Live Bait by Ted Wood Page B

me going out. I asked her to come out to the stoop and wave to me as I left, and I carried an empty suitcase with me to the car. Anybody who was thinking about my lifestyle would have known that Sam would have been with me if I were leaving, but it was dark by now and I figured it might fool a casual observer. Maybe they would think I had taken the hint and gone home. And maybe they wouldn't, but at least Sam was on duty for me.
    I had left too late to catch Tony at his circuit so I drove right to the racetrack, bought a ticket and went looking for him.
    The usual crowd was there. Most of them are the mugs—working stiffs who work at lousy jobs because they think of nothing but the track and the modest little wins they make that pay for steaks and bottles of cheap rye once in a while. One time you found nothing but Cabbagetown natives there, guys born and bred in Toronto's only real slum. Tonight it was different. I guess the world has changed in the last ten years. Many of the horseplayers were black, West Indians by the sound of their singsong voices, and from the strong whiff of marijuana that hung over the area. And there was a good smattering of Chinese, gambling the Caucasian way for a change instead of sticking with their endless games of fantan in Chinatown.
    The real regulars were still there, the guys who work at nothing but racing. You see the prosperous ones in the clubhouse, sipping Scotch on the rocks and eating lobster while the girls come to their tables to take the hundred-dollar bets. But most of them are down at the two-dollar windows, scraping change to get a bet together. They wear shiny suits and threadbare shirts and usually a raincoat, summer and winter, and they hustle for cash like pelicans diving for fish off the Florida Keys. Nothing's too murky to draw them if the money is there.
    I recognized one of them when I walked through. He's a thin guy in his fifties, five-nine around one thirty. He's deep enough inside himself to disguise his endless poverty and bad luck by improvising a little dance with every few steps he takes. Some copper called him Bojangles once and the name stuck although he's white, or would be if he took a bath. He'd finked for me a few times when I was a detective in Toronto and he recognized me at once as the source of a possible fin, maybe a sawbuck if the world was looking after him. He bobbed over to me and stood, ducking his shoulders, smiling his toothless smile. "Hey, Mr. Bennett, waddya say?"
    "Hi, Bo. What's new?"
    He sketched a few steps. "Aw, hell, shoulda had the six horse in the third race. He paid thirty-seven-eighty."
    He was set to give me a summary of all the horses he had bet in the last three years if I hadn't cut him off. "Listen, feel like doing me a favor? I wanna see Tony. You know, Tony with the loans, he's generally here by now."
    He glanced around in surprise, "Hey, yeah, gen'ally." Then he turned back and peered at me, shielding his eyes with his hand, as if I were hot. "You mean you're flat, Mr. Bennett?" He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Hell, I wouldn't go to Tony for a bet on the only horse in the race. He's ugly, y'know? That guy as works for him broke my buddy's thumb one time."
    I shook my head patiently and took out my wallet. I still had my vacation pay from Murphy's Harbour. It looked like Eldorado to him. "No, I just got paid. I wanna see him about something personal." I tugged on the corner of a ten, pulling it as gently as a good stripper working on her first glove. Bojangles cleared his throat, his voice cracked like a teenager's.
    "I could ask around for you, if you wan'ed."
    I gave the bill a decisive tug and handed it to him. "Do that, eh, I'll be over by the rail."
    He grinned and vanished the bill into his dirty pocket. "Fer sure, fer sure, Mr. Bennett. Be right back."
    He didn't come back until after the next race, shaking his head angrily. "Sonofabitch broke," he started, but I waved him down. "It's about Tony…"
    "Oh,