Gargantuan_ A Ruby Murphy Mystery - Maggie Estep [3]
I got out of bed and started stretching. I felt the fire spreading from my internal organs to my limbs. When I fail to follow my customary physical regime of running several miles, doing hundreds of sit-ups and push-ups and riding at least a dozen horses a day, I pay a price. Where some athletes’ bodies become stiff and half crippled, mine turns to fire. Not that I’m a traditional athlete. I got into all this a little late in life. I’m thirty-four and still an apprentice jockey. A bug boy they’d have called me in the golden days of racing. But the golden days of racing are gone and so are mine. Or so I thought. Until I met Ruby.
She was hanging over the rail looking down into the saddling paddock at Aqueduct Racetrack. She was standing next to a wild-eyed blonde and both women were staring at my mount, Ballistic, a less than stellar grandson of Native Dancer. A few months earlier, Ballistic had gone off as the favorite in an allowance race at Saratoga and hadn’t finished in the money—he’d dropped down in class in each successive race and was now running for a tag at Aqueduct. The horse had bad luck just like me.
I don’t usually look at the racing fans. At Aqueduct, in the middle of winter, most of them are either grouchy old white men clutching coffee-stained tip sheets or angry Jamaican guys prone to calling both jockeys and horses blood clots.
On that cold afternoon, something made me crane my neck and look up into the spectator area. And I saw her. She wore a red fake fur coat and, from that distance, her lips seemed as red as the coat even though it didn’t look like she was wearing lipstick. Her long black hair was falling loose and wild and her eyes were searching for something. I found it difficult to stop looking at her. Although I’d already been given a leg up onto Ballistic, and had picked up the reins to make contact with his mouth, I wasn’t really paying attention to the horse. The girl’s eyes met mine and she smiled a little but it was hard to tell if she was smiling at Ballistic or me. Probably the latter since, for the first time in nine months, good ol’ Ballistic won a race. I didn’t have much to do with it. I just stayed out of the old guy’s way and let him do his thing. Which, on this particular day, he did by an uncharacteristically large margin, crossing the finish line a half-dozen lengths ahead of the second-place horse.
Henry Meyer—Ballistic’s trainer—was even more surprised by the win than I was. He looked stunned as he ran a hand through his thinning hair then took hold of Ballistic’s bridle, steering the chestnut into position in the winner’s circle. Ballistic stood proudly as the track photographer took the win photo. I hopped down off the horse’s back, patted him on the neck, then took my saddle and went to weigh in. When I stepped off the scale, Henry came over and clapped me on the back. For better and mostly for worse, Henry had always had faith in me. Now, it had paid off.
“Glad to win one for you, Henry,” I said, looking into his tired brown eyes. He offered a rare smile and, for the first time, I saw something other than weariness radiating from him.
When Henry had turned away, I looked up to the spectator area, hoping to find the girl in the red coat. She was hard to miss. I stared up at her for several seconds but she wasn’t looking in my direction.
Ballistic was my last ride of the day so I went into the jockeys’ room to change back to street clothes. A few of the guys congratulated me and slapped me on the back. I nodded and grinned but my mind was elsewhere. When I emerged from the jocks room, I found myself walking into the grandstands. I almost never do this. But I felt compelled to find the girl. Jockeys are a superstitious lot and I felt certain she’d somehow made the race come out as it had. She’d held good wishes in her heart for me and Ballistic and these wishes had influenced fate.
As I wove through small packs of spectators, I pulled a cap from my jacket