The Scotch had soothed her slightly. “Oh, somewhat, I guess. I knew about it in general. That was his excuse for keeping me on a dollar-a-week allowance, practically. To get any money at all out of the King of Miami Dog Racing, I had to go down on my knees and sing “Swannee River.” Everybody else was getting rich out of Surfside, but not Max Geary, and God knows, not Max Geary’s daughter.”
“Then why didn’t he sell?”
“Because he was an idiot! A stubborn, sentimental idiot! He got his back up and he wouldn’t listen. He was the world’s most infuriating man, and what the hell am I talking to you about him for?”
“Because you think there’s a chance you might be able to use me.”
She swung around, her eyes still moist and nearly overflowing. “What do you mean, use you?”
“Why is Harry having such a hard time smiling tonight? What did your mother do, stall him?”
“How did you know that? It only happened two hours ago. Oh, yes. Dog racing was so important to Max. Surfside is his monument. She can’t bring herself to sign it away before his body is cold. Of course that’s not the real reason. The real reason is lust, and in case you didn’t hear me, I’ll spell it for you. L-u-s-t. Do you know what it means? It’s a word you hardly ever hear anymore.”
“I know what it means, but how does it connect with dog racing?”
“It’s intimately connected with dog racing. Not that I blame her too much, except that it’s just so-I don’t know, so humiliating. And so damn inconvenient right now. Max always had girls on the side, even when we were months behind on the electric bill. But Mother? Another man? Never. Do you want to look at him?” She reached around and took a pair of binoculars off the rail. “Can I borrow these? All right, at the front of the paddock. He’s younger than I am, for goodness’ sake.”
Two men were standing together at the front of the enclosure, watching the dogs being made ready for the fifth-race parade. One, resting against the rail, was in his sixties, with a deeply lined face and thin hair, the prim mouth of a snuff-user. He directed a stream of tobacco juice onto the track and drank from an open Coke bottle. Shayne adjusted the focussing knob. The liquid in the bottle was too pale for Coke.
The young man at his elbow was built like a jai alai player, slight but muscular. He put a stick of gum in his mouth and moved back toward the kennel, with the ease and sureness of someone who knows precisely where he is and what he is doing.
“Good-looking kid,” Shayne commented, returning the binoculars.
“Oh, smashing. Poor Mother has been playing golf and doing the housework all these years, and that doesn’t prepare you for real life. She didn’t have a chance. Honest to God,” she burst out, “if I told you how we had to cut corners and make do while that ocean of payoff money was pouring out month after month… And then to have to listen to this hypocrisy, this bullshit about the money he raised for the Boy Scouts. They wanted me to get up on that platform in a black dress, with a little lace hanky so I could touch my eyes when they said something especially affecting. But not me. I wouldn’t have any part of it. So he got plastered, so his car got away from him. I knew it was going to happen. I even knew it was going to happen in just that way.”
The bugle sounded, and the dogs left the enclosure.
“I know what people thought of him. A maudlin, sloppy old bore. Do you know he never used to take more than one or two sociable drinks before we enlarged? Before we added the quote Hall of the Greyhound, unquote? The scale of everything changed. A bigger handle. Ten drinks for Daddy a night instead of two. We had to do it. The washrooms-my God, they were foul. We had to put in hurdle races. That just about killed Max, all by itself. Because when the good old boys in Kansas course their greyhounds, they don’t make them jump over sawed-off broomsticks, do they? Honest, traditional dog racing isn’t enough in this day and age. It has to be fancied up. You don’t watch the dogs, you watch the TV.”
The marshal lifted each dog’s chin and tweaked its blanket, to make it look like a winner, when the caller announced its name and weight. The numbers were dancing on the tote board.
“Oh, God,” Linda said, weeping. “When I was about seven he used to take me hunting and fishing. Those were the great times. When his trouble began, he didn’t even know I was alive. I’m the unluckiest person. Look around you. Everybody’s got a fistful of bills. The kennelmaster’s an old friend of mine, I do his betting for him. I thought I could piggyback on his bets and come out ahead, but I can’t even seem to do that. Whenever he tells me he has something that’s absolutely sure, that’s the night I can’t spare more than a few lousy bucks. It’s a money-making machine, but I’ve never been able to get it to perform for me.”
At the rate she was drinking, she would need another Scotch in a minute. Shayne waved at a waiter. She blew her nose hard.
“I thought I owed it to Max’s memory to get drunk tonight, but now I don’t think it was such a good-” She turned suddenly, and her hand closed on Shayne’s arm. “That’s a divine muscle. Is that what you used to put Max in the hospital? Or a baseball bat?”
“Would you like an explanation of that?”
“Oh, never mind, I don’t think I’d believe it. I know he was impossible sometimes. I had enough fights with him myself. I threw a platter of chicken at him once. Shayne, I need some help.”
“What kind?”
“I think it was tetrazini, what difference does it make?”
“I mean what kind of help?”
“Not psychiatric. Maybe the kind of help you could give me with that hard right arm. Go back a few minutes. You asked me a question, and now I think I’ll answer it. How much did I know about the business? Thanks,” she said to the waiter as he passed in a drink. “Officially, not a hell of a lot. But unofficially-well, I made it a point to nose around, because some day all this was going to be mine, was the idea. None of the dog people pay any attention to me-I’m part of the wallpaper. And one of the things I’ve found out, one of the major things, is why he paid you three thousand a month.”
“He had every reason to keep that confidential.”
“He thought he was keeping it confidential. I pieced it together.”
“I think you’re trying to bluff me, Linda. Tell me your theory.”
“No, I don’t think I will. You play this game all the time. I’m new at it. I don’t want to hear you tell me how wrong I am. Because I know, and you’d better believe it. And this gives me a little muscle, even though I’m really only a frail girl. I think I’m going to hire you, Shayne, you corrupt son of a bitch. Mike Shayne, yeah! But I’m not going to pay you any money. I couldn’t afford your fees. This time your fee is going to be silence.” She put her finger to her lips. “Do me a favor, and I won’t explain that three thousand to the cops, or the newspapers, or the state’s attorney.”
Shayne continued to look at her steadily, and she went on, “I’m in a position to lay you waste, will you admit that?”
“Probably, if you have any evidence at all.”
“Pooh, evidence. I don’t need it. I’m the daughter. Do you want to take a chance? Go ahead. You may think you’re in trouble now, but wait till I’m done talking.”
“Who do you want me to work on, the kid in the kennel?”
“Exactly. His name is Ricardo Sanchez, and I’ll give you five days to get him off the track and out of Miami. Am I wrong in thinking that’s the kind of work you do?”
“I’ve done it,” Shayne said shortly. “But it can backfire. If your mother gets the idea you’re persecuting him, you’ll be worse off than you are now.”
She touched his arm again, this time running her palm along its full length to the wrist. “You can control that. I like competent people, and I have a feeling you’re competent. They’ve got an apartment in the Fanchon Towers. She rented it for him. Mother and I don’t have those long girl-to-girl talks anymore, and I had to follow her one night, which made me feel very crummy. I kind of sympathize with the old girl, but you have to admit it’s grotesque. He’s completely uneducated. Just because he has that great smile and that neat little Cuban ass.”