Saratoga Bestiary

by Stephen Dobyns

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

What's Super Bowl Sunday without a little gambling party in Saratoga Springs? By bedtime, private detective Charlie Bradshaw's a busy man. The bash has been robbed, Charlie hasn't recovered a stolen painting and a grocer lies dead behind his cash register. The names of five heavy gamblers promise to hold the key to the murder...and maybe much more. Charlie's investigation veers toward terror as it twists through a netherworld of unpleasant surprises."Dobyns is a graceful, assured writer with felicity of word and phrase. His characters spring to life, and he captures the charm of Saratoga Springs, both past and present." (The Washington Post)

Release date: July 1, 1990

Publisher: Penguin Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

The man sitting across the desk from Charlie Bradshaw was one of the wealthiest men in Saratoga Springs. Indeed, he was one of the wealthiest in the United States, and it was a stroke of good fortune that he should be in the market for a private detective and that detective should be Charlie, whose business this January seemed in a state of hibernation. As Charlie kept telling himself, a customer like George Whitman could make the difference between groceries and no groceries. With Whitman’s backing, Charlie could become the pet detective of the horse set, and he imagined stretch limousines double-parked outside his door on Phila Street. The sad part was that Whitman also appeared to be crazy.

“And just how long has Man o’ War been missing?” asked Charlie. Although his knowledge of racing was not what it should be considering a lifetime in Saratoga, Charlie was positive that Man o’ War had died back when he was in third grade.

“Just five days.” Whitman sat somewhat stiffly in Charlie’s visitor’s chair. He was a thin man in his early sixties with gunpowder-gray hair. As he spoke, he picked invisible specks of lint from his immaculate gray tweed suit, slowly moving his long hands as though moving them underwater.

“And do you know how they got him away?”

“We believe it was in a Ford Pinto.”

Charlie was unable to keep silent. “They got a horse into a Ford Pinto?”

Whitman’s hands stopped moving as, finger to finger, he formed a little cage in front of his chest. “Mr. Bradshaw, we are not talking about a horse. We are talking about the painting of a horse. The actual horse has been dead for forty years.”

“Certainly,” said Charlie, “but even a picture. It must have been a big picture and a Pinto is a small car.…” He stopped. Whitman was staring past him at the framed photograph of Jesse James on the wall behind the desk. He gave the impression of someone who was mentally enunciating the word “idiot” but was too well-bred to say it. At least he’s not crazy, thought Charlie.

“Last Monday one of the thieves called the museum,” continued Whitman, still eyeing the photograph. “He explained we could have the painting back for $10,000. Otherwise he would destroy it. We had several conversations over several days and on Wednesday we settled on a price of $5,000.”

“And what do you want me to do?” asked Charlie. Now that he began to think of it, all sorts of information about Man o’ War started springing to mind: how Big Red had had his only loss in twenty-one races right here in Saratoga in the Sanford Memorial Stakes in 1919 to a horse named Upset, how he had been purchased the year before in Saratoga as a yearling for $5,000, which was exactly what the thieves were asking for the painting. How ironic! Charlie wanted to mention these details to Mr. Whitman—who looked like a man who felt he’d made a mistake and was thinking of correcting it—but he kept silent.

Whitman shifted his gaze back to Charlie. He had light gray eyes, as if all the color had been leached from them by the constant counting of money. “We want you to deliver the ransom. This evening I’ll get a call as to where the money should be taken and then I’ll contact you. For this you’ll be paid $250.”

“No police?” asked Charlie.

“Mr. Bradshaw, there are many paintings in the Racing Hall of Fame but Voss’s painting of Man o’ War is one of the most valuable, both as an example of the art and because Man o’ War is still, perhaps, the best horse of the century. No police, no investigation, no trickery. We want the painting returned.” Mr. Whitman stood up. He was a tall man, nearly half a foot taller than Charlie. “You be here tonight and I’ll call you after I hear from the thieves. Ideally, we’ll have the painting back tomorrow.”

Charlie stood up as well. “How’d they steal the painting from the museum?”

“No, Mr. Bradshaw, your questions are irrelevant. No police, no investigation, no trickery.” Whitman walked to the frosted glass door separating Charlie’s office from the small waiting room, then turned and lifted his chin slightly as if smelling something unpleasant. “By the way, Mr. Bradshaw, whom do you favor in the Super Bowl?”

The question took Charlie by surprise. He had little interest in football, feeling such an interest was somehow a betrayal of his love of baseball. “Ah, the Eagles, I guess.”

“You’re not a Patriots fan?” Whitman looked disapproving.

“The Eagles have a pretty good team.” Really, he hardly cared, but he remembered the saying that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel and he supposed it adversely influenced him.

“What’s the current line?”

Charlie knew no more about point spreads than he did about bedspreads. “I haven’t heard it for today,” he said. Whitman probably guessed he didn’t know the first thing about it, and for a moment Charlie wished he had asked his friend Victor Plotz. On the other hand, he felt irritated with Whitman for thinking that just because he was a private detective in Saratoga Springs he should know the lowdown about point spreads for Sunday’s game.

Whitman appeared disappointed. “Expect to hear from me tonight,” he said. Then he left, quietly shutting the door behind him. Charlie waited until he heard the outside door close as well, then he exhaled a lungful of air through pursed lips, making a breathy whistling sound.

The $250 would pay the rent and maybe this job could lead to others. But then Charlie began thinking of something a little more grand. What if he did more than just deliver the money? What if he found the painting and even caught the thieves? Anything was possible.

Charlie had a date that night but he would break it. Perhaps he could change it to tomorrow night. As he turned to face the window, he saw his present girlfriend framed in the second-story window across the street. Dressed in white, she was bending over a man, her nose inches from his, as she inserted her fingers into his mouth. She looked kindly and eager. She was a dental hygienist and her name was Grace Washburn. Blond, forty, and slightly overweight, she had a sort of militant good cheer and pink cheeks that turned bright red when she and Charlie made love. They had been dating for three months and already she had cleaned Charlie’s teeth fourteen times. Never in his whole life had Charlie’s teeth been so clean. His gums ached just to think about it. And Saturday night, if they went out, Charlie could expect to have his teeth cleaned still again.

On several occasions Charlie had asked if they couldn’t forget the teeth-cleaning for just once, but Grace’s feelings had been hurt. Her great pride was her particular ability to clean teeth. And Charlie had submitted once more, sitting in a straight chair in her kitchen, a goosenecked lamp shining in his eyes, as Grace picked over his teeth with a wide variety of tools, then flossed them, then brushed them. Afterwards, they would go out to eat or watch a movie on Grace’s VCR, and after that they would make love. It was a comfortable relationship, except for the teeth-cleaning, and, although they’d only been dating a short time, Charlie had known her since moving into this office several years before. Well, he hadn’t actually “known her,” but he would often see Grace when he glanced out the window, and after a while they had begun to smile and even wave. It had seemed inevitable they would eventually date.

Charlie continued to watch Grace as he picked up the handset of his black desk phone to call her. Between their two windows a thick leaden sky was letting down fat white flakes. It was supposed to snow all day and nearly a foot was expected. This much of January and most of December had been like that. As Charlie started to dial, he heard the outside door open again. At first he thought it was Whitman, who perhaps had changed his mind and didn’t want to hire a private detective who believed that Man o’ War was still alive; but then there was a sharp rap on the glass and the door opened to admit a tall man in a brown overcoat whom Charlie had never seen before.

“You’re Bradshaw? My name is Moss, Blake Moss.” The man crossed the office in three strides and took hold of Charlie’s hand, which was stretched toward him across the desk. As Charlie’s hand was seized, he could feel his bones crack and the nail of his pinkie dug painfully into the skin of his index finger. Moss released him, then sat down abruptly in the visitor’s chair facing the desk. All his movements were quick and determined, as if designed to show the world that he wasn’t someone to fool around.

“I’ll jump right to the point, Mr. Bradshaw. I’ve come to you with a proposition.”

Charlie sat back down and massaged his hand under the desk where Moss couldn’t see it. He hadn’t had a customer all week and now he’d had two in a half hour. But perhaps Moss wasn’t a customer. “What’s on your mind?” asked Charlie.

“You and I are in the same line of work, Mr. Bradshaw. I have a detective agency in Albany, with branch offices in Schenectady, Pittsfield and Kingston. Now I want to open an office in Saratoga.” Moss leaned back and placed his large hands on his knees. He was about forty with a round face and small, delicate-looking ears. His blond hair was cut in a perfect flat top. “Military” was the word that came to Charlie’s mind. Moss was a big man, even somewhat swollen, and had the look of an ex-football player who needed to exercise more vigorously if he wanted to avoid a future in which he resembled a loaf of soft white bread.

“Saratoga’s a nice town,” said Charlie, wondering if it could really support two private detectives.

“I don’t like competition, Bradshaw.” Moss took out a pack of Marlboros and offered one to Charlie, who refused. Lighting one for himself, Moss shook out the match and tossed it into the metal wastebasket. “I don’t care to spend my time ducking around trying to get your clients while keeping you from getting mine. What I want is to offer you $20,000 a year to be the Saratoga branch manager of the Moss Security Agency. Apart from your regular investigations, you’ll be in charge of about a dozen security guards.” Moss paused and glanced around Charlie’s office, his eyes settling only briefly on Jesse James, before passing on to the pale green walls, the cracks in the ceiling, the thin brown rug covering the old linoleum, the gray safe in the corner, empty except for Charlie’s .38. “And of course,” continued Moss, “we’ll have to move the office to some more suitable location.”

“Suitable?” asked Charlie. Twenty thousand a year was several thousand more than he was making by himself. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be his own boss.

“I was thinking of an office in the Pyramid Mall.”

“The mall?”

“Where it would have the most visibility. Shoplifting, missing husbands, runaways, bad checks, insurance fraud—you want to be where people can see you.”

Charlie rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. He had a scratchy feeling in his chest and he was afraid he was getting a cold. “I like working by myself,” he said. “And I like working here.”

“Don’t tell me about it now,” said Moss, standing up. “Don’t make any hasty decisions. I’ve already checked your reputation and you’re just the sort of fellow I want. Think about it and I’ll talk to you on Monday. Twenty thousand plus health insurance, including dental. I bet you don’t even have health insurance.”

“Only dental,” said Charlie, remaining seated.

Moss stubbed out his cigarette in the green glass ashtray on the desk. “You backing the Pats?” he asked.

Charlie’s mind did a few quick flips as he realized that again the subject was football. “Sure,” he said.

“I’m an Eagles fan myself.”

“What odds?” asked Charlie.

Moss looked at him suspiciously. “You mean the line? Pats by four and a half. But it all depends on Eason’s knees. He sees the doc tomorrow.” Moss walked to the door. “Monday, Bradshaw. Think hard about this. It would mean a chunk of money. You could buy yourself some clothes.”

“I’ve got plenty of clothes,” said Charlie.

Blake Moss gave Charlie a brief nod and left, leaving the door open behind him. After a moment, Charlie went to close it. He looked down at his khaki pants and brown sport coat, his tan chamois cloth shirt. “Plenty of clothes,” he repeated to himself. “They’re just old, that’s all.”

Standing behind the bar at the Bentley, Victor Plotz took a maraschino cherry from the bowl in front of Charlie and squeezed it between two fingers until its scarlet sides split. Then he popped it in his mouth, stem and all.

“Just a few friends, Charlie. What could be more harmless than a few friends watching the Super Bowl?”

“Those rooms aren’t supposed to be open,” said Charlie, who was perched on one of the chrome stools drinking a diet cola.

“Hey, Charlie, your mother trusted me enough to make me the off-season manager of the Bentley. That function room up on the third floor has the big screen, forty-eight inches of football magic. Where’s the harm? And afterward I’ll sweep and polish and nobody’ll ever know that I was there.” Victor removed the stem of the cherry from his mouth and looked at it critically.

“Okay, okay,” said Charlie. He had no wish to disappoint Victor, and as for what happened in the function room Charlie hardly cared, unless, of course, it got into the newspapers. “And you’ll help me this evening?”

“Whatever you say. I’ll find someone to watch the bar.” Victor tossed another cherry into the air and caught it on his long pink tongue. Then he winked at Charlie. “I could eat these all day,” he said.

The bar at the Bentley was strictly Art Deco with lots of shiny chrome and black and white tiles. The long mirror behind the bar was framed with a thick silver tubing and every foot or so were little bulbs like makeup lights. Apart from the kitchen, the bar was the most modern room in the Bentley, the others being pure Victorian, which seemed appropriate for one of the last Victorian hotels in Saratoga Springs.

Charlie’s mother, Mabel Bradshaw, owned the Bentley and usually she ran it herself. But this year she had decided she couldn’t stand another winter in Saratoga and was spending the cold months in Paris, studying high fashion—an idea that startled Charlie every time he thought of it. Victor was keeping the hotel open just on the weekends, managing the bar, serving a limited menu in the grill, renting a few rooms mostly to the parents of Skidmore students but sometimes to the students themselves for amorous trysts, as Victor called them. As befitted the manager of a big hotel, he no longer wore the ragged sweatshirts that had kept him warm during his years as Charlie’s assistant in the Charles F. Bradshaw Detective Agency. Now he wore a dove gray suit, dove gray shirt and dove gray tie, which exactly matched his dove gray hair, expensively styled to surround his head much as an olive surrounds its pimiento stuffing. In the midst of all this gray, his large, elbow-shaped nose stood out like a beacon. Victor was about sixty and appeared to be speeding up, rather than slowing down, with several girlfriends, a severe Nautilus regimen and a red Renault Fuego parked in the manager’s slot of the Bentley. He was also Charlie’s best friend.

Charlie had left his office and crossed Broadway to the hotel around lunch time that Friday, motivated by what he ever afterward thought of as a bad idea. It had occurred to him that much might be gained by improving on George Whitman’s scenario for the coming evening. If, for instance, someone like Victor were watching the spot where Charlie dropped off the money, that person might get a lead on whoever was trying to ransom the painting of Man o’ War back to the racing museum. Then, if Charlie actually tracked down the thieves, saw to their arrest and recovered the money, possibly Mr. George Whitman might be pleased enough to send more business in his direction, in which case Charlie would never feel in the least bit tempted by an offer like the one from Blake Moss. But even as he was planning these events Charlie knew he would never have considered ignoring Whitman’s instructions if he hadn’t made that foolish remark about getting Man o’ War into a Ford Pinto. He wanted to do something that would gain him a little credit in Whitman’s eyes.

Charlie reached forward and nudged Victor’s sleeve with his hand. “But you have to be careful,” he said. “If these guys spot you, we’re in big trouble.”

Victor stirred his finger around the bowl of maraschino cherries, then wiped his hands on the bar towel. “So I’ll be invisible, just like Lamont Cranston himself.”

“There’ll be snow.”

“I seen snow before.”

“These people will be suspicious.”

“I’ll disguise myself as a parking meter. Cut the worrying, will you?”

“Okay, okay,” Charlie finished his diet cola and sat back. Probably he was wrong to be nervous. “So what’s this thing on Sunday?”

“Just a few guys watching the game, a coupla beers, a big bowl of popcorn. Nothing elaborate.” Victor grinned, showing his gold molars.

“What about Eason’s knees?” asked Charlie.

“Come on, Charlie. Who you been talking to? You don’t care squat about football.”

“Is the line still the Pats by four and a half?”

Victor squinted at Charlie, uncertain if he was being teased. “It’s dropped to three. The knees don’t look so good.”

“I’ll bet you two to five that the Eagles’ yardage in the third quarter will be two-tenths of a mile more than the Patriots’ in the second quarter and that the referee has a daughter named Agnes.”

Victor moved down the bar to the kitchen. “I’ll get your sandwich. I don’t like these traces of humor, Charlie. Makes me think I’ll have to start reading joke books just to keep up.”

Charlie chewed some of the ice in his glass and looked around the room, which was empty. The mirrors on three walls threw back his reflection and he winced. The previous April he had turned fifty, and ever since he’d been unable to look in a mirror without a little voice saying in his ear, “You’re fifty. Think of that, you’re fifty.”

His response wasn’t regret for life unlived or anxiety over what lay ahead; rather, it was surprise. He didn’t feel fifty. He didn’t know what he felt like exactly, but he’d felt this way for many years and it didn’t feel like fifty, not five-zero, not half a century. He supposed he kept saying it just so he would get used to it, but even now, nine months after his birthday, he was still saying it—“You’re fifty”—and each time it came as a surprise.

He looked all right, he thought, rather innocuous, even unassuming, someone your eyes passed over to look at someone else. A little overweight, but not much, thanks to swimming. Not quite as tall as he would have liked. A private face, round, relatively unlined, with graying hair combed straight back across his head. At the moment several strands were sticking up somewhat foolishly and he patted them back down again. He felt that his large blue eyes bore a thoughtful, even intelligent expression. His nose, on the other hand, was much too small, a little blip of a nose, a flesh-colored grape.

Victor returned with two plates each with a roast beef sandwich and potato chips. He put one in front of Charlie, then poured him another glass of diet cola. “But even though this party is just for a few friends, Charlie, I wouldn’t want your mother to hear about it. After all, she’s a lady, what does she know about a bunch of guys watching the Super Bowl?”

With his mouth full of sandwich, Charlie thought, with some surprise, that his mother really was a lady, despite her forty-five years as a waitress in Saratoga. A half interest in a winning trotter, some good bets, a lucky week in the casinos of Atlantic City had turned her into the owner of a big hotel and now she was studying high fashion in Paris. But gambling was in her blood, as it had been in Charlie’s father’s, the man who had bet that Lindbergh wouldn’t make it, that Lou Gehrig was a flash in the pan, that Hoover would be reelected, and who had welched on his IOUs by committing suicide when Charlie was four years old. As a result, Charlie had ambivalent feelings about gambling, knowing how easily he could let himself be swept away, trying to parlay his pennies into dollars and handing out bad checks on Friday, hoping to redeem them before Monday with a few big wins. He was a romantic. It was his great fault. It was too easy for him to believe in things that would never happen. Consequently, his betting was limited to a few horses at the track each August—horses with every virtue except the ability to win.

Charlie looked at Victor and wondered if he had any reason to be suspicious about his party. “That’s okay,” he said, “I won’t tell her. Just don’t make a mess, that’s all. How come you didn’t invite me as well?”

Victor drank down some Vichy, then coughed. “Charlie, you’re my best friend. Whenever I have a party, you’re first on my list. Numero uno. It’s just that you hate football, that’s all. You’d be a wet blanket, sitting around reading a book or something. You really want to come?”

“I’ve got to work that day.” Charlie thought Victor looked relieved. “Somebody’s been breaking into cottages out around Lake Cossayuna. I’m supposed to find him.”

“Cold work.”

“Tell you the truth, I’d prefer it to watching football.”

That evening around five Charlie drove back to his small house on Lake Saratoga for supper. It was already dark, and although on this January twenty-third he knew the days were getting longer and that in terms of daylight this day was more or less equal to November nineteenth, the dark was still oppressive and Charlie felt that his whole body had been clenched for several months. Several inches of snow had accumulated on the road and it was still snowing heavily. Charlie stayed in the tracks of the car in front of him, going about twenty-five. Big flakes shone in his low beams, blurring the red taillights up ahead.. . .