Kid Tatters knew Lucky had a piece of most of the gambling spots and appealed to him to settle his trouble. Lucky said it was a simple matter. No one would bother the bookie if he did as he was told. Kid Tatters had a permit to book at the track and his reputation was clean, but there was only one way he could protect himself.
«Make me your partner,» Lucky informed him and the conversation was repeated for me by a man who was present. «No one would stick up a partner of Lucky’s.»
Kid Tatters thought of himself as an honourable guy in business sanctioned by the state, but he gave in and Lucky was his partner until he died. I asked a guy if Lucky put up any money or worked for his end of the bookmaker’s profit.
«All Lucky did was collect,» the fellow said. «But in those days, Kid Tatters made himself a good bargain. He was never bothered again.»
It was a stinking town, but all gambling towns are.
Bond folded the cutting and put it in his pocket.
«It certainly sounds a long way from Lily Langtry,» he said after a pause.
«Sure,» said Leiter indifferently. «And Jimmy Cannon doesn’t let on he knows the big boys are back again, or their successors. But nowadays they’re owners, like our friends the Spangs, running their horses against the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts and the Woodwards, and now and again putting over a fast fix like Shy Smile. They aim to net fifty Grand on that job, and that’s better than knocking off a bookie for a few C’s. Sure, some of the names have changed around Saratoga. So’s the mud in the mud baths there.»
A big road sign loomed up on the right. It said:
STOP AT THE SAGAMORE.
AIR-CONDITIONED. SLUMBERITE BEDS. TELEVISION.
FIVE MILES TO SARATOGA SPRINGS,
AND THE SAGAMORE — FOR GRACIOUS LIVING
«That means we get our tooth glasses wrapped in individual paper bags and the lavatory seat sealed with a strip of sanitized paper,» commented Leiter sourly. «And don’t think you can steal those Slumberite beds. Motels used to lose one most weeks. Now they screw them down.»
11. SHY SMILE
THE first thing that struck Bond about Saratoga was the green majesty of the elms, which gave the discreet avenues of Colonial-type clapboard houses some of the peace and serenity of a European watering place. And there were horses everywhere, being walked across the streets, with a policeman holding up the traffic, being coaxed out of horse-boxes around the sprawling groups of stables, cantering along the cinder borders of the roads, and being led to work on the exercise track alongside the race-course near the centre of the town. Stableboys and jockeys, white, negro and Mexican, hung about at the street corners and there was the whinny and the occasional trumpeting scream of horses in the air.
It was a mixture of Newmarket and Vichy, and it suddenly occurred to Bond that although he wasn’t in the least interested in horses, he rather liked the life that went with them.
Leiter dropped him at the Sagamore, which was on the edge of the town and only half a mile from the race-track, and went off about his business. They agreed to contact each other only at night or casually in the crowds at the races, but to pay a dawn visit to the exercise track if Shy Smile was being given a last workout at sunrise the next day. Leiter said he would know about this, and much more, after an evening around the stables and at The Tether, the all-night restaurant and bar that was the home of the racing underworld when they came up for the August meeting.
Bond checked himself in at the central office of the Sagamore, signed ‘James Bond, Hotel Astor, New York’, before a hatchet-faced woman whose steel-rimmed eyes assumed that Bond, like most of her other seekers after ‘gracious living’, intended to steal the towels and possibly the sheets, paid thirty dollars for three days and was given a key to Room 49.
He carried his bag across the parched lawn, between the beds of Beauty Bush and forced gladioli, and let himself into the neat spare double room with the armchair, the bedside table, the Currier and Ives print, the chest of drawers and the brown plastic ash-tray that are standard motel equipment all over America. The lavatory and shower were immaculate and neatly designed and, as Leiter had prophesied, the tooth glasses were contained in paper bags ‘for your protection’ and the lavatory seat was barred by a strip of paper which said ‘sanitized’.
Bond took a shower and changed and walked down the road and had two Bourbon old-fashioneds and the Chicken Dinner at $2.80 in the air-conditioned eating house on the corner that was as typical of ‘the American way of life’ as the motel. Then he returned to his room and lay on his bed with the Saratogian, from which he learned that a certain T. Bell would be riding Shy Smile in The Perpetuities.
Soon after ten, Felix Leiter knocked softly on the door and limped in. He smelled of liquor and cheap cigar smoke and looked pleased with himself.
«Made some progress,» he said. He hooked the armchair up to the foot of the bed on which Bond was lying. He sat down and took out a cigarette. «Means getting up damned early in the morning. Five o’clock. The word is they’ll be timing Shy Smile over four furlongs at 5.30. I’d like to see who’s around when they’re doing that. The owner’s given as Pissaro. One of the directors of the Tiara happens to be called that. He’s another one with a joke name. ‘Lame-brain’ Pissaro. Used to be in charge of their dope racket. Ran the stuff over the Mexican border and then broke it down and parcelled it out to middlemen on the coast. The FBI got on to him and he did a term in San Quentin. Then he came out and Spang gave him the job at the Tiara in exchange for the rap he’d carried. And now he’s a racehorse owner like the Vanderbilts. Nice going. I’ll be interested to see what sort of shape he’s in these days. He was almost a main-liner in the days he was dealing in coke. They gave him the cure in San Q, but it’s left him a bit soft in the head. Hence the ‘Lame-brain’. Then there’s the jock, ‘Tingaling’ Bell. Good rider but not above this sort of caper if the money’s right and he’s in the clear. I want to have a word with Tingaling if I can get him alone. I’ve got a little proposition for him. The trainer’s another hoodlum — name of Budd, ‘Rosy’ Budd. They all sound pretty funny, these names. But you don’t want to be taken in by it. He’s from Kentucky, so he knows all about horses. He’s been in trouble all over the South, what they call a ‘little habitch’ as opposed to a ‘big habitch’ — habitual criminal. Larceny, mugging, rape — nothing big. Enough to give him quite a bulky packet in police records. But for the last few years he’s been running straight, if you care to call it that, as trainer for Spang.»
Leiter flicked his cigarette accurately through the open window into a bed of gladioli. He got up and stretched. «Those are the actors in the order of their appearance,» he said. «Distinguished cast. Look forward to lighting a fire under them.»
Bond was mystified. «But why don’t you just turn them over to the Stewards? Who are your principals in all this? Who pays the bills?»
«Retained by the leading owners,» said Leiter. «They pay us a retainer and extra by results. And I wouldn’t get far with the Stewards. Wouldn’t be fair to put the stable-boy in the box. Be the death sentence for him. The veterinary has passed the horse, and the real Shy Smile was shot and burned months ago. No. I’ve got my own ideas, and they’re going to hurt the Spangled boys far more than a disbarment from the tracks. You’ll see. Anyway, five o’clock, and I’ll come and hammer on the door just in case.»
«Don’t worry,» said Bond. «I’ll be on the doorstep with my boots and my saddle while the coyotes are still baying the moon.»