'You handled him like he was a little boy,' Penny said. She hugged my arm against her.
'It's what I do,' I said. 'As in most things, there's a pretty big difference between amateurs and professionals.'
'I'll say.'
'Sorry that had to happen,' I said.
'Oh, not me,' Penny said. 'I'm thrilled. I think Pud needs to be kicked in the ass every evening.'
'In your experience, am I going to have to do it again?'
'I don't know. He may not even remember it in the morning.'
'Perhaps SueSue will remind him.'
'You don't miss much,' she said. 'Do you?'
'Just doing my job, ma'am,' I said.
'Most of the people Pud picks on are afraid of him.'
'Given his fistic skills,' I said, 'he would be wise to ascertain that in advance.'
She smiled and gave my arm an extra squeeze and guided me through the cocktail crowd.
FIVE
IT WAS TEN minutes to six in the morning. I was at the rail with Hale Martin, the Three Fillies trainer, at the east end of the Three Fillies training track with the sun on my back, drinking a cup of coffee from the pot in the trainer's room. A big chestnut horse was being ridden around the soft track by a small girl in jeans and a lavender T-shirt that read THREE FILLIES on it. A whip was stuck into the top of her right boot. Under her funny-looking rider's cap, her hair was a long single braid down her back. The girl was an exercise rider named Mickey. The horse was Hugger Mugger. He was beautiful. There were four other horses being galloped in the morning. They were beautiful. As I went along I discovered that they were all beautiful, including the ones that couldn't outrun me in a mile and a furlong. Maybe beauty is skin-deep.
'How much does he weigh?' I said.
'About twelve hundred pounds,' Martin said.
I'd always imagined that trainers were old guys that looked like James Whitmore, and chewed plug tobacco. Martin was a young guy with even features and very bright blue eyes and the healthy color of a man who spent his life outdoors. He wore a white button-down shirt and pressed jeans, a silk tweed jacket, riding boots, and the kind of snug leather pullover chaps that horse people wore, I think, to indicate that they were horse people.
'And that hundred-pound kid controls him like he was a tricycle.'
Martin smiled. 'Girls and horses,' he said.
'It's probably a sign of city-bred boorishness,' I said. 'But all the horses look pretty much alike.'
'They ought to,' Martin said. 'They're all descended from one of three horses, most of them from a horse called the Darley Arabian.'
'Close breeding,' I said.
'Um-hmm.'
We were alone at the rail except for the Security South guards in their gray uniforms, four of them, with handguns and walkie-talkies, watching Hugger Mugger as he pranced through his workout.
'Doesn't it make some of them kind of weird?'
'Oh yes,' Martin said. 'Weavers. Cribbers. Stay around until we breeze Jimbo. We can't breeze Jimbo with the other horses.'
The stables and training track were surrounded by tall pine trees that didn't begin to branch until maybe thirty feet up the trunk. The horses' hooves made a soft chuff on the surface of the track. Otherwise it was very still. The exercise riders talked among themselves as they rode, but we weren't close enough to hear them. There was nothing else in sight but this ring in the trees where the horses circled timelessly, counterclockwise, with an evanescence of morning mist barely lingering about the infield.
'What's going on with that one?' I said.
'He tends to swallow his tongue,' Martin said. 'So we have to tie it down when he runs.'
'How's he feel about that?' I said.
Martin grinned. 'Horses don't say much.'
'Nothing wrong with quiet,' I said.
A trim man with short hair and high cheekbones came toward us from the stable area. He had on a tan golf jacket, and Dockers and deck shoes. A blue-and-gray-plaid shirt showed at the opening of the half-zipped jacket. He wore an earpiece like the Secret Service guys, and there was a small SS pin on the lapel of his jacket. When he got close enough I could see that he was wearing a gun under the golf jacket.
'Delroy,' he said.
'Spenser,' I said, trying to stand a little straighter.
'I heard you were coming aboard.'
'Aye,' I said.
