The Big Fix
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.
I said slowly, "_If_ I were even thinking of working for Mr. Barcelona,"
I told him, "I would be very careful never, never to mention it, you
know."
* * * * *
This bundle of The Awful Truth hit him and began to sink in with the
inexorable absorption of water dropping down into a bucket of dry sand.
It took some time for the process to climax. Once it reached Home Base
it took another period of time for the information to be inspected,
sorted out, identified, analyzed, and in a very limited degree,
understood.
He looked up at me. "I couldn't cuff a hundred, could I?"
I shook my head. I didn't have to veil my mind because I knew that Gimpy
was about as talented a telepath as a tallow candle. Frankly between me
and thee, dear reader, I do not put anybody's bet on the cuff. I do a
fair-to-middling brisk trade in booking bets placed and discussed by
telepathy, but the ones I accept and pay off on--if they're lucky--are
those folks who've been sufficiently foresighted to lay it on the line
with a retainer against which their losses can be assessed.
On the other hand I could see in Gimpy's mind the simple logic that told
him that as a bookmaker I'd be disinclined to lend him money which he'd
use to place with me against a sure-thing long shot. If I were to "Lend"
him a century for an on-the-cuff bet on a 100:1 horse, especially one
that I knew was sure to come in, I might better simply hand him one
hundred times one hundred dollars as a gift. It would save a lot of
messy bookkeeping.
So the fact that I wouldn't cuff a bet for Gimpy gave him his own proof
that I was confirming the fix.
Then I buttered the process.
"Gimp, do you know another good bookmaker?"
"Sure. But you're the best."
"Know one that'll take a bet from you--one that you don't like?"
"Sure, Mr. Wilson."
"Then," I said hauling a thousand out of my wallet, "Put this on _our
horses_ for me."
He eyed the grand. "But won't Mr. Barcelona be unhappy? Won't that run
down the track odds?"
I laughed. "The whole world knows them dogs as also-rans," I said.
"Gimpy, they put long shots like those into races just to clip the
suckers who think there is a real hundred-to-one chance that a 100:1
horse will outrun favorites."
"Well, if you say so, Mr. Wilson."
"I say so."
"Thanks. I'll pay it back."
He would. I'd see to that.
Gimpy Gordon scuttled out of my bailiwick almost on a dead run. He was
positively radiating merriment and joy and excitement. The note in his
hand represented a sum greater than he had ever seen in one piece at any
time of his life, and the concept of the riches he would know when they
paid off on the Kentucky Derby was vague simply because Gimpy could not
grasp the magnitude of such magnificence. Oddly, for some unexpected
reason or from some unknown source hidden deep in his past, his mind
pronounced it "Darby."
* * * * *
I returned to my African jungle still bored with the lack of anything
constructive. I returned at about the point where Tarzan and Jane were
going through that silly, "Me Tarzan; You Jane" routine which was even
more irritating because the program director or someone had muffed the
perfume that the Lady Jane wore. Instead of the wholesome freshness of
the free, open air, Jane was wearing a heady, spicy scent engineered to
cut its way through the blocking barrier of stale cigar smoke,
whisky-laden secondhand air, and a waft of cooking aroma from the
kitchen of the standard cosmopolitan bistro.
Worse, it got worse instead of better. Where a clever effects-director
might have started with the heavy sophisticated scent and switched to
something lighter and airier as Jane was moved away from civilization,
this one had done it backwards for some absolutely ridiculous reason. It
finally got strong enough to distract me out of my characterization, and
I came back to reality to realize once more that reality had been strong
enough to cut into the concentration level of a halluscene. There was
strong woman-presence in my room, and as I looked around I found that
Tomboy Taylor had come in--just as Gimpy Gordon had--and was sitting in
the other halluscene chair. She was probably playing Lady Jane to my
Tarzan.
Tomboy Taylor had changed to a short-skirted, low-necked cocktail dress;
relaxed with her eyes closed in my halluscene chair she looked lovely.
She looked as vulnerable as a soft kitten. Remembering that it's the
soft vulnerable ones that claw you if you touch, I refrained.
I went to my little bar and refilled my highball glass because swinging
through the jungle makes one thirsty, and while I was pouring I took a
sly peek into Tomboy Taylor's mind.