Murder at the Racetrack (14 page)

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some good nights in this run, too. Won my share of bets and collected as fast as legs or wheels
could get me to the payoff drop. I once hit on a number, 213, and a horse race at Saratoga and a baseball game at Fenway Park
all in the same day. By midmorning of the next, I had parried away all my winnings, had just enough in my pockets for the
cab ride back to the stables. I’ve won as much as $42,650 in one day and lost twice that much after a bad run at the tables
in Atlantic City. It’s my life and after fifty-six years of living it, I’m not about to change my ways. Probably couldn’t
even if I would want to, and I would lay 6-1 odds that for what I got there is no cure.

But, now I got Yellow Mama in the middle of my jackpot, her life at risk, and that’s been gnawing away at my insides something
fierce. I love that horse, love her more than anything or anybody that’s ever walked into and out of my life. And if I don’t
figure a way out of this mess I got us both in by Sunday night, she’s gonna end up legs to the wind and I’ll be a springtime
floater in the East River sure as there’s a Monday coming the next morning.

In fairness, none of this was my idea, I was just dumb enough to agree to it. To ask Yellow Mama to do the one thing she would
never do, could never do, and that’s lose a race on purpose. That horse has got a heart on her big as a stable and she’ll
run until her legs are numb. She’s lost some races in her years going around the tracks with me, but never without a fight
and never on a lay-down or a pull-up. I first laid eyes on Mama at an auction at a farm in Delaware, making my way east for
the startup there of racing season. She was a tiny little thing, just barely past eighteen months, legs thin as piano wire,
and even if she were soaking wet I could think of dogs that would come in at a higher weight. But she had magic eyes, the
kind of eyes a horse trainer spends his entire life lookin’ to spot, the dark, round eyes that tell you in an instant that
there’s no quit in this filly, no give, only guts and guile and a courage a knock-around like me could never hope to have.

I paid her owner, Jack Spinell of Rain top Farms, $1,100 cash for her, watching him sign over her papers on the hood of my
Ford F-i 50 truck. Spinell was a shrewd old-timer and he smiled as I counted out the cash and laid it in his stubby hands,
figuring he took me for a ride and made money the easiest way a man knows, getting rid of something he doesn’t want in return
for something he does. But even I knew, a guy with hundreds more losses than wins tagged to my name, that I had latched on
to the one thing I thought I’d never have in my racing career—a winner.

Up till then, I’d had my share of horses, usually training them for owners I never met. There were some good horses through
the years and a few special victories, including a stakes race down at Gulfstream Park with a horse named Full Pockets that
netted the owners a $75,000 purse. I left the track that day with my $7,500 cut in my back pocket and a smile on my face wide
as a starter’s gate. Came back to work the next day, still holding the smile, not remembering how or where I spent all that
money. Another time, a horse named Spring Thaw, tough little fighter out of Virginia, was leading the Florida Derby from wire
to wire. She would have won that race, should have won it, but luck wasn’t with her and she pulled up lame less than a sixteenth
of a mile to the finish line. Instead of a string of roses around her neck and a walk in the winner’s circle, me by her side,
she was laid out in her stall, half a dozen men surrounding her, one holding the needle that would pierce a vein and end her
misery.

I had just about lost hope and was all but ready to make that season up north my last as a trainer when I came upon Mama.
As I walked her up the ramp to my trailer, setting her up for the ride to New York, I asked Spinell why he went and named
her Yellow Mama. “She was born old and she was born scared,” he said, eyeing both me and the horse with disdain. “Only horse
I’ve ever seen run from a loud fly. I don’t know what you expect to get out of her, Bobby. But if you’re looking for more
than grief, you’re in for a big let-down.”

I looked back at Spinell and shrugged. “Wouldn’t care to bet on that, would you?” I asked.

Old Man Spinell laughed, tossed his cigarette to the dirt and walked away. “On that horse?” he said over his shoulder. “You’d
have to pay me off with jars of glue.”

Spinell was wrong and I was always sorry he didn’t live long enough for me to tell him so. I worked Mama up at the Big A,
threw a chunk of my winnings, both on and off the track, her way, and watched her grow bigger and stronger. She was never
going to be a large horse, wasn’t bred that way. And she never impressed in her training, running alone early in the mornings,
me clocking her time. That wasn’t her style, either. There wasn’t any reason for her to go fast in training, she wasn’t going
up against other horses. Mama didn’t love to run. Never did and never will.

Yellow Mama just loved to win.

I picked Blue Randolph to be her jockey. Would have been easier to latch on to one of the Spanish jockeys, Lord knows there
were plenty to pick from around the tracks. But I wanted someone from the States, guy knew his way around stables and horses,
guy with a feel for what made them run and sometimes not run. And that was Blue. He was tall for a jockey, running about five
foot six inches, but he rode atop a horse light as a feather, held the reins as if they were an extension of his hands and
only went to the whip when he had to, not just because he felt it was something that had to be done. He was in his late thirties
and years past his prime, if he ever had one to begin with, when I signed him on to ride Yellow Mama.

“She got some spunk to her,” he said to me after his first few turns around the track with Mama. “How she handles the nasty
part of a race we won’t know until she’s in one, but I’m thinkin’ of running her on the inside. You need speed to survive
on the outside and I don’t think off the one ride she’s got enough of that.”

“She doesn’t look all that strong, either,” I said. “And strength is what she’ll need to make her way through the inside of
a race.”

“Sometimes guts gives you more than strength can,” Blue said. “If she’s got enough of that, she’ll win more than her share
of races.”

I looked away from Blue and at Yellow Mama, running my hands along her slender back, and nodded. “She’s got more than enough,”
I said.

Yellow Mama started off slow, losing her first four claim races, running out of the money each time. But she got better with
every race, her time improved, her charge up the inside, Blue keeping her on a steady pace, growing stronger, more daring,
her confidence slowly emerging after each start. She won her first race at a small track on Long Island, me and Blue splitting
the $400 pay-out. And from there on, the races got bigger and so did the purses and the winning soon turned into a habit.
I ran her eleven times in her second year on the tracks and she never finished lower than third in any one of those races.

We lived pretty well for the next couple of years. Yellow Mama’s winnings sometimes were even enough to cover my gambling
losses. I knew I couldn’t run her forever and if I loved her as much as I’m always saying I do, I would have sold her last
year to Albie Toney, who wanted to put her out to pasture, have her roam with the studs at his West Virginia farm. Albie was
set to hand me $25,000 for the chance to see if Yellow Mama’s offspring would inherit her heart and grit. Instead, I turned
him down and I have nothing to show for it but empty pockets and a $50,000 debt to pay in less than forty-eight hours.

“You decide yet how you gonna play your way out of this one?” Blue asked. He was standing above me, outside Mama’s stable,
the setting sun gleaming off the shine on his shaved black head. I looked up at him and saw the sadness in his eyes, not over
me, he had learned long ago not to expect much back from trainers, but over Yellow Mama. I may have trained her, but Blue
was the one who rode her and if anybody knew how special a horse she was, it was the jockey who saw her fight and flight her
way to wins she had no right to expect to take. They rode as one, both of them unheralded, both bred to lose, both, somehow,
finding ways to win.

It was early on a Saturday morning and the stables were busy with trainers and jockeys getting ready for the afternoon’s card.
“This horse they want Mama to race,” I asked Blue, “she any good? I’m asking can Mama take her?”

“Blindfolded and with me riding her side saddle,” Blue said.

“But if you held her back she would lose, am I right on that?”

“Much as I would hate to do that to her, I would,” Blue said, a pained expression crossing his face. “Not to get you out of
the hole you’re in. I don’t care about that. But just to keep her alive.”

“What’s the risk in that?” I asked, lacking the nerve to look Blue in the face.

“She might buck on me,” Blue said. “I’ve never held her back, especially that deep into a race. If anything, I give her a
bit of a nudge, let her know this is where she airs it out. Never need to go to the whip there, either. She has a feel for
the finish line and she can taste the win. Pulling on her at that point be like slamming the brakes on the last lap of a car
race. Anything can happen and none of it would be good.”

“I guess that’s why they want me to hit her with the needle before the race,” I said. “Make sure she starts the race with
no chance of a win.”

“Damn you, Bobby,” Blue said. “You know the kind of people they are, the kind of crew Touchdown has working for him. You go
and put yourself in a fifty-grand hole to them? What did you expect? Getting money back from losers like you is how they make
their living.”

“You ever give a horse a shot like the one they got for Mama?”

“Not me, no,” Blue said, his anger doing a slow simmer. “But I seen it done, too many times not to forget it.”

“What’s it do to the horse?”

“What it’s supposed to do,” Blue said. “Slows them down, makes them a little dizzy, the legs tight and weak. They can race
but barely, just enough strength in them to get around the track a couple of times. You’ve seen it, too, don’t lie and tell
me different. They’re never the same horse after a shot like that. Take a good look at Mama now. See the life in her eyes.
After that shot makes its way through her body, those eyes will be as dead as any junkie’s. But what do you care? You’ll be
all square on your bet with Touchdown, free to gamble away until another day.”

Blue picked up his gear and walked away, heading toward the jockey’s lounge. I sat there, my arms resting on a pile of hay,
Yellow Mama’s breath warming the top of my neck. As much as I had gambled through the years, I had always managed to steer
clear of the heavy-hitters, connected guys like Touchdown and his Manhattan gang. I had heard there was a poker game in town,
somewhere on the Upper West Side, a brownstone in the 80s. I had five hundred in my pocket and hadn’t played much poker since
my Florida days and went in search of the game. I didn’t plan on losing big, certainly not more than what I had on me. But
then again, I never plan on losing big. No gambler does.

I was three hours into the game, playing against six players who seemed born with five cards in their hands, and found myself
staring down at six thousand dollars in winnings. That was the moment. That was when I should have thanked the table, tipped
the kid bringing over drinks and sandwiches, and walked out into the warm night air, my wallet filled with money. I was going
to play one last hand and then bow out. But then I get dealt three Jacks out of five cards and this feeling comes over me,
just like it does anyone as hooked on gambling as me. It’s the feeling that this is it, your night, your time, and any hand
you get is going to be a winning one. That deal lifted my winnings up to eleven thousand and I just kept right on rolling,
deep into the night and into the early morning, the drinks and sandwiches replaced by coffee and scrambled eggs.

I was up twenty-two thousand and on my second cup of coffee, black, no sugar, when I spotted Touchdown sitting in the corner,
crooked smile on his face, hard look in his eyes. He was dressed in a Brioni suit and held a glass of warm milk in his hands.
He didn’t play, never gambled, is what I had always heard. At least not on cards or horses. His gamble was on players like
me. His bet was that we would end up on the short side of the field, leave the table or the room owing instead of carrying.
And Touchdown was almost never wrong and he had the wad in his pocket and the cash in the bank to prove it. I did my best
to ignore him and given the lucky run I was on that wasn’t all that hard to do. By noon, I had been at the game little less
than eighteen hours and could have cashed in my winnings if I pushed my chair away from the table. It was the hot streak of
a lifetime, the kind a born loser never lands. I knew it would end, all streaks end, I just didn’t know when or how and figured
I’d play it out until I lost a few hands, and still walk away with the biggest haul I’d ever see. But it never works out that
way.

At least not for guys like me.

I lost eight big hands in a row, betting heavier with each draw, knowing in my gut the luck would turn back my way, ignoring
the reality that all the chips were now stacked in front of the other players. I should have pushed back and walked out of
that apartment, found an open diner and grabbed myself a bite. But, we were heading toward that last big pot, the one that’s
won with a dream hand and I needed to be there for that. I couldn’t walk away, not until I saw the cards and made the grab
for it all. I was so deep into my gambler’s haze that I couldn’t see the game for what it was, never saw the setup coming
my way. One of the rules a gambler learns early on is never to go into a situation blind. Know who you’re up against and what
their angle is before the game even starts. Don’t be blinded by easy wins and great draws and cards coming your way that never
would or should. Don’t ignore the losing streak that leaves winning that last hand, the biggest pot, as the only way out of
the hole. If I was halfway close to smart, I would have remembered all that and not painted myself into a corner, sitting
across from five other players, with a hard-ass gangster off to my left, looking as calm and as relaxed as if he were taking
the sun at the Jersey shore.