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“I just don’t want to,” he was telling Ruby. “This is something I’ve got to take care of.” The jockey was talking with his hands, more like an Italian than whatever it was he was.

“Sal?” Ruby looked to me for support.

We were in her place by now, had come up the stairs, passed by her neighbor Ramirez’s open front door and seen him, as usual, sitting at his kitchen table, staring down into a cup of coffee. Ramirez had nodded at us as we’d gone ahead into Ruby’s.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said to the girl, “I take it your man’s got his reasons for not wanting the cops involved.”

“Well, what are they?” Ruby asked Attila. She looked angry. I noticed she was pretty when she was angry. It had never been like that with Ruby and me, she’d never radiated even the slightest bit of sexual something around me and, in return, I’d kept my engine tuned down. I’m faithful to my wife most of the time anyway, straying occasionally when she goes on a particularly long jag of not wanting me inside her—she’s an adult student at Hunter College taking women’s studies classes and sometimes she gets notions about not wanting a man inside her—but it’s not like I’ve ever strayed emotionally. And Ruby’s not my type anyway. I like my wife’s flaming hair, her big, well-made chest and her ass that sticks out like a shelf a man can rest his troubles on. Ruby is too small and sort of reminds me of a ferret.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Attila told Ruby as he shot a dirty look in my direction.

“I want Sal here. He can help,” Ruby said, though why she thought this I couldn’t tell you. I guess she had the idea that between my being a Teamster and my Italian family going back a lot of generations in Brooklyn, maybe I knew how certain things worked. Which wasn’t entirely off the mark. Though what with my back problems and being out on Disability for a while and my endless struggle trying not to take the Percocets the doctors had prescribed, it’s not like I was in the prime of my powers.

“So what’s up?” I asked Attila now. “Somebody got a hit out on you?” I was joking, but the way the guy’s bright blue eyes went dark, I saw I’d hit the jackpot. Oh boy.

“Attila?” Ruby’s head snapped toward him.

“I dunno,” Attila shrugged. “I didn’t think it was a real concern.”

“Didn’t think what was a real concern?” Ruby’s face was knotting up.

“Well, there was a threat,” Attila said, giving me another dirty look. He wanted me gone but he wasn’t gonna come out and insist.

“I didn’t think drowning was an approved method of offing someone though,” the jockey added, trying to be funny.

Neither Ruby nor I laughed.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on now?” Ruby said. She had a small red splotch in the middle of each pale cheek—her anger, showing itself like that in two tiny patches. My wife, she gets pissed off, her whole body turns bright red to match her hair.

“There’s a lot going on,” Attila said, hunching forward on Ruby’s green couch. “I’ve done some questionable things.”

“Like what?” she asked sharply.

“It’s a long story, Ruby.” Attila sounded very sad. “You know I haven’t had an easy time trying to make it as a rider. Some folks offered me a nice chunk of change to do some things I didn’t really want to do.” He fell silent, resting his palms on his small knees.

“You have to tell me what you’re talking about,” Ruby said, in a voice that made the jockey’s sad eyes focus on her. We both knew she meant business.

“Nothing that bad,” he sighed. “I held some horses back in a few races. Stuff like that,” he said. “Now I don’t wanna do it anymore. But it’s hard to get out once you’ve gone that route.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning. “So what’s wrong with calling the cops?”

“I call the cops, they call the Feds and the New York Racing Association, etcetera… I get my license revoked. I never ride again. I go back to a life of shit.”

I didn’t know what the guy had done before becoming an aging apprentice jockey and I had a feeling Ruby didn’t know many details either.