EXCERPT:
TWO

KLINGING

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. As we landed in Miami, I was already missing Sonia. But at this moment in my life, Saratoga was my other woman. She had been good to me in the past, but she was known for spurning even those who loved her the most.

Another uncertainty hung over my arrival. Vince, my Southern California action supplier, had suggested that I get together with a guy named Panama Slim, an L.A. real estate magnate. Vince explained that Slim could have been the Donald Trump of L.A. But while Trump cultivated celebrityhood, Slim, a la Howard Hughes, avoided all contact with the media.

“Wherever you turn, you bump into a Panama Slim building, especially in West L.A.”

Panama Slim was Vince’s landlord. Slim was a rarity in the business, a hands-on landlord. He would personally inspect the premises of his multitude of renters. Vince called him a control freak. A few weeks back, Slim, who had weighed in at 11 pounds at birth and sucked the nipples of his mother like a trained torturer, had inspected Vince’s store.

“I was worried he might object to the porno section, but he didn’t blink. In passing, just small talk, he mentioned he’d be away for a week on business in Bolivia, and that was the second time in my 45 years of life that I’d heard anyone mention Bolivia. You were the first. So naturally I told him I had a friend who was now living in Bolivia. First he asked if you were dependable. I thought the question was strange, but of course I said yes. You know me. I can’t hide the truth. Then he said he’d like to meet you. I told him I’d talk to you. ”

Vince’s honest authenticity inspired people to share information with him. Evidently Panama Slim was negotiating with entrepreneurs in the Bolivian lowlands to build a race track. I imagined there could be some sort of gig in it for me, and with racing involved, how could I not be curious?

They had once raced in the eternal-Spring valley city of Cochabamba, but the 9,000 foot altitude was simply too much for the horses. The highest U.S. track is near Santa Fe, at 7,000 feet, and even Arapahoe, at 5,200 feet, is a difficult race course for incoming shippers. One of my favorite angles involves horses vanning down to a sea level track from Arapahoe, provided they showed their previous work at Arapahoe within two days of the race.

Racing failed to thrive in Cochabamba, and marketing problems shared the blame with the uncomfortable altitude. At near sea level, Santa Cruz was horse friendly. People gambled on local card games, cock fights, and even motorcycle drag races. The Santa Cruz region had replaced La Paz as Bolivia’s business center and money passed freely from hand to hand, disposable income that could easily find its way into pari-mutuel pools. Agribusiness and banking were big. Once you got out of the city, the Santa Cruz hinterlands were Bolivia’s version of manifest destiny, with pioneers and adventurers drawn there in hopes of getting rich. I would learn the details from Panama Slim.

Miami should have been a simple transition. But something was coming over me. Carrying only a backpack, I found myself yearning to haul some bulky luggage, envying people with the heaviest loads. It was uncharacteristic. I'd spent the decade avoiding heavy objects ever since I'd worked on a janitorial staff and had had to bump and roll refrigerators up staircases. It was a small frame lifting big frame, and I did it, but not without discomfort.

My ex-wife had a penchant for home improvement and she would start things that I had to finish. The finish might include disposing of heavy boxes of refuse, or changing the position of oversized furniture.

That was not the reason for my petitioning divorce, but it certainly didn't help the marriage. In a moment of epiphany, I had resolved to avoid all unpleasant physical labor connected to human maintenance. I even made that clear before I married Sonia. As it was, 80 percent of life is spent on maintenance, and I was committed to improving the quality of the maintenance time. I'd paid my dues.

Now, here in Miami, I was experiencing my Arapahoe-shipper angle in the flesh, and was bursting with pent energy. I found myself volunteering to lift an old lady's bulky suitcase from the carousel to the trolley. 

My bloodstream was brimming with the extra red corpuscles that the body manufactures to compensate for the low air pressure and resulting lack of oxygen at obscenely high altitudes.

Considering my newly obtained superpowers, I discarded the rent-a-car idea, and resolved to buy a used bicycle for my energizing commute between the Glens Falls summer cottage of my aunt Ada and Saratoga. My 88-year-old aunt, ruggedly individualistic, would not consider the possibility of a nursing home, and continued to maintain this cottage as well as her regular home, a wobbly Victorian structure near downtown Albany.

Getting a bicycle was both an aesthetic and a strategic decision. I had found that bicycle commuting to Laurel Race Course had sharpened my mind for the intense decision-making tasks of in-the-trenches horse betting.

The first two afternoons of Saratoga racing proved that the anomaly of August fog in the Andes had carried over into the races. I hadn't the mistiest notion of how to pick a winner. The usual methods, based on small-track shippers and Saratoga trainer specialists, were not working. The turf course, which once favored closers, was now an ally of front runners, but turf horses that had never raced in front were suddenly changing their styles and leading the pack.

Saratoga, my mistress, was spurning me.

For me, dying in the Andes is not as bad as losing at Saratoga, so I decided to take out a compass and find my way.

My compass was the racing column of Nick Kling. Kling, a farmer, a poet, and a nice guy, was one of those few public handicappers who actually cared about the folks who read his picks. He wanted them to win. Their happiness was linked to his success.

As a result, Kling was a rarity among public handicappers. He measured his results. Forced to pick a winner for every single race no matter how undecipherable, and two days prior to the scratches that might change the complexion of a race, Kling resolved to show a flat-bet profit at the end of each meet. Most of the time, he achieved his goal. If you've never bet two bucks, a flat-bet profit is the outcome of wagering an equal amount of money on each horse (flat bet), and your bottom line at the end of the meet is positive.

Betting to win randomly results in a loss of about 25 cents for each dollar, based on the tax, called the takeout, levied by the broker (the track) in the form of deductions from winning payouts, which amounted to around 15 percent at the time. But pin-the-tail-on-the-program random betting performs even worse than the track takeout as a result of little understood fact: random betting picks more overvalued horses than undervalued ones.

By using Kling's picks as a foundation, I would gain twenty-five points in my return on investment! Given that significant percentage improvement, all I would have to do is filter out particular Kling picks that had a reason to lose, based on scenarios that Nick could not have anticipated 48 hours in advance. Nick picks a come-from-behinder because three front runners figure to burn each other out. Nick grimaces when two of those front-runners scratch out of the race, and the remaining pace setter can control the lead. Nick's come-from-behinder now has no chance but he has to live with his pick. I don't.

Nick doesn't hang out in the press box. He's not a joiner. But when you meet him one-on-one, he wants to hear what you have to say.

On the morning of the third day of races, I located Nick on the backside, in front of the Barclay Tagg stable.

"Hey, Nick, I'm glad I found you."

"Matt, you're home again."

As we shook hands, I reminded myself to say nothing about my Nick-picking strategy. Never tell a friend that you are playing his horses, or subconsciously he might become overcautious. He might balk at picking longshots that he’d otherwise embrace.

We had coffee in the greasy spoon backside kitchen. I filled him in on Bolivia, the Marianelas and Panama Slim. Nick clicked open his briefcase, reached in and extracted a few copies of his most recent poems. I expected I’d enjoy them, recalling the flashes of lyricism in his racing columns.   

"So you're meeting Panama Slim," Nick said. "Don't let him walk over you."

"What do ya mean?" I asked.

"You'll find out."

I ended the day with a profit, thanks to a $16.60 winner in the fifth race, and helped by the fact that I'd excluded a Kling pick in the third race, following a negative rider change. (Nick had picked the horse because his last two wins were with Migliore aboard but the Mig was off his mounts for the day and the new rider was a no-win journeyman.)

I was supposed to meet Panama Slim at 6:30 at Mangino's Ristorante. The worst I could do was get a free meal, real New York Italian food. Ever since the seventh race, I was thinking in terms of eggplant parmesana.

I was oblivious to the post-race traffic. I used the road shoulder like the passing lane in the stretch of a harness track. From my angle the aroma of pine trees outperformed the exhaust fumes. I got there at 6:25, only to find not a single nearby post for locking my bicycle. Everything in the infrastructure is made for the automobile. Nothing for the bicycle. Life has been programmed so there will be no alternative to driving. The guys in the kitchen told me that my bike would be safe in the back between the trash bins.

By 6:35 I was rushing into the restaurant as if my eggplant parmesana might not wait for me.

Over the phone, Panama Slim had told me he'd be wearing a Santa Anita baseball cap. I picked him out at the bar. As his name suggested, it was the bar sitting at Panama Slim and not the other way around. His head was a size too large for his already bulky frame. He was a Cadillac with a 747 engine bulging from under the hood. This was probably the first time that the tough black-shirted bartender had ever felt intimidated. Continued

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