Hooligans Part 51

"Like to feel 'em go by," he said, adjusting his field gla.s.ses, checking out the infield, then the gate. "When betting starts, we can get next to the wood."

He handed me a program and I checked out the charts. There was a list of the stewards, headed by Harry Raines, and some track information that surprised me. According to the program, taxes took fourteen percent of the pari-mutuel's first ten million, eight percent of the next ten mil, six percent on the next fifty, and five percent on everything over that. Obviously the state was getting fat, a fact which certainly vindicated Raines.

The infield was as impressive as the stadium. A large pond with a fountain in the center had attracted herons and other water birds to it. Gardens surrounded the pond and there was a granite obelisk at one end.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to the large marker.

"Remember me telling you about Justabout at chow the other morning?"

"You mean the ugly horse?"

Callahan nodded. "First big winner to come off this track. Ran his first heat here, ran here most of the next season. First two years he won forty-two races. Ugly as he was, he was so good he once got a standing ovation for coming in second. The crowd figured he'd been racing so much he was tired. Just before the season ended last year, he got trapped against the rail going into the far turn, tried to break out, b.u.mped another kid, went down. They had to destroy him, so the board of stewards decided to bury him out there."

At exactly ten minutes before post time a horseman in a red cutaway and a black hunter's cap led the horses out onto the dirt, parading them around the track and in front of the stands. There was a ripple of applause, now and then, and a lot of chitchat among the horseplayers as the Thoroughbreds went by. Disaway was acting a little frisky, jogging sideways and shaking his head.

Callahan was right about the railbirds. Ten minutes before the first race, half of the crowd around us seemed to rush off en ma.s.se, waiting until the last minute to get their bets down. We moved up against the rail and across from the finish line, a perfect position.

The odds on Disaway changed very little, as Callahan had predicted. Five minutes before post time they dropped from $33.05 to $26.20, still a hefty long shot as far as the bettors were concerned.

As they started putting the horses in the gate, Callahan gave me the binoculars.

"Watch Disaway, the four horse. He's acting up a little but I don't think he's nervous. Anxious to run. Looks good, lots of energy."

I could see him jogging sideways and throwing his head about as the handler tried to lead him into the chute. Magic Hands was leaning over his shoulder, talking into his ear. A moment later the horse settled down and strolled into the gate.

I turned around and appraised the clubhouse with the gla.s.ses. Raines was in the center box, alone, looking stern, like Patton leading his tanks into combat.

"There's Raines," I said, "center stage."

Callahan gave him an unsolicited compliment. "Raines is a tough administrator. Built a rep for the track; well run, clean, profitable. "

"Aren't they all?" I suggested.

"Hah! I got out of college," said Callahan, "got a job working for the vet at a little track. Florida. a.s.sistant track doctor. Track was dirty. s.h.i.+ft, they switched blood samples, dosed horses . . . crazy. Saw two horses die that summer, one with heaves. Terrible. Pony just lies down, gags for air. Like watching him suffocate, only takes hours. Don't want to kill him because you keep hoping he'll turn around, make it. I decided to make a stink how bad it was. Got me fired. Told me I'd never work at a racetrack again. So I became a cop, went back, cleaned their tank. Heads up, they're coming out."

I gave him back his gla.s.ses just as the bell rang. I could see the horses charging out of the stalls, a blur of horseflesh and wild colors; mauve, pink, orange, bright blues and greens seemed to blend together in a streak of color, then the line began to stretch out as the field moved for position. The crowd was already going so crazy as the eight horses pounded toward the first turn, I couldn't hear the announcer giving the positions.

"How's he doing?" I yelled, unable to make one horse from the other on the backstretch.

"Off the rail and fourth going into the turn," Callahan yelled. "Got a bad break coming out of the gate . . . making up for it . . . Scoot's laying it on . . . on the outside now, moving into third. Scoot isn't letting him out full yet . . . pa.s.sing the three-quarter post . . . Scoot still holding him back . . . running him to win, all right. Not gonna let him out until the stretch . . . there he goes into third place . . . he's moving for the inside now . . . "

I could see the horses clearly as they came around the clubhouse turn. Disaway was running hard, challenging the two horse, Johnny's Girl. I could feel the excitement of the crowd as they started down the last five hundred yards.

Callahan continued his running commentary.

"He's on the rail now . . . pus.h.i.+ng for second. He's a nose out of second place now . . . and Scoot's letting him out! Look at that horse go! d.a.m.n, does he like that mud . . . "

Disaway nosed past the two horse and challenged the leader. I could feel the thunder of their hoofs as they stormed toward the finish line, the jockeys' livid colors splattered with mud.

Callahan's voice began to rise as he, too, was caught up in the excitement of the finish.

"Disaway's going for it. They're neck and neck coming down the stretch, and there he goes, he's pulling away, he's got the lead by a head and romping."

Suddenly Callahan stopped for a second, and then he cried out, "Jesus!"

As they approached the wire, Disaway suddenly swerved away from the rail and headed diagonally across the track, his left front leg dangling crazily as he made the erratic move. The two horse behind him tried to cut inside but it was too late. They collided, hard, neck on neck. Disaway was thrown back toward the rail as the two horse went down, chin into dirt, rolling over its hapless jockey. Disaway was totally out of control and Impastato was trying vainly to keep him on his feet, but the three horse was charging for the wire and they hit with a sickening thud. Scoot Impastato was vaulted from the saddle, spinning end over end into the rail, followed immediately by Disaway. The rail shattered and Disaway, Impastato, the three horse and jockey, and the horse behind it all went down in a horrifying jumble of legs and torsos and racing colors and mud.

The crowd shrieked in horror.

Then, just as suddenly, it was deathly still.

From the infield I heard a voice cry out, "Get him off me, please get him off me!"

One of the horses was trying to get up, its legs scrambling in the dirt.

One of the three jocks was on his knees, clawing at his safety helmet.

The two horse and rider were as still as death in midtrack.

Sirens. An ambulance. People running across the infield.

The place was chaotic.

"Let's get the h.e.l.l over there," Callahan said, and we jumped the rail and headed for the infield.

57.

RAINES GETS TOUGH.

It was a bizarre sight: Disaway was spread out on an enormous metal table, three legs askew, his head dangling awkwardly over one side, his bulging eyes terrified in death, his foreleg split wide open and its muscles and tendons clamped back, revealing the shattered bone. The vet, whose name was Shuster and who was younger than I had pictured him, a short man in his midthirties who had lost most of his hair, was leaning over the leg with a magnifying gla.s.s, and Callahan, dressed in a white gown, was leaning right along with him. Both gowns were amply bloodstained. I walked to within three or four feet and watched and listened, keeping my mouth shut and my eyes and ears open.

So far, two horses were dead, a third might have to be destroyed, and two jockeys were in the hospital, Scoot Impastato with a fractured skull and a broken leg.

"I've never seen a break quite this bad," Shuster was saying.

"The other horses could've done some damage when they ran over him," Callahan answered.

"I think not. The pastern bone broke inward here . . . and here. No chips or other evidence of impact. This is what interests me. See? Right here and then down here, at the bottom of the break."

Callahan leaned closer and nodded.

"Yeah. Maybe it splintered when the bone broke."

"Maybe . . . "

Shuster took a pair of micrometers and leaned back over the carca.s.s.

"Less than half a millimeter," he said. He took a scalpel and sc.r.a.ped something from the edge of the fractured bone into a test tube.

"Calcium?" Callahan said.

"We'll see."

"Butes did this," Callahan said.

"I'd have to agree. The horse was coming up lame. He should have been scratched."

"What was the trainer's excuse for dosing him?"

"Runny nose."

"Yeah, ran all the way down his leg."

"I couldn't argue," Shuster said apologetically. "It's a perfectly legitimate excuse."

"n.o.body's blaming you. This isn't the first time a pony with a bad leg has been Buted up."

The door opened behind me and Harry Raines came in. His kelly-green steward's jacket seemed out of place in the sterile white room, but my rumpled sports jacket didn't add anything either.

A barrage of emotions. .h.i.t me the instant he entered the room. In forty-one years I had never made love to another man's wife, and suddenly I was standing ten feet away from a man whom I had dishonored and toward whom I felt resentment and anger. I wanted to disappear, I felt that uncomfortable when he entered.

I had a fleeting thought that perhaps he knew about Doe and me, that maybe one of the Tagliani gang had anonymously informed on us. Too many people either knew or had guessed about us, Harry Nesbitt had made that clear to me. I almost expected Raines to point an accusing finger at me, perhaps draw an "A" on my forehead with his fountain pen. I could feel sweat popping out of my neck around my collar and for an instant I blamed Doe for my discomfort, transferring my anger and jealously to her because she had married him.

All that in just a moment, and then the feelings vanished when I got a good look at him. I was shocked at what I saw. He seemed not as tall as when I had seen him at the track two days earlier, as if he were being crushed by an invisible weight. His face was drawn and haggard, his office pallor had changed to a pasty gray. Dark circles underlined his eyes. The man seemed to have aged a dozen years in two days.

Is he really the success-driven robot others have made him out to be? I wondered. He looked more like a man hanging over a cliff, waiting for the rope to break.

Quite suddenly he no longer threatened me.

My fears were unfounded. He didn't pay any attention to me at first. He was more concerned with the dead horse. When he did notice me, he was simply annoyed and somewhat perplexed by my presence.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, looking at Callahan as he said it, as if he didn't think I knew the answer.

"That's Jake Kilmer. We're working on this thing together" was all the big cop told him.

"Jake, this is Harry Raines." That seemed to satisfy Raines who dismissed it from his mind. If he recognized my name he didn't show it. He turned his attention back to the business at hand. "I don't mean to push you, Doc. Did he just break a leg?"

"Two places. He was also on Butes."

"What!"

"He had a cold."

"According to who?"

"Thibideau."

"d.a.m.n it!" Raines snapped, and his vehemence startled me.

"Uh, there could be something else," Callahan said. He came over to us and took off the gown. "There's a crack in the pastern leading out of the fracture. It appears to be slightly calcified, which means it's been there a while. A few days, at least."

"So it wasn't a cold."

"I'm telling you this because Doc here can't say anything until he finishes his tests. But I'd say this animal was on Butazolidin because he was gimpy after the race on Sunday."

"Where did you get that information?"

"The jock, Impastato. But he didn't have anything to do with this I don't think. He quit Thibideau Sunday because he'd been made to break the horse out at the five-eighths and the horse was strictly a stretch runner, which is another reason he lost Sunday."

"The trainer's Smokey Barton, right?"

Callahan nodded.

"He'll go to the wall for this."

"It's done a lot," Callahan said.

"Not at this track," Raines growled. "Not anymore."

Shuster went back to work and Callahan nodded for me to follow him out of the room. We went outside and leaned against the side of the building in the hot afternoon sun. Callahan didn't say anything. A few moments later Raines came out.

Callahan said, "Mr. Raines, think we need to talk."

Raines c.o.c.ked his head to one side for a beat or two and then said, "Here?"

"Preferably not."

"My office then. We'll go in my car."

He drove around the track without saying a word and parked in his marked stall. We took the elevator to the top floor of the stadium, then headed down a broad, cool hallway to his office.

It was a large room, dark-paneled and decorated completely in antiques, down to the leatherbound volumes in its recessed bookcases. Ordinarily the room would have been dark and rather oppressive, except that the entire wall facing us as we walked in was of tinted gla.s.s and overlooked the track. The effect was both startling and elegant.

His desk was genuine something-or-other and was big enough to play basketball on. Executives in Doomstown seemed to have a penchant for big desks. This one was covered with memorabilia. It sat to one side and was angled so that Raines could see the track and conduct business at the same time. The view was breathtaking.

There were three paintings on the walls, two Remingtons and a Degas, all originals. There were only two photographs in the room, both on his desk. One was a black-and-white snapshot of an older couple I guessed were his mother and father. The other one was a color photograph of Doe, cheek to cheek with a black horse who must have been Firefoot.

I had a hard time keeping my eyes off her.

"Is this going to call for a drink?" Raines asked.

Callahan hesitated for a moment or two and then said, "I could do with a bit of brandy, thanks."