The Significant Seven

by John McEvoy

  “That she is,” Doyle answered. He looked at his employer, who was standing with his arms folded across what Doyle noticed, for the first time, a considerably reduced paunch. Doyle frowned. “Ralph, are you losing weight?”

  “Quiet, Jack. I’m concentrating on the filly.”

  The other three assistant starters carefully walked their two-year-olds up to the back of the gate. They led them in, then let each horse back out, stand, examine this situation which was seemingly disturbing to at least two of them, who skittered and balked before re-entering. Lucy of Artois, meanwhile, was quiet and alert in her stall.

  Doyle and Tenuta looked on as a big bay colt reared up backwards, almost hauling his handler off the ground, then came down and planted his feet and lashed out with the rear ones, narrowly missing head starter Dodge, who unleashed a string of curses that sizzled through the Heartland Downs air. “Put that crazy bastard on the list,” Dodge yelled to an assistant who was carrying a writing pad.

  Doyle said, “What list?”

  “His. Willard Dodge’s. He won’t let the owner of that colt enter him in a race until he’s better-mannered at the gate. The trainer, Buck Norman I think, will have to keep bringing him here for schooling until Dodge okays him to race.”

  All four horses were finally in the gate. Dodge waited to let them get their feet and heads settled before pressing the button. The doors flew open. One of the four stepped toward the back door of his stall. Another walked out the front. Lucy of Artois and another filly shot out of the gate like old pros.

  “All right, Jack,” Tenuta said happily, slapping Doyle on the back. “See how she came out of there?” He excitedly clapped Doyle on the back again. “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll buy you coffee.” Tenuta gave a thumbs-up to ‘Our Lucy’s’ groom, saying, “I’ll see you back at the barn, Emilio.”

  Walking across the infield toward the barn area and its track kitchen, Tenuta said, “What did you ask me before? I know you asked me something.”

  “I asked whether you were losing weight. I just noticed this morning what appears to be a weight loss on your part. Am I right?”

  They dodged a tractor pulling a harrow down the main dirt track. Doyle could hear Tenuta’s sigh even in the wake of the noisy maintenance machinery. “I’m still under attack at home. In the kitchen. It’s that damn Kentucky cookbook Rosa’s got.”

  Doyle said, “Aw, c’mon, Ralph, how bad could it be? You always say Rosa’s a terrific cook. The meal I had at your place, it was great. Remember the Kentucky Hot Browns? I thought they were good.”

  Tenuta groaned at the memory. “Rosa used to be a great cook. I don’t think I told you, but before we were married, I had Rosa kind of go into training with my mother. At my suggestion, if you know what I mean. Learning exactly how to do it right. How to make homemade pasta the right way, the way veal should be done. Meat and spinach ravioli, a great red sauce made with pork neck bones. Cannolini, lasagna, oh, Jack, what that woman could do in the kitchen! My Mama was a good teacher. Rosa was a good student. But now, she’s into this new stuff. I’ve lost fifteen pounds since she started this.”

  Doyle turned his head so Tenuta could not see him trying to stifle his laughter. “You’re not taking this seriously, are you?” the trainer said. “Let me tell you last night’s fiasco. Rosa started us off with something called apple carrot soup. The vegetable was a quote broccoli ring unquote. It looked like some kind of jello mold that had sat too long. Tasted like it, too. Then she came out with the doves.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Doyle said. “Doves?”

  “Doves. Damn right. I asked her where she got them. Her friend at Keeneland, Frances, the lady who sent her the damn cookbook, knows some hunter down there who reached into his freezer and Fed-Exed the birds to us. I guess hunting doves is legal in Kentucky. Or somewhere down south. Anyway, they wound up on my dinner table,” he said glumly.

  They crossed the racing strip and started heading for track kitchen. Tenuta said, “Are you Catholic, Jack?”

  Doyle stopped walking and looked at Tenuta. He hadn’t been asked that question in years. “Raised Catholic.”

  “Me too,” Tenuta answered. “A long time ago. The Holy Ghost is a dove, am I right? Isn’t there a peace symbol dove, or something? How can people shoot and eat birds like that?”

  Doyle had to turn his face away again before saying, “Ralph, what kind of a dove dish was it? Or dove recipe? You know what I mean.”

  “Don’t make fun of this, Jack,” Tenuta barked. “The little birds came in a mushroom soup casserole with cheddar cheese on top. Along with what Rosa said was sweet potato hash browns. Something called apricot horseradish sauce on the side.”

  Doyle was tempted to say “That’s probably the best way for the little things to be presented,” but he held his tongue. They walked on in silence.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  July 28, 2009

  Doyle flew Southwest Airlines from Midway Airport to America’s capital of gambling, sin, and family-friendly resort hotels. After listening to Morty Dubinski describe on the phone his “tremendous progress” during the first two days of the current Super Handicappers Challenge, Doyle decided to visit his money, and his friend, in Las Vegas. He told Ralph Tenuta he needed “a couple of days off. My first of the meeting.” Tenuta agreed. Doyle did not bother to inform Agents Engel and Tirabassi of his impending absence. Having made absolutely no progress in uncovering the Heartland Downs sponger thus far, Doyle figured a day or two away couldn’t hurt.

  He took a cab from McCarron Airport to the Delano Towers Hotel, site of the handicapping contest. When he hit the sidewalk, the midday heat hit him. “Jesus,” Doyle said to the doorman, “what’s the temperature?”

  “Here?”

  “Hey, wiseass, you don’t look to me to be an expert on heat indices in Budapest. Yeah, here.”

  The doorman grinned. “One-ten in the shade. And there isn’t any. Want me to take your bag?”

  “No, thanks,” Doyle said, handing the young man a five. “I can manage getting that far by myself.”

  At the registration desk, Doyle told the clerk he was a “guest of Mr. Dubinski.” Morty, as a paid contestant, had been given a suite with two bedrooms on the hotel’s tenth floor. “Very comfortable,” Doyle said to himself as he unpacked. Then he went downstairs to find the little handicapper.

  Doyle was directed to the large room devoted to horse playing. He stood in the doorway until he spotted Morty’s large white head bent over a pile of papers at one the many wooden carrels, second row from the front of the room with its lectern and microphone for the contest supervisor. Each of these small, comfortable spaces contained a desk, two chairs, and a small television set, even though the room’s wide walls featured enormous flat screens showing racing action from around the country. Morty, like all the rest of his rivals, was busily changing channels on the television set from racetrack to racetrack, glancing up at the wall screens, down at the papers with their trip notes, sheet numbers, and the Racing Daily past performance pages containing lettering, underlining, and symbols known only to themselves. With their equations and notations, some of these mounds of research materials looked like prep sheets at Las Alamos in the early stages of the development of the “Big One.”

  Next to Morty’s carrel sat a gray-haired gent wearing a tee-shirt with “Grandpa-Pittsburgh” on its back. To the right of his television set was a framed color photo of a dozen or so young children. A string of black rosary beads hung from Grandpa Pittsburgh’s neck.

  Immediately to Grandpa Pittsburgh’s right was a studious-looking young Chinese-American woman. Long black pigtails sprouted from under her backwards ball cap that proclaimed her to be “Pearl of the Orient.” On Morty’s left was a middle-aged white woman wearing a multicolored mumu large enough to protect the Wrigley Field pitcher’s mound during a rain delay. She was happily conversing with the older man to her left who, Doyle thought, bore an am
azing resemblance to the Grateful Dead’s late Jerry Garcia.

  “How I love this stuff,” Doyle said. It crossed his mind, not for the first time, that the entire sport/business of horse racing was balanced on the bankrolls of folks just like this. The nation’s breeding farms, lavish or modest; jockey fees, trainers’ incomes, feed suppliers, manual laborers at the tracks, mutuel clerks and janitors and bartenders, all supported by a percentage of the dollars provided each day by bettors like these from Seattle to Miami and all the way in between.

  Morty jumped up, smiling, when Doyle tapped him on the shoulder. “Jack, Jack, great to see you! Really great! Thanks for coming.” He pumped Doyle’s hand. “Did you find our room okay? I mean our suite?”

  “Sure did. Very impressive, Morty.” Doyle pulled a chair out from the desk. “How goes it?”

  The little man beamed. “Jack, listen to this. I’m in a good position to win this whole thing. Look at the leader board up there on the front wall.”

  Morty, Doyle saw, was in second place in the standings. Each contestant was obligated to make fifteen mythical $2 win and place wagers each day of the three-day tournament. They could make these bets on races at any track around the nation. Morty had “started kind of slow the first day,” he said. “Then I caught fire yesterday and moved into the top ten. Jack, I was so pumped I could hardly sleep last night. I just stayed up, going over and over my system figures for today. It paid off.”

  With only one race remaining on this, the final day of the contest, Morty trailed the leader, Mike Conway, also from Illinois, by only $10. Conway’s total was $282. With two hundred fifty men and woman competing, Morty was a cinch to earn prize money.

  Doyle said, “Who are you betting next, Morty?”

  “A horse from Heartland Downs back home,” Morty replied. “Seventh race. I like that turf filly, Tuck’s Tweedie, trained by Mark Gordon. She showed speed last time out going a mile and a sixteenth. She’s only going five and a half furlongs today. I like it when they drop back in distance like that. Tuck’s Tweedie looks solid to me. She fits all my new system guidelines.”

  Doyle reviewed Tuck’s Tweedie’s past performances in Racing Daily. Her speed figures indicated she was a standout in this comparatively weak eight-horse field. “I heard Conway made his last bet of the day and got nothing,” Morty whispered. “Jack, I’m in the driver’s seat here.”

  They watched on the massive screen on the right wall as Tuck’s Tweedie approached the Heartland Downs starting gate. Doyle frowned. “She’s not exactly on her toes, is she?” he said. Morty’s eyes were riveted on the screen. With considerable urging, Tuck’s Tweedie entered her stall in the gate. The race began at once.

  Sixty-five seconds later, Tuck’s Tweedie struggled across the finish line in last place. There was booing from the Heartland Downs crowd. The upset winner of the race, Brody Be Good, paid $24.20, thus vaulting the woman previously in fifth place, the mumu lady next to Morty, to the contest victory. Her celebration rocked the area. With favored Tuck’s Tweedie out of the money, the trifecta paid $7,898.

  Morty continued to gaze up at the TV screen, as if he had just seen a re-run of another dismal portion of his betting life. Doyle kept his eye on the television as Tuck’s Tweedie, her head down, body language dismal, was led away by her groom. Disgusted, Doyle got to his feet and heard the bewildered Morty say “Jack, I don’t get it. My horse was a super standout in my new system. But she stopped like a bad check. And I lose the contest to my neighbor here, this hair dresser from Topeka. Nice lady, but… Is there no justice, Jack? How do you figure it?”

  “I’ve got a good idea about what happened to your horse, Morty. And Tuck’s Tweedie is stabled right next to Ralph Tenuta’s horses. Damn.”

  Tuck’s Tweedie’s loss dropped the anguished Morty back to fifth place in the final standings of the contest. Still, his reward of $20,000 was, as he said, “The biggest payoff of my life. Thanks, Jack, for loaning me the grand to get me here.”

  Doyle was happy for his friend. He didn’t mention that, had Tuck’s Tweedie won, Morty would have taken down the first prize of $150,000. Doyle knew Morty knew that.

  The ride to Chicago, nearly from the time the plane crossed the Mississippi until it reached western Cook County, was a nightmare. The craft was buffeted by winds that caused it to bob up and down in a violent rhythm. The seatbelt sign was on. The interior lights suddenly went off. Doyle, trying to devise some kind of plan that would thwart the increasingly effective horse sponger, had his thought train thoroughly derailed over Springfield. That was when the plane stopped bouncing up and down and began going side to side like dice in a desperate crapshooter’s hand. The youngest stewardess shrieked and lurched toward a perch in the back. Just as she strapped herself in, the galley’s refrigerator doors burst open, scattering bottles of wine and beer and cans of soda and juices forward down the aisle as the planed dipped downward again. The crew made no attempt to retrieve these items. People screamed with fright.

  Doyle glanced at his seatmate, a young woman who had been listening to earphones and working on a spread sheet in her computer. Her pretty face was tinged with terror. She grabbed Doyle’s wrist. He laid his hand across hers’. To Doyle’s right, a dark complected young man was rocking back and forth in his seat, possibly in prayer or abject fear. Children began howling. Some adults, too.

  Seven and one-half terrifying minutes elapsed before, with a wonderful suddenness, the plane steadied and resumed a normal trajectory. The young woman let go of Doyle’s wrist. She said, “I’m Tracy Hartenstein. And I was scared shitless. Hope you didn’t mind me grabbing on to you.”

  “No problem. I’m Jack Doyle. I was starting to say a rosary for the first time in many years when you latched on to me. It made me pray faster.”

  They smiled at each other as their pilot, Captain Brett Steele, came on the intercom. To Doyle, the pilot’s name had a reassuring ring to it when announced following takeoff from Las Vegas. Now, Captain Steele, after fumbling momentarily with his sound system, intoned very calmly that “That little patch of weather is all behind us, folks. Sit back and enjoy the rest of your flight.”

  “Thank you, Lord,” Doyle said. Tracy Hartenstein took Doyle’s hand again, this time in a gentler grip. “Thank Him for me, too,” she said.

  Twenty-four hours later the Illinois state veterinarian Mary Holliday confirmed that Tuck’s Tweedie had been found to have had a sponge clogging her air passage during the previous day’s race.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  August 2, 2009

  “Jack, this is Renee Rison. Do you have a minute?”

  Doyle was driving back to Chicago after the day’s races. Traffic on Willow Road was moving right along for a change. “Sure, Renee.”

  “I need to talk to you face to face. I have a business proposition I’d like to discuss with you. I thought maybe we could meet this week. I know you’re a jazz fan.” There was a pause before she said, “Would you be interested in going to Ravinia tomorrow night to hear the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra? Unless, of course, you’re doing something with your friend Cindy.”

  “Actually,” Doyle said, “I had already planned to be at Ravinia tomorrow night. It’s a great band and leader Wynton Marsalis is a big favorite of mine.” Doyle angled onto the southbound Edens Expressway before adding, “Cindy’s in Kentucky this week, working horses before the Fasig-Tipton sale.” He jerked his steering wheel to the side to avoid being rammed into by a small woman driving a red Cadillac Escalante, cell phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, precariously balanced on top of her steering wheel. He swore.

  “What?” Renee said.

  “Nothing, nothing. That was just a short comment on the driving habits of some of our fellow citizens.”

  She laughed. “Sounded obscene to me.”

  “So are the habits of many American motorists. Anyway, let’s do it. I usually don’t like to discuss business in a social setting. But fo
r you and Wynton, I’ll make an exception. What time should I pick you up?”

  Renee said, “No, I’ll meet you there. I’ll ride out with some friends, but they will not join us. I guess you’ll be coming from the track?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave work early and pick up a picnic dinner for us. Is that okay?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Doyle said. “How about I bring some wine?”

  “Veuve Clicquot would be nice.”

  Doyle winced, well aware of the cost of that famous French champagne. On the other hand, tomorrow could be a great summer night at one of his favorite Chicago area music venues. And in the company of someone who, if she had a job proposal in mind, might become his only current paying employer. “You’ve got it,” Doyle said. “Where shall I meet you?”

  “You know that staircase to the Martin Theater right behind the main entrance? I’ll look for you about six. Thanks for doing this, Jack.”

  ***

  Doyle paid the $10 lawn admission and walked through the gate of this Chicago area treasure, Ravinia Park, now more than a century old. The thirty-six acre venue hosted nearly one-hundred and fifty events each summer. This was where George Gershwin played “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1936. So many people attended, Doyle had read, that hundreds boosted themselves up and listened while seated on the limbs of trees that surrounded the pavilion and lawn.

  On the Martin Theater stairs, little Renee sat behind a large picnic basket placed on the step in front of her. She was wearing a long-sleeved white and black shirt that had The Badger Express’ photo on the front, sandals, black jeans. A black sweater was tied around her neck. She was paying no attention to a much older man, sitting to her right, who was apparently trying to engage her in unwanted conversation. Above his north suburban standard-issue whale pants, a dark blue shirt bulged at waist level.

  Renee stood up and gave Jack a chance to peck her cheek before she looked down at the pest next to her. “This is my bodyguard, the ex-boxer,” she said. “Would you like to meet him?” The heavy set, middle-aged man hefted himself to his feet. Eyes averted, he pulled his straw hat farther down on his face. “Nice to meet you,” he mumbled before sidling off.