Bullet Work

by Steve O'Brien

  Beth shot to her feet, crouched forward. “Get outta here. You got no business being here.”

  Dagens cocked his head and made a pouty face. “We going to wrestle?” He chuckled. “I bet you’re pretty good on top.”

  She threw the brush at him, but he ducked, and it caromed off the stall wall.

  “Beat it, loser,” she said. “You got no reason to be here, ’specially this time of night.”

  “What are you going to do? Kick my ass?” He said, sneering at her.

  “She don’t need to.” The words came from a voice behind Beth. She spun around, and Jorge crept forward. He held a steel-tonged rake like a baseball batter. Admittedly, a 110-pound cleanup hitter, but one with the business end of the rake facing Dagens. Jorge stepped closer and raised the rake, preparing to strike.

  The palms of Dagens hands slowly pushed forward, and he backed away. “Hey, easy, Pancho Villa. Don’t need to get your panties all in a bunch. We were just having a conversation.”

  “Get off the property,” Beth said, pointing emphatically. “Get.”

  “Hey, dial it down, guys,” Dagens said, laughing and continuing to back away. “I’m just checking out the filly. I hear she’s a good one.”

  “Move along,” said Jorge.

  Dagens stopped and smiled. “You tell big boss man that if he wants the best out of that filly, he’ll put Dagens up on her.

  “Fat chance, pinhead,” Beth said. “Move it.”

  Dagens turned and walked out of the stable, disappearing into the darkness. Beth turned back. “Thanks, Jorge.”

  “What the hell he doing?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t like it. Don’t like it one bit. I’m going to have Mr. Gilmore take it up with the stews.” She stared in the direction Dagens left. “Jocks shouldn’t be out roaming the backside this time of night. And with the guys attacking horses, what’s he thinking?”

  Jorge rested the rake on his shoulder and shook his head. “I’ll be in the office,” he said. Beth nodded slowly.

  She slipped back under the webbing and put her arms around Aly Dancer’s neck. “Nothing bad’s going to happen to you, girl. Okay? I promise you. Nothing.”

  Chapter 19

  Aside from the competition between barns on a backside, there was also a supply-and-demand relationship for other services. Veterinarian services were no exception. A backside typically was home to four or five different vet companies. Many were one-man shops, and they hustled for business like a jock agent. Some had developed longstanding relationships with established barns. Others positioned themselves in second place, ready to jump at a new account if a relationship changed.

  Vets had a few rules to live by. First, they did nothing that could put their license at risk. Their ability to earn a living was dependent upon a license in good standing with the State. So they kept good records and were subject to oversight by the track, the medical board, and the state thoroughbred licensing commission.

  The other rule was keeping client receipts current. Trainers on a bad streak got slow in payment. Nobody wanted to be the vet of record when a stable went bust, so vets had to be glib and persistent about being paid. If they weren’t, the system would take advantage of them. Folks who were taken advantage of in this world went broke.

  Dr. Vic Dancett moved slowly but efficiently. His actions bore the precision formed by a lifetime of exercising an abundance of caution. He was tall and straight, like a walking pool cue, with shocks of white hair and a puffy white moustache. He did nothing quickly, but he did everything correctly. Vic was sixty-five and had worked the backside for nearly forty years, the last thirty as a licensed vet.

  Dancett had seen it all. Every kind of ailment a horse could suffer, every kind of racing injury, stress fracture, and infection, every kind of bad luck, hard knock, and tough break. Roaming the backside of a racetrack was all he ever wanted. He lost his wife to breast cancer two decades before. Dancett’s life was animals and the backside community. It was his family. Yes, Dancett had seen it all—or at least he thought he had.

  The hours were brutal, but most vets worked in the game because they loved it. They lived to see young horses develop, and they challenged themselves to solve problems that helped horses get better. More than occasionally, they cashed a ticket or two based upon things they could see that the public couldn’t. The betting public rarely looked at the animals in a race before they broke out of the starting gate. Their analysis solely focused on the history of their performance, like they were machines and the race was simply comparing different machines.

  Horses were far from machines. They performed based upon physical conditions. Little in a racing form told one about current physical condition, but vets knew physical condition firsthand. Sometimes it helped cash a bet.

  The day typically started at 5 a.m. with rounds, consults, and preparations for morning works. On race days the afternoons were filled with examinations of returning warriors and administration of medication before and after racing. As with medical doctors of the human world, the stress of competition created nicks, injuries, and assorted stress in equine athletes. Vets who wanted to keep their book full were available until the evening for advice and therapy. Then they would get up the next day and do it all over again.

  Over the years bans had been implemented over the use of race-day medication. Most were pain relievers or blockers to dull the sensation of pain in the course of a race. Horses who couldn’t feel the pain would over-perform, leading to breakdowns and career-ending injuries.

  Even small injuries that kept an animal from racing cost everyone money, and no one wanted to pay for an athlete who couldn’t perform, so there was always tension to push the envelope to get animals to the track.

  The best trainers were patient with small injuries because they maintained high winning percentages. Trainers lower down on the list needed numbers. They needed runners, so any advantage was sought, sometimes to the detriment of the competitors.

  One race-day medication available and legal in nearly every state was Lasix. During heavy physical exertion, the capillaries in a horse’s lungs could explode. This resulted in blood seeping into the lungs. A horse with blood in its lungs couldn’t run fast. At times the bloody discharge would fly out of the nostrils, covering the jockey and the horse itself. Obviously that wasn’t the image the thoroughbred set liked to foster. As with the human world, the industry’s answer was chemical.

  Lasix was a powerful diuretic, which if given to a “known bleeder” would reduce the body fluids in the animal and prevent bursting capillaries in the lungs. Unlike most medications, the name Lasix had no connection to the chemical makeup of the substance. Lasix was a term coined because the effect of the diuretic lasted six hours, hence Lasix. It was common knowledge that Lasix could improve a horse’s performance, and sometimes the improvement could be dramatic. Many handicappers looked for first-time Lasix runners because history has shown a horse could improve five to six lengths over its pre-Lasix performance.

  By regulation, the tracks and information services had access to race-day medication information, and that was shared with the betting public. Lasix made horses lighter because of the water weight loss, and since there shouldn’t be excess fluid in their lungs, they ran faster.

  To be prescribed Lasix, the horse had to be examined by a vet who scoped the lungs following a race or workout. If evidence of bleeding was present, the horse could go on the Lasix list and be treated on race day. The actual degree of bleeding, or presence at all, was a subjective determination made by the vet. If the vet said there was blood, the horse could get Lasix. End of discussion. Once on Lasix, the saying went, always on Lasix. As long as the horse ran in jurisdictions that allowed Lasix, it would race with the substance.

  To hit the optimal time zone for administration of Lasix, a vet would travel from barn to barn on a schedule to allow several hours for the Lasix to kick in. If the vet’s clients had horses running throughout a r
ace card, he would time his visits to the barns to administer the medication. Then he would check off the horses as the day progressed. Giving the medication too late or too early could have adverse effects, so vets operated on a strict schedule.

  A vet van was a virtual cornucopia of pharmaceuticals, all identified and stocked in plastic trays similar to a carpenter’s workbench. In this case there were several workbenches fastened to the interior of the van, along with rubs, wraps, and other therapeutic devices.

  Although vet vans were required to be locked when not occupied, most vets would park near a barn and leave the side or back doors open. They administered the required therapy, returned to the van, and moved to the next barn.

  A vet on his rounds was like a milkman. He made deliveries, provided services, and moved onto the next location. If someone knew the relationships of a specific veterinarian and could match up horses scheduled to receive Lasix injections, the person could fairly accurately predict the path of the vet as he distributed services. Most people didn’t care and never knew the difference.

    

  Falcon knew the difference.

  The card had set up perfectly for Falcon. Two unprotected trainers, Dave Simpkins and Kenneth Oliver, had race-day Lasix performers in the same race, the eighth. So while Dancett was giving an injection to a horse scheduled to race in the seventh, Falcon was able to get to the open vet van door. He pulled open the drawer holding the Lasix, withdrew all four boxes, and replaced them with two identical boxes.

  Then he disappeared.

    

  Dancett drove to Simpkins’ barn and pulled a Lasix box containing the med and pre-packaged hypodermic needle from the drawer. He frowned because he thought he had more than just the two boxes left. At least he had enough to finish today’s entrants. He made a mental note to stock up in the morning as he never wanted to be short of such a valuable product. Lasix was a medication that moved through the vet vans quickly, so he shrugged and injected Simpkins’ gelding with the substance. Then he drove to Oliver’s barn and repeated the process.

    

  Neither Simpkins’ nor Oliver’s horse won that day. In fact, neither got a check.

  Both dropped dead before being led over for the eighth race.

  On another part of the track, Raven smiled as Dean Horn struggled to explain to the racing audience why two entrants in the eighth had to be late scratches.

  Fear on the backside was palpable. Raven witnessed it firsthand every day. Confusion and uncertainty filled the air. It was a stench that intensified with time.

  The backside smelled of fear. Raven only smelled the money.

  They had no idea what was coming.

  Part Two

  Onto the Backstretch

  People attacked what they feared.

  It was simple. It was predictable.

  They feared what they chose not to understand. The possibility that an event was beyond the realm of the cogent or the logical was not to be tolerated. Reality existed only in what man chose to believe. If it did not match beliefs, it could not be true. It had to be evil. It had to be destroyed.

  That’s why some were labeled witches

  and burned at the stake.

  That’s why gifts from the obscure

  were callously rejected and distrusted.

  That’s why bloodletting was deemed

  the highest evolution of the medical arts

  for two thousand years.

  That’s why eugenics was roundly

  accepted as morally beneficent science.

  Mankind had faith only in what it chose to believe, in what it chose to see.

  It was logical. It matched belief systems.

  It didn’t challenge their fears. It was understandable. It didn’t cause them to question.

  Yet the human spirit wearily

  cried out for a miracle.

  The miraculous was scoffed at, ridiculed,

  and rationalized as a quirk, a coincidence, a random act. The miraculous was written off as a parlor game, hucksterism, or infested vermin that had to be eliminated so that the ledger of logic was again balanced and true.

  When the alchemist practiced on metals,

  people waited breathlessly. They wanted to believe. The alchemist who toiled with the human soul was shunned, marginalized,

  and justified out of existence.

  This was the lesson taught generation

  after generation. Who would dare to change it? Through this worldly existence each would

  bear a gift, even the boy.

  Chapter 20

  There was a rhythm to mornings on the backside. Before heading to the office, Dan grabbed a cup of coffee at Crok’s and walked the four barns to Gilmore’s stable. He didn’t have any particular business most days—just liked the sounds, smells, activity, rumors, and, above all, the horses.

  They were beautiful and the center of this universe. They were treated like princes and princesses and cared for like a mother cares for her infant. It was a hard life for the grooms, hotwalkers, and stable hands. Most made little to no money, but the horses needed them, and, in the same way, they needed the horses.

  He walked down the gravel road, stepping quickly to the side to get out of the way of a veterinarian’s van heading toward him. As Dan moved toward Gilmore’s barn, he stepped into the grassy area just off the shedrow path. He pulled up a crate and sat down, watching the grooms and hands care for their charges.

  Beth was washing down a young horse. It looked like Welling Green, a promising three-year-old in Gilmore’s barn. Nino was walking a hot along the shedrow. Jorge was mucking out a stall, which involved scooping out all the straw, including parts left behind by the inhabitant.

  The straw was raked into a pile, hoisted onto a hand cart, transferred to a larger cart, and eventually taken to a larger pile, hopefully downwind from the backside. Once that was completed, new, clean straw was laid down in the stall. Then the process was repeated twenty or so times until every stall was mucked.

  Everyone on the backside had mucked a stall. Everyone on the backside hated mucking out stalls. If it was a better job, it would have a better name. But mucking out stalls happened every day, and the “new guy” at a stable, routinely became the “chief mucker outer.”

  Jake occupied the trainer’s office, but Dan was content to sit and take in the morning. He took the lid off his cup, blew some steam off the coffee, and sipped. All around was activity, all centered on a horse and making that horse confident and strong.

  It was a place for dreamers. Could this young horse be a champion? Will he fight down the stretch? Does she have the will to win in a nose-to-nose duel? And there were smaller dreams. Could this older claimer keep winning? Will this gelding stay with us another year? The hands poured their hearts into these horses, and the vast majority of the time their hearts were broken. But they came back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. They still believed. They were dreamers. They were God’s gift to the racehorse.

  Jake stepped out of his office, stretched, and yawned. Then he glanced Dan’s way and quickly snapped into character. “Dan, how are you? Didn’t know you were coming by.”

  “Just killing time before I head to the office. Only have the carnival in town for three months. I need to make sure I get value for the e-ticket I bought.”

  Jake walked over and started talking quietly. There was enough background noise at the time. He didn’t need to be secretive. “I been meaning to call you. That filly is turning into something. We’re gonna work her from the gate tomorrow morning right after the break. You’re gonna wanna be here.”

  “That’s great. I need a runner with Hero’s Echo on the shelf for a few more weeks.”

  Jake shrugged like he’d been insulted. Dan was just being honest.

  “We’ll have Hero running before the month’s out,” Jake said. “But this little filly’s got fight and a good turn of foot. She’s pass
ing all her lessons.”

  “Who you going to ride?”

  “Got Kyle Jonas up on her tomorrow. Kid’s a little green, but he sits well on a horse, and she really moves for him. If she does what I think she can do,” Jake said, under his breath.

  Dan nodded and sat silently. This is what owners hoped for. The reason they got in the game, to get a good one. He did his best to keep emotions in check. As was often quoted at the racetrack, being too close to the game would break your heart. Dan had experienced the broken heart part and planned to be close to the sport as long as he could, but he’d learned to temper his feelings. It was okay to dream; it was deadly to expect.

  “Kid’s got soft hands?” Dan asked.

  Jake looked puzzled, then smiled. “Yep, soft hands.”

  Dan decided it was time to turn serious. “Jake, I think you’ve got to pay the money. There’s too much to lose and not enough to gain.”

  Jake spit on the ground in front of him. “I don’t give in to punks. Never started, never will.”

  “Jake, it’s about keeping the horses safe. It’s about keeping your business. They’ll catch whoever is doing this, and it’ll probably be real soon. It just doesn’t make sense to take the risk.”

  Jake glanced off into the distance, like he’d ended the conversation, then continued.“When I was a kid in middle school, we had some bullies from the nearby high school who would shake down my friends on the way home. They demanded money, tennis shoes, anything of value. Had some kids so scared they were stealing money and stuff from their parents to pay them off.” He spit again. “Anyway, they came after me one time, and I said I wasn’t going to pay.”

  “What happened?”

  “They beat the crap out of me.”

  “Inspirational story, Jake.”

  “Well, the next day, I came by. I looked like I’d been in a cage match with a grizzly. They ask me if I’m gonna pay up. I said ‘nope.’”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Yep, they beat the living crap out of me again. But you know what? They never bothered me after that, ’cause I beat them at their own game.”