Surprised was hardly the word to describe Raines. He was appalled.
I was like a crap shooter on a roll. The more aghast they got, the more I unloaded. I watched Raines‟
every muscle, trying to decide whether he had truly been misled by Titan and the others, or whether
he was one of the greatest actors of all time. I decided he had been duped. Whatever had been
weighing on his mind earlier in the day probably seemed insignificant compared to what I was telling
him. I saved my best shot until last.
“I‟m surprised Titan, Seaborn, Donleavy, or the fellow who owns the newspaper and TV station—
what‟s his name.. . ?“
“Sutter,” he said hoarsely.
“Yeah. He‟s handling the cover-up. I‟m surprised one of your associates didn‟t tell you before this,” I
said.
Pause.
“They‟ve known about it for several weeks.”
Callahan looked like he had swallowed his tongue.
Raines got another five years older in ten seconds.
I‟m not sure to this day whether I was venting my anger toward the Committee, Chief, and the rest of
the Dunetown crowd, or telling the man something he should know, whether it was a petty move on
my part because I wanted his wife, or a keen piece of strategy. That‟s what I wrote it off as, even
though it was still a reckless thing to do. Whatever my motives were, I knew one thing for sure: A lot
of hell was going to be raised. Some rocks would certainly be overturned. I was anxious to see who
came running out.
By the time I was finished, he knew I knew who was on the Committee and the extent of its power,
and I did it all by innuendo, a casual mention of Titan here, of Seaborn there, none of it incriminating.
I stopped short of that.
I was having a hell of a time. It was the Irish in me: don‟t get mad, get even. I was doing both.
“Anyway,” I said, summing it all up, “the fix wasn‟t part of this other mess, it‟s just indicative of what
was happening here. Uh I tried to think of a delicate way of putting it.
A change of values in the city since the old days.”
His cold dark eyes shifted to me and he stared at me for several seconds although his mind still
seemed to be wandering. Then he nodded very slowly.
“Yes,” he said sadly. “That‟s well put, Kilmer. A change of values.”
It was then that I realized how deeply hurt he was. Bad enough to find out you have been lied to by
your best friends, but to get the information from your wife‟s old boyfriend went a little beyond
insulting. I stopped having a good time and started feeling sorry for him. A lot of Harry Raines‟
dreams had been destroyed in a very few minutes.
Pancho Callahan stared out the window at the racetrack. He had less to say than usual—nothing.
Raines got up, poured another round of brandy, and slumped on the corner of his desk.
“1 appreciate your candor,” he said, stopping to clear his voice halfway through the sentence. “I
understand about your... previous ties to Dunetown. All this is probably difficult for you, too.”
He wasn‟t doing bad at the innuendo himself. A lot of information was bouncing back and forth
between us, a lot of it tacitly. I almost asked him what had been troubling him.
Instead, I dug it in a little deeper.
“It hasn‟t got anything to do with old ties, Mr. Raines,” I said. “I‟m an investigator for the
government. I came to help clean up your town. I‟ve been here five days arid I only know one thing
for sure. Everybody of importance I turn to for help, kicks me in the shins instead. Callahan wouldn‟t
have told you all this. He wouldn‟t be that inconsiderate. I, on the other hand, have never scored too
well in diplomacy. It doesn‟t work in my job.”
I stopped talking. The dialogue was beginning to sound defensive.
Raines looked at Callahan. “Can you confirm this?” he asked quietly.
Callahan nodded slowly.
“My God,” Raines said again. And then suddenly he turned his attention back to Pancho Callahan.
“The blame rests squarely with the trainer,” Raines snapped, almost as if he had forgotten the
conversation moments before. It was as if it had given him some inner strength. The weight seemed to
be gone. Fire and steel slowly replaced it, as if he‟d made a final judgment and it was time to move
on. “I‟ll have Barton‟s ass. I‟ll get him out of here along with that damn Butazolidin.”
Callahan chimed in: “Seems to me, sir, we‟re talking about two different things here. Buting up the
horse today and fixing the race on Sunday. They‟re connected this time, but they‟re two different
problems.”
“Yes, I understand that,” he said. He braced his shoulders like a marine on parade and ground his fist
into the palm of his other hand.
“We talked to the jockey. .
“Impastato,” Raines said, letting us know he knew his track.
“Right. Impastato got chewed out by Smokey Barton for letting Disaway out at the five-furlong
post—he usually goes at the three-quarter. Anyway, it was Thibideau who told him to run the race
that way.”
“That happens; it‟s not uncommon,” Raines said, attempting to be fair.
“No. But it‟s usually not done in a race where the horse is favoured and the track is right for him.”
“1 agree,” said Raines, who was turning out to be nobody‟s fool, “but it‟s not enough to prove the
race was a fix.”
“No, but there‟s something else. „The last race Disaway ran, Impastato says the horse was shying to
the left going out of the backstretch. Started running wide.”
“Look, I‟m sorry, Callahan,” Raines said impatiently, “but I need to know where you got this thing
about the race being fixed. I can‟t go to the stewards and tell them I heard it around the track.”
“You can‟t take it to the stewards at all . . . or the Jockey Club,” Callahan said, looking to me for
support.
“And why not?”
“We can‟t prove any of it,” I said. “You‟re a lawyer. All of this is expert conjecture. You could get
your tail in as big a crack as ours would be.”
“My tail‟s already in a crack,” he growled.
Callahan said, “What Jake means is, we can‟t prove the horse was burned out so he wouldn‟t run well.
We can‟t prove Thibideau put the final touch on it by opening him up too early. We can‟t even prove
it was Thibideau. Fact is, we can‟t even prove for sure the horse has been running with a hairline
crack in his foreleg.”
Raines‟ anger was turning to frustration.
“Why don‟t you just spell it out for me,” he said.
“Okay,” said Callahan. “The way I see it, they couldn‟t Bute him on Sunday because there‟s a little
kick to Butes; the horse might just have done the job anyway, and he was favoured. The fix was for
Disaway to lose. They had to Bute him today because he was going lame after the workouts, and
today was his day to win. So Disaway ran like a cheetah, couldn‟t feel the pain in his foreleg until he
went down. What I think is that Thibideau set up the loss on Sunday. Smokey‟s only sin was not
pulling the pony because he was going lame. Hell, you could run a lot of trainers off the track for
doing that.”
“Then I‟ll run „em off,” Raines said angrily. He finished his second brandy and stood with his back to
us, staring down at the track. “An owner‟s greed, a trainer‟s stupidity, and two horses are dead. One
jockey may never ride again, and another is lying in pain in the hospital.” He turned back to face us.
“To my knowledge, there‟s never been a fix at this track, not in almost three years.”