I asked Pete, “When did this happen? Anybody see it?”
“No, no, of course not. He send me over to the tack room after the fourth, and boost the ante to fifteen thousand. Then he say I either lose or get taken care of. I told him to go — well, you know. That’s when he hit me, and when I wake up, he’s gone.”
Elena said angrily, “They ought to do something about that Rath.”
“Yeah.” As far as I was concerned, the “they” was rapidly becoming me. My fingers were sticky; I realized I still held the Chiclet in my sweaty hand, and the sugary coating was getting slippery. I stuck the gum in my coat pocket and looked toward the walking ring. Rath wasn’t there. I knew where he probably was; with Hammond and two other bruisers upstairs.
In a few minutes, Pete left to weigh in, and the three of us went back upstairs to our table high in the stands overlooking the beautiful oval track bordered by trees, green lawn cool and colorful inside it. A hundred conversations swelled around us, and a constant stream of men and women wound in and out of the tables. It was pleasant and lovely, but mainly I was looking at four men seated a few tables away from us.
Jimmy Rath was there with two bruisers — and Hammond, a thick bulge of fat puffing over his collar. Rath sitting at the same table was proof enough that Hammond was the boy fixing the races — as far as I was concerned. The Racing Commission and the cops felt differently. And it would take more than hunches to get Hammond because of his pal Valdez.
Suddenly, I stopped paying any attention to Hammond. Something was moving on my leg. Slowly, suggestively. Elena and I sat close together facing the track, and her hand was resting just above my knee, caressing me gently.
I turned and looked at her face close to mine, looked at the rest of her. She was wearing a gray skirt and a pink sweater that covered her up completely, but was still very nearly indecent. A shroud on that body would have looked indecent.
“Cuidadito!” I said. “Be Careful, baby. Two more seconds and another inch, and I’ll go screeching around the track with the horses.” She smiled, wiggled long lashes. My spine wiggled. “I will be careless,” she said. “You do not look enough at me.” Her hand moved. I moved. I had never been alone with Elena since Pete introduced us, but I knew if I ever was, there’d be plenty happening.
I put my hand over hers and said, “Honey, you want me to fall down frothing?”
“Yes,” she said. Then: “What is frothing?”
The question was gone from her eyes now; only the answer was there. I started to tell her a terrible lie about what frothing meant, but right then the high, fast notes of the bugle sounded, and the announcer said the horses were coming onto the track for the quinta carrera, the fifth race.
Elena took her hand away, and I put it back, and then the horses were passing in front of us. I saw Pete in bright red-and-white silks up on Jetboy, a black five-year-old gelding with clean, graceful lines. I expected Pete to look up and nod or wave, but he went right on past, head slightly bent.
I realized I didn’t have a bet down on Jetboy, so I went down to the mutual windows and bought two fifty-peso win tickets. Jetboy was one to two, the odds-on favorite. By the time I’d reached the table again, the race had already started. I sat down beside Elena, stuck the two tickets into my pocket and my fingers hit the sticky gum. I pulled it out, started to throw it away. Then I noticed that the white coating had melted and there was what appeared to be a hole pushed into the gum. I squinted at it, spread the thing with my fingernails. There was a hole, all right, with a white powdery stuff inside it. It hit me all at once, and I jumped to my feet just as the crowd did, except they were yelling about the race.
The horses were charging down the far side of the track, opposite the stands, and Jetboy trailed the fifth-place horse by four lengths. Usually Pete stayed closer than that, but he wasn’t riding as smoothly as he usually did. I knew damn well why, and my heart jumped up into my mouth as he started his move on the last turn. The crowd was jumping up and down as Jetboy reached the fourth spot close behind the bunched leaders. I watched Pete slumped over the saddle, riding sloppily, not like a kid with thirty-nine winners behind him — and then he tried to go through on the inside, and I bunched my hands into tight fists and almost squeezed my eyes shut. He couldn’t make it, there wasn’t room and I knew he couldn’t make it. I was yelling at the top of my lungs as I saw Jetboy practically brushing the hard, sharp wooden rail. The whip came down again, and it all happened in a second.
Jetboy leaped forward, running up on the heels of the horse ahead, stumbled, fell. I saw Pete hurtle through the air like a bundle of rags, slam into the rail — and in the sudden shocked silence of the crowd I thought I could hear him hit. He fell to the dirt track, rolled and lay still as the horse sprinted down toward the finish line. Jetboy struggled up and galloped away.
I heard Vera’s piercing scream, and then, intuitively, I looked toward Hammond’s table. He was watching the finish of the race, more interested in that than Pete’s crumpled body.
I snapped out of it, whirled and ran down the steps, sprinting toward the track. By the time I reached the rail, the huddle of doctors and officials cleared away, and Pete was lying there with a white sheet over his body and head, and there was nothing else I could do. Except break Hammond in two. Clear down the middle. Like a goddamn match-stick that didn’t have a chance.
I ran back up the steps, the fury hot in me now, my hands itching. I saw Vera lying in a faint at our table, Elena bending over her. I didn’t stop. I walked straight to Hammond’s table.
None of the men looked up until I stopped alongside them. Hammond was on my right, facing the track. Opposite me and on my left were the two musclemen, and Rath sat with his back to me. I could feel the muscles around my mouth twitching, jerking.
I put my palms flat down on the table, and Hammond glanced up, fat pink face gleaming slightly with perspiration, thick lips dry. “Yeah?” he asked.
“Don’t ‘yeah’ me, you fat bastard,” I shouted.
There was a slight movement behind me. I reached out without turning, slapping Rath backhanded, knocking him out of his chair. His head cracked against the iron rail, and he let out a yell and started to jump up.
“Wait a minute,” Hammond said. “Wait a minute. What’s this all about?”
“You don’t know, huh, Hammond? You haven’t the faintest idea!”
An empty glass in front of Hammond held several colored tickets. His program was open in front of him, Number 2 circled — a horse named Ladkin. I looked at the tote board where the winning numbers were already lighted under the “Oficial” sign: 2, 3, 6, 1. Ladkin was the winner at fourteen to one. Another sleeper. Hammond didn’t stop me as I picked up the glass and dumped out his tickets.
There were twenty fifty-peso win tickets on Number 3, and ten win tickets on Number 4. Nothing on the winner. For a few seconds it puzzled me, but only for a few seconds. Those heavy bets were enough to push the odds on Ladkin up to fourteen to one.
“Hammond,” I said, “you usually bet two horses to win in the same race? A question, fat boy.”
His pink face grew pinker and for the first time he got nasty. He leaned toward me, his face angry. “Give a listen, Scott. I heard all I care to hear right now. I know you been poking your ugly nose in the wrong holes, you hear me? You keep it up, you never will get Stateside.”
“It isn’t just a fixed race now, fat boy. It’s murder.”
“Murder, my backside! The kid made a bad ride, that’s all. Everybody makes a bad ride every now...”