I watched Disaway as they led him out to be hosed and squeegeed down and fed. His nostrils were
flared open, his ears standing straight up and slightly forward, and there was a look of defiant
madness in his eyes. I was beginning to understand why Pancho had a thing about Thoroughbreds.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked as we walked down the shedrows.
“About what?”
“What was all that about, feeling the horse?s legs, the stop-watches, all the inside track stuff?”
“Well, he?s not a bad kid,” Callahan said as we walked through the dissipating fog. “He?s strong,
good bloodlines, has good legs, but he?s a mudder. He just does okay on the fast track. If I were a
betting man I?d put my money on him to show. He?s about half a length short of a champion.”
“You got all that from feeling his forelegs?”
“I got all that from reading the racing form.”
As we walked past the shed rows and headed across a dirt road toward the jockeys? cafeteria, I saw a
dark blue Mercedes, parked near the stables. It was empty. I looked around, trying not to be obvious,
but the fog was still too heavy to see anybody farther away than twenty feet.
“Old Dracula?s here,” Callahan said.
“Dracula?”
“Raines. The commissioner.”
“You don?t like him?” I found myself hoping Callahan would say no.
“Runs a tight operation. Like him a lot better if he had blood in his veins. One cold piece of work.
That?s his wife right over there.”
It caught me by surprise. I turned quickly, getting a glimpse of Doe through the fog, talking nose to
nose with a horse in one of the stables. Then the mist swirled back around her and she vanished.
“Let?s mosey to the commissary,” Callahan said. “Grab some groceries. Listen to the jocks and
trainers.”
I didn?t know Callahan well, but he was acting like a man who?s on to something.
The fog had lifted enough for me to see the contours of the cafeteria, a long, low clapboard building.
The dining room was a very pleasant, bright room that smelled of fresh coffee and breakfast. It was
about half-filled with track people: jocks, trainers, owners, handicappers, exercise riders, stewards.
The talk was all horses. Mention Tagliani to this group, they?d want to know what race he was in and
who was riding him.
I stayed close to Callahan, ordered a breakfast that would have satisfied a stevedore, and listened.
Callahan was as tight with these people as a fat man?s hand in a small glove. He talked to the track
people from one side of his mouth and me from the other:
