by John McEvoy
Doyle sighed. Nora caught it and bristled, “We can make our way, Jack. They have buses here, do they not?”
“Oh, yes, they do. Running on a fairly dependable schedule. But you can depend on me for transport to and from the track. After all, I’ve got to make sure my client gets to work.”
Mickey said, “Thanks, Jack.”
Next morning, Doyle picked up Mickey just after 5:30. She was bright as the early sun, dressed in jeans and riding boots and tee-shirt under a light jacket with the famed Irish band U-2’s name emblazoned on the back. Mickey’s driver/agent was not in the same perky shape.
Doyle had been somewhat over-served the previous night while playing poker with Moe Kellman and several of Kellman’s Outfit-connected buddies from Chicago’s Taylor Street neighborhood. The game was held at the lavish River Forest mansion of reputed Outfit chief Fifi Bonadio, who had been friends with Kellman since first grade. Doyle once before had played poker with this group and emerged an encouraged winner. Not this time. Maybe, he thought cynically, that’s why he’d been “encouraged” the first time.
Kellman’s friends from childhood looked they had come from the casting office for the movie Goodfellas. But, as Doyle well knew, they were not actors. They made a jovial group at the green felt table in Bonadio’s rec room, being attended by two polite and efficient young male servers of drinks and food, the hands being dealt by another friendly, engaging young man named Tony DiCastri.
Driving the excited Mickey Sheehan to Heartland Downs, Doyle tried to repress the memory of that poker night’s disastrous final hand of seven-card stud. Ahead by some $800, he had check raised, driving all the players out except his host. Bonadio raised another $400. Doyle, face flushed and heart beating, re-raised $600, thus risking his bankroll.
Jack had gone for the gold with a queens-over-nines full house, the strongest hand he’d drawn all night. He ran smack into Bonadio’s four treys. Jack glowered as Bonadio pounded the table in triumph. Moe, sitting next to Jack’s right, whispered, “Take it easy, Jack.” Even early this morning, that defeat still rankled. But he’d shake it off. Doyle was practiced at that.
***
Mickey and Jack arrived at Ralph Tenuta’s barn just before six o’clock. Haze still hung from the track’s huge willow trees bordering the barn area as the sun warmed its way forward. Doyle had called Tenuta the night before to inform the trainer that Doyle’s client had arrived. He described Mickey. Still, Tenuta’s surprise at Mickey’s size and youth was evident when he shook her small, strong hand. But he was gracious. “Welcome to Heartland Downs. You feel like getting on a couple of horses this morning?”
Mickey’s face lit up. “Any morning, Mr. Tenuta.”
“Let’s just make it Ralph from now on.”
***
Doyle and Tenuta stood at the rail observing horses going past, some jogging, some galloping, some churning their legs as fast as they could. The air filled with the sound of percussive hooves, equine exhalations of breath, comments being shouted back and forth by their workout riders.
Tenuta had turned Mickey over to his head groom, Paul Albano, instructing him to “Put her on two. Have her jog that black filly Marva’s Dream a mile, then tell her to open up Plotkin for three furlongs in about thirty-six seconds for the three furlongs. We’ll see how she does.”
The black filly ambled past smoothly, Mickey standing up in the irons in the circus rider stance used by many exercise riders, looking very relaxed. “She’s got good balance,” Tenuta said. “Looks like she knows what she’s doing.”
“Well, of course she does. Do you think I’d be the agent for some goofus?” Tenuta ignored that crack.
Doyle shaded his eyes trying to see exactly how his jockey looked as she went by on Marva’s Dream. Her short blond curls stuck out from the fringes of her riding helmet. Her short-sleeved white tee-shirt flattened against the protective flak jacket underneath it that Paul Albano had insisted she wear. “Look at the muscles in that little girl’s arms,” Doyle said.
Twenty-four minutes later, Mickey returned to the track aboard the stocky bay two-year-old named Plotkin. Tenuta trained his binoculars across the infield to assess this workout carefully. Mickey sat low in the saddle this time, motionless, as Plotkin sped his way toward the far turn. “He cut the corner like a quarter horse,” Tenuta said excitedly. “The kid let him run down the stretch.” The trainer was smiling as horse and rider flashed past the finish line.
“Hey, that looked pretty good,” Doyle said.
Tenuta looked at his stopwatch. “Better than pretty good, Jack. Your little girl brought Plotkin in with their three furlongs right at thirty-six seconds as I asked. On the button. Like a pro. That’s hard to do, her on this horse for the first time. She must have the proverbial ‘clock in her head.’ Plus, she looks great on these horses.”
The two men walked into the Heartland Downs grandstand to a breakfast bar. They bought cups of carry-out coffee, Ralph adding a Krispie Kreme doughnut to his order.
As they headed back to Tenuta’s barn, Doyle tried to assess what Mickey had showed them this early morning. If anyone had asked him, he would have pronounced himself “Surprised and delighted.” He felt a surge of positive possibility regarding his little Irish client.
Tenuta said, “What are you smiling about, Jack?”
“Not life in general, Ralph. Life in particular. ’Tiz a great morning, surely,’ as my rider might say.”
“There’s a race for Plotkin next week. I think I’d like to use Mickey on him. The race is just five furlongs for two-year-olds. It’ll be Plotkin’s first start.What do you think?”
“I’ve got to take Mickey over to the Racing Board office to get her a jockey’s license this morning. Damn, Ralph,” Doyle said, putting his arm around his friend’s shoulders, “this could be fun.”
On the walking path leading to the stables, trainer Buck Norman approached them slowly on his palomino pony. “Mornin’, men. Ralph, I heard that two-year-old you’ve got worked pretty sharp this morning.”
“Sharp enough. See you, Buck.”
Tenuta said, “Buck has been kind of nosing around about Plotkin for the last week. He’s mighty interested in that youngster. By the way, Jack, did I tell you that Plotkin is for sale? You might want to take that into consideration. I think the price would be right.”
“Consider it for who? I’ve got my jockey’s agent license, I can’t own a horse. How much do you think Plotkin would go for?”
Tenuta said, “I’m pretty sure he could be had for $50,000.”
“Whew. That’s too steep for me, my friend.”
“What about your pal Moe Kellman? You could maybe go partners with him. I’d train this horse not for my usual $65 per day rate, but just for a percentage of what he wins. That’s how strong I feel about Plotkin as a money-maker. If I don’t sell him to somebody I know,” Tenuta said, “his current owners are going to sell him right out from under me. Hate to see that happen.”
“Who owns Plotkin?” Doyle said.
“The widow of the deceased owner, nice lady, knows nothing about racing and doesn’t care about it. Problem is, she’s got a son, Stewart, some kind of a half-assed lawyer, who has put himself in the middle of this.”
They entered Tenuta’s office. Ralph turned on the coffee maker. Doyle said, “Let me talk to Moe. But I know he’s never going to try to get licensed. His ties to his Outfit buddies would prevent that. Mind you, Ralph, Moe has never been arrested. He came out of the Korean War with honors. But these lunkheads on the city crime commission have linked him over and over with the mob, and his old friend Fifi Bonadio.”
Tenuta grinned. “Are you telling me these ‘links’ are, what, unreal?”
“No. What I’m telling you is that neither Moe Kellman nor I could get an owner’s license. So, why would you suggest we buy Plotkin?”
Tenuta said, “There’s a way to solve get around this. It’s not quite legal, but it’s not real bad ill-legal if y
ou know what I mean. Just a way to get things done.” He refilled his coffee cup. “Want any?”
Jack declined. “I’m caffeinated enough to gallop ten furlongs. What’s your idea?”
“You and Moe put up the money to buy Plotkin. Then we’ll officially transfer ownership to somebody we trust. My wife, Rosa.”
Doyle said, “You think we could get this past the racing commission? And the Jockey Club?”
“Why not? This won’t be the first or last time horse ownership has been hidden. I’ve never done it before. It our case, it’s harmless. I’m sure you trust me and Rosa. We trust you. As I said, I’ll train Plotkin without charging a day rate. I’ll take twenty percent of his earnings.”
“You’re that confident about Plotkin?”
“Jack, I’ve been in this game more than thirty years. I can recognize talent when I see it. Am I confident? You bet I am.”
Doyle laughed. “I’ll probably bet on him, too. I’m game to try this, Ralph. Do you think the widow’s son Stewart will take fifty grand for Plotkin?”
“In a minute.”
Doyle got up off the battered couch, eliciting a look of disapproval from the always crabby cat Tuxedo. “You talk to Rosa,” Doyle said. “I’ll talk to Moe about this set-up. This might work out.”
Chapter Six
The morning sun seeped through the drawn blinds covering his basement apartment windows. He heard the loud groan of a garbage truck as it reversed its way down the adjacent alley. “Aw, shit,” Lenny Ruffalo said. He sat up, threw off his bed covers. “I’ll never get back to sleep.”
Lenny had been up late the night before, flipping television channels back and forth between the final races at California’s Fairplex Park and the late night show he knew his mother was watching in her living room upstairs. Every morning, she liked to talk about whatever her favorite TV host had done the night before. Lenny tried to be responsive, although he couldn’t care less about what starlet had recently emerged from recovery, what politician was attempting to show the common man just how common he supposedly was. Lenny was residing rent—if not guilt—free in his mother’s basement. He figured he owed her at least that much attention.
He hadn’t bet anything on his computer at Fairplex. But he had carefully watched the races. Always trying to spot a horse who experienced trouble, or a jockey who made the wrong decision on perhaps the best horse. He’d thought about getting into this TiVo stuff with the TV so he wouldn’t have to stay up late so many nights. But that cost money. He didn’t have much. He sure as hell couldn’t impose on his mother, Elvira, for help along those lines. At least not now. As deftly as Lenny had played his adoring mother from his position as the cherished only child, he did recognize some limits.
Walking to his small bathroom, Lenny glanced appreciatively at the Sports Illustrated calendar model for this month. His twenty-sixth birthday was approaching. He circled the date with a ballpoint pen and drew a line from that date up into the tall, golden model’s barely concealed crotch.
Lenny brushed his teeth, then washed his face with its incipient dark beard. He considered it to be his very hip five o’clock shadow. Ever since he’d been discharged from the US Army, he told people that he favored modified facial hair as kind of a personal statement. Like so many of those young actors on TV and movies who looked a lot like him, he thought.
His mother had greeted him at the downtown Chicago bus terminal when he’d arrived three months earlier after a thirty-four hour ride from Fort Hood in Texas. They embraced amid the large collection of arrivals and departures, some welcome, some not. Elvira did not inquire what had brought him home earlier than expected. But he volunteered to her that it was a cruel combination of physical ineptitude and mental deficiencies that he’d been born with. This after he had volunteered for the new, lenient Army, an organization desperate for members, in which people such as himself, with minor criminal records and IQ’s hovering around the century mark, had been accepted and signed up to serve their country.
At “the Hood,” Lenny could barely keep up in the dawn running drills. Could hardly sleep at night in a barracks replete with loud snorers and young men who barked out remnants of their dreams. He never connected with a buddy. Never was able to pull himself up the rope and over the twenty-foot-high training wall.
What Lenny did best was discover a young enlistee from Brooklyn who had access to a steady supply of crystal meth. Lenny eagerly embraced that connection. The meth worked to ease out his days. But one morning, on the rifle range, on a meth overload, he fired a volley of shots fifteen feet above the intended target. He was hauled in for drug testing. Then psychological evaluation. Ten days later, he was given his walking papers, actually being “all that he could be,” but not in the way the Army wanted.
This Tuesday morning, Lenny pulled on his Chicago Bears sweat shirt and pants, and black Nikes and walked up the basement stairs to the backyard of his mother’s home. He did some lazy stretches on the grass next to the large tomato patch. Smoked a Kool menthol light, glancing over his shoulder to be sure Elvira wasn’t looking out the kitchen window at him. She had made it clear on the first day he was back that she didn’t want him smoking in her house, or at all.
Lenny took a last drag. Tossed the butt into the alley. Went around the side yard to the front and picked up that morning’s Chicago Tribune. When he returned to the back yard, Elvira was watering her large bed of flourishing tomato plants. She smiled warmly at her only child.
“Are you ready for some breakfast, Lenny?”
“Always ready for breakfast, Ma. I’m gonna take a quick shower.”
Elvira said, “Lenny. You want eggs or pancakes?”
“How about both?”
Elvira watched him fondly as he went down the stairs to his apartment. When he’d lost his most recent job, as a pizza delivery man, she welcomed him back, understanding that he could no longer afford the Berwyn apartment he shared with two old high-school buddies after returning from the Army.
Elvira’s next door neighbor, Pat Sena, waved across the fence. Elvira momentarily lowered the bell-shaped spray of hose to wave, say good morning. She turned back to concentrate on her tomato plants and think about her son.
Lenny’s recent job loss was part of a pattern that began to unfold from the time he was expelled from high school early in his senior year, for smoking pot. He’d been trying to sell some, too, and was fortunate in not being nabbed for that. But she persuaded herself that maybe, now, out of the Army and back home, he might find his right track in life.
Elvira walked to the faucet on the side of the house and turned it off. Looked back proudly at her impressive tomato patch and neatly kept back yard behind the bungalow she’d paid for with proceeds from the Berwyn florist shop she’d owned for the last sixteen years.
She had no outstanding debts. And she was lonely. Had always felt she had not done enough for or right by Lenny. He’d been a challenge from the start. A difficult birth. Three years of infant Lenny awakening off and on throughout one exhausting night after another. Elvira had taken him to five different doctors. None could pinpoint what was wrong with this troubled child.
Dr. Gerald Greenberg, the last of the five, told her, “It’s not physical. It’s not neurological, Mrs. Ruffalo. It’s just, well, not explainable.”
Rolling up the hose on its circular rack, she thought again what Lenny might have been like had he had a father in his life. Elvira and Bruno Ruffalo had been married seven years before they managed to produce her lone pregnancy.
Jubilation spread in Bruno’s large family. His two older sisters finally warmed to Elvira. Then, a week before Lenny was born, Bruno Ruffalo toppled over one brutally hot July afternoon on a Berwyn bocce court, dead of a heart attack.
“Enough memories for today,” Elvira said. She walked into the kitchen and gave Lenny an affectionate pat on the head. The Racing Daily was laid out in front of him on the table. He was intently scribbling notes and figures on the margin
s of the paper.
As he polished off his breakfast, Lenny kept his eye on the Weather Channel showing on the small TV set on the kitchen counter. “Heavy rains over much of the East Coast” came the prediction.
Lenny smiled. “That’ll make an off track at Belmont.” His most rewarding betting involved horses running in the mud.
He kissed his mother. “Great breakfast. Thanks.” Skipped down the basement stairs to get his jacket, his money, and his concealable stash of meth.
“I’ll be home for supper, Ma,” he hollered back up the stairs.
Lenny hurried to the El station for his familiar trip to downtown Chicago and the off-track betting shop on State Street. He’d been going there for almost a month now, getting to know the regulars. Some of the guys were there every day, including a few he knew from high school. Also present were Pakistani taxi drivers double-parked outside, harried traders from the nearby exchanges rushing in to wager, and then the tables of regulars. Retirees, most of them
African-American, some elderly Italians, one old Jewish man who sat by himself in the room Lenny favored. Lenny’s presence reduced the average age to sixty-five plus. The lone females on hand were the bartender, Kitty, and Juanita, who cooked and served sandwiches.
And most of them knew him. Early on, Lenny was disturbingly demonstrative when one of his horses failed to meet his expectations. Slamming his Racing Daily down on the table, leaping about in anguish, shouting at his bad luck, he was the center of a scene. After a week, it took an intervention by a huge black customer known as Large to persuade Lenny to improve his manners. Large was a retired Teamster official with forearms the size of ham hocks. He had a serious talk with Lenny who, impressed, decided it was wise to modify his behavior.
After a string of dreadful betting days, he’d become known in the parlor as “Lenny the Loser.” He heard the talk. Fuck ’em. He’d get this straightened out. Sooner or later. He knew it. But he knew enough to keep his mouth shut now, thanks to Large.