Mortal Lock (7 page)

“What about the breeding? You said there were books on it, so that’s real important, right?”

“To some people, yeah. To them, bloodlines are everything. Me, I never went much by that. You got horses, you look up who their mother and father was, you’d think they’d be rockets. But they turn out to be duds, never even make it to a racetrack. Other ones, you never heard of any horse in their whole family tree, just a bunch of mutts. And they turn out to be world-beaters.”

“What do you look for, then?”

“Heart,” the old man said.

“Where’s that on the program?”

“It’s not supposed to be on the program.”

“So how—?”

“That’s mine,” the old man said. “I was asked to teach you the game, and I’m doing that. And one of the things you learn is, a real handicapper, he puts together a system that works, he don’t share it with anyone, ever. You ever watch those commercials on the TV
in the middle of the night? The ones where this guy, he’s made a zillion dollars in real estate, now he’s going to show you how to do the same thing for a couple of hundred bucks?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You believe them?”

“Come on.”

“Let’s get something to eat,” the old man said.

8

“You don’t think you know enough yet?” the old man asked me.

I’d been going to the track with him for more than three months straight. I’d moved around a few times, just in case anyone was paying attention. It’s easy for me to move, only takes an hour or so. I don’t own a lot of stuff.

“No,” is all I said.

“You got all the lingo down, now. You know how to read the program, how to bet, that’s more than ninety percent of the lame
stugotz
that hang around any track.”

“But there’s more, right?”

“Sure. There’s always more. Me, I’m still learning, picking stuff up.”

“Okay, then.”

He gave me a look, but he didn’t say anything. That night, we sat in his favorite place in the grandstand. “You know why this is the perfect spot?” he told me the first time we sat there. “You can see the action in the turns, on the backstretch, and coming home, too. That’s ’cause this is a half-mile track, get it?”

“No. What difference could that make? I mean, they all run the same distance, right?”

“Half-mile track means two circuits to get the whole mile in, okay? Two circuits, four turns.”

“They’re not all like this one?”

“Hell, no. Most of them are mile tracks, now. Like the fucking Meadowlands. Used to be a lot of five-eighths courses, too—that’d be three turns, real long stretch. Like Sportsman’s Park just outside Chicago, that was a real beauty.”

“So, one mile, that’s only two turns?”

“Yeah,” he said, like he was sucking on a lemon. “Gives you faster times, sure, but you can’t actually see most of the race, unless you’re one of those guys don’t mind wearing fucking opera glasses.

“By me, binoculars narrow it down too much. You can only watch a few horses at the same time, depending on how tight the flow is. You miss a lot that way. Most people like the two-turn tracks, because the horses run closer to form there. That means the favorites win more often.

“I’m not talking about horse people; I mean the guys who bring their girlfriends to the track, watch them bet their birthday numbers, think it’s cute.”

I thought about the guy I was watching for. Then I said, “That’s good for guys like us, right?”

He gave me one of his looks, but he didn’t say anything.

10

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked him one day. We were at a diner, a short distance from the track, having breakfast, waiting for the gates to open so we could watch some new shippers qualify.

“All my life,” he said. “My old man used to take me, when I was just a kid. That’s why they ran the trotters at night, so working guys could go. But I didn’t do it like this, come anytime I want, I mean, until I retired.”

“You had a regular job?”

“What, you think everyone’s like you?” he said. “Con Edison, just like my old man. Thirty-five years I put in.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Didn’t seem long to me,” he said. “I figured, I had things to look forward to. My old man, he died on the job, when I was still in high school. I remember him always saying he was going to retire someday, spend all his time playing golf.

“My old man loved golf, but he only got to play once in a blue moon. He was going to move to Florida—they got a golf course down every block, there. But he never got to go. Me, I could have had what I wanted right here in Yonkers.”

“So what got messed up?”

“Everything got messed up. My wife, Pam, she had plans, too. Just like my old man. She never got to see any of them come true, either. Fucking cancer.”

He looked down at his hands. Big hands, I noticed. I always look at a man’s hands—the eyes show you the right-now—it’s always the hands that show you the history.

After about a minute, he said, “My kids, I got a boy and a girl. He’s a lawyer, she’s a schoolteacher. Only she don’t teach. Anyway, the boy, he lives in Los Angeles, and my daughter, she’s all the way down in South Jersey. After Pam passed, I started coming here all the time. But then it turned lousy, like I said.

“So now, I got me a place upstate. There’s a sweet little track twenty minutes from my house. It’s not major league, but it’s got some nice horses going. And not just the old campaigners that aren’t fast enough for the big purses anymore; the prospects, too. You can pick out the ones that are going places. It’s kind of fun, watch them after that. Not in person, I mean in the papers. See how they made out.”

“You miss your kids?”

“About as much as they miss me,” he said. “I always worked second shift. Put in a lot of overtime, too. Always adding to that goddamned pension, that was me.”

11

One day, the old man said he’d showed me what he knew—a
piece
of what he knew, he made sure to tell me. That’s how I knew it was time for him to split.

“You don’t have to do this … what you do, Henry.” That was the first time he ever said my name. “I know you must get paid good, but there’s not even a pension at the end, right?”

I nodded. The old man knew more than I thought he did. There’s only one way a guy who does my kind of work gets to retire.

12

After the old man went away, I did the same stuff he did. I was there every night. I kept my notebook, and I watched. They never called me off, and I got paid expenses every week, so I figured they hadn’t found that Arnie guy yet.

One Tuesday night, there wasn’t a single pacer I liked in the first race, but I was crazy about a trotter going in the second—a tough little gelding named Sheba’s Pride, eleven years old and he still knew the way home. That was something the old man taught me, how some of the older horses had the track figured out better than the drivers did.

Sheba’s Pride was in with 5K claimers, grinders who weren’t ever going to get claimed, just there to pick up a pick of the purse. My horse had a life mark of fifty-one and one, but he took that when he was a four-year-old. Three of the other horses had gone faster, and much more recently. But not one of them had taken their mark on a half-mile track, like my horse had.

It was a nasty day, cold with heavy clouds; the infield flags showed a hard wind, too. None of that was going to bother my horse. I had watched him qualify when he shipped in from
Freehold—another four-turn track. His driver had him pocket-sitting all the way; he could have cruised home second, qualified easy. But he pulled outside, challenged, and put together a last quarter in twenty-eight and three, open lengths between him and the horse that had been on top.

“They have to want it,” the old man had told me. I knew that was what he meant by “heart,” even though he never said the word.

I had wheeled Sheba’s Pride, so I had the Double covered if he could pull off his half. I didn’t care who won the first, but I watched anyway. The seven horse tried to cut across, but he moved too sharp. The interference break took out the front-runners … lucky none of the horses went down.

Some rat with no business winning anything managed to stagger home ahead of what was left. Paid a ridiculous forty-seven bucks for the win.

When I checked the board, it was like the stakes just shot up. I knew if Sheba’s Pride came through for me, I was looking at a real bundle.

The marshal called the trotters, and they rolled in behind the moving gate. When the pace car pulled away, three of them fought for the lead, but Sheba’s Pride showed nothing going into the first turn. He was shuffled back, sixth on the rail, and he stayed there all the way through the first two quarters, even though the second went in a stone-slow thirty and four.

Just past the half, Sheba’s Pride pulled off the rail, but he wasn’t the only one with that idea. Usually, that’s good—you want to flush cover to run behind if you can. But he was parked deep, with two horses ahead of him on the outside instead of just one.

I glanced at the timer, the three-quarters had gone in 1:27.4, so I knew the lead horse wouldn’t be able to hold on, but he was trying like hell anyway.

The first horse coming up on the outside slingshotted the clubhouse turn and made his move. The horse behind him had his nose
in the other driver’s helmet. Just as those two pulled past the leader, Sheba’s Pride swung out three-wide and made his own lane.

Down the stretch, it looked like the two horses who’d been running outside were really flying. Sheba’s Pride was just grinding away on the outside, closing on the leader, but not fast enough. But he kept grinding, right to the wire. The photo had his nose in front. The Double paid $709.50, and I had it five times.

I didn’t go cash my tickets right away. I wanted to watch the replay on the monitors. And make some marks in my notebook.

I wished the old man had been there, but I didn’t know why.

13

Late one afternoon, I got a call. They told me the job was over. They didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask. Instead of going to the track that night, I checked out of the motel and drove to a new one, all the way over by JFK.

The next morning, I packed my duffel bag: my clothes, my tools, and my notebook. I would have ditched everything except the notebook, but I didn’t know how this would come out. That’s why the virgin semi-auto I’d bought for the job I never did went into the slot built behind the glove box. Then I threw the duffel in the trunk of my car and started driving.

I’m going to try my luck at this sweet little track upstate I heard about. If I can be good at anything besides the one thing I already knew I was good at, maybe I could be good, period. A good man, I mean.

I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out, soon enough.

for Stephen Chambers

Beyond the border is everything they pray for. Pray
for
, not pray
to
. The border is no plaster shrine; it is a gateway to Paradise. The only one.

My life is to take them there.

They pray to God, but they cannot see God. They pray for the border, but that, too, they cannot see. God is only a belief. And the border; it is only a line on a map.

That line is not God’s work. There is no river to swim, no mountains to climb. The terrain is exactly the same on either side. The borderline is not made by God; it is the mark of the Conqueror, a dry moat surrounding his palace.

Those who pray, those who dream, those who risk all they have against what they could be … they are no threat to the Conqueror. They do not want the palace; they dream only of tending its grounds.

On the Conqueror’s side of the border, pay for such work is meager by their standards. It is not irony that the people of the Conqueror call it “slave wages.” But on the other side, such wages can transform a life. Many lives. For eternity.

A man can live for years in a hovel if he knows each day brings his family closer to glory. A man can live with many others, packed in as if in prison, treated with contempt, driven like a mule. He can look at a tattered picture of his wife and children and feel his chest swell with pride. Why? Because he is their hero. Their provider and protector. His children will have clean water to drink. His children will never be beggars. His wife will not sell her body to feed them. Someday, there might even be a house. And school.

And his grandchildren will prosper, because their parents will have carried on his name, each generation climbing higher than the one before, because each will have begun higher.

All because of their foundation. The foundation he is building with his body-crushing labor.

His wife will be the envy of the others in the village. Her husband is not one of those fat, drunken cowards who tell big stories but never do big things. They make babies, but what is that? A dog can make puppies.

Someday, his name will mean something.

And if he dies in the attempt, he will be forever honored as a man.

Those who guard the border know none of this.

There is no gate. The patrols are as random as the packs of bandits that live in the lawless land between hell and Paradise. But not as merciful.

I am no coyote. Those who hire me are not crammed into an airless truck, to be abandoned at the first sign of danger. I am no deliverer of cargo; I am a warrior.

The dreamers pay me to fight. And to guarantee that they are never, ever taken alive. Everyone knows what happens to those who are taken by the bandits. The tapes—the ones the bosses make inside their castles—they are sold even here. But anyone with the kind of money it would take to buy such tapes would not need to cross the border. For them, for the
narco-reys
, Paradise is on this side of the border.

I take anyone who has the money. I make a run only every two or three months, and I must be paid in advance. That money does not come with me—I, too, have my own obligations.

It sometimes takes years for me to be paid. Years before I take a person across. I keep records, and I never cheat. This is the opposite of the way some do it, I have heard. Some take them across, and wait to be paid with the money they send back. This I cannot
do. Part of my pay demands that I must make sure they are not taken alive. How could they pay me then?