Photo Finish: A Jack Doyle Mystery (Jack Doyle Series Book 5)

by John McEvoy

  ***

  Moe gestured across the busy, buzzing room. Most of the patrons had turned their attention from his exchange with Moseley, and Moseley’s retreat, back to their dinners. Entertainment over. The maitre d’ responded to Moe’s wave. At his signal the kitchen doors opened, unleashing a flow of food to the Kellman table. Smiling Bruce directed the placing of the plates by the three tray bearers.

  “Go Yale Blue, eh?” Kellman said. “I remember a great comment on that educational pillar of privilege from a terrific novelist named Charles McCarry. He wrote ‘All Yale alumni thought they had done everything that could ever be expected of them in life simply by being admitted to Yale.’”

  Moe looked over at the table now being vacated by the Moseley party. Shook his head. “Tomorrow should be interesting. Let’s eat.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  One of upstate New York’s impressive summer rainstorms thundered out of the Adirondack skies and hit Saratoga Race Course shortly before Saturday’s third race. Observing this deluge from their third-floor visiting owners’ box, Moe said to Doyle, “What about Plotkin? Can he handle this kind of muddy track?”

  “I don’t know, Moe. Plotkin has never raced on an off track. But his dam ran some decent races over them.” He stood up. “Nora, Moe, I’m going for a beer. You want anything? Sandwich? Peanuts? Popcorn?”

  Nora said, “Not right now, Jack, thanks. I’m too nervous to be hungry.”

  “Are you saying Plotkin’s mother was a mudder, Jack?” Mo laughed. “That’s good news. Yeah, please, get me a Nathan’s hot dog with everything.”

  Nora said, “I know Mickey has ridden over sodden trails worse than this one, anyway. No worries about her.”

  “Thank you, Nora, for the confidence booster,” Moe said.

  Doyle would have liked to consult trainer Tenuta for his views on the track condition. But Ralph was at the barn with Plotkin. And Ralph had never owned a cell phone.

  ***

  The rain, reduced to a steady downpour, finally ceased one race before the Sanford Stakes, seventh event on the program. Nora was using the binoculars Doyle had brought. “Look at those poor jockeys coming back,” she said, “all covered with mud. That must sting terrible hard when that wet dirt hits them in the face.”

  “All the more reason to be in front from the start,” Doyle said. “I’ll bet that’s what Ralph will tell Mickey to try and do with Plotkin.”

  The post parade for the Sanford Stakes unfolded following an impressive version of “Call to the Post” by the heavy-set, bearded track bugler dressed in red jacket, black cap, black trousers. He bowed to the appreciative crowd after his last clarion note.

  To the cheers of some of the more than 40,000 fans on hand, a rainbow rose in the sky to the south of the track. Some of the riders looked up at it and waved their whips in appreciation. Mickey, Doyle saw, wasn’t doing any of that. She was concentrating on getting Plotkin to relax. She never looked up, her attention directed entirely to her lively little mount. Every few strides, Mickey bent over Plotkin’s neck, saying something to him. The colorful silks Mickey wore had been selected by Rose Tenuta. They were the colors of Italy’s flag.

  Moe dumped his hot-dog wrapper in their box’s waste container. Said to Jack, “What does asshole Moseley’s Yale’s horse look like?”

  Nora handed Doyle the binoculars. “He looks like a big, tough, son of a bitch. He’s warming up great, too. Aw, man.” Doyle sat back down.

  ***

  The Sanford Stakes was completed in a minute and ten seconds, each of those moments pressurized for Plotkin’s people. Nora gripped Jack’s left arm so tightly he couldn’t wave it to urge on their horse. Moe kept shouting, “C’mon, Mickey. C’mon. Bring him home.” Moe was slapping his folded up Racing Daily against the railing of their box in rhythm with Plotkin’s run. Doyle had never seen Kellman so excited, engaged, demonstrative.

  Mickey had hustled Plotkin out of the gate in perfect stride, clearing horses on their inside and getting him quickly over to the rail where he took a three-length lead in the first quarter-mile. Track announcer Trevor Durkin said, “That is a blazing first quarter, 22 seconds flat, on this kind of muddy track.”

  Tenuta said, “Mickey’s not even pushing on him. She’s sitting chilly. Oh, Jack, can they do it?” He had hold of Doyle’s right arm. Nora clenched Doyle’s left hand.

  Plotkin led all the way to the final seventy yards when he was passed by a mud-spattered gray closer named Big Old Lew, losing by a length. Doyle watched closely as Mickey stood up in her stirrups rounding the clubhouse turn after the wire, patting Plotkin on his neck. Plotkin shook his head back and forth, obviously annoyed. The jock on Big Old Lew gave a respectful hand slap to Mickey.

  “We came damned close to winning it,” Jack said. Nora, hands clenched, kept her eyes on her sister as Mickey galloped Plotkin back to be unsaddled. “They did pretty feckin’ good,” Nora said.

  Tenuta hurried from their box to join Albano down on the track as the groom began to unsaddle Plotkin. Ralph gave Mickey a big thumbs up. Albano’s wide smile was very visible from Jack’s box.

  “Pretty damn good, indeed,” Kellman said. “Plotkin ran great. Mickey rode him perfectly.” He embraced Nora, then Jack. The little man’s face was flushed with excitement. “How about that! We come to Saratoga with a longshot and almost pull it off. Great stuff. Great training by Ralph and great ride from Mickey. Who could ask for anything more?”

  “Well, there’s more,” Doyle said. “Moseley’s horse wound up finishing seventh, Moe. That jerk owes you $5,000. Think he’ll come down here and pay?”

  “No, Moseley won’t come himself. He’ll send somebody down here with maybe half of what he owes me. That keeps him kosher in the estimation of his pals.”

  Minutes later a young Moseley minion strolled down the steps to their box, smiled, and handed an envelope to Kellman. “That’s for you, sir,” he said before quickly retreating.

  Kellman ripped open the envelope. He smiled as he looked up after a quick counting. “Half the money here, Jack. Why am I not surprised? There’s also a promise to pay note.” Moe ripped up the note and threw it down.

  Doyle said, “Wait a minute. Why would you settle for half of what he owes you?”

  Kellman folded up his Racing Daily, offered his arm to Nora, and led the way out of their box. Over his shoulder, he said to Doyle, “Plotkin ran a terrific race. He earned second-place money of $40,000. And, at eighteen to one, he was a helluva good bet. I bet a thousand across the board. I’ll have Ralph cash my tickets tomorrow. I’m not going to sweat the Yale blowhard shorting me. That was not unexpected, believe me.”

  Doyle laughed. He said to Nora, “I’ve never known my pal Moe to be so magnanimous. Must be this Saratoga Springs air.”

  Nora was glowing. “Whatever it is, it’s brilliant. I want to hurry down and see Mickey.”

  “We’ll walk over to the backstretch and congratulate Ralph,” Kellman said. “And Paul Albano. And, of course, Plotkin.”

  Doyle said, “Nora, we’ll meet you in the parking lot once you collect Mickey. Tell her how much we appreciated her ride on Plotkin. Your little sister is something else.”

  Doyle and Kellman made their way through the large crowd heading out the gate toward the stable area across Union Avenue where they would find their horse.

  They pushed their way past tip sheet sellers claiming “Six Winners Today. Get Tomorrow’s Winners Right Here.” The ink had hardly dried on some of these recently manufactured spurious offerings. Doyle and Kellman stepped carefully around clumsily moving couples sharing opposite handles of coolers, picnic baskets atop them, neither the female or male bearer looking too happy.

  Right before the traffic light changed and the patrol people in charge unleashed the impatient hordes, Kellman felt a tug on the arm of his sport coat. He looked down at a young Hispanic boy holding a small basket containing packages of peanuts.

  “Senor, only one dollar a bag.�
��

  Kellman smiled down at this skinny little salesman. He said, “Can I have a sample?”

  “Si, senor.” The boy looked up expectantly as he handed Kellman a peanut.

  Moe sampled it. He said, “I’ll take two bags of these good peanuts.” He pulled out a twenty dollar bill. The boy’s eyes grew large. “Senor,” he said, “I cannot have change for that.”

  Moe leaned down and folded the bill into to the boy’s small hand. “I don’t want any change. You keep this money. And take it home to your parents.”

  He patted the boy on the head. “C’mon,” he said to Doyle, “let’s go see our horse and our people.”

  They crossed Union Avenue. Kellman opened the bag of peanuts and offered it to Doyle.

  “Pretty good,” Doyle said after shelling one and popping the nut into his mouth.

  Kellman waved him off when Doyle attempted to hand the bag of peanuts back. “Keep it, Jack.”

  Doyle said, “What, you don’t like peanuts, Moe?”

  “Never have. And never liked being poor and hustling when I was a kid like that little guy back there.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Eric Allgauer still had access to the Heartland Downs backstretch even though he did not have any clients. As a licensed veterinarian, he could not be refused entrance. He took advantage of that fact. Also his ability to easily approach horses.

  Tuesday was a “dark day,” no racing, at Heartland Downs. Allgauer was waved through the gate and drove slowly to a parking area a couple of hundred yards away from the barn in which Ralph Tenuta’s horses were stabled.

  He sat silently in his truck until dusk, occasionally pulling on the pint of Stoly he’d brought with him.

  After evening feeding time was over, and Tenuta’s crew of workers had left for the night, Allgauer got out of his truck and carefully walked, unseen by the lone night watchman, to a horse he’d treated named Madame Golden. Eric knew she was entered in the seventh race the following afternoon.

  This was Eric’s second visit to Heartland Downs that day. Early in the morning, he had met his brother at Rudy’s barn. They walked to Friar Tuckie’s stall. Eric said, “What race is he in tomorrow?”

  “The sixth.”

  “Perfect. I’ll give him his ‘booster shot’ now. It’ll make him good to go, go fast that is, for thirty hours. Hold his halter.”

  The brothers looked up and down the shed row before Eric slipped into Friar Tuckie’s stall. Within seconds he had administered the shot of EPO.

  Ten hours later, Eric was at Tenuta’s barn moving quietly through the dusk.

  “Hey, babe,” he said. Madame Golden shuffled to the front of her stall, eager for the attention. Allgauer looked up and down the shedrow. There was no one in sight.

  Allgauer reached into his windbreaker pocket. Took out the hypodermic needle he’d prepared that afternoon. Stroking the mare on the left side of her extended neck, he plunged the needle into the other side. Madame Golden neighed loudly and backed away, shaking her head from side to side.

  “Run good, baby,” Allgauer said as he left Madame Golden’s stall. He walked unseen back to his truck and drove out of Heartland Downs. Near the exit gate, a young Mexican-American groom was walking a lively two-year-old around the training ring. Allgauer waved to the kid. Thought how much he’d always liked horses. Felt a surge of guilt over what he’d just done.

  Another pull on the Stoly. “Fuck it,” he said to himself. “I won races for Tenuta and that damned dago fired me. He deserves what he gets.”

  He drove down Euclid to his favorite restaurant, Tom’s Charhouse, its motto emblazoned on the large sign at the front of the large parking lot: “No Beefs about Our Beef.” Inside, Elisa the smiling hostess walked Eric to his usual table against the wall on the left side of the room. Where he used to entertain clients when he had them. And where he had frequently dined with Ingrid McGuire. Elisa recently had made two inquiries about the absent Ingrid and was met with gruff responses from Allgauer. She had stopped asking.

  Rhonda, his regular waitress, smiled as she approached his table. “The regular, Eric?”

  “That’ll do, babe.”

  Forty-eight minutes later, Eric finished off the last of his New York strip steak, drained his third glass of merlot. Got up, leaving cash on the table to cover his bill, plus a fifteen-dollar tip for Rhonda.

  ***

  On his way home, Allgauer hit the ATM machine at the 7-Eleven store just blocks away from the condo he had shared with Ingrid. The condo that for him now was so empty and silent and depressing.

  He withdrew $700 from the ATM machine. His balance had diminished, but was still decent. And it should soon improve.

  Eric had apportioned his investment on Ralph Tenuta’s trainee Madame Golden for the next afternoon. “”I’ll make it $500 to win. Make it $100 to place. Just in case the elephant juice doesn’t work. But I do believe it will,” he said to himself. He reserved the other $100 for a win bet on Friar Tuckie.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Racing Daily correspondent Ira Kaplan’s front-page story in the Friday edition was headlined “Rash of Upsets at Heartland.”

  Heartland Downs, IL—Some longshot players cashed big here Thursday afternoon after the sixth and seventh races.

  In the seventh, the previously undistinguished allowance performer Friar Tuckie suddenly came to life with a scintillating stretch charge, getting up in the final strides of the one-mile turf event to score by a length. He paid $48.80.

  Friar Tuckie is owned by Mac Doherty, trained by Rudy Allgauer, and was ridden by journeyman Arnold Passman.

  The following race saw a surprising wire-to-wire win by owner Hillis Howie’s Madame Golden, trained by Ralph Tenuta.

  Madame Golden, winless in her previous seven starts although finishing in the money in three, had previously lagged back far back early in her races. Not this time. Under a hustling ride by Mickey Sheehan, Madame Golden shot out of the gate and then widened on her field, winding up a four-length winner after leading throughout. Madame Golden returned $30.20 to win, $14.80 to place.

  In post-race winner’s circle comments to Heartland’s in-house television interviewer Joe Kristufek, Tenuta said, “This is pretty amazing to me, Joe. I thought Madame Golden was training a little better recently. But I sure didn’t see this improvement coming. Glad it did, though. And Mickey rode her great.”

  ***

  Friday evening, when Eric returned to his condo after going to Heartland Downs to cash his winning tickets on Friar Tuckie and Madame Golden, there was a message on his answering machine. He heard the excited voice of his brother Rudy.

  “Hey, Eric, thanks for what you did with Friar Tuckie.” Rudy paused. His voice was muffled as he spoke to someone he was with. “Sorry about the interruption, Eric,” he picked up. “I’m at Tom’s Charhouse, having dinner with Mac Doherty and his family. Remember? The owner of Friar Tuckie?

  “The man is riding high. Grateful for the win, buying dinner for a bunch of us. He bet the horse good after I told him we had a shot. ‘A shot.’ Ho, ho, in regards to that. Mac wants to know if you’d like to join us. If you get this message in time. It’s 5:40, Friday. Come on over if you can. After dinner, we’ll be in the lounge. It’s karaoke night.” Rudy’s dropped his voice. “Mac fancies himself as a singer. Who am I to discourage that, right, bro? Thanks again.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Early the previous day, Lenny Ruffalo had pushed his way through the crowded Metra train car to the rear where he spotted the lone remaining open seat. He elbowed out of the way a young pregnant woman carrying a small child in order to get to it. “You asshole,” the woman snarled.

  “Fuck you, lady.”

  During the forty-five minute ride from Chicago to the Heartland Downs station, Lenny busied himself going over his handicapping figures for the day’s races. He really was interested in just two of the nine events, each with a horse trained by Ralph Tenuta.

  Ove
r dinner at her house the night before, Elvira said, “Lenny, with all your interest in this horse-racing stuff, you should go and meet Ralph Tenuta sometime. You know, he’s a second cousin to you on your father’s side.” She passed the platter of lasagna to him. “Maybe he could give you a job at the track.”

  Lenny ignored the latter suggestion. He could not envision himself doing manual labor on behalf of one-thousand-pound animals that frightened him to be close to. But meeting Cousin Ralph was not a bad idea. He was well aware of Tenuta’s impressive record of winning races. “Not a bad idea, Ma.”

  As usual, he pretended to agree with his mother. How could he not, being as dependent upon her as he was. His dismal betting results were carving up the money he’d saved from his former pizza delivery job. He’d begun lifting cash from Elvira’s purse two, sometimes three, times a week. Just twenty bucks at a time. He was quite sure his lovingly indulgent mother was aware of this. But she never called him on it. And so he continued doing it, rationalizing “Hell, she can afford it.” He had realized years before that Elvira was pretty much incapable of denying him anything.

  ***

  The racetrack crowd charged off the Metra train and up the long walkway to the track’s entrance. Several men were running. “Got to catch the double,” one hollered. Lenny took his time. Tenuta’s first runner of the afternoon was Kenosha Rose in the third race. The other one, Madame Golden, was in the seventh.

  Lenny didn’t pay much attention to the finish of the second race. He slid his sandwich wrapper and empty beer cup under the bench where he sat near the railing to the racing strip. Picked up his Racing Daily and hustled to the paddock area. He positioned himself at the white fence as the third race entrants were saddled, walked, then mounted following the traditional cry of “Riders Up.”

  Tenuta, he saw, was a nicely dressed, stocky, middle-aged man, his Italian complexion made darker by years of working outdoors at racetracks. When Tenuta waved at his rider for the race, Mickey Sheehan, Lenny watched her stride toward her horse.