Murder at the Racetrack

by Otto Penzler

  “I had him to show.”

  “Well, if you had enough of a bet on him—”

  “Just two dollars.”

  “So you got back two-twenty,” the man said.

  “I just felt like winning,” Keller said.

  “Well,” the man said, “you won.”

  • • •

  He’d put down the catalog, picked up the phone. When Dot answered he said, “I was thinking. If that Dudley horse wins, the client wins his bet and I don’t have any work to do.”

  “Right.”

  “But if one of the other jockeys crosses him up—”

  “It’s the last time he’ll ever do it.”

  “Well,” he said, “why would he do it? The jockey, I mean. What would be the point?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’m just trying to understand it,” he said. “I mean, I could understand if it was boxing. like in the movies. They want the guy to throw a fight. But he can’t do it, something in him recoils at the very idea, and he has to go on and win the fight, even if it means he’ll get his legs broken.”

  “And never play the piano again,” Dot said. “I think I saw that movie, Keller.”

  “All the boxing movies are like that, except the ones with Sylvester Stallone running up flights of steps. But how would that apply with horses?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s been years since I saw National Velvet”

  “If you were a jockey, and they paid you to throw a race, and you didn’t—I mean, where’s the percentage in it?”

  “You could bet on yourself.”

  “You’d make more money betting on Kissimmee Dudley. He’s the long shot, right?”

  “That’s a point.”

  “And that way nobody’d have a reason to take out a contract on you, either.”

  “Another point,” Dot said. “And if the jockeys are all as reasonable as you and I, Keller, you’re not going to see a dime beyond the two grand. But they’re very small.”

  “The jockeys?”

  “Uh-huh. Short and scrawny little bastards, every last one of them. Who the hell knows what somebody like that is going to do?”

  • • •

  Keller’s friend was short enough to be a jockey, but a long way from scrawny. Facially, he looked a little like Jerry Orbach. It was beginning to dawn on Keller that everybody in the OTB parlor, even the blacks and the Asians, looked a little like Jerry Orbach. It was a sort of a horseplayer look, and they all had it.

  “Kissimmee Dudley,” Keller said. “Where’d somebody come up with a name like that?”

  The little man consulted his Racing Form. “By Florida Cracker out of Dud Avocado,” he said. “Kissimmee’s in Florida, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “I think so.” The fellow shrugged. “The name’s the least of that horse’s problems. You take a look at his form?”

  The man reeled off a string of sentences, and Keller just let the words wash over him. If he tried to follow it he’d only wind up feeling stupid. Well, so what? How many of these Jerry Orbach clones would know what to do with a perforation gauge?

  “Look at the morning line,” the man went on. “Hell, look at the tote board. Old Dudley’s up there at forty-to-one.”

  “That means he doesn’t have a chance?”

  “A long shot’ll come in once in a while,” the man allowed. “Look at Hypertension. With him, though, his past performance charts showed he had a chance. A slim one, but slim’s better than no chance at all.”

  “And Kissimmee Dudley? No chance at all?”

  “He’d need a tailwind and a whole lot of luck,” the man said, “before he could rise to the level of no chance at all.”

  Keller slipped away, and when he came back from the ticket window his friend asked him what horse he’d bet on. Keller’s response was mumbled, and the man had to ask him to repeat it.

  “Kissimmee Dudley,” he said.

  “That right?”

  “I know what you said, and I suppose you’re right, but I just had a feeling.”

  “A hunch,” the man said.

  “Sort of, yes.”

  “And you’re a man on a lucky streak, aren’t you? I mean, you just won twenty cents betting the favorite to show.”

  The line was meant to be sarcastic, but something funny happened; by the time the man got to the end of the sentence, his manner had somehow changed. Keller was wondering what to make of it—had he just been insulted or not?

  “The trick,” the fellow said, “is doing the wrong thing at the right time.” He went away and came back, and told Keller he probably ought to have his head examined, but what the hell.

  “Kissimmee Dudley,” he said, savoring each syllable. “I can’t believe I bet on that animal. Only way he’s gonna win the seventh race is if he was entered in the sixth, but it’ll be some sweet payoff if he does. Not forty-to-one, though. Price is down to thirty-to-one.”

  “That’s too bad,” Keller said.

  “Except it’s a good sign, because it means some late bets are coming in on the horse. You see a horse drop just before post time from, say, five-to-one to three-to-one, that’s a good sign.” He shrugged. “When you start at forty-to-one, you need more than good signs. You need a rocket up your ass, either that or you need all the other horses to drop dead.”

  • • •

  Keller wasn’t sure what to watch for. He knew what you did to get your horse to run faster. You hit him with the whip and dug your heels into his flanks.

  But suppose you wanted to slow him down? You could sit back in the saddle and yank on the reins, but wouldn’t that be a little on the obvious side? Could you just hold off on the whip and cool it a little with the heel-digging? Would that be enough to keep your mount from edging out Kissimmee Dudley?

  The horses were entering the starting gate, and he picked out Dudley and decided he looked like a winner. But then they all looked like winners to Keller, big, well-bred horses, some taking their positions without a fuss, others showing a little spirit and giving their riders a hard time, but all of them sooner or later going where they were supposed to go.

  Two of the jockeys were girls, Keller noticed, including the one riding the second favorite. Except you were probably supposed to call them women, you had to stop calling them girls these days around the time they entered kindergarten, from what Keller could tell. Still, when they were jockey-size, it seemed a stretch to call them women. Was he being sexist? Maybe, or maybe he was being sizeist, or heightist. He wasn’t sure.

  “They’re off!”

  And so they were, bursting out of the starting gate. Neither of the girl jockeys was riding Kissimmee Dudley, so if one of them won, well, she’d live to regret it, albeit briefly. Some people in Keller’s line of work didn’t like to take out women, while others were supposed to get a special satisfaction out of it. Keller didn’t care one way or the other. He wasn’t a sexist when it came to business, although he wasn’t sure that was enough to make him a hero in the eyes of the National Organization of Women.

  “Will you look at that!”

  Keller had been looking at the screen, but without registering what he was seeing. Now he realized that Kissimmee Dudley was out in front, with a good lead on the rest of the field.

  Keller’s little friend was urging him on. “Oh, you beauty,” he said. “Oh run, you son of a bitch. Oh yes. Oh yes!”

  Were any of the horses being held back? If so, Keller couldn’t see it. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear Kissimmee Dudley was simply outrunning all of the other horses, proving himself to be superior to the competition.

  But wait a damn minute. That piebald horse—what did he think he was doing? Why was he gaining ground on Dudley?

  “No!” cried the little man. “Where’d the Two horse come from? It’s that fucking Alvie Jurado. Fade, you cocksucker! Die, will you? Come on, Dudley!”

  The guy had liked Jurado well enough when he was making money f
or him on Hypertension. Now, riding a horse named Steward’s Folly, he’d become the enemy. Maybe, Keller thought, the jockey was just trying to make it look good. Maybe he’d ease up at the very end, settling for the place money and avoiding any suspicion that he’d thrown the race.

  But it was a hell of a show Jurado was putting on, standing up in the stirrups, flailing away with the whip, apparently doing everything he possibly could to get Steward’s Folly to the wire ahead of Kissimmee Dudley.

  “It’s Kissimmee Dudley and Steward’s Folly,” the announcer cried. “Steward’s Folly and Kissimmee Dudley. They’re neck and neck, nose to nose as they hit the wire—”

  “Shit on toast,” Keller’s friend said.

  “Who won?”

  “Who fucking knows? See? It’s a photo finish.” And indeed the word photo flashed on and off on the television screen. “Son of a bitch. Where did that fucking Jurado come from?”

  “He gained a lot of ground in a hurry,” Keller said.

  “The little prick. Now we have to wait for the photo. I wish they’d hurry. See, I really got behind that hunch of yours.” He showed a ticket, and Keller leaned over and squinted at it.

  “A hundred dollars?”

  “On the nose,” the little man said, “plus I got him wheeled in the five-dollar Exacta. You got a hunch and I bet a bunch. And he went off at twenty-eight-to-one, and if it’s a Six-Two Exacta with him and Steward’s Folly, Jesus, I’m rich. I’m fucking rich. And you got two bucks on him yourself, so you’ll win yourself fifty-six dollars. Unless you went and played him to show, which would explain why you’re so calm, ’cause it’d be the same to you if he comes in first or second. Is that what you went and did?”

  “Not exactly,” Keller said, and fished out a ticket.

  “A hundred bucks to win! Man, when you get a hunch you really back it, don’t you?”

  Keller didn’t say anything. He had nineteen other tickets just like it in his pocket, but the little man didn’t have to know about them. If the photo of the two horses crossing the finish line showed Dudley in front, his tickets would be worth $58,000.

  If not, well, Alvie Jurado would be worth almost as much.

  “I got to hand it to you,” the little man said. “All that dough on the line, and you’re calm as a cucumber.”

  • • •

  Ten days later, Keller sat at his dining room table. He was holding a pair of stainless steel stamp tongs, and they in turn were holding a little piece of paper worth—

  Well, it was hard to say just how much it was worth. The stamp was Martinique #2, and Keller had wound up bidding $18,500 for it. The lot had opened at $9,000, and there was a bidder in the third row on the right who dropped out around the $12,000 mark, and then there was a phone bidder who hung on like grim death. When the auctioneer pounded the gavel and said, “Sold for eighteen five to JPK,” Keller’s heart was pounding harder than the gavel.

  It was still racing eight lots later when the second stamp, Martinique #17, went on the block. It had a lower Scott value than #2, and was estimated lower in the Bulger & Calthorpe sales catalog, and the starting bid was lower, too, at an even $6,000.

  And then, remarkably, it had wound up sailing all the way to $21,250 before Keller prevailed over another phone bidder. (Or the same one, irritated at having lost #2 and unwilling to miss out on #17.) That was too much, it was three times the Scott value, but what could you do? He wanted the stamp, and he could afford it, and when would he get a chance at another one like it?

  With buyer’s commission, the two lots had cost him $43,725.

  He admired the stamp through his magnifier. It looked beautiful to him, although he couldn’t say why; aesthetically, it wasn’t discernibly different from other Martinique overprints worth less than twenty dollars. Carefully, he cut a mount to size, slipped the stamp into it, and secured it in his album.

  Not for the first time, he thought of the little man at the OTB parlor. Keller hadn’t seen him since that afternoon and doubted he’d ever cross paths with him again. He remembered the fellow’s excitement and how impressed he’d been by Keller’s own coolness.

  Cool? Naturally he’d been cool. Either way he won. If he didn’t cash the winning tickets on Kissimmee Dudley, he’d do just about as well when he punched Alvie Jurado’s ticket. It was interesting, waiting to see how the photo came out, but he couldn’t say it was all that nerve-racking.

  Not when you compared it to sitting in a hotel suite in Omaha, waiting for hours while lot after lot was auctioned off, until finally the stamps you’d been waiting for came up for bids. And then sitting there with your pencil lifted to indicate you were bidding, sitting there while the price climbed higher and higher, not knowing where it would stop, not knowing if you had enough cash in the belt around your waist. How high would you have to go for the first lot? And would you have enough left for the other one? And what was the matter with that phone bidder? Would the man never quit?

  Now that was excitement, he thought, as he cut a second mount for Martinique #17. That was true edge-of-the-chair tension, unlike anything those Jerry Orbach look-alikes in the OTB parlor would ever know.

  He felt sorry for them.

  What difference did it make, really, how the photo finish turned out? What did he care who won the race? If Kissimmee Dudley held on to win by a nose or a nose hair, it was up to Keller to work out a tax-free way to cash twenty $100 tickets. If Steward’s Folly made it home first, Alvie Jurado moved to the top of Keller’s list of Things to Make and Do. Whichever chore Keller wound up with, he had to pull it off in a hurry; he had to have his money in hand—or, more accurately, in belt—when his flight took off for Omaha.

  And now it was over, and he’d done what he had to, so did it matter what it was he’d done?

  Hell, no. He had the stamps.

  THE RETURN THIN WHITE DUDE… SCREAMING

  Ken Bruen

  I was in love with Joan Baez.

  Does it get more fucked than that?

  You’ll notice I said… was.

  Not anymore; that ship has sailed.

  We’re about the same age, me and Joanie, racked up the same amount of mileage. Course, she looks a hell of a lot better.

  I’m into Bowie again… yeah, me and Ziggy, gonna go out on the same stage. Back in the ’80s, I was still with the department. The horses were then just a hobby, an expensive one but not yet a Jones.

  The thin white dude did a concert at the Garden. I pulled point, got to be part of the squad inside.

  Man, I’ll never forget, on his way from the dressing room, looking like some damned golden angel, he paused, looked at me and said in that Brit accent,

  “Ta very much, Guv.”

  I needed that translated… it means, “Thank you very much, Boss.”

  Fucking A.

  Class, you better believe it.

  Other concerts I pulled, the cocksuckers wouldn’t give you the freaking time of day. Faggots, all of ’em, especially the guys from the West Coast.

  Punks?

  Yeah, you got that right.

  I was a pretty good cop for a time, but what can I tell you? I had a family, kids to feed, a wife who seemed to change the furniture every year, so I began to take a little. Started to spend more and more time at OTB. Days I was on call, I went to the track and fuck, I was hemorrhaging cash. Got involved with a loan shark and the vig… murder. When I was trying to deal with the bloodsucker, he said, in a Brooklyn accent, the words leaking out of the side of his mouth,

  “You know fuck all about racing. Why don’t you just put a Zippo to the money, save you the trip to the track.”

  Go on… trot it out

  Bad cop

  Rotten apple

  Bag man

  On the dime

  You’re taking twenty bucks here, then, what the hell, it’s Franklins, then you stop counting. You’re telling yourself,

  “No biggie.”

  It is.

  I became a regular at O
TB. That shit creeps up on you.

  Next thing, the loan shark, he wants, like, a favor and I’m getting in the hole so bad. Meanwhile, they started cleaning up the department, and I’m asking, like, what about the goddamn streets. No, go after their freaking own. I’d made lieutenant and when the board got through with me, I was real lucky not to do time. Bounced me of course, no pension.

  So, my wife takes off—with a CPA. Always hated accountants. Figures, right?

  Ended up in a room in Brooklyn, not a rape away from Bed Stuy. Man, those were rough times. I was hitting the sauce and doing a little blow, nothing major, just to clear the cobwebs… Bowie, Major Tom…

  Still listening to Joan till one night I’m real close to eating my piece. Not my department issue, naw, a piece of shit I bought on the street. You’re a cop, you gotta have hardware. I’d blown the last of my savings on a sure thing in the Kentucky Derby.

  Got the metal in my mouth, Joanie is doing “Diamonds and Rust,” I can taste the oil on my gums and I’m a hair from squeezing when the phone rang. Near pulled the trigger from the start the sound gave me.

  I wasn’t getting a whole lot of calls then. I put the gun aside, real careful, and snatching the receiver, hear,

  “Loot?”

  Only one guy in the whole Manhattan area calls me that.

  Lenny.

  Me and the Lenster go way back. He was with Manhattan South for a while but got busted early on in a scam over hookers.

  Said to me one time,

  “You got horse fever and me, I got hooker fever. H and H, going to be the death of us, bro.”

  Got himself a sweet deal with some mob guy and was pulling down serious change. He’d offered me some of that, but mob guys? I’d gone,

  “You fucking nuts? I’m a cop for chrissakes.”

  Not no more.

  He asked,

  “How’s it hanging, bro?”

  I said,

  “Been better.”

  And he laughed. I swear, I think he could see the Saturday Night Special I’d tossed. He went,

  “Listen, I’m living out on the Island, got me a real nice pad. What say you hop a cab, get yer ass over here and we sink some brews. How’s that sound?”