If Death Ever Slept

Meanwhile, throughout the four days, Wolfe presumably had the gang busy working on other hypotheses-including Dol Bonner-though he never told me who was after what, except that I gathered Saul Panzer was on Otis Jarrell himself. That was a compliment to the former client, since Saul’s rate was sixty bucks a day and expenses and he was worth at least five times that. Fred Durkin was good but no Saul Panzer. Orrie Cather, whom you have seen at my desk, was yes and no. On some tricks he was unbeatable, but on others not so hot. As for Dol Bonner, I didn’t know much about her firsthand, but the word around was that if you had to have a female dick she was it. She had her own office and a staff-with one of which, Sally Colt, I was acquainted.

By Sunday night I knew enough about Jamaica and Belmont, especially Belmont, to write a book, with enough left over for ten magazine articles. I knew four owners, nine trainers, seventeen stable boys, five jockeys, thirteen touts, twenty-eight miscellaneous characters, one lamb, three dogs, and six cats, to speak to. I had aroused the suspicions of two track dicks and become close friends with one. I had seen two hundred and forty-seven girls it would have been fun to talk to but was too busy. I had seen about the same number of spots where a gun could be hid, but could find no one who had seen Roger Foote near any of them. None of them held a gun at the time I called, nor could I detect any trace of oil or other evidence that a gun had been there. One of them, a hole in a tree the other side of the backstretch, was so ideal that I was tempted to hide my own gun in it. Another good place would have been the bottom of a rack outside Gallant Man’s stall, but there were too many eagle eyes around. Peach Fuzz wasn’t there.

Sunday night I told Wolfe there was nothing left to explore unless he wanted me to start looking in horses’ mouths, and he said he would have new instructions in the morning.