Bullet Work (3 page)

Falcon lifted the pipe above his right
shoulder and swung fiercely toward the animal’s leg. The pipe
whooshed through the air, accelerating as it descended. Falcon felt
the bone snap and crumble as he followed through. The horse
shrieked out, stumbled, and hopped on the good hind leg.

Falcon stood for a split second holding the
pipe, then realized he needed to move. He zipped around the corner
of the barn, tossed the pipe toward the shedrow, and ran into the
men’s room. More horses joined in the commotion.

Fear was a virus, and several barns were now
infected. Over the din he recognized the animal with which he had
shared the apple. The horse cried out. The sound pierced him,
haunted him. Falcon covered his ears. It didn’t help.

Soon voices appeared and the sound of people
running. Falcon went into one of the stalls and locked the door. He
would wait out the storm. He wiped the cold sweat from his
face.

What the hell am I doing?

He held his face in his hands. This was all
wrong. He had no options. It was a trap, but now he had to ride it
out.

Falcon took some deep breaths to steady
himself. It didn’t work. He turned, leaned forward, and
vomited.

Chapter 5

A racetrack backside quickly became
its own community with neighborhoods, gossip, and jealousy. Each
barn was a small business, and each small business lived right next
door and out in the open with its competitor.

The backside had a chapel, a security force,
a café with dining hall, and mock community center. There were
restrooms with camp-quality showers, basketball rims, and makeshift
soccer fields.

And there were laws. Don’t poach other
people’s help, don’t steal other people’s equipment, and don’t brag
too much when things went well. Other than that, life was fair
game. And as games go, this one was wickedly cruel.

Winning was everything. Trainers got ten
percent of any purse money, plus day money for each horse in their
stables. For trainers, day money just kept them afloat; they needed
to win races.

In this town winning was everything. If
trainers don’t win, owners don’t buy new horses and don’t pay their
bills on time. If trainers don’t win, they develop a reputation
that they can never outrun. If trainers don’t win, they can’t pay
their staff, feed bills, vet bills, or their own rent. If trainers
don’t win, they’re dead.

They become victims of the unforgiving fate
known as inadequate cash flow.

So, trainers thought about winning all the
time. Where can I place this horse to get a check? Can I drop him
down in the claiming ranks and not lose him? Can she run out her
conditions at this track, or do I need to look at a softer spot? I
need to win so I can approach that owner about that horse we can
claim for a quarter.

The average field was nine horses. Purses
paid through five spots, though third, fourth, and fifth paid
diddley. So in every race nearly half the businesses walked away
with nothing. They fired a shot and got bubkiss. They had to get
checks, they had to get good checks, and they had to get a lot of
checks.

Many things played into winning: jockeys,
vets, condition books, training regimen, feed, and meds. All
invested in a 1,200-pound animal with ankles like a teenage
ballerina.

There are ten million ways to lose a race,
and sometimes trainers couldn’t find a way to win.

As trainers liked to say, there’s a reason
jockeys were known as pinheads. Trainers brought their horses up
perfectly for a race, training like a monster, sitting on a huge
race, on his feed, kicking down the stall, and the pinhead gets
behind a wall of horses or moves too early like he’s suddenly
riding Man o’ War rather than a quarter claimer.

It was so hard to win, and sometimes a
trainer had to have a horse that could win despite the jockey. Fact
was, he could train his horses perfectly, could make every decision
perfectly, could plan and strategize perfectly, but events
conspired, and he still lost.

It wasn’t a game for timid souls. Trainers
had to scrap like hell to win and, if they didn’t win, have the
courage and confidence to lift their heads up and truly believe
they would win the next one.

If a trainer had the big horse, the dominant
animal in the division, he was the alpha male. He was the mayor of
this community. Everything worked. The world was easy. Owners
thought he was Gandhi. His horses were first call for the top
jockeys at the track. The barn took down purses for the fun of it.
Life was champagne and roses. That trainer was the belle of the
ball.

For trainers without the big horse, life was
an endless series of back alley knife fights. The small businesses
in this community came and went. Trainers that didn’t win on a
consistent basis went.

And they went fast.

Two other things made up this community. A
newspaper, commonly known as the overnight, which was a sheet of
coming day’s entries with ads for nightclubs, steak houses, and
accounting services printed on the back. The community also had a
post office. Unlike the real post office, this series of 4-inch by
5-inch boxes sat outside the racing secretary’s office in the
administrative office of the track.

Aside from serving as a mailbox with official
business between the track and a trainer, this post office was a
source of contact that ranged from messages from a stable hand to
his employer, notes from track administrators to trainers, media
inquiries, and occasionally notes from one trainer to another.

The post office was one place left behind in
the digital world. Although trainers had migrated to email and
text, the post office was still a main form of communication.

The boxes were stacked sixteen rows high and
twenty rows across. The names of the trainers were marked with
masking tape at the bottom of each box. At the start of the meet,
they were in alphabetical order based on stall requests. By the end
of the meet, new names were pasted over the old names, and for all
but cryptographers there was no semblance of alphabetical
order.

The post office was a high traffic area, with
most trainers dropping by after morning workouts, between races or
at end of day. The racing secretary’s office hummed most hours of
the day with new condition books being formed, trainer complaints
being registered, and an endless happy dance being done when any
media types bothered to poke their heads around.

There was one time when the hallway by the
racing secretary’s office was vacant. That was post time.

When horses were called to the post, the
staff, secretaries, and officials all stopped what they were doing
and walked to the balcony to watch the race. People only worked in
this industry if they loved horses. It made no sense otherwise.

And those who loved horses wanted one
thing—to watch them run. So when horses were called to the post,
everyone from the racing office went to the balcony.

That’s exactly what Raven knew and exactly
what he counted on. He had seen them just walk away from their
desks, hang up the phones, and move to the balcony.

Raven waited until they were all gone, then
he slipped in through the stairwell entrance and walked to the post
office. In each mail slot he inserted the same letter. He did it
quickly, like a blackjack dealer firing out cards.

A blackjack dealer wearing latex gloves, that
is.

Then he disappeared.

Chapter 6

Opening day—there was nothing like
it in the world.

Dan jogged from the parking lot toward the
turnstiles. The deposition ran just over five hours. Dan would have
stayed all night. He owed that to his clients, and his work always
came first. But since he was defending the depo, he just needed the
testimony to bear out and hold his case together. Mission
accomplished—and now he was free to catch the last half of the
opening day card.

He quickly traded bills with the program
vendor and ripped open his treasure map. For a short twelve weeks,
the circus was in his backyard, and he wasn’t going to miss it.

Dreams took flight on opening day—renewal,
opportunity, and the chance to be a winner. Today was a fresh
start. He took a deep breath as he strode toward the paddock on the
backside of the grandstand. Memories of long shots hit and photo
finishes won filled his senses.

Dan was seven years old when Uncle Van
brought him to the track for the first time. He sat in the car
while Van went inside the grandstand to bet; then, they would stand
near the rail and watch the races. When he’d gotten the hang of it,
Dan started making his own selections. He told Van to bet the
purple one.

The silks were his singular means to tell one
contestant from another. Numbers weren’t a challenge for him, but
the beauty of the jockey’s silks and the majesty of the horses
captured his imagination.

“Did you bet the purple one, Uncle Van? You
bet the purple one?” Dan pleaded. Van was a proud handicapper. The
purple one was 25-1.

“You got the purple one, Dan-o.” Of course,
he didn’t bet it. It was Dan’s first lesson in “booking” bets.

Dan screamed at the top of his lungs as they
came rushing through the stretch. The purple one was going to the
lead and pulling away. Dan jumped up and down, pumping his fists in
the air. Some other railbirds congratulated the boy on his big
winner. Van gave the railbirds a sheepish smile and muttered
something about beginner’s luck.

They shuffled back toward the car. Van
turned, checked the tote board, and confirmed that none of his
tickets could be cashed. He tussled Dan’s hair, then handed his
program and losing tickets to him. “We’ll get ’em next time,
Dan-o.”

Uncle Van and Dan were late getting back home
for dinner. The two had gone out to pick up some mulch from the
gardening center and had been gone nearly three hours.

Aunt Frannie pulled Uncle Van into the dining
room and lectured him in a stern whisper. “What were you thinking?
Taking the boy to the racetrack? Sakes almighty, if Jean knew you’d
done that, she’d never let Danny come back.”

Dan scrambled up the back stairway to his
room with the worthless pari-mutuel tickets and the day’s racing
program. At that age he didn’t care about the business side of
racing. He didn’t understand gambling or the economics. He didn’t
know the roles of the people involved. The only thing Dan knew for
sure was when those animals ran past, his heart nearly came out of
his chest. It took his breath away.

Uncle Van filled a huge gap in the boy’s
life. Dan had been five when his dad died. Heart attack—he just
dropped on his way to the parking lot from his office in
Clarendon.

Dan didn’t understand what happened at the
time. He just knew he never saw him again. Dan had to wear fancy
clothes a lot, and everyone was sad. The life insurance kept his
mom and him in good shape for a year or so, but eventually she had
to get a job.

She was able to get a position in the
secretarial pool at the Central Intelligence Agency. It sounded
cooler than it was. “The Firm,” as it was known in the D.C. area,
had prestige and allure as a place of intrigue and mystery. For his
mom it was just a job. She worked hard and made plenty of friends,
but being a single mom and working full-time was a constant drain
on her.

Fortunately, his mom’s sister, Frannie,
bought a house in the same neighborhood. They used to joke about
how “lucky” they were to find their dream home two blocks away. Dan
eventually knew better. Frannie and Van weren’t wealthy, but
Frannie knew his mom would need the help, so they moved nearby.
That way, Dan could go to Frannie and Van’s after school, have a
home-cooked meal, and do school work while his mom kept up her
hours at work.

Frannie and Van didn’t have kids. So despite
losing his dad, Dan ended up with a family and a half. Van taught
him how to throw a football, how to ride a bike, how to deal with
bullies, and, a few years later, how to pick the ponies.

Chapter 7

A few steps past the kiosk where he
bought his program, Dan spotted the boy with the limp and tattered
ball cap sitting on the top railing of the whitewashed fence
surrounding the paddock. From where the boy was sitting, he could
see the entire paddock and be near the horses as they departed
through the tunnel to the front of the racetrack.

The incident from Crok’s kitchen the previous
day haunted Dan, and the memory created an instant buzz kill for
his opening day euphoria. His failure to assist the boy was one
thing, but the behavior by the three men was barbaric. What caused
them to pick on someone as small and unimposing as the boy with the
limp? Sure, he was different, but his problem was that he was also
weak.

Jungle animals don’t attack the different;
they attack the weak. They also don’t attack a gathering; they
attack loners.

Being different, weak, and alone, the boy
would continue to be an easy target for those punks. The backside
was a society within a society. It was unforgiving. It was the Wild
West.

Paranoia and greed drove action. Respect was
carved from dominance. Jealousy was borne from fear. Oddly, though,
the men feared the boy. If he could do this job well, what did it
say about them? Better to run him off. So, they lashed out in fear.
By minimizing the boy, they elevated themselves. It was natural
selection. If left unabated, it would run its logical course.

Dan couldn’t erase what had happened the day
before, but just maybe he could alter the landscape of the
jungle.

He tapped the boy on the leg. “Hey, how you
doing?”

The boy didn’t look at him, just said, “Fine”
in a quiet voice, like he wasn’t sure anyone was actually talking
to him.