LITMIR.BIZ

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poor Shorty. I just heard this morning.”

      “Yes, well, it looks like foul play, Mr. Harvey, so I’m doing a little research on his owners, and Doug Buckley was one of them.”

      There was a pause as Harvey lit a cigarette. “Won the lottery, if I’m not mistaken.”

      “That’s right.”

      “I never met him, but I remember he sounded very bubbly over the phone. I guess I’d sound bubbly, too, if I won the lottery. Said he was interested in getting into the racing game, but didn’t know anyone in the business, so he called me. Claimed he devoured every issue of Sport of Kings, and my column in particular. He wanted the name of a good trainer. I asked him how big a stable he wanted and how much money he wanted to spend, and he said just one horse to start, twenty to thirty thousand dollars. I told him I had just the man for him and gave him Shorty’s number.”

      “What happened then?”

      “Well, about a week later, I bumped into Shorty at JJ Muggs and he thanked me for sending a new client his way. By that time, he already had his eye on a horse.”

      “Someday Prince.”

      “That’s right. I know that Shorty himself had coveted the colt since watching him as a two-year-old the previous fall. He’d finished third twice, and Shorty felt he could be a late-kick sprinter. Trouble was he didn’t have anywhere near the money it would take to buy him. The arrival on the scene of Doug Buckley and his fat purse was timely indeed.” Harvey inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

      “Then what?”

      “In late May, Someday Prince made his first start as a three-year-old, running for a tag—thirty-two thousand—and Shorty claimed him. The jockey took him immediately to the lead and, as Shorty predicted, he faded in the stretch. Finished eighth. Buckley, who was sitting with Shorty in the clubhouse, was disturbed by the horse’s poor showing. Shorty told me later he had been quite firm with Buckley. Told him the colt would prove out, but to show how strongly he felt, he would buy a twenty-five percent interest in him. So Doug kicked in twenty-four thousand, and Shorty, by begging and borrowing and maybe a little stealing, scraped together eight, and three weeks later, in his first race for his new owners, Someday Prince came from off the pace in a special weight maiden race and won handily.”

      Young said, “He’s entered Sunday.”

      “Well, if he wins, he’ll have more than recouped the original investment.”

      “Too bad Shorty won’t be around to enjoy it.”

      Next, Young phoned the Airport Hilton, had his call transferred to Doug Buckley’s room, found him in, and, after a few minutes of introduction and explanation, succeeded in persuading Doug to meet him in the dining room a half-hour later, at five-thirty.

      Young wove in and out of traffic all the way up the Don Valley Parkway and across Highway 401 to the hotel, flipped his keys to a valet, and found Doug—as advertised, muscular and baby-faced—standing at the entrance to the dining room, shooting the cuffs of his powder blue leisure suit and smoothing his coiffure.

      Young said, “I thought those outfits went out of style about 1979.”

      “It’s retro,” Doug said, colouring slightly.

      The maitre d’ seated them at a corner table and gave them menus. When the waiter arrived, Doug ordered a half-litre of gewurtztraminer and the fettucine alfredo. Young ordered two bottles of Labatt’s Blue. “No glass,” he told the waiter, “and no food.”

      Young began the conversation by asking Doug about his new life. “It must have been hard to leave the wife and kids.”

      Doug nodded. “It’s not something you do every day, but I’d just made a fortune, and it turned out to be a very liberating experience. It taught me that I was not a prisoner of my marriage or my job or my role as a father. I was a free agent. I could do all the things I’d always wanted to do.”

      “Like what, for instance?”

      Doug looked around. “Like pay cash for a top-ofthe-line car. Like buy a new wardrobe.” He fingered the lapels of his leisure suit. “Like buy a racehorse, or move out of suburbia and into a nice hotel where you can get a massage at three in the morning, if that’s what turns you on.”

      “Speaking of racehorses,” Young said, “Shorty Rogers was your trainer, right?”

      Doug lifted his napkin from his lap to his lips and patted them. “I’m sure you already know that.”

      “Him and you get along okay? I mean, you were his boss, right? No problems between you two?”

      Young’s first impression was that Doug was not the sort of man who would look you in the eye at the best of times, and he seemed particularly evasive right now. “I hardly knew him,” he said. “He’d only been training for me for a few weeks. I’ve been told that he drank too much, but I really wouldn’t know.”

      “You got his name through Priam Harvey at Sport of Kings, right?”

      Doug shifted in his chair. “That’s right.”

      Young examined his fingernails. “That’s kind of interesting about Priam Harvey. He happens to be a friend of mine. As a matter of fact, when my daughter was looking for a job a few years ago, Mr. Harvey told me I should talk to Shorty.”

      “Your daughter worked for Shorty?”

      Young looked back at Doug. “She’s taken over his horses for the time being. Debi Young? You should know her, she’s looking after your horse.”

      Doug’s brow furrowed and he peered into his wine-glass. “I think I met her when Shorty claimed Someday Prince, and I went to the backstretch to see him up close.” He looked back up at Young. “So that’s your daughter? His groom?”

      “That’s my daughter. She’s heard from the other owners, but not from you. They want her to stay on as trainer.”

      Doug couldn’t contain a smile. “Big girl?”

      Young smiled, too. “Well, look who her father is.” He stood up to his full height, leaned across the table towards Doug, and extended his hand. “You going to be around for a while?”

      Hesitantly, Doug lifted his hand. “When, tonight?”

      Young took Doug’s hand and squeezed. “I mean are you likely to stay in this hotel for a while? No second thoughts about going back home to the wife and kids?”

      Doug shook his head. “No, I’m not going back.”

      “No plans to move over to the Holiday Inn next door?”

      “Hey,” Doug laughed nervously, beginning to blanch in Young’s grip, “massages at 3:00 a.m. Why would I leave?”

      At 9:00 p.m., Young was at home and happily ensconced in his La-Z-Boy, which was so impregnated with back sweat and whose crannies were so littered with loose change and pens and pencils and balled-up Kleenexes and dusty kernels of popcorn and worms of cheesies that it resembled a stork’s nest more than it did a chair.

      Jamal was on Young’s lap. Jamal’s favourite place in the world was his grandfather’s lap; at age two he would sit facing his grandfather, pulling his lips, tugging his ears, whacking his forehead with a tiny fist while Young was trying to watch TV. Now, almost six, Jamal faced the same direction his grandfather did, and together they watched TV sports. Tonight, they were watching baseball. When a batter rapped a grounder to short with a runner on first and nobody out, Young shouted, “Two, two!” and Jamal yelled, “Two, two!” in a serious little-boy voice, and when the throw to first beat the batter by two steps, Young shouted, “Got him!” and Jamal yelled, “Got him!”

      As she did every time voices were raised, Reg struggled to her feet from her ragged mat in the middle of the living room carpet. Raised voices in Young’s apartment were always sports-related. Sometimes Reg

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