"You sound as though you're accusing me of contemplating a fix."
"Oh no. Not that."
"Then what?"
"Wally, Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace were refused by the National Association Of Dog Food Canners because of their substandard health. If I'm not mistaken, the Derby Association should have to run the race early that Saturday afternoon."
"Early?"
"Uh-huh. Early. Y'see, Wally, the blue laws of the blue grass state make it illegal to run horseraces on Sunday, hence the start of the Derby must be early enough to let our three platers complete the race before midnight."
"Lieutenant, there still stands a mathematical probability that--"
"That the rest of the field will catch the Martian Glanders as they lead our three dogs past the clubhouse turn?"
"Lieutenant, you are wronging me."
"I haven't said a thing."
"Then why have you come here to bedevil me, lieutenant? If Barcelona has ideas of arranging a fix--"
"If Barcelona has such notions, Wally Wilson would know about it."
"Everybody," I said, "entertains notions of cleaning up a bundle by having the hundred-to-one shot come in by a length. Even Barcelona must have wild dreams now and then--"
"Come off it," he snapped. "Something's up and I want to know what's cooking."
* * * * *
"Lieutenant, you're now asking me to describe to you how someone might rig the Kentucky Derby in a world full of expert telepaths and perceptives and manipulators, a large number of which will be rather well-paid to lend their extrasensory power to the process of keeping the Derby pure."
He eyed me sourly. "Remember, 'Fireman' O'Leary?"
"That's an unfair allegation," I replied. "The rumor that he started the Chicago Fire is absolutely unfounded."
"As I recall, 'Fireman' O'Leary came by his nickname about one hundred years after the holocaust that started on DeKoven Street in 1871. It seems that 'Fireman' O'Leary was most useful in helping the fillies home at Washington Park by assaulting them in the region of the bangtail with small bollops of pure incandescence. He was a pyrotic."
"That is a false accusation--"
"It was never proved," admitted the lieutenant, "because any one who accused anybody of making use of extrasensory faculties in 1971 would have been tossed into that establishment out on Narragansett Avenue where the headshrinkers once plied their mystic trade."
"Things are different now."
"Indeed they are, Wally. Which is why I'm here. No one but a fumbling idiot would try anything as crude as speeding a dog over the line by pyrotics or by jolting the animals with a bolt of electrical energy."
"So--?"
"So considering the sad and sorry fact that human nature does not change very much despite the vast possibility for improvement, we must anticipate a fix that has been contrived and executed on a level that takes full cognizance of the widespread presence of psi-function."
"But again, why me?"
"Was not 'Fireman' O'Leary an ancestor of yours?"
"He was my maternal grandparent."
"And so you do indeed come from a long line of horse operators, don't you?"
"I resent your invidious implications."
"And wasn't 'Wireless' Wilson the paternal ancestor from whom the family name has come?"
"I fail to see ... the allegation that my father's father employed telepathy to transmit track information faster than the wire services has never been proved."
He smiled knowingly. "Wally," he said slowly, "if you feel that allegations have somehow impugned the pure name of your family, you could apply for a review of their several appearances in court. It's possible that 'Fireman' O'Leary did _not_ use his pyrotic talent to enhance the running speed of some tired old dogs."
"But--"
"So I think we understand one another, Wally. There is also reason to believe that psionic talent tends to run in families. You're a psi-man and a good one."
"If I hear of anything--"
"You'll let me know," he said flatly. "And if Flying Heels, Moonbeam, _and-or_ Lady Grace even so much as succeed in staying on their feet for the whole race, I'll be back demanding to know how you--Wally Wilson--managed to hold them up!"
After which the good Lieutenant Delancey left me to my thoughts--which were most uncomfortable.
Barcelona had to be kept cheerful. But the dogs he'd picked could only come in first unassisted if they happened to be leading the field that started the _next_ race, and even then the post time would have to be delayed to give them a longer head start. That meant that _if_ our three platers came awake, _everybody_ would be looking for the fix.
Anybody who planned a caper would sure have to plan it well.
Barcelona hadn't planned the fix, he merely stated a firm desire and either Barcelona got what he wanted or I got what I didn't want, and I had to do it real good or Delancey would make it real hot for me.
I was not only being forced to enter a life of crime, I was also being forced to perform cleverly.
It wasn't fair for the law to gang up with the crooks against me.
And so with a mind feeling sort of like the famous sparrow who'd gotten trapped for three hours in a badminton game at Forest Hills, I built a strong highball, and poured it down while my halluscene set was warming up. I needed the highball as well as the relaxation, because I knew that the "Drama" being presented was the hundred and umpty-umpth remake of "Tarzan of the Apes" and for ninety solid minutes I would be swinging through trees without benefit of alcohol. Tarzan, you'll remember, did not learn to smoke and drink until the second book.
* * * * *
The halluscene did relax me and kept my mind from its worry even though the drama was cast for kids and therefore contained a maximum of tree-swinging and ape-gymnastics and a near dearth of Lady Jane's pleasant company. What was irritating was the traces of wrong aroma. If one should not associate the African jungle with the aroma of a cheap bar, one should be forgiven for objecting to Lady Jane with a strong flavor of tobacco and cheap booze on her breath.
And so I awoke with this irritating conflict in my senses to discover that I'd dropped out of my character as Tarzan and my surroundings of the jungle, but I'd somehow brought the stench of cheap liquor and moist cigarettes with me.
There was an occupant in the chair next to mine. He needed a bath and he needed a shave but both would have been wasted if he couldn't change his clothing, too. His name was Gimpy Gordon.
I said, "Get out!"
He whined, "Mr. Wilson, you just gotta help me."
"How?"
"Fer years," he said, "I been living on peanuts. I been runnin' errands for hard coins. I been--"
"Swiping the take of a Red Cross box," I snapped at him.
"Aw, Mr. Wilson," he whined, "I simply gotta make a stake. I'm a-goin' to send it back when I win."
"Are you going to win?"
"Can't I?"
For a moment I toyed with the idea of being honest with the Gimp. Somehow, someone should tell the duffer that all horse players die broke, or that if he could make a living I'd be out of business.
Gimpy Gordon was one of Life's Unfortunates. If it were to rain gold coins, Gimpy would be out wearing boxing gloves. His mental processes meandered because of too much methyl. His unfortunate nickname did not come from the old-fashioned reason that he walked with a limp, but from the even more unfortunate reason that he _thought_ with a limp. In his own unhealthy way he was--could we call it "Lucky" by any standard of honesty? In this world full of highly developed psi talent, the Gimp _could_ pick a pocket and get away with it because he often literally could not remember where and how he'd acquired the wallet for longer than a half minute. And it was a sort of general unwritten rule that any citizen so utterly befogged as to permit his wealth to be lifted via light fingers should lose it as a lesson!
But then it did indeed occur to me that maybe I could make use of the Gimp.
I said, "What can I do, Gimpy?"
"Mr. Wilson," he pleaded, "is it true that you're workin' for Barcelona?"
"Now, you know I can't answer that."
I could read his mind struggling with this concept. It was sort of like trying to read a deck of Chinese Fortune Cards being shuffled before they're placed in the machine at the Penny Arcade. As the drunk once said after reading the Telephone Directory: "Not much plot, but _egad_! What a cast of characters!" The gist of his mental maundering was a childlike desire to have everything sewed up tight. He wanted to win, to be told that he'd win, and to have all the rules altered ad hoc to assure his winning.
Just where he'd picked up the inside dope that Barcelona favored Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace in the Derby I could not dig out of him. Just how Gimpy had made the association between this clambake and me--good old Wally Wilson--I couldn't dig either. But here he was with his--by now--sixty-five bucks carefully heisted, lifted, pinched and fingered, and by the great Harry, Gimpy was not a-goin' to lay it across the board on those three rejects from a claiming race unless he had a cast-iron assurance that they'd come in across the board, one, two, and three.