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“You got a violator?”

“That’s right, Officer,” the pump jockey said. “Second-time offense, no less.”

Silver Spectre

by Jon L. Breen

Everyone in the racing world hated Stu Gallon...

* * *

Want to hear a ghost story? Come on, listen to this. The next drink’s on me. You don’t like ghost stories? Well, call it a detective story then, with yours truly as detective. I can’t prove I was a detective, but then nobody can prove there was a ghost either. You don’t like detective stories? Well, it’s also a racing story — and I know you like racing, because you have today’s program from Santa Anita sticking out of your jacket pocket. Pretty good, huh? I told you I was a detective.

I heard this story years ago, in a bar. It wasn’t a sleazy joint like this one though. It was much cozier, sort of like a friendly English pub. It was back East, in a place called Blakemore Village, an Atlantic resort town. It doesn’t exist any more — it hardly existed then. But there was a racetrack there, Blakemore Downs. It went bankrupt about the time racing was booming all over the country. The whole operation was snake-bit from the first, they say, though it managed to stay in business quite a few years. At the time I got to Blakemore Village, the wrecking ball was only a week or two away from that pretty grandstand. The track had been closed for a couple of years. My paper had assigned me to do a piece on the track — a nostalgia piece, they’d call it today.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the assignment, but I always tried to do my best. In the middle of the day I went out and looked at the track. I talked to the caretaker, the only human being on the premises, an old ex-jockey named Billy Duff. He rode around the grounds on an aged grey gelding, the only horse left at a place where so many crashing hooves had thudded their way to glory or disaster. You can laugh all you want, but sportswriters had to write that way in the old days.

It turned out that nearly everything at the track was still intact. Even the jockey room had racks and racks of bright-colored silks hanging there. Everything was a little dusty and the infield was overgrown with weeds, but you had the idea they could have started racing tomorrow if there’d been any horses to race or any suckers to watch them. No offense, friend. I’m sure you’re a scientific bettor and regularly show a profit on your investments. But I’m sure you’ll agree that most of your brethren lack whatever sense they were born with.

I got what I could from Duff, but he was a closemouthed old timer without many stories to tell, and it began to look as if I’d be writing a dull piece. Over the forty years of Blakemore Downs’ existence, some really fine horses had run there. But I wanted to turn in something more than just a walk through the old newspaper files and racing manuals.

That night I went into the local tavern, sat down at the bar, and ordered a drink. In those days, I did that for information, for color, not just because I wanted to drink away the evening. Now I don’t have that excuse, but back then when I walked up to a bar I was working.

There were a few regulars sitting there shooting the breeze, and they were cordial to me. By that time in the history of Blakemore Village they weren’t seeing many visitors and much of the conversation was devoted to figuring out why their town was dying. They were philosophical enough about it. Just one of those things — boom today, bomb tomorrow.

At a corner table, away from anyone else, was a gaunt and gloomy-faced man of about sixty. He didn’t join in the conversation, but devoted himself to serious drinking. The bartender would provide him with a fresh drink periodically in response to some practically invisible signal, and the other regulars would cast a voyeuristic glance his way every so often.

Promptly at eight o’clock, Billy Duff came in for what was apparently a nightly quick one, something you could set your clock by. He was friendly enough but no more talkative than he had been with me that day at the track. He too cast an interested glance at the man at the corner table. Obviously, he knew him but he made no move to go over and say hello. I offered to buy Billy a drink but he assured me that one was his permanent limit, and he left at a quarter past eight.

I hung on, chatting with the regulars. I was enjoying the conviviality and had a hunch that if the man at the corner table ever got up and left the tavern an interesting story might come my way. It might or might not have any bearing on my story about Blakemore Downs — but by that time I didn’t much care.

Sure enough, about ten o’clock, the man at the corner table lurched to his feet, made his way to the bar with wobbly dignity, wordlessly paid his tab, and made his way out the door.

As soon as he was out of earshot the bartender said, “Old Stu. I haven’t seen him around here in years.”

The other regulars nodded or grunted in uninformative agreement.

Finally I had to ask. “Who is he?”

“Stuart Gallon. He used to be a trainer of racehorses. He led the trainer standings at the Downs for years.”

“He must be sorry to see the place torn down,” I remarked.

One of the regulars snickered. “I don’t know,” he said.

I smiled. “Come on, you guys. There’s a story to tell about this guy. So tell it.”

“You may not be able to use it. It’s sort of a ghost story,” said the bartender.

I shrugged. “I don’t believe in ghosts — but some of my readers might.”

“O.K.” The bartender looked over my shoulder toward the window with a slight smile. “Fog’s rollin’ in,” he said. “Sometimes it gets so thick here you can’t see your hand in front of your face.”

“Save the atmosphere,” I kidded. “Don’t try to scare me. Just tell me the story, and I’ll provide the whistling wind or the cold chill or whatever’s called for when I write it up. And—” I added as an afterthought “—set up a round on me.” I didn’t want to lose the story, whatever it was.

“We do get a lot of fog here though,” the bartender said. “It’s one of the things that didn’t do the Downs any good. Sometimes it would be so foggy in the afternoon they couldn’t even do a full chart of the race. It’d just say ‘fog’ and give the positions at the finish. Along the backstretch, the jockeys could have been wrestling or shooting pool or kissing each other and nobody in the stands’d know it.

“But that’s getting away from the story. Not too far though. The man who just left, Stu Gallon, was not well liked in these parts. Whether it was justified or not, I don’t know.”

“It was justified all right!” snapped one of the regulars, a smallish old man with leathery skin. Another ex-jockey? I wondered.

“I know you think so, Fred. All I know about it of my own knowledge is that he believed in racing his horses a lot. He thought a race wasn’t much harder on a horse than a workout — and he might as well go for the money as just run ’em around the track for no reason. Some folks said that was inhumane, but I don’t know.”

Fred said heatedly, “It wasn’t just that, Charley. A lot of good trainers believed in racing their horses a lot. But Stu Gallon was a hard man. He hated horses — that’s the long and short of it. He’d race them when they weren’t right and he’d take a whip to them if they looked cross-eyed at him. And he didn’t treat people much better. I’d have gone over and punched him one tonight when he came in, but I guess he’s been punished plenty already for what he did.”

“Anyway,” said Charley, the bartender, “for purposes of the story let’s just say Stu Gallon was not a popular man around the racetrack. People who worked for him never seemed to stay long. But he was a successful trainer.