by Otto Penzler
“The expert handicapper explained that a winner was a sure thing. So I borrowed $200 and handed it over to my bookie. My horse came in second and I lost everything. This scenario taught me several important life lessons. One was that gambling is a lot of fun but you have to be a billionaire or an idiot to do it regularly. The other is that not everything in the world is exactly as it seems—especially the integrity of the racetrack. This revelation made it evident that racetracks and the people who inhabit that world are the perfect background for stories of lying, stealing, cheating, and any other crime you can conjure. Here, then, is the field for MURDER AT THE RACETRACK—that rare field in which everyone is a winner.”
—Otto Penzler, from the Introduction
PRAISE FOR DANGEROUS WOMEN,
EDITED BY OTTO PENZLER
“I’m not usually given to superlatives, but Dangerous Women may be the best, most varied, and colorful mystery anthology of all time. ”
—Janet Evanovich
“A brilliant anthology.”
—Robert B. Parker
“Wow, what memorable dames! What terrific short stories! Dangerous Women is a winning collection.”
—Susan Isaacs
Copyright
The events and characters in this book are fictitious. Certain real locations and public figures are mentioned, but all other characters and events described in the book are totally imaginary.
Copyright of the collection © 2006 by Otto Penzler
Introduction copyright © 2006 by Otto Penzler
“Keller By a Nose” copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Block; “The Return of the Thin White Dude… Screaming” copyright © 2006 by Ken Bruen; “Zuppe Inglese” copyright © 2006 by Jan Burke; “Yellow Mama’s Long Weekend” copyright © 2006 by Lorenzo Carcaterra; “That Kind of Nag” copyright © 2006 by Max Allan Collins; “The Odds” copyright © 2006 by Thomas H. Cook; “The Hustle” copyright © 2006 by Pat Jordan; “The Great, the Good and the Not-So-Good” copyright © 2006 by H.R.F. Keating; “The Cover Story Is Always a lie” copyright © 2006 by John Lescroart; “Raindancer” copyright © 2006 by Michael Malone; “The Long Shot” copyright © 2006 by Michele Rebecca Martinez Campbell; “Meadowlands” copyright © 2006 by Joyce Carol Oates; “Hotwalking” copyright © 2006 by Julie Smith; “Pinwheel” copyright © 2006 by Scott Wolven
All rights reserved.
Grand Central Publishing
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New York, NY 10017
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The Grand Central Publishing name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56517-2
For Elmore Leonard
A great hard-boiled writer
A great soft-boiled friend
Contents
COPYRIGHT
INTRODUCTION
KELLER BY A NOSE
THE RETURN THIN WHITE DUDE… SCREAMING
ZUPPA INGLESE
YELLOW MAMA’S LONG WEEKEND
THAT KIND OF NAG
THE ODDS
THE HUSTLE
THE GREAT. THE GOOD AND THE NOT-SO-GOOD
THE COVER STROY IS ALWAYS A LIE
RAINDANCER
THE LONG SHOT
MEADOWLANDS
HOTWALKING
PINWHEEL
INTRODUCTION
Otto Penzler
What is it about horse racing that makes it seem so out of kilter? Here we have exquisitely beautiful animals upon whom are lavished all the care that most men don’t even offer their wives. It ’s an outdoor sport, mainly reserved for warm sunny days, with bright green lawns in the infield and leafy old trees beyond.
Yet if there’s a dirtier sport than horse racing, one with more fixes than Needle Park (and let’s get this straight—professional wrestling has as much to do with sports as Dennis Rodman has to do with splitting the atom), I have yet to discover it. Even boxing, which has the reputation of being crooked, is purer than a seven-year-old Pakistani bride compared with “the Sport of Kings.”
There are good reasons for an owner to want his horse to lose a race. The more times a big old stallion steps into the gate and comes up short, the longer the odds are for the next race. A sudden victory with long odds can pay off very handsomely if a clever fellow has placed a substantial bet on that very outcome.
It’s almost impossible to count the ways in which an owner (or a trainer, not to mention the occasional jockey) can stop a horse from winning. Various chemicals can slow down a horse, and so can the wrong food. A long run in the middle of the night probably won’t have a positive effect on a horse’s stamina the next afternoon. You don’t want to know what a sponge shoved way up a horse’s nose will do to the poor critter. There are other methods of killing a racer’s chances of a first-place finish, some a bit too uncomfortable to describe here, but trust me—there are a lot of them.
Here’s a little story that I promise is true, but I’ll have to bypass a name for obvious reasons. About a thousand years ago, shordy after the invention of movable type, I worked in the sports department of the New York Daily News. An expert handicapper had a desk in the corner and his picks ran in the paper every day. He was heading off for a vacation and asked me for a favor: Would I handicap the races at Aqueduct for the next two weeks? This way there would be no interruption in the handicapping service, and bettors who relied on his picks wouldn’t go into withdrawal.
Well, I explained, I didn’t think I could pick the winner of the race if it was Secretariat running against a mule. And all that arcane stuff about mudders (nothing to do with fadders) and maidens (who could also be male) was an alien language, so suggesting that I pass myself off as an expert seemed as far-fetched as my dream of playing centerfield for the New York Yankees. “No problem,” he assured me. “I’ll teach you all about it tomorrow,” he said. Which he did.
He went on vacation and I had a merry old time picking the win-place-show results of every race for the next couple of weeks. When he returned from his fun in the sun, we tabulated the results, and to the amazement of one and all (especially me), I had amassed a better winning percentage than he had. Then again, Ray Charles throwing darts at the Racing Form would probably have done better than either of us.
Still, he was delighted and grateful that I hadn’t embarrassed him and he decided to thank me by telling me to bet on a certain horse a few days later. Understand, I was making about $75 a week at the time, frequently skipping even simple meals a couple of times a week because I couldn’t afford both lunch and a book I just had to have. So I bet two bucks on the horse he told me about, and sure enough, I won about eight dollars and was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. When he approached me the next day, beaming, he asked how much I’d won, and I told him. He practically threw me out the window. “I give you a winner,” he shouted, “and you bet a lousy two bucks?” Well, I had figured, if I can pick them better than he could, just how much did I want to risk?
He patiently explained that when he gave me a winner, it wasn’t exactly because he had handicapped it. It was a sure thing. So he told me he” d give me another, but this time I should put down a real bet. A week or so later, he gave me another horse. I scraped together what I could and bet twenty dollars this time. I won nearly ninety dollars (more than a week’s pay!) and felt like John D. Rockefeller (or Scrooge McDuck, to make a literary reference).
The next day, we replayed the same scene. He was again outraged at my gutlessness and told me so. After calling me lots of not very nice names, most of which
described in colorful and comprehensive detail my lack of brains as well as heart, he told me he’d give me one more, but then that was it. By now I was getting the hang of it, so I borrowed $200 and handed it over to my favorite bookie and advised him to lay it off (pass the bet along to another bookie) since this was a sure thing and I didn’t want to see him lose all the money that I was going to rake in. He told me he’d risk it. Naturally, and you saw this coming, my horse came in second and I lost everything I’d previously won and a whole lot more. Next day he shrugged and said you can’t win ’em all.
This scenario taught me several important life lessons. One is that gambling is really a lot of fun, but you have to be a billionaire or an idiot to do it regularly. The other is that not everything in the world is exactly as it seems, including—and, perhaps, especially—the integrity of the racetrack.
As a result, this revelation made it evident that racetracks and the people who inhabit that world—most of whom, I’m absolutely certain, are utterly fair, honest and aboveboard (which is my moment of political correctness for the month)—are the perfect background for stories of lying, stealing, cheating and any other crime you can conjure.
Here, then, is the field for Murder at the Racetrack—that rare field in which everyone is a winner.
Lawrence Block has received the two greatest honors that the mystery world can bestow: the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and the Diamond Dagger from the (British) Crime Writers’ Association, both for lifetime achievement.
Ken Bruen’s twenty novels are among the darkest in the history of crime fiction. He has been nominated for an Edgar and won the Shamus award from the Private Eye Writers of America for The Guards, which introduced his Galway-based P.I., Jack Taylor.
Jan Burke won the Edgar for Best Novel in 2000 for Bones, an Irene Kelly novel. She is the founder of the Crime Lab Project, which aims to give greater support for forensic science in America. She has served on the National Board of Directors of MWA and was the president of the Southern California chapter.
Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of six books including the controversial Sleepers, which became a New York Times number one bestseller in hardcover and paperback, as well as a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Kevin Bacon and Minnie Driver. He is the producer and writer of NBC’s Law and Order.
Max Allan Collins is the author of more than thirty novels, many featuring Nate Heller, all of whose adventures feature real-life people and some element of actual history. He has made films with Patty McCormack and Mickey Spillane, and wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip for many years.
Thomas H. Cook has been nominated for Edgars five times in three different categories (True Crime, Paperback Original and Best Novel), winning the Best Novel of the Year award in 1997 for The Chatham School Affair. Several of his novels have been filmed in Japan.
Pat Jordan is the author of more than a thousand stories and articles for such publications as The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy and Harper’s. He has also written eleven books, one of which, A False Spring, was hailed by Time as one of “the best and truest books about baseball.”
H.R.F. Keating is one of the Grand Old Men of mystery fiction. As one of Britain’s leading critics for more than half a century and the author of more than fifty books, he was given the Diamond Dagger by the (British) Crime Writers’ Association in 1996 for lifetime achievement.
John Lescroart is the author of sixteen crime novels, the last thirteen featuring Dismas Hardy (beginning with Dead Irish in 1989), which have become regulars on the bestseller lists. Hardy is named for Saint Dismas, who is the patron saint of thieves and criminals.
Michael Malone has written three mystery novels featuring the wealthy Justin Savile V and his boss, Police Chief Cuddy R. Mangum, plus the New York Times bestselling The Killing Club, based on the daytime drama series One Life to hive, of which he was the head writer. He won an Edgar for Best Short Story, “Red Clay,” in 1997.
Michele Martinez, like Melanie Vargas, the chief protagonist of her novel Most Wanted (the first of a series), was a federal prosecutor in New York City, serving as Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District, home to the biggest and richest drug gangs in America.
Joyce Carol Oates, a winner of the National Book Award as well as five other nominations, is the author of such best sellers as We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Arguably the greatest living writer in the world, she is the author of nearly a hundred books, including novels, short story collections, poetry, criticism, children’s literature and so forth.
Julie Smith has written twenty mystery novels, including five about a San Francisco lawyer, Rebecca Schwartz, who made her debut in Death Turns a Trick, and nine about Skip Langdon, a female New Orleans cop who was the heroine of the 1991 Edgar-winning New Orleans Mourning.
Scott Wolven has had stories selected for Best American Mystery Stories of the Year for four consecutive years—more appearances than any writer aside from Joyce Carol Oates. His first book, the short story collection Controlled Burn, was published in 2004 by Scribner.
Now we’re at the post and the bugler is raising the horn to his lips, so get ready for a great ride—and some terrifying moments as Murder at the Racetrack awaits.
—Otto Penzler
New York, July 2005
KELLER BY A NOSE
Lawrence Block
So who do you like in the third?”
Keller had to hear the question a second time before he realized it was meant for him. He turned, and a little guy in a Mets warm-up jacket was standing there, a querulous expression on his lumpy face.
Who did he like in the third? He hadn’t been paying any attention, and was stuck for a response. This didn’t seem to bother the guy, who answered the question himself.
“The Two horse is odds-on, so you can’t make any money betting on him. And the Five horse might have an outside chance, but he never finished well on turf. The Three, he’s okay at five furlongs, but at this distance? So I got to say I agree with you.”
Keller hadn’t said a word. What was there to agree with?
“You’re like me,” the fellow went on. “Not like one of these degenerates, has to bet every race, can’t go five minutes without some action. Me, sometimes I’ll come here, spend the whole day, not put two dollars down the whole time. I just like to breathe some fresh air and watch those babies run.”
Keller, who hadn’t intended to say anything, couldn’t help himself. He said, “Fresh air?”
“Since they gave the smokers a room of their own,” the little man said, “it’s not so bad in here. Excuse me, I see somebody I oughta say hello to.”
He walked off, and the next time Keller noticed him the guy was at the ticket window, placing a bet. Fresh air, Keller thought. Watch those babies run. It sounded good, until you took note of the fact that those babies were out at Belmont, running around a track in the open air, while Keller and the little man and sixty or eighty other people were jammed into a midtown storefront, watching the whole thing on television.
Keller, holding a copy of the Racing Form, looked warily around the OTB parlor. It was on Lexington at Forty-fifth Street, just up from Grand Central, and not much more than a five-minute walk from his First Avenue apartment, but this was his first visit. In fact, as far as he could tell, it was the first time he had ever noticed the place. He must have walked past it hundreds if not thousands of times over the years, but he’d somehow never registered it, which showed the extent of his interest in off-track betting.
Or on-track betting, or any betting at all. Keller had been to the track three times in his entire life. The first time he’d placed a couple of small bets—two dollars here, five dollars there. His horses had run out of the money, and he’d felt stupid. The other times he hadn’t even put a bet down.
He’d been to gambling casinos on several occasions, generally work related, and he’d never felt comfortable there. It was clear th
at a lot of people found the atmosphere exciting, but as far as Keller was concerned it was just sensory overload. All that noise, all those flashing lights, all those people chasing all that money. Keller, feeding a slot machine or playing a hand of blackjack to fit in, just wanted to go to his room and lie down.
Well, he thought, people were different. A lot of them clearly got something out of gambling. What some of them got, to be sure, was the attention of Keller or somebody like him. They’d lost money they couldn’t pay, or stolen money to gamble with, or had found some other way to make somebody seriously unhappy with them. Enter Keller, and, sooner rather than later, exit the gambler.
For most gamblers, though, it was a hobby, a harmless pastime. And, just because Keller couldn’t figure out what they got out of it, that didn’t mean there was nothing there. Keller, looking around the OTB parlor at all those woulda-coulda-shoulda faces, knew there was nothing feigned about their enthusiasm. They were really into it, whatever it was.
And, he thought, who was he to say their enthusiasm was misplaced? One man’s meat, after all, was another man’s pots-son. These fellows, all wrapped up in Racing Form gibberish, would be hard put to make sense out of his Scott catalog. If they caught a glimpse of Keller, hunched over one of his stamp albums, a magnifying glass in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other, they’d most likely figure he was out of his mind. Why play with little bits of perforated paper when you could bet money on horses?
“They’re off!”
And so they were. Keller looked at the wall-mounted television screen and watched those babies run.
• • •
It started with stamps.
He collected worldwide, from the first postage stamp, Great Britain’s Penny Black and Two-Penny Blue of 1840, up to shordy after the end of World War II. (Just when he stopped depended upon the country. He collected most countries through 1949, but his British Empire issues stopped at 1952, with the death of George VI. The most recent stamp in his collection was over fifty years old.)