Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [22]
They found a seat twenty rows up, far from the race track. Meadows noticed glumly that they were surrounded by garrulous retirees from a nearby condominium. Having spent their youth, but not their savings, in Queens and Charlestown, they fled to Florida, first for the winters and then forever. Great climate, but not a damn thing to do but to await death over the bingo table or to sign up for the bus trips to the dog track. Meadows tuned out their chatter.
Two minutes before race time the grooms emerged from the kennel area. At the end of each leash was a lean greyhound capped tightly with a muzzle. The dogs were impossibly mean, he knew, sometimes even stopping in the middle of a race to fight each other. The inbreeding that had made them fast as a freight train had also made them monumentally stupid. Each dog in front of him now wore a cloth number and walked in a desultory gait two or three paces behind the groom.
“You picked a name. How does everybody else know which dog to bet on?” Meadows asked.
“That’s how,” said Terry, pointing. The number seven greyhound was hunched unabashedly in a squat, fertilizing an orchid bed near the home stretch. A cluster of drunks down on the rail gave a hearty ovation.
“Jesus!” Meadows laughed. “Great sport.”
“Ay Dios, everyone will bet that dog now.” Terry sighed. And sure enough, by post time the odds on the seven greyhound had dropped to five to three.
The dogs bolted from the gate in hot pursuit of a bogus rabbit nailed to a moving boom. Meadows tracked Fly Baby as it grabbed an early lead, faltered, move up once more before getting bumped to the outside and finished fourth, out of the money. The whole thing took forty-nine seconds.
“Mierda,” muttered Terry. The number seven dog won by three lengths. “Let me go to the bathroom, and then we will leave. I’ll meet you at the finish line.”
Alone, Meadows scanned the payday crowd. Below, six rows down, was a pretty young woman. From the back she resembled Sandy Tilden. Meadows found himself straining to see if a small child sat at her side. Of course, there was none. When the woman turned sideways, she did not look like Sandy at all, and Christopher Meadows looked away.
He limped down to the rail for a better glimpse of the greyhounds. From the grandstands they all looked alike; up close he noticed marked differences in size, musculature and gait. The grooms looked bored stiff. So did the dogs.
“Stop it now. I was here before you.”
Meadows turned to his left in time to see a pudgy snowhaired old man move nose to nose against a tall young Latin. “Now this was my spot, son. Move down a little bit, please.”
His adversary was built like a refrigerator.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the young man demanded. He had the face of a ferret. Another husky Latin stood behind him, laughing. A third had his back to the fracas. He was studying the greyhounds. Meadows noticed he wore a cream-colored suit.
“Now I don’t want to fight…” the older man was saying.
Meadows searched the crowd for a sign of Terry. When he looked back, the old man was out of breath and off the ground; the punk had hoisted him by the shoulders.
Meadows did not move. His heart raided against his ribs, and his legs felt like sand. He saw it quite clearly, tucked into the young man’s belt…the bluish butt of a pistol. Then the third man turned around. The face of the man took Meadows’s breath away.
There it was. Oval and brooding. Those fierce, deep eyes, coals and ice.
It was him.
The eyes flicked past Meadows as the man in the cream-colored suit said something harsh to the other two and gestured sharply. The young Latino sullenly put the old man down and walked toward the ticket lobby with his two companions. The old man slapped wanly at his rumpled clothes, speaking to no one in particular. “Stupid goddamn hoods. Think they own this country…”
Meadows could only stand transfixed.
Terry appeared then. “Chris! You’re pale! Is something wrong?”
Meadows grabbed her arm.
“Let’s go. Let’s go,” he