Riders Down by John McEvoy Page B

neighing loudly. Only two members of the field walked into their stalls in the gate without encouragement from the hard-working crew of assistant starters. It was two minutes to post-time for the first race at Pinckney Park.
    An impassive expression never left Hidalgo’s dark, handsome face. His slim body was almost motionless, and this sense of calm finally was transmitted to Alki Alley, who settled down and waited fairly patiently to be loaded into the gate. Carlos had always had a gift for handling young horses, since his earliest days on a farm outside of Taluca, Mexico, the farm where he had begun riding when he was four years old.
    Carlos’ father, Reyes, had been a prominent quarter horse jockey at the southwestern tracks in the United States Growing up, Carlos rarely saw his father, whose career finally came to a spiraling halt fueled by weight problems, alcohol, drugs, and a growing indifference to his craft. But Carlos had inherited Reyes’ innate ability to horseback. After moving to the states as a teenager, he had quietly carved out a rewarding career for himself. Carlos was not cut out to be one of the sport’s superstars. But he was regarded as a solid professional, winning some one hundred and fifty races each year at the Maryland and Pennsylvania tracks and thus providing a very comfortable living for his wife, Maria, and their four children.
    Now thirty-six, Carlos had begun to plan seriously for his retirement. His body was increasingly beset with aches and pains from the numerous injuries he had suffered through the years (six broken collarbones, two broken legs, broken right arm and left shoulder—about normal for a jockey with twenty years of experience). Unlike his father, Carlos had saved his money. He now had nearly enough to buy a small farm near Ocala, Florida, where he could begin a new phase of his life breaking and training young horses. That, according to his calculations and those of his accountant, was perhaps a year away. He had more riding to do before that plan became reality. Today, as 1 p.m. approached, he concentrated on guiding Alki Alley into the Pinckney Park starting gate.
    ***
    Jimbo Murray had gone to Baltimore two weeks earlier and rented a room in a house adjacent to the Pinckney Park backstretch. He paid cash for a month’s rent, telling the landlady, Katrina Schulte, he would be “in and out” during the upcoming race meeting because he was a horse van driver for a company that serviced the East Coast racetracks. Katrina had rented rooms to racetrackers for nearly forty years. Cash in hand was her primary interest.
    When Murray flew back to Madison, he met with Bledsoe to give him the key to the rented room and describe the setup. The room was on the top floor of Schulte’s three-story house, in the northeast corner. There were two windows that overlooked the Pinckney Park backstretch: a small bathroom window, and a large one that shed light into the combination bedroom-sitting room with its sway-backed bed, small television set with a coat hanger aerial, and three-cushion couch missing one cushion. That window offered an unobstructed view of the racetrack’s backstretch, the southern portion of which was seventy-five yards away.
    Bledsoe slipped up the stairs and into the rented room on Tuesday night. He looked around approvingly. It was perfect. A transient’s special, no questions asked, except for “how many weeks are you paying for?” His duffel bag contained a change of clothes, some sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, and the Remington, broken down. He slept soundly that night and was up in plenty of time to observe horses working out in the gray haze of the next morning. As they galloped past, he practiced sighting the rifle. Then he went back to sleep until he heard, coming from across the track infield, the sound of a bugle calling horses to post for the first race, the one with Alki Alley, jockey Carlos Hidalgo up.
    Bledsoe patiently examined the