Mortal Lock Read online

“I don’t want to own one. I just want to win some money on them.”

  “Uh-huh,” the old man said. Meaning, whatever was really going on, it wasn’t his business. “All right, here’s how it works. Winning money on the trotters is part handicapping, part investment, and part luck. If the race is clean—and, a lot of them, they’re not no more, not with exotics on every race—the edge goes to the man who really loves the horses. You got to have a feel for them. That takes—”

  “What’s ‘exotics’?” I interrupted. I know it’s not polite, but he was losing me, and I wanted to slow him down so I didn’t miss anything.

  “Combo betting. Like a trifecta, that’s one example. To hit one of those, you have to pick the horses who come in first, second, and third, in that order. Long odds, big payoffs.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” It sounded okay to me. That’s the way life is—the bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.

  “What’s wrong with it is that big money always brings out the guys who like shortcuts. Those kind of people, the ones I’m talking about now—all they have to do is pay two, three drivers to pull their horses—hold them back, make sure they don’t finish in the money, okay? Then they bet the other horses in every possible combination. Long as they make sure the pulled horses are short-priced, they’re guaranteed a big score, every time.”

  The old man lit a cigarette, hunching his shoulders and cupping his hands, even though there was no wind.

  “They used to call a race like that the Big Triple. Usually had only one a night, on the last race; keep the crowd from leaving,” he said. “Now, they got one on damn near every race. Superfectas, you got to pick the first four horses in the exact order of finish. High-Fives … well, you get the idea.”

  “Yeah,” I said. And I did. There was a casino at the track—not a real one, just slots, mostly—and it was packed to the gills with gamblers. Not horse-players, gamblers.

  “Look at it like this,” the old man said. “The owner of the winning horse gets half the purse; the horse that comes second, his owner gets half of what’s left, and so on … all the way down to fifth. So if you own a horse, he can get you a check even if he never wins a race. They do it that way because it’s better for the game. It costs just as much to feed a horse that never wins a race as it does to feed a world champ, so the idea is to spread the purse money around, help the owners out, keep more of them in the game.

  “Now the driver’s take is ten percent of whatever his horse earns in the race. Let’s say the purse is ten grand. That means five g’s for the winner’s owner, and five hundred for the driver, okay? So what you do, you tell the driver of the best horse, here’s a couple of grand for yourself, you do the right thing. No big deal. All you got to do is make sure your horse, it’s not gonna be his night, see?”

  “If that’s the way it is, how come you bet on them?”

  I thought that was a good shot I’d just landed, but the old man didn’t even blink. “You stay away from those kinds of races. That’s something you have to learn. Some guys, they strictly play the stakes races,” he said. “A stakes race means the owners have to buy their way into them, keep putting up more and more money as the season goes along. The stake, see? You ante up, that lets you sit in. But you have to keep calling to stay in the pot.

  “Some of those races, the purse gets so big, you could never get to the driver. It’s not just that the driver’s in for a fat check if he gets his horse home—any driver gets seen tanking in a big race, he’s on the permanent shit list. You train one of the top horses, you know what he’s supposed to do out there, and you watch close. So even if the driver doesn’t get nailed by the track, the trainer, he’ll know.”

  “A big race, like the Kentucky Derby?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “Like the Kentucky-fucking-Derby. Only for a trotter, that would be the Hambletonian. Named for the original, see?”

  “I never—”

  “I know.” He spit over the rail. “You never heard of it.” He took a breath, like he was taking control of himself. “Listen,” he said, “you think the trotters don’t run for big money, too? That Hambletonian I just told you about? Last year, the purse was two million, okay? That sound like chump change to you? They got all kinds of races for six figures, and a few go over that. There’s plenty of money in this game, you got the right horse.”

  He sounded like a guy apologizing for something, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything at all.

  “You couldn’t pay a driver enough to pull in one of those big races,” he said. “And finding three of them crazy enough to try, forget it.”

  “So why wouldn’t they cheat in the other direction?” I asked him. “Isn’t there a way to make them go faster?”

  “You mean like when they stick a garden hose down their throats and pump them full of baking soda? Sure. That’s what they call a ‘milkshake’—it stops their muscles from locking up so they still got plenty of zip down the stretch. But you mostly see that used on thoroughbreds, not trotters.”

  “How come? They’re all horses, right?”

  “No! That’s what I’ve been telling you. Okay, look, they call all standardbreds ‘trotters,’ but it’s not like they all trot. Some of them are pacers. Trotting and pacing, those are different gaits. But you got to hold that gait. If you start running, you’re out.”

  He held up his hand to stop my next question, then he showed me what he was talking about, using the first two fingers of each hand: “Trotters move their outside front leg and inside rear leg at the same time; pacers move both outside legs, then both inside legs, like sidewinders, see?

  “The big thing to remember is what I told you, they got to stay on whichever gait they pick. If they break stride, start galloping, the way the ponies do, you got to take them off to the side, settle them down, get them back to trotting or pacing before they can get back into it.

  “That happens, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, their race is done right there. That’s why you never want to hit a trotter with a speedball. He’s likely to get all excited, start running. That’s when you can tear up your tickets.”

  “But there’s other ways, right?”

  “With all the drugs they let them take now, who knows?” the old man said. He tapped a fresh cigarette out of his pack, looked at it for a second. Then he said, “Listen, you don’t have to come around here with this fairy story, okay? I got asked to do a favor, and I’ll do it. You want to pick up enough so you sound like you know what you’re doing, let people think you’re a handicapper, I can teach you enough. But you want to really look the part, you got to put in more than a few days, understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can’t be here every night. It’s a long drive from where I live. But I can come maybe two, three times a week, until you’re ready, fair enough?”

  “You’re the one doing the favor.”

  “That’s right. Now, I got some books at home. About harness racing. When I come down Monday night, I’ll bring some for you to look at. You willing to do that?”

  “Yeah,” I said, surprised. People don’t ask me to read books. “Thanks.”

  “In the meantime, just hang out, watch the races. Only watch, for now. You start betting before you’re ready, you could get lucky, think you actually know what you’re doing. Worse, you could get hooked on the action. Then you’ll never learn nothing.”

  “Okay,” I told him.

  It was early the next morning by the time I got back to my room. Motels are better than hotels—you can park right outside your room, and the desk clerk doesn’t need to see you come and go.

  I used one of the prepaid cells I always carry to make the kind of calls you make in my line of work. They never ask you for a credit card number, just an address.

  The hooker they sent over was like they all are.

  2

  “Never fall in love,” the old man told me a week later. “That’s certain death for a handicapper. It’s okay to have a cou
ple, few horses that are like your guys, sure. You follow them, root for them, all that. But when it comes to betting on them, you got to make sure they’re placed right, first.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Class is one way; you can see if the horse is going up against tougher company than usual. Or if he’s in soft. But, mostly, you got to watch the conditions. See this race here,” he said, pointing to the form. “It’s a ten K condition layout, only for non-winners of eight thousand, last six outs, okay?”

  “And even the winner, he only gets half the purse.”

  “You listen good,” he said, like he hadn’t expected it. “That’s right. And remember, the horse comes in second, he takes half of what’s left. All the way down to fifth.”

  “So, six races not to win eight thousand dollars, they couldn’t be winning too often.”

  “Or,” the old man said, smiling a little, “they were kicking ass, but the purses were real, real small. Sometimes, an owner don’t expect much from his horse, so he keeps him at the small tracks.”

  “Small tracks, small purses?”

  “Yeah,” he said, handing me the program. “You got it down. So show me, which one of these is in cheap?”

  “I think … this one,” I said, putting my finger on a horse who won five out of the eight races they showed on the form, but the purses were all under two thousand.

  “Maybe. Maybe so. Next thing is to look up the track,” he said, taking the program from me and turning some pages. “That’s Bangor, way the hell up in Maine. Speed rating for that track is two oh four, according to this little program you bought. What’s it for here?”

  I looked where he was pointing. “It says, ‘Yonkers, one fifty-nine.’ ”

  “Good! Now this here one we’re looking at, he’s been going in two oh two and change when he wins up there. And that’s a real slow track. What’s that speed translate to down here?”

  “One fifty-nine?” I guessed.

  “Closer to the deuce, I think, but you’re in the right spot. So, could he win here, if he runs his number?”

  I scanned the form, looking at each of the other horses. It was chilly out, with the wind blowing enough to move the flags. Maine, I’d never been up there, but I figured this kind of weather wouldn’t be any big deal to a horse that made his living in worse.

  I went over the race real careful. Taking my time, the way the old man had told me to. The horse would be fifth from the inside when the race started. It wasn’t just the number on his blanket; the old man told me that every slot has to wear a color to match it, so you could tell them apart even on the back stretch. The horse had a black blanket.

  “Early speed doesn’t mean as much as it used to here,” I remembered the old man saying. And, anyway, this horse never was first by the quarter mile even when he started from way inside, so I didn’t count that much.

  “Yeah,” I finally said. “I think he could.”

  “Me, too,” the old man said. “Even though those speed ratings are a pile of crap today, they give you some idea. Now I’ve been to that track in Maine, and, let me tell you, it’s one rotten joint.”

  “The track itself?”

  “Yeah. The track itself. See, the best tracks are firm, but they ain’t like concrete. A horse moving to a track like this, he’s going to feel like he’s floating.”

  3

  One of the things I had been reading about was the movable hub rail they have at Yonkers. The old man hated it. “Just another sign,” he’d said to me, when I asked him about it. “This whole track has gone lousy. One time, it was one of the top spots in the whole country … maybe the whole world. Had the best horses, biggest purses, huge crowds. Now look at it.

  “First, they had to go and fuck with the starting line. Used to be, there was a long distance between the start line and that first turn, okay? Now, naturally, that means a real short home stretch, right? So, tell me, what kind of horse does that favor?”

  “One with early speed?”

  “You’ve been hitting those books,” he said. “I’ll have to bring some more down for you next time. More advanced stuff. Now listen: Before they had that movable rail on the inside, you could see the strategy and tactics play out right in front of you. Get to the front, dictate the fractions. That means, shoot that first quarter, then back off on the second. You want to keep the pace slow, because you know they’re all going to be coming at you down the stretch.

  “Now, you go the whole way on the front end, there’s no cover, so it may be a tougher trip. But it’s a shorter distance home, too. If you’re still in front looking at the wire, you can’t block the others off—that’s a sure DQ—but you can ease your horse out a little to the right, give the other guys a few extra feet to cover, see?”

  “Yeah,” I said. And I did.

  “But you can’t do it that way no more,” the old man said, like they’d been out to cheat him, personal. “Now it’s all gimmicks. This track, they even run some of the races at a mile and a sixteen. What’s that supposed to be, a joke? These horses aren’t bred for that distance. You can’t handicap them, ’cause you got no background to look at. Might as well make them run uphill.”

  “Not standard.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at me close. “That’s right. They say this track’s coming back. Big purses again. That’s true enough. But that’s all down to the fucking ‘casino’ they got inside. That’s where the real money is.”

  4

  A month went by with him talking to me like that. “You been making paper bets for a while now,” he said one night. “You ready to pick one for real?”

  “I think so.”

  “You already got one, don’t you?”

  “I … guess,” I said. Wondering how he knew.

  “Show me.”

  He studied the form I held out. Asked me a bunch of questions. Kept nodding. Finally he said, “Your guy’s no overnighter; he’s been on the grounds for five weeks now. Been going in the same class every week, just one step down from the top. Hasn’t won here yet, but he’s been holding his own. And there’s a driver change, too. You see that?”

  “Yeah. John Campbell. He’s good?”

  “Good? The man’s an artist. Some of these drivers, they’re nothing but thugs. Campbell, he knows you can’t whip a horse into winning, you have to guide him home, act like you expect him to get there first. With pacers, he’s pretty good,” the old man said, “but you put him behind a trotter, there’s no driver out here that can touch him.”

  5

  My horse was a chesty bay named Little Eric, a Noble Gesture trotter out of an Arsenal mare. He was sluggish out of the six-hole, but he fired up and went first-over just past the quarter, which had gone in a soft thirty-flat. Just as he caught up to the lead horse, Simple Justice, that one picked up speed, and kept Little Eric parked out. The half went in fifty-eight and four.

  Little Eric finally got clear by going slingshot on the clubhouse turn, but he’d come a long way without cover and the heavy chalk, Bruno’s Boy, had popped down into the inside lane, as the movable hub rail lived up to its name.

  Bruno’s Boy was really rolling, but my horse kept chugging on, dead game. Little Eric held off Bruno’s Boy by a neck. The tote board said he paid $18.20 to win. On the program, he’d been what the old man told me was a classic overlay. That meant he wasn’t the favorite, and he didn’t deserve to be, but he was a lot better than the 13-1 morning line made him out to be.

  “Nice,” is all the old man said. I didn’t know if he said that because I’d picked the horse, or because I didn’t jump up and down and scream as they came down the stretch, the way some people do. “Lames,” the old man called them. “Like chumps who yell at the dice in a casino. The horses hear all that shouting about as much as the dice do. Makes as much difference to them, too.”

  I made my way to the window, waited my turn on line, the program open in front of me, heavily marked up in red. Under the brim of my hat, my eyes
swept the area. But I didn’t see what I was looking for.

  6

  “Thanks,” the old man said, when I handed over the beer I brought back for him.

  He took a sip. Looked over at me. “You never get one for yourself,” he said.

  I just shrugged.

  “You don’t smoke, neither. Against your religion?”

  “I don’t do that, either,” I said.

  He closed his eyes like he was thinking something over, but he didn’t say anything for a while.

  I went back to looking at the program.

  The old man tapped me on the forearm. “See that?” he said, pointing at the giant tote board in the infield. “Forget that Morning Line crap—you can watch the real action right here. Remember, the track don’t set the odds, the bettors do. That’s all ‘pari-mutuel’ means: you’re betting against all the other players. The track takes its piece off the top. Same as the house does in a poker game. That’s the only sure way to make money, any kind of gambling. Live off the takeout.”

  “What about when you bet with a bookie?”

  “Don’t bet with bookies,” he said, like we were done talking.

  I studied the tote board. Watched the numbers jump around.

  “Any chump can be a gambler,” he said. “All it takes is money. Or credit, if you’re fucked up enough. You, you’re learning to be a handicapper.”

  “Handicappers don’t bet with bookies? Where do they go, then, OTB?”

  “OTB? That’s Sucker Paradise. You bet with those thieves, there’s another takeout, on top of the track’s. A horse that pays ten dollars at the track, he’d be a nine-eighty horse at OTB, see? You let politicians run anything, the first thing they do is drain it dry. OTB, that’s the only bookie operation in history to lose money. A pro wouldn’t go near that joint. Let’s say you hit a big enough number—like a Pick 4, which is a righteous play for a handicapper, ’cause you’re stringing winners, not betting on horses to come in third or crap like that. At OTB, IRS takes its cut right at the window. They rob you at both ends.”