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... pushing for second. He‟s a nose out of second place now. . . and Scoot‟s
letting him out! Look at that horse go! Damn, 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 colours 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 colours 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 mid-track.
Sirens. An ambulance. People running across the infield.
The place was chaotic.
“Let‟s get the hell 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 mid-thirties who had lost
most of his hair, was leaning over the leg with a magnifying glass, 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.
“1 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 carcass.
“Less than half a millimetre,” he said. He took a scalpel and scraped 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.”
“Nobody‟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 hit 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
dishonoured 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.”
“Damn 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 Doe 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.”