By Barbara Wolcott

How I came to be behind bars with Miss Lili Tremain and a dog at the San Luis Obispo Police Station is a bit of a story. It starts when Stat Jack at New Times asks if I want to write a story about the new offtrack betting at the Mid-State Fairgrounds.

Some say Jack has the moniker because he's hot for sports, but after thinking about it during my time in stir, I think he has it because he's in a hurry for the copy. "Find a tout," he says to me.

I don’t tell Stat Jack that all I know about horse racing is in "Guys and Dolls" because the money is good and I need another pair of tennis shoes from Pasadena. So I slap on my Minnie Pearl hat and hotfoot it downtown to McCarthy’s where I am sure to find a tout, because the fine art of horse racing odds is clearly a gentlemanly pursuit and this is a manly establishment.

Tending bar is Margaret Mary Feeney, a dyn-o-mite dame of the tall persuasion with flaming red hair so long she must have to push it aside to sit down. I shinny up on a stool and ask her where I can find a tout, and there is a glimmer of surprise in her eyes. She smiles and tells me there is only one in town and points to a table near the door where Hot Horse Henry is punching on a laptop.

Henry is not very friendly when I ask him for advice, but he stops pulling up screens on the laptop to ask if I want to play the Trifecta. I tell him we can play board games after I get my story. He gets this glazed look in his eyes like a pastrami echo in the gut.

I persist. "Come on, Hot Horse. I’ve been to the library, but I didn’t get the true scoop on this horse racing game. I need you to help me. I got a fin burning a hole in my pocket and I want to play the ponies when they start satellite wagering out at the Mid-State Fairgrounds. Tell me how to find an underplay."

Henry stared at me hard and cold. "First off, don’t ever call me Hot Horse again. Ever. Second, stop with the lingo. It hurts my ears and it’s underlay, not underplay. Third, get out of my face."

This was not going well. I try showing Henry a little leg.

"Nice tennies," he says. "They from Pasadena?"

Clearly Henry is more worldly than I gave him credit for but I still can’t get him to help me in my quest for pari-mutuel knowledge.

Then I get a break. "Damn, piece of junk!" Henry shouts loud enough to wake the drunk in the corner booth. "How am I supposed ta figure out the line for the Breeder’s Cup when this thing keeps freezing up one me?"

I seize my chance. "I can get your laptop fixed if in return you’ll help me with my story," I announce.

Henry is still blue in the face, but Miss Margaret Mary Feeney tells him to give me a try, and he says, "OK, Margaret." She is not pleased that he uses her given name because only her friends call her that and her very good friends call her Miggie. Hot Horse Henry is none of these.

In the parking lot Hot Horse Henry says he will drive. When I tell him to go to French Hospital emergency room he gives me another pastrami look but drives over to Johnson Street.

The crew at the hospital is having a break after several hours of nonstop patients and they're skating around with little EKG buttons stuck to their shoes. I find Gumdrop Nelson when he collides with a gurney full of bedpans and hand him the mangled laptop. No one seems to know why he is called Gumdrop, but since he was a hotshot Marine pilot, no one seems to care.

Hot Horse Henry turns purple. "This is not a computer hospital!" he yells in my ear, but Gumdrop Nelson has the laptop apart and back working in about four minutes flat. Hot Horse Henry is impressed enough to give Gumdrop Nelson a free tip for the Breeder’s Cup.

Back at McCarthy’s, Hot Horse Henry is ready to spill his secrets of horse race handicapping so I can impart them to the readers of New Times.

"OK, sis. When the horsies come out look ’em over real careful, see. The one with the prettiest silks–those are the colors the horses and jockeys wear–pick that one to come in first. And then the one with cutest name, that one’s going to come in second."

Now it’s my turn to give the pastrami look.

"Come on, HH. You promised."

"You’re right. A deal’s a deal and I’m no welcher. But I’ll tell you this stuff takes years of study, and even then there’s no guarantees. You want guarantees, go buy yourself some mutual bonds and stay away from the pari-mutuel."

He’s just getting rolling so I get out my pad.

"OK. First off, you're going to need a Form...."

"A what?"

"Oh geez. Forget it."

"No, Henry," I say softly. "Just go slow, OK?"

"The Daily Racing Form. It’s the bible. You see, the only way to do this right is to research the horses. The Form will give you the information you need. It’s up to you to take that information and make the right decisions.

"You know how with a baseball score box you can re-create an entire game?"

I stare blankly.

"Never mind. Just understand that the Racing Form gives you the chance to figure out how all the horses have done in their previous races, and that will allow you to make an educated wager."

Henry takes a Form out of his briefcase. It looks like a good-sized tabloid newspaper. There are stories and pictures about recent races, and inside it’s filled with column after column of seemingly incomprehensible statistics.

"Like I say, you can’t figure this stuff out in a decade, much less over a drink. But I’ll give you the ABCs."

Henry opens up the Form to a race marked 6 Woodbine. "That means it’s the sixth race at Woodbine."

"Where’s Woodbine?"

"You’re betting by satellite. What do you care where Woodbine is? Try to concentrate for a few seconds on the stuff that matters."

As I look chagrined, Henry explains that each horse is listed along with its past performances, a stat-filled chart that makes no immediate sense to me.

"Let’s take Smoke here [see graphic]. We’ll ignore the stuff about his sire and dam–only a sucker bets on who someone’s daddy was–and go on to the important information buried in the PP lines."

Henry explains that the top line gives all the information–the date of the race, where it was held, the horse’s time in each section of the race, and who finished first, second, and third. There’s a bunch of other stuff, that Henry tells me not to worry my pretty little head about. I tell him not to be an asshole.

"What you see in Smoke here is that he’s finished first in his last two races, each time driving at the finish, and second the two before that."

"Sounds like a winner. I’d bet on him."

Henry looks at me with the dull gaze of a mother of triplets after their fourth birthday party.

"What? You just said he’s placed in his last four races," I say, feeling good that I’ve used "placed" correctly.

"You know that stockbroker line: ‘Past results are not an indicator of future performance.’ Well, it’s true for the horses, too. You have to look for what isn’t there. For instance, if any of the other good horses in this race had been in Smoke’s previous races, they would show up in bold in the finishers’ list. They don’t. Second, the previous races were a mile or under; this one’s a mile and an eighth. That can make a difference, although it’s good that he finished strong."

About this time Margaret Mary sidles with another round of drinks.

"Don’t forget to tell her about the Beyer Speed Figure."

Henry gives her a "don’t tell me how to do my job" stare, but goes on to explain how the BSF is a way the Form has devised to compare horses in different races on different tracks. It’s the bold number in the middle of the Past Performance line. Anything over 100 is pretty darn good. Smoke’s a 95 in his most recent races, but two other horses–Green Means Go and Crown Attorney–were consistently in the high 90s.

"Also," Henry says, "you gotta look at the races. Green and Crown have been running in Class 1 and Class 2, while Smoke’s gotten fat against lesser competition in claimers. He’s going to have to step it up if he’s going to win in this company."

"You’re right," I confessed. "this is very complicated. I’ve got some idea how to read the Form now, but is there any way that I can simplify it for New Times readers?"

"You got two decent options. First of all, the Form has handy summaries of the horses' chances, here on the side. They don’t always get it right, but it’s better than nothing. Or you can wait for this handicapping software I’m going to perfect if you dames ever stop interrupting me."

"Well, thanks for your time, Henry. If I can ever do anything for you...."

"Now that you mention it...."

Henry explains that a friend of his needs someone to drop off a package in Paso, and since I was up to the Fairgrounds maybe I could help him out. He goes to the door and flicks the side of his nose and a short, fireplug of a guy in a silk suit comes out of the back of a too-long-to-be-real limo carrying a package.

Henry doesn’t introduce his friend. But as he’s handing me the package, from out of nowhere Miss Lili Tremain suddenly broadsides the guy from the back seat of the limo, and as they go down the guy’s package pops open and the bar is filled with flying C-notes. Miss Margaret Mary Feeney pulls out a rod, but the guy from the back of the limo is faster and she is staring down the barrel of an even bigger gat.

Hot Horse Henry takes a pitiful look at his laptop and then lands it squarely on the back of the head of the guy from the back of the limo. This time the laptop is in pieces, but it's OK because the guy from the back of the limo is out cold and Hot Horse Henry has been secretly sweet on Miss Margaret Mary Feeney for a long time.

The story is that there are no more touts in San Luis Obispo because Hot Horse Henry now works for the Police Department as a special enforcement officer with considerable experience in a certain field. Miss Margaret Mary Feeney is actually a copper working undercover, and Miss Lili Tremain is out on parole since she helped send the guy from the back of the limo up the river. I'm sprung because the cops think that anyone who has to get educated about horse racing at the library probably is not bright enough to be involved in money laundering.

Hot Horse Henry has a new laptop and he doesn't mind that the old one and all his data are toast because not only does he work with Miss Margaret Mary Feeney, he can call her Miggie.

The preceding story apocryphal. Well, most of it is. And even if it isn’t, the names, except for those of the horses, have been changed to protect the innocent.