"I do."
"Okay," I say. "Tomorrow I"ll hunt up some charitable organization that repairs pianos."
Then, before he can say another word, I am out the door.
I stop by Club Elegante looking for Gerhardt the Goblin, grab a ringside table, and when he hasn"t shown up by the seventh match, I decide to leave, especially because the next match features Botox Betty, who once broke her hand slapping my face over a friendly misunderstanding and a couple of intimate pinches, and Lizzie the Lizard, who shed her skin faster than French Fatima shed her clothes over at Tasteful Teddy"s.
By the time I get to my apartment, Benny Fifth Street is already there, watching replays of the piano flattening G.o.dzilla Monsoon just as he crosses the ten-yard line, followed by a hospital interview with G.o.dzilla, who doesn"t sound any more punch-drunk than usual, and finally a statement from the winning coach to all the young Pompadoodle fans out there that they should never neglect their music lessons because today clearly proves that music is important to their daily lives, and without music they might only have won by 46 points and disappointed all the big Pittsburgh plungers who bet on them to beat the spread.
Gently Gently Dawkins shows up just as we turn off the television-he was busy eating his fourth meal of the day, which puts him maybe two hours behind his normal schedule-and I tell them what Milton told me.
"Clearly, it"s got to be some Pittsburgh fan," says Gently Gently.
"Why?" I reply. "You don"t have to be a Pittsburgh fan to fix a game."
"You don"t?" he ask, frowning, and I can see he"s still a few thousand calories short of functioning on all cylinders.
"No," I say. "Maybe this isn"t confined to Milton, or even to Manhattan. I mean, it"s got to cost a lot of loot to get a wizard good enough to pull that stunt with the piano. Maybe we should see if anything like that has happened anywhere else."
"How should we go about it?" asks Benny.
"Start by calling Vegas. See if anything like today has happened when it looked like an underdog might win, or even just beat the spread."
"I"ll do it," says Gently Gently.
"Are you sure?" asks Benny. "I don"t mind making the call."
"No problem," says Gently Gently.
"Okay," I say. "The phone"s in the next room."
"I know," he says, getting up. "So are the cookies."
"He eats three more cookies and a biscuit, and you won"t need Milton to hex the bad guys," says Benny, as Gently Gently leaves the room. "Just have him breathe on "em, or maybe step on their toes."
Gently Gently is back out in less than a minute.
"That was fast," I say.
"It was all negative," he replies. "No one"s dropped a piano anywhere." He pauses. "Some Acme Movers dropped a pipe organ carrying it into a church out there, if that helps."
"Not a whole lot," says Benny.
"Anyway, our contact"s sorry, but no pianos. The only weird thing they"ve had out there is the tidal wave."
"A tidal wave?" I repeat. "In Las Vegas?"
"Yeah," he says. "Funny, isn"t it?"
"Tell me about it," I say.
"No one was hurt," says Gently Gently. "It comes from out of nowhere and practically drowns Nasty Nick Norris just when he"s about to pull a 300-to-1 upset in their tennis tournament, and then as quick as it comes, it goes away. I think they would have been convinced it was a ma.s.s hallucination, except that they found half a dozen codfish and a sea urchin stuck in the net."
I pull out my abacus and dope out the odds that the tidal wave and the piano aren"t related. Since the abacus can"t compute any higher than a google-to-one, it melts.
"What have a Vegas tennis match and a New York football game got in common?" I muse.
Gently Gently raises his hand. "They"re both sports?"
I ignore him and say, "We need to find the connection. Someone"s paying a h.e.l.l of an expensive wizard to rig these events, which means someone"s making a bundle on them-someone who doesn"t want his name to be known."
"That does not make a lot of sense," opines Benny. "So someone is paying a wizard. That doesn"t mean he has to hide his own name. Anyone can lay a bet. Are you sure Milton wasn"t holding something back?"
"Pretty sure," I say. "But even if he is, he knows that I am also holding something back from him"-I pat my wallet-"and we can trade whenever he wants."
"You mind if I turn on the TV?" asks Gently Gently.
"Trying to find out who"s robbing us doesn"t interest you enough?" asks Benny.
"It ain"t that," explains Gently Gently. "But I got a sawbuck down on Loathesome Lortonoi in the seventh at Del Mar, and it"s almost post time."
"You bet with some other totally illegal bookie?" demands Benny.
"It ain"t ethical to bet with the illegal bookie I work for," responds Gently Gently. He searches for the right words. "It"s a conscript of interns."
"Let him watch," I say. "It"s easier than arguing with him."
The picture comes on, and the horses are already parading to the post.
"There"s Loathesome Lortonoi!" says Gently Gently, pointing to a huge black horse who looks like he and his rider should be chasing Ichabod Crane around Sleepy Hollow. "They shipped him out there just for this race. It"s a perfect spot for him."
There are six horses approaching the starting gate. Four of them look like close relatives of Loathesome Lortonoi. The sixth horse looks like he should be pulling a death cart in medieval Graustark, or maybe be spread throughout a few hundred cans of dog food. Even the flies avoid him. His jockey looks like he wishes he could wear a brown paper bag over his head. The tote board says he"s 750-to-1.
"Is that Pondsc.u.m?" asks Benny.
"No, it"s just a little smudge on the screen," says Gently Gently.
"I mean the horse."
Gently Gently pulls a Racing Form out of his pocket and looks at it. "Yes, it is. Have you seen him before?"
"He was losing races back when I was in grammar school," says Benny. "He was the slowest, ugliest horse in the world even then."
The horses enter the gate, and a few seconds later the doors spring open and Loathesome Lortonoi comes out of there like a bat out of h.e.l.l, and before they hit the far turn he"s fifteen lengths in front. The next four horses are spread out over another thirty lengths. Pondsc.u.m isn"t even in the picture.
They hit the homestretch, and now Loathesome Lortonoi is twenty lengths in front-and suddenly the crowd starts screaming, and the announcer gets so excited he starts whistling and cheering and forgets to say what"s happening, but he doesn"t have to because in another two seconds Pondsc.u.m enters the picture. He is going maybe ninety miles an hour, and it seems like his feet are hardly touching the ground-and then I realize that his feet are hardly touching the ground, because somehow while rounding the far turn he has sprouted wings and is literally flying down the home stretch. He catches Loathesome Lortonoi with a sixteenth of a mile to go and wins by thirty lengths.
Gently Gently turns to me. "Is that fair?" he asks in hurt, puzzled tones.
"We"ll know in a minute," I say. And sure enough, a minute later the result is official and Pondsc.u.m returns $1,578.20 for a two-dollar bet.
I turn to Benny. "Who do we know out there?"
Benny consults his little book. "The biggest bookie working Del Mar is No-Neck McGee."
"Give me his number," I say, and a moment later I dial it, and No-Neck McGee picks it up on the third ring.
"Hi, No-Neck," I say. "This is Harry the Book."
"Harry," he says. "Long time no see."
"No, I can see again," I tell him. "Wanda the Witch"s spell only lasted a couple of weeks."
"So what can I do for you on this most terrible of days? Did you see what just happened in the seventh?"
"That"s what I want to ask you about."
"I"m making a formal complaint to the Jockey Club."
"It"ll never hold up," I say. "There"s nothing in the rules that says a horse can"t have wings."
"Just as there"s nothing in the rules that says he can"t have blinkers, or shoes for that matter. I"m basing my case not on the fact that he had wings but that he didn"t declare them prior to the race, the way you have to declare all other equipment. Is that what you"re calling about? Did someone pull the same trick up at Belmont?"
"No," I say. "I just want to know if you had any big plungers on Pondsc.u.m?"
"I took just one bet on him," answers No-Neck. "Problem is, it was for six hundred dollars. That"s why I"ve filed the complaint. Paying it off will break me."
"Who placed the bet?" I ask.
"An ex-jockey who hangs around the track all the time," says No-Neck. "Remember Charlie Roman-off?"
"Chinless Charlie?" I say. "Didn"t he get ruled off the track for life?"
"Life or three hundred years, whichever comes first," answers No-Neck. "Anyway, he lays the bet, but he"s never seen six hundred dollars at one time in his life, so I know he is someone else"s stalking horse. Or is it stalking bettor?"
"Thanks, No-Neck," I say. "That"s what I needed to know."
"Glad you called today," says No-Neck. "I have a feeling my phone will be disconnected by next week."
We hang up, and I turn back to Benny and Gently Gently. "I think I"m starting to see the light," I say.
"I don"t know how you can," says Gently Gently. "It"s almost nine o"clock at night."
"Give your Form to Benny and go into the next room for another cookie," I say, and he does so faster than Pondsc.u.m or even G.o.dzilla Monsoon ever moved.
"I can tell by your face you got an idea," says Benny. "Or maybe it"s just a sty in your eye. But it"s something."
"It"s an idea," I say. "It comes back to your question: Why would someone hide the fact that he was laying bets? After all, betting is legal at the track and in Vegas, and it"s almost legal with bookies."
"I already asked that," says Benny.
"The logical answer is that the hex was in, and he didn"t want people to know that he was the one who made the bet."
"Yes, that makes sense," says Benny. "But we already know the race and the game and the match were hexed."
"But we know something else," I say. "We know that the kind of wizard who can cause a tidal wave or do the other things does not come cheap. So the next thing to do is find out who can afford three such wizards on the same day."
"There"s hundreds of guys with that kind of loot just in Manhattan," says Benny. "It"s like finding a blonde in a haystack."
"Don"t you mean a needle?" I ask.
"I found a needle in a haystack once," he answers. "I"ve never found a blonde."
I couldn"t argue with that, so I went back to the subject at hand. "We can work it from either end," I say. "We can narrow it down by finding someone who could afford all three wizards, or we can narrow it down by finding out just which wizards have the power to pull these stunts off."
"Too many either way," says Benny, as Gently Gently comes back into the room. "There"s a third way."
"Oh?" I say. "What it is?"
"Pound the h.e.l.l out of Big-Hearted Milton until he tells you who gave him the money."
"It could have pa.s.sed through four or five hands before it got to Milton," I say.
"That narrows it down," says Gently Gently. "Who do we know who has four or five hands?"
I send him out to a chili parlor.
"You know," I say when he is gone, "I think the money is the key to it all."
"Of course it is," agrees Benny. "No money, no hexes."
"No," I say. "I mean, I think you hit on something before. There are hundreds of possible plungers, and dozens of possible wizards, but there"s only one pay-off, and that"s the one I have to make to Milton."
"You"re going to pay him?"
"Tomorrow," I say. "Tonight there"s something I have to do. Get me Morris the Mage"s phone number."
I talk to Morris, and we agree on a price, and he casts his spell and gives me the magic word, and the next morning I hunt up Milton in the men"s room at Joey Chicago"s, where he is sitting fully clothed on one of the toilets, his nose covered in bandages, reading an ancient book of magic.
"Good morning, Milton," I say pleasantly.
"I ab nod talkig to you," he says through the bandages.
"That"s too bad," I say. "Because I have sought you out to pay my debt of honor."
I pull out the money and hand it to him.
He smiles, gets up, puts the money in a pocket, and walks to the door.