Close Call (9 page)
Aiden Lucarelli was sitting at the bar working on a Bud Light when Denny Shannon stumbled into Haller’s Pub on Thirty-third and Parnell. As usual, there was an empty stool on either side of Aiden. Everyone in the neighborhood knew him as an anger-packed, argumentative, combative collection of complexes in “great need of avoidance,” as old Donal Corcoran, a Haller’s regular, put it. Corcoran also said of Aiden that “He’s like a nightmare combination of the Al Capone-Dion O’Banion criminal lines, just as lethal and eager as each.”
Haller’s Pub was one of Chicago’s oldest saloons. Located a half block south of Democratic ward headquarters, for decades it had been a popular hangout for politicians, cops, firemen, city workers, tradesmen, and senior retirees. It smelled of cigarette and cigar smoke, beer, and grilled onions. It was known in the neighborhood as a “goddamn gold mine.” The loudest sound on south Parnell early every morning was the cascade of beer kegs down delivery truck ramps at Haller’s service door.
At age twenty-six, Denny and Aiden were Haller’s Men, having played Little League baseball on Haller’s sponsored teams, years later sixteen-inch softball, in between making their rite of passage from soda pop swillers to dedicated adult drinkers. Patrons of Haller’s often held bachelor parties in the tavern’s large back room. A few permitted their wives to join them in this male-dominated sanctum on the occasion of post-funeral receptions.
Shannon was late. Lucarelli had amused himself by asking Marge Duffy, the afternoon bartender, for perhaps the sixtieth time, to “go out with me some night.” Her regular reply was, “As soon as my fifth child clears kindergarten, I’ll start considering it, Aiden.” Her laughter trailed behind her as she moved to the far end of the long mahogany bar to welcome two thirsty fire captains just off duty. Marge was a forty-one year old divorcee with two young children, a great body, and absolutely no inclination to expose it to the likes of Aiden Lucarelli. Her rejection of his advances was an ongoing joke between them, at least the way Marge saw it. Lucarelli frequently envisioned the moment he’d jump her outside of Haller’s after she’d worked a night shift and fuck her silly, a mask on, her never knowing it was him.
It was twenty after one in the afternoon. Lucarelli and Shannon had agreed to meet for lunch at noon to talk over Art Riley’s newest plan for them to put into effect at Monee Park. Lucarelli looked at his cousin with disgust. “Christ, man,” he said, “you’re stoned. And drunk. And late. What the hell happened?”
Shannon rested his thick forearms on the bar. He shook his head from side to side. He was wearing his most recently favored tee-shirt. On the back it read, “Drink Til You Want Me!” Lucarelli noticed drops of dried blood on the front of the shirt.
“Saw my old man early this morning,” Shannon mumbled as he gingerly sat down on the bar stool. “He came around for the first time in three years. Right before I walked into the house, he started beating on Ma again. I beat the shit out of him. Just like he used to beat the shit out of me all those years. He got in a few licks himself.”
“Bastard had it coming,” Lucarelli said. He held up two fingers and Marge popped open two more bottles of beer.
“I know
that
,” Shannon said irritably. “But I still don’t feel great about it, even if the old man had it coming. He got this kind of pitiful, scared look on his face when I was whaling away on him. Made me sick to see him that way. I don’t know why I had to have a pa like him, I really don’t.”
The White Sox-Detroit Tigers game was on the big television up behind the bar. They watched a half inning in silence. Conversation among the other dozen or so patrons of Haller’s was muted, the noise level nothing like it would be after five o’clock when the working men came in ready to raise their glasses, voices, and a little bit of hell if the opportunity arose. Marge had specifically requested a transfer to the day shift so she wouldn’t have to face what she described to owner Butch Haller as “that motley crew” every evening. “With them trying to hit on me, plus running me ragged pulling draft beers like a robot, and listening to the same old arguments, this shift is shortening my life,” she’d complained to Haller. He granted her request. Her only regret was the occasional dealings she had with the cousins on the days they got off of work early.
When the commercials began before the start of the third inning, Lucarelli broke their silence. “At least you got a pa,” he said morosely. “You’re ahead of me there.”
Shannon stared straight ahead, thinking of the stories he’d heard about Aiden’s late father Jimmy, a “made man” in the Chicago Outfit who had been shot to death during a police raid on an Elmwood Park bookie joint. Aiden was two at the time. His mother Bridgett never remarried. The fatherless child was spoiled rotten by both the Italian and Irish sides, raised “like a young prince,” as Bridgett proudly put it. This lack of discipline served to smoothly develop him into the arrogant prick he always would be.
Lucarelli said, “Let’s eat.” He walked over to a corner table near the window looking out on the tavern’s parking lot. Across the street was the Holy Rosary school yard, where he and Shannon had terrorized their classmates for most of eight years. Haller’s property had also been the scene of numerous fights matching the cousins against usually hapless, outmatched foes. Lucarelli grinned. “We’ve spilled a lot of blood over these two blocks.”
“Yeah,” Shannon said, “usually other peoples’.” They gave the young waitress their orders for sandwiches and “a couple more Buds.” Then they got down to discussing their latest assignment from Art Riley.
Doyle came down out of the press box with a bounce in his step. It was a beautiful July Fourth evening at old Monee Park. Mid-day rains had been heavy but short-lived and, though turning the racing strip into a sea of slop, were followed by cloudless skies starting in late afternoon. Thousands of south side horse racing fans had chosen to come out for the twilight racing program that would be followed by a fireworks display, then a concert by some area country and western bands. This annual event had been inaugurated by Jim Joyce years earlier and Celia was determined to keep it on the schedule, cost be damned. From his press box perch Doyle had watched as the Monee parking lots began filling up well before six p.m. He knew this was something rarely observed, like seeing a fat cyclist, or a skinny Hell’s Angel.
Now, making his way through the crowded grandstand, Jack could feel and hear the buzz of an assemblage eager to be entertained, and to bet. There were long lines at the mutuel windows, and the bars and concession stands were busier than he’d ever seen them.
There
must be 10,000 people here already
, he thought as he sidestepped a man who was walking with his head buried in the tabloid
Racing Daily
, the so-called bible of thoroughbred racing. The air was rich with the smell of grilling Italian and Polish sausages, hot dogs, popcorn.
One of the longest lines was in front of the small booth of Madame Fran, Forecaster Supreme. Madame Fran was a short, hefty woman with lively eyes and a ready smile. Doyle watched as Madame Fran, dressed in her usual working outfit of long sleeved orange caftan, white turban, a sparkling ring on every finger, waved forward the next customer, a pants suit wearing matron eager to pay the $5 fee for Fran’s list of predicted winners on the night’s racing program. In addition to the printed cards containing her horse picks that she sold before the races began, Madame Fran offered private consultations at considerably higher fees. She was usually busy with those later in the night, her prognostications encompassing not only horse racing but the stock market, crop futures, and, occasionally, domestic dilemmas. She had been doing a thriving business at Monee Park for years, having been hired by Jim Joyce, then retained by Celia. When the racing season ended, Madame Fran put her booth in storage and herself in her Sarasota, Florida condo.
Shontanette Hunter had introduced Jack to Madame Fran when, right after he’d started work there, she gave him an extensive tour of Monee Park. Jack had picked up one of the printed cards Madame Fran provided, gratis, to Monee Park patrons. They contained what she described in bold face type as “Rules to Bet By.”
“A happy bettor is more likely to be a winning bettor.”
“Do not approach the mutuel windows with a frown on your face, or with fear of defeat in your heart.”
“Your intuitive powers function best when channeled through a corridor of optimism.”
Doyle had asked Shontanette, out of Madame Fran’s hearing, “Does she believe this stuff? She gives the impression that she does.”
Shontanette said, “I know, I know, it sounds like a lot of other hustles. But I’ll say this about Madame Fran: every year for about the last ten or so she’s picked more winners on her little tip sheet than any other handicapping expert in Chicago. You can check it out, Jack.”
Madame Fran, originally Freda Finklestein, was beaming as she advised a client sitting in a chair alongside the table at her booth. She looked like a woman who was enjoying work she had been doing for more than two decades since, at age twenty-two, she dropped out of her pre-med course at Northwestern University and morphed into Madame Fran. The only disconcerting part of that career change was telling her horrified parents. But she won them over after declaring “There has to be a better way for me to help people, have fun, and make a living besides looking at lesions.”
Doyle stepped to the side of Madame Fran’s table. “What’s in the forecast?” he said, smiling. “It’s crystal clear,” she replied, round cheeks dimpling and her brown eyes alight, “I’ll have at least five winners. But,” she added with a frown, “I feel there’s something not quite right about tonight. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.” She shuddered slightly, just enough to set into motion her double chins. Doyle knew this kind of pessimism was completely out of character for her.
“What’s different,” Doyle said, attempting to reassure her, “is the great business we’re doing for a change. Enjoy it,” he advised, patting her on the shoulder before moving away.
Just outside Madame Fran’s booth there was a line of a dozen waiting customers. Near the back, not in the line but talking earnestly to a middle-aged man who was, stood a tall, skinny, old man. He wore a tattered, long-sleeved white shirt, wrinkled khakis, and a new ball cap that said Monee Park. Doyle recognized it as last week’s featured track give-away item (Free Caps to the First 2,000 Paying Customers).
Doyle felt a tap on his back. He looked around at Karl Mortenson, Monee Park’s director of security. The two men had met for the first time the previous week, Mortenson eager to impress Doyle with the fact that he was “retired from the Chicago PD,” now engaged in a second career at the racetrack. Mortenson was a big, beefy, middle-aged man, redolent of a powerful pine-scented after shave lotion that failed to mask his breath, which smelled rather strongly of moth balls. He had the kind of glad handing style Doyle despised. Nodding toward the skinny oldster, Mortenson confided, “He’s at it again. We can’t seem to stop him. We bar him, but he somehow manages to get in. I’ll have to throw him out again.”
“Who is he?”
Mortenson said, “A guy named Slim Wallace. Been around the racetrack all of his life, in one capacity or another. His capacity in recent years has been tout.”
“He’s touting a horse to that man now?”
Mortenson grinned. “Bet on it,” he said. “The race coming up has a ten-horse field. Slim has probably given a different one of those horses to each of ten people. All he asks is, ‘Buy a win ticket for me.’ Naturally, one of the ten horses he recommends will be the winner. And Slim will track down the winning bettor and ask for his winning ticket, and maybe a bonus. I’ve seen a lot of racetrack touts. Slim is one of the slickest. Here, let’s move up a little closer. You can listen to him.”
“Will a drying out track bother him? Flinty McGinty? Not a chance,” they heard the old man saying in a strong, confident voice. His listener was apparently not fully convinced. Slim pressed on. “Flinty McGinty’s the class of this field. This horse could win running over cobblestones. Or hot coals. In sleet or snow. He’ll run through fire. Bet him good for me, will you?” Slim pleaded.
The mark still looked a bit skeptical. He said to Slim, “If Flinty McGinty is so good, why is he twenty-two to one on that odds board?”
“Mister,” Slim said, “that’s because his trainer, an old friend of mine, has been hiding this speedball. Working him in the early morning dark so he couldn’t be timed by the clockers. Believe me, he’s a stick of dynamite about to go off and make us rich.”
Mortenson intervened at this point, grasping Slim by the elbow and pulling him roughly to the side. “Caught you at it again, old man,” he said. Slim grimaced in Mortenson’s powerful grip. Glaring at the security chief, he said, “You mean I can’t give my handicapping opinions to this friend of mine here? What happened to free speech in this country?”
Mortenson started marching Slim toward the exit. “Friend of yours?” he said. “Hell, you never saw that man until five minutes ago.”
“Well, if Flinty McGinty wins he’ll be a friend of mine.”
Doyle watched them traipse away, thinking
there’s as many characters per square foot around the racetrack as there are divorcees in Vegas.
***
Immediately after the second race, back at his desk now, Doyle received a call from Roger Bullard, the Monee Park manager of pari-mutuels. Bullard was excited. “Jack,” he said, “I just wanted to tell you we’ve had more money bet on the first two races tonight than any time in the last ten years. Almost a new record on the daily double. I thought you’d like to know because we might be on our way to a season’s high for the nine races.”
Doyle said, “Thanks, Roger. That’s great news.” He was going to add, “Give me a running total through the night, will you?” when the infield tote board abruptly went dark, followed by all the lights that were spaced around the racing strip. Lighting in the building remained on. Doyle closed his eyes for an instant, thinking he’d imagined it. But when he opened them and again looked out his window, darkness still enveloped the track and the tote board remained blank. Twenty minutes later, when it became apparent the problem could not be quickly remedied, the announcement was made that the rest of the nights’ races were cancelled. Monee Park admissions employees began issuing rain checks to departing customers. Betting was over for the night and the hard core players were disgruntled. Thousands of people with their families remained, however, for the fireworks show which went on as planned.
***
Doyle tapped out a short news story about the partial blackout for the media and e-mailed it. Depressed, the glow having been ripped off this once promising night, he was about to leave and head for O’Keefe’s Olde Ale House when his phone rang. Shontanette said, “Jack, will you come upstairs for a few minutes? Celia needs to talk to you.”
He walked into the apartment, saying hello to Shontanette, Bob, and Celia, who was talking on her cell phone. They sat around the dining room table, coffee cups before them.
“Damn,” said Doyle, “what an unlucky break that was. Any report on what caused the malfunction?” He pulled out a chair and sat down as Shontanette said, “Of all nights for this to happen! Things were going so great. Our biggest crowd in years, betting like crazy. Talk about bad luck!”
Celia put her phone on the table. She looked stunned. “There was no luck involved,” she said slowly. “That was Chuck Lipman, the head electrician. He says part of the lighting system was sabotaged. He said that’s evident from the damage done. He has no idea how whoever did it knew how to attack the system. Swears it couldn’t have been any of his crew, and I believe him. It’ll take at least a day to repair,” she said. She put her head down on her folded arms that lay on the table. Doyle looked at Bob, sitting immobilized in his wheelchair next to his wife, Doyle knowing that both of them wanted to move to Celia and comfort her, but were unable to do so.
Shontanette broke the silence. “Damn, we’re on a bad roll here. First the money room robbery, now this.”
Doyle said, “I’m starting to think we’re under siege.”
Bob Zaslow whispered something Doyle couldn’t hear. Celia, sitting next to Bob, shook her head. Bob said nothing more. He just stared at Doyle, who was feeling uncomfortably left out. Doyle looked at Celia. “What did Bob say?” he asked.
Celia said, “Nothing important, really.” She patted her husband’s hand. He looked back at her, anger in his eyes. She gave into him then, saying, “Okay, what Bob said was ‘We were never under siege before Jack Doyle got here.’”