Read The Significant Seven Online
Authors: John McEvoy
The Significant Seven (18 page)
July 24, 2009
Returned from the Hawkins picnic, Doyle found a message on his home phone machine. He heard Damon Tirabassi’s voice. “Jack, we need to talk soon. Karen and I will meet you at that Greek joint near you at six tomorrow morning, so you won’t be too late getting to the track after that. She and I have a meeting with Special Agent Goodman at ten o’clock. We need to know where we are with the sponging case. This is important. Don’t let us down, Jack.”
Petros’ Restaurant was bustling even at five to six in the morning. Doyle arrived first, greeting Petros’wife with his usual kiss on the cheek, signaling waitress Darla to start his breakfast regimen. Doyle had eaten here at least three times a week for a few years, but his current racetrack assignment had cut back on his patronage of Petros’. The owner noticed. Peering out from the kitchen, Petros, who considered himself a dead ringer for Telly Savalas, shouted, “People, get ready, the big shot famous Jack Doyle is here.”
“Stay back there with the grease, El Greco,” Doyle shot back. They were both practiced in this kind of affectionately insulting exchanges.
The FBI agents walked in a few minutes later. Karen ordered coffee, grapefruit juice, and a toasted bagel with chive cream cheese. Doyle nodded approvingly. He said to the waitress, “My usual, Darla my dear.”
“And you, young man,” Darla said to Tirabassi.
“An egg, basted, one slice of dry wheat toast. Just a glass of water with that. I’m watching my weight.”
Eyebrows up, Darla murmured, “I’ve been here eighteen years and never written an order that skimpy.” She flounced toward the kitchen order window.
Tirbassi said, “We haven’t heard anything from you, Jack. We check phone messages and e-mails twice a day. Nothing. That’s why we asked to meet you this morning. What is going on? Have you found out anything about the spongings? We’re under a lot of pressure to move this along.”
Doyle waited as Darla returned to fill their coffee cups. “Let’s eat, then we’ll talk,” Doyle said. Their plates were soon set before them. Tirabassi looked at Doyle’s meal with a mixture of envy and amazement. It was a thick cheese and ham omelet, four pieces of crisp bacon positioned next to a two-layer stack of syrup-covered French toast. Darla set his side order of hash browns to the left of Doyle’s full plate. “Everything, okay, folks?”
Karen spread cream cheese on her bagel. Doyle looked appreciatively at her. “You look nice and tanned, Karen.You still in that volleyball league?”
“Yes. We’re in first place, as a matter of fact. Undefeated. I’m playing doubles with Holly Stanton. We were on the team at Wisconsin. She’s good.”
“Folks,” Tirabassi said, “could we get down to business here?”
“What the hell is our business?” Doyle shot back. “Me flapping around at the racetrack in futility? I haven’t gotten a sniff of the sponger.” He finished the omelet and began working on the French toast. “I’ve gotten nowhere.”
Karen said, “Can you think of anything else we might do? I know the horsemen’s association has offered the $50,000 reward for information regarding the spongings. But that hasn’t produced any response yet. Do have any ideas, Jack?”
“No, Karen, I don’t. I also can’t quite figure out why these Significant Seven guys keep dying. Four so far. All under weird circumstances. How can this be coincidence? Doesn’t seem possible.”
Tirabassi said, “I know about those men dying, but none of the authorities where they died have come to us. There’s no indication of murder. We don’t have connection to those matters. The deaths all appear to be accidental or natural.”
“Four friends gone in a few months?” Doyle said. “From the same group of famous horse owners? That doesn’t raise your suspicions?”
Tirabassi said, “Suspicions are the lifeblood of the tabloids. Not us.”
Darla brought the check to the table. Doyle picked it up. “Damon,” he said, “the only time I’ve seen you pick up a check was to slide it across the table to me. This time I’ll save you the trouble. You get the tip. Karen,” he added with a smile. “Why is it I take such pleasure in ribbing your partner?”
“Only you can answer that, Jack.”
Looking at the two hard-working, dedicated agents, Doyle thought again what an unusual combination they made. Pretty Karen from Kenosha, business-like but friendly, not averse to even laughing some times at Doyle’s jibes. Usually dour Damon, soccer dad and coach, driven crime buster from when he grew up in an Outfit-controlled Chicago neighborhood.
Doyle put his wallet back in his pocket. “Seriously,” he said, “how long do you expect me to keep under cover at the racetrack, getting nowhere? What should I do?”
The three sat silently for nearly a minute. Karen said, “Years ago, an uncle of mine told me a story about horses. He was my mother’s brother, a real Virginia gentleman, a champion equestrian rider, Randolph Bayliss. During World War Two, he enlisted in the Army. Because of his background with jumping horses and show horses, Uncle Randy was assigned to the U.S. Cavalry. Even though the Army was mechanized by then, they still had a small cavalry division based in Kansas, I think. Maybe Nebraska. It upheld the long tradition of Army cavalry, I guess.
“Anyway, Uncle Randy was made an officer and put in charge of this little base. When he got there, he was horrified. He sent a telegram to his commanding officer, saying, ‘I’ve got one hundred wild horses here who have never seen a man. And I’ve got a hundred draftees from New York City who have never seen a horse. Please advise.’
“The answer,” Karen continued, “came back almost at once. One word. ‘Proceed.’”
Doyle and Tirabassi laughed along with her. “And that’s what Uncle Randy did, Jack, and that’s all we can suggest you do. Proceed.”
July 26, 2009
Doyle and Tenuta stood near the Heartland Downs starting gate, watching a two-year-old filly named Lucy of Artois getting an education. It was a cool morning, dawn only an hour back. The odors of mown grass, sweaty horses, and cigar smoke from the veteran head starter, Willard Dodge, mingled in the sunny air. Besides Tenuta’s trainee, which he referred to as “Our Lucy,” finding the French word Artois too much for him to pronounce, three other young horses were there being taught how to enter the large green starting gate, referred to as “the Iron Monster,” and then wait patiently before quickly emerging from their stalls when the bell clanged and the front doors opened. Young horses, finding themselves enclosed in stalls with only two inches of space on each side of them, a rider on their backs, an assistant starter balanced on a thin ledge next to them, frequently freaked out. That’s why morning lessons were necessary. “It takes most horses about a month of preparation to get them ready to come out of there and run their races,” Tenuta said.
“Where do they get the guys to do this work?” Doyle asked, as he watched a half-dozen very fit-looking men working with these excitable creatures. “It’s not easy work.”
“Not easy?” Tenuta snorted. “That’s an understatement. These men school horses every morning for a couple of hours, then come back in the afternoon to start the nine races. Most of these guys are former exercise riders, or ex-trainers. All are experienced horsemen. And they’ve got the scars to show it.”
“What do you mean?”
Tenuta said, “I know all these guys pretty well, and if there’s even one of them that hasn’t been taken from the racetrack to the hospital emergency room at least once, I never heard of him. They get bruised and battered. Pulled muscles, dislocated hips, smashed fingers, broken collarbones, broken backs. It’s very physical, very dangerous work. I’m always amazed they can get people to do it. Wait, I think they’re getting her ready.”
“Who owns Our Lucy?” Doyle said.
“Nice guy named Kirk Borland. He bred her and looks forward to seeing her make her first start. He calls me about Lucy every day.”
“Is this your Lucy’s first time in the gate?”
“Here,” Tenuta said. “She had some pretty good gate training down on the farm in Florida where she was raised and broken. That’s real important as a beginning. Because how horses break from the gate can determine whether they win or lose. If they don’t settle in there, and react to the bell, and jump out at least when all the others do, they’ve dug themselves a big hole. Especially horses just beginning their careers.”
Led forward by one of the assistant starters who’d grabbed her bridle, a young man referred to as Muzzy by starter Dodge, as in “Muzzy, go in with her,” Lucy of Artois calmly approached the gate and entered stall two. “She’s doing fine so far,” Tenuta enthused.
“That she is,” Doyle answered. He looked at his employer, who was standing with his arms folded across what Doyle noticed, for the first time, a considerably reduced paunch. Doyle frowned. “Ralph, are you losing weight?”
“Quiet, Jack. I’m concentrating on the filly.”
The other three assistant starters carefully walked their two-year-olds up to the back of the gate. They led them in, then let each horse back out, stand, examine this situation which was seemingly disturbing to at least two of them, who skittered and balked before re-entering. Lucy of Artois, meanwhile, was quiet and alert in her stall.
Doyle and Tenuta looked on as a big bay colt reared up backwards, almost hauling his handler off the ground, then came down and planted his feet and lashed out with the rear ones, narrowly missing head starter Dodge, who unleashed a string of curses that sizzled through the Heartland Downs air. “Put that crazy bastard on the list,” Dodge yelled to an assistant who was carrying a writing pad.
Doyle said, “What list?”
“His. Willard Dodge’s. He won’t let the owner of that colt enter him in a race until he’s better-mannered at the gate. The trainer, Buck Norman I think, will have to keep bringing him here for schooling until Dodge okays him to race.”
All four horses were finally in the gate. Dodge waited to let them get their feet and heads settled before pressing the button. The doors flew open. One of the four stepped toward the back door of his stall. Another walked out the front. Lucy of Artois and another filly shot out of the gate like old pros.
“All
right
, Jack,” Tenuta said happily, slapping Doyle on the back. “See how she came out of there?” He excitedly clapped Doyle on the back again. “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll buy you coffee.” Tenuta gave a thumbs-up to ‘Our Lucy’s’ groom, saying, “I’ll see you back at the barn, Emilio.”
Walking across the infield toward the barn area and its track kitchen, Tenuta said, “What did you ask me before? I know you asked me something.”
“I asked whether you were losing weight. I just noticed this morning what appears to be a weight loss on your part. Am I right?”
They dodged a tractor pulling a harrow down the main dirt track. Doyle could hear Tenuta’s sigh even in the wake of the noisy maintenance machinery. “I’m still under attack at home. In the kitchen. It’s that damn Kentucky cookbook Rosa’s got.”
Doyle said, “Aw, c’mon, Ralph, how bad could it be? You always say Rosa’s a terrific cook. The meal I had at your place, it was great. Remember the Kentucky Hot Browns? I thought they were good.”
Tenuta groaned at the memory. “Rosa used to be a great cook. I don’t think I told you, but before we were married, I had Rosa kind of go into training with my mother. At my suggestion, if you know what I mean. Learning exactly how to do it right. How to make homemade pasta the right way, the way veal should be done. Meat and spinach ravioli, a great red sauce made with pork neck bones. Cannolini, lasagna, oh, Jack, what that woman could do in the kitchen! My Mama was a good teacher. Rosa was a good student. But now, she’s into this new stuff. I’ve lost fifteen pounds since she started this.”
Doyle turned his head so Tenuta could not see him trying to stifle his laughter. “You’re not taking this seriously, are you?” the trainer said. “Let me tell you last night’s fiasco. Rosa started us off with something called apple carrot soup. The vegetable was a quote broccoli ring unquote. It looked like some kind of jello mold that had sat too long. Tasted like it, too. Then she came out with the doves.”
“I beg your pardon,” Doyle said. “Doves?”
“Doves. Damn right. I asked her where she got them. Her friend at Keeneland, Frances, the lady who sent her the damn cookbook, knows some hunter down there who reached into his freezer and Fed-Exed the birds to us. I guess hunting doves is legal in Kentucky. Or somewhere down south. Anyway, they wound up on my dinner table,” he said glumly.
They crossed the racing strip and started heading for track kitchen. Tenuta said, “Are you Catholic, Jack?”
Doyle stopped walking and looked at Tenuta. He hadn’t been asked that question in years. “Raised Catholic.”
“Me too,” Tenuta answered. “A long time ago. The Holy Ghost is a dove, am I right? Isn’t there a peace symbol dove, or something? How can people shoot and eat birds like that?”
Doyle had to turn his face away again before saying, “Ralph, what kind of a dove dish was it? Or dove recipe? You know what I mean.”
“Don’t make fun of this, Jack,” Tenuta barked. “The little birds came in a mushroom soup casserole with cheddar cheese on top. Along with what Rosa said was sweet potato hash browns. Something called apricot horseradish sauce on the side.”
Doyle was tempted to say “That’s probably the best way for the little things to be presented,” but he held his tongue. They walked on in silence.
July 28, 2009
Doyle flew Southwest Airlines from Midway Airport to America’s capital of gambling, sin, and family-friendly resort hotels. After listening to Morty Dubinski describe on the phone his “tremendous progress” during the first two days of the current Super Handicappers Challenge, Doyle decided to visit his money, and his friend, in Las Vegas. He told Ralph Tenuta he needed “a couple of days off. My first of the meeting.” Tenuta agreed. Doyle did not bother to inform Agents Engel and Tirabassi of his impending absence. Having made absolutely no progress in uncovering the Heartland Downs sponger thus far, Doyle figured a day or two away couldn’t hurt.
He took a cab from McCarron Airport to the Delano Towers Hotel, site of the handicapping contest. When he hit the sidewalk, the midday heat hit him. “Jesus,” Doyle said to the doorman, “what’s the temperature?”
“Here?”
“Hey, wiseass, you don’t look to me to be an expert on heat indices in Budapest. Yeah, here.”
The doorman grinned. “One-ten in the shade. And there isn’t any. Want me to take your bag?”
“No, thanks,” Doyle said, handing the young man a five. “I can manage getting that far by myself.”
At the registration desk, Doyle told the clerk he was a “guest of Mr. Dubinski.” Morty, as a paid contestant, had been given a suite with two bedrooms on the hotel’s tenth floor. “Very comfortable,” Doyle said to himself as he unpacked. Then he went downstairs to find the little handicapper.
Doyle was directed to the large room devoted to horse playing. He stood in the doorway until he spotted Morty’s large white head bent over a pile of papers at one the many wooden carrels, second row from the front of the room with its lectern and microphone for the contest supervisor. Each of these small, comfortable spaces contained a desk, two chairs, and a small television set, even though the room’s wide walls featured enormous flat screens showing racing action from around the country. Morty, like all the rest of his rivals, was busily changing channels on the television set from racetrack to racetrack, glancing up at the wall screens, down at the papers with their trip notes, sheet numbers, and the
Racing Daily
past performance pages containing lettering, underlining, and symbols known only to themselves. With their equations and notations, some of these mounds of research materials looked like prep sheets at Las Alamos in the early stages of the development of the “Big One.”
Next to Morty’s carrel sat a gray-haired gent wearing a tee-shirt with “Grandpa-Pittsburgh” on its back. To the right of his television set was a framed color photo of a dozen or so young children. A string of black rosary beads hung from Grandpa Pittsburgh’s neck.
Immediately to Grandpa Pittsburgh’s right was a studious-looking young Chinese-American woman. Long black pigtails sprouted from under her backwards ball cap that proclaimed her to be “Pearl of the Orient.” On Morty’s left was a middle-aged white woman wearing a multicolored mumu large enough to protect the Wrigley Field pitcher’s mound during a rain delay. She was happily conversing with the older man to her left who, Doyle thought, bore an amazing resemblance to the Grateful Dead’s late Jerry Garcia.
“How I love this stuff,” Doyle said. It crossed his mind, not for the first time, that the entire sport/business of horse racing was balanced on the bankrolls of folks just like this. The nation’s breeding farms, lavish or modest; jockey fees, trainers’ incomes, feed suppliers, manual laborers at the tracks, mutuel clerks and janitors and bartenders, all supported by a percentage of the dollars provided each day by bettors like these from Seattle to Miami and all the way in between.
Morty jumped up, smiling, when Doyle tapped him on the shoulder. “Jack, Jack, great to see you! Really great! Thanks for coming.” He pumped Doyle’s hand. “Did you find our room okay? I mean our suite?”
“Sure did. Very impressive, Morty.” Doyle pulled a chair out from the desk. “How goes it?”
The little man beamed. “Jack, listen to this. I’m in a good position to win this whole thing. Look at the leader board up there on the front wall.”
Morty, Doyle saw, was in second place in the standings. Each contestant was obligated to make fifteen mythical $2 win and place wagers each day of the three-day tournament. They could make these bets on races at any track around the nation. Morty had “started kind of slow the first day,” he said. “Then I caught fire yesterday and moved into the top ten. Jack, I was so pumped I could hardly sleep last night. I just stayed up, going over and over my system figures for today. It paid off.”
With only one race remaining on this, the final day of the contest, Morty trailed the leader, Mike Conway, also from Illinois, by only $10. Conway’s total was $282. With two hundred fifty men and woman competing, Morty was a cinch to earn prize money.
Doyle said, “Who are you betting next, Morty?”
“A horse from Heartland Downs back home,” Morty replied. “Seventh race. I like that turf filly, Tuck’s Tweedie, trained by Mark Gordon. She showed speed last time out going a mile and a sixteenth. She’s only going five and a half furlongs today. I like it when they drop back in distance like that. Tuck’s Tweedie looks solid to me. She fits all my new system guidelines.”
Doyle reviewed Tuck’s Tweedie’s past performances in
Racing Daily
. Her speed figures indicated she was a standout in this comparatively weak eight-horse field. “I heard Conway made his last bet of the day and got nothing,” Morty whispered. “Jack, I’m in the driver’s seat here.”
They watched on the massive screen on the right wall as Tuck’s Tweedie approached the Heartland Downs starting gate. Doyle frowned. “She’s not exactly on her toes, is she?” he said. Morty’s eyes were riveted on the screen. With considerable urging, Tuck’s Tweedie entered her stall in the gate. The race began at once.
Sixty-five seconds later, Tuck’s Tweedie struggled across the finish line in last place. There was booing from the Heartland Downs crowd. The upset winner of the race, Brody Be Good, paid $24.20, thus vaulting the woman previously in fifth place, the mumu lady next to Morty, to the contest victory. Her celebration rocked the area. With favored Tuck’s Tweedie out of the money, the trifecta paid $7,898.
Morty continued to gaze up at the TV screen, as if he had just seen a re-run of another dismal portion of his betting life. Doyle kept his eye on the television as Tuck’s Tweedie, her head down, body language dismal, was led away by her groom. Disgusted, Doyle got to his feet and heard the bewildered Morty say “Jack, I don’t get it. My horse was a super standout in my new system. But she stopped like a bad check. And I lose the contest to my neighbor here, this hair dresser from Topeka. Nice lady, but… Is there no justice, Jack? How do you figure it?”
“I’ve got a good idea about what happened to your horse, Morty. And Tuck’s Tweedie is stabled right next to Ralph Tenuta’s horses.
Damn
.”
Tuck’s Tweedie’s loss dropped the anguished Morty back to fifth place in the final standings of the contest. Still, his reward of $20,000 was, as he said, “The biggest payoff of my life. Thanks, Jack, for loaning me the grand to get me here.”
Doyle was happy for his friend. He didn’t mention that, had Tuck’s Tweedie won, Morty would have taken down the first prize of $150,000. Doyle knew Morty knew that.
The ride to Chicago, nearly from the time the plane crossed the Mississippi until it reached western Cook County, was a nightmare. The craft was buffeted by winds that caused it to bob up and down in a violent rhythm. The seatbelt sign was on. The interior lights suddenly went off. Doyle, trying to devise some kind of plan that would thwart the increasingly effective horse sponger, had his thought train thoroughly derailed over Springfield. That was when the plane stopped bouncing up and down and began going side to side like dice in a desperate crapshooter’s hand. The youngest stewardess shrieked and lurched toward a perch in the back. Just as she strapped herself in, the galley’s refrigerator doors burst open, scattering bottles of wine and beer and cans of soda and juices forward down the aisle as the planed dipped downward again. The crew made no attempt to retrieve these items. People screamed with fright.
Doyle glanced at his seatmate, a young woman who had been listening to earphones and working on a spread sheet in her computer. Her pretty face was tinged with terror. She grabbed Doyle’s wrist. He laid his hand across hers’. To Doyle’s right, a dark complected young man was rocking back and forth in his seat, possibly in prayer or abject fear. Children began howling. Some adults, too.
Seven and one-half terrifying minutes elapsed before, with a wonderful suddenness, the plane steadied and resumed a normal trajectory. The young woman let go of Doyle’s wrist. She said, “I’m Tracy Hartenstein. And I was scared shitless. Hope you didn’t mind me grabbing on to you.”
“No problem. I’m Jack Doyle. I was starting to say a rosary for the first time in many years when you latched on to me. It made me pray faster.”
They smiled at each other as their pilot, Captain Brett Steele, came on the intercom. To Doyle, the pilot’s name had a reassuring ring to it when announced following takeoff from Las Vegas. Now, Captain Steele, after fumbling momentarily with his sound system, intoned very calmly that “That little patch of weather is all behind us, folks. Sit back and enjoy the rest of your flight.”
“Thank you, Lord,” Doyle said. Tracy Hartenstein took Doyle’s hand again, this time in a gentler grip. “Thank Him for me, too,” she said.
Twenty-four hours later the Illinois state veterinarian Mary Holliday confirmed that Tuck’s Tweedie had been found to have had a sponge clogging her air passage during the previous day’s race.