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breeding. The rest of them, well, they keep right on working. Those fancy carriages you seein Central Park? You know, the ones for tourists? Who you think pulls them? Those Amish people, down in Pennsylvania, where you think they get the horses, pull their buggies? They got some programs where they even get adopted. That’s probably the best deal of all.”
    “The regular racehorses, they don’t—?”
    “ ‘Regular’ racehorses?” he said, like he was mad about something. “You mean, like the ones you see on TV, get movies made about them?”
    I just nodded; I didn’t say anything. That’s always the best move when it looks like someone’s going to lose it. I learned that one when I was just a little kid, even before I started getting locked up.
    “You never been near a track in your life, but you heard of Secretariat, am I right?”
    “Yeah. I mean, everybody’s—”
    “Sure. But I say, Nevele Pride or Une de Mai, I might as well be talking about fucking Martians, huh?”
    “I guess so. I mean—”
    “Thoroughbreds, that’s all anyone knows. Let me tell you something, kid: Those nags, they’re nothing but toys for rich men. That’s why those spindly-legged things are always breaking down. They ain’t from rugged stock,
working
stock, the way trotters are.”
    “But they’re faster, aren’t they? I mean—”
    “A track star could outrun a prizefighter, too. But what happens when the runner gases out, got no breath left? Your trotters, they’re the true tough guys in the business. Go out forty, forty-five times a year and
work
for their money. Race in the rain, race in the snow. Race in a damn hurricane, you let them. They pull whatever you put behind them, too. You don’t have to be no midget to do it—some of those drivers are as big as you are. And you don’t have to be from Saudi-fucking-Arabia to own one, neither.”
    “I don’t want to own one. I just want to win some money on them.”
    “Uh-huh,” the old man said. Meaning, whatever was really going on, it wasn’t his business. “All right, here’s how it works. Winning money on the trotters is part handicapping, part investment, and part luck. If the race is clean—and, a lot of them, they’re not no more, not with exotics on every race—the edge goes to the man who really loves the horses. You got to have a feel for them. That takes—”
    “What’s ‘exotics’?” I interrupted. I know it’s not polite, but he was losing me, and I wanted to slow him down so I didn’t miss anything.
    “Combo betting. Like a trifecta, that’s one example. To hit one of those, you have to pick the horses who come in first, second, and third, in that order. Long odds, big payoffs.”
    “What’s wrong with that?” It sounded okay to me. That’s the way life is—the bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.
    “What’s wrong with it is that big money always brings out the guys who like shortcuts. Those kind of people, the ones I’m talking about now—all they have to do is pay two, three drivers to pull their horses—hold them back, make sure they don’t finish in the money, okay? Then they bet the other horses in every possible combination. Long as they make sure the pulled horses are short-priced, they’re guaranteed a big score, every time.”
    The old man lit a cigarette, hunching his shoulders and cupping his hands, even though there was no wind.
    “They used to call a race like that the Big Triple. Usually had only one a night, on the last race; keep the crowd from leaving,” he said. “Now, they got one on damn near
every
race. Superfectas, you got to pick the first
four
horses in the exact order of finish. High-Fives … well, you get the idea.”
    “Yeah,” I said. And I did. There was a casino at the track—not a real one, just slots, mostly—and it was packed to the gills with gamblers. Not horse-players, gamblers.
    “Look at it like this,” the old man said. “The owner of the winninghorse gets
half
the