Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

I could see the next three horses, the major contenders, driving to prevent Bobby from getting too big a lead. I hung back a comfortable fifth. I’m thinking, “Go ahead. Knock yourselves out.”

I hit thirty yards before the first turn. I was just easing my horse to the right to get him on firmer ground a few feet off the rail. I looked up to see Bobby leaning into the turn, and then bam. One second he’s in total control, the next second he’s spilling to the left, arms and legs flailing as he’s caught in the grinder of the horses’ hooves behind him. Thank God I was far enough off the rail to be able to avoid him, but I felt a shivering sickness.

My first instinct was to rein up and run to him, but I heard the wail of the ambulance flying across the track. I knew they’d do what they could for Bobby. In the meantime, nothing stops a race.

I’m sitting in fourth place as we cruise around the turn and down the backstretch. I pass the six furlong pole, and that alarm goes off in my gut that says “Now!”

I’ve watched Bobby ride Trumpeter Swan a half dozen times, and I know what this colt’s made of. He’s half speed, half courage, and one hundred percent heart. I shift my weight low and forward until I’m practically one with his neck and give him the call.

“C’mon, Swan. Give it to me.”

I swear, he knows what I want. No need for the whip. It’s like slipping a Maserati into high gear. I have to adjust my balance for the shock of the speed.

I see a bit of daylight as the horses ahead of me go a bit wide into the final turn. I take him to the rail to save ground, and he drives. The cleats on the hooves of the horses we pass come inches from his fine-boned legs, but he gives me what I ask for. He explodes through the hole like a driving halfback.

We straighten into the homestretch on top by half a length. It’s a cruise from here to the wire. Then we hit the eighth pole. I can feel an almost imperceptible shift into a lower gear. The heart and the drive are there, but the speed is noticeably coming off.

I glance back, and the pack is coming. I go to the whip, and I can feel the Swan strain to give me more, but it just isn’t there. We go under the wire in fifth position.

I could feel my heart torn out in two directions. I couldn’t imagine what Mr. Fitz must have been feeling. I knew the stable was on a losing streak that was breaking its back. This was the purse that could have set it right. I’d have given anything to hand it to him. But a deeper concern was Bobby Pastore.

I cantered Swan back to where the groom was waiting to take him. The trainer, Marty, was with him, glowing red as a beet.

“What happened out there, O’Casey?”

“I don’t know, Marty. Bobby just went off to the left. I couldn’t see why. How is he?”

Marty flipped out.

“Never mind that. What happened to the Swan? You rode him like he was running in cement.”

I slid out of the saddle.

“He just ran out of gas.”

He was in my face, looking down from his six foot two on my five foot three.

“Maybe you ran out of gas. He never faded like that before.”

I was stunned. Marty knew me from the time I was an apprentice. He agreed to take me on as a regular stable jockey when Mr. Fitz brought me in. I rode to win, and we always got along.

“I rode according to your orders, Marty. The horse weakened. You better check with the vet.”

Marty turned on his heels and walked off.

“Marty.”

He looked over his shoulder.

“Where’d they take Bobby?”

He gave a look I didn’t understand and spat out, “To the morgue.”

I had three more races to ride that afternoon for other owners. My heart was definitely not in it, but somehow I managed to pull off a win in the last race of the afternoon. Each of us has a valet assigned to take care of our equipment after a race. When Tony, my valet, met me in the winner’s circle to take my saddle, he whispered, “Billy, you heard?”

I stood next to him as he undid the girth.

“What?”

“Bobby’s dead.”

It came as a shock all over again.

“I know.”

“They arrested Mr. Fitzroy.”

I couldn’t even get the words out. He read the question in my face.

“They say it’s murder. They charged Mr. Fitzroy with murdering Bobby.”

I sat in the jockey’s room for an hour after a shower. I was too stunned and drained to move. I thought of the lowest ebb of my life, when I’d been hit with a year’s suspension as a jockey. They called it race fixing, but I was following the orders of a trainer who wanted his horse brought in out of the money to build the odds for his next race. It’s done. It’s not unheard of, but I make no excuses.

The year’s suspension was deliberately extreme. The Massachusetts Racing Commission was drowning in bad press over corruption. They went on a witch hunt to clean up their own image. I was branded a leper. There wasn’t an owner or trainer who dared to come near me for fear of being sucked into the outcast club.