room, Mike, and keep away from the window.”
“I may have to do some moving around. I want you to spot them for me.”
“Mike, I’d rather not do that, if you don’t mind. I like it better behind the scenes.”
“We’re going to be using closed circuit,” Shayne said. “Dave, time to go to work.”
Dave, the electronics technician, was on the couch, leafing through Playboy. He stood up, yawning and scratching.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mike. What do we do when the Surfside people don’t want to let me take over their console?”
“We reason with them,” Shayne said. He took the. 38 out of his belt holster, checked the cylinder, and shifted it to his sling.
“Oh, God,” Soupy moaned. “I didn’t know I was getting involved in anything like this.”
“Think of money, Soupy.”
He led the way to the master control room, passing the judges’ box. Lou Liebler was lighting a cigarette when he looked around and saw Shayne. He nearly set fire to his eyebrows.
“Say-Mike. Got a minute?”
Shayne made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “Everything under control, Lou. Talk to you later.”
The console engineer had just arrived, and was arranging his working aids: cigarettes, crackers, cheese, a bottle of Gatoraid and a paperback mystery. He looked around.
“And who is this bearded gnome? Dave? Welcome aboard. Now you can find out how a professional works.”
“We seem to be hijacking your dog track,” Dave said apologetically, “so move over.”
“Hijacking,” Shayne said from behind him. “That’s too strong a word. We’re just going to add a few touches. Still, you heard him. Move over.”
The technician started to get up as Tim Rourke and Soupy pushed in. “Who are you people? Who authorized this?”
“I didn’t know who to ask,” Shayne said. “Do you know what I mean by a citizen’s arrest? A citizen sees a crime being committed, and instead of ducking he steps up and arrests the guy, and if he’s lucky he doesn’t get his head shot off. We have reason to believe that crimes of a serious nature are being committed here. Watch the kennel monitor for a minute.”
The technician looked from face to face, then at the bank of closed-circuit screens. All of them were alight, and most of them busy. He swung around at once. “Somebody switched locations!”
“Dave and I did that,” Shayne said, “but the kennel people don’t know we’re getting a new angle.”
The screen showing the interior of the kennel was crosshatched with lines. This was the ventilator grill, concealing the second camera. Amateur handicappers were already gathering behind the glass on the clubhouse side. That entire wall was glass, to convince the bettors that Surfside had nothing to hide. The wide-angle lens distorted dimensions, and when Sanchez walked in front of the hidden camera he seemed to be lopsided and moving with a slight list.
“Keep watching,” Shayne said. “Soupy, slide in here.”
Two of the pictures showed the main turnstiles, a third the corridor to the clubhouse escalators. Early arrivals were beginning to dribble through.
“Concentrate,” Shayne said. “For every one you spot there’s an additional hundred bucks.”
The track’s safety director, a squat Italian named Lou D’Alessio, came blasting in.
“What, may I ask-”
The engineer watching the monitors said suddenly, “Lou, take a look at this.”
In the kennel picture, Sanchez was facing the hidden camera, looking down at something in his hand. The hand was screened from the watchers outside, and also from the regular closed-circuit pickup, which had been cut off and was no longer transmitting. As he changed position, they could see he had a small hypodermic syringe.
“Tape it,” Shayne said.
D’Alessio pushed closer. “What’s the bastard think he’s doing?”
Sanchez reached into one of the cages, as if to check the dog’s identifying tattoo. Injecting the medication took only an instant. The syringe was hidden in his fist when he closed the cage and moved on.
Dave reversed the tape and replayed it. “We didn’t get the needle.”
“Be ready for it the next time,” Shayne said.
The safety director turned. “This is very, very serious. You don’t know how serious this is. That dog is in the Classic.”
Shayne blocked him. “Leave him alone for now. Somebody has to handle the dogs.”
“You don’t understand. He’s fixing the Classic. People are going to be betting on that race.”
“And most of them, as always, are going to get screwed. Let’s stay calm and quiet and see what else happens.”
“I’m responsible for security at this track.”
“You’ve been doing a lousy job at it. Soupy’s looking for three gunmen. Let’s lower our voices. We don’t want to distract him.”
D’Alessio growled. As he pushed forward, with an arm raised, Shayne went beneath the arm and caught him about the chest.
“Soupy, he’s carrying a gun. Get it, will you?”
“Me?”
“You’re nearest. It won’t bite you.”
Shayne could feel the excited ticking of D’Alessio’s heart. He let him go after Soupy reached in and pulled his gun.
“You’ve been busy with pickpockets and breaking up fights,” Shayne said. “Your security here is a joke, except that I wasn’t laughing when one of your uniforms shot at me a couple of nights ago, in the middle of a crowd. I can’t be objective about that, but I’ll try to overlook it if you’ll keep out of our way. Under the counter would be a good place.”
“You don’t mean it. I’ve got too much to do.”
“I mean it. This is an outside audit. We don’t know who’s involved and who isn’t.”
The announcer arrived next, a leathery-faced person who had been calling dog races since adolescence. He was surprised to see the crowd, and more surprised to see D’Alessio on the floor, knees under his chin.
“Lou? What are you doing down there?”
“Resting, what do you think I’m doing? Making myself promises.”
“Well,” the announcer said, looking around, “I’m going to need some elbowroom. I’ve got to familiarize myself with the dogs.”
They rearranged themselves, and he squeezed in. Shayne ended up at the windows, and Rourke passed him a pair of binoculars. They were at the end of the suspended deck, and through a window in the side wall he could look into the paddock and see the loading dock on the far side of the lockup kennel. Wagons from the contract kennels were parked in a separate enclosure. Beneath, he could see all of the clubhouse and three-fifths of the grandstand.
“Soupy, any luck?”
“Mike, I’m beginning to see spots, not people. Ha-Ha has his hair in a ponytail-he ought to be easy. But I haven’t seen him. Beach detectives, though, the whole bunch is here. And there’s my good friend Peter Asshole Painter.”
Shayne checked the screen. The inward flow was increasing. He saw the chief of detectives talking to one of his plainclothesmen near the turnstiles. He moved away, and Shayne followed him onto the next screen. Dave’s changes had disturbed the sequence, so when Painter left that picture in the top row, he appeared next in one along the bottom. He went to the kennel and joined the group looking in.
Dave, behind Shayne, grunted. “Yes, yes, stick it in him.”
After a moment he moved to the viewing window and reran the tape he had just made. “Got the needle this time, Mike. Nice and clear.”
The grandstand was filling up. Soupy leaned forward on his hands, his eyes skittering from screen to screen. Thinking he saw one of the three men, he followed the figure off the screens into the clubhouse. Using Shayne’s
