“Hold the light still.”
“Is this what it means to be an apprentice burglar?” Shukey asked. “That’s the fourth time in five minutes you’ve told me to hold the bloody light still.”
“That’s because it’s the fourth time in the last five minutes you’ve moved it. Hold the light still.”
Getting into the track while it was closed was no problem. Not for two of Howard Biel’s “boys.” We just showed our ID’s to the guards and they admitted us.
The trainer’s offices were something else again.
They were not as open to us as the track grounds in general. In fact, entering them was illegal.
I mean, it wasn’t a problem — God knows I’ve bypassed enough locks in my time — but it was burglary.
So we had to be quiet. And careful.
It was eerie, being at the track when it was totally empty and dark. You could almost still hear the cheers of the crowd echoing throughout, hours after they’d all left.
As we crossed the stable grounds to Woody Spencer’s office, the gravel beneath our feet sounded ultra-loud as it crunched under our shoes.
The locks on the office doors were flimsy at best, and I was able to pick them easily.
“Wow,” Shukey had exclaimed. “You made that look like taking candy from a baby.”
“I’ll teach you sometime,” I whispered to her, as we entered.
We’d already checked out Lassiter and Hopkins’ offices, but their records had told us nothing. If there was mob connection there, I didn’t recognize it — which didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
Spencer’s records were a different story.
“Look at this,” I told her, unable to hide the excitement from my voice.
“What?” she asked, moving the light again.
“These horses here,” I told her, pointing to five names, “are all owned by the Palma Group.”
She looked at the names, and commented, “One of them is a very promising three year old.”
“Oh, really?”
“Okay, so what’s so important about them being owned by this Palma Group?”
“Well,” I said, putting the files down, “the Palma Group is a division of the Champion Corporation, that much we get from these files. Now I had a case a few years ago, before Biel, that took me to Chicago. There I had some contact with the Champion Corporation. I found out then that Champion is a subsidiary of Italia Associates, Limited. Italia is owned and operated, in fact, Italia is Angelo DeLillo.”
“DeLillo? Why does that sound familiar?” she asked.
“DeLillo is big in the Chicago area,” I explained. “In fact, you may have heard of the DeLillo Family?”
Her mouth opened as realization hit.
“The Mafia?”
I nodded.
“This is the connection we’ve been looking for,” I told her. I grabbed some folders and started straightening them out.
“C’mon, let’s get this stuff back where it was — exactly the way it was,” I reminded her.
“Okay.”
Once everything was back where it belonged, we left and I relocked the door.
“You really have to teach me how to do that.”
“It was easy,” I told her. “I turned the lock on the other side before shutting the door.”