Mortal Lock

by Andrew Vachss

  I didn’t say anything. That’s the way things are, everywhere.

  “Used to be, you got a wino to cash a big ticket for you,” he said. “Ten-percenters, we called them, ’cause that’s the piece they got out of it. All they had to do was show a Social Security card. It got reported to the IRS, sure, but they didn’t take out the money off the top. You walked off with ninety percent, all cash.”

  I studied the tote board for a few minutes. “How come the show pool has so much money in it?” I asked him.

  “There’s a bridge-jumper in the house,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  The old man lit himself a smoke. “This is how it works. The more the bettors like any particular horse, the less it’s going to pay, understand? By law, the track has to pay at least $2.10 on each race, no matter what the odds. Now, you see the seven horse up there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look at those odds: one to nine. Only time you see something like that, the horse is a monster. The next race, you see it’s a Sire Stakes elimination, okay? There’s maybe fifty horses eligible for the final, so they break them into groups, then the winners get to race each other. See, on the program? There’s six of these races tonight. You with me so far?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s happening here is that the seven horse, Stephen’s Susie, she got put in with a bunch of stiffs. Those others don’t belong on the same track as her. Look at her lines: she’s already won a couple of hundred grand, see there? Next best filly to her has banked thirty-something and she had to run twice as many races to get even that much. Stephen’s Susie, she’s already gone in fifty-three. For a two-year-old trotting filly! Only one other horse in the field ever got below two flat, and that was at Woodbine, where they all fly. The next race, it’s going to be a slaughter.”

  “So, if everybody bets on her, it’s not going to pay anything?”

  “Not if you’re a ten dollar bettor, it won’t. But look at that board. Look at it close. When the odds get like that, you get the same $2.10 whether your horse comes in first, second, or third. So you play the monster to show, you’ve got the closest thing to a mortal lock you’ll ever see on a racetrack. Figure it that way, it’s a five percent return on your money in under two minutes. But that only works if you throw serious coin. You plunk down two, three hundred K, and, so long as the monster gets at least third, you get your stake back, plus ten, fifteen thousand profit.”

  “But what if the horse, I don’t know, breaks stride, like you said? Even a great horse wouldn’t win, then.”

  “That’s why they call them bridge-jumpers, kid.”

  7

  Back in my motel room, I studied the photographs they’d given me before I left.

  “This is him,” the man who’d hired me said. “He knows he’s marked, but the fucking rat’s a degenerate gambler—he has to play. And he’s gotta watch the action, see it with his own eyes. He’s not crazy enough to walk into a real casino, so we figure it’s got to be the track. This one, it’s got those slots, too. Sooner or later, he’s going to show.

  “So what you need is a reason to be there every night. And we’ve got that covered for you, too. You’re going to be a real hardcore gambler, the kind of guy who practically lives on the premises, never misses a day. After a while, you’re part of the scenery; nobody pays attention.”

  I didn’t say anything. That’s what people like him expect.

  “We might even get lucky with a heads-up,” he told me. “The only racehorses this little weasel knows anything about are the kind you rent by the hour. This Arnie guy, he’s all about flash. Never goes anywhere without full front. He picks the wrong whore to bring with him one night, we’ll get a call. That happens, you’ll get one, too. But don’t count on it, all right? Just study those photos; make sure you’ll know him if you see him.”

  I knew what they’d expect me to do with the photos after I was done studying. The man gave me half the money in front, like always. Said it was mine to keep even if I didn’t do the job. I knew that meant they had other people working the same job, but I didn’t ask any questions. That’s not my place—I’m a contract man, not a family member.

  So I put in a couple of months, seeing the old man two-three nights a week, just like he’d said. Some days, too—he told me the real pros never miss the baby races—two-year-olds racing for stakes their connections put up when they were born—or the Qualifiers—where horses coming in from another track have to prove they can go the course in under a certain time.

  You can’t bet on any of those races, but it’s the best place to get advance info. “Like scouting a farm team, see who’s going to be a star in a couple of years,” the old man said.

  He kept a notebook, and he made a separate section for each new horse he liked. Every time that horse would go after that, the old man would be there, making his notes.

  He showed me how to make a notebook of my own, but he never showed me what was in his—that wasn’t part of the deal.

  “Every handicapper’s got his own system,” he said. “And it all comes down to weight.”

  “I thought weight didn’t matter with trotters. You said it’s only the thoroughbreds who have to—”

  “Not the weight they pull,” he said. “The weight you put.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look, kid, you see this program?”

  “Sure.”

  “Got all kinds of information, if you take the time to learn how to read it. Most of the suckers who come here, they don’t even bother to do that, and that’s good, because they’re the ones we’re betting against, remember? But even if you learn to read the program perfect, even if you check the breeding books, read everything you can get your hands on, you’re still working with the same information anyone can get: Like how many times the horse has been out, how much money he’s won, his fastest time, what class he’s been in … right?”

  “I … guess. Sure. But, all that information, how do you know what piece is more important than another?”

  “That’s the trick!” the old man, said, like he was proud of me for figuring it out. “That’s the weight I was talking about. Some handicappers, they’re speed whores. Others, they go for horses that race better in the mud. Or take a drop in class.”

  “What about the breeding? You said there were books on it, so that’s real important, right?”

  “To some people, yeah. To them, bloodlines are everything. Me, I never went much by that. You got horses, you look up who their mother and father was, you’d think they’d be rockets. But they turn out to be duds, never even make it to a racetrack. Other ones, you never heard of any horse in their whole family tree, just a bunch of mutts. And they turn out to be world-beaters.”

  “What do you look for, then?”

  “Heart,” the old man said.

  “Where’s that on the program?”

  “It’s not supposed to be on the program.”

  “So how—?”

  “That’s mine,” the old man said. “I was asked to teach you the game, and I’m doing that. And one of the things you learn is, a real handicapper, he puts together a system that works, he don’t share it with anyone, ever. You ever watch those commercials on the TV in the middle of the night? The ones where this guy, he’s made a zillion dollars in real estate, now he’s going to show you how to do the same thing for a couple of hundred bucks?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You believe them?”

  “Come on.”

  “Let’s get something to eat,” the old man said.

  8

  “You don’t think you know enough yet?” the old man asked me.

  I’d been going to the track with him for more than three months straight. I’d moved around a few times, just in case anyone was paying attention. It’s easy for me to move, only takes an hour or so. I don’t own a lot of stuff.

  “No,” is all I said.

  “You got all the lingo down, now. You kn
ow how to read the program, how to bet, that’s more than ninety percent of the lame stugotz that hang around any track.”

  “But there’s more, right?”

  “Sure. There’s always more. Me, I’m still learning, picking stuff up.”

  “Okay, then.”

  He gave me a look, but he didn’t say anything. That night, we sat in his favorite place in the grandstand. “You know why this is the perfect spot?” he told me the first time we sat there. “You can see the action in the turns, on the backstretch, and coming home, too. That’s ’cause this is a half-mile track, get it?”

  “No. What difference could that make? I mean, they all run the same distance, right?”

  “Half-mile track means two circuits to get the whole mile in, okay? Two circuits, four turns.”

  “They’re not all like this one?”

  “Hell, no. Most of them are mile tracks, now. Like the fucking Meadowlands. Used to be a lot of five-eighths courses, too—that’d be three turns, real long stretch. Like Sportsman’s Park just outside Chicago, that was a real beauty.”

  “So, one mile, that’s only two turns?”

  “Yeah,” he said, like he was sucking on a lemon. “Gives you faster times, sure, but you can’t actually see most of the race, unless you’re one of those guys don’t mind wearing fucking opera glasses.

  “By me, binoculars narrow it down too much. You can only watch a few horses at the same time, depending on how tight the flow is. You miss a lot that way. Most people like the two-turn tracks, because the horses run closer to form there. That means the favorites win more often.

  “I’m not talking about horse people; I mean the guys who bring their girlfriends to the track, watch them bet their birthday numbers, think it’s cute.”

  I thought about the guy I was watching for. Then I said, “That’s good for guys like us, right?”

  He gave me one of his looks, but he didn’t say anything.

  10

  “How long have you been doing this?” I asked him one day. We were at a diner, a short distance from the track, having breakfast, waiting for the gates to open so we could watch some new shippers qualify.

  “All my life,” he said. “My old man used to take me, when I was just a kid. That’s why they ran the trotters at night, so working guys could go. But I didn’t do it like this, come anytime I want, I mean, until I retired.”

  “You had a regular job?”

  “What, you think everyone’s like you?” he said. “Con Edison, just like my old man. Thirty-five years I put in.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Didn’t seem long to me,” he said. “I figured, I had things to look forward to. My old man, he died on the job, when I was still in high school. I remember him always saying he was going to retire someday, spend all his time playing golf.

  “My old man loved golf, but he only got to play once in a blue moon. He was going to move to Florida—they got a golf course down every block, there. But he never got to go. Me, I could have had what I wanted right here in Yonkers.”

  “So what got messed up?”

  “Everything got messed up. My wife, Pam, she had plans, too. Just like my old man. She never got to see any of them come true, either. Fucking cancer.”

  He looked down at his hands. Big hands, I noticed. I always look at a man’s hands—the eyes show you the right-now—it’s always the hands that show you the history.

  After about a minute, he said, “My kids, I got a boy and a girl. He’s a lawyer, she’s a schoolteacher. Only she don’t teach. Anyway, the boy, he lives in Los Angeles, and my daughter, she’s all the way down in South Jersey. After Pam passed, I started coming here all the time. But then it turned lousy, like I said.

  “So now, I got me a place upstate. There’s a sweet little track twenty minutes from my house. It’s not major league, but it’s got some nice horses going. And not just the old campaigners that aren’t fast enough for the big purses anymore; the prospects, too. You can pick out the ones that are going places. It’s kind of fun, watch them after that. Not in person, I mean in the papers. See how they made out.”

  “You miss your kids?”

  “About as much as they miss me,” he said. “I always worked second shift. Put in a lot of overtime, too. Always adding to that goddamned pension, that was me.”

  11

  One day, the old man said he’d showed me what he knew—a piece of what he knew, he made sure to tell me. That’s how I knew it was time for him to split.

  “You don’t have to do this … what you do, Henry.” That was the first time he ever said my name. “I know you must get paid good, but there’s not even a pension at the end, right?”

  I nodded. The old man knew more than I thought he did. There’s only one way a guy who does my kind of work gets to retire.

  12

  After the old man went away, I did the same stuff he did. I was there every night. I kept my notebook, and I watched. They never called me off, and I got paid expenses every week, so I figured they hadn’t found that Arnie guy yet.

  One Tuesday night, there wasn’t a single pacer I liked in the first race, but I was crazy about a trotter going in the second—a tough little gelding named Sheba’s Pride, eleven years old and he still knew the way home. That was something the old man taught me, how some of the older horses had the track figured out better than the drivers did.

  Sheba’s Pride was in with 5K claimers, grinders who weren’t ever going to get claimed, just there to pick up a pick of the purse. My horse had a life mark of fifty-one and one, but he took that when he was a four-year-old. Three of the other horses had gone faster, and much more recently. But not one of them had taken their mark on a half-mile track, like my horse had.

  It was a nasty day, cold with heavy clouds; the infield flags showed a hard wind, too. None of that was going to bother my horse. I had watched him qualify when he shipped in from Freehold—another four-turn track. His driver had him pocket-sitting all the way; he could have cruised home second, qualified easy. But he pulled outside, challenged, and put together a last quarter in twenty-eight and three, open lengths between him and the horse that had been on top.

  “They have to want it,” the old man had told me. I knew that was what he meant by “heart,” even though he never said the word.

  I had wheeled Sheba’s Pride, so I had the Double covered if he could pull off his half. I didn’t care who won the first, but I watched anyway. The seven horse tried to cut across, but he moved too sharp. The interference break took out the front-runners … lucky none of the horses went down.

  Some rat with no business winning anything managed to stagger home ahead of what was left. Paid a ridiculous forty-seven bucks for the win.

  When I checked the board, it was like the stakes just shot up. I knew if Sheba’s Pride came through for me, I was looking at a real bundle.

  The marshal called the trotters, and they rolled in behind the moving gate. When the pace car pulled away, three of them fought for the lead, but Sheba’s Pride showed nothing going into the first turn. He was shuffled back, sixth on the rail, and he stayed there all the way through the first two quarters, even though the second went in a stone-slow thirty and four.

  Just past the half, Sheba’s Pride pulled off the rail, but he wasn’t the only one with that idea. Usually, that’s good—you want to flush cover to run behind if you can. But he was parked deep, with two horses ahead of him on the outside instead of just one.

  I glanced at the timer, the three-quarters had gone in 1:27.4, so I knew the lead horse wouldn’t be able to hold on, but he was trying like hell anyway.

  The first horse coming up on the outside slingshotted the clubhouse turn and made his move. The horse behind him had his nose in the other driver’s helmet. Just as those two pulled past the leader, Sheba’s Pride swung out three-wide and made his own lane.

  Down the stretch, it looked like the two horses who’d been running outside were really flying. Sheba’
s Pride was just grinding away on the outside, closing on the leader, but not fast enough. But he kept grinding, right to the wire. The photo had his nose in front. The Double paid $709.50, and I had it five times.

  I didn’t go cash my tickets right away. I wanted to watch the replay on the monitors. And make some marks in my notebook.

  I wished the old man had been there, but I didn’t know why.

  13

  Late one afternoon, I got a call. They told me the job was over. They didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask. Instead of going to the track that night, I checked out of the motel and drove to a new one, all the way over by JFK.

  The next morning, I packed my duffel bag: my clothes, my tools, and my notebook. I would have ditched everything except the notebook, but I didn’t know how this would come out. That’s why the virgin semi-auto I’d bought for the job I never did went into the slot built behind the glove box. Then I threw the duffel in the trunk of my car and started driving.

  I’m going to try my luck at this sweet little track upstate I heard about. If I can be good at anything besides the one thing I already knew I was good at, maybe I could be good, period. A good man, I mean.

  I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out, soon enough.

  for Stephen Chambers

  PASSAGE TO PARADISE

  Beyond the border is everything they pray for. Pray for, not pray to. The border is no plaster shrine; it is a gateway to Paradise. The only one.

  My life is to take them there.

  They pray to God, but they cannot see God. They pray for the border, but that, too, they cannot see. God is only a belief. And the border; it is only a line on a map.

  That line is not God’s work. There is no river to swim, no mountains to climb. The terrain is exactly the same on either side. The borderline is not made by God; it is the mark of the Conqueror, a dry moat surrounding his palace.

  Those who pray, those who dream, those who risk all they have against what they could be … they are no threat to the Conqueror. They do not want the palace; they dream only of tending its grounds.