Riders Down Read Online Free PDF

Solomon looks when I visit him.’”
    Kellman paused and looked out the window. “You had to laugh, listening to him. Bernie was one of those rare people that just naturally brighten you up when you talk to them. Last call I had from him, two days before he died, he says, ‘Mosey, you know how to summarize Jewish holidays?’ No, I say. Bernie says, ‘Here’s how: They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.’ He was still laughing when he hung up.”
    Noticing the skeptical expression that remained on Matt’s face, Kellman pressed on. “There are things, Matt, that look to be one thing but are very much another. Just take a story in today’s paper. It’s about how the murder rate in the city has stayed the same for two years even while the number of serious assault cases have shot through the roof. They make this out to be a big deal.
    “Know what the deal really is? Victims are getting better medical help. The paramedics, the trauma unit workers, emergency room surgeons—they’ve been saving the lives of people who before this would have gone right into the murder column. Now they go into the assault list—people with gaping gunshot wounds, knives sticking out of their chests. Last week at Cook County they saved the life of a guy who staggered in the front door with an ax blade in his forehead.
    “So the murder
rate
may be down, but the number of jerks trying to
commit
murder hasn’t dropped off any. They’re just not as lucky as it as they used to be. Like I said, Matt, things often aren’t what they seem. As far as I’m concerned, Bernie’s death falls into that category.”
    Matt picked up the news story and read it again. “Moe,” he said, “okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re right about this. Let’s say Uncle Bernie didn’t voluntarily decide to take a flyer. So, why would someone kill him? And who?”
    “Exactly,” said Kellman enthusiastically, leaning forward to pat Matt’s knee. “That’s where you come into it. I want you to try and find out ‘who’ for me.”
    Moe went to his desk and lifted a folder out of the middle drawer. “I’ve made some notes on the last few conversations I had with Bernie,” he said. “I had dinner with him two weeks before he died, lunch five days before it happened. Both those times, he was excited about some project he had going involving horse racing and a professor who had come to him as a ‘research source,’ as Bernie put it. When I asked him who the professor was, and how he came to locate him, Bernie clammed up. He wouldn’t give me any details other than the fact that the professor was going to quote him in some book he was writing. Bernie was very proud of that. I don’t know if you know this, but Bernie was an educated man himself. He was looking forward to the book being published. He was
excited
about it—not like a guy getting set to kill himself.”
    Matt said, “Moe, let’s say you’re right. Where do I come into it?”
    “At the racetrack,” Kellman replied. “I think some people tossed Bernie out that window, phonied up a suicide note, and eliminated a problem. The question is, what kind of problem could this old man pose? I’ve checked with a lot of people I know in this town”—he paused to let that sink in, letting Matt know that the people he checked with were people that Matt never wanted to start checking with—“and they’ve heard nothing. Nothing. Bernie was kind of like a hero from the old days for them, you know? He went back beyond any of them, knew guys that were local Outfit legends. If they’d heard anything, they’d tell me. But nothing.
    “My thinking is that this is connected to this professor. It could be tied to horse racing, which Bernie said was the guy’s big interest. I think the reason for Bernie’s murder, my friend, is somewhere in your racing world. I can’t think of any other place to start looking. And with your background, your contacts, you could help me on