Close Call

by John McEvoy

  Madame Fran, originally Freda Finklestein, was beaming as she advised a client sitting in a chair alongside the table at her booth. She looked like a woman who was enjoying work she had been doing for more than two decades since, at age twenty-two, she dropped out of her pre-med course at Northwestern University and morphed into Madame Fran. The only disconcerting part of that career change was telling her horrified parents. But she won them over after declaring “There has to be a better way for me to help people, have fun, and make a living besides looking at lesions.”

  Doyle stepped to the side of Madame Fran’s table. “What’s in the forecast?” he said, smiling. “It’s crystal clear,” she replied, round cheeks dimpling and her brown eyes alight, “I’ll have at least five winners. But,” she added with a frown, “I feel there’s something not quite right about tonight. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.” She shuddered slightly, just enough to set into motion her double chins. Doyle knew this kind of pessimism was completely out of character for her.

  “What’s different,” Doyle said, attempting to reassure her, “is the great business we’re doing for a change. Enjoy it,” he advised, patting her on the shoulder before moving away.

  Just outside Madame Fran’s booth there was a line of a dozen waiting customers. Near the back, not in the line but talking earnestly to a middle-aged man who was, stood a tall, skinny, old man. He wore a tattered, long-sleeved white shirt, wrinkled khakis, and a new ball cap that said Monee Park. Doyle recognized it as last week’s featured track give-away item (Free Caps to the First 2,000 Paying Customers).

  Doyle felt a tap on his back. He looked around at Karl Mortenson, Monee Park’s director of security. The two men had met for the first time the previous week, Mortenson eager to impress Doyle with the fact that he was “retired from the Chicago PD,” now engaged in a second career at the racetrack. Mortenson was a big, beefy, middle-aged man, redolent of a powerful pine-scented after shave lotion that failed to mask his breath, which smelled rather strongly of moth balls. He had the kind of glad handing style Doyle despised. Nodding toward the skinny oldster, Mortenson confided, “He’s at it again. We can’t seem to stop him. We bar him, but he somehow manages to get in. I’ll have to throw him out again.”

  “Who is he?”

  Mortenson said, “A guy named Slim Wallace. Been around the racetrack all of his life, in one capacity or another. His capacity in recent years has been tout.”

  “He’s touting a horse to that man now?”

  Mortenson grinned. “Bet on it,” he said. “The race coming up has a ten-horse field. Slim has probably given a different one of those horses to each of ten people. All he asks is, ‘Buy a win ticket for me.’ Naturally, one of the ten horses he recommends will be the winner. And Slim will track down the winning bettor and ask for his winning ticket, and maybe a bonus. I’ve seen a lot of racetrack touts. Slim is one of the slickest. Here, let’s move up a little closer. You can listen to him.”

  “Will a drying out track bother him? Flinty McGinty? Not a chance,” they heard the old man saying in a strong, confident voice. His listener was apparently not fully convinced. Slim pressed on. “Flinty McGinty’s the class of this field. This horse could win running over cobblestones. Or hot coals. In sleet or snow. He’ll run through fire. Bet him good for me, will you?” Slim pleaded.

  The mark still looked a bit skeptical. He said to Slim, “If Flinty McGinty is so good, why is he twenty-two to one on that odds board?”

  “Mister,” Slim said, “that’s because his trainer, an old friend of mine, has been hiding this speedball. Working him in the early morning dark so he couldn’t be timed by the clockers. Believe me, he’s a stick of dynamite about to go off and make us rich.”

  Mortenson intervened at this point, grasping Slim by the elbow and pulling him roughly to the side. “Caught you at it again, old man,” he said. Slim grimaced in Mortenson’s powerful grip. Glaring at the security chief, he said, “You mean I can’t give my handicapping opinions to this friend of mine here? What happened to free speech in this country?”

  Mortenson started marching Slim toward the exit. “Friend of yours?” he said. “Hell, you never saw that man until five minutes ago.”

  “Well, if Flinty McGinty wins he’ll be a friend of mine.”

  Doyle watched them traipse away, thinking there’s as many characters per square foot around the racetrack as there are divorcees in Vegas.

  ***

  Immediately after the second race, back at his desk now, Doyle received a call from Roger Bullard, the Monee Park manager of pari-mutuels. Bullard was excited. “Jack,” he said, “I just wanted to tell you we’ve had more money bet on the first two races tonight than any time in the last ten years. Almost a new record on the daily double. I thought you’d like to know because we might be on our way to a season’s high for the nine races.”

  Doyle said, “Thanks, Roger. That’s great news.” He was going to add, “Give me a running total through the night, will you?” when the infield tote board abruptly went dark, followed by all the lights that were spaced around the racing strip. Lighting in the building remained on. Doyle closed his eyes for an instant, thinking he’d imagined it. But when he opened them and again looked out his window, darkness still enveloped the track and the tote board remained blank. Twenty minutes later, when it became apparent the problem could not be quickly remedied, the announcement was made that the rest of the nights’ races were cancelled. Monee Park admissions employees began issuing rain checks to departing customers. Betting was over for the night and the hard core players were disgruntled. Thousands of people with their families remained, however, for the fireworks show which went on as planned.

  ***

  Doyle tapped out a short news story about the partial blackout for the media and e-mailed it. Depressed, the glow having been ripped off this once promising night, he was about to leave and head for O’Keefe’s Olde Ale House when his phone rang. Shontanette said, “Jack, will you come upstairs for a few minutes? Celia needs to talk to you.”

  He walked into the apartment, saying hello to Shontanette, Bob, and Celia, who was talking on her cell phone. They sat around the dining room table, coffee cups before them.

  “Damn,” said Doyle, “what an unlucky break that was. Any report on what caused the malfunction?” He pulled out a chair and sat down as Shontanette said, “Of all nights for this to happen! Things were going so great. Our biggest crowd in years, betting like crazy. Talk about bad luck!”

  Celia put her phone on the table. She looked stunned. “There was no luck involved,” she said slowly. “That was Chuck Lipman, the head electrician. He says part of the lighting system was sabotaged. He said that’s evident from the damage done. He has no idea how whoever did it knew how to attack the system. Swears it couldn’t have been any of his crew, and I believe him. It’ll take at least a day to repair,” she said. She put her head down on her folded arms that lay on the table. Doyle looked at Bob, sitting immobilized in his wheelchair next to his wife, Doyle knowing that both of them wanted to move to Celia and comfort her, but were unable to do so.

  Shontanette broke the silence. “Damn, we’re on a bad roll here. First the money room robbery, now this.”

  Doyle said, “I’m starting to think we’re under siege.”

  Bob Zaslow whispered something Doyle couldn’t hear. Celia, sitting next to Bob, shook her head. Bob said nothing more. He just stared at Doyle, who was feeling uncomfortably left out. Doyle looked at Celia. “What did Bob say?” he asked.

  Celia said, “Nothing important, really.” She patted her husband’s hand. He looked back at her, anger in his eyes. She gave into him then, saying, “Okay, what Bob said was ‘We were never under siege before Jack Doyle got here.’”

  Chapter 18

  Doyle stood at the clubhouse rail, cup of coffee in hand, notebook in the pocket of his tan windbreaker, watching the horses go past in their morning workouts, when he
felt a hand on his elbow. He turned to see Celia. With the sun at her back she looked a picture, he thought, her red hair glistening in the glow of morning, green eyes full of life. She wore a blue sweatshirt, the words Monee Park on its front, blue jeans, and a White Sox ball cap, its brim pulled low. “Caught you daydreaming, Jack. Looking at horses down here instead of upstairs writing about them.” She smiled to assure him that she was kidding.

  “I like watching the workouts,” Doyle replied, turning back to the track and leaning his arms on the rail. “You know what Winston Churchill said. ‘There’s something about the outside of a horse that’s good for the inside of a man.’ I couldn’t agree more.”

  They stood without talking for a few minutes. The sounds filling the cool air were those of pounding hooves, hard-breathing animals, the chirps of their riders. Then Jack said, “So, Celia, what brings you down here this morning? Looking for a hot horse?”

  She laughed. “Hardly. Actually, I was hoping to talk to you. I need to ask a favor.”

  Doyle finished his coffee, then tossed the cup into a nearby metal waste basket. “What kind of favor?”

  “A pretty big one,” Celia admitted. “Walk with me over to those empty grandstand seats. I want to keep this just between us for now,” she said, as she waved to a couple of trainers who had called out greetings to her.

  In the next quarter hour, Celia laid it out for him. Her attempt to persuade her cousin Niall Hanratty to sell her his interest in Monee Park had failed. So had her attempt to convince him that the value of the stock would soar once video slots were approved, that Monee Park would be a viable, profitable entity. “Niall doesn’t seem to understand how much we both have to gain if we hang on to this property,” Celia complained, voice rising. “For a man supposedly so smart about money, well, he’s thick on this subject. It’s so stupid, his attitude. ‘Money now, money quickly,’ that’s all Niall’s interested in. It’s all that’s been mentioned in the two letters to me from his lawyer here, this Art Riley, and in the one brief, long distance phone conversation I had with Niall. In the last letter, Riley even hinted that Niall might try to challenge Uncle Jim’s will, try to break it! That’s ridiculous. He has no grounds for that.”

  Celia frowned as she looked out over the track. “I’m sure,” she said, “that he’s disgusted with having to deal with a woman on an equal basis.”

  “Naw,” Doyle said, unable to resist, “maybe just a really stubborn woman, like you.”

  “Not funny, Jack Doyle.”

  “Oh, I know that. But when you think about it, your cousin does have a decent argument. The land here is like gold. Sell it for townhouses and a golf course and what have you, you’ve got easy money in the bank in a hurry. Holding off, waiting for the video slots bill to pass, well, I can see how that might not appeal to Hanratty.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense to him,” Celia shot back, “because he knows nothing about Monee Park. Or Uncle Jim. Or how Uncle Jim loved this place. How could a Niall Hanratty, living thousands of miles away, know anything about that?”

  A track siren signaled the start of a fifteen minute “break” during which horses were not permitted on the loam surface while tractors pulled harrows over it, smoothing it out. Most of the horse trainers and owners walked from the rail or stands inside the building for new supplies of coffee and doughnuts. A staple of racetrack mornings, Doyle had learned, was caffeine accompanied by some form of fried dough.

  Celia remained where she was seated, the brim of her cap pulled down over her forehead. When she finally looked up at him, Doyle saw tears in her eyes. He felt a catch in his throat. He started to put a hand on hers, but she got to her feet. Arms crossed, she composed herself, then looked down at him.

  “I’ll get to the favor now, Jack.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I’d very much appreciate it if you would make a quick trip to Ireland to talk to Niall Hanratty for me.”

  Doyle’s jaw dropped. He rubbed his hand through his hair as he got to his feet. “Kind of came out of left field with that one, didn’t you?” he said. “Well, I have a one word answer. Why? Why me?”

  “That’s three. The answer is, I can’t go. I can’t leave Bob for a trip like that. And I can’t seem to get Niall to see my side of things by phone or mail. I need someone to talk this out with him. To persuasively present my side. You’re the best person I know that could do this for me. The only one,” she repeated, pressing a tissue to her nose.

  “Aw, c’mon,” Doyle said, conceding, “no crying, okay?” Celia turned away for a few seconds, her shoulders shaking, then turned back to him. He saw that she was struggling to control a laugh. She failed, and it rolled out, making him laugh, too.

  “You’ll do it for me then?”

  He nodded yes.

  “Was that…pretty…good?” she managed as she resumed laughing.

  “Oh, yes,” he admitted, “that was a first rate hustle. I didn’t know you were such a capable actress.”

  “But you’ll still respect me,” she said with a giggle.

  “This morning, and all others.”

  Celia turned serious again. Looking straight at him, the sun now full fledged and out of its cloud coverlet behind her, she said, “I have a ticket for you on tonight’s Aer Lingus flight from O’Hare to Dublin.”

  Doyle said, “Why the hell not? It would be all new to me. My forebearers managed to get their butts out of there before the famine got them. Their descendants never evidenced any desire to return that I know of. Funny, I’ve always been curious as to what the ‘ould sod’ is like. I’ll do this favor for you, Celia.”

  ***

  Doyle wrapped up his morning’s work in a hurry. He called Morty over to his desk, explaining that he’d be “gone for a few days. You’re in charge.” Morty blanched. “Where to?” he asked. But Doyle was already on the phone, saying, loud enough for Morty to hear, “Moe, I’m leaving town tonight. For Ireland. Yeah, on very short notice. How about a farewell lunch?” He listened for a few seconds before saying, “I’ll see you there.” Morty said, “Ireland?” Doyle nodded, patted Morty on the shoulder, and walked out.

  By 12:30 Doyle was seated in Moe Kellman’s regular back booth at Dino’s Ristorante, beneath the owner’s most prized possession—the large, framed photo of Frank Sinatra, inscribed, “Dino, Keep on Swingin’.” Moe glanced up, said, “Hello, Jack,” then back down at the front page of that day’s Wall Street Journal. Seconds later he folded up the paper and disgustedly pushed it aside. “Another ring of corporate crooks found guilty,” he said. “Insiders scooping the cream off the top before their company goes under. Every other week there’s a story like this. It’s amazing to me. Hell, some of the guys from my old neighborhood had more ethics than these blue suited jackals.

  “You know what I’d like to see, Jack?” Moe said earnestly. “Instead of putting these guys’ ages in the paper, who cares about that, they should put in their alma maters, what universities they came out of. I think the public has a right to know where these thieves are being trained.”

  “I’d drink to that,” Doyle said, “if I had a drink.”

  “Patience, Jack, patience,” Kellman said, just as a waiter arrived at the booth with Kellman’s Negroni, a bottle of Pilsener Urquel beer for Doyle. They clinked glasses, Kellman smiling now, finished at least for the time being with concern over corporate corruption. “So tell me,” he said, “what’s with this Ireland caper?”

  Doyle described the mission he was going on for Celia, telling him how she “foxed me into it, I’ve got to admit. She’s not a bad actress for an education major,” he said with a grin.

  Moe sipped his Negroni, then patted his neat white mustache with his napkin. He looked speculatively at Jack. He said, “You haven’t fallen for Ms. McCann, have you Jack?”

  “Forget that idea,” Doyle snapped. “She’s a very, very attractive woman. But she’s married, for one thing, and married to a nice
guy who is trapped in his own body. I’m not going down that path.”

  Moe said, “How do you plan to handle things over there?”

  “I hope to meet with this Hanratty the day after tomorrow. I’m going to try to convince him to go along with Celia’s plan for the track. You know, keep it running until the slots become a reality. As I’ve said, Hanratty wants to sell the place right away and cash out his forty-nine percent. I may spend ten minutes with this guy and wrap up the agreement Celia wants, or walk out of a disagreeable situation. We’ll see.”

  “What do you know about Hanratty?”

  “His name, occupation, and relationship to Celia. That’s it.”

  “I made some inquiries about him,” Moe said. Doyle smiled. “I’ll bet you did. I’ve got to admit it, sometimes you amaze me, what you get interested in, who you know. Actually,” he added, “I do know that Hanratty has hired a lawyer here to represent him. Guy named Art Riley.”

  Kellman’s eyebrows elevated. He took a sip of his Negroni. “Not good,” he said, “not good at all.”

  “What do you know about Art Riley?”

  Moe said, “He’s got a reputation shakier than a penniless junkie. Been around for years, working with hack politicians, bent labor leaders, picking up good-sized pieces of deals here and there. He’s big in the Fourteenth Ward Democratic organizations, where clout is king.”

  “Have you had any dealings with him?”

  “Just once, years ago. I had been led to believe Riley could do a favor for a friend of mine. So I met with him. He’s a smarmy, hustling type, probably smarter than he lets on. A lot of nudging, winking, fake joviality. All I could think, watching Riley’s phony act, was that this guy’s probably got a heart colder than a Nome park bench. Our association, if you could call it that, was short-lived. And not repeated. After I’d met him I didn’t want to get anywhere near the guy ever again.