The first thing that struck Bond about Saratoga was the green majesty of the elms, which gave the discreet avenues of Colonial-type clapboard houses some of the peace and serenity of a European watering place. And there were horses everywhere, being walked across the streets, with a policeman holding up the traffic, being coaxed out of horse-boxes around the sprawling groups of stables, cantering along the cinder borders of the roads, and being led to work on the exercise track alongside the race-course near the centre of the town. Stable-boys and jockeys, white, negro and Mexican, hung about at the street corners and there was the whinny and the occasional trumpeting scream of horses in the air.
It was a mixture of Newmarket and Vichy, and it suddenly occurred to Bond that although he wasn’t in the least interested in horses, he rather liked the life that went with them.
Leiter dropped him at the Sagamore, which was on the edge of the town and only half a mile from the race-track, and went off about his business. They agreed to contact each other only at night or casually in the crowds at the races, but to pay a dawn visit to the exercise track if ‘Shy Smile’ was being given a last workout at sunrise the next day. Leiter said he would know about this, and much more, after an evening around the stables and at ‘The Tether’, the all-night restaurant and bar that was the home of the racing underworld when they came up for the August meeting.
Bond checked himself in at the central office of the Sagamore, signed ‘James Bond, Hotel Astor, New York’, before a hatchet-faced woman whose steel-rimmed eyes assumed that Bond, like most of her other seekers after ‘Gracious Living’, intended to steal the towels and possibly the sheets, paid thirty dollars for three days and was given a key to Room 49.
He carried his bag across the parched lawn, between the beds of Beauty Bush and forced gladioli, and let himself into the neat spare double room with the armchair, the bedside table, the Currier and Ives print, the chest of drawers and the brown plastic ash-tray that are standard motel equipment all over America. The lavatory and shower were immaculate and neatly designed and, as Leiter had prophesied, the tooth glasses were contained in paper bags ‘for your protection’ and the lavatory seat was barred by a strip of paper which said ‘sanitized’.
Bond took a shower and changed and walked down the road and had two Bourbon old-fashioneds and the Chicken Dinner at $2.80 in the air-conditioned eating house on the corner that was as typical of ‘the American way of life’ as the motel. Then he returned to his room and lay on his bed with the
Soon after ten, Felix Leiter knocked softly on the door and limped in. He smelled of liquor and cheap cigar smoke and looked pleased with himself.
‘Made some progress,’ he said. He hooked the armchair up to the foot of the bed on which Bond was lying. He sat down and took out a cigarette. ‘Means getting up damned early in the morning. Five o’clock. The word is they’ll be timing “Shy Smile” over four furlongs at 5.30. I’d like to see who’s around when they’re doing that. The owner’s given as “Pissaro”. One of the directors of the Tiara happens to be called that. He’s another one with a joke name. “Lame-brain” Pissaro. Used to be in charge of their dope racket. Ran the stuff over the Mexican border and then broke it down and parcelled it out to middlemen on the coast. The F.B.I. got on to him and he did a term in San Quentin. Then he came out and Spang gave him the job at the Tiara in exchange for the rap he’d carried. And now he’s a race-horse owner like the Vanderbilts. Nice going. I’ll be interested to see what sort of shape he’s in these days. He was almost a mainliner in the days he was dealing in coke. They gave him the cure in San Q, but it’s left him a bit soft in the head. Hence the “Lame-brain”. Then there’s the jock, “Tingaling” Bell. Good rider but not above this sort of caper if the money’s right and he’s in the clear. I want to have a word with Tingaling if I can get him alone. I’ve got a little proposition for him. The trainer’s another hoodlum – name of Budd, “Rosy” Budd. They all sound pretty funny, these names. But you don’t want to be taken in by it. He’s from Kentucky, so he knows all about horses. He’s been in trouble all over the South, what they call a “little habitch” as opposed to a “big habitch” – habitual criminal. Larceny, mugging, rape – nothing big. Enough to give him quite a bulky packet in police records. But for the last few years he’s been running straight, if you care to call it that, as trainer for Spang.’
Leiter flicked his cigarette accurately through the open window into a bed of gladioli. He got up and stretched. ‘Those are the actors in the order of their appearance,’ he said. ‘Distinguished cast. Look forward to lighting a fire under them.’
