The Race (Isaac Bell 4)
“I don’t want his empire. I just want to fly aeroplanes and win this race.” She searched his face, and added, “And be with you.”
“I suppose that I should feel grateful you still feel that way.”
“What would happen to Preston?”
“Oh, now Mr. Whiteway is ‘Preston’?”
“I can’t call my husband Mr. Whiteway.”
“No, I suppose you can’t.”
“Marco, what is it? What are you getting at?”
“I just wonder, will you keep helping me?”
“Of course. . What did you mean, if something happens to Preston?”
“Such as Harry Frost, your insanely jealous former husband, murdering your new husband.”
“What are you saying?”
Marco reached over and turned back the sleeve of her blouse, uncovering the bandaged bullet wound on her forearm. “Nothing you don’t already know about the man.”
38
A LOUD, BRIGHT CARNIVAL pitched its tents near Dominguez Field, just south of Los Angeles, and was doing a roaring business from the spillover of the quarter-million spectators who thronged to cheer the arrival of the last two contestants for the Whiteway Cup and send them off to Fresno in the morning.
Eustace Weed was sick with fear over the impending order to contaminate Isaac Bell’s aeroplane fuel and had no desire to go to a carnival. But Mr. Bell insisted that “all work and no play made Jack a dull boy.” He backed up this observation with five dollars’ spending money and strict orders not to bring any change back from the midway. A friend of Mr. Bell’s, a guy Eustace’s age named Dash who’d been hanging around, placing a lot of bets on the race, ever since Illinois, walked over with Eustace from the rail yard and promised they’d meet up later to walk back to the support train.
Eustace won a teddy bear by knocking over wooden milk bottles with a baseball. He was debating mailing it to Daisy or delivering it in person – as if somehow everything would turn out fine – when the toothless old barker who handed him his prize whispered hoarsely, “You’re on, Eustace.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow morning. Drop it in Bell’s gasoline tank right before he takes off.”
“What if he sees me?”
“Palm it when you fill the tank so he don’t.”
“But he’s sharp as all heck. He might see me.”
The toothless old guy patted Eustace’s shoulder in a friendly way and said, “Listen, Eustace, I don’t know what this is about and I don’t want to. All I know is, the fellows who told me to pass you the message are as bad as they get. So I’m advising you, whoever this sharp Bell is, he better not see you.”
The carnival had a Ferris wheel in the middle. It looked eighty feet tall, and Eustace wondered would they leave Daisy alone if he rode to the top and killed himself by jumping off. Just then, Dash showed up.
“What happened? Lose all your money? You look miserable.”
“I’m O.K.”
“Hey, you won a teddy bear.”
“For my girl.”
“What’s her name?”
“Daisy.”
“Say, if you married her, she’d be Daisy Weed,” Dash joked like it was a new idea. Then he asked if Eustace was hungry and insisted on buying him a sausage and a beer that went down like sawdust and vinegar.