Chapter 5: CHAPTER FOUR (Part 1)

“What did you learn?” The eagerness in Tony’s voice bothered him. Why was he so interested in what happened at Equine Electronics?”

He had invited the boy to a meal of potatoes and sausages and cabbage. Nothing much, he told him, but if you want to come over? Usually Tony spent his quiet time in the bunkhouse, a building on the south side of the farm, a building which had once been home to eight workers. They drifted away when the horses succumbed to the virus.

“Random.”

“What?” Tony looked up, fork hovering over the plate.

“What they compute into the horses.” He dabbed the fork-stabbed sausage with mustard squirted on the side of the plate. “They put random things into the program so people won’t know when the horse will win or lose.. or when it will break down.”

“Did you find any weaknesses?” A dollop of mashed potatoes disappeared into Tony’s mouth.

“What do you think I am, a spy?”

“You want your horse to win, don’t you?”

“She might not even run.”

“You’re too pessimistic.”

“I’m being realistic.”

“Have you talked with the Jockey Club yet?”

“No.” A long swallow of beer, straight from the bottle. “I’m not going to call or text because all you get is the runaround. And I’m not going to fly to New York to listen to Peter Chapman tell me I can’t run my horse against artificial horses.”

“We need an advantage.” Tony lifted his glass of beer.

“What I need to do is look in on Dawny Lee.”

“I have an idea.”

“Not interested.”

“Why not?”

Another swallow of beer. “I don’t know, Tony. It’s just that... Damn it, they’re so real you’d swear they were made of flesh and blood. The males have a cock and balls... some have balls, and the females have... female parts. Next thing you’ll know they’ll make horses that get horny.” He banged the bottle on the table. “I don’t know,” he said again.

“You’re not giving up, are you?”

“The way Dawny Lee’s been running...”

“Just hear me out, all right?” Tony placed his fork in the center of the empty plate, wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“All right.” He wanted the boy to pay attention to Dawny Lee, but was willing to listen.

“We have to involve another person.”

“This sounds like a conspiracy.”

:I’m just trying to help you out.”

“Who is he?”

“She works at Equine Electronics.”

“Is that why you wanted me to go there?”

“I wanted you to go there because I wanted you to see what Equine Electronics is all about.”

“And here I thought you were my exercise boy, and all you were interested in was exercising Dawny Lee.”

“I keep up to date, Mr. Gilbert. In the evening, when I’m don my chores I read. I read a lot, all about artificial horses, and Equine Electronics...”

“You were telling me about this person who works there.” A quick gulp of beer.

“She’s an inspector. You might have seen her if they showed you the computer room.”

“I was in there. Might as well have been on an alien planet.”

“She’s willing to help us.”

“Not interested,” he said firmly, pushing his plate aside.

“You haven’t heard what I have to say.”

“I’ve heard enough. You want this... person to go into the computer room and mess with the programs.”

“Just to slow down the horses.” Tony’s enthusiasm had vanished.

“That's impossible. The programs are locked. Besides, it’s cheating.”

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“What do you think they’d do if the Jockey Club decides you can run Dawny Lee against their horses?”

“They can’t do anything if the programs are locked.”

“She’s an inspector. She has the final say. A little change in the program here, a little change there...”

He pushed back his chair. “I won’t do anything dishonest.”

“In that case,” Tony said with a quick shrug, “you might as well forget it because you’ll have a better chance of dancing naked on the White House lawn than running Dawny Lee at Westover or any other track in North America.”

“I’ll figure something out,” he muttered.

He strolled outside to check on Dawny Lee. Leaving the filly here and not racing her was almost criminal. A thoroughbred was born to run. A twenty-minute drive west of the farm Westover Racetrack had been his home track, where most of his horses ran, but now it might as well have been on the moon.

Dawny Lee trotted to the fence, snuffled at his shirt.

“I didn’t bring you anything,” he said. “Doing too much thinking.”

The filly turned and raced across the spacious paddock. She trotted along the fence, looking out toward the woods. Stood still for a moment, and held her head still as if looking at some animal he couldn’t see. She walked to the center of the paddock and grazed.

The other paddocks stood empty, the only occupants stubborn weeds. He’d have to do something about that, but not right now.

Once upon a time thirty six horses called this home. Not the largest farm in this area, but he had held his own even after other owners lost horses to the insidious virus. They had given up, migrated to Westover and other cities. We can’t stay here, Dave, they had told him. Nothing more here for us.

How many horses still lived out there in the rest of the world? Probably not enough to make a decent race card. No one guessed, no one wanted to guess. United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Japan... Where else? South America, Australia, Hong Kong. Bring them all together, race them once a month.

He shook off the thought. Stupid, stupid.

And here was Equine Electronics, seemingly born out of nothing, appearing on the scene like Athena out of Zeus’s forehead. Waiting. Waiting to introduce their artificial horses as soon as they saw their chance. Almost as if they had known what would happen. The change from Equus caballus to Equus artificialus materialized almost overnight. It sure didn’t take long for the Jockey Club to change the rules.

Conspiracy?

The straws he grasped at were within reach.

It angered him that the owners who didn’t abandon racing readily accepted the change to artificial horses. Duncan Reynolds, who owned the farm next to his, told him it was so much easier to care for artificial horses they practically took care of themselves. He boasted he could win every major race if he acquired the right horses.

Eight months ago and he hadn’t seen Reynolds since. His name on the racing pages, on the internet stood out like glaring headlights. Reynolds’s artificial horses won more than their fair share of races, especially stakes races. Almost once a week he had his picture in various thoroughbred newspapers and journals, on Facebook, on YouTube, leading the victorious horse into the winner’s circle. The entourage included his wife, three children, six grandchildren, various employees. They were all smiling another victory, but there was something wrong with that. There had to be something wrong with that.

Random programming. That’s what Forster had said. How much money would it take to convince a computer programmer to change the program so they favored your horse. How much money to persuade the inspector to turn the other cheek and not report a discrepancy in the programming. Reynolds hadn’t been a wealthy man before he acquired the artificial horses, and his luck with real horses kept him mostly in the claiming ranks, but the way his luck changed so dramatically should have put questions in anyone’s mind.

The office was his sanctuary. He stood in the middle of the carpeted floor, gazing at the bookshelves. He pulled out a large illustrated volume about the great thoroughbreds of the twentieth and twenty first century. Man o’War, Citation, Kelso, Forego, John Henry, Secretariat, American Pharoah, Justify, Authentic... Those were horses. Real horses. Flesh and blood, muscle and bone and glistening sweat as they raced down the homestretch. Horses running now were man-made creations, and that made all the difference.

Knocks on the door brought him back from history. “Come in,” he called without turning away from the shelves.

The door opened. “I don’t to mean to bother you, sir,” Tony said, “but I’d like you to meet someone.”

He turned. A young black woman stood beside Tony. Tall, elegant. She carried a purse held in both hands in front of her as if daring someone to snatch it and run off with it.

“This is Janine McNally,” Tony said. “You know, the girl I told you about.”

He didn’t know what this was leading to, wasn’t really interested in seeing anyone from Equine Electronics.

“You wasted your time coming here.” No use beating around the bush when a clump of grass will do.

The girl pouted as if she had just been denied her favorite treat.

“You have to hear what she has to say,” Tony said. “It’d make your hair curl. Go ahead, Janine, tell him.”

“If you have the money,” she said, “the people in the computer room can do a lot of favors for you. If their horse wins, you get a piece of the... action, as it were.”

Duncan Reynolds. He almost said the name out loud, held his tongue. “What favors?” He walked to his desk, sat down. Indicated the chairs in front of the desk, waited until Tony and Janine had settled into them.

“Making sure your horse wins,” she said. “Making sure the other horses lose.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “Brian Forster told me the programming is locked once it’s complete, and no one can tamper with it.”

“Except the inspector. That’s where someone like me comes in. I have the authority to oversee the program to make sure there’s no... hanky-panky going on. But that’s the worst part of it. A lot of the... twenty or so inspectors we have at Equine Electronics are as crooked as a tree branch.”

“And you’re not?”

“I resent that, Mr. Gilbert. I have tried to be as honest as possible, not changing what the programmer has entered, but I know one owner who has his paws all over us in the computer room.”

Duncan Reynolds popped into his mind again. “What about the Jockey Club?”

“Whenever the Jockey Club gets too close,” she said, “they change the programming, and the horse loses the next four or five races. ‘You know horses,’ they say, ‘they win some, they lose some.’ ”

“The owner makes sure a few of his horses win stakes races,” Tony said. “That way he can tell the Jockey Club his horses ran into a lucky streak when he won all those races.”

“And conversely,” Janine continued, “if the same horses lose a bunch of races they can say horses are so unpredictable.”

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