by John McEvoy
The mansion had been built early in the previous century for one of Chicago’s more successfully rapacious meat packing magnates, who had demanded, and gotten, something baronial for himself. Fifi Bonadio’s additions to this gabled, gray stone monstrosity were in keeping with the original style, proof that the taste of these two ambitious Chicago profiteers, although separated in time by many years, was similarly awful.
As Dunleavy waited in the car, Moe said, “Matt, give me a hand here will you? Carry this in.” He handed Matt a large aluminum pan containing the raviolis. “Be careful,” he said, “the sauce is on them.” Moe reached into the trunk and extracted a rectangular white box. “This is the coat Feef wants to look at for Tiffany,” he said. The mansion’s front door was opened by a slim, dark-complexioned man wearing a blue suit and dark glasses. Moe said, “How you doing, Ralphie?”
“Not bad, Mr. Kellman. Just put the food down on that table,” he added. “I’ll have one of the maids take it to the kitchen.”
Following the man down the lengthy hallway, they passed a huge living room, a large library on one side of the carpeted corridor, a vast dining room on the other. The hallway walls were covered with artwork, some of it recognizable to Matt. Both old and modern masters were represented. Matt whistled softly through his teeth as they walked. “Is that a real Monet?” he whispered. Moe gave him a sidelong glance. “Don’t ask.”
Moe nodded in the direction of a dreadful piece of Midwestern art fair kitsch that was prominently displayed in mid-corridor. “Some of Feef’s stuff is great, some of it is bad taste on steroids,” he said as they passed a wide staircase with gleaming banisters on both sides and neared the end of the corridor. A bulky, blond-haired bodyguard rose from his chair as they approached, but said nothing. Ralphie opened the door, stood aside, and ushered them through.
They entered an expansive room that looked to Matt like the interior of a very upscale sports bar. A half-dozen television sets embedded in the walls were turned to various sporting events around the country, another to a stock market channel, the sound off on each. Sinatra sang over a magnificent audio system, sounding as if he were standing beside them. Light poured in from a wide glass wall at the rear of the room. Hundreds of autographed photos of athletes, politicians, and other entertainers lined all of two walls and half of the third. The rest of that wall was taken up by glass-enclosed cases packed with trophies won by various sixteen-inch softball, bowling, and bocce teams sponsored by Bonadio Construction (“We Make the Earth Move”), one of Fifi’s numerous business interests. Beyond the glass wall was an Olympic-sized swimming pool and two tennis courts. The pool and the courts were empty.
The man seated behind the wide, leather-topped desk was talking softly on the phone. He gestured toward chairs in front of the desk as he continued, meanwhile waving a jumbo cigar in the air as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra. Bushy black eyebrows contrasted with the whiteness of his thick head of hair. His deeply tanned face was long, chin strong, lips thin, and his restless eyes were as black as a monsignor’s suit. Fifi Bonadio would be considered handsome, Matt thought, were it not for the artless presence of a formidable Roman nose with its strikingly large nostrils.
Bonadio was wearing a yellow cashmere sweater, open-collared white shirt, black linen trousers, and black loafers. There were two rings on each of his hands, Matt noticed, each one larger than a good-sized walnut. Finally, Bonadio put the phone down. He stood up and came around from behind the desk. Moe stood, too, and the two men embraced, Bonadio beaming down at his boyhood friend. “Great to see you, Moe,” he said. “Have a seat.” He turned to Matt, waiting. Moe said, “Feef, this is my friend I’ve been telling you about, Matt O’Connor.”
The Outfit boss nodded coldy at Matt but made no effort to shake his hand. The three men sat down again. Matt looked past Bonadio and out the window. On the other side of the pool and tennis courts there was a lawn about half as long and wide as a football field. A half-dozen Mexican laborers were busy maintaining this green, tree-dotted expanse, under the watchful eyes of two bodyguards. There was a grape arbor in the northeast corner of the lot. “This cheapskate still makes his own dago red,” Moe had confided on the drive out. A ten-foot-tall concrete wall bordered three sides of the property. Electrical security wires that ran along the tops of the walls, and black security cameras visible in the trees, marred the otherwise sylvan scene—a reminder of the harsh realities extant in Fifi Bonadio’s world.
It was silent in the room for a few moments. Matt could almost feel the hard-eyed gaze Bonadio directed at him. Then the Mob chief said, “You gotta understand, O’Connor, that you’re the first newspaper guy I’ve talked to in thirty years. I’m not like my former asshole goombah in New York, the ‘dapper’ one, who made himself so famous he’s locked up in Ossining. I don’t deal with the press, and neither does my family, except for my son, when he played football. That’s a different world, his world.”
Pointing his cigar for emphasis, Bonadio continued addressing Matt. “What I’m saying here is that I’ve agreed to meet with you as a favor to my friend here,” Bonadio said, indicating Moe. “So, what’s your story?”
Matt cleared his throat. “You remember when Moe’s Uncle Bernie died?” Matt began. Bonadio interrupted him. “Remember? I was a pallbearer, for chrissake. Bernie and I did business for years.”
Matt pressed on. “Moe thought at the time that Bernie had been murdered, that it wasn’t suicide. He thought it may have been in connection to my business, which is horse racing. There were indications that Bernie had had contact with some professor, who convinced Bernie he was using him as a prime source for a study of gambling. Bernie had several contacts with this guy, according to what he told Moe.”
Matt reached into his sport coat pocket and extracted his reporter’s notebook. He riffled through pages with notations such as “Charlie Whitson, Calif. trainer, coming in to work his big horse Tuesday…Maggie’s running two of hers next Monday…Call stewards for comment on Callaway’s suspension…” until he found what he was looking for. Bonadio impatiently tapped a pencil on his desktop.
“Not long ago,” Matt said, “a good friend of mine, a big bettor, super sharp guy, brought to my attention some very suspicious races at tracks around the country. These races involved top-notch jockeys losing on favorites in National Pick Four races. When they did, the payoffs were huge. I’ve got all the information right here. There were only a few tickets sold on the winning combinations. Three of those winning tickets were sold here in Chicago at Heartland Downs.”
Matt closed the notebook and sat silently for a few moments, slapping it nervously against his knee. Finally, he said, “I guess what I need to know, Mr. Bonadio, is if you or your people have anything to do with these unusual race results.”
The next sound in the room was that of instantaneous laughter. It poured forth from Bonadio, who sat back in his leather chair, head raised to the ceiling, letting the mirth flow out. Matt felt his face becoming flushed. He looked at Moe, who signaled him to say nothing. So they waited, until Bonadio stopped laughing and leaned forward in his chair. “O’Connor,” he finally said, an amused look still present in his eyes, “do you think for one fucking minute that if I did have anything to do with shit like that that I’d tell you about it? Are you fucking nuts?” He shook his head, marveling at the naivete of Matt’s question. Then he looked at Moe.
He said, “Moe, it’s only for you I’m doing this.” Then he said to Matt, “Kid, you’ve got some major stones on you, I’ll give you that, coming here to ask me if I’m fixing horse races. You might as well ask me about that armored car heist in Stone Park last month, or the re-zoning deal the Bonadio firm managed to get from the greedy little bureaucrats in Clausen County last week. As if I would tell you, for chrissakes!
“But, out of respect for my goombah Moe here, I will tell you this: I have absolutely no fucking interest in horse racing. That was for my old man, some of my un
cles. They did some stuff in racing, no question about it. They bought little racetracks and used them to take layoff money from their city bookies. They doped some horses, controlled some crooked trainers, they had some jocks tied up. That was back when racing wasn’t regulated the way it is today, back when it was the only major legal gambling enterprise, long before Vegas and the state lotteries and the Indian casinos.
“That was then,” Bonadio continued, tapping his pencil again for emphasis. “We got out of that years ago.” He sat back in the chair, eyes half-closed, as if he were mentally riffling through a portfolio whose scope he found to be eminently pleasing. Then he smiled. “I got no idea how I can help here,” he said.
Moe, looking agitated, got up from his chair. He walked over to the north wall of the room and pretended to be examining the photos. Bonadio watched him out of the corner of his eye. Then he said, “Moe, goddamit, come back and sit down.” He raised his palms above the desk and shrugged expansively. His eyebrows rose as well, an expression of frustrated benevolence appearing on his tanned face. All this body language was meant to convey the message, “I’d help you if I could. But…”
When Moe returned to his chair, Matt could tell that the little furrier was angry. “Feef,” he said, “I didn’t bring Matt out here to be entertained by your condescending b.s. Maybe Matt didn’t put it quite the right way, his question. All we wanted to find out was if you knew anything, if maybe you’d heard something. Simple as that,” Moe said softly, his jaw set as he looked at his boyhood buddy.
Bonadio’s eyebrows elevated. Then he smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Feisty as always, Mosey, you never change. Yeah,” he sighed, “I’m hearing you, Moe. Settle down.”
To Matt, Bonadio said, “You’ve got nothing to go on here, kid. Just suspicions. If you had a name, or a description of somebody you think is in this thing, then maybe I’d be able to set some wheels in motion. Capice?”
Matt said, “The only thing I’ve got is the guy I mentioned earlier, the one who was picking Bernie Glockner’s brain about gambling in America. But Bernie never told Moe the guy’s name. So that’s a dead end.”
Moe said, “Tell him what you found out yesterday from Tyree Powell.” After explaining to Bonadio that Powell was the Jockeys’ Union local representative, Matt said, “Tyree met with me to talk about one of the riders in his organization, Randy Morrison. Tyree said Morrison called him, all disturbed. After he swore Tyree to silence, Morrison confessed that he was being forced to lose races by a guy who claims he’s done the killings of these jockeys that I told you about earlier. Said the guy knew all the details of each death and that he’d killed Morrison’s half-brother in order to coerce Morrison into doing what he wanted.
“Morrison told Tyree this guy was beyond creepy. May have used a device to disguise his voice. Laughed about what he’d done, what he would do if Randy didn’t come through. Their contact was via phone calls from the guy to the jockeys’ room at the racetrack. One time, when Randy was late getting there, the guy told Randy’s valet to pass on the message that ‘the Professor called. He’ll know what it’s about. It’s about some lessons I’m teaching.’ Then he laughed and hung up. When he called back in an hour, he talked directly to Randy, giving him the name of the horse he wanted him to intentionally lose on the following Saturday.”
Moe said, “After Matt told me this, it occurred to me that Bernie a couple of times referred to this guy from the University of Wisconsin as ‘the Professor.’ But, hell, there’s thousands of professors on that campus. What the hell did I care about this guy back then when Bernie was mentioning him?”
Bonadio slowly sat straight up in his chair, frowning. He started to speak, stopped to think for a few moments, then said softly, “I knew a guy there once.” He got up and walked around the desk, going over to a part of the south wall of the office that contained dozens of photos of his football-playing son, Rocco, wearing Number 74 on his red and white Badger lineman’s uniform. Some were action shots, showing Rocco slamming a ball carrier into the Astroturf; others were close-ups of him down in his three-point stance, looking big as a boxcar, glowering through his face mask. Bonadio gazed proudly at the display for a moment before tapping one framed photo with his index finger. “Come over here and take a look at this one,” he said.
Matt and Moe joined their host. The photo he indicated was of his massive son, dressed in black cap and gown and proudly displaying a University of Wisconsin diploma. Rocco was flanked by his father, wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit and a broad smile, and a shorter, powerfully built, completely bald man in a sport coat, slacks, and an open-collared shirt. Moe said, “Who’s he? Rocco’s personal trainer? Guy looks like a weight lifter.”
Bonadio shook his head. “He’s does training, all right, but not what you think.” He looked at Moe speculatively before responding. “If I tell you about this guy, his name is Bledsoe, would you come down a little on that mink for Tiffany?”
Moe’s face reddened. “For chrissakes, Feef,” he said, “I’m looking for the guy that may have killed my uncle and you’re talking price with me?”
Bonadio was momentarily embarrassed. “You’re right,” he said, apologetically. He gestured toward the chairs in front of his desk. “C’mon, sit down. I’ll tell you what I know.”
What Bonadio knew was that he had retained a man named Claude Bledsoe to tutor his son, whose football career was being jeopardized by a frighteningly diminishing grade point average. “I asked around up there about how to handle the situation. I found out bribery wouldn’t work. One of my guys went to an assistant dean and said to him, ‘How much bread will you eat?’ The dean didn’t get it. He tried to walk my guy down the street to some fancy organic bakery.
“Finally, after we nosed around some more, we found this guy Bledsoe. A strange character with a strange background. He’d been going to college up there for years. But extra smart and a good tutor. I paid this guy top dollar, but he was worth it. He got Rocco through his classes like a champ. Kid wound up with the first college diploma ever in the Bonadio family,” he added proudly.
“Far as I know, Bledsoe is still up there in Madison, still going to school. He’s got a zillion degrees. Everybody up there knows him. The kids all call him ‘the Professor.’ I guess he could be one if he wanted to. When you said Madison and a professor, he’s what came to my mind.”
Bonadio turned away from the photo. He walked slowly back to his desk and sat down, a serious expression on his face. Several seconds went by before he lifted his head and looked at his visitors. “Merde,” he mumbled, then, “This is bad. Very bad.”
Moe said, “What do you mean?”
Bonadio wiped his hand across his mouth before replying. “This guy Bledsoe called me last year, asking for a favor. I owed him one. And I did him one.” He paused again, as if reluctant to continue.
Moe leaned forward, anxious to hear the rest. “So?”
“So Bledsoe asked me if I could refer him to somebody who knew a lot about gambling in America. Especially sports gambling. More especially, horse race gambling. I never hesitated for a minute. Who could tell Bledsoe more than anybody else? So, I gave him Bernie Glockner’s name and number.”
Moe sat back in his chair with a thud, as if he’d been thumped in the chest.
Bonadio raised his hands, palms up, in a sign of apology. Then he shrugged, saying, “Maybe I did the wrong thing. I’m sorry, Moe. But that doesn’t mean for sure that Bledsoe did Bernie. Or that he’s the Professor connected to these racing things.”
Matt disagreed. Despite his years of acquiring an armor of skepticism while learning the newspaper business, Matt could feel it: there was a connection. He glanced at Moe, then looked at Bonadio. “I think this guy is tied in, this Professor. He may be running the racetrack scheme. We’ve got to get to him before he kills someone else and steals another bale of money. Moe, we better talk to Detective Popp about the Professor.”
&nbs
p; The mention of the detective’s name brought a deep frown to the forehead of their host. Matt spoke to reassure him. “There’s no need for us to bring you into it, Mr. Bonadio,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Matt rode the Hancock Building elevator to Moe’s floor, smiled a greeting to the model masquerading as a receptionist, and entered Kellman’s office suite. Moe, phone to his ear, waved Matt forward. To Matt’s surprise, Detective William Popp was present, rump leaning against the back edge of the long couch as he admired the view of sailboats bobbing on the choppy blue surface of Lake Michigan. Popp turned and placed his straw hat on a side table, saying, “Hello, Matt.”
The fourth man in the room was a stranger to Matt. He was very busy foraging amid the massive fruit plate, a staple in Moe’s office, his long, sharp nose seeming to twitch above his thin, graying mustache as he eagerly made his selections. He reminded Matt of some strain of small rodent, ferociously feeding. He had a narrow face and wore a navy blue suit almost as shiny as his nose. As he leaned forward, Matt noticed the man had a male pattern baldness area on the crown of his head, one that at first glance could be mistaken for a white yarmulke. Popp said, “Matt, this is Larry Van Gundy from the State’s Attorney’s office.” Matt said hello to the man, who briefly interrupted the refilling of his plate in order to nod back.
Matt could hear Moe winding up his phone conversation. “Feef, the last price mentioned to you is the last price. By definition. Get it? Call me tomorrow if you want that coat.” Exasperated, he put down the phone. “Fifi Bonadio,” he said disgustedly. “Got himself a new punch he’s trying to impress. But he’s niggling over what are nickels and dimes for a guy with his money. Man’ll never change,” Moe said, shaking his head.
When the four of them were finally seated, Moe said, “Matt, I put together this meeting. Let me tell you why. My good friend Bill Popp phoned me yesterday. He said Mr. Van Gundy had told him that Oily Ronnie Schrapps was trying to make a deal. Bill keeps me posted on anything that has to do with horse racing, or the track, because as you know I intend to find out who the hell it was that killed Uncle Bernie.”