Riders Down (12 page)

Chapter Twenty

“Darlene, bring me a couple of corned beef on rye. Two pastramis on onion rolls. Sides of potato salad, cole slaw. A jumbo shrimp cocktail, the big fruit salad. And another pitcher of margaritas. No salt, right? Thanks, darling,” smiled David Zimmer, otherwise known as The Fount, as he settled himself into a poolside chair at Las Vegas’ Delano Tower Hotel.

The order he’d placed was the first full meal of the day for The Fount, a six-foot-three, one-hundred-and-thirty-eight pound metabolic marvel who ate relentlessly in such quantities without gaining an ounce. Darlene, the waitperson who often served The Fount, gritted her teeth as she wrote down the order. So depressed at missing the cut at Hooters that she had subsequently packed on fifteen pounds but still affected a version of the well-known costume, Darlene nearly split her shorts as she pivoted away from The Fount’s table. It was 7 a.m. under a bright blue Nevada sky, the temperature reaching for eighty degrees. While taking the order from this thirty-five-year-old beanpole, Darlene never blinked, for she had waited on The Fount many times before and seen him demolish portions usually seen only on National Football League training tables. “This freak eats like that five or six times a day,” Darlene told friends. “He’s like a human landfill. He’s a good tipper, though. And he’s supposed to be the smartest guy in town.”

As the sun began to create steam from small poolside puddles left by the hoses of the janitorial crew, The Fount spread his
Racing Daily
on his umbrella-sheltered table. Then he opened his briefcase and laid out a thick sheaf of sheets containing his figures for the day’s horses races scheduled at tracks across the U. S. and Canada. After his usual ten hours of preliminary work handicapping the numerous cards, Fount had arrived at the tipping point of his day, when he would make his final decisions on which horses to bet, for how much, and in what combinations in events that would be conducted, as he liked to put, “on both sides of the Continental Divide.” He smiled in anticipation of the early morning “lunch” he had just ordered. He had breakfasted four hours earlier in his Delano Tower suite, and he was ravenous. Dinner for him would be at noon. The Fount labored primarily at night, made his bets in mid-morning, slept four hours, then reviewed the race results he’d videotaped on his twelve big-screen television sets and began to calculate the next set of figures. It was a seven-day-per-week work routine designed to grind most mortals into sawdust. The Fount thrived on it.

Years earlier, as a sixteen-year-old sophomore at MIT, he had read A. J. Liebling’s book
The Earl of Louisiana
, about one-time Louisiana Governor Earl Long, one of the more colorful politicians in a state wonderfully notorious for producing them. Long loved playing the horses and, each morning on a long table in his state house office, would lay out side-by-side various editions of the
Racing Daily
containing the records of horses running everywhere in the country. After making numerous picks, Long would call his bookies and bet. “If he’s betting a bookie in Louisiana,” Liebling quoted one of the governor’s staffers, Long “puts it on the tab…But if he wins he has a state trooper over at the bookie’s joint within a half-hour to collect.”

This, wrote Liebling, “was the life I had always wanted to live.”

That line of Liebling’s made The Fount chuckle whenever he thought of it. He had managed to achieve an existence reminiscent of the one-time Louisiana governor’s. He stretched expansively as he thought of the day ahead. He would never govern any state, but as the widely recognized kingpin of race book betting in the world’s gambling capital, The Fount had found the life he’d always wanted to lead. He lived at a “comped” rate in a first-class hotel only twenty floors above his “office,” the room created for him by the hotel’s owners, who also rebated a goodly chunk of his wagering because of its huge volume. This wasn’t Earl Long’s Louisiana, but it was about as good as it got for a horse player in America. The Fount was convinced that Liebling would have approved.

Dave Zimmer had been tagged The Fount—as in Fount of Information—in grade school when, as a six-year-old advanced to third grade, he had first revealed an amazing ability to answer even the most trivial of trivia questions. Facts, obvious or arcane, seemed to permanently attach themselves to his active brain. Eventually, he had chosen to aim his formidable mental arsenal at betting on horses.

This decision by The Fount came after he had graduated summa cum laude from MIT with a double major (mathematics and modern European literature), then spent three and a half lucrative but increasingly boring years working as a stock analyst for a major New York City brokerage house. The Fount was introduced to horse racing at Aqueduct and Belmont by Jeff Henry, a fellow stock analyst whose father owned horses.

The Fount found himself to be intrigued by racing—not only by the beauty of the athletic events unspooling before him on those weekend afternoons at the New York tracks, but by the challenge of deducing how to identify and wager on winners. After months of intensive study of racing history, including its voluminous literature devoted to “how to beat the races,” he spent more months watching and re-watching thousands of videotaped races. Then The Fount constructed his own system of betting, based primarily on “speed figures” of his own devising plus such elements as the type of shoes worn by horses, wind factors, and a sophisticated deconstruction of trainer patterns.

The Fount realized he was onto something after his first two weekends of betting following his intensive study. Two more months of daily plays confirmed that initial impression and bolstered his bank account resoundingly. This was going so well he began to feel constrained by his brokerage house job, which allowed him to be in action only an hour or so per day at a nearby off-track betting shop. Finally, Zimmer announced to his astounded parents, Dr. Nate Zimmer and Naomi, that their only child was going to become a full-time horse player based in Las Vegas. “No, I’m not going to be a full-time
gambler
,” he patiently explained. “Gambling is for dummies cemented in front of slot machines, or howling around roulette wheels, where eventually they leave what money they brought. I’m going to make a living as professional horse player. There’s a difference.”

That was a dozen years earlier, and The Fount had never regretted his decision. So proficient had he proved to be at picking winners that the Delano Tower management set up a special private room complete with television sets and his own personal mutuel clerk. Because the Vegas casinos no longer operated as independent bookies handling horses races, having chosen to send all monies bet with them into the common pools at the racetracks, the casino managers loved all horse bettors, winners or losers, since—like the racetracks—they received a percentage of each dollar bet. The bettors were all competing against each other, not against the casinos, which simply provided the mechanism for their action while taking a nice layer of cream directly off the top. The bigger the bettor, the larger the casino’s total share. Since The Fount bet thousands of dollars each day, the owners of the Delano Towers treated him royally. The fact that he had chosen to set up shop at their place gave them a healthy publicity boost among the knowing players who trekked to, or lived in, what author Tom Wolfe once termed “middle-class America’s Versailles.”

With his betting research laid out on the poolside table, The Fount sipped at his margarita. Then he sat back in his chair for a few moments, relishing the feel of the morning sun on his face, the challenge of the day to come. He was a happy man.

When his cell phone rang a few minutes later, The Fount checked its caller ID. Clicking on the phone he said, “Matt, my man. What’s up?”

Matt O’Connor replied, “I’ve got one for you. Ready? Baseball trivia. Who was the only man to die as a result of an injury suffered in a major league baseball game?”

Said The Fount dismissively, “Are you kidding me? Ray Chapman, hit in the head by a fastball. August 16, 1920. He was a shortstop for the Cleveland Indians.”

Matt said, “I’m not done yet. Who threw the pitch that killed Chapman?”

The Fount sighed again. “Carl Mays. Come on, Matt, who do you think you’re dealing with here?”

“I’m not done,” Matt repeated. “After poor Chapman was carted off the field, Mr. Smart Guy, who did they put in the game to run for him?”

The Fount smiled appreciatively before saying, “Not bad. Not bad. Harry Lunte ran for Chapman. How’s
that
?”

“You son of a gun,” Matt said admiringly.

“Now,” Matt continued, “let’s talk about why I’m calling. I need to come and see you for some advice and counsel.”

“I’ll vacuum the welcome mat, Matt. Are you bringing Maggie?”

“Nobody—not even me, whom she justifiably adores and reveres—
brings
Ms. Maggie Collins anywhere. I
invited
her to accompany me. She declined—she’s got a string of horses to train.”

“So I’ll vacuum half the welcome mat. How long you staying?”

“One day—most of which I need to spend with you.”

“You can use the guest bedroom at Chez Zimmer. I hope you’ve got some good Chi Town stories for me.”

***

Matt had first met Dave Zimmer at a Las Vegas handicapping “world championship” that he was covering for the
Racing Daily
in the summer of 2000.

Not being involved as a contestant, Matt found himself bored in this sea of seriousness: hundreds of dedicated horse players lured from all over the country by the chance at a $100,000 contest winner’s share. By the end of the first day, as Matt told Maggie on the phone that night, he was “convinced they could run J-Lo naked up and down the aisles here and these guys wouldn’t take their eyes off the fifth at Far Grounds.”

After three days the contest winner was declared: Dave Zimmer, aka The Fount. Matt’s post-contest interview with Zimmer had gotten off to a rocky start. The two men were in the casino’s private hospitality room. A waitress asked for their drink orders.

“Jack Daniels on the rocks with a splash,” Matt answered.

Zimmer said, “I’ll have a Daniels and Coke.”

Matt’s distaste for The Fount’s drink order was evident. “Daniels and Coke,” he snapped. “That’s a disgrace. Like mixing Moet champagne and Mountain Dew.”

The Fount’s face flushed. “I’m not the only guy who likes Daniels and Coke,” he said defensively. “I first heard about it when I was reading a magazine article about Roy Hofheinz, the guy who built the Astrodome. He drank Daniels and Coke.”

Matt said, “I don’t care if Roy Hofheinz, or Roy Rogers, or Trigger drank that mix. It’s crap. It’s a desecration.

“This,” he continued, tapping his half-empty glass, “is booze that deserves respect.” He took a long, respectful swallow.

“You ever hear of Bing Crosby’s bandleader?” Matt continued. “Phil Harris? A major league drinker.”

“Married to Alice Faye,” The Fount shot back. “My mother was a big fan of hers.”

“Right. Now, I’m going to tell you a story about this good bourbon. One time Crosby had a concert date in New Orleans. The local paper sent out a rookie feature writer, a young woman, recent j-school grad, to interview him in his hotel suite. It goes well—Crosby’s shot a good round of golf that morning, he’s in a fine mood. As the interview concludes and the young reporter is preparing to leave, she says, ‘By the way, Mr. Crosby, where is Mr. Harris? I understand he’s not in town yet.’

“‘True, true,’ says Crosby, playing it straight. “‘Phil can’t get here until tomorrow. Coming down from New York, he made a little detour into Tennessee. Said he had something very important to do there.’

“Naturally, the reporter’s curiosity is piqued. ‘That’s interesting,’ she says, ‘do you have any idea what he was doing in Tennessee?’

“‘Oh, yes, my dear,’ says Crosby, ‘I know exactly what Phil was doing in Tennessee. He went to Lynchburg—to lay a wreath on Jack Daniels’ grave.’

“This poor girl bought this fable,” Matt laughed. “It got right past her editor and was in the paper the next day. And even though what Crosby said Harris was doing was apocryphal, it emphasizes my previous point—Jack Daniels deserves to be treated with utmost respect. Not with Coke.” He emptied his glass for emphasis.

“Why are you taking up my time with this?” said The Fount impatiently. “What do you want?”

“I want your story for my paper—your background, how you got started handicapping horses, your lifestyle. But first I’ve got to ask you something else. My paper carries countless tout ads from people offering to sell their selections for money. As sharp as you must be—you know, to win a contest like this—why haven’t you started your own tout service?”

The Fount clunked his empty glass down on the table. “Why,” he asked, “should I tell anybody what I know when I’m the only one who knows it?”

Matt looked at him with new respect. “I can understand that,” he said. “I once asked one of these tout sheet kingpins that same question. Know what bullshit he came back with? Said he was dying of cancer, had just months to live, and therefore wouldn’t have enough time left to make all the winning bets he needed to make in order to finish paying for his grandchildren’s college educations. He looked me straight in the eye when he was telling me this. That was nearly eight years ago. He’s still in business, as healthy and crooked as ever.”

A grimace appeared on the Fount’s long, thin face. “I know the old bastard you’re talking about,” he said. “He’d steal a homeless cripple’s only blanket.”

“Exactly,” Matt said, laughing with him.

More Jack Daniels had followed that night in Las Vegas, and a friendship was formed. When The Fount came to Chicago for a big race, he always called Matt and they met for dinner. Matt, in turn, recognized The Fount as a valuable source to have on the Las Vegas scene, and he consulted him often.

This morning, after telling Matt he’d have him picked up by a driver at the airport the next morning, The Fount hung up the phone. He again stretched his lanky frame. His food order arrived, courtesy of two busboys being supervised by Darlene. Once the spread was laid out before him, he fell to with a vengeance.