Blind Switch

by John McEvoy

  Said Karen, “Think about it, Jack. You can, we might put it, clear your name with us while doing something very useful. Providing you cooperate and work with us on this, you’ll never have to worry about any unofficial ‘discouraging’ we might do in regard to your future employment. In fact, if you keep your end of the bargain, you can expect an endorsement from us.

  “This whole project should not, we hope, take more than a couple of months. We want to nail Rexroth before he can do any more damage. You and Bolger, we hope, will be able to lead us to the evidence we need. We don’t want this case prolonged. And I’m sure you don’t, either,” Karen said.

  “Let’s assume,” Doyle said, looking skeptical, “that I somehow pass the employment test. Let’s assume I actually get this job at Willowdale. What do I do, when I do? I’m no undercover agent.”

  “Whatever suspicions Bolger has about Rexroth’s crimes,” Damon said, “he can’t be too obvious about seeking confirmation. Otherwise, Rexroth’ll get on to him. And, obviously, Bolger can’t be everywhere on a big farm like that. He needs an ally, a confederate, somebody he can point in the right direction. Somebody he can trust.”

  Karen leaned forward, elbows on the table, looking Jack directly in the eye. “Do you think this is the scenario we would have written? Having to involve somebody, well, like you? But we’ve been thoroughly frustrated in trying to get Rexroth.”

  Damon said quietly, “Desperate situations demand desperate measures. I think that’s what this amounts to, Mr. Doyle.”

  Jack said, “Why in hell would Bolger trust somebody he’d never met—somebody like me?”

  Karen smiled at Doyle. “Because we told him he could, Jack. We gave him assurances. Now,” she added, “you’re going to live up to them.”

  Doyle wasn’t laughing now. The sound that came out of him was more a groan. I could probably refuse, he thought, as he looked at the expectant faces of the two FBI agents, and they couldn’t really nail me with any charges that would stick. But there’s no question they could prevent me from getting any kind of decent job in the future.

  Doyle shook his head in wonderment at the watershed moment he’d just reached in his rapidly changing life. “Jesus Christ—Jack Doyle, junior G-Man. I can’t believe this is happening.” He plunked his coffee cup down on the table, then slid the check onto Damon’s placemat.

  “How do I start with this thing?”

  Chapter 7

  “Jack, I feel bad about how it worked out for you. That’s why I asked for a meeting today.”

  Moe Kellman had phoned Doyle the previous night, three nights after Doyle had been robbed and laid low, literally and figuratively. “How did you find out about what happened to me?” Doyle had asked.

  “I hear a lot of things, Jack,” Moe had replied. “How I hear, that’s not important. What I hear is that you got ripped off, that somebody took all you earned from us. I was sorry to hear that, Jack.”

  The two sat in bright sunshine on this summer day in first-row box seats directly behind home plate at Wrigley Field. These were the best seats Doyle had ever had at a baseball game, and he said so. “Had them for years,” Moe shrugged.

  Moe Kellman, Doyle had learned, was a man who always had the best seats no matter where he went. His business was fur, luxury level fur, which was still a staple of his “people,” be they Outfit higher-ups or the members of the police and judiciary that helped them continue to thrive in an increasingly competitive criminal world. The animal rights, anti-fur movement had failed to make any inroads whatsoever with the stratum of society served by Moe Kellman.

  When Doyle had arrived that afternoon, he’d said to Kellman, “I didn’t know you liked baseball.”

  “I don’t,” Kellman replied. “I’m a Cubs fan. There’s a difference.”

  Doyle looked around at what legions of loyal Chicago Cubs fans referred to with reverence as the “friendly confines.” The grass almost shone in the sunlight, a slightly lighter shade of green than the ivy that covered the outfield walls of this compact old ball yard.

  Doyle hadn’t been at Wrigley Field since a September afternoon two years earlier when he had chaperoned a group of wide-eyed Serafin clients from Salt Lake City to a Cubs-Dodger game. The men in that middle-aged group had almost genuflected at their first sight of this Chicago sports landmark. The women had occupied themselves by ogling the goodly number of good-looking athletes occupying Cubs uniforms. How they played was secondary.

  Today, Doyle noticed, although it was a Wednesday afternoon, the Wrigley stands were nearly filled—filled, as usual, by an almost exclusively white crowd of northsiders, suburbanites, and out-of-towners. The many youngsters in the crowd were almost matched in number by the suit-coated businessmen who talked on their cellular phones inning after inning.

  Out in the bleachers, halter-topped girls sat with their bare-chested boyfriends, spending as much time applying suntan lotion and ordering from the busy beer vendors as they did watching the action on the field. Behind them, from the rooftoops of the old apartment buildings that bordered the ballpark on Waveland and Sheffield Avenues, gatherings of young people monitored the game in progress from amidst clouds of smoke that billowed skyward from barbecue grills.

  Don’t any of these people work? Doyle wondered.

  Aloud, he said to Kellman, “How can you be a Cubs fan? How can anybody? They haven’t won a pennant since World War Two.”

  “Listen,” Moe replied, “this is a great place to get a tan. And a great place to relax. There’s no pressure to concentrate—these schlubs are hardly ever involved in games that mean anything, so you’ve got a nice, comfortable absence of tension.

  “And from a financial standpoint,” Moe said, “you got to love this operation.”

  He took a drink of his beer, then carefully dried his impeccably trimmed white mustache with his handkerchief. “They should be a case study in every business school in this country.

  “It’s remarkable,” Moe continued, “year after year, with a very occasional exception, the Cubs organization puts a lousy product on the market. Then they sell that product as rich in tradition, as loveable, and all that other happy horseshit, and year after year they pack this joint. They’ve raised ineptitude to a commercial art form.

  “Oh, once in a blue moon they’ll win their division. But never the pennant. And they haven’t won the World Series in ninety-five years. Think of that, Jack,” Moe said, poking Doyle’s arm with an index finger for emphasis, “ninety-five years! And yet they raise their prices almost every year, and people line up to pay them! Futility. Failure. But bale up the money and send it to the bank!”

  Moe turned away from Doyle to exchange greetings with a portly, red-faced man in a light blue seersucker suit who had come down the steps from behind them. The man’s face was shiny with sweat. After a few moments of soft conversation, during which the man knelt on one knee like a supplicant while whispering into Kellman’s ear, Moe waved him away. “Take care of yourself, Judge,” he said, as the man retreated back up the aisle.

  Moe turned back to Doyle. “My grandfather on my mother’s side, Morrie Greenburg may he rest in peace, although he’s a longshot for that, Morrie would have bowed low in admiration to these guys that run the Cubs. Bowed low, I’m saying.

  “For over fifty years, Morrie sold cheap jewelry at inflated prices to the schvartzes over on Maxwell Street. But even Morrie gave more value than these guys,” Moe said, as the Cubs shortstop sailed his throw to first base into the third row behind the visitors’ dugout. Two runs scored, putting the home team down 5-0 to the St. Louis Cardinals in the top half of the first inning. When the ninth Cardinal batter of the inning finally flied out against the ivy in dead center, the crowd cheered and clapped enthusiastically.

  Doyle ordered beers from a vendor who was several exits past seventy on his roadway of life. As he handed one of the cups to Kellman, Doyle said, “Look, I know we’re not here to discuss contemp
orary corporate economics. What’s our business today?”

  “Jack…Jack,” Moe said, a pained expression on his face, “it’s not business here today. I just wanted to make sure that you know my people had nothing to do with that ripoff of your twenty-five grand.

  “According to the story I get—no, no, don’t ask me how I know this, just believe me that I do—there was a white woman and a colored guy seen running out of your garage that night, probably right about the time you hit the deck.

  “We’ve made inquiries, you might say, but we don’t have a clue as to who these two were. Maybe they were looking to mug somebody and just stumbled on you. Who knows?

  “What I do know is that when you do business for us, and do it right, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Moe emphasized.

  Nothing to show for it either, Doyle thought as he sat there, feeling like an idiot. Somehow Maureen and E. D. had smelled out the plot involving City Sarah and had combined forces to take dead aim at one of the plotters—him. Doyle couldn’t escape feeling another silent wave of deep embarrassment.

  Moe said, “The point, Jack, is that we don’t owe you a goddam thing. But we owe you. You know what I mean?”

  He shook his head as he saw Doyle’s puzzled expression. “It doesn’t make any difference if you understand or not. The thing is, here’s five grand—it’s to tide you over till you find something else.” Moe slipped an envelope into the side pocket of Doyle’s sport coat. “No, it’s not a loan,” Moe said before Doyle could speak, “don’t worry about that. Let’s just say it’s a belated bonus.”

  Moe looked thoughtfully toward the Cubs bullpen, a beehive of activity all afternoon. “Another thing, Jack. I heard you had some visitors early the other morning. Representatives of one of the nation’s law enforcement agencies.” He smiled slightly, noting the look of astonishment on Doyle’s face.

  “That’s okay, Jack,” Kellman continued. “Everybody gets unwanted visitors every once in a while. But you don’t want to get too cozy with people like that.”

  “Moe, I have to—or I might have to,” Doyle hurriedly amended. Looking at his little companion, Doyle suspected that here, too, Kellman was probably running head to head with him in the knowledge department.

  “We understand that, Jack. You’re in kind of a bind here, or”—Kellman smiled—“what at the racetrack they call a blind switch. Great old term. A blind switch is when a jockey gets himself caught in a pocket during a race, trapped maybe down on the inside, looking for a way out. Jocks just have to keep looking to work their way out when they’re in those spots. Otherwise they lose for sure. Looks like the feds have you boxed in.”

  Kellman took off his sunglasses and turned in his seat to face Doyle. “Let me get back to ‘too cozy’ with the feds, as I just mentioned. Too cozy as it might pertain to me and my people. Sometimes you tend toward the blunt side. That wouldn’t be good in your dealings with those people you’re being forced to deal with now. There’s a lot to be said for the vague approach, if you know what I mean.”

  After putting his sunglasses back on and draining his beer cup, Moe again patted dry his mustache. “Don’t thank me, Jack,” he said as he stood to leave. Then he leaned down and added: “But don’t look for anything more either.

  “One of Grandpa Morrie’s favorite quotes—I can almost hear him saying it—was from Benjamin Franklin. Franklin said ‘There are three faithful friends—an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.’

  “All you’ve got is one out of three, Jack, so try to hang on to it, okay?” Moe turned away.

  “See you at the gym.”

  ***

  After Moe had gone, Doyle sat half-watching the game. He bought a cold hot dog and a warm beer, but didn’t finish either. He thought of the money in his pocket, then of E. D. and Maureen. He had really liked both of them, and had believed the feeling was at least close to mutual. How had he so badly misread that situation?

  As the Cardinal batters continued to feast on a procession of Cubs pitchers, Doyle concentrated on the game only occasionally. He had a final beer, this one cold, and, still thinking of his assailants, realized that he was quite capable of forgiving them if their actions were ever explained to him. Doyle shook his head. “I must be going soft,” he said to himself. “Anybody else robbed me like that, I’d be looking forward to flaying them.”

  Doyle left Wrigley Field just prior to the start of the bottom of the seventh inning. The home team trailed 11-1. Yet the crowd was on its feet, waving at the panning WGN-TV cameras, singing along with an apparently half-demented one-time rock star as he led them, clueless as to the lyrics, in a genuinely horrendous rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Their team trailing by ten, Cubs fans were still having a grand old time.

  Moe’s Grandpa Morrie would have envied this scene.

  Chapter 8

  Doyle waved at a nearby polar bear as he walked the concrete path, deftly dodging a couple of baby strollers, then a child waving a cotton candy stick. The bear, splayed out on a rock in white-furred splendor, moved his head as if to respond. Doyle knew that was not the case, but smiled to himself at the thought.

  He was, that sunny afternoon, making his way through Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo because of a phone call he’d retrieved on his answering machine the previous evening.

  The voice on the phone had been quick, the message abrupt, delivered in an accent that Doyle realized was that of New Zealand. The voice belonged to Aldous Bolger, and informed Doyle, “We’ll meet Tuesday afternoon, half-past two, Lincoln Park Zoo, in the part they call the Farm. I’ll spot you, not to worry. If this doesn’t suit you, leave a message at 708-864-0854.”

  The FBI agents had told Doyle to expect this call from Bolger. It was necessary, they said, for Doyle and Bolger to meet before Doyle applied for work at Willowdale Farm.

  “You two need to talk, to go over the details of the job in advance, in case Rexroth has any questions for you,” Karen Engel had said. “Rexroth will definitely interview you. He talks to everybody but the landscape helpers before he hires them. It’s a peculiarity of his. By no means his only one, by the way.

  “The fact that you know racehorses, from being around them at the track, will of course come in handy. But farm work, the procedures there, are something you’re not familiar with. That’s what Bolger can brief you on. He seems to be a pleasant enough fellow. I think you’ll get along with him. He can also go over the details of the Willowdale horses.”

  Doyle stopped at one of the zoo’s concession stands. He bought a bag of popcorn that he nibbled at as he continued to stroll the tree-lined walkways. It was a little after two o’clock, so he had plenty of time to reach the meeting spot. Doyle’s apartment was located a couple of miles to the north. He’d always liked this place, and in fact often visited it after he’d jogged along a path in the adjacent park. In contrast to the Chicago area’s other zoo, a comparative megalopolis located in a western suburb, the Lincoln Park Zoo was accessible and compact enough to easily be traversed, and most of its inhabitants viewed, in the course of a leisurely afternoon.

  Twice, Doyle remembered, he had met women here whom he’d subsequently dated: a wealthy divorcee with an obnoxious young son, and an unmarried veterinarian who worked in the zoo’s small animal house. He’d had a fairly lengthy relationship with the veterinarian until she took a job at the San Diego Zoo.

  A breeze ruffled the baggy T-shirts of a group of black children in front of Doyle as he walked alongside the little zoo lake, over which a colorful flotilla of paddle boats moved in erratic fashion, guided by pilots with various degrees of proficiency. The kids, all between the ages of eight and ten, looked wide-eyed at the paddle boats, then at the sheep and cows that grazed behind fences near the red, wooden farm building.

  A couple of the kids excitedly asked questions of one of the counselors who moved calmly among them. The kids’ shirts said Better Boys Foundation, a local organization Doyle knew was h
eadquartered on Chicago’s poverty-ridden west side. “Must be an interesting field trip for them,” Doyle thought. He remembered reading a magazine article about gang members from that area of Chicago, only a few miles west of the Loop; several of the gang-bangers had admitted they’d never once in their lives seen Lake Michigan.

  Doyle sat down on a bench near a water fountain. The bench was just to the side of the farm building, so he figured he should be visible to Bolger. Doyle remained there nearly fifteen minutes and was beginning to wonder if he’d been stood up. Suddenly, he felt a large hand grip his shoulder from behind him.

  “No, no, mister, don’t get up. Sit right there,” Doyle heard the man say.

  A man with hair so blond it was almost white moved around the bench to face him, large hand outstretched, broad smile spread across his tanned, pleasant face. He was wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt, blue jeans, and western boots. The man was a couple of inches taller than Doyle, about six feet two inches, but he looked to weigh at least forty pounds more than Doyle’s one-sixty. He looked extremely fit, Doyle thought, not from gym efforts but from years of hard, outdoor work.

  Beside him stood a slim, very attractive woman in her early thirties, probably four or five years younger than the man, her hair almost exactly the same color as his. She, too, wore a blue denim shirt, opened slightly to reveal a slender neck, but instead of jeans had on a cream-colored skirt. She smiled at Doyle in friendly fashion, a smile that he found himself warmly returning. Standing between the man and woman were a young girl and boy; like the adults, they had white-blond hair, even features, and deeply tanned skin.

  The man said, “Mr. Doyle, I’m Aldous Bolger. Pleasure to meet you.”

  Doyle said, “My pleasure. And call me Jack, will you…er, Aldous?”

  Bolger looked at Doyle with an expression of resigned amusement. “Let me explain the name,” he said. “Our old man thought Brave New World was the most important bloody book since the Bible, and Mr. Huxley was one of his all-time heroes. My father read Huxley’s novel to our family at least once a year. I know long passages of the bloody thing by heart.” He gave a short laugh.