Mortal Lock by Andrew Vachss Read Free Book Online

you?”
    “I … guess,” I said. Wondering how he knew.
    “Show me.”
    He studied the form I held out. Asked me a bunch of questions. Kept nodding. Finally he said, “Your guy’s no overnighter; he’s been on the grounds for five weeks now. Been going in the same class every week, just one step down from the top. Hasn’t won here yet, but he’s been holding his own. And there’s a driver change, too. You see that?”
    “Yeah. John Campbell. He’s good?”
    “Good? The man’s an artist. Some of these drivers, they’re nothing but thugs. Campbell, he knows you can’t whip a horse into winning, you have to guide him home, act like you expect him to get there first. With pacers, he’s pretty good,” the old man said, “but you put him behind a trotter, there’s no driver out here that can touch him.”
    5
    My horse was a chesty bay named Little Eric, a Noble Gesture trotter out of an Arsenal mare. He was sluggish out of the six-hole, but he fired up and went first-over just past the quarter, which had gone in a soft thirty-flat. Just as he caught up to the lead horse, Simple Justice, that one picked up speed, and kept Little Eric parked out. The half went in fifty-eight and four.
    Little Eric finally got clear by going slingshot on the clubhouse turn, but he’d come a long way without cover and the heavy chalk, Bruno’s Boy, had popped down into the inside lane, as the movable hub rail lived up to its name.
    Bruno’s Boy was really rolling, but my horse kept chugging on, dead game. Little Eric held off Bruno’s Boy by a neck. The tote board said he paid $18.20 to win. On the program, he’d been what the old man told me was a classic overlay. That meant he wasn’t the favorite, and he didn’t deserve to be, but he was a lot better than the 13-1 morning line made him out to be.
    “Nice,” is all the old man said. I didn’t know if he said that because I’d picked the horse, or because I didn’t jump up and down and scream as they came down the stretch, the way some people do. “Lames,” the old man called them. “Like chumps who yell at the dice in a casino. The horses hear all that shouting about as much as the dice do. Makes as much difference to them, too.”
    I made my way to the window, waited my turn on line, the program open in front of me, heavily marked up in red. Under the brim of my hat, my eyes swept the area. But I didn’t see what I was looking for.
    6
    “Thanks,” the old man said, when I handed over the beer I brought back for him.
    He took a sip. Looked over at me. “You never get one for yourself,” he said.
    I just shrugged.
    “You don’t smoke, neither. Against your religion?”
    “I don’t do that, either,” I said.
    He closed his eyes like he was thinking something over, but he didn’t say anything for a while.
    I went back to looking at the program.
    The old man tapped me on the forearm. “See that?” he said, pointing at the giant tote board in the infield. “Forget that Morning Line crap—you can watch the real action right here. Remember, the track don’t set the odds, the bettors do. That’s all ‘pari-mutuel’ means: you’re betting against all the other players. The track takes its piece off the top. Same as the house does in a poker game. That’s the only sure way to make money, any kind of gambling. Live off the takeout.”
    “What about when you bet with a bookie?”
    “Don’t bet with bookies,” he said, like we were done talking.
    I studied the tote board. Watched the numbers jump around.
    “Any chump can be a gambler,” he said. “All it takes is money. Or credit, if you’re fucked up enough. You, you’re learning to be a handicapper.”
    “Handicappers don’t bet with bookies? Where do they go, then, OTB?”
    “OTB? That’s Sucker Paradise. You bet with those thieves, there’s another takeout, on top of the track’s. A horse that pays ten dollars at the track, he’d be a nine-eighty horse at OTB, see? You let politicians