Fools Trade: Jackson Trade, Book 4 by TJ Arant

Author:TJ Arant [Arant, TJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

I should have gone to see Martin, but I didn’t want to see him. Instead, I went to my apartment and enjoyed the new back door I’d put in on the west side, the side that before had nothing but wall. I enjoyed the window I’d put in there too. I sat in my favorite easy chair, turned toward the new door and the new window, and sipped on a beer until both the can and the beer inside were warm.

I had almost convinced myself to take a nap when the phone rang.

It was Imogene, and she said that Martin wasn’t feeling all that well. The horse dying. The bets. Farley being killed. It was enough to get a man down, even if he wasn’t mainlining bourbon. I could sympathize. Really, I could.

“He wants to know if you’re done.” Her voice had a hint of tension to it.

“With the part he was paying me for? Sure. That’s a wrap.” I recognized a little tension in my own voice. “Nobody will know about the bets, and Farley’s business associates aren’t in any position to advance the interests.” I let a beat slip in between sentences. “Did he ever find out about the pictures?”

“No.” She had her own beats to let sit between thoughts. “I never told him about those. But you retrieved them too?”

“Yeah, I have them. And unless you’re in the mood to collect that kind of thing, I think it’s best that I destroy them.”

“Yes, do that.” Another of her infernal beats. Talking to her on the phone was like waiting for the next bus at the bus stop. “You’re sure there aren’t any more?”

I didn’t think LaRae and her buddy had the nerve to hold out on me. “I’m sure.”

That was that. We exchanged short sentences and silences for another minute or two and said goodbye. She assured me that Martin would probably call me, and I could drop off the betting receipts. She implied that he’d pay a bonus.

As far as I could tell, the bonus was the one he’d got that he didn’t know about: keeping his wife’s naked pictures out of the wrong hands.

Around five, I finally gave up staring out the window without a drink in my hand, and I poured a couple of fingers of bourbon in my water glass. The first sip burned my lips, but after that, the taste was smooth enough, at least as smooth as a cheap bourbon gets.

I was looking out the window, but I was really taking the tally in my mind. Parker Street hired me to find a jockey, but the jockey wasn’t found. He maybe was having a fling with the owner’s wife, but he seemed to have run away with the trainer’s wife. I didn’t know what Vera Peele looked like, and she was probably an easier partner than Imogene Martin, but Martin was where the money was. So keep the box open next to Banks’s name. I hadn’t found him. Metro hadn’t found him either.

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