After breakfast, and after hearing some more of Leiter’s plans, Bond idled away the morning and then had lunch at the track and watched the indifferent racing that Leiter had warned him he would see on the first afternoon of the meeting.
But it was a beautiful day and Bond enjoyed absorbing the Saratoga idiom, the mixture of Brooklyn and Kentucky in the milling crowds, the elegance of the owners and their friends in the tree-shaded paddock, the efficient mechanics of the pari-mutuel and the big board with its flashing lights recording the odds and the money invested, the trouble-fre,e starts through the tractor-drawn starting-gate, the toy lake with its six swans and the anchored canoe and, everywhere, that extra exotic touch of the Negroes who, except as jockeys, are so much a part of American racing.
The organization looked better than in England. There seemed less chance of crookedness where so much crookedness had been insured against, but, back of it all, Bond knew that the illegal wire services were relaying the results of each race throughout the States, cutting the tote odds to a maximum of 20-8-4, twentys for a win, eights for first or second, and fours for a place, and that millions of dollars every year were going straight into the pockets of gangsters to whom racing was just another source of revenue like prostitution or drugs.
Bond tried out the system made famous by ‘Chicago’ O’Brien, He backed every firm favourite for a place, or ‘to show’ as his first ticket-hatch told him to call it, and he had somehow made fifteen dollars and some cents by the end of the eighth race and the day’s meeting. He walked home with the crowds, had a shower and some sleep and then found his way to a restaurant near the sales ring and spent an hour drinking the drink that Leiter had told him was fashionable in racing circles-Bourbon and branch-water. Bond guessed that in fact the water was from the tap behind the bar, but Leiter had said that real Bourbon drinkers insist on having their whisky in the traditional style, with water from high up in the branch of the local river where it will be purest. The barman didn’t seem surprised when he asked for it, and Bond was amused at the conceit. Then he ate an adequate steak and, after a final Bourbon, walked over to the sales ring, which Leiter had fixed as a rendezvous.
It was a white-painted wooden enclosure, roofed but without walls, in which tiered benches descended to a circle of mock greensward enclosed with silver-painted ropes in front of the auctioneer’s platform. As each horse was led in under the glare of the neon lighting, the auctioneer, the redoubtable Swinebroad from Tennessee, would give the history of the horse and start the bidding at what he thought a likely figure, and run it up through the hundreds in a kind of rhythmic chant, catching, with the help of two dinnerr-jacketed men in the aisles, every nod or raised pencil among, the tiers of smartly dressed owners and agents.
Bond sat down behind a scrawny woman in evening dress and mink whose wrists clanked and glittered with jewellery every time she bid. Beside her sat a bored man in a white dinner jacket and a dark red evening tie who might have been her husband or her trainer.
A nervous bay came chassying into the ring with the number 201 pasted carelessly on his rump. The harsh chant began. “I’m bid six thousand now seven thousand will yer? I’m bid seven thousand and three and four and five only seven and a half for this good-looking colt by Tehran, eight thousand thank you sir and nine will yer do it? Eight thousand five hundred I am bid will yer give me nine eight five will yer give me nine and six and seven and who’ll bid the big figure?”
A pause, a bang of the hammer, a look of sincere reproach towards the ringside seats where the big money sat. “Folks, this two-year-old is too cheap. I’m selling more winning colt for this amount of money than I’ve sold all summer long. Now, eight thousand seven hundred and who’ll give me nine? Where’s nine, nine, nine?” (The mummified hand in the rings and bracelets took the gold-and-bamboo pencil out of the bag and scribbled a calculation on the programme which Bond could see said ’34th Annual Saratoga Yearling Sales. No 201. A Bay Colt.” Then the leaden eyes of the woman looked across the silver ropes into the electric eyes of the horse and she raised the gold pencil) “And nine thousand is bid nine wilt yer give me ten will yer do it? Any increase on nine thousand do I hear nine one nine one nine one?” (A pause and a last questing look round the crammed white seats and then a bang of the hammer.) “Sold for nine thousand dollars. Thank you, ma’am.”