The Trojan Colt Read online

  “We have the sex Olympics morning and evening,” he responded. “In the afternoon we rest.”

  “You breed them twice a day?” I said, surprised.

  He nodded. “When there’s a demand for it. Around here, just Pit Boss and Marauder. And then, of course, no girlfriends for half a year. Can’t have a September or October baby turn a year old a couple of months later. Though even that’s changing.”

  “You’re breeding mares toward the end of the year?” I asked.

  “Not here,” he replied quickly. “But some of the popular studs do double-duty, standing the first half of the year here or in Europe and the second half in Australia. They made a hell of an offer for Trojan, but the syndicate voted against it. They decided he’s too valuable to risk.”

  “How come?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew.

  “Man’s made some bad investments. Even bounced a couple of paychecks. That Trojan colt was his salvation, and he didn’t want even the notion of twice as many Trojans coming to market, even halfway across the world, to lower the winning bid by a penny.”

  “What did he do to make his money in the first place?” I asked.

  “He was born,” was the answer.

  “That’s all?”

  “And he was 4-F.”

  I frowned. “I don’t quite follow that.”

  “Rich parents, two kids, both boys. One was 4-F, the other got killed in Vietnam. Parents die. Presto: instant millionaire. Not as rare in this business as you’d think.” He smiled. “It’s not a sport for the mildly wealthy.”

  “When did his fortune start going downhill?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I’m sure his wife would say it was the day he bought Mill Creek. Truth to tell, I don’t know. He still runs the damned place, so he must have some money left . . . and now he’s got three million and some, minus Fasig-Tipton’s commission.”

  He made sure none of the help were around as we approached my car. “My own opinion is that he’d have gone belly-up last year if he hadn’t sold his share of Trojan, though of course I can’t prove it. I think he stayed in the syndicate just long enough to get that colt and vote against standing Trojan in Australia, and then he cashed out.”

  “What’s a share worth?”

  “Whatever you can get for it,” he replied with a smile. “Shares in Seattle Slew originally went for three hundred thousand. When he turned out to be an even better sire than he was a racehorse, a couple changed hands for over four million apiece.”

  I let out a low whistle. “That’s remarkable!”

  “Don’t be too impressed. For every sire whose value multiples ten or fifteen times, there are fifty who’ll never be worth as much as the day they were syndicated. Today there are probably twenty stallions within thirty miles of here who syndicated for ten million or more and now have a market value of two million or less.”

  “It sounds like Monopoly money,” I said.

  “They spend it like Monopoly money too,” replied Chessman. “The trick is not to go to jail instead of passing Go and collecting your two hundred dollars—or two hundred million, in this business.”

  We reached my car, and I turned and shook his hand.

  “Thanks for your help, Hal,” I said. “And your private guesswork remains just that: private.”

  “Nice meeting you, Eli,” he said as I got into the car. “And remember to give Billy my best if you run into him, and tell him I’m not mad.”

  “I will,” I answered, starting the motor, while a little voice in the back of my head say: Don’t hold your breath.

  I drove around for an hour or so, just letting the scenery relax me as I tried to clear my mind, which was too damned cluttered with useless details. Then I started getting hungry, and I remembered that I’d promised to take Bernice out to dinner. Well, to meet her for dinner anyway.

  I drove back toward the station, passing another one along the way. It was nice to know they had so many cops on duty, but the place was so peaceful I couldn’t help wondering why. Then the answer hit me—to keep the place so peaceful, of course—and I realized that I really was getting tired.

  I stopped by the motel to take a quick shave and shower, put on a clean shirt—no noticeable dirt on the one I’d put on in the morning, but I had a feeling it and I both smelled of horses, or at least of stables.

  Finally I drove to the station and walked up to Bernice’s desk.

  “You ready?” I said.

  “In about five minutes,” she said. “My replacement just got here, and she’s in the washroom changing.”

  “Into what?” I asked in a feeble attempt at humor.

  “We’re not plainclothes detectives like some people I could mention,” she replied. “When we’re on duty, we have to be in uniform.” She checked her watch. “She should be here in the next minute or so.”

  “Then what do we need five minutes for?”

  She gave me the kind of look I’m sure an owner gives a lame horse that he just bought an hour earlier. “I have to get back into my civilian clothes.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been concentrating too much on trillion-dollar horses and not on beautiful policewomen.”

  She smiled. “For a compliment like that, all is forgiven.”

  A graying blonde in freshly pressed police blues approached us. “I’ll take over now,” she said.

  “Fine,” said Bernice, getting to her feet. “Eli, this is Brenda. I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hi, Eli,” replied Brenda. “I feel like I know you already. You’re almost a resident here at the station from what I hear.”

  “Too bad I’m not,” I said. “It’s cleaner than most of the places I’ve been this week.”

  She laughed. “That’s the first rule of the game in horse country: Watch your step.”

  “I’d rather be James Bond, wearing a tuxedo and sitting across elegant gaming tables from master criminals,” I replied. “But I can’t tie a bow tie, and I’ve never found a pair of patent leather loafers.”

  She smiled at me. “Bernice was right,” she said. “I like you already.”

  “Bernice said you’d like me?”

  “She said you were likeable.”

  “I hope she still thinks so after dinner,” I said.

  “I hope for your sake she still thinks so,” said Brenda. “We policewomen are tough.”

  “I’ll treat her with all the respect due a member of the law.”

  “You’d better,” answered Brenda. “She doesn’t brag about it, but she’s the best shot in this station.”

  Bernice joined us then, looking not beautiful, she hadn’t been beautiful even twenty years ago, but very pretty and immaculately groomed and dressed.

  “Did I give you enough time to tell Eli a bunch of lies about me?” she asked pleasantly.

  “She told me how you won the war—she never mentioned which one—and I told her how I brought jazz up the river from New Orleans,” I said.

  “I see both of your noses have had time to shrink back down to normal,” replied Bernice. She turned to Brenda. “Hold the fort until Phil gets here. See you tomorrow.”

  “Phil? I asked as we walked out the door to my car.

  “He’s got night duty on the desk this month,” she answered.

  “So you work the desk by day?”

  “This month,” she replied. “It rotates.”

  “And the rest of the time?”

  “Oh, a little of everything,” she said noncommittally. Then she smiled. “I’d advise you to resist the urge to rob a bank when I’m not busy being the desk sergeant.”

  “Damn!” I said. “I guess I’ll be late on my rent next month.”

  She laughed as we reached the car. “Where are we going?” I asked as I opened the door for her.

  “Not too far,” she said. “I want to make sure this car can get us there and back.”

  “It may not look like much,” I said, “but
it’s dependable.” Except when it isn’t.

  “Kind of like you,” she said. “Well, what kind of food do you like?”

  “Got any Greek restaurants in town?” I asked. “I love pastitsio and dolmades and saganaki.”

  She just stared at me.

  “This is Lexington, Eli.”

  “Italian?”

  She nodded. “That can be arranged.” She directed me, and in about three miles we pulled up to a little restaurant at the edge of a small strip mall that had a sign proclaiming that it was Antonelli’s.

  We entered, and a young man who looked more Hispanic than Italian led us to a table along a side wall. She ordered wine, I ordered a Bud, and we spent the next few minutes looking over the menu. I finally hit on veal parmesan, and she chose some kind of fish dish I’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce.

  “You’ll like the food here, Eli,” she said when the waiter, who also didn’t look Italian, disappeared into the kitchen to deliver our orders.

  “Do you come here often?” I asked. “Or just when you’re on a Dutch treat date?”

  She laughed. “Once or twice a month. I eat most of my meals out.”

  “Makes sense. Why slave over a hot stove after a hard day of paperwork or arresting baddies?”

  “We have our share of drunks and druggies and the like,” she said. “But what really interests me—and it’s all taken care of at higher levels, usually by the feds since it invariably crosses state lines—are the machinations of all the self-proclaimed royalty of the horse industry.”

  “Is there all that much going on?” I asked.

  “Not that you can prove, though now and then we get a headline case. But you know, when there are maybe fifty farms valued at twenty million or more, and a couple of hundred horses with market values in eight and occasionally nine digits, it’s difficult for everyone to observe the niceties of the law.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine,” I said.

  “Anyway, it makes the paperwork interesting,” she continued. “For example, you’re looking for a young man who worked for Travis Bigelow, and that’s probably as far as it goes—but wouldn’t it be fascinating to know how a man who inherited something like fifty million dollars and could buy Mill Creek outright, without a mortgage, managed to blow just about every penny he owned?”

  “It’s not exactly a secret that he’s been having financial troubles,” I said.

  “I know. But how do you blow that kind of money?”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” I replied. “I worry more about how I can blow fifty bucks on a weekend. Besides, the flip half of the business is just as curious.”

  “I don’t follow you,” she said.

  “Take two horses that look pretty much alike. Stand them side by side. Call the one on the left Old Plodder. Call the one on the right Trojan. Both are retired from racing. Neither has ever had any offspring make it to the track yet. But one of them is worth two thousand dollars, probably to some dog food company, and the other’s worth maybe fifty million today, and that could triple or quadruple in six or seven years if his foals start winning some major races.” I paused, while she tried to see what I was getting at. “Bernice,” I continued, “there are entire countries—or at least well-populated sections of them—that don’t have an annual gross domestic product worth as much as Trojan. Five or ten million kids will starve to death this winter. Now I’m sure Trojan is a nice, well-behaved animal who loves his groom, doesn’t dirty his stall, and breeds mares on command—but when all is said and done, he’s just a horse. What makes a dumb animal worth that kind of money?”

  “I’m sure you expect me to say fools like Bigelow, who shell out that kind of money for a surrogate to win what they haven’t won, or perhaps to consider themselves sportsmen, whatever that means—but you know, the average two-dollar bettor is just as guilty. The tracks return about three-quarters of everything that’s bet, pay upkeep and taxes on the rest, and still have enough left over to shell out hundreds of millions in purses. And the guy who’s betting his welfare check, or putting off his child support payment so he can lay some bets, is just as guilty as the guy who buys two percent of a top stallion for a million dollars.”

  “I bow to your superior knowledge,” I said.

  “You live in Blue Grass country, you learn about the industry,” she replied. “I grew up in New York City, where the average musical play costs ten million to put on and lasts less than a week. What makes one crazier than the other?”

  “A telling point,” I said. “At least finding lost kids and putting bad guys in jail makes sense.”

  “How long have you been doing it, Eli?” she asked as the waiter arrived with our salads.

  “I started out as a cop, a uniformed cop, in Chicago. Moved up to the detective bureau after half a dozen years.”

  “And?”

  “And arrested the wrong people.”

  She frowned. “The wrong people?”

  I nodded. “Stalwart reservoirs of the public trust,” I said. “They came out of it okay. After all, they owned half the lawyers and all the judges, and I was on my way to Cleveland. Things didn’t work out any better there: I shot a guy who was shooting at me, I lost my job, and my wife left. I got tired of getting fired for doing what I was paid to do, so I came to Cincinnati about five years ago, maybe a little less, and set up shop as a private eye.”

  “She left you because you shot a man in self-defense?” she asked.

  “I think it was more because I was unemployed again,” I answered wryly.

  “Mine left for someone fifteen years younger, fifteen pounds lighter, and an inability to stop giggling,” she said. “I keep hoping he’ll turn up in the drunk tank, but with her at home he doesn’t go out much.”

  “By God,” I said as the waiter took our salads away, “I just love trading stories with another winner.”

  She laughed so hard I thought she might actually fall off her chair. Somewhere about thirty seconds into it I got the distinct impression that she was suddenly crying, but she pulled out a handkerchief, wiped an eye, and pasted a smile back on her face.

  “So,” she said, changing the subject, “are you getting any closer to finding your young man?” she asked. “His parents check in every day to see if we’ve turned anything up.”

  I shook my head. “No, he’s still thoroughly missing.”

  “Any ideas?” she asked as the main courses arrived.

  “We can discuss it after we eat.”

  She nodded. “So you think he’s dead?”

  “I didn’t say that,” I replied.

  “You didn’t have to,” she said with another smile. “Someone raised you to be a gentleman, Eli. Oh, you can’t tell it from the way you dress or some of your language, but you hold doors open for me, you held my chair for me, I could tell it hurt you to agree to a Dutch treat, and now you’re putting off talking about the young man because dinner’s arrived and you don’t want to upset my delicate feelings.” She leaned forward. “I’m a cop, Eli. Such delicate feelings as I may still possess are compartmentalized and only come out when I’m alone. So shall we talk?”

  “Did I really pull out your chair for you?” I said. “I wasn’t even aware of it.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I said, and then looked up toward the ceiling. “Thanks, Ma.”

  “So why do you think he’s dead?”

  “Nothing that’d hold up in court or even hold water if you argued that he’s still alive,” I said. “Anyway, his car’s still here.”

  “That’s the only reason?”

  I shook my head. “These aren’t exactly reasons. They’re feelings, notions, suspicions. I can’t forget the way he looked the last time I saw him. He was at least very worried and quite possibly very scared. He was going to talk to me in the morning. Same thing with his girlfriend. He talks to her in late afternoon or early evening, tells her he’s got a serious problem and he’ll speak to her about it in the mor
ning, and he never shows up.” I took a bite of my veal. “Not bad,” I commented.

  “It’s quite good,” she said. “I’ve had it before.” She paused and stared at me. “There’s something else. I can tell.”

  “A couple of things,” I said. “First, why the hell did he drive his car across town and park it in a Kroger lot with the top down when it had been raining and was due to rain most of the night?”

  “Good question. Which Kroger?”

  “Leestown Road.”

  “Interesting,” she said noncommittally. “What was the other thing?”

  “Eddie Arcaro’s riding crop.”

  She blinked and frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Billy Paulson was Tyrone’s groom until about six weeks ago.”

  “Tyrone?” she asked.

  “The Trojan colt that Tony Sanders was caring for. Anyway, Billy went AWOL too. Vanished just as quickly and just as thoroughly as Tony.”

  “What has this got to do with Eddie Arcaro’s whip?

  “According to Hal Chessman, who hired him at Mill Creek last year, that was Billy’s most cherished possession. He even kept it tucked in his belt or in a boot all day while he worked.”

  “Okay,” said Bernice, “it was his most cherished possession.”

  “And he left it behind when he disappeared. And Tony left his car and his girlfriend.”

  “I’d hardly call her a possession.”

  “I agree, but the car and Nan—that’s her name—are two things he cared for very much.”

  “More than anything, like the other kid and the whip?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking back on Tony’s love for all aspects of racing and breeding. “But why leave them behind? More to the point, if he wasn’t going to need the car, why not sell it? Why let it sit in the rain with the top down?”

  “So you don’t think they’d leave without the whip and the car, and they haven’t shown up here,” she said. “From this you conclude that they’re dead?”

  “I don’t conclude anything,” I said. “But it’s sure as hell a possibility.”

  “I agree that it’s a possibility,” said Bernice. “But of course there are others, too.”