Read Online Shadow Roll by Ki Longfellow - Free Book Online Page A

and gave it back.
    “That shirt suits you.”
    He looked down at it and laughed.  “Couldn’t resist it.  Bet you wish you had one.”
    “You’d lose.”
    I’d always liked Paul.  Admired him.  Followed him around in the woods playing Cowboys and Indians.  Cribbed from his math papers.  He was better at that stuff than me.  Though I beat him all hollow at reading.  He wasn’t much of a reader.  When it came to books, I was school champ.  But when it came to figuring out things to get up to in the middle of the night, Paul was our man.  That he ended up a jocks’ agent was a bit of a stumper.  Being locked up in the Kid’s Joint, it was hard for us kids to learn any kind of skill.  So where he’d caught the racing bug had to be from me.  I figured he was an agent for the same reason I was a PI.  Both due to our being too big to be jockeys.  We were like the guys who had a lot of friends who were musicians, but we couldn’t play anything, not even a kazoo, and we couldn’t sing a note, so we ended up managing the band.  I thought he was that guy just like I’d of been that guy if I tried to stick with racing.
    Jarrett managed jocks.  The best I could do to stay close to the game was place bets on the ponies.
    Me, I first heard the horses run on the radio.  One thing I was always really good at was listening to Mister’s radio.  He’d be smoking those cigars Flo hated out back in that shack he had all to himself stuck sort of sideways onto the old six car garage and I’d be right outside one of the windows, the one he could never get all the way closed.  Wasn’t just me either.  Lino Morelli and Paul Jarrett and a few others killed ourselves trying to keep quiet so we could listen to Jack Benny or Fred Allen or Burns and Allen—which wasn’t easy, believe you me.  More than once Paul or Lino or whoever had to stuff their shirts in their mouths to stifle the laughter.  But when Mister switched the dial to the horse races everyone would drift off but me.  Paul would listen for a race or three, but then he was gone too.  There was something about the sound of the race caller, the noise from the crowd, the rhythm of pounding hooves.  From the first, I was there, right there, heart beating along, and I wanted that world as much as, later, I wanted Bogie’s world—before the war came along and made all those worlds even more precious knowing how easy they could all blow away.  I must of heard every race Seabiscuit ever ran.  It was Seabiscuit got me into this fix.  I might have a lot more money stuffed in a sweet little bank account if I hadn’t found racetracks.  But probably not.  I would of found some other way to get rid of it.  Money just didn’t seem to stick to me.
    Mrs. Willingford was steaming when I got back to our table.  Good thing she was too proud to do more than show it.  But she did have a word to say about Paul.
    “Joker likes that guy, but I never let him hire his jockeys.”
    “Why not?”
    She started to open her mouth, started to say something.  Then she closed it, turning her lips to thin strips of red rubber.  At the same moment, I think we both knew she’d made a mistake.  She couldn’t tell me why not.  So I knew why.  The look on her face gave the whole game away.  Because Paul may or may not have spent a little time in those cabins by the lake, but he’d never spent any with her.  And from the look on mine, she knew I knew.  She also knew she wouldn’t be spending any with me.  It must of shown in my eyes.  Or the way my ears flapped.  Or the way I couldn’t finish the sidecar she’d ordered and paid for.  Between her highhanded assumption I was not much more than a stable hand and my little chat with Paul, Mrs. Willingford’s spell had faded dead away.  Well, not completely, I admit that, but completely enough.  It can happen that way and I was glad it did.  The way she didn’t look at the cabins, the way I felt I’d better