Dean R. Koontz - After The Last Race

Century Oaks Race Course is modeled after the usual thoroughbred racetrack and

is not meant to represent any one, actual racetrack. The characters in this

novel are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead is

coincidental.

Wine maketh merry, but money answereth all things.Ecclesiastes, X. 19Ah, take

the Cash, and let the Credit go,Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!Omar

Khayyam, RubáiyátMoney, which represents the prose of life, and which is

hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws,

as beautiful as roses.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nominalist and RealistMake money,

money by fair means if you can, if not, by any means money.Horace, Epistles,

Bk. IMoney alone sets all the world in motion.Publilius Syrus, Maxim 656

Part One

OneGarrison slowly turned in a full circle, studying the clear-ing that lay

between the two birch trees. This was where the gateway man would wait for the

signal. Here where the view was good. Here in the shadows. Here with no one

but the birds. It was perfect.At one o'clock in the afternoon, the thickly

wooded ridge was still damp from the morning's thundershowers. The leaves on

the lowest branches sparkled with fat drop-lets of water that had gradually

dripped down from the higher reaches of the trees. Nearer the ground, mountain

laurel and rhododendron drooped slightly with the weight of the rain, but they

looked fresh and clean and as green as the vigorous strokes of a child's

crayons. Occasional lances of spring sunshine thrust through holes in the

green canopy, but for the most part the ridge was shadowy and cool.Edgar

Garrison had only a little trouble climbing the slope to the birch clearing.

The earth was moist, and the carpet of leaf mulch glistened like polished

tortoiseshell. Several times he had slipped and grabbed at a tree or a

limestone formation to keep his balance. Otherwise, the hike was no more

taxing than a brisk Sunday walk. He had followed the channels that, through

the years, had been cut by rain water sluicing down from the top. He had

reached the crest of the ridge less than ten minutes after starting up from

the clearing in the valley.At the edge of the forest he had found this deep

pool of shadows between two slender white birches that grew under the skirt of

a pine big enough to be the White House Christmas tree. Standing where he

could not be seen, he studied the Century Oaks Race Course, which was bright

and clean against the softly rolling Pennsylvania hills.The backstretch was at

this end of the track's twelve hundred acres, not more than three hundred feet

down the slope, encircled by a high cyclone fence. Inside the fence

fifty-eight long barns, all rusty red with brilliant white roofs, stood in

neatly ordered rows and provided stabling for nearly eighteen hundred horses.

Half a dozen grooms and exercise girls were standing in a tight group in front

of the track-owned “motel” where they rented rooms; they were laughing and

talking animatedly. Garri-son could not hear anything they said, but he caught

the shrillest strains of the laughter. A very beautiful three-year-old

chestnut filly posed regally in front of her stall while a young girl

carefully brushed down her flanks. Two horses that had been in the first race

of the after-noon were circling lazily in the wide aisle between two barns,

following meekly behind the hot walkers whose job it was to relax, calm, and

cool them before they were returned to their stalls. The scene was as idyllic

as a good honeymoon, gentle and soft and quiet.The memories it evoked were too

poignant for Gar-rison. He breathed deeply and, with an effort, looked away

from the familiar backstretch.Beyond the stables, following the far side of

the cyclone fence, fifty enormous oak trees stood like sentinels in a straight

line from east to west. The mile-long track was on the other side of the oaks,

ringed with freshly painted white railing. Two yellow tractors with striped

sun awnings were dragging heavy steel graders around the loam, smoothing away

all traces of the first race as the post time for the second race drew near.

He could see them as they drove past the empty spaces between the trunks of

the oaks.Looking higher, over the tops of the mammoth trees, he could see most

of the clubhouse. The lower tiers of the grandstand were concealed by the

oaks. But he had a good view of the upper levels as well as a clean line to

all of the glass-walled clubhouse restaurant and the entire fifth floor, which

contained the track offices, the judges' eyrie, the stewards' room, the news

room, and the fancy VIP restaurant.He raised the Zeiss binoculars that hung

from his neck, and he focused on the videotape cameras that were fixed at the

edge of the clubhouse roof. When his field of vision was sharp, he lowered the

binoculars until he was look-ing into the news room on the fifth floor, at

least half and perhaps as much as two-thirds of a mile away. Half a dozen

reporters and as many hangers-on were standing at the windows watching the

odds change on the electronic totalizator board which faced them from the

infield. The binoculars were so good that he could even identify two of the

newsmen.“Very nice,” he said softly.Garrison swung the binoculars from right

to left, past the judges' quarters, past the room where the stewards waited to

answer any questions of form, past eleven other windows until he came to the

tiny office he wanted. The room was dark. The upper half of its single window

re-flected the sunlight and the few scattered, fast-moving gray clouds that

still marred the spring sky.He lowered the binoculars and glanced at his

wrist-watch. It was twenty minutes past one. He had ten more minutes to

waste.Sitting on a small limestone outcropping a few steps back from the twin

birches, he listened to the birds war-bling as they preened from their

feathers the drops of rain that had passed to them from the leaves overhead.He

looked at home there in the middle of the forest. He was six-two, two hundred

pounds, and as lean and hard at thirty-seven as he had been at twenty-one. His

face was hard too, well tanned and weathered by enough leathery creases to

make him look rugged but not old. With his high forehead, deepset brown eyes,

and shock of untrainable brown hair, he was Hollywood's idea of the lonesome

cowboy. He had a thick neck, wide shoulders, arms that were a bit too long,

and those large flat-fingered hands that are a prerequisite for professional

basket-ball stars. He was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, a long-sleeved blue

workshirt, and the binoculars. If this had been a different age, if he'd been

dressed in hand-made buckskin, he would have been a fine figure of a mountain

man.He looked at his watch again, got up, went back be-tween the birch trees,

and raised the Zeiss glasses.In spite of the sunny reflections, he could see

her there at the window on the fifth floor. She was wearing a beige pantsuit

with a pimento scarf at her throat, and she was holding up a square of

red-and-white-striped cloth. She looked slightly comic, as if she thought she

were directing airplanes that wanted to land on the clubhouse roof. The Zeiss

glasses were so good that she could forget about the striped kerchief when it

came time for the real operation on Saturday afternoon.Garrison took the strap

from around his neck and slipped the binoculars into the leather case that was

hooked to his belt. He snapped the case shut and studied the clearing once

more—and tried to imagine that each leaf was a bright green slip of United

States currency. Two million dollars. Maybe more. It would buy a new life, new

opportunities, new dignity. . . .His attention was caught suddenly by shouting

and laughter coming from the backstretch. A small, scraggly gray goat with a

woman's purse in his mouth was run-ning past the sides of the stables, just

beyond the cyclone fence. A pretty blond girl was chasing him, waving her

arms, shouting, grabbing at his stubby tail and missing it every time. Another

girl and one of the grooms decided to help out, and then a middle-aged trainer

with a belly that defied his belt joined in the chase. The goat led them up

and down and up and down across the same stretch of ground, but finally they

cornered him. He stared at them as they crouched and moved in on him, and at

last he dropped the purse and sauntered away as if nothing had happened.Edgar

Garrison had seen it all before. The backstretch was full of animals: goats,

chickens, cats, dogs, ducks, and anything else of manageable size that was

necessary to round out a menagerie. A thoroughbred horse was a high-strung,

sensitive creature, and it was a lot happier when it had a pet of its own, an

animal that would stay by it most of the time and keep it company. For many

horses, billies and nannies were the best pets., the most soothing companions

available. To the people on the backstretch, the goats were rarely soothing

and were some-times downright aggravating. In the years he had worked as a

trainer on the backstretches of a dozen tracks, Gar-rison had chased more than

one thieving goat; nonethe-less, he laughed softly as he watched the billy

saunter away from the purse, laughed as if this were the first time that he

had enjoyed the joke.Those two decades spent on the backstretches all along

the East Coast now suddenly returned to him like an inner thunder of hooves.

Memory galloped after memory along the years: the first few difficult years as

a hot walker and then as a groom, his assignment as assistant trainer, the

first horse he trained according to his own regimen, his first win. . . .

Racing had left him with many good memories—But it had also killed Helen.When

the onrushing recollections brought him to that ugly moment of the past, his

mind fell down like a horse with a broken leg. He stood there in the woods as

if pole-axed, his feet planted wide apart and his head lowered and his eyes

vacant and his mouth gaping stupidly.After a long and awful moment he blinked

and shook his head, made himself stop grieving for the dead woman, and turned

away from Century Oaks Race Course. He had cried himself dry years ago. He

could not see any percentage in grief or melancholy at this point in his life.

He did see a percentage in revenge; and it was for revenge that he must now

conserve his time, strength, energy, and emotions.He took several deep

breaths, then checked his wrist-watch and noted the exact time. When the red

second hand swept up to the top of the dial, Garrison started to run.With his

chin tucked down and his right arm up to keep the undergrowth from lashing

into his eyes, he ran across the broad summit of the ridge. A trailing

blackberry vine snared his jeans. He ripped free of the brambles and kept

going.When the ground began to drop off, he found a rain gully and started

down the slope much faster than he had climbed it. Porous, water-smoothed

limestone bottomed the rain run, and it was as slippery as a well-waxed floor.

He fell, scrambled to his feet, and ran again. The gully forked when

confronted with a tooth of rock that was more solid than the erodent

limestone. He did not hesitate; he turned right, grabbed at the rock for

balance, and kept moving.The sound of his breathing came to him like a

dis-tant siren or whistle. That and the timpani beat of his own heart was all

that he could hear.Halfway down the slope, mountain laurel grew on both sides

of the channel and laced branches across it. Garrison bent down and tried to

pass under the laurel, but it grew much too close to the ground to let him by

that easily. He put his head down like a bull sighting the cape, and he

charged straight through with one arm up to protect his eyes. Branches tore at

his body. Brittle twigs scraped his exposed cheeks and chin, poked bluntly at

his neck. His raised arm and especially that unprotected hand were gouged and

abraded.He kept moving as if he didn't feel any of the beating he was taking,

and at last he came off the slope. On the valley floor he ran even faster than

he had done coming down. He weaved in and out of the trees. His shoulders

scraped the trunks. He twisted, jerked, and stooped to avoid low-hanging

branches, but he kept moving. He leaped agilely over clumps of brush and over

rotting logs.He came out of the woods into a circular clearing that was four

hundred feet in diameter with trees on all sides of it, and he did not stop

running until he was in the middle of that sheltered field. Then he sagged and

dropped to his knees in the tall grass and looked at his watch. He had made it

down from the twin birches in three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.Not bad.

But was it good enough?Stretching out on his back, he closed his eyes and

thought about it while his breathing slowed and his heart-beat stopped

pounding like a sheriff's fist on a door. Would the getaway man, this Dominick

Savestio, be able to make it down in as little as three minutes and

twenty-eight seconds? What if Savestio were fat, slow, out of shape? And even

if he were not out of shape, even if he could cover that distance in less than

four minutes, would he then be able to fly the helicopter? Or would he need

several minutes to regain his breath and to steady his hands? Already, little

more than a minute after he had collapsed, Garrison felt almost normal, but

maybe this Dominick Savestio would need time to recuperate after he reached

the clearing—or maybe he would have a heart attack when he was halfway down

the slope.Yeah, Garrison thought sarcastically, and maybe he'll come off that

ridge so fast he won't be able to stop, and he'll run into that damned

helicopter and knock himself cold. And while the rest of us are pinned down by

the cops and waiting for our getaway man, he'll be flat on his back in the

clearing. You better worry about that one too, Garrison.If he were going to

fidget and fret like an old woman, he didn't belong in this operation. The

plan could not tolerate indecision anywhere along the line. Naturally,

reasonable caution was called for, but not neurotic cau-tion. He hadn't even

met this guy, this Savestio. And until he did he was wasting time worrying

about the man.He got up and walked to the east end of the clearing where he

had parked his two-year-old Mazda. He got in, closed the door, hooked up the

safety harness, and looked at his watch. When the slender second hand touched

the twelve, Garrison started the car. He raced the quiet rotary engine, put it

in gear, and tramped the accelerator all the way to the floor. He tore up

twenty feet of grass on his way out of the clearing.The trail that led into

the eastern flank of the woods and toward the gently rising mountains was

nothing more than a pair of shallow dirt ruts each as wide as a tire. Grass

grew between the ruts, and weeds flourished on both sides of the crude lane.

Fifty years ago it had been a timber road for the farmer who had come deep

into the forest to get the trees which he cut for lumber and fuel. Later it

was a hunting trail when sportsmen used the clearing as a rendezvous point

during deer season. For five years now, ever since the race track had come

into possession of the land, the trail had not been used at all —except by

Garrison.For the first half mile a steep bank rose on the right, and the land

fell away into the forest on the left. Some of the weeds on the bank overhung

the road. They slapped the windshield and raked noisily along the right

fenders; and, in passing over the roof, they scraped like long fingernails

gouging insistently at the inside of a coffin lid.Garrison drove hard, pushing

the Mazda to its limits. He wheeled to the left as the lane took a sudden

turn. He avoided by inches a stand of baby pines on the verge, slammed

brutally across several wet-weather ruts, swung right as the bank dropped away

and the road took another abrupt change in direction.The wind screamed at the

open window beside him.The lane narrowed as elms, birches, and scraggly pines

crowded closer like auto-racing buffs eagerly an-ticipating disaster. The few

inches of open ground on the shoulders disappeared, and the road was only as

wide as it had to be.A variety of fat insects splattered like soft bullets

against the windshield.The trail slid downward for half a mile. As he picked

up speed, he saw that the land bottomed out at the base of the hill, and the

lane vanished into a tunnel of pine boughs. Confident that he remembered the

route fairly well from his trip in to the clearing, he brought the Mazda up to

sixty-five miles an hour.The tires thundered on the runneled earth.Garrison

drove like a professional: cautious, watchful, with one foot on the

accelerator and the other foot poised over the brake pedal. When he barreled

into the straight-away at the bottom of the hill, he needed every bit of skill

at his command.A natural drainage ditch at the side of the road had overflowed

during the morning's rainstorm, and the two ribbons of dirt in which the car

moved were suddenly gooey with mud. The track was as slick as a sled run.The

Mazda shimmied for a moment, was jolted out of the ruts, and glided sideways

toward a lightning-blasted elm that was as big as a house. The wheel spun in

Garrison's hands. The car was completely out of control.When he touched the

brakes, Garrison felt the car shud-der. He released the pedal, waited an

instant, tapped it again. The car was goaded into a tighter turn, and the back

end whipped past the elm with only a bark's width to spare.The steering wheel

still worked loosely back and forth.He released the brakes and went with the

car for a moment, braked again, then rode with it once more, stepped down, let

up. . . . The Mazda kept turning smoothly like a merry-go-round. It was a

hundred and eighty degrees into the turn now, pointing back the way it had

come, still sliding. . . .Suddenly the wheel ceased spinning uselessly under

his hands, and he felt some control return to him. The speed had dropped to

just twenty miles an hour. He nursed the Mazda all the way around until it was

facing the pines, and he tramped on the accelerator and got moving once more.

When the pines closed overhead and the shadows deepened, the lane was fairly

dry and he no longer had to worry.Perspiration beaded on his forehead,

trickled down his face and soaked his shirt. He was trembling.Half a minute

later he slowed the car and slammed through a flimsy barrier of high grass,

last year's dead milkweed plants, wild rhubarb, and other miscellaneous brush.

Beyond, he came to a full stop in a roadside picnic area, ten yards from a

two-lane macadam highway.He looked at his watch and saw that he had made two

miles in three minutes. About forty miles an hour over rough terrain. It was

better than he had expected, certainly good enough.He leaned back against the

headrest and waited for the shaking to stop.Then he put the car in gear and

drove onto the high-way. He didn't follow the series of back roads which he

had mapped out to Harrisburg. Instead, he turned right and followed the

two-lane to another highway that passed in front of the main gates of Century

Oaks Race Course.A few minutes later he drove slowly past the enormous parking

lots and past the huge, rectangular, boxlike main building. He had to smile.

This side of the clubhouse building was a brilliant white except for two

yard-wide bands of color, one running from end to end and the other from

foundation to roof. The effect was of scarlet ribbons binding a gigantic gift

package. And in a way that's what it was. A gift package. A gift of money. A

multimillion-dollar gift. On Saturday afternoon, at the height of Sweepstakes

Week, he would help to unwrap that package.

TwoJack Killigan, the general manager of Century Oaks, sat at his corner table

on the top tier of the Horsemen's Club and used his binoculars to watch the

horses line up in the starting gate on the far side of the track. For the last

twenty minutes, Killigan had been moving from table to table, shaking hands,

greeting the high rollers, com-plimenting their wives, and graciously

accepting praise for the condition of the track on this opening day of the

first fifty-day meet of the year. But now as the fifth race was about to

begin, Jack Killigan knew his place: out of everyone's way.The Horsemen's Club

was a glass-walled membership-only restaurant on the fifth level of the main

building, situated over one corner of the fourth-floor clubhouse restaurant.

The room held only sixty-one tables on two tiers, with seating for four at

each table. Every chair in the Club commanded an excellent view of the distant

mountains, the magnificent oak trees that partly concealed the backstretch,

and the big track that was now the focus of everyone's attention.No luxury had

been spared in this VIP restaurant. In fact, Killigan thought as he lowered

his binoculars and looked around the room, perhaps the luxury had been

overdone. The tables were all large and comfortable, and they were all laid

with white linen as perfect as the day it had come from the store. If a

tablecloth were to sustain a cigarette burn that required patching or a stain

that could not be entirely eradicated, it would be con-signed to the clubhouse

restaurant on the floor below, and a new cloth would be unfolded for the

Horsemen's Club. The china and silverware were of fine quality, complemented

by a stainless steel bud vase and two fresh roses—one white and one red—on

each table. Every chair was a captain's chair with padded arms and studded

leatherette upholstery. The tight-nap carpet was not as luxurious as something

you might find in a private home, but it was the most expensive all-weather

carpet avail-able, a deep red color that gave the room considerable warmth. On

the right-hand wall the carpet went all the way to the ceiling; thus, it acted

not only to please the eye but to further deaden any sound that might come

from the newsroom or the other offices on the fifth floor. The in-side of the

main door to the Club was also covered in red carpet and molded flush to the

rest of the wall. The Horsemen's Club was perfectly soundproofed. The other

walls were paneled in mahogany, and the suspended ceil-ing was done in

yard-square pieces of dark cork hung on a chrome frame.When he had brought

Rita up here to show her the Club on Friday evening, two days before the

opening of the meet, she had been quite enthusiastic.“You've done wonders,

Jack!”“You really like it?”“It positively drips money.”“So do the people

who've shelled out three thousand bucks to reserve a table for two hundred

racing days when they won't even make it to the track half that often.”“Like

my father? And me?”“Your father doesn't drip money. He gushes it.”She laughed.

“You know what?”“What?”“It's a good room for fucking.”“Really now, Rita.”“No,

I mean it. All these warm colors, soft textures . . . And those

fifty-foot-high glass walls appeal to the exhibitionist in me.”“I think we

better go.”“Don't be a spoilsport, Jack.”“And don't you work so hard at

shocking me.”“I'm not trying to shock you. I just think it would be fun.

Nobody's around. We could turn off the lights. Then we could see out onto the

track, but no one could see us. . . .”“It's getting late.”“Honestly, Jack!

Don't you sometimes feel like letting loose, doing something crazy, breaking

the rules?”“No. It's hard enough to get by without breaking the rules.”“So

you're happy with just getting by.”“Quite happy, Rita. Quite happy.”And

working within the rules, cajoling and persuading and arguing and threatening

the board of directors, he had revitalized Century Oaks Race Course. Starting

with a tacky business, he had modernized and streamlined and redecorated with

taste until he had come up with a model track. The Horsemen's Club was

especially good proof that there was no longer anything tacky about Century

Oaks.Even the mutuel windows of the Club were something special. They were at

the back of the second tier, behind a well-polished brass railing: twelve of

them: eight ticket sellers and four cashiers. These were nothing like the

windows on the other levels of the building. They were crafted of mahogany

panels and chrome trimming, very clean and warm and pleasant to the eye, a

long way from the clean but austere white panels, green plastic trim, and

clear Plexiglas of the clubhouse windows, and light-years beyond the spare,

neat but essentially hole-in-the-wall windows framed by concrete blocks on the

grand-stand levels.The high rollers in the Horsemen's Club did not even have

to get up from their tables to place their bets. Twelve Pony Express Girls

waited at strategic points throughout the two tiers, ready to take the guest's

money, run it to the mutuel windows, and return with his tickets. The Pony

Express Girls wore red mid-calf boots and tight, short shorts to match the

boots, and white sweaters with red horses stitched over the left breast. They

also wore big red-and-white jockey caps tilted at a rakish angle. These

messengers were all local girls chosen for grace and poise but most especially

for their long legs, round asses, pinched waists, pert breasts, and pretty

faces. Not one of them was hard to watch. As they ran back and forth placing

the guests' bets, they helped to make the time between each race pass

quickly.Naturally, Rita had something to say about them. Even before she

opened her lovely mouth, he had known what she would say, word for word.“How

much money do you think they'll make on the side? And 1 don't mean just in

tips.”“On the side?”“Excuse me,” she said. “On their backs.”“You have a filthy

mind.”“Realistic mind. And I love it.”“These are all local girls, Rita. They

aren't professional models. They haven't been hired from an 'escort' company.

They come from good families. They aren't prostitutes.”“But how much do you

think they'll make?”“You're incorrigible.”“Look, do all these men come with

their wives?”“Not always.”“Or their dates?”“No.”“With or without their wives,”

she said, “they're going to look. Without their wives, they're going to want

to touch. Are you trying to tell me there aren't a few of these girls who'll

take money and like it?”“Okay. Maybe a few of them. One or two.”“You admit it,

then!”“Admit what? That I can't control human nature?”“That you're indirectly

pimping for your high rollers.”“That's an ugly thing to say.”“I don't think

it's ugly, Jack. I think it's kind of nice. Touching. You want to serve them

every way possible.”“You're incorrigible.”“You said that already.”“So I'll say

it again.”“Admit it, Jack. From the moment you came up with the idea of Pony

Express Girls, you saw the possibilities. All the possibilities. Didn't

you?”Maybe I did. The success of the New Century Oaks depends to a great

extent on people who bet three, four, five, even ten thousand dollars on a

single program. I want them to be happy. If it means turning my head to a

little subtle solicitation, so what? I don't have to justify this to anyone.

This is my last chance. If I don't make a go here, I'm out of thoroughbred

racing for good.”“Poor darling. I didn't mean you should justify it. You don't

need to justify it. I think it's charming.”“You would.”She laughed.Killigan

was jolted from his reverie by the booming voice of the track announcer

calling the early positions of the horses in the fifth race. He picked up his

binoculars and focused on the track.“Excuse me, Mr. Killigan.”He lowered his

glasses and looked up.A waiter in an immaculate white jacket, white shirt,

black tie, and black slacks was at his right elbow. The man held a telephone.

“You're being paged, sir. Are you available?”“Yes,” Killigan said.The waiter

went to the other side of the table, put down the phone, and plugged it into a

jack set flush in the floor. By order of the State Horse Racing Commission,

there were no public phones on the track. A plug-in model was kept for the

manager's table so that no phone would be in plain sight, at other times, to

tempt a guest. Even the track's business phones were shut off an hour before

the first race, except for one phone in the manager's office and two guarded

phones, one in the backstretch and one in the operator's niche in the

clubhouse to be used only for emergencies. The tight security was necessary to

keep vital racing information from being leaked to bookies, among other

people. Finished, the waiter smiled and turned to go.“Wait,” Killigan said.

“If you had food or drinks to serve, and if you were serving a guest instead

of me, I hope you'd wait for the race to be over. You must never interrupt

anyone in the middle of a race.”The waiter blushed. He was young, dark-eyed,

hollow-cheeked. “I'm sorry, sir. I've never waited tables at a track

before.”Killigan smiled. “Just remember.” He picked up the receiver. “Killigan

Dean R. Koontz - After The Last Race

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: