Parnell caught a plane later that evening for New Mexico to start work on his new racer.
6
THE NEXT DAY, and four hundred miles to the south
From the gas station, you could see the stands around the race track. Maury sat in the gas-station office, his feet up on the desk, and looked out the window past the pumps, and beyond the highway, to the stands which were topped by waving pennants. He sat there and waited for the phone not to ring. Every day during racing season, he spent his afternoons in the gas station, waiting for the phone not to ring, and most days it didn’t.
But, every once in a while, it would and Willy, who ran the station, would pick it up and then turn to Maury and say, “It’s for you.” And Maury would have to run to the track. Maury didn’t like to run, not to the track or anywhere. But God help him he should some day walkto the track and, as a result, get there too late to make the bet. On the days when the phone rang and Willy told him it was for him, Maury would jump up and run over to the phone, crying, “Open the safe! Open the safe! Don’t just stand there!” And he’d be panting already, even before making the run to the track, as he’d take the receiver, identify himself, and hear the voice at the other end say, “Three on Mister Whisker.”
“Three on Mister Whisker,” Maury would repeat. Then the party at the other end would cut him off. Maury would slam the receiver, turn to Willy, and shout, “Isn’t that damn safe open yet?”
Willy would ask, “How much Maury? Take it easy for Christ’s sake, Maury. How much?”
And Maury would say, “Three.”
Then Willy would hand him $3,000 in hundred-dollar bills, thirty hundred-dollar bills, and he would stuff them into his pockets and run for the track. It would seem like for ever getting through the gate, then he would be at the hundred-dollar WIN window, and he’d say, “Three thousand on Mister Whisker.”
The clerk at the hundred-dollar WIN window would smile and say, “Hello, Maury. Big play on that one, huh?” And he’d take Maury’s thirty hundred-dollar bills and give him thirty tickets on the nose of Mister Whisker.
Maury could then relax for a few minutes. He could go some place to watch the race, or just sit down and get his breath back, until the particular race on which he bet was over. If Mister Whisker came in, he’d go back and collect on his thirty tickets. If Mister Whisker lost, he’d carry the thirty tickets back to the gas station, put them in an envelope, and mail them off to the commission house, so they’d know he actually had bet the three grand and not just pocketed it.
He’d thought sometimes of notbetting the money, of sticking it in his pocket and waiting for the horse to lose. He could scrounge up enough tickets that other people had thrown away to make up the amount he should have bet. But most losers got their revenge by ripping the tickets up first. Besides, what if the horse won? If the horse won, and Maury hadn’t had the money on it, he wouldn’t be able to go back to the gas station with the winnings. And if that happened, God help him. So he took his fifty a week for sitting in the gas station and hoping the phone wouldn’t ring, and every once in a while he ran across the highway with his pockets full of thousands of dollars that he knew better than to try and keep.
He’d got the job from his brother-in-law, his wife’s brother, who was a big shot. Maury was a little shot and always would be. His brother-in-law had got him the job because otherwise Maury might not have been able to support his family, and, in that case, Maury’s brother-in-law would have to. And the brother-in-law had made it clear this was one job, theone job in Maury’s life, that Maury did not want to get himself fired from. “If you screw this up, Maury, there’s nothing I can do for you. My sister will be a widow.”
It was a hell of a responsibility, and it terrified Maury. That was why he spent every afternoon hoping the phone wouldn’t ring.
What Maury was, he was the lay-off man. The occasional phone order he got began a long, tortuous distance away from him. It could begin with your corner bookie. Normally, your corner bookie likes to cover all his bets himself, because then he can keep all the money bet on losers. But, every so often there’s a run on a horse there’s so much money bet on a particular horse running with high odds that if the horse came in, it would cost your corner bookie his shirt to pay off. Your corner bookie is a gambler, but he isn’t crazy. So he calls one of the big bookies, in New York or Chicago or Miami, and lays off part of the money bet on that horse. If the horse doesn’t come in, he’s lost the money he laid off to the big bookie. But if the horse does come in, he’ll have the money to cover the winnings and he can pay off his betters.
Just as a small-time bookie sometimes has to lay off an excess of bets on a horse, the big bookie sometimes has to do the same thing. Mister Whisker, say, is running at 12 to 1, which means a $24 payoff on every $2 bet. A number of corner bookies have been getting runs on Mister Whisker, and have laid off part of the money with a big bookie. Not only that, but a number of the big bookie’s regular customers are also betting heavily on Mister Whisker. So the big bookie calls a commission house in St Louis or Cincinnati or Chicago, and he, in turn, lays off some of his bets.
After the commission house, there’s no place left to lay off bets. Except at the race track itself. So the commission house, if necessary, does itslaying-off right at the track. This system has a double advantage for the commission house. Not only does it cover the commission house bets, but a large win bet shortly before post time may also lower the odds at the track so that a horse which was paying 24 to 2 before the commission house placed its bet through a lay-off man at the track may actually end up paying only 10 to 2.
But although the commission house gains an additional advantage from a lay-off bet at the track, it is faced with an additional physical problem in making the bet. The corner bookie can phone the big bookie. The big bookie can phone the commission house. But the commission house can’t phone the race track.
So the commission house does the next best thing. It hires a man to stand by near a telephone close to the race track every afternoon for the entire racing season. When the commission house wants to place a bet; it calls the man it has hired and tells him how much to bet on which horse. Then the lay-off man races over to the track and makes the bet personally.
There’s only one rub. In order for the man to be able to make large bets when required, he must have large amounts of money handy. In the safe in the gas-station office, for instance, there was always a fund of between $30,000 and $50,000. When the fund dropped below thirty, it was replenished by a courier from the commission house. If a lay-off bet turned out to be a winner, any money won that brought the fund over $50,000 was immediately returned to the commission house.
That afternoon, when the phone rang at twenty minutes past two and Maury felt the panic wings flutter in his stomach, there was $42,000 in the safe.
Salsa had been sitting here in the car at the same spot every afternoon since he’d got Parker’s goading letter, watching the gas station through his binoculars. He was beginning to lose patience it was now Wednesday. He would wait it out till the end of the week. If there wasn’t any action by then, he’d give it up.
Salsa was a tall, smooth-muscled man of thirty-seven, an illegal immigrant, whose youth had been thrown away on a passionate concern for a brand of politics currently in strong disfavour in the United States. In his middle twenties, he had suddenly awakened to the Truth of Self-interest, which he now realized was a far more important and valid Truth than any Political Truth ever invented. He further realized this was the hidden Truth upon which most of the leaders he had blindly followed based their actions. They had claimed to be struggling selflessly for a better world and Salsa had been young enough to believe them actively. He had actually been struggling selflessly for a better world until he had realized that most of the men he’d been following were struggling mainly for a world which would be better for themselves. From then on, when faced by a man who claimed he was struggling for a better world, Salsa invariably thought, “Better for whom, Brother?”