Close Call

by John McEvoy

  It was an old man, apparently a wino who had wandered away from the mission facility a block over on State Street. He grasped an empty pint of Thunderbird (“What’s the word? Thunderbird. What’s the price? Sixty twice.”) in one hand. The other arm lay across his forehead as if he was shielding his eyes from the distant street light. He was snoring softly, head propped against the outside of the tire. Lucarelli kicked him in the ribs with his right boot. The old man cried out. Shifting his weight, Lucarelli drove his left foot into the man’s face. There was a cracking sound. Blood spurted from his nose and mouth, and he passed out again.

  Lucarelli grunted with satisfaction. Leaning down, he grabbed the wino’s legs, pulled him away from the car, and dragged him over into the shadows near the parking lot fence. Shannon followed. He gave the old guy a kick with the side of his boot, kind of half-hearted, but enough, he thought, to keep up his cred with his dangerous cousin.

  Chapter 15

  In the days after the track robbery, things started quieting down for Doyle, his routine resembling that of his uneventful first week on the job. He fell into the rhythm of his lengthy work days that began when he toured the stable area early each morning to gather material for the Barn Notes that he wrote, then e-mailed by noon to local media outlets. The hope was the Notes would serve as a basis of publicity for the track. Most Chicago area sports departments these days, Doyle knew, had pretty much chosen to ignore horse racing on a daily basis, though they still reserved some coverage for the big weekend races. With the exception of Racing Daily, the industry’s trade journal, the newspapers only staffed Monee Park on Saturdays. Doyle tried to break through this barricade by making his Notes as unusual as possible. He enjoyed his conversations with most of the trainers and jockeys he met on the Monee Park backstretch, though there were some rude bastards he learned to avoid.

  The smooth nature of his week came to an abrupt halt just before the final race Saturday night. That was when two middle-aged press box stalwarts, Hollis Randolph of the Chicago News and Randy Hicks of Metro Daily, got into what they considered to be a fist fight.

  For some reason, the press box vibes had been bad for most of the evening, beginning when Randolph asked Doyle “turn down that damn jazz you’re playing on the radio.” Doyle looked up, startled. He’d never heard Randolph say anything so forcefully.

  “What, you don’t like jazz?” Doyle said. “What kind of American are you?” Still, he reached over to his CD player and lowered the volume on John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.”

  “Too damn squawky,” Randolph answered. “If there has to be music playing in here, make it classical,” he sniffed, turning back to his computer keyboard.

  “I’m going to take umbrage at that, Hollis,” Doyle responded.

  “Take all you want.”

  “You’re telling me you dig that classical mush, the tedious, predictable repetition of the same note patterns in different keys for minutes at a time? Where, after you’ve heard the first few notes, you can accurately predict the next fifty or so? Where you look around at the audience and there isn’t a toe to be seen tapping? Where the only display of movement in the dead serious crowd is that of guys nodding off to sleep? An old buddy of mine termed it SFB music. So Fucking Boring. Not for mine, my friend. However, in the spirit of cooperation, I will lower the sound over here.”

  His mustache twitching, Adam’s apple bobbing behind his navy blue bow tie, Randolph grunted an indiscernable reply.

  But the squabble that erupted a couple of hours later did not involve musical tastes. Source of this conflict was the traditional press box handicapping pool. That night, Randolph and Hicks were in the contest, along with three television camera men, Morty Dubinski, Alvin the press box mutuel clerk, Rudy the bartender, and two radio station reporters. The contestants each put $10 into the pot. The person with the most points accumulated by the end of the night (five points for picking a winner, three for second, one for third) got the money. Doyle had decided to stay out of it until he got to know this crew better.

  This night, everyone in the contest blew their chances early in the program—except the voluble Hicks. He was, as he chortled loudly, “hotter than a bowl of Terlingua, Texas chili.” He kept rubbing it in, especially irritating Hollis Randolph who was holding the pool money. Hollis had managed to come up with just one winner through the first eight races. Hicks, who had tabbed five, rode him unmercifully as the night went on. “You couldn’t pick your nose tonight, Hollis,” was one of the least offensive Hicks jibes.

  To Hollis Randolph’s irritation, Hicks announced that he wanted to “get away early to beat the traffic.” Because of that, he asked Randolph to pay him off so he could leave. Randolph refused. He worked at his computer, not looking up as he said, “You know the rules, Hicks. The winner of the pool doesn’t get paid off until after the last race is run.”

  “Yeah, but nobody can win the last race and beat me,” Hicks protested. “I’m too far ahead. I’m the winner, you idiot. Now pay me!”

  As Randolph continued to ignore him, the enraged Hicks reached around from behind him and slapped him across the cheek. The tall, spindly Randolph sprang out of his chair like a startled heron. The two then began flailing away ineffectually at each other as the other press box denizens gawked.

  Doyle could hardly believe what he was seeing as Randolph and the squat, overweight Hicks stood no more than three feet apart, missing each other with both hands, puffing and sweating. He roughly stepped between them, shouting, “I’m not going to watch any more of this bitch slapping from you two. If you can’t fight like men, return to your seats. And,” he added, “Randolph, give Hicks his goddam money.”

  The two responded to these commands with relief. Randolph, hands shaking, eye glasses askew on his long nose, got out his wallet and handed some bills to Hicks, whose round face was now glistening with sweat. Hicks took the money without saying a word. He went to his desk, packed up his portable computer, and scuttled out the door.

  Doyle gave Rudy the bartender the high sign for a round of drinks on his tab. Rudy quickly produced a Bushmills on the rocks for Doyle, then started filling the rest of the orders. Doyle said to Morty, “How often does this kind of crap go on here?”

  “I’ve never seen a fight in a press box in my life.”

  “Well,” Doyle said, “you sure as hell couldn’t say you saw one here tonight. That hardly qualifies as even a minor fracas. What a couple of nudniks.”

  He walked to his desk and sat down. Susan Lane-Barker, the tall, slim young woman who covered the weekend races for one of the major press services, looked over at him. “Why are you smiling, Jack?” she said reproachfully. “I thought that was disgraceful.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, smiling back at her. “Sometimes, seeing people making fools of themselves tends to lighten my mood. As long as they don’t harm anyone but themselves,” he added. “It’s a weakness of mine.” Susan, far from mollified, turned back to her keyboard.

  Doyle asked Morty to lower the volume of the televised White Sox game. It was Morty’s turn to look aggrieved. “I take it you’re not a Sox fan, Jack?”

  “That’s right.”

  Morty sighed, forcing himself to come to grips with a dreadful new possibility. He said, “A Cubs fan, I suppose.”

  “Nope.”

  Morty was surprised. He sat back in his chair, giving Jack a long, speculative look. “You mean you’re not a baseball fan? What kind of American are you?”

  Doyle let a little of the smoky Bushmills roll around in his mouth, “grace his gums” as he had once described the feeling, before he answered. “I gave up on the so-called national pastime several years ago, Morty. Starting when mediocre major league infielders started making more money in a single year than all the teachers in a mid-size elementary school. Since sluggers turned into grotesque masses of muscle and started to hit six-hundred foot home runs. That’s when I scrubbed baseball off my blackboar
d. C’mon,” he said, “let me make a bet with Alvin and we’ll go outside and watch the last race.”

  It was Doyle’s first bet at Monee Park. The race was for older horses going a mile and a sixteenth. He used the first two favorites and a 7-1 shot in a straight trifecta, needing them to finish one-two-three in that order. They ran one-two-four. He crumpled up his mutuel ticket. They walked back into the now nearly empty press box. Morty said, “Can I leave now?”

  “Did you e-mail that press release about Monday night’s special events?”

  “Done.”

  “Okay,” Doyle said. “Take off. See you tomorrow.”

  Morty turned around when he’d reached the door. He had a sly grin on his face. “One more thing,” he said. “Hopalong Cassidy. What was the name of his horse?”

  Doyle said, “You’re a devious little bastard. Hopalong Cassidy? How the hell would I know the name of his horse? That was way before my time.”

  “Topper,” Morty said triumphantly, then exited, chuckling.

  Chapter 16

  Aiden Lucarelli was sitting at the bar working on a Bud Light when Denny Shannon stumbled into Haller’s Pub on Thirty-third and Parnell. As usual, there was an empty stool on either side of Aiden. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him as an anger-packed, argumentative, combative collection of complexes in “great need of avoidance,” as old Donal Corcoran, a Haller’s regular, put it. Corcoran also said of Aiden that “He’s like a nightmare combination of the Al Capone-Dion O’Banion criminal lines, just as lethal and eager as each.”

  Haller’s Pub was one of Chicago’s oldest saloons. Located a half block south of Democratic ward headquarters, for decades it had been a popular hangout for politicians, cops, firemen, city workers, tradesmen, and senior retirees. It smelled of cigarette and cigar smoke, beer, and grilled onions. It was known in the neighborhood as a “goddamn gold mine.” The loudest sound on south Parnell early every morning was the cascade of beer kegs down delivery truck ramps at Haller’s service door.

  At age twenty-six, Denny and Aiden were Haller’s Men, having played Little League baseball on Haller’s sponsored teams, years later sixteen-inch softball, in between making their rite of passage from soda pop swillers to dedicated adult drinkers. Patrons of Haller’s often held bachelor parties in the tavern’s large back room. A few permitted their wives to join them in this male-dominated sanctum on the occasion of post-funeral receptions.

  Shannon was late. Lucarelli had amused himself by asking Marge Duffy, the afternoon bartender, for perhaps the sixtieth time, to “go out with me some night.” Her regular reply was, “As soon as my fifth child clears kindergarten, I’ll start considering it, Aiden.” Her laughter trailed behind her as she moved to the far end of the long mahogany bar to welcome two thirsty fire captains just off duty. Marge was a forty-one year old divorcee with two young children, a great body, and absolutely no inclination to expose it to the likes of Aiden Lucarelli. Her rejection of his advances was an ongoing joke between them, at least the way Marge saw it. Lucarelli frequently envisioned the moment he’d jump her outside of Haller’s after she’d worked a night shift and fuck her silly, a mask on, her never knowing it was him.

  It was twenty after one in the afternoon. Lucarelli and Shannon had agreed to meet for lunch at noon to talk over Art Riley’s newest plan for them to put into effect at Monee Park. Lucarelli looked at his cousin with disgust. “Christ, man,” he said, “you’re stoned. And drunk. And late. What the hell happened?”

  Shannon rested his thick forearms on the bar. He shook his head from side to side. He was wearing his most recently favored tee-shirt. On the back it read, “Drink Til You Want Me!” Lucarelli noticed drops of dried blood on the front of the shirt.

  “Saw my old man early this morning,” Shannon mumbled as he gingerly sat down on the bar stool. “He came around for the first time in three years. Right before I walked into the house, he started beating on Ma again. I beat the shit out of him. Just like he used to beat the shit out of me all those years. He got in a few licks himself.”

  “Bastard had it coming,” Lucarelli said. He held up two fingers and Marge popped open two more bottles of beer.

  “I know that,” Shannon said irritably. “But I still don’t feel great about it, even if the old man had it coming. He got this kind of pitiful, scared look on his face when I was whaling away on him. Made me sick to see him that way. I don’t know why I had to have a pa like him, I really don’t.”

  The White Sox-Detroit Tigers game was on the big television up behind the bar. They watched a half inning in silence. Conversation among the other dozen or so patrons of Haller’s was muted, the noise level nothing like it would be after five o’clock when the working men came in ready to raise their glasses, voices, and a little bit of hell if the opportunity arose. Marge had specifically requested a transfer to the day shift so she wouldn’t have to face what she described to owner Butch Haller as “that motley crew” every evening. “With them trying to hit on me, plus running me ragged pulling draft beers like a robot, and listening to the same old arguments, this shift is shortening my life,” she’d complained to Haller. He granted her request. Her only regret was the occasional dealings she had with the cousins on the days they got off of work early.

  When the commercials began before the start of the third inning, Lucarelli broke their silence. “At least you got a pa,” he said morosely. “You’re ahead of me there.”

  Shannon stared straight ahead, thinking of the stories he’d heard about Aiden’s late father Jimmy, a “made man” in the Chicago Outfit who had been shot to death during a police raid on an Elmwood Park bookie joint. Aiden was two at the time. His mother Bridgett never remarried. The fatherless child was spoiled rotten by both the Italian and Irish sides, raised “like a young prince,” as Bridgett proudly put it. This lack of discipline served to smoothly develop him into the arrogant prick he always would be.

  Lucarelli said, “Let’s eat.” He walked over to a corner table near the window looking out on the tavern’s parking lot. Across the street was the Holy Rosary school yard, where he and Shannon had terrorized their classmates for most of eight years. Haller’s property had also been the scene of numerous fights matching the cousins against usually hapless, outmatched foes. Lucarelli grinned. “We’ve spilled a lot of blood over these two blocks.”

  “Yeah,” Shannon said, “usually other peoples’.” They gave the young waitress their orders for sandwiches and “a couple more Buds.” Then they got down to discussing their latest assignment from Art Riley.

  Chapter 17

  Doyle came down out of the press box with a bounce in his step. It was a beautiful July Fourth evening at old Monee Park. Mid-day rains had been heavy but short-lived and, though turning the racing strip into a sea of slop, were followed by cloudless skies starting in late afternoon. Thousands of south side horse racing fans had chosen to come out for the twilight racing program that would be followed by a fireworks display, then a concert by some area country and western bands. This annual event had been inaugurated by Jim Joyce years earlier and Celia was determined to keep it on the schedule, cost be damned. From his press box perch Doyle had watched as the Monee parking lots began filling up well before six p.m. He knew this was something rarely observed, like seeing a fat cyclist, or a skinny Hell’s Angel.

  Now, making his way through the crowded grandstand, Jack could feel and hear the buzz of an assemblage eager to be entertained, and to bet. There were long lines at the mutuel windows, and the bars and concession stands were busier than he’d ever seen them. There must be 10,000 people here already, he thought as he sidestepped a man who was walking with his head buried in the tabloid Racing Daily, the so-called bible of thoroughbred racing. The air was rich with the smell of grilling Italian and Polish sausages, hot dogs, popcorn.

  One of the longest lines was in front of the small booth of Madame Fran, Forecaster Supreme. Madame Fran was a short, hefty woman with liv
ely eyes and a ready smile. Doyle watched as Madame Fran, dressed in her usual working outfit of long sleeved orange caftan, white turban, a sparkling ring on every finger, waved forward the next customer, a pants suit wearing matron eager to pay the $5 fee for Fran’s list of predicted winners on the night’s racing program. In addition to the printed cards containing her horse picks that she sold before the races began, Madame Fran offered private consultations at considerably higher fees. She was usually busy with those later in the night, her prognostications encompassing not only horse racing but the stock market, crop futures, and, occasionally, domestic dilemmas. She had been doing a thriving business at Monee Park for years, having been hired by Jim Joyce, then retained by Celia. When the racing season ended, Madame Fran put her booth in storage and herself in her Sarasota, Florida condo.

  Shontanette Hunter had introduced Jack to Madame Fran when, right after he’d started work there, she gave him an extensive tour of Monee Park. Jack had picked up one of the printed cards Madame Fran provided, gratis, to Monee Park patrons. They contained what she described in bold face type as “Rules to Bet By.”

  “A happy bettor is more likely to be a winning bettor.”

  “Do not approach the mutuel windows with a frown on your face, or with fear of defeat in your heart.”

  “Your intuitive powers function best when channeled through a corridor of optimism.”

  Doyle had asked Shontanette, out of Madame Fran’s hearing, “Does she believe this stuff? She gives the impression that she does.”

  Shontanette said, “I know, I know, it sounds like a lot of other hustles. But I’ll say this about Madame Fran: every year for about the last ten or so she’s picked more winners on her little tip sheet than any other handicapping expert in Chicago. You can check it out, Jack.”