"But . . ."

"NO BUTS. I've had it with your meddling. You're coming with me. NOW."

I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice calm.

"Look, Staff Sergeant Munro. You can't just go around yelling at civilians. It's police harassment. Or something. Badgering a witness. I called you. I gave you the stuff. Now leave me alone. I've got work to do. If you want my fingerprints, you can tell Constable Donny to get them tonight at the ballpark. I will not be ordered about by you."

"Constable Donny?" Munro did a slow take, then cracked up. "You call him Constable Donny?"

"Not to his face."

"It's perfect."

"Well, he is a bit earnest."

"Earnest? He's an escapee from Leave It to Beaver."

"Except he's too young to have heard of it."

"He's too young to have heard of the Beatles!"

"Paul McCartney's old band, right?"

I guess we weren't mad any more.

"All right," Andy said. "You win. You don't have to come with me. But don't go out. Whoever sent this to you might try to contact you. And don't tell anybody else about this."

"Scout's honour."

"Do you think you can get through the rest of the day without meddling?"

"I'll try, sir."

"I'll send Constable Donny to pick you up. Try not to get the boy into any trouble."

The phone rang. I waved him out the door.

"Nice game story," said Jake Watson. "And the piece on the funeral was fine. Was it as bizarre as it sounded?"

"More. What do you want from me today?"

"I need some stuff for the playoff supplement on Monday. Position-by-position comparisons of the two teams. And a sidebar on what's happening with the betting odds. Can you call that contact of yours in Vegas?"

"Good idea. I'll see if I can find him."

I had done a story several years back about sports betting and dug it out of my files. The guy I had used wasn't one of the big names, but he was well connected and very helpful. Jerry something. Bergman. Jerry Bergman. His number was in one of my books. It took a while but, luckily, he hadn't moved.

"The odds have been wild on the American League," he said. "Up and down like the proverbial toilet seat."

"That's not surprising."

"No, but it's a headache for the books."

"I guess. How's it gone?"

"We don't set the line until the two divisions are clinched, so that was Sunday for the American League. As soon as the Titans won, we posted the odds at 78 for the Titans."

"Those are pretty good odds, aren't they?"

"Yeah. The Titans are better, plus they beat the A's eight games to four this season. But that was before Thorson got killed."

"One man makes that much difference?"

"Sure. Assuming they go to the three-man rotation for the playoffs, he pitches three times in the seven-game series."

"I see what you mean."

"So when he got croaked, the money started coming in for the A's. What's happening about that, anyway? Anyone been arrested?"

"Nothing. The players seem to have bounced back."

"Never saw a ballplayer who would let a little thing like grief get between him and money on the line."

"You got it. So what happened to the odds?"

"Well, some money came in on the A's Monday, but when the odds shifted, people began betting on the Titans again. But the action's been soft. I mean, who cares, right? Not like when the Yankees or Dodgers are involved. Then we get a lot of tourist money coming in."

"You don't get a lot of people calling up from Oakland or Toronto making bets?"

"We don't do phone bets."

"Really? You've got to be there?"

"Strictly cash and carry."

"I thought people bet on the phone all the time."

"Only local bookies carry accounts. There are guys here who act as agents for gamblers around the country, but they're putting cash down at a shop."

"Hunh. Could you run it down for me day by day?"

"Okay. Sunday, it was 78, Titans. Monday, after the murder, it dropped to even money, and that's a big drop out here. Tuesday and Wednesday, the same. Thursday, we started getting more Titan action and by today it's back to 67 Titans."

"Okay. Let's pretend I'm really stupid, here, which won't be hard. What do these numbers mean? If I bet $100 on the Titans today, and they win the playoffs, what do I get?"

"You're going at it backwards. I'll tell you what you'd have to bet to win the $100. All the lines are based on five dollars. You put up more money to bet on a favourite. At 67, you bet seven dollars to win five. If you're betting on the A's, you bet five to win six. In other words, if you wanted to win $100 on the Titans today, you'd have to bet $140."

"So I'd end up with $240."

"Exactly."

"And on Sunday?"

"At those odds, you had to put up $160 to make your $100."

"And why did you change the odds?"

"Thorson's death, mainly."

"But you didn't change them after Sanchez died?"

"The line hadn't been set at that point. We probably set them a bit lower than we might have because of Sanchez, but a player doesn't make as much difference as a pitcher. Like in football. A defensive end getting injured doesn't affect the odds the way it does when a quarterback goes down."

"I'm stupid again. Why does the money coming in make a difference?"

"Because bookies aren't in the business to lose money."

"I'm not that stupid. But how does it work?"

"The ideal situation for a bookie is when he has as much money bet on one team as on the other. Then the losers pay off the winners, and the book collects his percentage from everyone.

"But if more money is bet on one side than the other, we have to compensate. That's where the odds come in. They are set to reflect what we think the action will be. In this case, we assumed that more people would want to bet on the Titans. So the odds make the Titans a little less attractive and encourage betting on the A's."

"So if a lot of people bet one way, the odds shift."

"Right."

"If just one person makes a big bet?"

"Same thing, if the bet's big enough."

"Do people bet big money on the playoffs?"

"Most of it's just small stuff, but I've had three or four in five figures this week. One shop took a ten-grand bet on the A's Sunday just after the odds were posted. Nice timing."

"Be nice to have that kind of money to play with, wouldn't it?"

"Out here, that doesn't even raise an eyebrow. I've got customers who win and lose that much every day. They're nuts, of course, but they put food on my table. Who am I to judge?"

"Listen, thanks a lot, Jerry. I appreciate it."

"You bet."

I wondered if estate lawyers say "will do" a lot.

I was fixing lunch when the penny dropped.

What if that bet wasn't just lucky timing. What if someone had inside information? Like that the ace of the Titan staff wouldn't be in the playoffs. I called Jerry back.

"This guy who bet ten thousand on the A's. Do you know who he is?"

"He didn't come here. He's a regular at a little place over on South First Street. A buddy of mine works there. Why?"

I explained my theory.

"Could be. I'll see what I can find out."

"Could you find out the time he placed the bet, too? Thorson was killed sometime after seven forty-five."

"Check."

I called Bergman back a couple of hours later.

"No luck. The guy who took the bet doesn't get in until later. Where are you going to be tonight?"

I gave him the number of my press box phone and left for the ballpark.

Chapter 23.

There wasn't a whole lot to do before the game, for a change. With the pennant clinched, there was no particular need to talk to the Yankees, which suited me just fine. It was a pleasure to be able to treat them as also-rans.

I spent some time with my favourite New York beat writer, Arnie Shapiro. He was a funny little guy from a daily in New Jersey who managed to cover the Yankees without becoming self-important, a rare feat.

He had delicious gossip. One of the outfielders had picked up a woman in a Cleveland bar who turned out to be a transsexual who hadn't quite finished her/his surgery. The manager had got into a fist fight with his bullpen coach on the plane. And the team bus had been chased by a gang of Detroit thugs after a relief pitcher pissed out the window on their car. An average road trip for the princes in pinstripes.

They weren't all jerks, mind you. Just most of them. I spent a pleasant ten minutes talking with Gene Ridell, their shortstop. He had his family with him and wanted advice on sightseeing. A friendly man, he was stunningly rare in his interest in people and places outside of the game. He was also a good person to interview about playoffs. He'd been in a lot of them. It might make an interesting sidebar.

"Are you very disappointed in losing the division?"

He shrugged.

"I've been there before. I'll be there again."

"What about the pressure? Everyone predicts that the Titans are going to blow it because they haven't been in the playoffs before."

"Well, by the time you get to the playoffs you've already been through a lot of weird stuff. The playoffs are just a little weirder. They'll do fine if they don't psych themselves out of it."

"What's the hardest thing to deal with?"

"I guess the feeling that in the playoffs everything you do matters so much. Baseball should be peaceful. There should be room for mistakes. Errors are part of the game. Failure's part of the game. But it's hard to remember that when there's so much on the line. The playoffs and World Series turn baseball into a very unforgiving game."