Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [66]
Marius Tollman spent the morning telephoning to various acquaintances, offering profit. His offers were accepted. Marius Tollman felt a load lift from his spirits and with a spring in his step took his two-sixty pounds downtown a few blocks, where a careful gentleman counted out one hundred thousand dollars in untraceable notes. Marius Tollman gave him a receipt, properly signed. Business was business.
Fred Collyer wanted a drink. One, he thought, wouldn’t hurt. It would pep him up a bit, put him on his toes. One little drink in the morning would certainly not stop him writing a punchy piece that evening. The Star couldn’t possibly frown on just one drink before he went to the races, especially not as he had managed to keep clear of the bar the previous evening by going to bed at nine. His abstinence had involved a great effort of will: it would be right to reward such virtue with just one drink.
He had, however, finished on Wednesday night the bottle he had brought with him to Louisville. He fished out his wallet to check how much he had in it: eighty-three dollars, plenty after expenses to cover a fresh bottle for later as well as a quick one in the bar before he left.
He went downstairs. In the lobby, however, his colleague Clay Petrovitch again offered a free ride in his Hertz car to Churchill Downs, so he decided he could postpone his one drink for half an hour. He gave himself little mental pats on the back all the way to the racecourse.
*
Blisters Schultz, circulating among the clusters of people at the rear of the grandstand, saw Marius Tollman going by in the sunshine, leaning backwards to support the weight in front and wheezing audibly in the growing heat.
Blisters Schultz licked his lips. He knew the fat man by sight: knew that somewhere around that gross body might be stacked enough lolly to see him through the summer. Marius Tollman would never come to the Derby with empty pockets.
Two thoughts made Blisters hesitate as he slid like an eel in the fat man’s wake. The first was that Tollman was too old a hand to let himself be robbed. The second, that he was known to have friends in organised places, and if Tollman was carrying organisation money Blisters wasn’t going to burn his fingers stealing it, which was how he got his nickname in the first place.
Regretfully Blisters peeled off from the quarry, and returned to the throng in the comforting shadows under the grandstand.
At twelve seventeen he infiltrated a close-packed bunch of people waiting for an elevator.
At twelve eighteen he stole Fred Collyer’s wallet.
Marius Tollman carried his money in cunning underarm pockets which he clamped to his sides in a crowd, for fear of pickpockets. When the time was due, he would visit as many different selling windows as possible, inconspicuously distributing the stake. He would give Piper Boles almost half the tickets (along with the second bunch of used notes), and keep the other half for himself.
A nice tidy little killing, he thought complacently. And no reason why he shouldn’t set it up sometime again.
He bought a mint julep and smiled kindly at a girl showing more bosom than bashfulness.
The sun stoked up the day. The preliminary contests rolled over one by one with waves of cheering, each hard-ridden finish merely a sideshow attending on the big one, the Derby, the climax, the ninth race, the one they called the Roses, because of the blanket of red flowers that would be draped in triumph over the withers of the winner.
In the jocks’ room, Piper Boles changed into the silks for Crinkle Cut and began to sweat. The nearer he came to the race the more he wished it was an ordinary Derby day like any other. He steadied his nerves by reading the Financial Times.
Fred Collyer discovered the loss of his wallet upstairs in the press room when he tried to pay for a beer. He cursed, searched all his pockets, turned the press room upside down, got the keys of the Hertz car from Clay Petrovitch