Blind Switch

by John McEvoy

  “That’s about right.”

  “Has he ever come back here for a visit?” Karen continued.

  “Not that I know of,” Alice answered. “From the time he snuck out of here as a boy, I don’t believe Ronnie’s ever been back. One of the Romero boys told me a year or so back that he heard Ronnie was working on some farm up in Arkansas, or Kentucky. Ronnie can’t never be a jockey again, and he can’t get a license even to exercise horses at the racetrack. But he can work on farms, I guess.

  “But,” Alice said, “I’m not even sure that’s true. Rumors ’round here are thicker than skeeters in the swamp. All I could say is that, if he ain’t in jail again, he’s probably doing something with horses. That’s all Ronnie knows. He’s smart enough to stick with what he understands.

  “Thing is, Ronnie was a pretty bright boy. Could have stayed in school and done well. They was always testing him over to the grade school after he’d get in trouble. They found out that his brain was okay, but his mentality tests, well, they used to get them counselors all worked up.”

  Alice Cormier shook her head sadly. “Swear to you,” she said earnestly, “it all goes back to that damned Mortvedt blood. Why my sister ever married into that bunch is something I won’t understand if I live till Huey Long comes back.”

  ***

  Driving back to New Orleans, Karen said, “This Mortvedt must be a real sicko.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” Damon replied as he pulled out to pass one of the horse trailers that had also recently departed LaCombe Downs.

  Damon drove in silence for several miles before Karen said, “There’s one thing that really bothers me about this whole case.”

  “What’s that?”

  Karen said, “It’s that, from the start, the whole emphasis seems to be on apprehending Rexroth. I mean, I know he deserves it if he’s been defrauding insurance companies by having his poor horses killed. But everything seems to be aimed at him, from the time this investigation was launched. He’s the primary target. Looking for Mortvedt, well, it seems like that is seen as just an avenue to get to Rexroth. My question is, what about Mortvedt himself? As the creep doing the dirty work, why doesn’t he have the bull’s eye on his chest?”

  Damon gunned the Taurus into the passing lane and sped past a pair of semis before responding.

  “I know where you’re coming from,” he said. “The emphasis from the top has been on Rexroth from the very beginning. I can’t tell you why. And it’s not ‘ours to wonder why,’ either.

  “All I know is that Rexroth is the big enchilada on this plate, Karen. Mortvedt’s on the menu, but Rexroth is the main course as far as the Bureau is concerned.”

  Chapter 11

  After angling across the frenzied Dan Ryan Expressway traffic and exiting onto the Calumet Expressway, heading for Indiana, Doyle glanced out of his car window to the left, seeing the remnants of Gary’s industrial age, the empty foundries and factories. The Skyway was dotted with signs for the area’s current boom industry: casinos. Doyle thought he’d rather be fishing for the industrial-strength carp that inhabited the waters of Wolf Lake to the right of the Skyway than shooting craps on a summer afternoon.

  He figured about six and a half hours to Lexington and Willowdale Farm following the tollway to Indianapolis, a quick stop there to pick up a couple of pastrami sandwiches from Shapiro’s Delicatessen, then I-65 through the Hoosier State to New Albany, other side of the Ohio River from Louisville. Then it was an easy seventy-five miles or so from Derby Town to the heart of the Blue Grass.

  Doyle moved the radio dial off an all-news station after hearing the announcer begin to describe “an Oak Park woman who was the victim of a home invasion gone terribly wrong.” Doyle tried to imagine a home invasion going smoothly to the satisfaction of all concerned.

  As Doyle tuned in Gary’s good jazz station, in the middle of an Oscar Peterson tour de force titled “Nigerian Marketplace,” he began to review his assignment. He went over what Engel and Tirabassi had told him about the horse killings, went over his meeting with Aldous Bolger. Then his thought-train quickly went onto a siding marked by Doyle’s pleasant memory of meeting Bolger’s sister.

  “Caroline,” he said to himself, “nice name…nice girl…Wonder how many other New Zealand women are as great-looking as she is?”

  Doyle’s car, at the suggestion of Maggie Howard, was unwashed and unkempt, the interior packed haphazardly with his possessions, backseat strewn with horse industry magazines and old copies of the Racing Journal.

  “You got to make it look like a horseman’s car,” Maggie had said.

  This advice Doyle had received the previous morning after he’d driven out to Heartland Downs. He had wanted to say goodbye to City Sarah and Maggie, not necessarily in that order, and also ask that if any word was received in the Zocchi barn of former employee E. D. Morley, it be forwarded to Doyle in Kentucky.

  Doyle had caught up with Maggie right after training hours. “I got on ten this morning,” meaning she’d exercised ten horses, she said happily, “and I’m starving. I’ll even let a suspicious character like you buy me breakfast.” Her black eyes crinkled with good humor.

  Once they were seated in the track kitchen, where the morning orders were just about evenly divided between fried eggs and huevos rancheros, with bottles of beer being sold to many members of each faction, Doyle said, “What do you mean, suspicious?”

  Maggie smiled at him from over her platter of ham and eggs. “Jack, you know what I’m talking about,” she said. “Ever since you came to work for Angelo, everybody around here figured you were up to something. Like I told you from the get-go, you weren’t any kind of horse person then.

  “Sure, you picked up the routine pretty fast. And you showed up and worked hard, I’ll give you that. But that didn’t change the fact you weren’t really one of us.”

  Doyle stepped away from the table for a coffee refill at the cafeteria counter. When he’d returned to his seat, he said, “Maggie, what you say may be true. But I’ll tell you this, my dear, I better look the part where I’m going next.” Without coming close to getting into the subject of his involvement with the FBI, Doyle recounted how he had found a position on a farm in Kentucky.

  “Doing what?” said the incredulous Maggie Howard.

  “Working for a friend of mine. Name is Bolger.”

  “What farm you going on?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s called Willowdale.”

  Maggie looked even more amazed at this statement. “Jack, that’s one of the major farms down there.” Taking off her black exercise rider’s helmet, Maggie shook her black curls in another sign of disbelief. Then, her eyes narrowed as she regarded Doyle across the scarred plastic table.

  “Jack Doyle, you’re up to another something, aren’t you?” she said accusingly.

  “I’m just going about making a living, Maggie,” Doyle replied. “I don’t know how this is going to work out for me. But I haven’t got anything else going. I refuse to go back to the kind of bullshit jobs I used to do. And Angelo hasn’t exactly offered me any bonus money to return to work for him. So, I figured I’d give it a try down in the old Blue Grass.” He reached for his coffee cup, avoiding her gaze.

  Maggie went back to the counter, evidently convinced she wasn’t going to elicit any more useful information regarding Doyle’s upcoming employment. She returned with two bran muffins nearly the size of croquet balls, then quickly polished them off. Doyle shook his head admiringly; the girl had about a twenty-inch waist. “Don’t tell me,” she said, laughing at the look on Doyle’s face. “I know, I know, it’s what everybody says—I’ve got the metabolism of a hummingbird. Well, enjoy it is my theory.”

  “So,” Doyle said, trying to be as nonchalant as possible, “anybody ever hear from E. D. Morley?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Not a word,” she said. “That was real strange. E. D. worked for Angelo for four, maybe five years. That’s
a long time these days on a racetrack backstretch to work for the same man. Everybody figured they got along real good.

  “But then E. D. just never showed up one day. Never even picked up his last check, Angelo said. And that was real strange, because E. D. was as tight as they come. Not cheap, mind you; he’d always chip in for guys down on their luck, or something like that. But tight, is what I’m saying. I guarantee you, E. D. knew where his every dollar was, and why it was there.

  “Say,” Maggie said, frowning at Doyle. “Wasn’t it just about the same time you left the stable that E. D. did?”

  “Right about the same time, I guess. I’m not positive,” Doyle shrugged.

  Maggie’s big black eyes burrowed into Doyle. “Jack, there’s something here you’re not telling me about, something funny. Am I right?”

  Doyle stood up, smiling. “You’d know a lot more about me if you would have accepted my kind—no, make that heartfelt—invitation to dinner back when I first met you. But now,” he said, hands raised apologetically, “I’ve got to leave the state and head to my new job. I just don’t have the time to exchange any confidences with you now. Come on, I’ll walk you back to the barn.”

  As they headed toward the track kitchen door, Maggie said, “Somehow, Jack, I get the feeling I did the right thing. Don’t get me wrong,” she added, “it’s not that I don’t like you. But you remind me of a story an old boyfriend of mine told me.”

  Maggie waved hello at a trainer coming their way, then resumed talking as they walked.

  “This fella, this one-time boyfriend, grew up in Detroit and went to school with the son of one of those Mafia dons, or whatever they call them. Anyway, Jimmy, my friend, stayed in touch with this guy, his name was Mario, over the years. Jimmy wound up as a horse trainer, Mario went into the family business. And about five years ago, Mario got nabbed in a big crackdown in Detroit, and he got sent to prison.

  “My friend Jimmy kept in touch with Mario. And Mario wrote him back these long letters. He was a real good letter writer. Jimmy said Mario had been the editor of their high school newspaper.

  “Anyway, Mario is in prison for about three years, and near the end of his sentence, he gets to know a new arrival—a congressman from near his home back in the Detroit area. They get to be good buddies.

  “The congressman reads one of Mario’s letters one day, and he tells Mario, ‘You’re a terrific writer. I’d like to write a book—about my experiences in politics, and my bad luck that brought me here, and so forth.’ And then he says to Mario, ‘Would you help me write this?’

  “According to Jimmy, Mario tells the congressman, ‘No, I can’t do that, as much as I’d like to. The reason is, there’s not enough time. I’d like to help you, Congressman, but I’m getting paroled out of here in two weeks.’

  “I guess the congressman was pretty disappointed at this. He says to Mario, ‘Well, that’s too bad. I wish I would have gotten to know you sooner.’

  “And Mario takes a long look at this guy, this congressman, and he says to him: ‘Believe me, if you would have known me longer, you would have been here sooner.’’’

  Maggie stopped walking. They had nearly reached the south end of Angelo Zocchi’s barn by now, where her car was parked. She looked up at Doyle.

  “Jack, I can’t hardly help but think that there’s something about that story that brings you to mind. I don’t know what you were up to when you were here before. And I don’t know what you’re up to taking this farm job in Kentucky. Tell you the truth, I’d rather not know.

  “You’re a cool guy, Jack. But I do believe that getting into your life could be a risky thing.”

  Maggie Howard extended her strong, brown, right hand, and Doyle gripped it briefly. He couldn’t argue with her. Maggie seemed like a very nice, straight-ahead young woman, equipped with one of those built-in bullshit detectors like the kind that Jack Doyle carried through life.

  Chapter 12

  Once he’d identified himself over the intercom at the huge stone gates, Doyle pointed his car up a long, winding driveway that led through Harvey Rexroth’s Willowdale Farm.

  Doyle had driven the eleven miles out from Lexington on a blacktop county road that was flanked on each side by miles of rolling green pasture divided by expensive white fencing. Many of those miles had nineteenth-century stone walls still in place nearer the road.

  In contrast to the boom times of the nineteen-eighties, not all of the pastures were replete with thoroughbred horses; many of the fields were empty, others contained grazing beef cattle. While the city of Lexington had experienced a tremendous growth of business in recent years, Fayette County’s most visible and famous industry, horse production, had tailed off sharply.

  Still, the scenery was striking. Spring sunlight glistened on dew-laden grass, on which lay, lazed, or romped a variety of thoroughbred horses—from mares in foal, to those with foals at their sides, to the stallions isolated in the imperious splendor of their own paddocks. The white fences bordering the lush acreage of the Willowdale property extended for miles.

  When Doyle’s car had curved around the white-gravel driveway and up to the columned portico of the farm’s red-brick mansion, the front door of the enormous structure opened and a small, dark-haired, dark-suited man wearing gold-rimmed glasses motioned Doyle to park in a spot beside the steps. “Good morning,” the man said after Doyle had stepped out of the car.

  “I am Byron Stoner, Mr. Rexroth’s executive assistant. If you will please follow me, Mr. Rexroth is almost ready to see you.”

  Doyle removed his sunglasses, placing them in a pocket of his tan sport coat. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, khaki trousers, and Western boots. The complete assistant farm manager’s look, he hoped. He followed Stoner down a long hallway where walls of dark wood were covered with paintings of horses. The hall led to the rear of the mansion.

  Glass doors, like those in airports and hotels, slid open as Doyle and Stoner approached. Then they were at the entrance to an enormous tinted-glass structure covered by a retractable dome. The building housed a huge swimming pool, its border dotted with some comfortable-looking beach furniture.

  Circling the area that bordered the pool was a beige-colored, slightly banked track around which sped a gorgeous, long-legged, young redhead on inline skates. Doyle did a double take. All she was wearing was blue knee pads, blue elbow pads, and a red headband.

  “Well, good morning America, how are ya?” Doyle muttered to himself as the nearly nude figure flashed past him.

  He said to Stoner, “Isn’t that kind of dangerous? Without a helmet?”

  “She’s a real daredevil, that one,” Stoner said. “She’s one of Mr. Rexroth’s secretaries and companions. As you may have read in the popular press, Mr. Rexroth is a bachelor who loves women.”

  “Likes them active, eh?” Doyle said as the redhead zipped through the far turn of the track and headed toward them up the left straightaway. As she swung her arms from side to side, her breasts shifted sideways like cantaloupes in motion.

  “Active they must be,” responded Stoner without a trace of irony on his serious face. “Their assignments are considerably more physical than clerical, but Mr. Rexroth demands devotion to duty in all his employees, no matter what those duties may be. Mr. Rexroth is over there,” Stoner said, gesturing toward the far end of the pool.

  Doyle saw a thick-bodied man, five feet nine or ten and over 200 pounds, somewhere in his late thirties. He looked to Doyle to have been one of those naturally pudgy children who grew up packing on firm layers of blubber each year into adulthood, where they topped out in the portly section of their tailor’s files. Rexroth was talking on a cellular phone. His resonant baritone voice was angry and loud. The sun, shining through the open dome, bounced off Rexroth’s large, hairless head. Daddy Warbucks in the Blue Grass, Doyle thought.

  Rexroth wore a dark-green velour robe. On his feet were gray Nike cross trainers. In his left hand was a
baton-sized cigar that he gestured with as he talked into the phone. Asleep next to Rexroth’s right Nike lay a brown and white bulldog. Like Rexroth, the dog had a broad head, big shoulders, and a large, fleshy jaw. Doyle found himself momentarily gawking at the similarity of appearance between man and beast.

  About fifteen feet to Rexroth’s left, leaning forward on a white wicker couch and apparently impervious to the phone tirade taking place nearby, was a very large young man who Doyle, from the description supplied by the FBI agents, recognized as Rexroth’s bodyguard, Randy Kauffman. He looked as ominously stupid and strong as they had said. Kauffman was intently watching, on a small color television, the Jerry Springer Show.

  Doyle recalled Damon Tirabassi’s description of Kauffman as being “wider than a warehouse door, and just as dumb. He pumps more iron than the Packers, and he eats steroids like popcorn.”

  Damon had gone on to say that a Willowdale worker, later fired, reported Kauffman to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “This woman,” Damon said, “called in that she had seen Kauffman knock down a horse with one punch. Evidently Rexroth had ordered him to do it, so Kauffman cracks this old mare right between the eyes with a right hand, and down she goes. The ex-worker said Rexroth just was hopping around, laughing at this, calling Kauffman ‘Mongo.’ The point,” Damon said, “is don’t ever let him get his hands on you.”

  Doyle returned his attention to Rexroth. The media mogul sat behind a large, marble-topped desk, an impressive piece of furniture completely at odds with the rest of the mini-pavilion’s casual decor. The top of the desk was piled with computer printouts, notepads, newspapers, and a computer that Rexroth impatiently pecked at as he continued to shout into the phone.

  “Phillips,” he said, “the reason I made you editor of Horse Racing Journal, the reason you have a huge salary plus an expense count that you’ve padded so much it could win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction—was to boost, that’s BOOST, circulation. Goddamit, my papers don’t LOSE readers, they GAIN them—all except the one you’re editing.