The Significant Seven (20 page)

“Well,” Doyle shrugged,” I don’t like to point this out. But if your father is, as you say, a guaranteed goner because of lung cancer, where does the other concern for his safety come into it? I mean, as I remember it, one of the Seven had a heart attack and drowned. Another died in a road accident of some sort. There was the poor guy who mistakenly got the bagel with peanuts in it. And the last one, Zabrauskis, died while camping out. This is wild stuff odds-wise, I grant you. So many deaths in such a short span of time among one close-knit group of humans. But, when it comes to your father, can you imagine him being the target of any serial killer zeroed in on The Significant Seven? If, and it’s a big one, such a killer exists? I mean, considering your father’s medical condition, what would be the point? Your father, unfortunately, is on his way out, on his own.”

Renee glared at Doyle. “The point? The point? The point is my father wants to die in his own home. He’s already arranged hospice care. He’s planned his funeral and the wake and the burial. He does not want to join the list of weird deaths among his friends. He wants to die on his own terms. And I want to make sure that he can.”

Doyle swirled the Bushmills in his cup before placing the cup down on the blanket. “All right. I can understand that, Renee. But where do I come into this?”

“I want to hire some absolutely topnotch security people to guard my father. I don’t want to be calling these rent-a-cop firms full of minimum wage ex-cons or cons-to-be. I know you have connections to the FBI. I remember the insurance fraud case that you helped them with. You must know people who could recommend quality guards I could hire. Or, if you don’t know, you should be able to find out.”

The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra started warming up. Their sound erupted from the nearby speakers. Renee said, “I take Dad to chemo a couple of times a week. These are last-ditch attempts to fight off the inevitable. I spend most of my time with him now. So I don’t have time to vet this area’s security firms. I’m asking you if you could help me out by doing that. That’s all, Jack. We’d pay you well for your time.”

Doyle hesitated. “I can’t imagine there’s a serial killer of horse owners at work here. What would be the point?” He stopped himself then, reflecting on this situation. Here he was, sitting across from this very attractive young woman, not showing any eagerness to accept money from her.
What has happened to all my basic instincts?
he thought. “All right, Renee, I’ll do it.” They bumped cups.

“I’m going to tell you something that has to remain between us,” Renee said earnestly. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Not yet.”

Renee said, “The partnership agreement that my father and the rest of The Significant Seven entered into, when The Badger Express was about to go to stud, was very carefully constructed. At Moe Kellman’s suggestion, my father hired a Chicago attorney named Frank Cohan. Supposedly the city’s top contract lawyer. Cohan drew it up. The contract specifies that ‘Any profits from the stallion career of The Badger Express be equally divided among the partners. When a partner dies, whatever succeeding profits do
not
go to his heirs, but are to be divided among the remaining partners. This continues until the last partner dies, at which time that partner’s designated heir, or executor, shall devote the profits to a reputable organization that cares for retired racehorses.’ These men, my father and these friends of his, they loved racing and racehorses. They wanted to give something back.”

Doyle said, “I’m impressed. You remember all that legalese?”

“I have a good memory,” Renee said.

“Okay, Renee. I’ll ask around and find the best security people that I can. It might be expensive to hire the best,” he warned.

“Money’s not an issue. Preserving my father’s peace of mind is.”

On the Ravinia stage, the great jazz orchestra finished tuning up. It was almost eight. Doyle drained his drink. He offered to pour Renee more champagne, but she declined. They both stretched out on the blanket now, Doyle with his windbreaker bunched under his head, looking up at the star-filled summer sky.

In one of his first meetings with FBI agent Karen Engel a couple years back, at the start of the horse-killing case, the normally calm Engel had lashed out at what she considered to be Doyle’s obstinacy. “You’re colder than a bail bondsman’s heart,” she said.

Ah, but not anymore
, Doyle thought.
I’m beginning to lurch toward generous
gestures, again
.

He listened with his eyes closed as Wynton Marsalis’ golden trumpet soared above the dense, rolling sound of his band mates who were putting their all into Duke Ellington’s “Take the A-Train.”

He glanced at Renee. Eyes closed, she was smiling, too.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

August 4, 2009

They’d agreed to meet at Fit City at seven a.m. Doyle was there on the dot. Kellman, as usual, had arrived earlier than agreed and begun working up a sweat going through his fifty sit-ups and one hundred fifty push-ups before he attacked the treadmill. He waited to start jumping rope until Doyle was there. Doyle took one look at the little furrier as he increased his tempo and started criss-crossing. “Stop fucking trying to impress me,” Doyle said. “I’m already impressed. Besides, I could probably enlist a couple of young black girls from the projects who would you make you look ordinary.”

Kellman smiled but did not stop. He said, “I saw Sonny Liston jump rope when he was in training for his first fight against Floyd Patterson in Chicago back in the sixties. Liston trained up at a place near Lake Geneva, right over the state line. He was one of the scariest-looking men I’d ever seen. Liston used to just abuse all his sparring partners, then jump rope. They played the record of ‘Night Train’ while he was doing it. You remember that song? A big R&B hit. No, you’re too young. Anyway, his trainer kept it going on a record player set up next to the ring. Which was already splattered with some sparring partners’ blood. Over and over with the song. Liston was amazing. Glowering, sweating, moving his feet like he could do it forever. A frightening sight.”

Doyle said, “I heard he fell down for Clay, or Ali, in their second bout. The so-called phantom punch. Years later Liston died in Vegas, supposedly of a drug overdose. But everybody who knew him said Sonny was scared to death of needles, this big guy, they made him tremble. That he never touched drugs.”

“I wouldn’t know about any of that,” Kellman said.

Doyle took off his sweat shirt and started to shadow box around the room, moving in the direction of the light bag for some energetic, rhythmic tattooing. “I’m starting slow. I had a late night.”

“Hah,” came the derisive answer from the amazingly fit septuagenarian. Kellman, a grateful survivor of what he termed the “Fucking Korean Conflict that those of us caught in it called a war,” had been a workout fanatic for half a century. His level of fitness never seemed to vary. Kellman ascribed much of his age-defying endurance to an extraordinary diet of Italian food, many vegetables, garlic prominent among them, and the occasional treasured introduction of a “big Jewish hot dog or a fatty pastrami on onion roll.” Doyle often detected the odor of garlic in the film of sweat emanating from Kellman during these workouts.

Doyle, warmed up now, feeling better already as he let loose on the light bag, laughed as he asked, “Is
Hah?
a kind of probing question? A declaration of doubt? Believe me, I had a late night.” He sent the speed bag spinning with a final two-handed flurry.

“How late was your night at Ravinia? With Ms. Rison? Two nights back?” Kellman stopped jumping and hung the rope on a wall hook before reaching for a towel.

“How’d you know about that?”

Kellman said, “Guy I know happened to see you there. Happened to mention it to me.”

Doyle sighed. “Have you ever thought about offering your services to our government? You know, to find Osama bin Laden? Jesus!”

“Jack, don’t get riled. It was a coincidence that my friend spotted you. What’s the big deal? So you’re still working for the Feebs trying to catch whoever is sponging horses. And now you’re maybe going to provide protection for Arnie Rison’s very, very attractive daughter?”

Doyle gave the speed bag another furious rap. He said, “It just seems that sometimes, Moe, you seem to know more about where I’m going than I do.”

Doyle walked over to the heavy bag. “Hold this for me?” Kellman complied, steadying the one-hundred-fifty-pound canvas bag hanging from its ceiling chain. Doyle let go with a series of combinations that dented the bag and caused Kellman to set his feet as he tried to keep the bag straight. Doyle shifted his stance and changed the angle of his punches, increasing their intensity, as he worked through what he estimated to be a three-minute round. Then he stepped back, sweating, grinning.

“Did you see my left?” he said to Kellman.

“Not bad, kid. A veritable blur.”

Doyle said, “Not
bad
? Like a goddam piston. Of course,” he grinned, “it’s a lot easier to do to a bag that doesn’t hit back.”

Showered and dressed, they went to the Fit City juice bar. Kellman quickly downed two twelve-ounce glasses of pomegranate-cranberry juice. Doyle asked for water.

“You want anything to eat, Jack? I’m buying. I’ll wait and have breakfast at my office.”

“Naw, Moe. Thanks. If I feel up to it, I’ll stop at Petros’ on my way to the track. Get a load of restorative grease before I go to work. I don’t have much appetite this morning.”

Kellman said, “What’s got you so down this morning?”

Doyle fiddled with his napkin before saying, “A couple of things. I’m not making any progress finding the horse sponger. And these guys that keep dying, Ralph Tenuta’s clients in The Significant Seven, that’s fucking depressing. I feel sorry for Arnie Rison. He’s a done deal with that lung cancer. I feel sorry for Renee, worrying about her father’s current safety. His short future. A load of woe, Moe,” Doyle said softly.

They sat in silence. Then Kellman said, “Let me tell you a story. But first I got to ask you, you know that book by a writer named Mark Harris? About baseball players? Called
Bang the Drum Slowly
?

“I haven’t read the book, but I saw the movie years ago on television. Robert De Niro, Michael Moriarity. One of their team’s coaches was that comedian Phil Foster?”

“Right.”

Doyle said, “I loved the movie, even though De Niro, batting, looked about as authentic as, well, little broads with big silicone boobs.”

“There’s a line in the book,” Kellman said, “that I’ll never forget. One of the coaches is talking about the De Niro character’s impending death. This revelation, he says, is ‘Sad. It makes you wish to cry.’ But another coach comes back with, ‘It is sad. It makes you wish to laugh.’”

“I remember that in the movie.”

Moe said, “What I’m getting at is this. I’m in Miami one winter, doing some business. Yes, in case you’re wondering, people buy furs in Miami.”

“I wasn’t wondering. Go on.”

“One of my oldest friends has come with me, so we could play a little golf, take in some night life. Jerry Greenberg, from the old West Side. We grew up together. Very funny man, always with the dead pan humor. Could have been a comic, but went into the clothing business and made a fortune instead.

“Meanwhile, back in Chicago, is another very good friend of both of ours. Al Goldstein. Another kid from the west side. Diagnosed with leukemia months before, treated, didn’t work, forget it. Great guy.”

Kellman paused to order another glass of juices. “So,” he said, “Jerry and I are sitting at the bar at Joe’s Stone Crab in south Miami Beach, waiting for our dinner call. Bartender says to me, ‘Mr. Kellman, there’s a call for you. It’s your wife. She says it’s urgent.You can take in that corridor around the corner of the bar.’

“’Leah,’ I say, ‘what’s the matter?’

“She says, ‘Al’s gone. Can you come home tomorrow? They’ll be sitting shiva at their house.’ I tell her yes, of course, and put the phone down.”

He drank more juice as Doyle checked his watch, knowing that there was no hurrying his friend on a memory like this.

“I never cry, Jack, not since my first month in Korea when my two best buddies got torn to bits with mortar fire on the same goddam bitter cold morning. But… I broke up after this call from Leah. Tears are coming down my face. Al Goldstein was like a brother to me. I walk back to my seat at the bar where Greenberg is sitting. He sees how upset I am. He says, ‘Moe, what is it?’

“I tell him, ‘Jerry, our great friend Al passed away this afternoon.’ I put my face down in my hands. Maybe a minute goes by. Then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look up at Jerry. He says, ‘Uh, Moe? Were there any calls for me’?

“Jack, I thought about hitting him in the nose, but it broke me up laughing even with the tears on my face. I said, ‘You son of a bitch.’ I didn’t say thanks. But I should have.”

He drained his glass and stood up. “Sometimes, Jack, you just have to try to laugh your way through. Dance between the rain drops. Know what I mean?”

Chapter Forty

August 6, 2009

This was one of the best times of the day for Marty Higgins. Between six and six-thirty on a clear summer morning. Breathing in the cool air as he stretched his legs on the patio of his River Woods home. He had on shorts, a cut-off gray sweat shirt, a Chicago White Sox ball cap, his New Balance cross-trainers.

Ever since Higgins had taken up jogging a dozen years back, this period of anticipation always made him smile. The next best period was when he finished his daily four-mile run through the Cook County Forest Preserve path that bordered his home. In between, well, it could get a little tough for him around mile three. “Ain’t getting any younger,” he told himself, “but still moving.” Then he’d kick it into another, final mile gear. Marty had turned fifty-five three weeks earlier. When he stepped on the bathroom scale once a week, he weighed one pound less than thirty-eight years ago, when he was a defensive back at Mount Carmel High School, perennial football power of the Chicago Catholic League. Coming out of high school and entering the UW, he knew his football career was over. Too small for the Big Ten. But he took pride years later in his dedication to fitness. The endorphins from these morning runs seemed to propel him through his busy business days.

***

Orth had parked his Big Dog cycle off the Forest Preserve tree-lined roadway behind a thick stand of bushes. He’d gotten there just after dawn. Assured by Sanderson that this was “one of Higgins’ jogging days,” Orth made his preparations, then began waiting patiently in the cool silence. At six-fifteen, a slender young woman trotted past on the bicycle path that ran parallel to the roadway, pulled forward on a long leash by an energetic black Labrador. Not another person came by. Orth knew Higgins never used the bike path, preferring the roadway.

The sound of pounding footsteps alerted him. Orth peered from behind his helmet shield to make sure it was the target. He recognized Higgins from the photos Sanderson had provided. Higgins passed him. Orth looked at his watch. He waited the ninety seconds he calculated Higgins would need to reach the bridge across the Preserve Creek. He pushed his bike out from behind the bushes and drove up the roadway.

Orth had been on the bridge an hour earlier. Working with a small light in the dark, he strung a light gray trip wire two inches off the ground from one side of the bridge’s far end to the other. It took him less than a minute.

Throttled down in the quiet morning, Orth moved ahead. Higgins was running in the middle of the roadway, running easily. He heard the cycle begin to accelerate. Irritated at this unusual and unwelcome sound, Higgins muttered, “All of a sudden we’ve got a biker on my route. Damn.”

He started to sidestep off the roadway and onto the bridge walk. His left foot caught in the nearly invisible trip wire. Higgins yelped as he pitched forward onto his chest, face smashed down against the pavement.

Orth did a quick wheely with the front of his “Big Dog” in order avoid the trip wire. His back wheel rolled over it easily. Orth brought the front wheel down on Higgins’ prone figure. He had to struggle to retain balance and keep the bike wheels from sliding off Higgins.

Twenty yards down the sidewalk, Orth braked his cycle and turned it around. He drove back slowly. Higgins was inert. Orth saw the trail of blood leading down the curb and the definitive geometric angle of Higgins’ broken neck.

Orth raised his helmet and wiped sweat off his forehead. He felt the exhilarating adrenalin rip that always accompanied his kills. No feeling in the world like it for him, not ever.

He pulled the helmet back down again and drove quickly to the east end of the Forest Preserve where he’d parked his small truck and trailer, rented from an outlet more than one-hundred miles south of his Wisconsin cabin. The parking lot was empty except for his vehicles. He loaded the Big Dog into the trailer, jumped into the truck, and took off. He’d have to remember to clean the blood off the Big Dog’s tires when he got home.