at his office door now and we stopped.

  “Listen, Lassiter. Danny Aiello had been harassing Mapes for months, for this guy Gordie. Now Aiello is in the hands of the cops and he’ll talk soon enough. If I find out that you do know this guy Gordie, I’ll come back and show you how hard I can really hit. You got that?”

  “Don’t threaten me, Po. I’ll put in a call to Howard Biel and have your job. I have some friends on the board, you know.”

  I stepped up close to him and he flinched, as if he thought I was going to hit him again. Instead I just eyeballed him until he looked away.

  “You make all the phone calls you want, my friend, but job or no job, if I find out you were lying to me, I’m coming back.”

  I turned away fro
m him, walked ten feet and then turned back and said, for effect, “I promise.”

  Walking away I really felt embarrassed.

  What a performance, Po! I told myself. You came on like a real horse’s ass.

  I’d not only succeeded in making a total asshole of myself, but I’d probably clammed Lassiter up for good. If he knew anything, I sure as hell wasn’t going to hear about it now.

  I’d have to have somebody else work on him.

  Somebody like Shukey.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The people at Hopkins’ barn told me that he was in his office. As I started to walk there I found my way barred by his assistant, Mickey Richards.

  “What do you want here Po?” he demanded. I looked down at him, into his cold, gray eyes and, in spite of his size — or lack of it — I did not want to tangle with him. I’d lost control of myself with Lassiter, and was determined that it would not happen again.

  Richards, however, was not going to make it easy for me to stick to my decision.

  “I’ve come to talk to your boss, Richards, now get the hell out of my way before I go over you like a steamroller.”

  I was hoping that the verbal threat would be enough to get him to move because we were in his neck of the woods and I felt that if we did start to waltz, I would end up with more than one partner.

  I decided to play my ace in the hole and showed Richards my N.Y.S.R.C. identification. His resolve melted a bit when he saw it. I knew what he was thinking, that I was one of “Biel’s Boys,” and the fact that Biel night be involved made him back off.

  He didn’t like it, though. I knew I was going to have to watch my back for a while.

  I knocked on Hopkins’ door and he shouted out for whoever it was to come in.

  When he saw me standing in the doorway he stood up behind his desk and told me rightly, “Get the hell out of here, Po.”

  His tone was cold and menacing, but physically he would not have been able to back up his tone, so I stepped into the room and shut the door behind me.

  “Look, Mr. Hopkins,” I began, determined to be respectful. In spite of my intense dislike for the man, he was a friend of Howard Biel’s, who I did respect and like. “I’m working with the police to try and find out just what happened to Eddie Mapes and to your daughter. I just want to ask you some questions.”