by John McEvoy
Many eyes were on the three television sets spaced above the back bar showing, respectively, a Cubs-Cards baseball game, an “ESPN Classic” program on Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, and “Celebrity Poker.” The audio had been turned off on all three sets, but the volume on the battered old radio at the end of the bar was on high. The radio carried a Milwaukee sports talk show, which today had its usual contingent of contributors: mostly lifelong bachelors, or divorced men, living in the basements of their widowed mothers’ homes, all with passionate opinions on matters so slight as to hardly qualify as trivia. Two waitresses hustled food baskets from the kitchen to the worn wooden booths lining the walls of the long room. The pool table was in use, the aged pinball machine silent.
By definition, the start of Mystery Hour varied from afternoon to afternoon. It might be 1:47 or 3:21 or 5:05 or some other time, depending on the whim of the bar’s owner, a mischievous import from County Meath, Ireland, named Tim Doherty. The result of this marketing practice was a clientele that tended to nurse their drinks until bargain time arrived, then began tossing them down in torrents. Many of these customers stayed on long after Mystery Hour was over, continuing to drink and spend, which was the whole idea. Doherty referred to this busy sixty-minute period as his “liquid loss leader.” He signaled its beginning by loudly ringing a battered cowbell he said he’d brought over with him from “the ould sod.”
At 4:59, just two minutes into that day’s Mystery Hour, the front door of Doherty’s Den banged open. A wide-necked, broad-shouldered man, five feet eleven, two hundred and twenty pounds, stopped just inside the threshold. With his large shaved head and steel-framed glasses, Claude Bledsoe’s appearance was enough to cause a momentary hush, especially among people toward the front who could see that he was carrying an archery bow. Reaching over his shoulder, Bledsoe extracted an arrow from the quiver on his back. He carefully aimed it, then released the bow string. The arrow zoomed over the heads of the bar patrons before burying itself in the center of the dart board on the back wall some fifty feet away. Bull’s-eye.
“Jesus Christ!” yelped one of the students, ducking down and covering his head with his hands, in the process knocking off his Packers ball hat.
“Nope,” smiled Doherty, toweling off the moist surface on which the young man had spilled his glass of Old Style, “it’s Claude Bledsoe. I guess he’s taking archery this semester.”
The archer hung his equipment on a coat hook before taking a seat on one of the stools at the end of the bar. Doherty drew a pint of Bass Ale and brought it to him. “Hello, Claude,” he said. “How’re they hanging?”
“Loose and ready, Tim. And you?”
Doherty said, “Fine, Claude.” He leaned across the bar and spoke softly. “But I wish you’d leave your Robin Hood act outside. You’ve scared the bejesus out of some of my customers.”
Bledsoe’s face darkened. Quickly, Doherty added, “Just a request, is all.” He moved down the bar, his back to Bledsoe, keeping a wary eye on him in the bar mirror.
Down the bar a middle-aged man turned to the still shaken student, who was staring wide-eyed at the arrow in the middle of the dart board. “You don’t know about Claude Bledsoe?” the man said. “I guess you’re new on campus. He’s sort of a legend around here.” The student ventured a peek at Bledsoe, who was now sipping his ale and speed-reading a copy of The Wall Street Journal.
What the student saw was a man who looked years younger than forty-nine. He also looked different from anyone else the young man had ever seen. A weight lifter at the YMCA where Bledsoe swam laps daily once remarked that Bledsoe was built “like a hairless orangutan.” That statement was made well outside of Bledsoe’s hearing, for the same weight lifter had once seen Bledsoe, showing off, lift up the back end of a Volkswagon Beetle “as easy as you’d pull up your garage door.”
Bledsoe’s physical strength and willingness to display it were well known in downtown Madison. He had never lost an armwrestling match to a member of the Wisconsin football team, any Badger team in nearly three decades, embarrassing new recruits autumn after autumn at Doherty’s Den, where their knowing teammates delivered them to be humiliated.
Bledsoe had never lifted a weight in his life. His freakish strength, like his great intelligence, sprang from a gene source not apparent in his family history. The sometimes dark nature of his character was of similarly mysterious origin.
After he’d been graduated the first few times, Bledsoe was assigned a permanent academic advisor. That man, Henry Wing, met with Bledsoe before the start of each semester and recorded the degrees earned, also noting the outside interests Bledsoe said he enjoyed: several of the martial arts, skydiving, music, moutaineering, target shooting. Wing occasionally saw Bledsoe on campus or in town in the company of a woman, but never the same one twice.
Henry Wing retired the year that Bledsoe took his degree in agricultural science, accepting the diploma while wearing Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls and a John Deere cap. In the notes he left for his successor as Bledsoe’s advisor, Wing wrote, “You will find Mr. Bledsoe to be brilliant. He has also long struck me as being exceedingly strange, like those large men who wear dresses, or horned helmets and breastplates, or tasseled hats and lurid makeup, to professional football games, making one wonder what, when the games are over and night comes, they might be going home to.”
***
The man at the bar continued to enlighten the student, who had now replaced his Packers cap on his head and was working on another beer. As he understood it, the man said, Bledsoe had been a student “here since the seventies, on some kind of permanent scholarship from his family. I don’t believe he’s worked a day in his life.”
The man could not have known it, but that was not actually the case. In the long course of his scholarship years, Bledsoe had saved a sizeable chunk of his stipend, for he’d always lived modestly—decent but cheap apartments, used cars, thrift shop wardrobe, the rare gourmet dinner. But four years earlier Bledsoe, until then an extremely conservative investor of his savings, went completely out of character. The results were disastrous. Not long after he’d shifted his assets, along came the economic tsunami known as the dot com crash. Bledsoe was suddenly faced with a new reality: he needed to replace his on-its-last-legs car, a twelve-year-old Honda Civic that had begun flaking rust like dandruff. But Bledsoe had no funds to finance such a purchase.
As a result, Bledsoe offered his services as a paid tutor to the university’s athletic department, a fiefdom with impressive financial resources. With his impeccable academic record, he was immediately accepted. He was soon assigned to tutor a talented athlete from River Forest, Illinois, named Rocco Bonadio.
Rocco was at the university on a football scholarship. As Bledsoe soon discovered, his brawny, amiable, dark-haired pupil had little interest in, and even less acumen for, his studies. Rocco was in Madison solely to block for Badger glory, drink as much beer as possible, and screw as many coeds as he could. Bledsoe told Harriet Okey, his girlfriend that semester, that Rocco was “so dumb he can hardly make an ‘O’ with a glass. He’s got a hairline that nearly coincides with his eyebrows.”
After learning more about Rocco’s background, Bledsoe showed more interest in him. Rocco, it turned out, was the only son of Chicago Outfit boss Fifi Bonadio, a man of such authority that, in the words of one of his lieutenants, “when he comes home at night his wife stands at attention and the parakeet and goldfish try to look busy.”
Fifi Bonadio was extremely proud of Rocco’s athletic exploits, but even prouder that the Bonadio clan finally had its first college student. And the mob boss was determined that Rocco emerge from Madison with a degree. Primarily as a result of Bledsoe’s efforts, this happened. Bledsoe wrote all of Rocco’s papers for the courses in his major, criminal justice. That was the tuck-away bin into which many scholastically challenged jocks were funneled, the irony of which, in Rocco’s case, was not lost on either Fifi or Bledsoe. Because o
f the young man’s “learning disability,” Bledsoe arranged for Rocco to take all of his quizzes and tests while being monitored only by Bledsoe. He thus managed to guarantee the much desired diploma for the Bonadio family wall.
“Had Rocco ever gotten a grade higher than C in any course,” Bledsoe confided to Harriet, “there would have been grounds for a full-scale NCAA investigation. I massaged him through just at the right level, work good enough to earn passing grades but not good enough to raise any red flags over the thick cranium of this dolt.”
Appreciative of Bledsoe’s efforts, Fifi Bonadio, during a festive dinner at an upscale Madison restaurant the night before Rocco’s graduation, tapped Bledsoe on the arm. Several glasses of wine earlier, he had begun to smile benevolently at Bledsoe, who was seated beside him, addressing him fondly as Professor. “You did good with my boy,” Fifi said softly, nodding toward his beaming son. “I know it wasn’t easy. He’s a great kid and a damned good football player. But he’s got his mother’s brains. Nice people, good looking, her family, but they’re not much smarter than the goats they used to herd in Calabria.
“So, I toast you Mr. Bledsoe,” Bonadio said, raising his wine glass. “Salud. And,” reverting to his softer voice, he added, “I owe you. You ever need anything, any time, you call me.” Bonadio slipped Bledsoe a card with a business phone number along with whopping cash bonus.
***
Bledsoe smiled to himself whenever he thought of that night. But he never thought he would have occasion to call in the favor offered—until now, with Grandma Bledsoe’s deadline looming less than a year away.
Late that same September week, two days after his meeting with lawyer Altman and two years, three months after Rocco Bonadio’s graduation dinner, Bledsoe dialed Big B Construction and Paving, Cicero, Illinois, and left a message on the answering machine. Fifi Bonadio called back an hour later. “Professor, how are you? What can I do for you, my friend?”
Bledsoe said he was fine, but he needed some advice. “I’m working on a paper about horse race gambling in America,” Bledsoe lied. “I’d like to talk to someone who has been involved in it, who knows a great deal about it. I don’t need to use his name, I just need information he could provide. Mr. Bonadio, would you happen to know anyone like that?”
Bonadio’s laughter flowed through the phone. “Are you shitting me?” he chortled. “I’ve got the guy for you. He worked for us for a long, long time, making our betting lines. Brilliant guy, a genius. We called him the Wizard of Odds. He could move numbers around in his head like an Einstein.
“When we finally let him retire,” Bonadio continued, “he said he wanted to keep his hand in by making a little book on his own. Fine, we said. He’d earned the right. Believe it or not, Professor, that was about twenty-five years ago! He’s the oldest bookmaker in town, maybe in the whole fuckin’ world.” Bonadio laughed. “Name’s Bernie Glockner. I’ll give you his address and phone number.
“Tell the Wizard I said for you to call. Tell him hello from me.”
Chapter Seven
That night Matt rose from his chair as Maggie Collins walked through the terrace doorway of Chicago’s North Pond Café, on her way to joining him at a table that overlooked Lincoln Park and its duck-dotted lagoon. As usual, she turned as many heads as a waiter bearing a platter of flaming saginaki.
“What are you grinning at?” she said as she slid onto the chair he was holding for her.
“Grinning? Was that what I was doing? I thought I was just gazing in awe. You look terrific. It occurred to me again today that you’re really the only job-related perk I’ve had since I started writing about racing.”
“And more than you deserve,” Maggie answered, blue eyes gleaming as she patted her short-cropped black hair into place. It was said with the smile that so frequently flitted across her tanned face.
North Pond Café, with its wonderful food and exceptional view of the city, was one of their favorite restaurants, even though it was not located near either of their homes. Maggie owned a western suburb condo only minutes from Heartland Downs, where she trained her horses. Matt was an Evanston condo resident with a much longer commute to the racetrack but with nearby Lake Michigan as ample compensation. They dined at North Pond at least three times a month, usually after which Maggie spent the night at Matt’s place before arising at 4 p.m. for her drive to the racetrack. It was a trek that she made in exchange for Matt staying at her place the numerous other nights each month they spent together.
Maggie and Matt had been an item for nearly three years. At thirty-six, he was three years her senior and one marriage ahead of her. He and his wife Kathy had agreed to disagree after five increasingly passionless years during which Matt repeatedly refused to leave racing journalism to join her wealthy father’s media empire as a general sports columnist. Matt and Kathy realized that they had married far too impulsively, and too young, and parted on extraordinarily amicable terms, ones flavored by mutual relief.
Kathy quickly remarried—an executive in her father’s company—and, from what she told Matt, was a happy woman. In his turn, Matt entered a relationship with Maggie Collins, one-time North Shore debutante, now full-time horse trainer, a person as wrapped up in her work as he was in his. They had arrived at a comfort plateau that involved time spent together on a regular but never codified basis, a rewardingly shared sex life, and no hints of a need for formal commitment on the part of either one of these very independent individuals.
As Matt confided to his friend Rick, “It’s like going steady in high school, except as adults.”
“Better not let Maggie hear you say that.”
“Funny thing is, Rick, she feels exactly the same way I do.”
Matt often thought how lucky he was, especially compared to his friend. Rick, a lifelong bachelor, had begun a volatile, sporadic relationship eight years earlier with Chicago actress Ivy Borchers. Ivy maintained she would marry Rick only if he stopped betting on horses. Rick countered that nothing less than her retirement from acting would spur him into matrimony.
After one of their regular spats, Rick explained to Matt what he deemed to be the major cause of this lengthy standoff. “Actors are dangerously devious people,” Rick contended. “No doubt about it in my mind. Remember, they’ve been professionally trained to be somebody other than what they are. Why should I believe anything this woman says?” Matt eventually came to recognize this combative relationship for what it was: an impasse of convenience, satisfying in its strange way to both Ivy and Rick. Matt was grateful he wasn’t locked up in a life like that.
Looking across the table at Maggie as she perused the list of North Pond menu specials, he smiled as he always did when thinking of how they had met. As he loved to tell the story whenever anyone inquired, “We met at third base, where she kicked me in the nuts.”
This had occurred during a summer racetrack softball league game at Heartland Downs. Matt was playing third base for the Press Box team. In the first inning of this season opener against the Backstretch Bombers, Maggie had blasted the twelve-inch ball into a gap in right field. Her long legs carried her swiftly around first and then second base. As the right fielder released the ball, she sped toward third. Matt straddled the bag awaiting the throw, as he had countless times in his athletic life. The throw was a rocket, right on target. Maggie and the ball arrived simultaneously. Maggie slid in hard on her left side. Her upraised right foot accidentally caught the crouching Matt squarely in the groin, whereupon he dropped the ball, rolling across the white chalk line in agony.
Moments later, still gripped by pain, Matt looked up at the face of the base runner. It was a very attractive face, one now with an expression that appeared to combine both concern and pent-up laughter.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Ty Cobb?” he groaned, waving his treasured Brooks Robinson signature glove at her.
“Safe is safe,” Maggie replied, standing over him, one foot still on the bag. The
n her attempt at keeping a straight face failed. She broke into laughter that was soon echoed by the rest of the players, coaches, umpires and, finally, Matt.
“Come on, I’ll help you up,” she said, extending a hand.
Matt reached for her hand and slowly got to his feet. He said, “You owe me a drink. At least.”
“After we finish whipping your sorry asses,” Maggie responded.
“Where’d you learn to talk like that? The Marines?”
“Nope. Four older brothers,” she said. “And I was the best base runner of the bunch.”
They had not met before that softball evening, but Maggie and Matt knew of each other. She was a regular reader of his Racing Daily column and, as trainer of a successful stable, had occasionally been mentioned in it. Matt was well aware of Maggie, who was one of only three women trainers at Heartland Downs. The other two looked like Roseanne. Maggie reminded him of a taller, sturdier version of Audrey Hepburn—Hepburn with an athlete’s body, the result in Maggie’s case of more than twenty-five years of horsebacking.
The only daughter of prominent Lake Forest attorney Jeremy Collins, Maggie had begun riding when she was five on a pony purchased by her fond father. She grew up in the equestrian show ranks, then at sixteen talked her way onto the Heartland Downs backstretch and into the summer employ of an old Texas-born trainer named Spanky Gural. It was the most exciting season of her life. She left home each morning at five o’clock, purportedly heading for her job as a counselor at a Libertyville children’s camp, but drove instead to the racetrack. There she spent long hours hotwalking, then grooming Gural’s horses, until the morning he gave in to her pestering and permitted her to start galloping horses for him. Maggie soon showed she was a natural at it, so much so that Gural encouraged her to apply for an apprentice jockey’s license.