A Stone's Throw, James Ziskin [best books to read for students .TXT] 📗

his boots thumping across the kitchen floor, as he held the knife inches from my back. I reached into my bag and fished out my key chain. Johnny snatched it away and herded me back into the kitchen.

“Sit down,” he said as he examined the keys. I did as I was told. “Which one is it?”

“The long one. Brass.”

He turned the key over a couple of times, surely wondering how he was going to get in and out of a bank in the middle of the night. Or in the morning, for that matter.

“Do you have something to eat?” he asked at length. “Bologna or cheese or something?”

“In the icebox.”

He opened the door and rummaged through the contents, pulling out some cold cuts, mustard, pickles, and one of the two quarts of beer left over from my last music appreciation evening with Fadge.

“Bread?”

“In there,” I said, indicating the breadbox next to the toaster on the counter. Arms full, he hooked an open bag of potato chips with his pinky finger and hauled his shopping spree back to the kitchen table where he dumped it without ceremony. He slapped together a sandwich with one hand while the other held the knife. Then he fell on the food, tearing into the sandwich, eating the chips out of the bag, and washing it all down straight from the bottle of beer.

Once he’d had his fill, he glared at me. “Who did you tell about me?”

“No one. I thought you were dead.”

“Don’t lie to me. Who did you think you were chasing down on the farm? You knew, and you must have told someone. Your boss, maybe? Or that big guy you were with?”

Fearing my denials would only antagonize him, I said nothing at first. He reached for the bottle of beer again, all the while holding the knife tight.

“You’ve seen the papers,” I said finally. “If I’d known you were alive, I would have printed it. I was trying to track down someone else. Someone who I’m just starting to understand has been dead for ten days.”

“And who’s that?”

“Dan Ledoux.”

“You’re too smart for your own good.”

“I really thought you were dead. And so did everyone else. You did a great job covering your tracks. If you hadn’t barged in here tonight, no one would’ve ever suspected a thing.”

Perhaps I should have kept that last bit to myself. After all, I was still the only person who knew he was still alive. And I didn’t want to remind him of that easily remediable situation. But he wanted his gun and newspaper. That was the only card I had to play. I decided to keep him talking.

“What happened nine years ago? Why did you go along with the plan to fix the race?”

Johnny drew a breath and closed his eyes for a short moment, as if the memory caused him physical pain. When he opened them again, I saw the red. His face flushed as if he might be holding that breath he’d just taken. It wasn’t the healthy red that comes from exercise or brisk weather, but from intense pressure, like a blood vessel about to burst. In fact, his temples seemed to throb under my scrutiny. Then a big, rolling drop of a tear escaped his right eye.

“It was for her,” he said, barely managing more than a croak from his throat.

“Vivian?”

He nodded as he pinched both his lips and eyes in an effort to stem the tears. “She asked me to do it, and I said yes.”

“Why?” I asked, wondering if I could make a grab for the knife while he struggled to compose himself.

“I was in love with her, what do you think? She could’ve asked me for anything, and I would’ve done it.”

“Whose idea was it to throw the race?”

“Mack was the guy behind it all. I found out later that he made twenty thousand on that race. Twenty thousand. And what did I get? Blackballed from racing. My career ruined.”

“Did Mack approach Lou Fleischman to have you ride Robinson’s Friday?”

Johnny wiped the back of his hand across his nose. “Yeah. Ledoux set me up as a morning rider for Mack. It was part of the plan. Bring in some young rube who would do as he was told. That was me.”

“And Vivian was with Ledoux? Even while she pretended to be in love with you?”

“Who wasn’t she with? Mack, Ledoux, me, the blacksmith, the track announcer . . .”

I chalked up the last two to sarcasm on Johnny’s part but, in truth, wasn’t entirely sure. At any rate, I didn’t want to break his momentum with stray questions about Vivian’s catalogue of lovers, so I encouraged him to tell me how he’d fallen for her.

Johnny’s voice was low and measured and rough. Careful. “I saw her for the first time at Polo Park in Winnipeg. She was standing there in her light dress, looking like a million dollars. God, those legs. She was so damn beautiful.”

“And she spoke to you?”

“She turned on the charm. A couple of megawatts’ worth. Smiled at me, batted her eyelashes, wet her lips just so. I thought she really liked me. Maybe she was one of those crazy fans, I figured. The girls who’ll do anything to get close to a jockey.”

“Are there such girls?” I asked, then realized it might have come out all wrong. He didn’t seem to notice. “So she seduced you?” I continued. “But it was all a lie?”

“Yeah, and I was such a sap I fell for it. She told me we’d go to Maryland and get married. I could be a jockey at Pimlico and Churchill Downs and Saratoga and Belmont.” He paused to laugh bitterly and take a swig of beer. “Get married? She was already married. Twice. And she had a boyfriend and was sleeping with his boss to boot.”

“And you.”

“Yeah. Me too. She liked small guys, you know. Jockeys. Some kind of weird thing with her. Ledoux was a shrimp, too. No bigger than me.”

“It