Elfhome

8: ON THE NOSE

There were a million things that needed Tommy’s attention if the races were to happen. He worked out how much of the seed money had to go to operating expenses and how much could be risked in betting. He would need to pay wages, stock the food concessions, and put aside tax money. True, he’d double his amount with the admission fees, but the money had to be spent up front first. Lastly, some cash had to be spent immediately so that various families didn’t starve before race day. The entrance fees more than covered the purse money for the winners, so that money didn’t need to be held in reserve. He set the starting odds, downloaded the spreadsheet to his datapad, and made sure his cousins’ phones all worked.

“Remember, your cap is five hundred.” Tommy paced the room. “Anything above that, call me first. We have to watch our bottom line closely on this one, so call in after every bet. The elves are jumpy; keep your guns out of sight. Watch your back. Remember that the oni are still out there loose.”

“Danny. Yoyo. Zippo. Quinn.” He tapped the chests of the teenagers as he passed them. “You’re to guard the warren. If the elves know where we are, the oni might too. They might raid us for food, money, and sex. Call Bingo if you see anyone suspicious. He’ll be stationed closest to the warren. If you’re raided, don’t give them any reason to kill you.

“This is just like before — only this time, we’re doing it for ourselves.”

All day his phone rang, giving Tommy a constant barometer of Pittsburgh to be entered into his spreadsheets. True, there were some names he recognized as die-hard gamblers. They carefully weighed the odds, dispassionate in their choices. The rest of the city, however, bet with their hearts.

The elves bet on Blue Sky without exception. They believed the holy sekasha-caste were perfection made flesh, and having seen the half-elf race, Tommy wasn’t sure if he’d quibble with that.

The human population splintered into a multitude of factions. The younger crowd that thought of Elfhome as their world bet on Team Tinker or Team Big Sky. John’s team had the most recent wins, their custom-modified Delta hoverbike, and their “perfect” rider. Team Tinker was still a strong contender even though Oilcan wasn’t as aggressive a rider as Tinker used to be. Team Tinker had the experience and the only other Delta. While the team was all humans, Tinker had been magically transformed into an elf and was now married to Windwolf, which tainted the team through association.

The older humans didn’t bet on either of the top two teams. They saw Pittsburgh as still a city of Earth and men. They supported the underdogs. Then under that, came bets on teams connected to certain political ideology, or someone just had a lucky feeling for, but those were usually only to place, not to win.

He was out at the racetrack when he realized that his phone had stopped ringing. He took it out and checked on the signal strength. “Trixie, is your phone working?” he asked the half-oni in charge of the food concessions.

She took hers out and glanced at it. “Huh, no signal.”

He went up to the track office and picked up the landline. It was dead, too.

Trixie had followed him. “What do you think it is?”

“The oni might be attacking town.” He swore. “Last thing we need is to have the elves slap martial law back on.”

“Well, we’ll be eating hotdogs for the next two weeks.”

He picked up the microphone to the racetrack’s PA system. “I’m heading into town. Do we need anything out here?”

There was a call from somewhere near the concession booths.

“What was that?” Trixie’s hearing was as human as her ears appeared.

“Toilet paper.” Tommy tied his bandana back into place and headed out to his hoverbike.

“I’ve been trying to call you.” Babe held out a list of bets.

“All the phones are down.” Tommy entered the information into his spreadsheet. Babe had only taken four bets, one at the five hundred dollar cap for Team Providence to win. It was a fairly new team made up of tengu, having only run a half-dozen races and never even placed. None of Tommy’s information suggested that they could pull a win off. They were such a long shot that the large bet required an immediate adjustment to the odds. “Shit, what a hell of a time for the phones to go down.”

He didn’t recognize the name: Kenji Toshihiko. Most the Japanese in town, though, were part of the tengu. “I don’t like this taking bets blind. Spread the word: I’m closing the books.”

Doug had a five hundred bet for Team Providence. And Syn, too. Tommy swore and ran numbers right there. If all of his cousins had taken bets at their cap, locking in the same long-shot odds, and Team Providence won, then he and his family were going to be royally screwed. Not only did it take out all the money they’d set aside to cover the bets, it would also eat up all the money that the race would bring in with admissions.

He checked his phone. It was still dead.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Tommy punched Syn in fury.

“We’ll just call the bets off.” Syn scrambled out of the way of a kick.

“We can’t!” Tommy shouted. “The fucking anal elves and their frigging honor! A bet is a promise to them! If we welshed on the bets, they’d be all over our asses because they know we’re half-oni!”

“Someone is suckering us!”

“Don’t you think that I know that? I’m going to fucking find them and kill them. Spread the word. No more bets!”

Whoever planned the strike against them had done it with great precision. It had only taken an hour to close down the books, but the damage had already been done. Twenty bets, all at cap, all made within minutes of the phones going dead. Ten thousand dollars, with a payoff of half a million dollars.

“The bets are to win,” Bingo pointed out as they gathered at the warren.

“Because to show and place gave lower odds,” Tommy snapped.

“How the hell do they expect Team Providence to win?” Bingo said. “Team Big Sky was creaming everyone before the elves locked the city down. And there’s Team Tinker and Team Banzai and Team Eh?”

Tommy had talked to all the teams. They assured him that they were all racing. Some of them might have been lying, in on the scam, but not Team Tinker or Team Big Sky. They were tied too closely to the honorable elves to cheat, and they were the favorites to win. “Whoever the hell they are, they’ve got something else planned, then. They’re going to cheat somehow. We’ve got to find out how.”