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into the gate and the fat cop settled back. Thirty was already too much. If he lost it, he’d be lunching on Cheetos for a week.
    “So you got anything good?” asked Lucas. “What was this thing about Billy Case and the rookie?”
    The fat cop laughed. “Fuckin’ Case.”
    “There was this woman lawyer,” said the thin one, “and one day she looks out her office window, which is on the back of an old house that they made into offices. The back of her office looks at the back of the business buildings on the next street over. In fact, it looks right down this walkway between these buildings. At the other end of this walkway there’s a fence with a gate in it, like blocking the walkway from the street. So you can’t see into the walkway from the street. But you can see into it from this lawyer’s office, you know? So anyway, she looks down there, and here’s this cop, in full uniform, getting his knob polished by this spade chick.
    “So this lawyer’s watching and the guy gets off and zips up and he and the spade chick go through this gate in the little fence, back onto the street. This lawyer, she’s cool, she thinks maybe they’re in love. But the next day, there’s two of them, both cops, and the spade chick, and she’s polishingboth of them. So now the lawyer’s pissed. She gets this giant camera from her husband, and the next day, sure enough, they’re back with another chick, a white girl this time. So the lawyer takes some pictures and she brings this roll of Kodachrome in to the chief.”
    The first of the horses was guided into the back of the gate and locked. The woman with the violet eyes got back and settled at the end of the bench. The thin cop rambled on. “So the chief sends it down to the lab,” he said, “and they’re only like the best pictures anybody ever took of a knob-job. I could of sold them for ten bucks apiece. So the chief and the prosecutors decide there’s some problem with the chain of evidence and we wind up in this lawyer’s office with a video unit. Sure enough, here they come. But this time they got both the spade chick and the white chick. This is like in Cinemascope or something. Panavision.”
    “So what’s going to happen?” Lucas asked.
    The fat one shrugged. “They’re gone.”
    “How much time did they have in?”
    “Case had six years, but I don’t give a shit. He had a bad jacket. We think he and a security guard was boosting stereos and CD players out of a Sears warehouse a few months back. But I feel sorry for the rookie. Case told him this was how it’s done on the street. Gettin’ knob-jobs in alleyways.”
    Lucas shook his head.
    “Right on the street, in daylight,” said the fat cop.
    The last horse was pushed into the back of the gate, locked, and there was a second-long pause before the gate banged open and the announcer called “They’re all in line . . . and they’re off, Pembroke Dancer breaks on the outside, followed by . . .”
    Dancer ran away from the pack, two lengths going into the turn, four lengths at the bottom of the stretch, eight lengths crossing the wire.
    “Holy shit,” the fat cop said reverently. “I won six hundred bucks.”
    Lucas stood up. “I’m going,” he said. He was staring atthe tote board, calculating. When he was satisfied, he turned to the other two. “You coming behind? I’ll drive slow.”
    “No, no, we’re all done,” said the fat cop. “Thanks, Lucas.”
    “You ought to quit now,” said Lucas. “The rest of these races are junk. You can’t figure them. And, Bucky?”
    “Yeah?” The fat cop looked up from his winning ticket.
    “You won’t forget to tell the IRS about the six hundred?”
    “Of course not,” the cop said, offended. Lucas grinned and walked away and the fat cop muttered, “In a pig’s eye.” He looked at his ticket again and then noticed that the woman with the violet eyes was hurrying after Lucas. She caught him just before he got inside, and the fat cop saw