Shadow Roll by Ki Longfellow Read Free Book Online Page A

Line , one by the men’s room, and if I went out it, would I still be headed in the right direction for the offices of The Saratogian ?  Now there’s a name you don’t get to say too much—unless you live in Saratoga.  Or as I’ve said they say up here: the Spa.
    “So guess what the job is?  Say barman, you wanna pour me another?  And top him up too.”
    This made them both laugh so hard—the idea a man would drink water when he could be knocking back watered down hootch—they doubled over, and I was headed for the men’s room.
    My new friend, the ex-flatfoot, straightened up, coughing.  “Wait!  I haven’t told you what the job is.”
    I had to know.  So I stopped.  “OK.  What’s the job?”
    “Day off today, but usually I’m track security.  Don’t that beat all?  I get paid to wander around the Saratoga racetrack inna uniform checking people ain’t sneakin’ in and keepin’ an eye out for pickpockets.”
    “Lucky you.  So you saw Gallorette win the Whitney?”
    “Who?  What?”
    “A great horse in a great race.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Yeah.  Right now I gotta see a guy about a tree.”
     

Chapter 11
     
    I was out the back door, around a corner, and up an alley fast, then quickly across Congress Street where I did a kind of first base slide into a lot full of parked cars.  Me and the cars were all behind the biggest hotel I’d ever seen.  The “lot” had to of been the stable yard where the guests of a hotel big enough to house Versailles, and all its wigs, once kept their fine carriages and fine horses—but now kept their cars.  And what cars.  It was a glittering metallic sea of snazzy cars.  A brand new Cadillac wouldn’t merit a second glance.
    Forget the hotel.  Who cared about a hotel full of swells?  I was supposed to be working here.  So far all I’d done was read library books and buy an idiot in a green suit a couple of cheap shots of Old Crow.
    Out of the parking lot and down the street I found the newspaper office.  It was a nice place for a mostly nice town, and there I read a two week old newspaper report on the accidental drowning of Manny Walker.  Walker’d been twenty years old, a native of Troy, New York, a professional jockey for two years, and moving up fast in the riding stats.  In fact, one more win and he’d of topped the list.  This was mostly due to his getting the ride on Fleeting Fancy, this year’s sensational three-year-old filly, another female up against the boys in Saratoga’s Mid-Summer Derby, aka the Travers Stakes.  Paper said the official cause was drowning by accident while swimming.  As Walker was known to keep in shape by swimming before a day’s races (he was found by some old guy named Herb Bedwell out rowing around looking for a place to do some quiet early morning fishing), the fact of his being alone, not five feet from the lake’s small dock, face down in the water weeds with a snapping turtle waiting to sun itself on his cold dead back, surprised no one.  There’d been some talk of how a lad so fit and so able could drown at all, but these things could happen to anyone.  Especially the water weeds part.  Even the best swimmer, once tangled up in that stuff, could get into trouble.  And I oughta know; I got stuck once myself.  Good old Lino Morelli pulled me out.  He was also the one pushed me in.
    Two days later, The Saratogian was writing about Matthew Mark McBartle.  McBartle, born in Scottsboro, Alabama, won two graded stakes in one day at Belmont, was among the top three winning riders at Atlantic City Race Track, and like every other top American jock, showed up in Saratoga for its short rich season of racing.  McBartle had the mount on Court’n Spark, a highly regarded entry in the upcoming Travers Stakes.
    For reasons unknown, M. M. McBartle had gone for a spin in his brand new Mercury convertible in the middle of the night.  He was twenty one years old, he’d been alone, had not been drinking,