Murder at the Racetrack
Read Murder at the Racetrack Online
Authors: Otto Penzler
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General
“The expert handicapper explained that a winner was a sure thing. So I borrowed $200 and handed it over to my bookie. My
horse came in second and I lost everything. This scenario taught me several important life lessons. One was that gambling
is a lot of fun but you have to be a billionaire or an idiot to do it regularly. The other is that not everything in the world
is exactly as it seems—especially the integrity of the racetrack. This revelation made it evident that racetracks and the
people who inhabit that world are the perfect background for stories of lying, stealing, cheating, and any other crime you
can conjure. Here, then, is the field for MURDER AT THE RACETRACK—that rare field in which everyone is a winner.”
—Otto Penzler, from the Introduction
DANGEROUS WOMEN
,
EDITED BY OTTO PENZLER
“I’m not usually given to superlatives, but
Dangerous Women
may be the best, most varied, and colorful mystery anthology of all time. ”
—Janet Evanovich
“A brilliant anthology.”
—Robert B. Parker
“Wow, what memorable dames! What terrific short stories!
Dangerous Women
is a winning collection.”
—Susan Isaacs
The events and characters in this book are fictitious. Certain real locations and public figures are mentioned, but all other
characters and events described in the book are totally imaginary.
Copyright of the collection © 2006 by Otto Penzler
Introduction copyright © 2006 by Otto Penzler
“Keller By a Nose” copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Block; “The Return of the Thin White Dude… Screaming” copyright © 2006 by
Ken Bruen; “Zuppe Inglese” copyright © 2006 by Jan Burke; “Yellow Mama’s Long Weekend” copyright © 2006 by Lorenzo Carcaterra;
“That Kind of Nag” copyright © 2006 by Max Allan Collins; “The Odds” copyright © 2006 by Thomas H. Cook; “The Hustle” copyright
© 2006 by Pat Jordan; “The Great, the Good and the Not-So-Good” copyright © 2006 by H.R.F. Keating; “The Cover Story Is Always
a lie” copyright © 2006 by John Lescroart; “Raindancer” copyright © 2006 by Michael Malone; “The Long Shot” copyright © 2006
by Michele Rebecca Martinez Campbell; “Meadowlands” copyright © 2006 by Joyce Carol Oates; “Hotwalking” copyright © 2006
by Julie Smith; “Pinwheel” copyright © 2006 by Scott Wolven
All rights reserved.
Grand Central Publishing
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The Grand Central Publishing name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56517-2
For Elmore Leonard
A great hard-boiled writer
A great soft-boiled friend
Contents
THE RETURN THIN WHITE DUDE… SCREAMING
THE GREAT. THE GOOD AND THE NOT-SO-GOOD
THE COVER STROY IS ALWAYS A LIE
Otto Penzler
W
hat is it about horse racing that makes it seem so out of kilter? Here we have exquisitely beautiful animals upon whom are
lavished all the care that most men don’t even offer their wives. It ’s an outdoor sport, mainly reserved for warm sunny days,
with bright green lawns in the infield and leafy old trees beyond.
Yet if there’s a dirtier sport than horse racing, one with more fixes than Needle Park (and let’s get this straight—professional
wrestling has as much to do with sports as Dennis Rodman has to do with splitting the atom), I have yet to discover it. Even
boxing, which has the reputation of being crooked, is purer than a seven-year-old Pakistani bride compared with “the Sport
of Kings.”
There are good reasons for an owner to want his horse to lose a race. The more times a big old stallion steps into the gate
and comes up short, the longer the odds are for the next race. A sudden victory with long odds can pay off very handsomely
if a clever fellow has placed a substantial bet on that very outcome.
It’s almost impossible to count the ways in which an owner (or a trainer, not to mention the occasional jockey) can stop a
horse from winning. Various chemicals can slow down a horse, and so can the wrong food. A long run in the middle of the night
probably won’t have a positive effect on a horse’s stamina the next afternoon. You don’t want to know what a sponge shoved
way up a horse’s nose will do to the poor critter. There are other methods of killing a racer’s chances of a first-place finish,
some a bit too uncomfortable to describe here, but trust me—there are a lot of them.
Here’s a little story that I promise is true, but I’ll have to bypass a name for obvious reasons. About a thousand years ago,
shordy after the invention of movable type, I worked in the sports department of the New York
Daily News.
An expert handicapper had a desk in the corner and his picks ran in the paper every day. He was heading off for a vacation
and asked me for a favor: Would I handicap the races at Aqueduct for the next two weeks? This way there would be no interruption
in the handicapping service, and bettors who relied on his picks wouldn’t go into withdrawal.
Well, I explained, I didn’t think I could pick the winner of the race if it was Secretariat running against a mule. And all
that arcane stuff about mudders (nothing to do with fadders) and maidens (who could also be male) was an alien language, so
suggesting that I pass myself off as an expert seemed as far-fetched as my dream of playing centerfield for the New York Yankees.
“No problem,” he assured me. “I’ll teach you all about it tomorrow,” he said. Which he did.
He went on vacation and I had a merry old time picking the win-place-show results of every race for the next couple of weeks.
When he returned from his fun in the sun, we tabulated the results, and to the amazement of one and all (especially me), I
had amassed a better winning percentage than he had. Then again, Ray Charles throwing darts at the
Racing Form
would probably have done better than either of us.
Still, he was delighted and grateful that I hadn’t embarrassed him and he decided to thank me by telling me to bet on a certain
horse a few days later. Understand, I was making about $75 a week at the time, frequently skipping even simple meals a couple
of times a week because I couldn’t afford both lunch
and
a book I just had to have. So I bet two bucks on the horse he told me about, and sure enough, I won about eight dollars and
was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. When he approached me the next day, beaming, he asked how much I’d won, and
I told him. He practically threw me out the window. “I give you a winner,” he shouted, “and you bet a lousy two bucks?” Well,
I had figured, if I can pick them better than he could, just how much did I want to risk?
He patiently explained that when he gave me a
winner,
it wasn’t exactly because he had handicapped it. It was a sure thing. So he told me he” d give me another, but this time
I should put down a real bet. A week or so later, he gave me another horse. I scraped together what I could and bet twenty
dollars this time. I won nearly ninety dollars (more than a week’s pay!) and felt like John D. Rockefeller (or Scrooge McDuck,
to make a literary reference).
The next day, we replayed the same scene. He was again outraged at my gutlessness and told me so. After calling me lots of
not very nice names, most of which described in colorful and comprehensive detail my lack of brains as well as heart, he told
me he’d give me one more, but then that was it. By now I was getting the hang of it, so I borrowed $200 and handed it over
to my favorite bookie and advised him to lay it off (pass the bet along to another bookie) since this was a sure thing and
I didn’t want to see him lose all the money that I was going to rake in. He told me he’d risk it. Naturally, and you saw this
coming, my horse came in second and I lost everything I’d previously won and a whole lot more. Next day he shrugged and said
you can’t win ’em all.
This scenario taught me several important life lessons. One is that gambling is really a lot of fun, but you have to be a
billionaire or an idiot to do it regularly. The other is that not everything in the world is exactly as it seems, including—and,
perhaps, especially—the integrity of the racetrack.
As a result, this revelation made it evident that racetracks and the people who inhabit that world—most of whom, I’m absolutely
certain, are utterly fair, honest and aboveboard (which is my moment of political correctness for the month)—are the perfect
background for stories of lying, stealing, cheating and any other crime you can conjure.
Here, then, is the field for
Murder at the Racetrack
—that rare field in which everyone is a winner.
Lawrence Block has received the two greatest honors that the mystery world can bestow: the Grand Master Award from the Mystery
Writers of America and the Diamond Dagger from the (British) Crime Writers’ Association, both for lifetime achievement.
Ken Bruen’s twenty novels are among the darkest in the history of crime fiction. He has been nominated for an Edgar and won
the Shamus award from the Private Eye Writers of America for
The Guards,
which introduced his Galway-based P.I., Jack Taylor.
Jan Burke won the Edgar for Best Novel in 2000 for
Bones
, an Irene Kelly novel. She is the founder of the Crime Lab Project, which aims to give greater support for forensic science
in America. She has served on the National Board of Directors of MWA and was the president of the Southern California chapter.
Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of six books including the controversial
Sleepers,
which became a
New York Times
number one bestseller in hardcover and paperback, as well as a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Kevin
Bacon and Minnie Driver. He is the producer and writer of NBC’s
Law and Order.
Max Allan Collins is the author of more than thirty novels, many featuring Nate Heller, all of whose adventures feature real-life
people and some element of actual history. He has made films with Patty McCormack and Mickey Spillane, and wrote the
Dick Tracy
comic strip for many years.
Thomas H. Cook has been nominated for Edgars five times in three different categories (True Crime, Paperback Original and
Best Novel), winning the Best Novel of the Year award in 1997 for
The Chatham School Affair.
Several of his novels have been filmed in Japan.
Pat Jordan is the author of more than a thousand stories and articles for such publications as
The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy
and
Harper’s.
He has also written eleven books, one of which,
A False Spring,
was hailed by
Time
as one of “the best and truest books about baseball.”
H.R.F. Keating is one of the Grand Old Men of mystery fiction. As one of Britain’s leading critics for more than half a century
and the author of more than fifty books, he was given the Diamond Dagger by the (British) Crime Writers’ Association in 1996
for lifetime achievement.
John Lescroart is the author of sixteen crime novels, the last thirteen featuring Dismas Hardy (beginning with
Dead Irish
in 1989), which have become regulars on the bestseller lists. Hardy is named for Saint Dismas, who is the patron saint of
thieves and criminals.
Michael Malone has written three mystery novels featuring the wealthy Justin Savile V and his boss, Police Chief Cuddy R.
Mangum, plus the
New York Times
bestselling
The Killing Club,
based on the daytime drama series
One Life to hive,
of which he was the head writer. He won an Edgar for Best Short Story, “Red Clay,” in 1997.
Michele Martinez, like Melanie Vargas, the chief protagonist of her novel
Most Wanted
(the first of a series), was a federal prosecutor in New York City, serving as Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern
District, home to the biggest and richest drug gangs in America.
Joyce Carol Oates, a winner of the National Book Award as well as five other nominations, is the author of such best sellers
as
We Were the Mulvaneys
and
Blonde.
Arguably the greatest living writer in the world, she is the author of nearly a hundred books, including novels, short story
collections, poetry, criticism, children’s literature and so forth.