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two oh two and change when he wins up there. And that’s a real slow track. What’s that speed translate to down here?”
    “One fifty-nine?” I guessed.
    “Closer to the deuce, I think, but you’re in the right spot. So, could he win here, if he runs his number?”
    I scanned the form, looking at each of the other horses. It was chilly out, with the wind blowing enough to move the flags. Maine, I’d never been up there, but I figured this kind of weather wouldn’t be any big deal to a horse that made his living in worse.
    I went over the race real careful. Taking my time, the way the old man had told me to. The horse would be fifth from the inside when the race started. It wasn’t just the number on his blanket; the old man told me that every slot has to wear a color to match it, so you could tell them apart even on the back stretch. The horse had a black blanket.
    “Early speed doesn’t mean as much as it used to here,” I remembered the old man saying. And, anyway, this horse never was first by the quarter mile even when he started from way inside, so I didn’t count that much.
    “Yeah,” I finally said. “I think he could.”
    “Me, too,” the old man said. “Even though those speed ratings are a pile of crap today, they give you some idea. Now I’ve been to that track in Maine, and, let me tell you, it’s one rotten joint.”
    “The track itself?”
    “Yeah. The track itself. See, the best tracks are firm, but they ain’t like concrete. A horse moving to a track like this, he’s going to feel like he’s floating.”
    3
    One of the things I had been reading about was the movable hub rail they have at Yonkers. The old man hated it. “Just another sign,” he’d said to me, when I asked him about it. “This whole track has gone lousy. One time, it was one of the top spots in the whole country … maybe the whole world. Had the best horses, biggest purses, huge crowds. Now look at it.
    “First, they had to go and fuck with the starting line. Used to be, there was a long distance between the start line and that first turn, okay? Now, naturally, that means a real short home stretch, right? So, tell me, what kind of horse does that favor?”
    “One with early speed?”
    “You’ve been hitting those books,” he said. “I’ll have to bring some more down for you next time. More advanced stuff. Now listen: Before they had that movable rail on the inside, you could see the strategy and tactics play out right in front of you. Get to the front, dictate the fractions. That means, shoot that first quarter, then back off on the second. You want to keep the pace slow, because you know they’re all going to be coming at you down the stretch.
    “Now, you go the whole way on the front end, there’s no cover, so it may be a tougher trip. But it’s a shorter distance home, too. If you’re still in front looking at the wire, you can’t block the others off—that’s a sure DQ—but you can ease your horse out a little to the right, give the other guys a few extra feet to cover, see?”
    “Yeah,” I said. And I did.
    “But you can’t do it that way no more,” the old man said, like they’d been out to cheat him, personal. “Now it’s all gimmicks.This track, they even run some of the races at a mile and a sixteen. What’s that supposed to be, a joke? These horses aren’t bred for that distance. You can’t handicap them, ’cause you got no background to look at. Might as well make them run uphill.”
    “Not standard.”
    “Yeah,” he said, looking at me close. “That’s right. They say this track’s coming back. Big purses again. That’s true enough. But that’s all down to the fucking ‘casino’ they got inside. That’s where the real money is.”
    4
    A month went by with him talking to me like that. “You been making paper bets for a while now,” he said one night. “You ready to pick one for real?”
    “I think so.”
    “You already got one, don’t