A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

glass shade hung from the painted wood-paneled ceiling, and the sheer curtains on the windows were surely an afterthought, not a functional or aesthetic choice. They weren’t substantial enough to shut out the sun or the attentions of someone determined to peep inside. And they were ugly to boot. I noticed a couple of dark prints on the walls, depicting street scenes of some bygone era, but nothing else to brighten the décor.

Johnny had left the room uncluttered if rumpled. It appeared he’d brought little with him for his month-long stay in Saratoga. A suitcase in the corner, a leather satchel hanging on the room’s only chair, and a shaving kit, hair oil, and a toothbrush on an old, chipped washstand in front of a mirror. The bath and toilet were down the hall. Everything pointed to an itinerant, Spartan existence. That made sense to me; he was a jockey, after all, presumably traveling from track to track, barn to barn, following the horses wherever they were running next.

Mrs. Russell checked the drawers of the dresser, I can only assume, on a quest for Johnny Dornan’s wallet. But from what I could see, all she found was some shirts, underwear, and slacks. Her sour face confirmed my suspicions; she’d struck out, not pay dirt. So much for the past-due rent.

“Doesn’t look like he lit out,” said Fadge, nudging a copy of the Saratogian on the nightstand with a flick of his forefinger. It was opened to the sports section and the race chart. “I’d say he intended to come back.”

“A fat lot of good that does me,” said Mrs. Russell. “That little jerk still owes me a week’s rent. Well, you two will have to cover it.”

“Why would we pay his bill?” I asked, not particularly surprised that Johnny was once again a “little jerk” in her eyes. “We’ve never even met the man.”

“And his riding cost me a fortune yesterday,” added Fadge.

“All right, then, out,” she said. “You have no business here if you’re not going to honor his debts. Let’s go, big fella.”

With no option, we obeyed. Ever the gentleman, Fadge held out a hand, yielding the right of way to me and our hostess. We all tramped out into the hall, and Mrs. Russell shut the door.

“Let yourselves out that way,” she said, indicating the exit to the external staircase.

“That wasn’t much help,” I said as we climbed into Fadge’s car. This time he went first, of course, since the driver’s door was dented shut.

He started the engine and threw the car into gear.

“Here,” he said, producing the newspaper he’d noticed in Dornan’s room and tossing it to me. “He wrote something I couldn’t quite make out from a distance.”

“You swiped his newspaper?” I asked.

“Yeah, the old bag called me ‘big fella’ one too many times.”

Fadge stopped to phone Mrs. Pindaro from a booth in Ballston Spa. He described her as apoplectic when he returned to the car.

“I had to bite the bullet,” he explained. “Jeff Zeitner’s been bugging me for over a year to give him a job. I just called him and told him to get down to the store to relieve Mrs. Pindaro.”

“What happened? I thought she was an old hand at this.”

“She’s having a breakdown. Probably because someone ordered a black-and-white milkshake, and she’s against integration.”

“Wait a minute,” I said as he pulled away from the curb. “Isn’t Jeff Zeitner that fourteen-year-old kid who’s always hanging around the store? Zeke? The one you’re always yelling at? Is that even legal?”

“Sure. In India. And I like the kid. I yell at him because I like him.”

“You’re entrusting your business to a fourteen-year-old kid?”

“Better Zeke than Mrs. Pindaro. At least the place will be there when I get back.”

I shook my head again, wondering why he even cared.

Johnny Dornan had tried his hand at the newspaper’s crossword puzzle but hadn’t gotten very far. And what he’d managed was a mess. I was tempted to scratch out his answers and correct the thing, but I resisted. He’d also written notes in the margins to handicap the horses he’d faced Friday.

“Strong finisher,” he’d scrawled next to one. “Rabbit,” next to another. He offered an unflattering description of one of the other jockeys in the form of a vulgar slur, and I noted the name, Quesada. All this seemed like preparation for his job. Odious but nothing unusual.

“Find anything?” asked Fadge as he sped west on Route 67.

“Why do you suppose there was no Friday paper in his room?” I asked.

“That’s not Friday’s?”

“No, Thursday’s. It looks as though Dornan was in the habit of sizing up the competition the night before he rode. So why didn’t he do the same for today’s races?”

“Because he didn’t race today.”

“But would he have known that before he died in a broken-down foaling barn on Tempesta Farm?”

Fadge shrugged. “Maybe he intended to, but someone invited him to a barbecue.”

I frowned my disapproval at him, but he was watching the road.

“Anything else in the paper?” he asked. “Where’s Lolita playing? We should go see that.”

“Pig,” I said, flipping to the next page in the paper. “There’s a corner ripped out in the market ads. And he wrote something there. Only a couple of letters are left.”

“What’s it say?”

I squinted at the chicken scratch. “Not sure. But wait a minute. You’re not going to believe this. You know how in the movies, the detective rubs a pencil over the top sheet of paper in a pad, and it reveals what was written on the previous page?”

“Yeah. It’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge. The ink on the backside of this page transferred what he wrote to the page beneath it. Like carbon paper.”

Fadge took his eyes off the road a moment to throw a skeptical glance my way. “I don’t believe it. What’s it say?”

“The first two letters might be R-O. Then the rest of it is on the page underneath. I can’t decipher with you bouncing all over the