Read Year of the Dog for Free Online

Chinatown OTB branch was the highest performing betting parlor on the Lower East Side, grossing a hundred thousand a day, while serving the biggest volume of gamblers in the city. That volume did not include the large number of Chinese gamblers who placed their bets with the Chinese bookies working the streets outside the OTB.
    The average Chinese gambler, who didn’t speak much English other than the name of the horse and maybe the track where the race would be held, preferred the services of the Chinese bookies. These bookies offered a 10-percent discount on bets of ten dollars or more, and unlike OTB, did not require that a W2-G tax form be completed, and a driver’s license and a social security card be provided for winnings above six hundred dollars.
    No illegal Chinese, no prudent Chinese, was going to furnish that information, especially since many of the old-timers placed exotic bets that were more difficult to win, but which would generally pay out more than six hundred.

    Fong Sai Go— fourth brother Fong—considered himself a bookmaker, johng ga, but in reality he was only a teng jai, a small sampan, in the vast ocean of illegal Chinese gambling. He was a small-time Chinatown bookie, sanctioned to work the main OTB by his village association cronies who owned the building from which the OTB operated. The other family associations went along, and the tongs didn’t make a fuss as long as they got their piece of the action.
    Sai Go held the gold-plated metal card in his hand, running his thumbnail over the dragon and the Goddess of Mercy etchings, over the Chinese words on either side of this Buddhist talisman, a gold credit card–sized panel of metal featuring laser-etched phrases: cheut yop ping on, or “peace be with you,” and “ a safe journey always.” He began to consider the irony of how the bot gwa, talisman, had failed him, when he noticed the front end of the betting floor filling up, the frigid cold outside driving indoors the throng of Chinese waiters and kitchen staff just come off the late shift.
    Sai Go stood off to one side, where he had a good view of the wide-frame color television monitors showcasing holiday horse racing from Golden Gate, Los Alamitos, Delta Downs. The overseas action from Down Under—Sydney, Melbourne, Caulfield—would come later, but in Hong Kong, races from the Happy Valley track, and from the Sha Tin oval in China, were getting ready to be run.
    He put away the talisman and saw that it was well after midnight. A few more gamblers came in and joined the noisy smelly mix of men in meen nop cotton-padded vests and down jackets shaded gray, brown, black—the somber tones of the working class. There was the faint burnt smell of dead cigarettes on the sticky linoleum covering the floor.
    A crew of young Chinatown gangbangers came in, wearing black down coats and punky haircuts. Several wore black racing gloves with the fingers cut off. They fanned out through the betting parlor, and Sai Go instinctively brushed his hand back to feel for the box-cutter steel in his rear pocket. He felt better when he saw Lucky, the dailo, step into the room with another crew of Ghosts.
    Lucky spotted him immediately, went in his direction. The crowd parted for the dark phalanx that escorted him, eight crazies and a big dark-skinned Malay.
    Sai Go thought about the pad in his pocket as the crew came to the back of the house. He decided not to reach into his jacket as they circled him.
    “I want a thousand on Ming Sing, to win,” said Lucky, “in the second race at Happy Valley.”
    “Ming Sing,” Sai Go repeated, acknowledging the bet.
    “Any action on that yet?” from Lucky.
    “You’re the first,” Sai Go answered, waiting for his moment to change the subject.
    Lucky had overheard one of the uncles explaining how the fix was in, and how Ming Sing, movie star, a three-year-old gelding from Australia, was an eight-to-one payout. Lucky didn’t catch the details but figured that the