“I’d say there were four plays,” Harry said when the announcer shifted to a game in the Middle West. “He could have scored with any one of them. Heads or tails, and they all came up tails.”

“You think he threw it?” Waters said.

“That’s what I want Shayne to find out. Now tell him about the third race at Tropical.”

“Harry, where’s the percentage? There’s not a damn thing we can do but pay up.”

“Doc, give me some more whiskey.”

When Waters hesitated he said sharply, “So it’s bad for me. Do you care?”

Waters took his glass and poured him a strong drink. Harry was squinting, trying to keep things from overlapping.

“A couple of mugs stuck me up when I was eighteen,” he said. “They got a wristwatch and three bucks. That was the last time till tonight. I don’t like it. I also don’t like being clubbed with a pistol barrel. I think Mike will work on it for me if I pay him enough dough, but he has to know the facts. All the facts. What’s the name of the horse?”

“Ladybug,” Waters said reluctantly. “There’s no mystery. She’s a Naples horse, in his wife’s name, for tax reasons. In two years she never did a thing. Fifth, sixth. What do you want Shayne to do, Harry, walk in on Al Naples and ask him if he fixed the race? Sure he fixed it. He fixed it by hiding the mare’s speed. Why worry about how? There are ways. He fooled everybody, and she paid off at sixty-five to one. His wife couldn’t get to the track this afternoon. She had to have her hair done, and anyway she didn’t want to bet at the track, she said, because she didn’t want Al to know she was betting seven C’s on the mare, she liked her so much. That was her story, and what was wrong with it? They got four thousand down all told, here and there. I tried to call you, Harry, and where were you? We could have come back to the track with some of that, fed it into the machines. But you weren’t answering the phone.”

Shayne finished his cognac and poured himself some more. “If it was just the football game or just the horse race, would you still need Harry’s help to make the payoff?”