Black Diamond by John F. Dobbyn Page A

I was more in need of a night’s sleep than another pummeling.
    The morning alarm at five thirty brought back reminders from previously silent muscles that Mr. Scully had gotten the best of me inthe set-to. Added to that, it was two hours earlier than my usual wake-up call.
    I made a brief stop at Starbuck’s for a black eye. This little known Bucky special, strong black coffee with two shots of espresso, is guaranteed to rip out the most persistent cobwebs. Combine it with a couple of Motrin and you have the true breakfast of champions, and one I hope never to have to repeat.
    After the previous day, I decided to follow the physicians’ oath to the letter—first do no harm. Rather than exacerbate Colleen’s situation further, I focused on the case against our client Hector Vasquez.
    The backstretch at Suffolk Downs, as with any horse track, is a self-contained world. Life among the trainers’ barns begins sometime before dawn. Grooms, stall muckers, feeders, hot-walkers, all go into their well-practiced routines like an ant colony. The buzz and hum that thirty years ago had a southern African-American accent is now uniformly in Mexican Spanish.
    Trainers move from stall to stall to check legs and ankles for heat and decide on the regimen of the day’s training for each horse before the exercise riders check in for instructions.
    On the drive to Suffolk Downs, I called Rick McDonough, Black Diamond’s trainer, on his cell phone and asked him to leave my name with security at the gate. That greased my path directly to barn 23.
    I found Rick with a cluster of riders outside the stalls where grooms were tacking up for the morning ride-outs. He was giving specific instructions to the riders for each mount when he saw me. He pointed toward the coffee shack and gestured an invitation for a cup. I nodded acceptance and went to the shack to wait.
    I had two cups waiting when he ambled up with a walking gait that could only be produced by bone breaks he had suffered as a saddle bronc rider in Montana in his youth. Rick was somewhere between fifty and eighty years old. It was hard to tell, since the creased,weather-worn skin of his face and the angular mismatch of all of his limbs could have passed for ninety.
    Rick had trained racehorses for my adopted father, Miles O’Connor, back when my days began with mucking out the Augean stables on Miles’s estate. They made a hell of a pair. Miles was the personification of the Harvard-trained, elite Boston trial lawyer, and Rick was a horse whisperer of mythic insights who was probably still wearing the jeans and boots he had worn when I was a stableboy. What linked them was a consummate trust and belief in the depth and truth of the character of each other. I don’t think Miles had a closer friend than Rick, and it was mutual.
    Rick accepted the cup of strong black caffeine I offered and leaned against the counter. He looked a good deal more life-worn and tired than the last time I saw him.
    His only greeting was a shake of the head. “Hell of a thing about Danny.”
    I knew he felt it as deeply as I did. He had trained both Danny and me to breeze horses in the morning workouts. I did it until I passed a hundred and twenty pounds. Danny was smaller, so he kept on until Rick had given him every trick and nuance of riding a jockey can use. Rick believed in Danny through all of the pitfalls of money and the fast life that Danny fell into. Rick was there with an offer of a mount on Black Diamond when Danny finally climbed out of the pit.
    â€œA hell of a thing indeed, Rick.”
    He just nodded.
    â€œI better tell you up front. Hector Vasquez is being charged with his murder. I took on his defense.”
    He glanced over at me with one of those looks only a face like Rick’s could give.
    â€œThere’s a reason, Rick. I think he’s innocent. It also gives me a chance to find out what happened to Danny.”
    It took him a