by John McEvoy
Lenny leaned over the fence.
“Mr. Tenuta. Sir. Could I talk to you for a minute?” he said forcefully.
Tenuta, concentrating on Kenosha Rose who was being saddled by Paul Albano, said, “About what, son? I’ve got a horse running here. I’m busy.”
Lenny watched as Tenuta gave instructions to Mickey Sheehan. The horses circled the walking ring once more, then proceeded through the tunnel leading to the track. The paddock crowd dispersed.
Lenny grabbed his chance. “Mr. Tenuta, do you know you and I are cousins? I’m Bruno Ruffalo’s son.”
Tenuta, startled, stopped walking. “How about that? Nice to meet you, son. What’s your name?”
“Lenny. Lenny Ruffalo. I’m a big fan of racing. And a huge fan of yours.”
Tenuta smiled and nodded. Took Lenny by the elbow and began to steer him toward the grandstand. “Well, that’s good to know, Lenny. What can I do for you today?”
***
Lenny grinned. “All I need to know is how you think your two horses will do today.” He patted his jacket pocket. “I brought a bunch of money to bet on them. What do you think?”
Tenuta gave Lenny an appraising look. “Son, if any of us knew, on any given day, what our horses would do, we’d all be retired and wouldn’t be working seven days a week. Hell, I think—I think—Kenosha Rose is going to run good for my new jockey Mickey Sheehan. My other horse in today, Madame Golden, I have no clue what she’ll do. She’s a puzzle. She trains great but runs terrible. I’ve had a new vet start dealing with her lately. The lady does horse communicating stuff. But I have no idea if it’s going to work for Madame Golden today.”
He pulled away from Lenny, saying “Nice meeting you,” and walked rapidly through the doorway leading to his box. Over his shoulder he said, “Good luck, Lonnie.”
“Lenny,” muttered Ruffalo.
Lenny trotted past the first-floor mutual windows manned by clerks and went to one of the banks of automatic betting machines. He hated telling clerks what he was betting. The machines were fine with him.
Encouraged by Tenuta’s assessment of his horses’ chances, Lenny put most of his bankroll down to win on Kenosha Rose. The horse proceeded to run a dull fifth. Lenny disgustedly flung his Racing Daily down on the pavement in front of his bench. When Mickey Sheehan and Kenosha Rose, both splattered with dirt, came past him, Lenny shouted, “Nice ride, you dumb bitch.”
A man next to him roughly grabbed Lenny’s arm. “Watch your mouth, you jerk. I’ve got kids here with me.”
Lenny walked rapidly inside the building. He bought a Bud Lite. Tried to calm down as he paced back and forth, calculating what he might do with the remnants of his bankroll. He finally decided to pass up betting on Tenuta’s lesser entrant, Madame Golden. It was 4:24 p.m. He still had time to catch the 4:30 Metra train back to the city.
On the train platform he stood amidst a small crowd of obviously beaten-down bettors. One gray-haired old woman muttered over and over again, “Fuck horse racing and anybody who likes it.”
Another senior citizen, a squat man wearing a battered Chicago Bears ball cap and Cubs windbreaker, said, “Sadie, you say that almost every afternoon you’re here. And that’s almost every afternoon.” She gave him an icy look.
“See you tomorrow, Sadie?” he said.
Her smile revealed an amazing array of ugly and widely- spaced upper teeth. “’Course I’ll be back, Barney.”
With two minutes to go until the train’s scheduled arrival, this motley crowd listened avidly to the track announcer John Tully’s description of the fifth race. “And she continues to lead to the wire, Madame Golden, under young Mickey Sheehan.”
The last thing this crowd heard before the Metra cars’ closed was Tully’s report that “Madame Golden returned $30.40 to win, $17.60 to place, $8 to show.”
On the train, Lenny staggered to a seat near the door and next to a window. He felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Tears formed in his eyes. Passengers seated nearby gave him worried looks.
“Cousin Ralph,” he said bitterly, over and over, “you fucked me up good this afternoon. God damn you.”
Chapter Twenty-five
“Hey, it’s me. Wanna get a beer after work?”
Teresa Genacro said, “Wait a minute, Lenny.” She looked at the overhead mirrors above the aisles in the Berwyn convenience store where she worked as cashier five days a week, the late morning to late afternoon shift. A pair of furtive junior high boys were pretending to assess the packaged pastry items in aisle three. One of them slipped two cans of soup from across the aisle into the right pocket of his hoodie. “Hey, dipshit,” Teresa shouted. “Put that back. You’re on the video here, for Chrissakes.” The boy dropped the cans of chicken noodle and scurried out the door, his buddy on his heels.
“What was that?” Lennie said when Teresa again picked up the phone.
“Business as usual here. Amateur hour. These little shits got no idea how to steal.” She paused to punch out a multinumbered lottery ticket for one of the morning regulars. “Anyway, yeah, I’d like to go for a beer.” She plumped down on the stool back of the register counter. “My feet are fucking killing me. The Den? Six? Cool.”
***
Lenny arrived first at this aged Berwyn tavern and walked down the long, scarred wooden bar to one of the small, dark booths in the back of the large dark room. In early evening, The Den was crowded with construction guys just off work, plus remnants of the afternoon trade, oldsters who made their glasses of tap beer last as long as possible in order to delay them from returning to where they lived.
Some of the men nodded to Teresa as she strode past them. At five-ten, 155 pounds, she was what Lenny appreciatively termed “an impressive figure.” She had responded to this intended compliment by saying, “What the fuck does that mean?” Teresa was from the neighborhood. Most of The Den’s customers knew her. She was well remembered for throwing an obnoxious bricklayer through the tavern’s front window one eventful Easter Weekend night two years earlier when the man had gotten more than usually out of hand.
On her way to Lenny’s booth, Teresa said hello to Sid, the bartender, and swiped into her hand the bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon he’d placed on the bar for her.
Seated in the booth, Teresa said, “So, how’d you do at the track?”
Lenny shrugged, looking down at the table. Tried to avoid the losing White Sox score blazing across the television set up on the wall behind Teresa. “I did good today. Only bet one loser. ’Course I only bet the one horse,” he added sadly.
Teresa let out a sigh that ruffled the napkins on their table.
“You’re still going that bad with those nags?”
“Bad as can be. But that’s going to end,” Lenny said, leaning across the table. “I’ve worked out some new speed figures angles, Treece. I’m gonna start using them tomorrow when I go down to the OTB parlor.” He sat back, smiling.
“Lenny, Lenny, if you weren’t such a hopeful soul I wouldn’t be spending any time with you.”
The tavern’s dim lighting barely reflected off Teresa’s large ear-pierced items. Lenny thought, by no means for the first time, how fine she looked with jewelry parenthesizing her broad face. He smiled as he remembered his favorite of her body ornaments, the one located in the considerable recess of what he considered to be her deeply enticing navel. He said, “I’ll get us another round. Okay?”
They each had two more beers and split one of The Den’s super-salty microwaved pizzas, Teresa on the leading end here. Lenny slipped into the nearby gents for a quick meth hit.
Teresa looked around The Den, the place that her widowed father used to bring her to as a kid after Sunday mass at nearby St. Stanislaus Church. He’d sit her on a bar stool, get her a pickled egg from the large bottle on the bar. Give her as many beef jerkys as she wanted. Owner Sid always had a cold glass of ginger ale for her.
Like Lenny, Teresa was an only child. Unlike him, she had been secretly s
exually abused, by her father’s brother Albert when she was a preteen. Too embarrassed to inform her dad, she had confided in Sister Mary Agnes at her parochial school. The nun informed her father, who proceeded to beat his brother Albert nearly to death. Albert was hospitalized, but he did not lodge charges against Stan. Teresa and her father never saw Albert again.
Teresa had never felt a meaningful connection to anyone other than her dad until she met Lenny, six years ago, in the detention center of their Pulaski High School. Lenny had been caught smoking pot in the gym locker room. Teresa, having admitted she’d “slapped the shit out of” a student hall monitor who had made an ill-advised comment about her weight, was the only other person in the small, airless room besides Lenny.
Seated on a long bench, head down, long lank hair drooping around his thin, frightened face, Lenny appeared close to crying. Teresa slid down the bench to sit next to him. “Stop that,” she ordered. “That’s what they want to see you do.” She pointed at the ceiling corner where a security camera was aimed at the room.
She put her big right arm around Lenny’s slender back. “Hey,” she said, “we can get by all this shit. Just man up. Admit what you did. They’ll just put you on probation. This isn’t the end of the world for you, for Chrissakes.” Lenny looked at her gratefully. Teresa was the first girl at Pulaski who had ever shown any interest in him. They’d been close ever since.
Lenny made a second meth run to the wash room. He returned walking jauntily, his eyes aglow. “Damn, Lenny, I wish you’d give up that stuff.”
He shrugged. “Lot of days, if I don’t get high I can’t get by. Anyway, Treece, here’s the deal. My fucking distant cousin Ralph Tenuta is going great at Heartland Downs. But when I bet his horses, they lose. If I don’t bet them, they win. It’s unbelievable. It’s killing me. I talked to him today and he wouldn’t tell me anything about what horses he’s training that’s going to run good. Says he doesn’t know, which I think is pure bullshit. But I don’t know how to get good info out of him. I gotta figure a way to do that.”
Lenny got out of the booth. Sid was ready for him with another pair of Pabst Blue Ribbons. Back in the booth, he heard Teresa say, “Remember when we met back in high school. In the detention center?”
“How could I forget?” he smiled.
“Well, it was true that I beat that crappy high school rap by convincing the hall monitor, miserable little son of a bitch, to change his report. Not testify against me at the hearing.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Simple. I grabbed him in the hall one day. Told him if he spoke against me, I’d go to his house some night and set it on fire.” She took a swig of her beer and grinned in satisfaction. “It worked. He believed me.”
Lenny leaned across the table. He said softly, “Would you really have done that? The fire?”
“Fuckin’ A.” She drained the Pabst bottle. Gave Lenny a long look. “What you’ve got to do, Lenny, is throw the fear of God into your Ralph Tenuta. Wait, no, I take that back. Not the ‘fear of God.’ The fear of you. Then he’ll come through with the information, tips, inside info you’re after. What you need to turn things around with your horse playing.”
Lenny said, “Great idea, Treece. But what in hell could I do to make Ralph cooperate with me?”
“Let me think about it.”
Chapter Twenty-six
As Doyle bounced down the Heartland Meadows clubhouse stairs, his cell phone rang. He recognized the caller’s number. “Hello, Nora. Jack Doyle, ace jockey agent, here.”
Nora laughed. “What happened today that makes you so bubbly?”
“Mickey had three mounts this afternoon. Won with two of them, finished third on the other. Damn impressive. And people are starting to take major notice. Ira Kaplan, the Racing Daily writer, wants to do a feature story on her. The sports announcer on one of the local TV stations called, interested in her. I’ve got her on five mounts tomorrow, another five the next day. Hey, business is booming.”
He paused to look at his notebook. Mickey had earned a bit more than $3,000 that day. He was startled when Mickey burst out of the jockeys’ room and snuck up behind him and hugged him around the waist, laughing. “Wake up, Mr. Agent. You never heard me coming.”
Mickey was wearing white jeans and a black tee-shirt proclaiming, “Celtric Tigress—We’ll Be Back.”
“Great day, Mickey. I’m talking to your sister.” She waved him a hurried goodbye and headed for the parking lot.
Doyle said, “Okay, Nora, I’m back on. That was Mickey. She’s riding high. And very well, I might add.” He smiled as he watched Mickey jump into Ralph’s maroon 1992 Buick, a beautifully maintained reminder of topnotch American auto production. Ralph waved to Doyle as he pulled away. Ralph was taking Mickey to his Arlington Heights home with him for dinner with Rosa.
Nora said, “Mickey told me this morning she was invited to dinner at the Tenutas’ house tonight. Ralph will drive her home after that. He and Rosa have been so very nice to the both of us.”
“They’re genuinely nice people. And what a cook Rosa is! By the way, what are you doing for dinner tonight?”
A short silence. “Well, I was going to warm some of the Irish stew I made last night. It’s my culinary specialty. I made some good soda bread, too.” She paused. “Would you like to join me?”
Doyle said, “What goes best with Irish stew? I’ll pick something up at the Liquor Outlet.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve got some Guinness. And some Jameson’s as a valued accompaniment.” He heard her giggle.
“I’m on my way.”
***
“You’re as pale as the moon. But much more lovely,” Doyle said as he traced his finger down Nora’s neck. They lay atop the spread of her bed, naked and satiated, an hour after they’d enjoyed the Irish stew and the brew and the Jameson’s and each other.
They had moved quickly through the dinner, Doyle relishing all of it, telling her a few carefully edited stories about his past, then sitting back and getting her to similarly respond. He helped her clear the table. As Nora bent to turn on the dishwasher, he recognized a strain of possibility. He impulsively grabbed her around the waist as she turned toward the sink. Kissed her deeply. She looked up at him, eyes wide, smiling. Without saying anything, took his hand and led him to her bedroom. The night came alive for both of them.
***
“That was good for me, Jack. It’s been a long while since I’ve been with anyone. I could never lately set eyes on a man at home who sparked any interest in me.” She turned and placed her head on his chest. Her long red hair spread in a tickling way across his skin that made him laugh.
“What’s so funny, then?”
Doyle said, “Who would have thought that an Irish bookmaker named Niall Hanratty would lead me to a young Irish jockey, and me into bed with the jockey’s lovely sister?” He turned on his side, pressed her face against his chest, stroked her back. He heard her chuckle.
“Excuse me? What’s so humorous to you, woman?”
“The fact that I had to cross the ocean with my little sister in order to find myself a place in bed with a useful man.” She shook with laughter. Jack gave her a whack on her lovely firm butt. He smiled as she responded by kicking his foot.
They held each other and Nora continued to lay her head on his chest. Doyle looked up at the ceiling before saying softly, “Am I to assume that this, well, dalliance, won’t lead to anything verging on serious?” He waited expectantly.
Nora said quietly, “Only to perhaps a few other similar ‘dalliances,’ as you put it. If we’re lucky. That would be fine with me, Jack. And, I’m sure, with you.”
She sat up and shifted over in the bed to straddle him and leaned forward to put her mouth near his. Her hair framed Doyle’s face as she whispered, “We’re not the marrying kind, are we, Jack Doyle? And so feckin’ what?
“Now put your hand there, dear Jack. And your other hand there. And your mouth here.”
>
Never a man good at taking orders, Doyle took these.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Doyle had stopped in the Heartland Downs racing secretary’s office to pick up Tenuta’s mail. At the barn, he placed three envelopes on the trainer’s desk. One was a letter from the Illinois Racing Commission.
It was a hot summer morning, and Tenuta was sweating when he came through the door. He took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. Jack declined his offer of one. “I’m sticking with coffee.”
Seated behind his cluttered desk, Tenuta reached for the mail. After he’d opened the envelope on top, his swarthy face lost color. “Ralph, what’s the matter?” said a concerned Doyle. “You feel all right? You look terrible.”
“Not as terrible as I feel, Jack. Here, read this.”
The official notice from the Racing Commission informed Tenuta that his trainee Madame Golden had “tested positive for the illegal Class One Banned medication EPO, otherwise known as Elephant Juice.” As a result, Madame Golden’s purse earning would be taken away and distributed to the second-place finisher in the race in question. Tenuta was ordered to meet with the state stewards to determine why his “license should not be suspended for thirty days.” He also faced a fine of $3,500.
Tenuta was baffled. “Jack, I’ve got no idea what this EPO is. Never heard of it. And,” he said, “pounding his desk with a fist, “I’ve never given any of my horses anything but hay, oats and water. And, sure, some perfectly legal vitamin supplements. Everybody does that. Nothing illegal about that.”
Tenuta sat back in his chair, face to the ceiling. “Thirty years in this business and I’ve never had a horse of mine turn up with a drug positive. I don’t get it, Jack.”
“Ralph, cool down. Maybe the lab chemists made a mistake. As I understand it, you can ask for an independent laboratory to test Madame Golden’s blood sample. The commission has to allow you to do that. You just have to make a request when you meet with the stewards.
