19 Purchase Street (44 page)

“Not much,” Gainer said, folding the form and putting it into the rack in front of him. He saw that he wasn't alone with that opinion. At fourteen minutes to post time the Totalizator Board showed odds of twenty-five to one on Snapshot. And now flickering to thirty to one.

Chapin leaned to Gainer and said: “He'll win.”

Gainer borrowed Vinny's binoculars. Saw that the horse was well-muscled through the thighs and quarters, broad enough in the chest. Nice conformation, a small refined head, neat ears. Snapshot certainly looked like a runner, even with all four legs wrapped. That was something Gainer always looked for, wrappings. As a rule he never bet a horse with four wrappings.

“Unless he falls down,” Chapin added to his previous statement.

Gainer glanced at the racing form again, quickly handicapped his choice, the favorite. Then, thinking perhaps this was a joke at his expense, he looked at Chapin's eyes. All he could read there was straight stuff.

“Try some of it,” Chapin advised. “But don't overload or give it to anyone, not even God.”

“Chapin, for this horse to win God has to already know,” Gainer said. He went up to a two dollar sellers window, asked for a hundred tickets on Snapshot. As an afterthought, because there was no wait, he had the seller punch out a hundred more of the same.

When he returned to the box it was five minutes to post time. The odds on Snapshot were forty-five to one. Chapin was getting edgier every second. Vinny was relaxed, like a guy who would survive and be well off no matter what. Vinny was the younger brother by three years but looked at least five older. He was heavier, wider faced, and, because his mouth had a slight, natural upward turn at the corners, gave the impression that he would be better-natured, which was not the case. Chapin had been carrying Vinny more or less for years—financed him and extricated him from various squeezes.

Vinny broke the tension of the moment by taking something from his jacket pocket that he slipped to Gainer. “Check that out,” he said.

A diamond ring.

It needed cleaning.

“Two carats thirty points not counting the baguettes on the sides. Color's a little off to tell you true, but it's clean. You won't see anything in it,” Vinny assured him.

“How much?” Gainer asked only to show some interest.

“Fifteen hundred a carat regular, a flat three geesuls to you.”

“Ever get any sapphires?”

“I get what I get, you know.”

“Or rubies?”

“That the only kind of material you're interested in?”

“Yeah.”

“I've got a package coming tonight. If there's any of those in it, I'll put it aside for you.”

Gainer dropped the ring into Vinny's jacket pocket.

Vinny felt to see if it was there.

The horses were at the gate, being put in. The jockey on Snapshot wore pale blue silks. The favorite was acting up, refusing to go in, as though indulging his temperament was an extra due him for the winning he was surely about to perform. There were nine horses in the race.

“The one horse never breaks well,” Gainer said.

“Be no different this time,” Chapin said.

Gainer offered Vinny his binoculars back, but Vinny pushed them away, told him, “Go ahead, you look.”

The flag was up.

The gate doors sprang open and the horses lunged out. Snapshot was only a split second slow out of the gate but with his position in the number one slot that allowed all eight other horses to pull over ahead of him, squeezing him to dead last on the rail.

Going past the stands for the first time a pair of early speed horses had taken the lead. The favorite was fifth, well-placed, being rated, staying out of trouble and saving ground. Snapshot was twelve lengths off the pace and running as though he was merely trying to imitate the others. If form held up, the front speed would burn itself out, giving way to the second favorite, which would give way to the favorite, which would win by four or five, perhaps more.

That was exactly how the race was going when the horses were rounding the far turn.

Time for all bettors to stand.

Time for their urging and roaring.

The two leaders were falling back. The favorite was coming on.

Snapshot was still last on the rail.

Gainer glanced at Chapin. This was crazy, he thought. He'd just blown four hundred.

Chapin was intent on the race.

At that point the chestnut and pale blue that was Snapshot and rider made a sudden move. Passed the tiring horses, came around the stretch turn, went wide for room, all the way out to the middle of the track. Snapshot's front hooves grabbed, dug the dirt for speed. He closed easily on the favorite, went by him at the sixteenth pole and won going away by nine lengths. Snapshot's jockey had done nothing more than take the ride, never used the whip. The official time of the race was one minute, forty-one seconds, only three-fifths of a second off the track record. Snapshot came back to the winner's circle with his fine head up and his tail whipping, apparently enjoying the new experience.

Chapin sat, pinched his nostrils with first knuckle and thumb, grinned and double-winked at Gainer. “That animal really found itself,” he said.

“What else might be found?” Gainer asked.

Chapin shook his head no, meaning not to worry. “I hope his owners have sense enough to enter him in a handicap.”

The payoff evoked a mixture of gasps and growls and some glee from a group of fat ladies who were habitual long-shot show bettors.

Snapshot, it was flashed, paid one hundred eighty dollars to win.

Gainer cashed in. Ten tickets at a time at each of the long line of cashier's windows. Just being cautious. He knew someone had sure as hell put this horse over. Despite Chapin's reassurances to the contrary, whatever had been put into that horse might be determined. There could be an investigation.

What Gainer did not know was that no urine or blood sample could possibly show anything. To find out how the good-looking but lazy thoroughbred Snapshot had run a nearly record-breaking mile and a sixteenth at Belmont would have required vivisection. And even then, locating anything would have been a matter of extreme luck.

Three and a half years back Chapin had set it up, in collaboration with an old money-loving veterinarian in Lexington, Kentucky, a Dr. Healy. The doctor arranged with one of his horse-breeding clients to accept a foal instead of fees. For tax reasons. He registered the foal as Snapshot, made sure all papers were in keeping with the requirements of the Thoroughbred Racing Association.

When Snapshot was four months old Dr. Healy put him under anesthesia. Laid him out on the operating table and prepared him by shaving the hair from an eight-inch square area of his left loin. Chapin assisted.

Using fluoroscopy, the doctor determined Snapshot's left kidney and the suprarenal capsule situated directly anterior to it, the adrenal gland. It was not a simple matter. In a horse, as in a human, the kidney and even more particularly the adrenal, is tucked well up in under the last two ribs, making them not easily accessible.

Dr. Healy studied the field, marked a black cross on the pinkish flesh of Snapshot. The point of entry. He took up a 50cc syringe with a Number 10 hypodermic needle attached. The needle was about six inches long. He drew about 2occ's of glucose solution into the syringe.

The silicone microchips Chapin had prepared lay on a piece of gauze on an operating tray. They had been made sterile. Chapin had produced three chips, two as backups. Each was wafer thin and 3.2 millimeters or one-eighth inch square. Chapin took up one of the chips with sterile tweezers. Placed the chip at the opening of the hypodermic needle. The doctor drew back ever so slightly on the plunger of the syringe to suck the microchip an inch or so into the needle's shaft. Then, careful not to cause the chip to be drawn up into the syringe itself, he took an additional small amount of the glucose.

The angle of the needle was crucial to the procedure. The doctor pressed it into Snapshot's flesh, through the gelatinous tissue and cartilage between the second and third ribs and then slowly, deeper into the tissue, close as possible to the adrenal gland. Holding the needle at that depth, he pressed on the plunger of the syringe. The microchip was forced in, injected along with the glucose. It would remain lodged in the tissue while the glucose would be absorbed. Everything depended on whether or not the microchip was precisely implanted. A mere centimeter could mean failure.

Next morning, Snapshot was out in the pasture, acting as rompish as before.

His coat grew back.

Dr. Healy saw to it that he got the best of care. The following year, as a sleek two-year-old, Snapshot was put in the Keenland sales. A leading stable bought him for forty thousand and brought him along believing he could be more than a tax write-off. It took eight races for Snapshot to break his maiden.

Chapin followed Snapshot's whereabouts and performances closely. Several times circumstances seemed almost right and Dr. Healy expressed his impatience.

Chapin had waited until this perfectly suitable sixth race on this day at Belmont.

It all came down to the moment when Snapshot was rounding the far turn.

Chapin reached into his inside pocket of his jacket, flicked on the switch of a transistorized power transmitter designed by him to activate by remote control the microchip imbedded in Snapshot.

The microchip received Chapin's signal, triggered an electrical impulse to the sensitive conductors of its pure gold circuits. The amount of electricity discharged by it was, by no means, a jolt. Sixty-five millivolts. Hardly enough to power a lightning bug.

What Snapshot felt was merely a twinge as the electrical impulse arced into the greater splanchnic nerve. That nerve, in turn, sent it charging through the filaments of nerve routes serving the plexus of the adrenal gland—through the cortex, the outer shell of the adrenal and deeper to its inner part, the medulla. Responding in its natural intended manner, the medulla discharged adrenaline into Snapshot's bloodstream.

Snapshot had never felt so much power.

His heart seemed suddenly larger and in command. His lungs filled fuller than ever before. The very air that he was pushing around him was like a flow of fuel into his wider nostrils. His chest and shoulders and flanks felt immense to him, and lubricated, and his legs felt twice as long, capable of reaching far out in advance of him. He kept his eyes straight ahead but his vision was acutely peripheral now as well and he was aware of the other horses he went by, the white of the rail, the stippled texture of the crowd in the stands.

And then the bit was pressuring the corners of his mouth, a perverse counter to the call in him to continue at full speed. The bit insisted, slowed him, turned and controlled him. Brought him back.

A winner.

Chapin was.

Chapin was pleased with himself.

He had made no bet at the track, but he'd gotten down in Las Vegas for three thousand, in Reno for three more and had two spreads out among bookies he knew. Altogether his winnings would amount to four hundred thirty-two thousand. He wouldn't split evenly as he'd agreed with Dr. Healy. Not that the money was so important to Chapin. It was just that the doctor was bent over asking for it and Chapin couldn't resist sticking it to him. In fact, it would have been against a personal law not to. For one thing, the doctor had no way of knowing how much had been bet. Chapin would take a third off the top and then split with the doctor.

He waited for Gainer to cash in. They walked to the car park together. On the way Chapin put his hand on Gainer's shoulder, and as though one diversion had just concluded and another was needed in its place, told him: “All right, now … let's meet somewhere in town for a drink and you can tell me what's so important to you.”

H
INE
peeked over the edge of the dune. Saw the two surf fishermen were still down on the beach. They had been there since early morning. He had noticed them first out his bathroom window while he was using the toilet, so he'd put on a pair of trunks and gone down to them, acting just casually curious.

Not many people fished the surf along that stretch but those two seemed to be doing well enough. They had a large orange plastic bucket for the fish they caught and the cheapest sort of white styrofoam cooler for their beer and sandwich makings. They'd already caught five ugly fair-sized fish. Their two poles were held upright by metal tubes in the sand so all they had to do was sit there and every once in a while feel the lines to determine if they had anything on.

Hine was satisfied that they were what they appeared to be. They were genuinely proud of those ugly fish the way they had lifted them up by the gills to show them to him, Hine decided.

He settled back into the depression of the dune. Squirmed his bare buttocks and back, causing the fine granules beneath him to give, as though creating a mold. He often thought of this sandy dip as his private baking container. He had done some of his best tanning and thinking here and believed it appropriate that here was where he should finalize his deal with Gainer. He'd been willing without a second thought when Gainer, through Sweet, had stipulated same place, same conditions.

Bareass in the dunes.

No possible tricks up the sleeves.

What a beautiful day to springboard himself up, right up over Darrow's head. A flawless sky, a timid breeze, the sun unchallenged. Hine was sure that Darrow would be out in it at Number 19, adding to his leisure color. Maybe the mortician would only have to shave him, Hine thought, and his laugh to himself was almost out loud.

He heard the sliding door open and close. That would be Sweet with Gainer.

Gainer, nude as required, squatted on his haunches on the inside of the dune as he had the time previous. Sweet remained standing on the edge.

Hine felt so confident that it was going to go as he wanted that he didn't get into it right away, small-talked a bit about some movie he'd seen and disliked recently and also inquired about the scars on Gainer's shins. When Gainer told him the scars were from playing soccer, Hine considered the pain, acted impressed and that was enough. To business.