by John McEvoy
The more Doyle got to know Bolger, the more he appreciated the man-for his work ethic, his fair treatment of his work force, for the joy he took in spending time with his sister and her children. Bolger’s energy supply was apparently inexhaustible. Not only would he work twelve hours most days, he would reserve the time to spend with Helen and Ian almost every evening, usually taking them to fish in the Willowdale Farm lake, or else monitor their riding of the Shetland pony he had acquired just for their use during their stay.
Doyle sometimes accompanied Bolger and the kids to the fishing hole, but he rarely remained for long. He could appreciate the calm and peaceful setting, and the feel of the lush green grass that draped the sides of the blue lake, and, no question, the obvious joy evidenced by Caroline’s children as they competed with each other to catch the most, or biggest, fish. But as Doyle put it one evening to Bolger as they observed Ian and Helen in their dead-serious competition, “Fishing just doesn’t do it for me. You know what I mean?
“There was a guy I used to work out with, he loaned me a book about some New York newspaper editor who ‘found himself’ fly-fishing? I went fly-fishing once with this guy, spent a whole morning and most of the afternoon up to my balls in icewater, we didn’t catch enough to feed a small cat breakfast.
“Fishing, for me, is about in a dead heat with watching yacht racing, cooking shows, or the first three quarters of NBA basketball games.”
“Keep those opinions near your vest, man,” Bolger said seriously. “A lot of horsemen are serious fishermen, both here and back home. To say otherwise makes you sound even more suspect than you usually do.”
Doyle looked at Aldous. “Really?” Concern showed on his face, until he realized that Bolger was exaggerating nearly as much as he. “Naw, you’ve been cracker,” Bolger reassured him. “I’ve heard some muttering from a couple of the lads, them wondering how I’d picked you for my assistant over them. But that’s been about it-more jealousy than doubt. You’re not a bad actor, Jack Doyle. I’d say it’s good on ya so far.”
On a few of those evenings when Doyle didn’t accompany Uncle Aldous and niece and nephew to the lake, he walked back up the little hill and headed toward his apartment, which was located on the top floor of the Willowdale dormitory. Most times, he walked past Bolger’s two-story brick house. Sometimes, he was happy to discover, Caroline Cummings would put down the book she was reading, wave to him from her chair on the front porch, and invite him to “stop for a drink, if you’d like?” He had yet to refuse her.
Caroline would usually make easy conversation, asking him about his day, about how Doyle liked working with Aldous.
“Suppose I said I hated working for him?” Doyle said to her once. “Suppose I said I can’t stand how overbearing he is, and rude, and bullying to his help? Suppose I said that? Then what would you say?”
Caroline cocked her eye at him-she was looking toward the lake, and he had been admiring her profile as he kidded her, the soft-looking white-blond hair pulled back from her tanned forehead, her long eyelashes-and replied, “What would I say? I’d say you aren’t talking about Aldous Bolger.” She added, “His boss, maybe, yes.”
As the weeks unfolded with Doyle held hostage, as he thought of it, in the heart of Kentucky’s Blue Grass country, he began more and more to look forward to two things: finding the incriminating material needed to hang Rexroth out to dry and thereby get the FBI off his case, and, two, his twilight conversations with Caroline.
In addition to admiring her beauty, and easy and good-humored way of conversing with him, Doyle was impressed with her strength. When the subject of her late husband came up, usually in the context of something to do with the children, Caroline calmly addressed it, never attempting to shield the pain she felt over his loss, but never dramatizing it, either. Grant Cummings must have been a hell of a man as well as a hell of jockey to win this woman for his wife, Doyle thought.
As Doyle sat chatting with Caroline one evening, the telephone rang in Bolger’s house. Caroline went inside to answer it. When she returned to the front porch, she said, “That was the man at the front gate. He said there is a Federal Express package there for you, Jack. He can’t leave his post there. He wants to know if you will go down there and pick it up. What shall I tell him?”
Minutes later, Doyle made his way down the long driveway to the front gate of Willowdale. As he moved past the grazing horses in the broad fields on either side of him, he wondered who might be sending him something via Federal Express. Had Karen or Damon planned to mail him something, he was sure they would have informed him in advance. “This could be Publisher’s Clearing House, or a letter bomb,” he said to himself.
After Doyle had retrieved the package, he opened it as he began his return walk. When he saw what was inside, he abruptly stopped. There were six cashier’s checks, each worth $5,000. Doyle riffled through them twice, his initial disbelief giving way to a growing tide of exultation. “Damn, these things are for real,” he said to himself. “I can’t believe it!” He checked the address label on the front of the package. The addressee was definitely Jack Doyle. The return address was in Hallandale, Fla.
Doyle looked inside the package again. He then extracted a folded-over piece of white paper. The writing on it was from a typewriter. It said: “Dear Jack. Sorry we did what we did to you, but we had a very, very good reason. Look up a three-year-old named Bunny’s Al. If you wish, call this number.”
He read this note two or three more times as he stood in descending dusk. Then Doyle hotfooted it to Bolger’s office. The door was unlocked. Doyle entered and headed for the stack of Blood-Horse magazines Bolger kept on a shelf behind his desk chair. He began to leaf through recent stakes results in the back of the publication. Three issues back, he found the name of Bunny’s Al.
Underneath the name, which was in white type on a black background, was the following: “Whirlaway Stakes, Florida Park, June 22, $75,000 added, value of race $83,200, three-year-olds, seven furlongs, 1:23 4–5, track fast.”
Doyle read further. The next entry repeated Bunny’s Al name, then gave his color (chestnut), age (three), and weight carried in the race (118), plus his winner’s share ($49,920).
The names of his sire and dam were next, but they meant nothing to Doyle, nor did the name of the horse’s breeder.
He continued to examine the Blood-Horse entry. On the next line, after the letter “O” for the horse’s owner, Doyle read “M. Hoban.” No clue there, he thought at first, although something was niggling at his memory. But the next piece of information jumped out at him. After “T” for trainer, was this: “E. D. Morley.”
Stunned, Doyle looked around the area in which he stood, as if he were going to suddenly find someone there to consult with concerning this astonishing revelation. “Didn’t Maureen tell me her last name was Hoban?” He ransacked his memory. Doyle was pretty sure he was right about that.
“I’ll be a triple-decker son of a bitch,” he said aloud. Then he began jogging up the drive to his Accord. Doyle couldn’t wait to get this pair on the phone, although he knew he’d much rather have his hands around their necks.
Chapter 18
The parking lot where Doyle stood, outside the Wildcat Jiffy-Shop station and store, was relatively quiet. Not so the background noise on the other end of the receiver when, after several rings, it was finally picked up and a woman’s voice said hurriedly, “Fado. How can I help you?”
Doyle said, “Fey-dough? What the hell does that mean?” He hadn’t intended to be impolite to this stranger, but the thought of the thieving twosome bit at him. The woman replied, in a chilly voice, “Fado, that is spelled F-a-d-o, means ‘long ago’ in Gaelic.”
Long ago and far away, with my money, Doyle thought. “What is the Fado you’re talking from?” Doyle asked. “I mean, what sort of business is it?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Somewhat impatiently, the woman said, “Fado is an Irish bar and restaurant. And a ver
y popular one.”
Doyle said, “Isn’t that Bob Marley and the Wailers I hear on your sound system?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And this is an Irish bar and grill?”
For a moment it seemed she was going to take the time to explain Fado’s choice of music. Instead, though, she said, “It is indeed an Irish bar. Now, again, how may I help you?”
“Let me talk to your lady bartender from Cork by way of Chicago,” Doyle said. “Tell her it’s Mr. Doyle. From Immigration.”
There was another lengthy pause, then Doyle heard the phone being set down. He waited, tapping his foot to the reggae beat and looking up at the star-packed Kentucky sky. Finally, he heard a familiar voice say, “Jack Doyle, you lovely man. Isn’t it a great thing now that you’re calling?”
“Hello, Maureen,” said Doyle.
After adding a few more sentences on to her warm greeting, Maureen said, “Jack, I can’t talk to you from this phone. Give us your number up there, please, and I’ll call you back in five minutes. I’ll be paying for the call that way.”
“You should be,” Doyle growled. He waited eagerly for the phone to ring. When a pickup truck pulled into the parking lot, he snatched up the receiver, making it look like the phone was in use, then replaced it. Seconds later, the phone rang.
“Jack, we’re both on here now,” Maureen said. Then Doyle heard E. D. Morley’s deep voice, on another extension, say, “Hey, mon, what you op to?”
“Don’t start that Jamaican jive with me,” Doyle snapped. “E. D., I want to know what the hell you were doing when you robbed me of my money. And hit me with that dose of knockout juice.” Doyle could feel the heat rush to his face as he relived the ambush in his parking garage.
“Aw, sheet, Jack,” E. D. said in his rumbling bass while reverting to his natural Chicago West Side accent, “it’s a long story.” There was a pause, then Morley said, “But you got a right to hear it.”
“True that tis,” chipped in Maureen. Doyle was about to lash out at his one-time counselor from Cork when he decided it was best for him to just shut up and listen.
What Doyle heard over the course of the next half-hour or so was a combination of explanation and justification, interspersed with elements of sincere apology. All this was jointly offered by Maureen and E. D., who vowed repeatedly that they had never intended to keep the money they stole from Doyle, only use it as the basis for an investment that “couldn’t go wrong-and didn’t.”
Maureen said she had first met E. D. the previous year at a St. Patrick’s Day party hosted by one of Angelo Zocchi’s clients, Jim Dunleavy, for all the stable help. It was held at O’Keefe’s Ale House. Maureen, of course, had been working on this busiest night of O’Keefe’s year, and she helped serve the Dunleavy party.
“It was brilliant, Jack,” Maureen gushed. “We hit it off right away. E. D. came around the next night, and then we started going out, and now-well, we’ve been together since right before we left Chicago.”
Interjected Morley earnestly, “My mama’s grandma really was from Jamaica, a white woman name of Cullerton.”
“Look,” Doyle said, “don’t take this as being anti-romantic, or anything, but I’m not real interested in this reggae version of Abie’s Irish Rose, if you know what I mean. Why’d you take my money?”
Morley and Maureen had seen their chance, they explained, when Jack had confided in her about his deal with Moe Kellman. “What ever made me trust you?” Doyle said, groaning into the phone.
Spurring them on, they said, were Maureen’s desire to get out of the barmaid’s life and E. D. Morley’s long-harbored hope of obtaining his own trainer’s license and horses to train. “I groomed and did the scut work for years,” Morley said. “I worked as Angelo’s assistant. I wanted to go out on my own. Only two things standing in my way: my color, and my bank account.”
“Your color,” Doyle said, “what’re you talking about? There are black trainers, I’ve seen them at Heartland Downs.”
“How many you seen?” Morley shot back. Doyle realized that the number was, indeed, very small. “I guess, well, two,” Doyle said, thinking of Clifford Spraggins and Scotty Hunter.
“I’m telling you, it’s almost impossible for a black man to get a good stable to train,” Morley emphasized. “So, I was looking to get started with horses of my own. All I needed was the capital.”
E. D. had gotten a call from a friend of his in Florida, telling him that there was a promising, obscurely bred but well put together three-year-old gelding for sale.
“Horse had never started, the owner had died, the widow was anxious to sell off this gelding and a couple of other horses her husband had owned. My buddy told me this gelding, Bunny’s Al, could be a steal at the price. The widow lady would let him go for $20,000 and throw in one of the old claiming mares to boot.”
E. D. said he’d taken a week off of work and driven to Ocala, Fla., to examine Bunny’s Al. “I liked this horse from the get-go,” Morley said. “I told the widow lady, ‘give me a week to get you the money.’ She promised she would. Then I drove back up north fast as I could and talked this all over with Maureen.”
“So this is where I came into it,” said Doyle.
Once Maureen and Morley agreed that they knew what Doyle was up to, they simply sat back and watched the plot unfold. When City Sarah won her “target” race after the maneuverings of Zocchi and Doyle, they had indeed bet on her.
“But we made our big bet on you, Jack,” Maureen said. She then went on to vow that “we had always, always intended to pay you back. The proof is in those checks we sent in the Federal Express. Jack, it was just kind of a loan we had of your money. That’s all it was.” She sounded sincere.
“That’s the stone truth, man,” added Morley. “We didn’t like to do you that way, but we were careful not to hurt you when we took the twenty-five off you. And we’ve put that money to good use, Jack, you got to admit that.”
Bunny’s Al had turned out to be “all racehorse,” his proud owner-trainer said. “Maybe he’s no classic horse, but he’s been good enough to win us more than $125,000 so far. Fact that he’s done so good for me has gotten me some other owners. I’m training ten head down here at Florida Park.”
Maureen could hardly wait to announce her plans. “If E. D.’s stable keeps going along well, we may buy into Fado. I’ve already been given an option on twenty-five percent of it. How’s that for a fookin’ brilliant prospect?”
Doyle pondered all that he had heard. His silence brought a rebuke from Maureen.
“Jack, don’t be that way,” Maureen said. “It’s all water over the stones, now. You got a bump on the head is the worst thing, really. Now, you’ve got all your money back.”
“Plus interest,” E. D. rumbled, “let’s not forget the extra five grand we sent you.”
A question occurred to Doyle. “How’d you find me?”
“We talked to Maggie Howard. Called her at Angelo’s barn,” E. D. replied. “She told us you were working for that guy Rexroth, on his farm. At first I thought she was jivin’ me. Maggie said she could hardly believe it either.”
“You know,” said Doyle, “I could just keep that anonymous money and still go back to Chicago and file a complaint against you two.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth before he recognized the fallacy of that strategy. And Maureen and E. D. were not far behind him. “Now, Jack, would your Mr. Rexroth like to know he’s got a boyo working for him that’s thought to have fiddled with a horse race up in Chicago?” Maureen mused. “One that had a lot of the lads in Vegas chewin’ on their cufflinks?”
Doyle knew she was right. But he couldn’t resist a parting shot. “When you take over that bar down there, be sure and change its name from Playdough or Fado or whatever. Maybe make it Ebony and Ivory. Or, better yet, Assault and Robbery.”
Maureen’s hearty laugh resounded over the phone. “Oh, Jack, you sound just like yourself.”
Dr
iving back to Willowdale, he couldn’t help but smile at the conversation he’d had, with all its various elements of desire and deceit. Maureen and E. D., he thought, who’d of believed that? He’d pulled something off, but they had trumped him easily.
With so much that had been unexplained now clear, Doyle felt a lightened mood as he sped down the dark country road. He liked both E. D. and Maureen too much, and admired their gutsiness, to hold a grudge.
Once he’d turned into the Willowdale property, Doyle slowed his car. He waved his hand out the window at a row of broodmares peering out at him from one of the pastures, lined up along the white fence like chorus girls at ease.
The thirty grand now in hand, he admitted to himself, also served to influence his newly benign view of Maureen and E. D.
Chapter 19
“But Jeezus had a jump shot!!!..”
Hearing this, Red Marchik awakened with a start. He sat straight up in bed, heart pounding. For a moment he looked about him wildy, the words ringing in his ears. Jesus had a what?
Then he listened again to the booming voice, saying “And Jeeeeezus rose up at the top of the key, and shot over old Satan’s outstretched hands…and Jeeeeezus scored!!!..”
Fully awake now and aware of where he was and what he was listening to, Red Marchik reached across the still form of his peacefully sleeping wife and turned off the radio.
The clock read 7:01. Wanda always set their alarm on the station that featured Reverend Roland Ruland, the famed Sports Preacher. Reverend Ruland was a widely popular radio and television minister in the South, tying together as he did two of the great passions of the region: religion and sports. All of Reverend Ruland’s sermons-“available only on videotape or cassette, no printed versions”-involved scripture combined with athletics. The more far-fetched these connections, the more tenuous his analogies, the more popular Reverend Roland Ruland became.