Стюарт Вудс - Class Act

Mickey O’Brien sat in a reclining chair in the living room of his apartment in the basement of his mother’s Brooklyn Heights townhouse and watched Bridal Veil turn the corner into the home stretch, half a length ahead of the nearest competition. Mickey had ten grand on her nose, which he had been promised would reach the finish line first, even if they had to shoot another horse. He had odds of twelve to one, and this win was going to make everybody he owed well again. He took a deep breath and began to let it out slowly. Then the impossible happened.

The filly seemed to trip over something with her left forefoot, but there was nothing there to trip over. Her right leg went rigid in a wild attempt to stop, then the horse on her rump collided with her, and they both went down, causing a series of catastrophes akin to an interstate car crash in thick fog. The horse who had been half a length behind crossed the line unpursued.

Mickey might as well have taken an arrow in the chest. He started to get to his feet, then fell back into the recliner. His mother’s entrance coincided with that moment.

“Ohmigod, now what?” she asked. “I know that look,” she said accusingly, “it happens when you lose and lose big.”

“Mom,” Mickey said weakly, throwing up an arm as if to stop her progress. “Don’t start, not now!”

“I’m not starting,” Louise O’Brien said firmly, “I’m finished, done with your sickness. You will not see another dime from me that will go to some sorry bookie somewhere!”

Mickey clutched himself and turned onto his side, away from the slings and spears that were being delivered from her direction.

“You get out of this house right now!” she yelled. “And don’t you darken my door between the hours of nine am and midnight. Why don’t you go get a nice bouncer’s job in some disco somewhere, like a respectable ex-cop. Bring home a paycheck!”

“Mom, I don’t need a paycheck. I’ve got a pension! And a good one!”

“And every dime of it ends up in your bookie’s pocket!” She was screaming now. “You might as well have your pension on auto-deposit to that bookie’s pocket!”

“Stop, stop, please. I just saw my horse — running at twelve to one at full speed, collapse on the home stretch.” He waved at the big TV. “Just look at that mess!”

Louise did look, and it was a mess, she would give him that. “Get out! Take your gun and go shoot that horse! Put him out of his misery!”

“It’s a filly.”

“I don’t give a good goddamn what it is!”

“They’re shooting her now,” Mickey said, pointing. A group had gathered around the filly, and somebody was holding a tarp between her and the camera, then a forklift moved onto the track, and she was taken away.

Mickey was crying real tears now. “Poor goddamned baby!” he cried, watching the lump under the tarp be driven through a gate.

Louise grabbed the coal shovel from the fireplace set and whacked her son on the shoulder with it. He got his jacket on and fled the premises.

“Your key won’t work before midnight!” Louise yelled after him. “I’ll fix that!”

Mickey flagged a cab and, before he could think, nearly gave it the address of his favorite bar. But if he went there, he would be sent home with broken legs, and his mother would do the rest.

“P. J. Clarke’s,” he said to the driver. His crowd didn’t drink there. They didn’t like the class of people it drew. They dressed too well and smelled too good, they drank twelve-year-old Scotch, and they didn’t fuck people like them.

Mickey’s worst fears were realized when he got inside the crowded bar and immediately came face-to-face with the police commissioner of New York City and that snotty friend of his, Barrington.

“Look who’s here!” Dino cried gleefully. “We don’t even have to go look for him! Come on in, Mickey, and buy us a drink!”

Mickey got out the door quickly and sprinted up Third Avenue; he knew not where, just out of there. He wished he could get out of his life, too.

Jack Coulter was wakened by his nurse on the day of his discharge. She shaved him, changed his bandage, and set out his clothes, which had been laundered, dry-cleaned, and pressed, and his shoes polished. She helped him dress and get seated in a wheelchair, then a breakfast cart and table was wheeled in and he had a sumptuous breakfast.

When he was done, the nurse took away the cart, set his trench coat and hat in his lap, and pushed his wheelchair to the porte cochere, where his Bentley awaited. He said goodbye to the nurse and gave her an envelope of hundreds to be shared as she saw fit, then he gave his coat and hat to the driver and got into the rear seat beside Hillary.

“Well, you look fresh and almost new,” she said, kissing him carefully, to avoid a nose bump.

“Never better,” Jack said.

They were driven to Teterboro and thence to Jet Aviation, where a Citation CJ3 awaited them, one owned by the office supply company now owned by Hillary, and one of two available for their use. Minutes later, they were climbing through clouds, then, finally, in clear blue skies. Jack dozed off.

An hour later, Jack awoke when he felt the landing gear come down and five minutes after that they coasted to a stop at Columbia Aviation at Bar Harbor Airport, where they and their luggage were loaded into a Range Rover and driven to the charming village of Northeast Harbor, where they occupied a charming house overlooking the charming harbor. Jack settled into an armchair with a view and allowed the New York Times to be placed in his hands. He was brought a cup of tea, then Hillary settled into a chair opposite him and opened the island newspaper.

“Was there anything in the New York papers about my, ah, mishap?” he asked.

“Nothing that could identify you,” she replied. “You know, the Post said something like, ‘Man mugged on Lex, assailant sought.’ ”

“No photographs?”

“Oh, some tourist got a snap of you being loaded into the ambulance, then shopped it to the Post . You were unidentifiable.”

“Has anyone been sniffing around our building?”

“Nothing the deskman couldn’t handle.”

“I expect O’Brien will be asking.”

“Let him ask.”

Mickey O’Brien flashed his gold badge at the doorman and entered the building without being stopped. He got only as far as the desk, where he flashed it again.

“Hello, O’Brien,” the deskman said. “Don’t they make you turn in your badge when you retire?”

“Usually,” O’Brien said, “but not detectives. I need to see Jack Coulter.”

“ Mister Coulter is not at home.”

“Yeah, I know what that means.”

“He left the city this morning.”

“For where?”

“His summer home.”

“And where’s that?”

“Now, that’s not a question you expect to have answered, is it?”

“I expect to have all my questions answered.”

“Dream on, Mickey. We all know what you did, and if you walk in here again, I’ll have Internal Affairs on your back, and you know how they cling.”

“Fuck you,” O’Brien said, but left. He crossed Fifth Avenue, and found a bench against the Central Park wall with a view of the building. Now, where would a gent of Coulter’s station have a summer house? Hamptons? Nah, too flash. Cape Cod? Maybe that or the Vineyard or Nantucket. He needed to narrow the range. As he thought about it, a blue Bentley with Florida plates turned the corner and entered the building’s garage.

Florida plates? Jack had a place in Palm Beach, didn’t he? He trotted across the street and into the garage. The Bentley was parked near the entrance, and Mickey checked the plate. It was in a dealer’s frame with a West Palm address, and he jotted down the license number, then trotted back to his bench and got out his phone. He got himself connected to the West Palm Beach police and gave them another detective’s name, at the 19th Precinct.