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were out there for all to see.  The rest were tucked away in tucked away places which meant you had to go looking for ‘em.  So maybe the jockey owed someone bad some serious money.  Or maybe he wouldn’t throw a race.  Then there was always the one where a jock knew too much about the kind of hoods who could fix anything that could be fixed—like back when Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series and probably fixed the 1921 running of the Travers.  Or maybe an owner or a trainer found out he was dirty and lost them a high paying Grade I stakes race.  It could even be chalked up to a real accident, like the disappearance of Citation’s rider, Al Snider.  A few months back, Snider and a couple of his buddies disappeared off a fishing skiff near the Florida Everglades.  It was dusk and a storm was building.  The skiff was found but not Snider.
    Al was one year older than me.  He was headed to the top of his game.  A few months later, Citation won the Derby.  He won the Preakness and the Belmont.  It was Al Snider who should of been in those winner’s circles.
    There was also the possibility that the guy’s wife did it.  I could think of a dozen reasons for that .
    But three jockeys?
    I spent over an hour in the Saratoga sun doing what Hercule Poirot liked to do, think, but Poirot was English—sorry, Belgian.
    I was wearing dark glasses.  Poirot wouldn’t wear sunglasses.  But Philip Marlowe would.
    No getting round it.  Time to do what the red-blooded American Philip Marlowe would do.  Wear the dark glasses.  Get to the track.  Buttonhole a few people.  Ask ‘em questions.  Talk about the jockeys.  Find the connection between them.  There had to be a connection.
    I heard Bogie say, “What’s keeping you, kid?”
    I said, “I’m moving, I’m moving, I’m off my rocker.”
    I’d walk across Congress Park, look at a few horses in a few stalls, find the jockey’s room, talk to a couple of ‘em.  One or two had to know something.
    Scratch that idea, Russo.  Talking to jockeys when they’re suiting up for the day’s meet wasn’t the smartest idea.  First off, it’s hard to talk to a man with his head down a toilet.  Half of ‘em would be puking up just one more ounce to make weight.  Second, if they weren’t puking they’d be listening to a trainer.  Third, I wasn’t supposed to be doing any detecting here.  What I was really here for was not to stir up a wasp’s nest of cops and press and panicked tourists.  I sure wasn’t supposed to spook the jocks.
    Here’s what I was being paid for.  A few weeks of soft Saratoga living, filled with the flash and dash of the best racing had to offer.  After that I’d present a report stating that in each case it was a lamentable accident.  For all I knew, it could be true.  They could be accidents.  Stranger things had happened.  I didn’t know many, if any, but a hundred to one they had.
    I’d been hired to prove they were accidents.  Or at least not prove anything else.
    I didn’t like it.  It smelled like selling out.  Would Bogie do it?  The real question was: would Sam Russo do it?
    You’d think I’d know the answer to that.  I didn’t.  I was in Saratoga Springs.  I was near the best racehorses in America.  I was sleeping on a soft bed.  I had an expense account.  I was being tested.
    Maybe in a day or two I’d know my answer.  In a day or two I’d know who Sam Russo really was.  For now, all I had was hope.
    Dressed as any one of a thousand swells come to town for the season, still wearing the dark glasses, I made my way to the newspaper office.  I thought the local rag would know a thing or two they hadn’t printed.  Well, that was the idea anyway.  But why they’d tell me was something I was working out as I strolled south along Broadway.
    “Sam!  Hey, Russo!”
    I froze.  Christ on a hamburger bun.  Who the hell did I know in Saratoga besides George Labold?  Worse, who the hell knew me?  I