Overlay / A Bed of Money / Underlay

OVERLAY“In the year 1978 (433 Galactic) the attention of the Bureau fell to the planet Earth which, Headquarters decided, had reached a point where it furnished a clear and present danger to the cause of Galactic Unity. With some regret, tempered by a long and hard-bought sense of bureaucratic anomie, a plan was put into operation to rid the sector of the menace by sowing the seeds of disunity within.” And so our narrator, a galactic agent on a singular mission, recruits four members from the world of Aqueduct horse-racing to fight the Good Fight against entropy and chaos. Of course, these four gamblers are dangerous and insane, but one must work with what one has at hand. A BED OF MONEYFoster the Loser becomes Foster the Winner when he bets on People Trap in the sixth at odds of 341-1… and wins $23,000. And that’s only the beginning. Because George Foster has always been the Loser. It takes a little getting used to becoming the Winner. Celebrating with a drink, he meets Dolores, who is only too happy to accompany him back to a hotel room. She loves hearing him tell the story of his Big Win. She is so excited, she calls up Al and Eddie to share in George’s good fortune—and to relieve him of it. But winners don’t give up that easy, and he takes off with Dolores in tow. And so begins George’s best day at the track … with Dolores and the $23,000, and Al and Eddie in hot pursuit. UNDERLAY Harry the Flat is dead and buried in the backstretch of Aqueduct Raceway. This is causing the Mob no end of trouble on the betting side, so Harry’s oldest and dearest friend—now carrying on with Harry’s widow in Harry’s absence, and in debt to the Mob for $1500—is persuaded to dig him up after the eighth race. The Mob boss is very specific on this point, and to that end has had a time bomb surgically implanted in our hero’s thigh to impress upon him the urgency of this matter. So with a cello case stuffed with a pick and shovel, off he goes to the track to dig up the dubious remains of Harry the Flat.


Genre: General Fiction