Murder at the Racetrack (3 page)

But those were just estimates. They might wind up selling for quite a bit less, or a good deal more.

Keller wanted them.

•    •    •

Going Postal got off to a slow start, but Keller knew that was to be expected. The horse liked to come from behind. And in
fact he did rally, and was running third at one point, fading in the stretch and finishing seventh in a field of nine. As
the little man had predicted, the Two and Five horses had both gone out in front, and had both been overtaken, though not
by Going Postal. The winner, a dappled horse named Doggen Katz, paid $19.20.

“Son of a bitch,” the little man said. “I almost had him. The only thing I did wrong was decide to bet on a different horse.”

•    •    •

What he needed, Keller decided, was fifty thousand dollars. That way he could go as high as twenty-five for #2 and fifteen
for #17 and, after buyer’s commission, still have a few dollars left for expenses and other stamps.

Was he out of his mind? How could a little piece of perforated paper less than an inch square be worth $25,000? How could
two of them be worth a man’s life?

He thought about it and decided it was just a question of degree. Unless you planned to use it to mail a letter, any expenditure
for a stamp was basically irrational. If you could swallow a gnat, why gag at a camel? A hobby, he suspected, was irrational
by definition. As long as you kept it in proportion, you were all right.

And he was managing that. He could, if he wanted, mortgage his apartment. Bankers would stand in line to lend him fifty grand,
since the apartment was worth ten times that figure. They wouldn’t ask him what he wanted the money for, either, and he’d
be free to spend every dime of it on the two Martinique stamps.

He didn’t consider it, not for a moment. It would be nuts, and he knew it. But what he did with a windfall was something else,
and it didn’t matter, anyway, because there wasn’t going to be any windfall. You didn’t need a weatherman, he thought, to
note that the wind was not blowing. There was no wind, and there would be no windfall, and someone else could mount the Martinique
overprints in his album. It was a shame, but—

The phone rang.

Dot said, “Keller, I just made a pitcher of iced tea. Why don’t you come up here and help me drink it?”

•    •    •

In the fifth race, there was a horse named Happy Trigger and another named Hit the Boss. If Going Postal had resonated with
his hobby, these seemed to suggest his profession. He mentioned them to the little fellow. “I sort of like these two,” he
said. “But I don’t know which one I like better.”

“Wheel them,” the man said, and explained that Keller should buy two Exacta tickets, Four-Seven and Seven-Four. That way Keller
would only collect if the two horses finished first and second. But, since the tote board indicated long odds on each of them,
the potential payoff was a big one.

“What would I have to bet?” Keller asked him. “Four dollars? Because I’ve only been betting two dollars a race.”

“You want to keep it to two dollars,” his friend said, “just bet it one way. Thing is, how are you going to feel if you bet
the Four-Seven and they finish Seven-Four?”

•    •    •

“It’s right up your alley,” Dot told him. “Comes through another broker, so there’s a good solid firewall between us and the
client. And the broker’s reliable, and if the client was a corporate bond he’d be rated triple-A.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Keller,” she said, “what makes you think there’s a catch?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But there is, isn’t there?”

She frowned. “The only catch,” she said, “if you want to call it that, is there might not be a job at all.”

“I’d call that a catch.”

“I suppose.”

“If there’s no job,” he said, “why did the client call the broker, and why did the broker call you, and what am I doing out
here?”

Dot pursed her lips, sighed. “There’s this horse,” she said.

•    •    •

The fifth race was reasonably exciting. Bunk Bed Betty, a big brown horse with a black mane, led all the way, only to be challenged
in the stretch and overtaken at the wire by a thirty-to-one shot named Hypertension.

Hit the Boss was dead last, and which made him the only horse that Happy Trigger beat.

Keller’s new friend got very excited toward the end of the race, and showed a ten-dollar Win ticket on Hypertension. “Oh,
look at that,” he said when they posted the payoff. “Gets me even for the day, plus yesterday and the day before. That was
Alvie Jurado on Hypertension, and didn’t he ride a gorgeous race there?”

“It was exciting,” Keller allowed.

“A lot more exciting with ten bucks on that sweetie’s nose. Sorry about your Exacta. I guess it cost you four bucks.”

Keller gave a shrug that he hoped was ambiguous. In the end, he’d been uncomfortable betting four dollars, and unable to decide
which way to bet his usual two dollars. So he hadn’t bet anything. There was nothing wrong with that, as a matter of fact
he’d saved himself two dollars, or maybe four, but he’d feel like a piker admitting as much to a man who’d just won over three
hundred dollars.

•    •    •

“The horse’s name is Kissimmee Dudley,” Dot told him, “and he’s running in the seventh race at Belmont Saturday. It’s the
feature race, and the word is that Dudley hasn’t got a prayer.”

“I don’t know much about horses.”

“They’ve got four legs,” she said, “and if the one you bet on comes in ahead of the others, you make money. That’s as much
as I know about them, but I know something about Kissimmee Dudley. Our client thinks he’s going to win.”

“I thought you said he didn’t have a prayer.”

“That’s the word. Our client doesn’t see it that way.”

“Oh?”

“Evidently Dudley’s a better horse than anybody realizes,” she said, “and they’ve been holding him back, waiting for the right
race. That way they’ll get long odds and be able to clean up. And, just so nothing goes wrong, the other jockeys are getting
paid to make sure they don’t finish ahead of Dudley.”

“The race is fixed,” Keller said.

“That’s the plan.”

“But?”

“But a plan is what things don’t always go according to, Keller, which is probably a good thing, because otherwise the phone
would never ring. You want some more iced tea?”

“No, thanks.”

“They’ll have the race on Saturday, and Dudley’ll run. And if he wins you get two thousand dollars.”

“For what?”

“For standing by. For making yourself available.

“I think I get it,” he said. “And if Kissimmee Dudley should happen to lose—where’d they come up with a name like that, do
you happen to know?”

“Not a clue.”

“If he loses,” Keller said, “I suppose I have work to do.”

She nodded.

“The jockey who beats him?”

“Is toast,” she said, “and you’re the toaster.”

•    •    •

None of the horses in the sixth race had a name that meant anything to Keller. Then again, picking them by name hadn’t done
him much good so far. This time he looked at the odds. A long shot wouldn’t win, he decided, and a favorite wouldn’t pay enough
to make it worthwhile, so maybe the answer was to pick something in the middle. The Five horse, Mogadishy, was pegged at six-to-one.

He got in line, thinking. Of course, sometimes a long shot came in. Take the preceding race, for instance, with its big payoff
for Keller’s OTB buddy. There was a long shot in this race, and it would pay a lot more than the twelve bucks he’d win on
his six-to-one shot.

On the other hand, no matter what horse he bet on, the return on his two-dollar bet wasn’t going to make any real difference
to him. And it would be nice to cash a winning ticket for a change.

“Sir?”

He put down his two dollars and bet the odds-on favorite to show.

•    •    •

Dot lived in White Plains, in a big old Victorian house on Taunton Place. She gave him a ride to the train station, and a
little over an hour later he was back in his apartment, looking once again at the Bulger & Calthorpe catalog. If Kissimmee
Dudley ran and lost, he’d have a job to do. And his fee for the job would be just enough to fill the two spaces in his album.
And, since the horse was racing at Belmont, it stood to reason that all of the jockeys lived within easy commuting distance
of the Long Island racetrack. Keller wouldn’t have to get on a plane to find his man.

If Kissimmee Dudley won, Keller got to keep the two-thousand-dollar standby fee. That was a decent amount of money for not
doing a thing, and there were times when he’d have been happy to see it play out that way.

But this wasn’t one of those times. He really wanted those stamps. If the horse lost, well, he’d go out and earn them. But
what if the damned horse won?

•    •    •

The sixth race ended with Pass the Gas six lengths ahead of the field. Keller cashed his ticket, and ran into his friend,
who’d been talking with a fellow who bore a superficial resemblance to Jerry Orbach.

“Saw you in line to get paid,” the little man said. “What did you have, the Exacta or the Trifecta?”

“I don’t really understand those fancy bets,” Keller admitted. “I just put my money on Pass the Gas.”

“Paid even money, didn’t he? That’s not so bad.”

“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.”