Gary Corby - Sacred Games

“Does this belong to you?” I asked, and proffered the whip.

“That it does.” The driver cast aside the whip he held and grabbed mine. He said, “This is my lucky whip; I’ve never run a race without it, so thanks. Where did you find it?”

“I wondered when you’d arrive,” Markos said to me.

“What did you get from my witness?” I demanded.

“ Your witness?” Markos smiled the superior smile of a man who’d won a race to the man who’d come in second. “I found him first. What do the little boys say? Oh yes. Finders keepers.”

I grated. “We’ll interview this witness together .”

“Didn’t we just agree to compare notes later?” he said, in all apparent innocence. He even managed a slightly hurt tone.

“I’ll save you the trouble in this case. He might have vital information, and it’d be a pity if any of it unintentionally slipped your mind in the debrief.”

The Spartan gave me an evil grin. “Very well, we can question him together.”

The driver’s head had swiveled between Markos and me as we argued. He opened his mouth to speak, but an angry voice behind us got in first.

“No, you can’t. Not now.” A short, dark man who sweated freely and wore a harried frown stepped between us and the driver. The stress oozed from his voice. This had to be the team manager. He pointed to the hippodrome. “Iphicles is about to risk life and limb out there in a race that requires the utmost concentration, and you idiots want to bother him? Right when he needs to focus?”

“These are important questions,” Markos said. “King Pleistarchus commands they be asked.”

The manager snorted. “You think I care about kings now? You could be bum-boy to Zeus himself, and I wouldn’t halt the team for you.”

Iphicles said, “They found my lucky whip, Niallos. Look, they returned it.”

He held up the whip to be seen.

That stopped the manager. “They did, did they?” Niallos looked from one of us to the other. “In that case, I thank you. Chariot drivers are the most superstitious men alive. Well, you can see why; their lives depend on luck as much as skill. Iphicles was convinced he’d die in this race unless someone found that whip.”

Iphicles said, “Niallos, there’s nothing for me to do yet but stand here. I may as well speak to them. I owe them. I might win the Olympics because of these two.”

Niallos turned to Markos and me and said, “You have until the trumpets sound again.” He marched off to bellow orders at the crew.

I said, “Thanks, Iphicles.” The driver was as short as his team manager, but his shoulders were massive, and the muscles in his upper arms were like ropes. I glanced down. The middle two fingers of his left hand were missing. “What happened to your fingers?”

“Racing accident, years ago when I was young and reckless.”

“Now you’re older and wiser?”

“Just older.”

“Dangerous for you.”

“That’s where the luck comes in. I’m one of the veterans of this race. It’s the youngsters more likely to make mistakes, but we all have to watch out.”

Iphicles could not have been much older than me.

It was hard to think among the barely controlled chaos of the race preparations. The crew swarmed all over the chariot and the horses. Two grooms stood at the front to hold the bridles and prevent the team from bolting. Men checked leather straps, made minute adjustments, and checked again. A slave rubbed oil into the harness. Another slapped pig fat and oil about the axle. One man checked the coupling between the harness and the chariot, and another man checked the work of the first. If that coupling failed, it would be disaster. One man, his eyes closed, ran his fingers along every part of the reins to ensure there was not the slightest nick, nothing to snap under the intense pressure of the race.

The roar of the crowd rose steadily over the noise of the race crews as they put the vehicles through final prep. Nervous horses neighed and danced in excitement, held barely in place by struggling grooms.

Against the noise I said, “Do you know a man named Arakos?”

Iphicles bent close to say, “Isn’t he the dead man? Heard of him but never met him. I’m a race driver, not one of those fighting thugs.”

Unfortunately, that made sense. “Where were you last night?”

“Across the river, screwing as many women as possible and guzzling the best wine.”

I blinked. Iphicles was a straight talker.

“I puked twice already this morning. I’m still nursing a massive hangover.”

“Do you always drink and wench yourself senseless before a major race? The preparations don’t seem entirely adequate.”

Iphicles laughed. “Look about you.” Across the boxes, attendants and crews everywhere made last-moment preparations the same as the men next to us. In many boxes the driver had already stepped up to his vehicle. “See those men taking the reins? Some of them will die today. What man doesn’t make the most of his last day on earth?”

“Last night, did you see-”

Iphicles said something I couldn’t hear over the rising noise.

I leaned close to his ear and shouted, “What did you say?”

He leaned close to my ear and shouted back, “I said, What did you say? You’ll have to speak up; I can’t hear you over the crowd.”

The next box along housed Team Megara. Their chariot had a problem of some sort; the wheels screeched fit to tear out my teeth. Men with buckets smeared fat as fast as they could ladle.

I cupped my hands together and shouted into Iphicles’s ear, “How did you lose your whip?”

“This is hopeless,” Markos shouted. “We’ll have to wait till after the race.” He abandoned the struggling conversation and stepped back to watch the crew prepare the chariot. I silently agreed with Markos that there was no hope of getting any useful information, but I wasn’t willing to give up.

Iphicles had watched my mouth as I spoke, and he nodded to show he understood. He shouted something back, but though I heard fragments, I couldn’t make sense of what he’d said. I wanted to drag Iphicles away from the noisy place, but I knew he couldn’t go.

The noise level suddenly dropped.

“Quick, tell me how you lost the whip.”

“I already told your friend that. I took a wrong turn while I staggered home, went left into those woods instead of right across the river. Sounds dumb, I know, but my head wasn’t working too well, so I followed the guy in front of me.”

“What guy?”

“I dunno. There was a man ahead of me. Obviously I thought he was going back to camp, too. I just staggered along behind.”

“Obviously. What happened then?”

“The man turned around and said I was going the wrong way. He pointed me toward the ford. I said thanks-at least I think I did-and then I must have tripped, ’cause next thing I knew I was flat on my face. When I came to, I went in the right direction. I don’t remember much else.”

“You carried a horsewhip to meet women?” My imagination ran wild.

“It’s a lucky whip. When I woke this morning without it in my hands, I almost died.” He shuddered. “I realized I must have dropped it when I fell, and like a fool I was so wasted I hadn’t noticed. I went back for it, but it was gone.”

Because Markos and I had taken it for evidence.

“Would you recognize this man if you saw him again?”

“I dunno. Maybe. Ask me later. Right now I’m all nerves.”

And there I’d been expecting the owner of the whip to solve the case for me. He knew almost nothing. But who was it he’d followed? The murderer? Or Arakos?

As we spoke, a crewman beside us scooped out a large handful of grease from a bucket, slopped it onto the chariot’s right axle where it joined the wheel, and spread it around. When he was satisfied, the crewman raised his arm and called. “Right wheel. Check!”