by John McEvoy
It was almost seven when Doyle drove his Accord up the long circular driveway leading to Rison’s Palos Heights home. The red sports car he parked behind was recognizable to him by the vanity license plate that read “Cool Grl.”
She opened the front door before he rang the bell. “Thanks for coming, Jack. Come in.” Renee wore a yellow sun dress under a light black sweater she had thrown over her shoulders. Following her down the hallway, Doyle felt a blast of air conditioning.
Renee preceded him up the wide stairway of the expansive Tudor home to the second floor. At the end of the corridor, a large bedroom overlooked the back yard and pool. “Hello, Mr. Doyle,” said a woman who identified herself as “Audrey Hartman, Mr. Rison’s hospice nurse. He was hoping you’d come tonight.”
Doyle momentarily stopped in his tracks when he saw Rison. The lanky horse owner was propped up in a hospital bed, as pale as the pillow on which his head lay. He had lost dozens of pounds just in the few weeks since Doyle had seen him at Heartland Downs. Rison carefully removed the oxygen mask from his face and whispered, “Thanks for coming, Jack.”
Audrey Hartman said she’d go down to the kitchen and get coffee. “Fine,” Renee said. She closed the bedroom door behind the nurse and walked over to stand next to her father’s bed. She motioned Doyle toward the large arm chair nearby.
“Go ahead, Jack, sit down. I’ve been sitting all day.”
It took an effort for Arnie Rison to elevate his back and head to address Doyle. “As you can see, Jack, I’m in the home stretch.” He smiled briefly. “Of a great life. With a great daughter at my side.” Each sentence was followed by a gasp for air.
Doyle leaned forward. “What can I do for you, Arnie?”
Renee helped her father take a few sips of water through a plastic straw.
“I need only one thing from you, Jack. A promise to protect Renee. When I’m gone.”
They waited as Arnie applied the oxygen mask for a minute. Doyle found it hard to watch. Renee walked over to the window and looked out, arms crossed. Like Doyle, she didn’t want to witness this struggle for waning life.
Arnie removed the oxygen mask and motioned them to listen. “Jack, if something happens to Mike Barnhill, God forbid…And I wind up as the last of our guys, The Significant Seven…My daughter will be in charge of the monies from our partnership once I’m gone…I am afraid for her…Whoever has caused these deaths, and I am positive it’s somebody’s sick, sick plan…may target my Renee as the last survivor….I want her protected, Jack Doyle. I’ll pay you a lot of money to do it…if you would.”
“Where is Barnhill now?” Doyle said.
“He and Peggy are in England, Yorkshire…On a walking trip with some group…Mike said he had to get away from here with all this happening.”
“Dad, when do the Barnhills get home?”
“Early next week. He’s having some kind of exterior security system put in while they’re gone…Electrical fence around the sides and back of his property, I think…Peggy and Mike are both damned worried…Why wouldn’t they be?”
Doyle said, “This whole scenario is off the charts. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Renee said.
Doyle thought of what Damon Tirabassi had told him. He said, “Do either of you know what a Tontine is?” They said no. Doyle recounted what he’d learned from Tirabassi about this financial arrangement. “Actually,” Doyle concluded, “the deal with The Badger Express amounts to a Tontine. Doesn’t it? Last man standing is the big winner?”
“No,” Rison said, coughing. “The big winner was never going to be one of us. It would be the horse industry, the salvaging of old retired thoroughbreds from slaughter and…shipment to Europe for food. We all just…hated that stuff. How racehorses were sold…at auctions…for cents per pound…Then shipped to slaughter houses…We, all my guys, loved horses…We couldn’t imagine discarding them the way so many people do…That was the whole idea of the contract, the foundation.”
Renee said, “This is crazy. Each of the five men now dead apparently had no enemies, no reason to pass away at their ages. If this Tontine thing is what you say it is, my Dad and Mike Barnhill are the last members of the partnership alive. And, Dad…” She turned away and broke into tears. Doyle stood up and went to put his arm around her. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the pained expression on Arnie’s face.
Nurse Hartman poked her head in the door. “Do you need me? Can I get something?”
“No,” Renee murmured. “We’re okay, Audrey. We’ll be done soon.”
Not soon enough for me, thought Doyle. He said, “Arnie, I’d like to help you. But I am obligated to my work with Ralph Tenuta. I can’t drop that and start shadowing Renee, something I probably wouldn’t be much good at anyway. When she comes to the backstretch, of course I’ll be on my toes.
“I suggest,” Doyle continued, but Rison waved him off. “You do what you can…at the track…I’ll be satisfied. That’s all I’m asking of you. The pay…”
“Forget the pay,” Doyle barked. “I’m not charging you for anything.”
He sat down in the chair again next to Rison’s bed. “Here’s a suggestion, Arnie. I’ll talk to Moe Kellman. There’s a guy he knows, I’m sure between the two of them they could come up with some major league security talent for you and your daughter.”
Rison reached out his hand and placed it on Doyle’s wrist. His smile was evident even behind his oxygen mask. “You watch out for my Renee at the track,” he whispered. “I’ve get her covered otherwise. I’ll talk to Moe. And a guy my son Cal knew in the SEALs has an agency now…does private security work…He contacted me when he read about the deaths of…of the other Significant Seven. Very nice young man…smart…said he knew our Cal over in Iraq.”
Rison’s head dropped back on the pillow.
Doyle said, “What’s this guy’s name?”
“I think Dad has talked enough,” Renee said. “This is exhausting for him. Audrey,” she called out.
Surprised at this abrupt dismissal, Doyle stood. He put a hand on Rison’s bony shoulder.
“He’ll do a good job,” Rison said, “this fellow that my son Cal knew… His name is Sanderson… Scott Sanderson. He works with another ex-SEAL in the private security business…”
Rison paused to summon strength. “The other man…I don’t recall his first name…last name is Orth.”
Chapter Forty-Three
August 15, 2009
“Did Arnie Rison call you?”
Moe said, “Last night. After I guess you talked to him, Jack.”
Doyle said, “Can you help him out?”
“No problem. I’ve lined up a couple of Pete Dunleavy’s ex-cop buddies, plus some talent from the other side of the law. You remember Fifi Bonadio’s bodyguards? They’ll be splitting shifts, too. Should ease Arnie and Renee’s minds.”
“Arnie said he thought he was okay with some ex-SEAL his son knew.”
“He told me,” Kellman said, “that he wanted extra protection for him and Renee. So be it.”
Doyle stopped pacing his condo living room. He put down his coffee cup. It was just after seven and he had caught Kellman in his car on the way to Fit City. “You got a couple of minutes?” he said.
Kellman laughed. “For you, Jack? Naturally.”
“You know about a Tontine? It’s something I never heard of. What happens is, as I understand, the contributors’ money builds up and last guy standing gets it.”
“This is the Italian thing, right? Yeah, I know about that kind of deal. Far as I know, some of those old dagoes on the west side where I grew up are keeping those things going even now. Not many, though. It’s an old-time, old-country thing.”
Doyle started pacing again. “It’s amazing to me sometimes, what I don’t know,” he said disgustedly. He could hear Kellman ask driver Dunleavy to pull over in front of the Hancock Building, site of the little furrier’s business suite.
Moe said, “Jack, knowing a lot is great, though not that many people do. Knowing how to know a lot is for the rest of us who are not geniuses, but not schlubs either. If you learn how to find what you don’t know, kid, it’s a trampoline-life moment.” There was a pause. Doyle heard Kellman say, “I’ve got to take a quick call here from a guy I know at City Hall. Hold on.”
Not a minute had elapsed before Kellman said to Doyle, “Let me tell you a story.”
Doyle stopped pacing and sat down, smiling, knowing that Kellman could usually be relied upon for instructive episodes from his past.
“When I was a kid and got back from Korea, I lived in a cheap apartment—you could do that back then—just off Rush Street. I hung around a bar called The Interlude a lot of that summer. I was going to start college on the GI Bill at Illinois in the fall. I had a little money saved up, and a lot of free time. The Interlude was a lively place, with sports fans, a bookie in residence, good-looking waitresses dropping in from the great jazz places downtown Chicago had then. I’m talking about Mr. Kelly’s. The Blue Note, the London House, the Back Room. The Gate of Horn was a block or two over. I heard Odetta sing there. I saw Lennie Bruce arrested by Chicago cops who hauled him off the stage, after laughing at his routine, which was hilarious. But they were under orders from the top.
“The owner of The Interlude was a very funny, hip Irish Catholic guy named George Sheehan, who had been in the bar business all his life. Big, round-faced, bald-headed guy, strong as an ox. George ran tabs for a lot of his customers, many of whom came from the Loyola night law school down the block. George’s famous pronouncement was, ‘If I’m ever arrested, I’d rather have a Jewish bail bondsman rep me than a Loyola lawyer. What have the Jesuits done to produce so many deadbeats like you?’
“He’d holler this out, usually late on a Saturday night, and the people at the packed bar would howl with laughter, and George’d say, ‘The next round’s on me, you lousy bums.’
“Funny thing, George made a lot of money when they were putting up the Hancock Building, which is close to the old Interlude. He’d open up at six in the morning for the iron workers going up on the girders at seven. He served hard-boiled eggs and shots of whiskey to these guys, many of them Mohawks from upstate New York. Fearless when it came to heights. That’s not an urban legend, that’s a fact. Well, that’s neither here nor there, although it’s some kind of coincidence that my business is located in the tall building built by not drunken Indians, just Indians who drank a couple of ounces of cheap bar whiskey before working their way up a hundred stories.
“Anyway, Jack, what I’m getting at is that there were many arguments in the Interlude, especially late at night, especially between two guys, one named Fischer, the other named Jansen.” There was a pause. “Paul Fischer, Jimmy Jansen. I’m sure that’s right, although this took place back there in the so-called mists of time.
“These two would argue trivia about politics and sports and movies, so on, so on, and bet each other who was right. Before I got to know them, one would go to the Newberry Library the next day to find the answer to their dispute.
“One night, the subject is how many times did Willy Pepp fight Sandy Saddler. Who won the most of those fights? Fischer said Pepp, Jansen insisted it was Saddler. The argument was on. After observing these two for a week or so, I would listen to them, quietly get off my bar stool, head for the men’s washroom down a dark hallway, get on the pay phone there, and call my Uncle Bernie. Bernie Glockner. Brilliant man. He was known as the ‘Wizard of Odds’ because he set the betting lines for the Vegas casinos run by the Chicago wise guys. He had sports record books at hand, a set of encyclopedias, the almanacs and atlases, plus a memory like a herd of elephants. The man was a human Google.
“There wasn’t a time I called Bernie that he didn’t immediately give me the right answer. Fischer would bet that he knew the 1946 Kentucky Derby winner, which he did. But Jansen would say ‘I bet you a double sawbuck you can’t say who rode that horse.’ On and on. What was President Garfield’s middle name? What was the name of the Indian woman who helped out Lewis and Clark? This was long before they put her on the dollar coin. Etc., etc.
“So, after calling Uncle Bernie, I’d go back to the bar and tell Fischer and Jansen who was right. If either one of them was. And actually, most of the time, one of them was right. These two should have been on Jeopardy. They would have hauled down the green. But I don’t think Jeopardy was on then. Also, these two were kind of battered-up veteran drinkers, not exactly TV types. At least in those days. Now, who knows? Both divorced, with alimony, child support they struggled to make. Not really what you would call likeable people, but they weren’t bad guys. They both worked and they paid their bills. You could probably make a reality TV show about them today.
“At first, Jansen and Fischer would check out my answer the next day before they learned to trust me. Once they did, the winner always bought me a couple of nightcaps when I came back with what they were convinced was the right answer.
“One late night,” Kellman continued, “Jansen says, Moe, how do you do it? You listen to us, you go to the bathroom, you come back, and you come up with the right answer. It’s amazing for a young fellow like you, even bright as you are.’”
“I played it very cool. I told Fischer and Jansen, ‘I can’t explain it but, for some reason, pissing seems to jog my memory.’”
Doyle was laughing now. “You rascal, you,” he said. “Thanks, Moe.”
Chapter Forty-Four
August 16, 2009
Teresa Chandler tapped on her friend and employer’s office door. As always, she entered without waiting for a reply from Renee. Having been in business together in this boutique Chicago travel agency for almost six years, their routine of familiarity was a given. But when Teresa noticed the expression on Renee’s face, she paused. “What’s wrong?”
Renee leaned back in her desk chair. “I just had a call from my Dad. Kind of shook me up.”
Teresa reached across the desk to pat her friend’s hand. “Has he suddenly gotten worse?”
Distracted, Renee did not answer immediately. Then she looked up at Teresa. “Let’s have an early lunch. I could use a super double margarita over at Lupita’s.”
“Sounds good to me,” Teresa said.
Renee said, “But I have to make one phone call first. I’ll be out in front in a few minutes.”
Teresa shut the door behind her. Renee’s voice shook slightly as she began her long-distance conversation.
***
The disturbing phone call from her father had come thirty minutes earlier. “Renee, I just want to bring you up to date on some syndicate matters.”
“What, Dad?”
A coughing spasm preceded Arnie’s reply. “My partners’ wives, widows I should say about five of the poor women, have been talking to each other about these deaths. Certainly understandable. Peggy Barnhill, I guess she’s their appointed spokesperson, called me this morning. She said they wanted to have a meeting to review the original Significant Seven contract agreement. I told her, ‘Fine. Let me talk to Frank Cohan. He’s the attorney who drew it up. He’s got the original in his office. I was the only one of us to take a copy. Remember, Renee, when I showed it to you last year?”
“Yes.”
“Turns out Cohan is in Scotland on a golfing vacation. Doesn’t get back until next week. I asked Peggy to tell the other women we could have a meeting then. Here at my house, if they’d agree. Because I’m really not up to traveling into downtown Chicago. Peggy said okay, she understood.
“Anyway, I just wanted you to know about this. I want you to be at the meeting. You can host it better than I can,” he laughed. Then his coughing resumed.
Renee said, “Dad, what would it take to amend the contract?”
“Why would we want to amend it?”
“Well, why do these widows want to examine it?”
Arnie said,
“It’s their right. But as I remember the terms, it would take a majority of the partnership to make any change in the agreement.” He paused. “There’s only two of us now. Isn’t that a goddam shame?”
Chapter Forty-Five
August 17, 2009
The phone button was blinking when Orth returned to his cabin.
“Bro, we got to talk. Tried your cell. See you at the same place on the big river, two afternoons from today. Any problem with that, get back to me quick.” Sanderson hung up.
Orth had been out on the lake, trolling for bass, without his latest cellphone, the most recent in a series of such instruments he bought and used for one week each before discarding. He’d caught and released eight bass, one them about three pounds he thought, a real battler. He kept the one walleye he’d snagged. It wasn’t legal size, but big enough for his dinner, fuck the DNR.
He drove to Boulder Junction’s Qwik Stop to use its outdoor phone. Called the airline. Called Sanderson to say, “Confirmed.” Went back to his cabin and made his dinner, some fingerling potatoes to go with his pan fried walleye. One of his favorite meals. After eating and washing his plate and utensils, he knocked back a couple of Leinies and turned on the radio repeat of his favorite political commentator, a man regarded by many citizens as the most vicious right-wing bloviator in the business. Orth got out his rifle and two pistols and cleaned and oiled them as he did every week, smiling as he listened to the strident radio voice raging about “this once great country’s continuing decline.”
***
Sanderson opened his St. Louis motel room door right after Orth’s one tap. They were in a Holiday Inn Express. “Hey, man,” the Sanderson said, slapping his hand onto Orth’s. “You made good time from the airport. Let me turn the TV up so we can talk. I guess nobody knows you’re here?”