Apparently, pain management knocks things loose. Put this together in 20 minutes of furious typing the other night.

“First time?”
I looked up. The state trooper, complete with Stetson and mirrored sunglasses, was giving me a half smile while he scanned the crowd.
“First time up here.” I nodded at the crowd across the track from us. “Used to be all I could afford was the infield.”
“Millionaire’s Row’s better duty. Not as much fun, but at least folks tend to keep their clothes on.”
I nodded. We had our backs to two columns supporting the floor to ceiling windows that allowed the rich-but-not-that-rich to see out during races. My principal was at the bottom of the set of three landings, his prodigious gut against the railing and his arm around his ‘companion’. I have to giver her credit. She looked almost interested in whatever he was pointing at and babbling about.
“I can see that,” I replied. “Guess you’ve done this before.”
“Yep. Tenth year, matter of fact.” He stopped for a second to listen to something in his earpiece. “Some darned fool just decided to get ugly with that nice young lady checking ID at the top of the escalator.”
“And how did that go?” I checked my principal again, then scanned the dozen or so other people out on the veranda.
“About as well as you’d expect. My partner’s taking them downstairs to the nearest exit.”
“Not arrested? I thought y’all had a zero-tolerance thing for nonsense these days.”
“We do, but the Downs doesn’t want the fuss. Better to escort them off property than to have something happen in front of Gawd and everybody.” He spoke with just a touch of Eastern Kentucky in his voice. I would have bet a lot of money that it got more pronounced when he was either angry or had a few nips of bourbon in him.
We stood in silence, me keeping an eye on today’s employer, him just watching the crowd in general. As we watched, folks started filtering out of the dining room behind us and out to watch the race.
“Always this crazy?”
“Saturday’s gonna be worse,” he drawled. With a rueful smile, he added, “Friday used to be for the locals, but now it’s just Derby Eve.”
“Yep, kids still get the day off, but I don’t know too many who come out for all this.”
“That so? Used to get Oaks off too, back in the day.” He nodded his head toward the infield. “Mama used to make a picnic lunch and we’d camp out there in the first turn. I remember everybody doing a bit of drinking, but it wasn’t as crazy as all this.”
As we watched, somebody wearing nothing but a smile heaved themselves up onto a set of portable toilets and then hopped down the double row of gray huts. They were careful to cave in each and every roof as they went. A couple of troopers and a National Guard MP met them at the end of the line and caught them as they took a swan dive toward the nearest mud puddle.
“It’s not just them down there,” I observed. I tilted my head back toward the dining room. “Folks up here been getting pretty juiced all day.”
“Yup,” he agreed. His voiced dropped a bit as a group of men in suits and women in hats came out and made their way down the steps. “Just costs a few thousand a head up here, and the booze comes from a bit higher on the shelf.”
The call to post sounded over the loudspeakers, and the noise level came up just a tad as people in the stands either moved to make a final bet or rushed to get back to their seat in time.
The door between us opened, and a tall brunette dressed in what was probably the minimum amount of fabric a woman could wear and still say she was wearing a dress stepped out. An older man, wearing a suit that probably cost more than my truck, walked behind her. She wobbled a bit on tall heels, but had that focus that only the truly inebriated exhibit.
The man called out to her as she headed down the steps, and I caught sight of a stack of gold-plated julep glasses held tightly to her bosom. I’d heard one of the waiters telling a patron that they were $1000 apiece, but proceeds went to some charity and you got to take the cup home with you. Apparently, the gentleman trying to grab the brunette’s arm either thought that was a bargain or was a true philanthropist. She was carrying about $10,000 worth of glasses stacked up like souvenir beer cups from a football game.
“Eyes front,” the trooper growled mischievously.
I snorted, but got my head back in the game. The crowd on the veranda got thicker, but were quite congenial as the ushers made sure everyone was on the level they had paid for. The loudspeaker blared every so often, then I heard the crowd roar as the race started.
Both of us kept our eyes on the crowd up on our level, as well as what we could see of the infield. My employer was jumping up and down hard enough that I had a brief worry that he’d go over the side and drag the young lady whose arm he had a grip on over with him.
His horse must have won, because he let out a whoop loud enough to be heard over the rest of the crowd. Immediately, he turned and made a beeline up the steps, waving his ticket. I caught sight of his companion rolling her eyes as she leaned back on the railing to wait for the crowd to thin.
Unfortunately for my employer, the brunette chose that exact moment to wobble out onto the stairs. I was pushing off from the column when they collided. She screeched as her ankle turned, then fell to her knees on the concrete. He at least had the presence of mind to keep her from hitting her head on a step by falling on his butt to give her a place to land. They ended up in a heap on the first landing.
Those ten or so souvenir cups, on the other hand, had no such luck. They rang like hand bells as they bounced down the steps to land against the railing.
By the time the trooper and I got through the jumble of drunks gathering around my principal and the unlucky woman, he had popped back up to his feet and was looking around furiously for his betting stub.
“You OK?” I demanded, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him up a couple of steps.
“I’m fine!” he replied angrily. “Stupid bitch almost took us both all the way down.” He peered at the steps, then laughed in triumph. “There it is.”
Before I could stop him, he hopped back down, narrowly missing the woman’s leg with his Italian loafers. He scooped a scrap of paper up from the floor, then scanned it.
“Yep, this is it!” he crowed. His date slid up beside him. With one arm around her middle, he started up the steps. “Almost dropped fifty grand there.”
I guess he hit on a pretty big bet, then.
I should have followed him up the steps, but without thinking, I reached down to help the trooper pull the young woman up. She was sitting there, looking at the tears in her dress and sobbing. Long streaks of mascara left long tracks in her thick make-up as she surveyed the dented remains of her souvenirs.
“We got ya, miss,” the trooper soothed. “Let’s just get you back to your table and we’ll have someone come check you out.”
Gently, he grasped her wrist and hauled her up as quickly as modesty would permit. There wasn’t much of her dress in the first place, and it wasn’t designed for the stresses that falling on her butt had put on it. One of the older gentlemen waiting for the steps to clear swept his suit coat off and offered it to her. She accepted it between sobs and pulled it over her shoulders.
I reached for her other arm to help her up the steps, then saw three parallel lines tattooed on the inside of her forearm. They were partially obscured with make-up, but all the fuss had wiped most of that off.
It was the same tattoo the teenage boy someone had found frozen to the grass in Dixie Cemetery had worn. It was the same mark from the toddler’s body Doctor Svoboda had showed me.
Now, I had a live woman with the mark.
“You got comms to the command center?” I asked. My tone must have changed, because the trooper shot me a look.
“Yep,” he replied. His eyes scanned the crowd around us, not knowing why I was concerned.
“I need a couple of folks up here immediately to watch this girl, and I need somebody from human trafficking up here ASAP.” I lifted my chin toward the man who had followed her out onto the veranda. He hadn’t waited for his companion to get sorted out. Instead, he was waiting to get through the door and back to the dining room.
“You’re gonna want to have someone talk to him, too.”