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of credit for what you do—taking care of him like that. I know I never would’ve been able to baby-sit my old man.”
    “I better get going,” Mickey said.
    As Mickey stood up, Artie said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy some time for you. I’ll make up some story—your father’s sick, was in the hospital, whatever. But all I can promise you is another few days. After that, I don’t know what I can do. A thousand and change is a big fuckin’ number—you’ll have to start paying it off somehow. If you have to take it out of your own pocket, then you have to take it out of your own pocket. That’s the best I can do for you.”
    “Thanks,” Mickey said, leaning over and patting Artie on the back. “I owe you one.”
    AT THE NEWSSTAND under the Kings Highway subway el, Mickey bought a copy of Sports Eye, then he went to the OTB on East Sixteenth. Although Mickey only knew the names of a few people at the OTB, he knew almost all of their faces. He had been seeing the same people, hanging out at OTBs and racetracks, for most of his life.
    The Sixteenth Street OTB was small—the whole place was about five hundred square feet—and you could see the cigarette smoke under the fluorescent lights. It was one of the only OTBs in Brooklyn that was open nights for the trotters at Roosevelt and Yonkers, and degenerates from the entire borough jammed into the place. It was so crowded, sometimes you couldn’t get up to the windows in time to bet, and the spillover usually hung out on the sidewalk, pissing between cars and drinking beer out of paper bags.
    When Mickey arrived, the usual crowd of dirty, tired-looking men were standing on the street in front of the OTB, smoking and reading their racing programs and scratch sheets. Mickey pushed and weaved his way through the loud, angry crowd, glancing up at one of the TV monitors. The fifth race at Yonkers was going off in seven minutes. There was a long line of people waiting to bet, so Mickey got a betting slip and stood at the end of the line while he used his copy of Sports Eye to handicap the race. It was very crowded and, on a normal night, Mickey would have headed back over to the bookie joint. But Artie was there and Mickey didn’t want Artie to see him making more bets.
    Mickey got his bet in seconds before the pool closed, then he made his way back toward the TV screen.
    “Hey, who you got here?”
    Mickey looked over and saw the guy with the gray hair and the bushy gray mustache. Although they talked just about every time they saw each other, Mickey wasn’t sure what the guy’s name was. A couple of years ago the guy had introduced himself to Mickey, and Mickey thought his name was Ray or Roy.
    “The F,” Mickey said.
    OTB used letters to correspond with the numbers at the track, so the F was the six.
    “He’s missing a week,” the guy said.
    “He should get a good trip, though,” Mickey said.
    “I went with the D horse.”
    “Got as good a shot as any,” Mickey said.
    “I was by Yonkers last night,” the guy went on. “Had the three in the last, needed it to get home the double. The three takes over at the top of the stretch, then the two comes out of the clouds to nail me. Can you believe that? The double comes back two and change—woulda been bigger if the three got it.”
    Mickey was shaking his head, as if he felt sorry for the guy, but the truth was he didn’t give a shit.
    As the horses were lining up behind the starting gate, Mickey looked around to see who else was in the OTB. He spotted the skinny Indian guy who bet the eight horse in every race. If the eight horse wasn’t in contention, he would just stand there, not making a sound. But if the eight left the gate strong or started closing on the outside, he would start screaming like a madman: “Come on freight train, come on freight train!” The retarded guy with the red hair was standing in the corner, mumbling to himself as usual, and standing near the door was the father with