Close Call (2 page)
The main entrance to Monee Park was unattended as Doyle drove through the gate. It was two weeks before the race meeting would begin and there were only a dozen or so cars in the parking lot, most of them in slots marked for “Officials.” Looking at the old, brick grandstand that loomed in front of him, Doyle couldn’t help but laugh at his irony-laden situation. The only previous time he had taken a job at a racetrack, Heartland Downs northwest of Chicago, it was as a novice groom, intending to fix a race, a plan he had reluctantly carried out. It was a plan that also wound up with him being coerced into cooperating with the FBI in cracking a ring of criminals who were killing horses for their insurance values. Besides helping to bring these vicious crooks to justice, the main benefits for Doyle had been clearing his name with the authorities, winning a major bet on an honest race, and getting to know the beautiful Caroline Cummings. Now, here he was less than a year later, about to begin work as the publicity director of another Chicago area thoroughbred track, this one a small and struggling enterprise that he’d never before set eyes on.
Doyle had returned to Chicago after a three-month stay in New Zealand and, on his first full day back, before he had seen any of the people he knew, he got a phone call from Kellman. “How did you know I was back?”
Moe said, “That’s not important. How about if I buy you dinner at Dino’s?”
Early that evening Doyle strolled through the crowd of clamoring would-be customers at the entrance of Dino’s Ristorante, a Clark Street fixture and Kellman’s favorite restaurant. Dino’s was a prime destination for the city’s movers, shakers, and wannabes in both categories. Angie, the hostess, looked at Doyle in surprise. “Haven’t seen you lately,” she said. “Go on in. Mr. Kellman is waiting for you.”
Kellman was sitting in his usual maroon leather booth at the back of the long room, under the huge photo of Frank Sinatra, the singer’s arm around the beaming Dino. There was a Negroni cocktail in front of Kellman. He held a cell phone to his ear. He switched the phone from right to left hand and reached across the table to enthusiastically shake Doyle’s hand, all the while continuing to talk on the phone.
“Did I tell you last week or not, that fur won’t be in until the end of the month. And the price remains the same.” Kellman listened for thirty seconds or so, rolling his eyes. “Feef,” he said, “I’m busy. I don’t have time to quibble. I know it’s late in the season for a fur, but that doesn’t make the fur any less valuable to me. There’s always next fall. Now, you want it or not?” Kellman nodded and said, “You got it. Good bye.”
Kellman took a long drink of his Negroni. “Fifi Bonadio,” he said to Doyle. “He’s in love again. For about the thirty-ninth time. Some improv actress he met at a Second City benefit for the St. Joseph’s League. You couldn’t make it up. It’s a good thing his wife now spends most of the year with her relatives back in Sicily. And he wants a discount on top of his discount, just because we grew up together on the West Side.”
Doyle had heard a good deal about Bonadio but had never met him. That was fine with Doyle. Bonadio owned a huge construction company and several Chicago area banks and car dealerships, but he was not in any Chamber of Commerce. He was known to be a shrewd businessman, avid woman chaser and, more significantly, longtime head of the Chicago Outfit.
Kellman signaled their waiter, who quickly returned with another Negroni plus a Bushmills on the rocks for Doyle. The little man sat back, saying, “Jack, you look good. With that tan you got, all the color you got Down Under, you remind me of Steve McQueen in that prison escape picture. What was it…yeah, ‘Papillon.’ It’s good to see you.” They clinked their glasses together. “I was surprised you came back so soon,” Kellman said. “I had the impression you might just wind up staying in New Zealand with that Cummings woman.”
“Caroline,” Doyle amended.
“Yes, Caroline Cummings,” Kellman said.
Caroline Cummings, an attractive widow with two young children and sister of horseman Aldous Bolger, a key aide to Doyle in bringing the Kentucky horse killers to justice, had invited Doyle to her home outside of Auckland. Theirs became a satisfactorily social and sexual relationship during Doyle’s months there, just as they had enjoyed each other on the Kentucky horse farm the previous summer. But, as Doyle said to Kellman before draining his drink, “Love really never had much to do with it.” He hesitated, swirling the ice cubes around in his glass. “I admire and like Caroline a lot. Always will. I think the feeling is mutual. But the more time we spent together, the more obvious it became to both of us that we were never going to be anything more than good friends.…
“It was hard to leave down there,” Doyle said. “At the same time, I was pretty damned glad to get back to Chicago. Now,” he added, “I’ve got to go about finding a job.”
Kellman’s smile gleamed beneath his perfectly trimmed white mustache. “You’re in luck again, Jack. I’ve heard of something that could be just right for you.”
Doyle gave Kellman a long look. “Last time you got me a job could hardly be called something that was ‘just right for me.’”
“So, yes, there were some ups and downs,” Kellman said. “You got drugged, robbed, and came close to being charged with fixing that race. But that was a one-time deal, just as I told you it would be. And, admit it, didn’t things work out all right for you in the long run? It was a hell of a lot more interesting than chugging along in life as an advertising account executive.”
Doyle shrugged. “I can’t argue, I guess. Okay, what plans have you got for me this time around?”
“I don’t have any plans for you, Jack,” Kellman snapped. “You’re, what, forty-two years old. And I’m not your guardian. What I have for you is an opportunity. Which I am bringing to your attention because, for some unknown, continuing reason, I like you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Moe lowered the level of his Negroni by half before saying, “Let’s order some food. I’ll lay this out for you while we eat.” He nodded in the direction of the observant Dino, who immediately sent a waiter hustling over to their booth.
They had a soup of escarole, white beans, and Italian hot sausage, followed by plates of spinach noodles under mushrooms, asparagus, truffle oil, and shaved Parmesan. At Moe’s elbow was his usual large serving of roasted garlic. By the time the chicken Vesuvio was served, Doyle was full. He sat back, took a few more small bites, and watched admiringly as the little man across from him continued to rapidly put away every last morsel on each of his plates before reaching for Doyle’s abandoned chicken platter.
“Have you ever weighed more than a hundred and thirty?” Doyle said.
“Right after Korea, when I got out of the Marines and got married. I got up to a hundred fifty by just lying around the house at night and enjoying married life with my Leah. After about a year of that, I went back to the gym and took the weight off. Leah and I are coming up on our forty-sixth wedding anniversary,” he added proudly. “But let’s get back to the matter at hand. Your job opportunity.”
The job, Moe said, was as “publicity director at Monee Park. I know you’ve never had a job quite like that, but your background in advertising and marketing should make it pretty easy to learn those ropes. Ever been to Monee Park?”
“No, the only Chicago track I’ve been at is Heartland Downs. Monee, don’t they race at night?”
“Right. Night thoroughbred racing during the summer. They’ve been doing it since the ‘thirties. I used to love to take Leah out there for a dinner on hot nights in July and August. It’s a neat, little old place. Built back before the Depression. Brick grandstand, third story clubhouse, the stands real close to the racing strip so you’d feel you were close to the action. I cashed some very nice bets there years ago,” Moe said, smiling, “some very nice ones indeed.” He paused, relishing the memories. Doyle could only imagine what machinations might have resulted in those betting coups back in what Kellman often referred to as “the good old bad days.”
Moe said, “Here’s the setup. Did you ever hear of Jim Joyce?”
“No.”
“He bought Monee Park out of a bankruptcy sale in 1978. He owned and operated it until he died last December. He’d had heart trouble for years, then he got lung cancer. Bang. Three months, then the finish line. It was bad.”
Moe took a sip of coffee. “Jim Joyce was a great friend of mine. He was one of the few Micks in our old neighborhood on the West Side. Most of us were Italian or Jewish. His old man ran a saloon that catered to anybody with a buck. Jim and I played basketball together in high school.”
Doyle’s incredulous look was noticed. “In those days, when I grew up,” Moe explained, “they had city high school basketball leagues for guys under five-foot ten. Naturally, I qualified. I think Jimmy slumped his spine down on measurement day, because a year after we graduated he was six feet. We played together for three years.
“Then I went in the Marines. It was during the so-called Korean fucking conflict. Jim got a pass—he was born with only one kidney. Jim stayed here in Chicago and went to work as a runner at the Grain Exchange. By the time I came out of the Marines he’d moved up so fast he’d bought a seat on the Exchange. Ten, twelve years later he’d piled up a huge fortune from his trading. Jim was a genius at it. He used a major part of his capital to buy Monee Park. He renovated the old joint, sold his Exchange firm for a ton of money, and became a racetrack executive. Which he was, until December. Jim was always nuts about horses and racing.”
Moe leaned forward, arms on the table, his white shirt cuffs making the linen tablecloth look tawdry. He glanced at his Cartier watch and brushed a crumb away from the sleeve of his immaculate gray suit. “I’m going to tell you a little more about Jimmy Joyce. There were a thousand people at the Cathedral for his funeral. I was a pallbearer. Me and five red faced jumbo Micks sweating out their Bushmills from the wake the night before.
“About a quarter of the crowd was blacks and Mexicans Jim had employed at Monee Park. Even when the track started bleeding money, after the casinos and the lottery came in, Jim never laid off or fired anybody. The rest of the crowd was from City Hall, the legislature, the Grain Exchange, the old neighborhood, plus hundreds of others he’d made friends with. He was awfully damn good at that.
“The Cardinal said the funeral mass. They had a beautiful choir. His niece Celia gave the eulogy. It was funny, and sad, right on the money. One thing she emphasized was that her uncle was a ‘man of no pretension.’ Perception, yes, but never pretension.
“Leaving the Cathedral there was the Chicago Catholic tradition of pipers walking behind the coffin. I had to laugh. I said to Bernie Flynn, he was across from me on the other side of the coffin we were hauling, ‘I’m surprised Jim isn’t leaping out of the coffin in protest. He hated bagpipes.’
“‘Oh, I know that,’ Bernie said back. ‘Jimmy always said the Irish invented the damn things and gave them to the Scots as a joke.’”
Moe raised an index finger in the direction of the waiter, who scurried to the booth with two slim liqueur glasses and a carafe of what Doyle knew to be grappa, Moe’s favorite after dinner drink and, in Doyle’s experience, one of the champion hangover producers in the annals of alcohol. Doyle asked the waiter for more coffee.
Doyle thought about Moe’s longtime association with the late Mr. Joyce. After all, Moe had previously convinced Doyle to fix a horse race on behalf of other “dear friends,” a contingent Doyle eventually learned was comprised of Moe’s boyhood buddies turned Outfit guys. He had no desire to rekindle any association of that sort. “Danger” was by no means Doyle’s middle name, having to contend as it did with “bad luck” and “poor choices.” His unease must have showed, because Moe smiled before reaching across the linen to pat Doyle’s hand.
“Now, Jack,” he said, “don’t jump to conclusions. Jim Joyce long ago distanced himself from his old neighborhood buddies—except for me. He was an absolutely legit businessman. He never married. There was always a woman in his life, but never one he committed to. Jim had three major passions: making money, horse racing, and his niece Celia, with her coming in first by far. Celia McCann I’m talking about. She was the only child of Jim’s older sister Marie, who was killed along with her husband in a car crash years ago. Jim wound up raising Celia from the time she was about ten.
“Jim sent her to a Catholic boarding school in Iowa, but she spent all her summer vacations with him, even when she was in college. Celia learned the racing business from the ground up, starting as a hot walker on the backstretch for a trainer friend of Jim’s, then working menial jobs, later lower management jobs at Monee Park. She loved the whole thing from the start. Jim’s other sibling, a younger sister named Elizabeth, met and married an Irish citizen and went over there to live more than thirty years ago. She died of cancer several years back, lung, same as her brother. Like her sister Marie, Elizabeth had just the one child, a boy. His name is Niall. Niall Hanratty.”
Moe drained his grappa glass, then refilled it from the carafe. Doyle’s glass remained untouched. He wanted to keep a clear head. Moe said, “I can see you’re still uneasy about our earlier project. Which, if I may remind you, wound up, after some uncomfortable episodes en route, providing you with a fairly decent financial score.”
Doyle said, “’Uncomfortable episodes’? That’s what you call me being drugged and robbed? Then put in a hammer lock by the FBI? Discovering a friend who was almost battered to death? Not to mention nearly being killed by a goddam helium balloon? You call those ‘uncomfortable episodes’? When they get the Masters of Understatement Hall of Fame up and running, you’ll be a first-ballot shoe-in.” He reached for the grappa.
“Sometimes, Jack, I think you were put on earth just to irritate people.” Moe was about to elaborate, but instead put his napkin down and warmly grasped the bejeweled hand of one of Chicago’s wealthiest society matrons who had stopped at their booth on her way out of the restaurant, saying in what for years had been her version of a Southern belle’s drawl, “Moe, dahlin’, how yew tonight?”
Doyle had seen her photo in the Chicago newspapers, especially the one owned by her besotted current husband. She leaned forward and whispered something to Kellman. He whispered back. Then she smiled, waved goodbye, and swept off, trailing Chanel Number Five, never having even glanced at Doyle.
“Lovely woman,” Moe said, seated again, grappa glass in hand. “I knew her when she checked hats at the old Mr. Kelly’s jazz club. Among other things. She managed to marry very, very well the last three times. A deserved escalation. She’s brighter than any of her husbands, past or present, and a hell of a lot nicer. She’s been a good customer, too.”
“Could we return to this job opportunity you’ve got for me?”
“Here’s the situation,” Moe said. “When Jimmy Joyce died, he left Monee Park to two people. Fifty-one percent of it went to his niece, Celia, and forty-nine percent to his nephew, Niall Hanratty, who lives in Ireland. He’s a bookmaker. A big one.
“Celia had been Jimmy’s assistant general manager. He brought her in to help him a couple of years ago, and I understand she’s done very well in the job. But the track hasn’t done well. Their business was way, way down at last year’s meeting. Monee Park has a serious cash flow problem, which was partly what led to resignations by a lot of Celia’s management staff. Celia was still managing to meet the payroll, but they thought they saw the handwriting on the wall. That the track was doomed to close.
“Among those quitting, and suddenly, was Howie Hagan, her advertising and publicity director. He went to work for an amusement park. When I found out what kind of a jam Celia was in, with Hagan gone and the start of the meeting coming up, I thought of you. You’ve done advertising and publicity work. You know racing. You can be trusted. And you need a job. Nice fit, to my mind,” Moe said, reaching again for the carafe.
Doyle gave Kellman a quizzical look. He said, “It sounds to me like you’re boosting me aboard a sinking ship. If Monee Park is doomed, why the hell would I want to go to work there?”
“It’s not doomed. On shaky ground, yes. But there are encouraging factors for the owners. For one thing, the land the track sits on is worth a fortune. It’s prime property in a booming suburban area. But that’s not important.”
“Why not?”
“Because Celia will never sell. She loves racing. She’s told me she feels she ‘owes it to Uncle Jim’s memory’ to keep the track going. She means it, too. Celia loved her uncle. And she’s a very strong, determined young woman.”
Doyle said, “But if the track is on the skids, what’s the point of keeping it open?”
“Besides the obligation Celia feels to her uncle,” Moe answered, “there’s hope on the horizon in the form of a gambling bill now in the state legislature. It’s in committee down there in Springfield. It would authorize a casino for the city of Chicago. In order to protect horse racing interests from being blown out of the water, the bill would allow the Illinois racetracks to install video slot machines. Even a lot of the downstate legislators see the worth of that. The racetracks are part of a significant agribusiness in this state, one with thousands of farm jobs and suppliers.”
“I know this has worked other places,” Doyle said. “Video slots have saved tracks on the East Coast, in Iowa, in the Southwest. I guess they’d work here, too. People are suckers for those machines. I read once that each machine kicks back a daily profit of something like $350! Amazing.”
“Exactly,” Moe said. “You get a thousand of those up and cranking away, your racetrack is golden.”
Moe reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick roll of bills wrapped in a beige rubber band. Kellman always paid cash and never carried a wallet.
One of the few
like that left in America
, Doyle thought. He had never gotten around to asking Moe why, and he didn’t this time, either. He concentrated on the job possibility as Moe peeled off a pair of twenties for the tip. As for the bill, Dino ran a tab for Moe, payable monthly.
“Are there other applicants for this job?” Doyle said.
“No. It’s yours if you want it. There’s a time element involved here. Celia needs somebody right away. I’ve known Celia since she was a youngster. She trusts me. I put in a couple of good words for you,” he smiled. It was a mischievous look.
If Jews had
leprechauns
, Doyle thought,
Moe could pass for one
.
“What did you tell her about me?”
“I gave her a discreetly edited description of you and your various occupations. I didn’t mention the race fixing caper. I did tell her you’d had a career in advertising and public relations at some top agencies here in Chicago. A career working, as a good friend of mine once put it, ‘in the art of stretching imagination to its elastic limit.’ In other words, you could sling the B. S. as fast and far as anyone.
“I told her you had helped the authorities in busting an insurance fraud ring. Celia remembered reading about that case. I told her you were smart, honest, quick on your feet, and with your fists when you had to be.
“I also told her you could be a kind of know-it-all, wise-cracking, authority-hating pain in the ass. In other words, I was truthful.”
Doyle’s face flushed. He said, “Which of these outstanding qualities of mine impressed her the most?” He picked up his napkin, then tossed it back on the table with a frown. “I’m sure that last part put her solidly in my corner.”
Kellman took a final sip of grappa. He carefully wiped his mustache with his napkin, smiling at Doyle and starting to slide out of the booth.
“What impressed Celia the most,” Kellman said, “was that you are a friend of mine. And that you are available.”