Billy Bathgate (32 page)

It was peculiar that Mr. Schultz knew everything about betrayal but the way it worked, in the freedom of the joyfully voracious spirit of all of us, or else why would his Abbadabba take the trouble to give me a horse? Mr. Schultz lacked imagination, he had a conventional mind, Drew was right, he was ordinary. Nevertheless I now faced enormous executive responsibilities, I had to bring things to pass, I had to engage people to do things I thought they ought to do and from a position of no authority whatsoever. As I thought about it, men in movies who got things done had assistants and secretaries. On a card right in front of me was the Grand Union Hotel’s list of services, including a masseur, a barber, a florist, a Western Union office, and so on. I had an entire hotel at my disposal. I steeled myself
and picked up the phone and in my lowest, softest voice, affecting the kind of nasality of speech of Drew Preston’s friends, I informed the hotel operator that I wanted to reach Mr. Harvey Preston at the Savoy-Plaza in New York, and if he was not in residence to find out from the operator there his forwarding number, which might, perhaps, be Newport. When I hung up my hand was shaking, I, the juggler extraordinaire. I assumed it would take some time to locate Harvey, undoubtedly in bed somewhere with the company of his taste, so I called Room Service and they very respectfully took my order, which was honeydew melon and corn flakes and cream, scrambled eggs and bacon and sausages and toast and jelly and danish pastry and milk and coffee, I just went right down the menu. I sat in a wing chair by the open windows and tucked my Automatic behind the cushion and waited for my breakfast. It seemed to me very important to remain quite still, as one does in a very hot bath, so as to be able to endure it. Mickey would be driving and probably it was Irving with him because whatever they wanted to do would require precision in Saratoga, and perhaps patience, and something deft and sad in its effect rather than outrageous. I liked them both. They were quiet men and bore no ill will toward anyone. They didn’t like to complain. They might inwardly demur but they would do their job.

I thought of what I would say to the elegant Harvey. I hoped he would be near a phone. It could even be white. He would hear me out having had the most perfunctory concern for Drew’s safety over the summer because of the steady flow of charge account bills or canceled bank checks that had undoubtedly come to him in the mail. I would represent myself as transmitting his wife’s wishes. I would be very businesslike. In my mind at the moment I had no personal interest at all in Mrs. Preston, certainly nothing that would tinge my voice with love or guilt. Not that I could ever feel guilty toward Harvey. But apart from that, I had lost in this situation any capacity at all for the eroticized affection, it wanes pathetically in terror, I not only could not remember making love with Drew, I could not even imagine it. She didn’t interest me. There was a knock on the door and
my breakfast was wheeled in and the very cart it came on was gatelegged out under its white linen cloth into a dining table. All the food was served in or under heavy silver. The melon was set in a silver bowl of ice. I had learned last night from Drew not to overtip and got the bellboy out of the room with aplomb. I sat feeling my gun in the small of my back and stared at this enormous breakfast as if I carried Bathgate Avenue where I went, with all the sweet fruits of the earth spilled on my plate. I missed my mother. I wanted to be wearing my black-and-white Shadows jacket. I wanted to steal from the pushcarts and hang around the beer drops and catch a glimpse of the great Dutch Schultz.

At noon, after I packed my bag and left it downstairs with the bell captain, I asked directions to the racecourse and made my way there on foot. It was about a mile from the hotel down a broad boulevard of dark three-story, deep-porched houses, one after another. In the front yards were signs that said park here and the residents stood in the street and tried to wave the passing cars into their driveways. Everyone in Saratoga was trying to make a little money, even the owners of these grand gabled houses. Most of the traffic was heading for the track’s own parking lot, at every intersection cops in their short-sleeved shirts were waving it on. Nobody seemed to be in much of a hurry, the black cars moved at a stately pace and nobody blew their horns or tried to improve their position, it was the most mannerly traffic I had ever seen. I looked for the Packard even though I knew I wouldn’t find it. If they set out in the early morning, even with Mickey driving it would take them to midafternoon to get here. All at once I saw the green roof of the grandstand, like some pennanted castle in the trees, and then I was on the grounds, and the day was festive with people streaming to the gates under their panama hats and sun parasols, they carried field glasses, men were hawking programs, the place was not as big as Yankee Stadium but grand of scale nonetheless, it was a wooden structure painted green and white, it had the air of a distinguished old amusement park with flower beds lining the
paths. I stood on line for a clubhouse ticket and was told they would not let me in as an unaccompanied minor, I wanted to take out my Automatic and shove it up the guy’s nose, but instead I asked an elderly couple to buy my ticket for me and walk me through the turnstile, which they were gracious enough to do, but it was a humiliating recourse for the trusted associate of one of the most deadly gangsters in the country.

Then when I climbed the stairs to the stands and came out to my first glimpse of the great oval track I felt immediately at home, it was that delicious shock of looking down from a deep shade to a green field in the sun, you got it from a baseball diamond or from a football gridiron, and now I saw the racecourse had it too, that sense before the sport begins of the glory of the day to come, the palapable anticipation of a formal struggle on a course as yet unmarked, with phantom horses racing to the finish line in a pristine brilliance of air and light. I felt I could handle myself here, I enjoyed the unexpected confidence that comes of recognition.

So there I was burdened with my deadly serious reponsibili-ties on this fine day when it seemed as if the whole society was coming to gamble, and the common people would do their betting on the grounds and stand in the sun by the rail to see what they could of the actual race, which was the homestretch, while the well-to-do bettors sat in the shade of the raked wooden stands so they could see somewhat more of the course, there were the boxes right at the front edge of the stands which had been bought for the season by politicians and men of wealth and fame, but if unoccupied on any particular day could be bought with a bribe to the usher to be used on a contingency basis, and finally, set back on a separate tier above the grandstand, was the expensive clubhouse where the truly sporting came to sit at tables and have their luncheon before the start of the day’s races. I found Drew up there alone at a table for two with a glass of white wine in front of her.

I knew of course no matter what I told her she would not dream of leaving before she’d had her fill of the horses. I knew too that if I spoke of the danger she was in or acknowledged my
fear her eyes would wander, her mind would wander, she’d drift away in her mind and spirit and the light I held in her eye would dim. She liked my precocity. She liked my street-tough self, she liked her boys gallant and bold. So I told her I had a sure thing in the seventh race and I was going to bet everything I had and make enough dough to keep her in bonbons and silk underwear for the rest of her life. It was supposed to be a joke but somehow it came out in a constricted voice, with more fervor than I intended, like a declaration of my childish love, and the effect on her depthless green eyes was to set them brimming. And now we both sat there in silence and great sadness, it was as if she knew from her own system of reckoning everything I didn’t dare tell her. I couldn’t look at her but turned my gaze to the track out there in the sun, a long wide beautifully kept raked-dirt oval track with white fencing, inside of which was an inner oval track of grass with obstacles for the steeplechase races, and inside that were plantings of red and white flowers and a pond with real swans paddling around, and all of it set in a vast verdant countryside with the foothills of the Berkshires far to the east, but I only saw oval, and ran my eyes around the closed track as if it were an endless bulkhead, as if I had not all the air of the world to breathe but the stifling diesel fumes in a tugboat deckhouse, and every moment that we had lived since that night was my hallucination, a moment’s reprieve from the great heaving sea lunging up from itself to gulp at the night’s prey, and people of my barest acquaintance who were dead had not yet died.

Little by little the tables filled up, though neither of us was hungry we lunched on cold salmon and potato salad, and finally the mounted men in red hunt coats came onto the track and the trumpet blew and the horses with their jockeys paraded at a slow pace past us to the far turn where the starting gate had been set up, and the first of the day’s races went off, as they were to do thereafter every half hour, every thirty minutes or so a race went off, a mile or more or sometimes less around the broad raked-dirt track, you saw them perhaps for a few moments out of the starting gate and then unless you had glasses they became a rolling blur, as if one undulant individual animal was rippling
around the far stretch of the track, and it was moving not all that quickly and only when it came into detailed view as horses again, in urgent and walloping whipped exertion, did you understand what a great distance they had run in what little time, and they were swift as devils as they galloped past you and crossed the finish line in front of the stands with the jockeys standing up then in their stirrups. And there was much excitement and importuning and shouting and screaming during the race, but it was not the kind of noise and cheering you got at a baseball game when Lou Gehrig hit a home run, it was not a joyous life sound and did not continue past the moment of the first horse’s finish, but died off suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch, with everyone turning back to their charts to give the next half hour to the new bets, and only the winners still buzzing with happiness or gloating over their winnings, the flesh of the horse the least of anyone’s concern, except perhaps the owner stepping into the winner’s circle in front of the stands to pose for pictures with the jockey and the horse in its garland of carnations.

And I knew what Mr. Berman meant, what mattered were the numbers each animal carried around the track, the numbers on the big boards facing the stands that showed the odds at post time. The horses were running numbers, animated odds, even to the very wealthy squires who bred them and bought them at the yearling sales and owned them and raced them and won purses with them.

But all these impressions came to me through the corners of my eyes, as it were, and on the edges of my attention, as I left Drew and came back to her, and then took her down to her box and left her there, and went looking everywhere on all the levels for the hoods I knew and the hoods I didn’t know, because this was not the exclusive horse show of the night before, this was a grand convention of all the idlers of the world, I saw people pushing their two dollars under the grate who clearly were busted, people in the sun by the rail in their undershirts clutching their tickets that were the one way they could get out, whatever it was, to get out of it, I had never seen such pale faces come
to enjoy a day, and everywhere on every tier, in every aisle, were the men who knew what others didn’t and talked from the sides of their mouths and nodded the knowing nods of commerce, this was such a seedy stand of life, such a grubby elegance of occupation, with the drinkers of tall iced drinks or shots of neat all wanting too much from life and losing too much to it as they stood on the betting lines to try again in their democratic ceremonies of gain and loss on the creaking tiers of these old wooden stands.

All I asked of Drew was that she not go down to the paddock to see the horses before they came onto the track, that she sit in her box, which was numbered and known, just near the governor’s box at the finish line, and content herself looking at them through her binoculars.

“You don’t want me to bet?”

“Bet what you want. I’ll go to the window for you.” “It doesn’t matter.”

She was very thoughtful and still and made a quietness around herself that I felt as a kind of mourning.

Then she said, “You remember that man?”

“Which man?”

“The one with the bad skin. The one he respects so.”

“Bad skin?”

“Yes, in the car, with the bodyguards. Who came to the church.”

“That man. Of course. How could I forget such skin.”

“He looked at me. I don’t mean he was forward or anything like that. But he looked at me and he knew who I was. So I must have met him before.” She pursed her lips and shook her head with her eyes cast down.

“You don’t remember?”

“No. It must have been at night.”

“Why?”

“Because every night of my life I am a damn drunk.”

I pondered this: “Were you with Bo?”

“I think I must have been.”

“Did you ever tell Mr. Schultz?”

“No. Do you think I should have?”

“I think it’s important.”

“Is it? Is it important?”

“Yes, I think it might be.”

“You tell him. Would you?” she said and raised her binoculars as the horses of the next race came at a walk onto the track.

A few minutes later a uniformed messenger came up to the box with an enormous bouquet of flowers in his hand and they were for Drew, a great armload of long-stemmed flowers, and she took them and her face colored, she read the card and it said
From An Admirer
, just as I had dictated, and she laughed and looked around her, up into the stands behind her, as if to find whoever it was who had sent them. I called to an usher and put a folded five-dollar bill in his hand and told him to bring a pitcher of water, which he did, and Drew placed the flowers in the pitcher and put them on the empty chair beside her. She was cheerier now, some people in the next box smiled and made appropriate remarks, and then another uniformed messenger arrived, this time with a floral arrangement so large it came with its own wicker stand, like a little tree with flowers like stalks of popcorn, and big green fan leaves mixed in and bell flowers of blue and yellow with little tails, and the card said
Ever Yours
, and now Drew was laughing with that shocked happiness of people who get Valentine’s Day greetings or surprise birthday parties. I can’t imagine, she answered when a gentleman leaned over and asked her what the occasion was. And when the third and fourth even larger deliveries were made, the last a display with dozens of long-stemmed roses, the whole box was transformed with flowers, she was surrounded by them, and there was considerable amusement and interest in the boxes around her and people stood up in their seats to see what was going on and there was a flurry of interest that spread through the stands and people started to come over from all directions to ask questions, to make remarks, some people thought she was a movie star, a young man asked her if he ought to be asking for her autograph, she had now more flowers around her than the winner
of a cup race, she held them and was surrounded by them, and even more important, she was surrounded by the people who came up to see what all the excitement was about. Some of them were her friends from the horse set, and they sat with her and made jokes, and one woman had her two children with her, two little blond girls with bowl haircuts who were dressed in white dresses and bows and white anklets and polished white shoes, nice shy little girls, and Drew improvised little corsages for them to hold, and a photographer appeared from the local newspaper and took flash pictures, everything was going so well, I wanted those children to stay there, I asked the mother if they would like some ice cream and ran off to get some, and while I was at it I ordered from the clubhouse bar a couple of bottles of champagne and several glasses, flashing my roll and dropping Drew’s name so that the bartender wouldn’t give me a hard time, and soon she was entertaining right there in the box amid her flowers, and I stood back a step and saw that even some of the race officiais on their horses glanced up from the track to where she was, it was as if the queen was present in her flower-bedecked box with little girl attendants and people lifting their glasses in her honor.