Riders Down

by John McEvoy

  With all the rest of Katrina Schulte’s renters at their jobs at the track, the rooming house was empty. Katrina was tending the rose bushes that ran along the back fence of her property. She looked up when she thought she heard the familiar sound of crowd noise. But when she glanced at her watch she saw it was 12:59. She was puzzled, because she knew it couldn’t have been an exciting finish to the first race—the first race hadn’t gone off yet. She shrugged and returned to her roses.

  Bledsoe retrieved the shell casing that had spurted onto the floor near where he’d stood aiming the Remington. He quickly pocketed it, broke down the gun and packed it in the duffel, and took the stairs two at a time. He’d worn thin rubber gloves throughout his stay in the room, so he wasn’t concerned about fingerprints. He made it to his car, two blocks away, in less than two minutes.

  Driving away from the track and the sound of approaching police sirens, Bledsoe realized he was hungry as well as pumped up from what he’d done. But he decided to wait until he was a good ways west on Interstate 70, maybe even past Hagerstown, until he picked up something to eat on his way back to Madison.

  That night, as he sped past Cleveland on Interstate 80, Bledsoe fought off advancing fatigue by again mentally congratulating himself on his progress thus far. Things had really been set in motion now. He’d taken giant steps in his quest for Grandma’s millions.

  What would he do with the $15 million? Live very, very well, for one thing. That was a given. No more secondhand cars and third-floor walkups. Then he was struck by the thought that besides elevating his standard of living, this coming bonanza could serve to buy him some immortality at the university he had long attended. A chair there—he would endow a chair at UW! Two or three of his future millions should do it.

  What department should he favor with his generosity? There were so many in which he had studied over the years. Then it came to him, and he laughed aloud at the thought: the economics department, of course. The Claude Bledsoe Chair of Economics. Perfect.

  Chapter Thirteen

  News of Carlos Hidalgo’s shocking death spread rapidly through the horse racing world and, because of its horrible and mysterious nature, well beyond. Days later, no suspect had been identified, no motive revealed, no clues unearthed. His family buried Hidalgo in his native Mexico amid an atmosphere of grief, anger, and uncertainty.

  The day of the Hidalgo services, Claude Bledsoe was busy working in the office space of his Madison apartment on Mifflin Street. Using carbon paper, he carefully prepared copies of a letter on his late grandmother’s old Underwood Typemaster, a mastodon of the written word that she had bequeathed to him. He typed each recipient’s name in capital letters above the repeated text and addressed the envelopes on the Underwood as well. Then Bledsoe completely dismantled the old typewriter, placing its parts in a Kohl’s shopping bag that he carried to his car. Fifteen minutes south of Madison on Highway 51 he arrived at Lake Waubesa. Finding an isolated and empty short pier, he hurled the typewriter remnants far out into the lake. When he got back to Madison later that afternoon, he sent Jimbo Murray to a Mail Box outlet sixty miles away in Whitewater that handled UPS deliveries.

  He’d set everything in motion now. Carlos Hidalgo’s death had sent a message, these letters would emphasize it. With three months to go in which to meet Grandma Bledsoe’s deadline, Bledsoe glowed with confidence as he headed down Mifflin for an early evening drink or two at Doherty’s Den.

  ***

  Randy Morrison’s letter bearing its fictitious return address was delivered by UPS the next morning, addressed to Morrison in care of the Racing Secretary’s office, Dell Park, San Diego, CA. One of the junior clerks from that office brought the letter to the Dell Park jockeys’ room at 11 a.m. and placed it on the bench in front of Morrison’s locker, along with the rest of his mail. Morrison regularly received requests for his autograph and other forms of fan mail. He was the leading rider at the Dell Park meeting, a twenty-seven-year-old rising star. Making the junior clerk’s day was Morrison’s muttered, “Thanks, buddy.”

  Morrison, a five-foot-four, one-hundred-and-twelve pound bundle of muscle and sinew, had just showered off the residue of his morning exertions, including exercising two stakes horses for top trainer Wayne Calabrese. He decided to open his mail before sitting down for his daily session of racetrack rummy with his fellow riders. He picked up the brown envelope from the bench. He read:

  Randy Morrison,

  You don’t know me. You never will.

  I am the person who killed Carlos Hidalgo. It is very much in my power to do the same to you IF YOU DO NOT DO WHAT I SAY.

  You must intentionally LOSE on three horses of my choosing in the next month. You will be told which horse on the day of the race.

  You must make these losses look legitimate. I don’t want to have you suspended and unavailable for the second and third races. You can figure out how to do that.

  If you do not do as you are told in Race Number One, someone CLOSE TO YOU will die as Carlos Hidalgo did.

  If you do not do as you are told in Race Number Two and Three, you will die.

  IT IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT.

  There was no signature on this plain piece of paper.

  Randy Morrison read the letter again. Then he snorted, crumpled it up, and tossed it into a nearby wastebasket. “What a bunch of crap,” he said. He remembered notes from other crazies he’d received in the past. There had been many. Like most prominent professional athletes, Morrison drew unwanted attention from a frothing fringe group of fans. They included the seventy-four-year-old woman threatening him with a paternity suit if he didn’t agree to begin dating her, and the man who identified himself as “Master Winslow” and said he had laid a powerful voodoo curse on Morrison for having cost him a big daily double.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Gene Wishman, who was carefully polishing Morrison’s riding boots. Wishman served as Morrison’s valet. In every jockeys’ room in America, Wishman’s occupation was pronounced “val-let,” not the familiar “val-lay” in keeping with the word’s French origin. These men performed personal services for their jockey-employers: laundering their riding clothes, inspecting their whips for wear and tear, insuring that the correct amount of lead weight was placed in the saddles before each race. Those saddles were then transported by the valets to the paddock for placement on the horse. Like many of the men who worked as valets, Wishman was a former rider and therefore very comfortable in the milieu all of them referred to as “the room.”

  Morrison shook his head as he finished pulling a clean white tee shirt over his impressively muscled torso. “Another crackpot threat is all,” he said. “C’mon, let’s go play cards.”

  Five days later, at 9:47 in the morning, a jockeys’ room attendant at Dell Park answered his phone, then called out to Randy Morrison. “Phone for you, Randy.”

  “Yeah,” Morrison said into the phone.

  “I’m the letter writer,” said an obviously disguised voice in a whisper. “Listen carefully. Lose with your mount in the eighth race today. The four horse in the eighth race. Or I’ll do what I said I would.” Before Morrison could reply, the phone went dead.

  Morrison kept thinking of the phone call that afternoon as he dressed in the blue and yellow silks of Tom and Evie Knutson, owners of Bailey’s Babe, horse number four in the featured eighth race, and the strong favorite to win. Morrison was uncharacteristically reserved as he met the Knutsons in the paddock before the race. He barely heard the riding instructions given by trainer Leon Leving. As Bailey’s Babe left the paddock and walked through the tunnel leading to the track, Morrison muttered to himself, “This is bullshit.” Minutes later, he crossed the wire first with Bailey’s Babe and smiled broadly at the jubilant Knutsons, who eagerly awaited him in the winner’s circle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bledsoe entered the Addison Hotel, located just west of the first turn of Indianola Park outside of Indian
apolis, through an open loading dock on the building’s east side. The morning sun was at his back. He wore a gray jumpsuit that he’d commissioned from a Madison seamstress who specialized in costumes for the university’s theater department. On its back the inscription read “Corrigan Plumbing and Heating.” He carried a brown duffel bag in his right hand. A plain blue baseball cap was pulled down low on his forehead, almost touching the top of his dark sunglasses. He walked through the service door with a nod to a hotel maintenance worker who was dumping trash. “Emergency call,” Bledsoe grunted as he passed the man and headed for the freight elevator. He rode it to the top floor of the hotel and climbed the interior stairway to the roof. It was 5:33 a.m.

  Bledsoe had done his homework. He had accessed the Jockeys’ Union internet web site and carefully studied the photos available there of Eddie Calvin, Randy Morrison’s older half-brother. On the second to last day he’d spent with her, Marnie Rankin had finessed her way into an informative phone chat with an old friend of hers, trainer Danny Hiller, eliciting the information that Eddie Calvin was riding first-string for him at Indianola Park. “Eddie comes out every morning to work horses for me. He’s been great to work with for several years now,” the normally reticent Hiller enthused.

  At 6:01, just as the morning haze had almost completely dissipated, Bledsoe peered through his binoculars from his rooftop perch overlooking the first turn of the Indianola Park racing strip, two hundred and ten yards away. He saw a momentary break in the procession of horses heading from their barns to the track. He put down the binoculars, reached into the duffel bag, and then began to assemble the Remington.

  ***

  Eddie Calvin had kissed his wife Lucy goodbye at 5:30 that morning. It was a kiss on her forehead that, as deep in sleep as she was, she may not have noticed, for she was accustomed to his early departures and rarely awakened before he went off to work. Their two young daughters also slept soundly in their room in the Calvins’ Indianapolis townhouse.

  Dressed in jeans, boots and a blue tee-shirt worn under his black protective riding jacket, Eddie carried his riding helmet to his red Ford pickup. Dew lingered on the carefully trimmed grass lining the driveway. As Eddie buckled his seat belt, he glanced at the simple wooden cross that dangled from the Ford’s rearview mirror, then tapped it for good luck. It was a gift from his oldest daughter, Ashleigh, age eight, who had made it in her bible class.

  As he drove to Indianola Park, Eddie made a mental note to give his brother Randy a call that night; Randy’s birthday was the next day. Eddie never looked at the wooden cross, or touched the St. Christopher medal he wore on a chain around his neck, or read his bible each evening, without thinking of his older half-brother. It was Randy who had “helped pave the way,” as he put it, for Eddie’s turnaround—the salvaging of a promising riding career and what Eddie now firmly believed was his immortal soul. Both had been threatened by a potentially lethal combination of substance abuse and pride.

  Six years earlier, after two straight sensational seasons in which he had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars, Eddie Calvin had fallen deeply into drugs and, finally, despair. The quality of his riding declined sharply. His marriage teetered. He knew what was happening to him. He was convinced he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  Aware of Eddie’s deepening troubles, Randy had several times flown in from the coast to attempt to counsel his brother, urging him to enter a substance abuse program, as he himself had done four years earlier. Randy also pleaded with Eddie to attend meetings of the Racetrack Chaplaincy—as he himself regularly did. The half-brothers were products of hard-working, hard-drinking parents who had struggled to make a modest living on a small Arkansas farm. The boys had seen firsthand the ravages of alcohol excess. Still, both had taken to drinking on a regular basis early in their teenage years. During these visits, Eddie always listened respectfully to Randy, vowed to reform, but soon reverted to his destructive ways.

  One autumn weekend Eddie traveled to Woodburn Racetrack on the outskirts of Toronto to ride in two stakes races for an old trainer friend of his, a man who was not then aware that Eddie’s life and livelihood were in jeopardy because of drugs. Eddie didn’t arrive at his hotel until late the night before the races. He promptly fell asleep, but awakened less than thirty minutes later feeling, as he often later recounted, “as if all of a sudden I was not alone.”

  Energized, restless, Eddie reached for the remote control and turned on the television. Appearing on the screen was a famous television evangelist. Eddie found himself listening intently as the man implored his audience to “come to Christ.” Suddenly, Eddie found himself weeping. An enormous sense of peace, an almost physical release, swept over him. As he later would tell the many treatment groups he addressed, “I just knew all of a sudden that Jesus was with me and that I needed to accept him into my life. I had found what I’d been missing.”

  Starting that night, Eddie Calvin’s addictions were a thing of the past. He never touched drugs or alcohol again. The following afternoon, he won both the stakes races for his old trainer friend. When he returned home, he told his amazed and delighted wife that their old life was “dead and gone.” Eddie became an active spokesman for, and heavy financial contributor to, the racetrack substance abuse agency, and a very vocal advocate of the “power and love of Jesus.” His riding career took off again, too.

  Five minutes from his home this rainy morning, Eddie hit the drive-through window at the Dunkin’ Donuts for a large black coffee, then continued on the three miles to the backstretch entrance of Indianola Park. It was 5:57 when he parked his truck outside of Barn Nine. Walking to the barn office to say good morning to trainer Hiller, Eddie heard the familiar sounds of banging feed tubs, pitchforks scraping stall floors, radios tuned to Spanish-speaking stations, horses nickering as they were bathed. The sharp smell of horse manure, horse urine, horse sweat, liniment, and hay made him smile, as always. It was an aural and odorous wrap-around experience he thought he would never tire of.

  “Need you to gallop five horses and work one, Eddie,” said Hiller as he glanced at the morning’s schedule. Eddie nodded, sipping his coffee as his first mount, a big bay filly named Asbury Julie, was tacked up and brought to him outside the barn. “She’s an easy one,” Hiller said. “Take her around twice.” Hiller returned to his office as Eddie steered Asbury Julie onto the dirt riding path that led to the racetrack a quarter of a mile away. The jockey’s shoulders bobbed in rhythm with the filly as she bounced along. He could tell that she felt good. He did, too. The morning sky had begun to brighten.

  Eddie brought Asbury Julie onto the racetrack at 6:08. Bledsoe, who had been scanning the arrivals through his binoculars, easily identified Eddie from the photos he had studied in the Jockey News. Eddie was grinning as he said something to the clockers at the rail.

  A tall, lean woman on an outrider’s pony approached Eddie and took hold of Asbury Julie’s bridle. Bledsoe watched as Eddie waved her away, indicating that he did not require her assistance. He said something to her and Bledsoe, now observing the scene through his rifle’s scope, saw her throw her head back and laugh before moving away from Eddie.

  Eddie looked back over his shoulder and grinned at the woman. The bullet from Bledsoe’s rifle smashed down through the back of his head and through the center of that grin. Eddie’s riding helmet seemed to slightly elevate in a gush of blood and matter, some of which spewed onto the woman’s pony. That terrified beast wheeled and tossed the woman to the ground. She landed within a yard of where Eddie had fallen. She frantically turned away from his shattered face and continued to scream as track workers rushed forward.

  Before the track ambulance arrived on the scene, Bledsoe had already pressed the “lower level” button in the otherwise empty freight elevator. By the time the elevator car had descended the twelve floors, he had removed his plumber’s coveralls and blue cap. He put his dark glasses on before he stepped off the elevator on level one, a broad, ba
ld man in a blue business suit carrying a brown duffel bag.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The day Eddie Calvin was to be buried, Matt finished his morning run on the Evanston path bordering Lake Michigan just as the rim of the emerging sun climbed into view.

  He’d gotten up earlier than usual because he, Maggie and Rick were scheduled to begin their drive to Indiana by 6 a.m. Eddie Calvin had ridden for Maggie some years before, and she was going to pay her respects. Matt and Rick had both been assigned to cover the event for their respective papers.

  After checking his watch, Matt sprinted the last two blocks to his Hinman Avenue condo, pounded up the back stairway, and hit the shower right after activating the coffee maker. Twenty minutes later, dressed as formally as most racing writers ever get—shirt, tie, sport coat, pressed slacks—he sipped his coffee as he watched out the front window for Maggie’s black GMC Denali. When it pulled up in front of his building, he went immediately down the stairs and out the door, hair combed but still damp from his hurried shower. As he approached the curb, Rick got out of the passenger seat. He said, “You sit with Maggie. This is way too early for me, man. I want to stretch out in back get a little more sleep.”

  “Help yourself,” Matt said. He kissed Maggie on the cheek as she began to pull away from the curb. She was wearing an expensive-looking black dress. Her broad-brimmed black hat lay on the console between their seats.

  “Let me give you one tip before I go to sleep,” Rick said as he settled into the broad second seat. “Maggie, keep going straight south once you’re on the Outer Drive. It’s old Highway 41 and it’ll take you down along the lake to 90 before you hook up with 65 to go south. That way you’ll miss the Skyway tolls.”

  “I’ll pay the tolls,” Maggie said, eyes on the mirror in which she could see Rick. “No time for the old scenic route this morning. We’re in a hurry.”