CARL GREENE had never really thought of himself as the vulnerable type.

Sure, there was the land mine shrapnel in the back outside Panmunjom in 1953, followed by almost three years of jaw-grinding rehab in a VA hospital. And the divorce, which 30 years later blew a gaping six-figure hole in his FBI pension plan. And, of course, half a century's worth of painful 1-2-3-5 superfecta finishes. But that was about it, give or take a few family funerals.

About it, that is, until right now, right here. Dawn, on the backstretch at Saratoga Race Course. Fish-cold hands vice-gripped against the outside rail, midway around the turn for home. A percolating stew in the belly torn between simmering down and shooting straight up the throat. Eyes blank, staring icily straight at nowhere.

One August week a year, every year for the past 15, Carl had begun his Saratoga mornings at this spot, usually with black coffee in one hand, an unfiltered Camel in the other. To one side, the three-sixteenths pole from which the storied likes of Suspended Flight, Look At Me, and Vodka Tonic had launched rallies into Thoroughbred racing history. To the other side, Barn 37.

Why Barn 37, he'd never really figured out. Maybe it was the angle at which early light pricked through the spindly Norway spruces, bounced off the tin roof, and brought to life the 18 horses stabled along the south face of the rickety wooden structure. Or maybe it was the interplay between the sycamores lined in front of the barn, the horses circling the trees, and the steam that rose behind all of them from great mounds of last night's discarded straw. For whatever reason, that particular spot just always felt like the right place to be.

"My private escape," he'd called his adopted sunrise rail-side roost to friends back in Chicago. "Peace," too.

But on this Wednesday morning, 7 a.m. sharp as usual, Carl knew full well there was no escape. Or peace. On this morning, everything was different. Up for grabs. His past, and what it meant. Perhaps his future, and what it held. Certainly his heart, and to whom it belonged.

"I never should have come up a day early," Carl mumbled to himself, nervously pumping both wrists back and forth into the rail. "Why me? Why now? After all these years! Damn that painting! And damn Dark Tuesday to Hell!"

DARK TUESDAY. Yes, there was the culprit. Of all the fifth wheels and perverse concepts in the world, August Tuesdays at Saratoga had to be near the top of the list. Right up there with ice cream in January and Bibles in by-the-hour motels.

After all, Monday's races, and the sundry frustrations they spawned, were already ancient history. And Wednesday's races lay forever away. To call Tuesday, the one day of the week when there was no racing, a "dark day" was being kind. Dark, for sure. More like positively black.

But Carl had flown in a day early this year because the Brunswick B&B across the street from the track had called a month back with a Tuesday cancellation and offered him his "usual" back room for half price.

Why not, he'd figured. Get in around noon, spend the afternoon goofing around on Broadway, do a little handicapping, and be well-rested for a week of racing. Beginning, of course, at 7 a.m. Wednesday in front of Barn 37.

Saratoga Springs had first crossed Carl's consciousness as a teenager, when he read a newspaper article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a little town in upstate New York where people came from all over the country every August just to go to the races. A place where schoolteachers and doctors and plumbers swapped laughs and handicapping horror stories while politely lining up at streetside stands on Broadway for early morning delivery of the Daily Telegraph. A place where hot tips, workout tabs, and breeding nicks were the grease of the commonweal. As a recent, rabid initiate to Thoroughbred racing at Golden Gate Fields, Carl had sudden visions of the Emerald City, glistening capital of the Land of Oz.

War wounds, family, and work had conspired to keep him away from Saratoga until he'd passed age 50. Nothing had kept him away since.

As an August "regular," part of the daily drill was a walk along Broadway, with its hodgepodge of junk shops, grande dame hotels, biker bars, and highfalutin haunts. That included an annual stop in the Empire State Emporium, a darkly paneled ground-floor maze of closet-sized rooms and hallways, jammed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with other people's basement rejects. A few years ago, he'd found an old LSMFT lighter there; further back, a Boston Globe trumpeting Secretariat's Triple Crown win.

On this Dark Tuesday, the Emporium was as cluttered and claustrophobic as ever. And empty, too. Junk, after all, is junk. As Carl twisted and turned his way toward the back of the store, he found at the end of an unlit hallway a place he'd never before run across-what appeared to be the establishment's pathetic excuse for an office. In one corner of the unoccupied room, a 35-watt lamp was trying to do a 100-watt job atop a worn wooden desk piled high with disheveled stacks of Daily Racing Forms. On every wall, yellowed curled posters were tacked helter-skelter to warped wooden paneling. An old metal four-drawer file cabinet stood in the darkest corner, behind the door, its bottom drawer missing. On top of the file cabinet, behind a jumble of empty Coke bottles, a painting of a backstretch scene leaned against the wall. Judging by the dust on the 18"x24" canvas, and the dirty wood frame, Carl figured it could have been sitting there for who knows how long without so much as a human glimpse.

But Carl quickly wanted more than a glimpse. Moving the bottles aside, he could see this was not just another painterly Saratoga moment. Through the film of filth, he could see it was a moment he knew well. The backstretch, from the three-sixteenths pole, looking due east at first light, straight at Barn 37.

Carl moved face to face with the unsigned painting, scanning every inch, finally fixating in the dim light on what appeared to be the stable's silks, on a sign, hung on the back corner of the barn. "EW," it read, the blackened art deco lettering surrounded by a reddish-colored circle lost in heavy-handed varnish.

At that moment, a teenage boy quietly appeared in the office doorway.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This area is private."

"But this painting; I'd like to look at it further," said Carl, his baritone voice instantly aggressive, his hands reaching for the artwork. "I might want to buy it."

"Sorry, mister, please don't touch. I'm just the help. All I can tell you is that the owner told me nothing in this room is for sale."

"When will he be back?" Carl shot back impatiently. "I want to look at this painting."

"It's a 'she,' and maybe in a few hours. I don't know."

Over the course of 25 years as a field agent with the FBI in Chicago, Carl had helped put away plenty of oily con men, ham-handed mobsters, and pinstripe boodlers, and being told to get lost, no matter how politely or appropriately delivered, was not something he took well. But the kid was just following orders, so Carl backed off.

"I'll be back later," he said in a thinly disguised huff.

Never one to shirk a challenge, Carl knew the afternoon's mission before he'd left the Emporium. Someone had painted his spot. Who would have done that? And why? And when?

"EW," he rolled over in his mind. "Find them. Find the answer."

IN THE late 1970s, Carl and a couple of pals had raced a string of cheap Thoroughbreds on the Chicago circuit. No-counts, mostly, though You're An Angel and No Discount, a pair of hard-knocking fillies with bad attitudes, had managed to cover expenses before wearing out. Carl knew, thanks to an IRS audit of No Discount's partnership five years after her demise, that the paper trail on a stable, if recent enough, shouldn't be that hard