Yuletide Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 4) by Gene Doucette

your own does have a maturing effect on a person. 
    “Surely there’s more we can do!” Santa said.  “We can’t just let you walk off on your own, you’re a child!”
    “I’m doin’ all right, mister.  This food’s great though.  Real nice of you.  But look, I got a steady job.  That basement under O’Shea’s place, I’m the only one short enough to stand upright down there, so that’s some real security, until, you know, until I get bigger.  And I got places I can sleep in the winter.  I got friends.”
    “Does that include the guy shaking you down earlier?” I asked.
    “Oh, him?”  His eyes darted to the window, and the street beyond, as if he was actively searching for the person in question.  “You boys don’t want to get involved in that.”
    “If he means you harm, we certainly do!” Santa said.
    “Nah, nah, I got that under control.”  He didn’t say it like someone who was at all confident that this was the truth.
    “Look kid, you may as well tell Santa here everything or he’ll have to come up with his own happy ending.”
    “I’m certain the nuns at your orphanage are worried terribly about you, Davey,” Santa said.
    “Right, fine.  But it’s not a story for little kids, right?  It’s a gambling thing.”
    “You owe him money?” I asked.
    “Kinda.  The guy he works for thinks I owe him money.  We don’t agree about that.  What do you fellas know about horse racing?”
    Santa and I looked at one another.  “I think the question, young man, is what could you possibly know about it?” Santa asked.
    “More than you’d think from lookin’ at me,” Davey said.  It was a sentence that defined him more accurately than anything I’d heard up to that point.  He had just the right combination of knowledge and intelligence to be dangerous, and his age made it easy to forget that fact.
    “So here’s the deal,” he continued.  “Down at the track the jockeys all know each other, right?  They ride for the horse owners and only make coin when they win, so they got lotsa incentive to win, but they’re also real friendly with each other most’a the time.  And they look out for each other, right?  So now and again, like if one of those boys are about to get canned or they’re hard up for a purse, they’ll get together and throw a race.  Not all the time, just here and there, mostly on weekdays when the action ain’t that much in the first place.”
    “They’ll decide who is going to win ahead of time?” Santa asked, for clarification.
    “Exactly.  Or place or show.  Anything with a purse, just for a pal.  So it helps to be in the room with the jockeys when they all decide to throw one.  That’s where I come in.”
    “You’re secretly a jockey?” I asked.
    “Naw, I hate horses.  I could be though, maybe.  No, I’m in the room only they don’t know it.”
    “Hiding.”
    “Yeah.  Thing about being this size, there’s lotsa places I can fit.  So my friend in the alley, he works for a guy who likes to place big bets on those horse races, but he likes to make those bets when it ain’t really gambling, right?  He likes it when he already knows how it’s gonna play out, I’m saying.  So for a little of his action I been spying on the jocks and tipping him off whenever there was a sure thing.  And it was workin’ beautiful for a long time.  That was until a few weeks back, when one of my sure things broke his leg on the back stretch.  Now the guy is sayin’ I owe him the money he lost on the horse.”
    “Why that’s ridiculous!” Santa said.
    “Sure it is.  But he won’t leave me alone about it until I cough up money it’s pretty obvious I don’t have.  I even offered to earn it back with more sure things, but he doesn’t want to hear it.  Which is a shame, because I’ve got a good one in a few days and he’s gone deaf.  That’s what we were really arguing about.  Me and the guy in the alley, I mean.  He came to tell me