“So?”

“So Dandy’d been doing a bit of coke, right, and he was high and feeling good. So he kicked the old nigger’s ass out of the club and they all had a good laugh, he says.”

“So?”

“So listen, Burke. He keeps talking about it, right? Like he wants to laugh it off or something but it’s almost like he’s scared-I mean it was just some old wino or something.”

“He didn’t work you over?”

Margot smiled, a tiny bit of her dark lipstick showing on her teeth. “Dandy doesn’t hurt me anymore hardly at all, Burke. I know it’s going to be over soon so I just go into my stash every day and give him money. All he wants is for me to tell him what the trick did to me and then fuck him. He doesn’t hurt me himself much. He’s like a trick too, you know-some of them just want you to talk. Only he doesn’t pay.”

“He will.”

“That’s what Michelle said.”

“You told Michelle I was doing something?”

“No, I’m not stupid. But I told her what happened in the Lounge and she said this old nigger really is the Prophet. Weird, huh?”

“You think Michelle is crazy?”

“Man, I know she’s not even close to crazy, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Then don’t worry about it.”

“You’re going to do the thing with Dandy?”

“We agreed that the object was to get Dandy to stop his action with you, to let you walk away and not come after you, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s all, right?”

“Well, it doesn’t seem like a lot for five grand.”

“Since when? That was the deal-there’s no more coming to you.”

“I’m not saying anything. Just when-”

“When it happens it happens, Margot. You’ll know because you’re going to be in on it, right?”

“Yes, I know.” She seemed tired all of a sudden. Walking over to the blackened window, she tapped her nails against the sill. I asked her if she had the News with her, and she pulled a copy of the Times from her giant purse. Did they have the race results in that uptown rag? I sat down to check while Margot kept up a steady patter of insights about the streets and the life. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out how she ended up with the likes of Dandy, but that wasn’t my job. I used to dream about how someday people would pay me to think, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Nodding occasionally to Margot so she’d keep talking quietly, I was left pretty much to myself. I hadn’t expected anyone in the poolroom to comment about how my face looked, but I’d thought Margot would say something. She never saw it-obsessions give you tunnel vision. I should know.

I finally found the race results, appropriately displayed in lowercase (and upper-class) type. Damn! Honor Bright, ninth race, the winner, paid $11.60. That was all the information the sissy Times would give me, but it was enough. I was now on the longest winning streak of my life with the horses. Come to think of it, with anything at all. But I didn’t want to spoil the moment by dwelling on it, and I didn’t want to share it with Margot either. So I said, “Okay, I won’t be able to reach you, I guess. So you can call me at the number you have in a couple of days and we can make a meet. By then we should have everything in motion.”

Margot was drumming her nails against the face of her watch.

“I don’t want to go back on the streets right away-Dandy might see me or something. You going to stay here long?”

“No-I got to go to work.”

Margot leaned forward, partially blocking my way. “You think it shows?”

“What?”

“On me-you think it shows… being a hooker?”

“No, when you’re not one.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s not important. Your eye’s healing, right? My face’s going to heal, right?” She noticed my face for the first time.

“What happened?”

“I got bit by a baby dragon.”

“Where?”

“It’s not important. Look, you call, okay?”

Margot stood up. “Burke, as long as I’ve got to be here anyway, you want…?”

I looked at her, tried to smile, not sure if it came off. “It’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time. But not now, I got to work. Can I raincheck it?”

Margot looked like she’d expected the answer. “I shouldn’t be thinking about tricking all the time, huh?”

“If I was you, I’d think about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like how I’m going to solve my problems.”

“You’re going to solve my problems.”

“I’m going to solve one of your problems, kid. But you make problems for yourself-you do wrong things.”

“Like what?”

“Like calling the Prophet an old nigger,” I told her, getting up to walk her to the door.

MARGOT HAD NO sooner walked out the door than Max appeared-he waits as silently as he does everything else. I gave him four grand, holding out one for myself for the running expenses of this case, and told him to stash it for me someplace. Less four hundred for Max, this thing still had the chance to show a decent profit if it worked out.

I asked Max if he wanted something to eat, purposely avoiding the subject of horseracing, and I saw a tiny flicker pass across his face. So he thought I already knew the results and wasn’t admitting anything. Okay, just for that I’d torture him until he demanded to know the truth.

I didn’t have long to wait. As soon as we got to the restaurant Max made the sign of a galloping horse to ask me what happened last night. Instead of telling him I showed him that harness horses don’t gallop-that’s against the rules. In fact, they’re called standardbreds instead of thoroughbreds because they’re bred to a standard gait, either a trot or a pace. They evolved from working horses, not from rich men’s playthings like the useless nags who run in the Kentucky Derby. I showed him with my fingers how pacers move their outside legs together and then their inside legs together in rolling motion, while trotters put one front leg and the opposite rear leg forward at the same time. I showed him what it meant to break stride, or go off gait, and why pacers were generally faster and less likely to break than trotters.

Max sat through this entire explanation with the patience of a tree, figuring he would outwait me. But he finally cracked under the strain, just as I was explaining about new breeds now being developed in Scandinavia, how they aren’t as fast as American-style trotters but they have tremendous endurance. Jumping up, he stalked over to the cash register for the News and fired it over to me hard enough to break bones. Then he folded his arms across his chest and waited.

As I opened the paper I had a momentary flash of panic. What if the goddamned Times was wrong? But there it was in greasy black and white. We won. I showed Max the chart of the ninth race-Honor Bright had left cleanly, grabbed a quick tuck fourth at the quarter, moved outside with cover at the half, then fired with a big brush on the final paddock turn to blow past the leaders and win going away by almost two lengths. Max insisted I show him what the charted race would have actually looked like if we’d been there watching, so I got some paper and diagrammed the whole thing for him. Max really showed class. He never asked how much we had won-the victory itself seemed enough. Of course, he could have already figured it out. But the real class showed when he agreed to pick the money up from Maurice and never said a word about making another bet. I’d proved something to him, and that was enough-he didn’t think he’d found the key to the vault.

I dropped Max at the warehouse where I used a pay phone to call Flood and tell her I wouldn’t be seeing her until very early the next morning. I told her I’d ring her from downstairs before I came up.

My face hurt a bit and I wanted to change the dressing-and I wanted to sleep. But when I got back to the office I had to explain the whole race again to Pansy and feed her too, so it was after four in the afternoon when I finally lay down.