With his host busy talking on the telephone, Jack Doyle sat back in one of the comfortable chairs that flanked a long glass table positioned near the large window of Moe Kellman’s north Michigan Avenue business office. Directly in front of the table, also facing north toward a spectacular, eighteenth-floor view of the Chicago skyline, was an expansive, comfortable, dark leather couch.
Kellman had waved a greeting as Doyle was ushered in, but continued his phone conversation. He was elegantly dressed as usual, white linen shirt agleam under a gray silk suit, two huge diamond cufflinks sparkling as he shifted the phone from one hand to another.
Kellman perched on a chair behind his desk. But there were no chairs in front of it. Kellman preferred to do business from the couch, located several deep-carpeted yards from his desk, where he could easily reach over and give an encouraging pat to a customer’s knee or hand.
Still talking on the phone, Kellman motioned across the room to Jack. The late afternoon sun behind Kellman’s back served to back-light and further emphasize his startling head of frizzed white hair. He was urging Doyle to help himself to the lavish platter of fresh fruit that just been delivered. Responding in pantomime, Doyle waved off Kellman’s offer of something to drink.
This was Doyle’s first visit to Kellman’s place of business, and he was impressed by the prestigious Michigan Avenue address, the two glossy receptionists in the outer office, the extensive collection of modern art that graced the walls of the spacious, tastefully furnished room.
Doyle walked over to the north-facing window, admiring the view. When his gaze fell upon a church steeple in the distance, Doyle remembered the shock he’d felt early that morning. After informing Byron Stoner that he had personal business in Chicago and would be away for the day, Doyle had gotten into his car at Willowdale and turned on the radio as he pulled out of the driveway.
“And JEEZUS, driving old CAR NUMBER ONE, he leads the JERUSALEM 500, you better believe it, brothers and sisters.…”
The voice had jumped out of the speakers, startling Doyle. How’d I get this station on my dial? Doyle thought, quickly reaching for the knob. He found hard to believe the popularity of the man he thought of as “Elmer Gantry in a jockstrap.” Doyle silenced the radio and inserted a Gene Harris tape. Doyle smiled as the gospel-influenced jazz pianist’s music replaced the preacher’s bombast.
“That’s right, sweetheart,” Kellman cooed into the phone, eyes alight as he winked at Doyle. “That’s the price. Rosemary is going love that coat. You’ll have to take her out every night next winter, show her off.” Kellman laughed loudly at the short response to that suggestion.
“Okay, that’s how we’ll do it. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll messenger it over to you. Same to you, Feef.”
Placing the phone down, Kellman said, “Fifi Bonadio.” He shook his head. “Cheapest son of a bitch in the Outfit. Every time he buys a coat as a present for one of his punches, it’s like you’re negotiating the fuckin’ Louisiana Purchase. And with all the money he’s stolen and hidden….”
Moe crossed the room. First he shook Doyle’s hand, then reached up to pinch his cheek fondly. “This is our City Boy?” he said, glancing at Doyle’s farm manager outfit, short-sleeved white shirt with no tie, tan khakis, western boots. “You’re dressed like Ronald Reagan on vacation,” Kellman said. “All you need is a red neckerchief.” He took a seat on the couch, plucked a pear from the tray on the table, and sat back.
“So what is it, Jack?” Kellman smiled. “You miss me? That why you drove all the way up here from Kentucky to talk?”
“Not quite,” Doyle replied.
The reason for Doyle’s visit, as he had explained to agents Engel and Tirabassi prior to departing Kentucky, was to pick Kellman’s brain regarding what he thought Rexroth might be up to with Willowdale’s mystery horse-the fast, bay colt of unknown origin that Willie Arroyo was still flying in to work out. “If anybody would know, it would be Moe Kellman.” The agents did not disagree.
Doyle spent the next quarter hour recounting to Kellman the details of Aldous Bolger’s beating, an event Kellman was very curious about, having seen the various media accounts, and the confession of Lucas Collier. “We’re looking to tie together Mortvedt and Rexroth,” Doyle said.
“You mean you and your FBI buddies.”
“Yeah, me and my FBI buddies,” Doyle answered glumly. “You probably know all about that, how they’ve got me by the balls because of the City Sarah thing.”
Kellman held up his hands defensively. “I know about how they reeled you in. That’s all I know, and all I want to know. All I’m assuming, Jack,” Moe added with great seriousness, “is that you’ve been very, very discreet regarding our dealings.”
Doyle said, “They know more about you than I do, I guarantee you that. No, they haven’t laid all over me regarding our…what could you call it, association? More important to me right now is Rexroth, what he might be doing.”
“That’s great, Jack,” said Kellman. He settled back on the couch and began to talk. He said that of course he had no way of knowing “exactly what Rexroth was planning,” but one possibility came to mind.
“Are you familiar with ringers in horse racing?” Kellman asked.
“No,” Doyle said. “Thanks to you, my knowledge of racetrack crime is confined to stiffing horses.”
Kellman let that pass. “Well,” he said, “it’s hard to do, but it’s not impossible. Simply put, it involves the substitution of a fast horse, the ringer, for a slow horse. And it involves two horses that look very much alike.
“The last case like this that I remember involved some guys out west. Two guys. They got their hands on a set of the equipment that’s used to tattoo horses-you know, identify them. You saw City Sarah’s lip tattoo, right?”
“Right.”
“So,” Kellman continued, “these guys went to Mexico, either Juarez or the track in Mexico City, I don’t remember, and paid cash for a pretty good runner, plenty fast enough for what they needed. They brought him back to northern California. This Mexican horse had no tattoo. So they tattoo him with the registration number of this bum they’d been racing up there. The horses looked almost exactly alike, and I think they were the same age. The slow horse hadn’t finished in the money in six months.
“They enter the slow horse under his name, but they lose him someplace and run the fast one, and he wins big. Twice. The horse checker at the track sees that the tattoo matches up with the one on the slow horse’s papers, so he doesn’t suspect anything’s out of line. He thinks the horse is legit. Believe me, this is the kind of caper that is very rarely attempted these days. It was more common seventy, eighty years ago. Hell, they had a guy years ago that painted horses so they could be used as ringers. Paddy Barry, I think his name was.
“Anyway, these guys cash two huge bets before the authorities get wise to them and determine that no registered tattooer had ever worked on the Mexican horse, that his tattoo was really the tattoo of the slow horse. Both of the guys were kicked out of racing and convicted. One of them did time. Before the other one had a chance to serve, he turned up as a floater in San Francisco Bay.”
Kellman paused to deftly tong an ice cube from the silver bucket to his tall glass of Perrier. “The floater was related to a friend of mine, a third cousin of this guy I know. But that’s another story.
“Now, besides the tattoo as identification,” Kellman continued, “horses registered in the United States can be traced by blood types. Their parents’ blood sample records are on record-both the sire’s and the mother’s, or the dam’s, as they call them.
“As I understand it, that system was put in mainly to protect against mix-ups with young horses. If a guy bought a horse that was supposed to be sired by, say, Uncle Sam, who’d knocked up Miss Liberty or whatever, and for some reason the guy has doubts that this is true, he can check it out. The foal’s blood sample has got to be consistent with the blood types of its parents. If not, then something isn’t kosher and the alarms go off.”
Doyle shifted in his chair. “This is all very interesting, Moe. But what could this have to do with Rexroth?”
Kellman said, “I’m coming to that.
“Suppose-just suppose-that Rexroth has got a horse that nobody knows about.”
“What do you mean?” asked Doyle.
Kellman said, “I’m talking about a horse that nobody, or hardly anybody, knows about. A horse that has not been registered, or officially named. A horse that for racing purposes does not exist. And suppose this horse is owned by Rexroth, and Rexroth is giving this horse secret workouts, flying in a professional jockey to work him, staging simulated races.
“And suppose this unknown horse is supposed to be the fastest item to come along since Cigar?” Kellman sat back again on the couch, looking self-satisfied bordering on smug.
Doyle said, “I’ll be damned. You’ve heard something, haven’t you?”
Kellman didn’t answer that. He just smiled at Doyle, his eyes twinkling. “Try a pear?” he asked.
Getting up from his chair, Doyle walked slowly over to the north window of Kellman’s office suite, deep in thought. He was not even slightly aware of the impressive flotilla of pleasure boats maneuvering in the green-blue waters off Oak Street beach, or the giant white clouds, looking like deformed dumplings, that moved before the steady northwest wind, being pushed across the lake toward Michigan.
All of Doyle’s thoughts were concentrated on the bay horse housed back at Willowdale, the horse that jockey Willie Arroyo flew in to exercise each week, the horse that Aldous Bolger had been instructed by Rexroth to ignore.
He turned back toward Kellman. “Okay, let’s say Rexroth has got this unofficial horse, or mystery horse, or whatever you want to call him. What could he do with him?”
Moe reached to the silver platter and began expertly to quarter a red apple as big as a bocci ball, using a long, thin knife sharp enough to skim fuzz off the nearby peaches. He said, “If this animal has talent, there could be a special use for him. It would be tricky, but it could be done.”
“You’re talking about as a ringer.”
“I’m talking about as a ringer, yes.”
Doyle paused to think this over. “What about the horse’s registration papers? The lip tattoo? How could Rexroth work around those things?”
“The registration papers? Simple. You just use the slow horse’s papers. They’re on file at the track. All they have to show is the description of the horse in question. And if I’m right, Rexroth would have a horse in his racing stable that looks a helluva lot like the unknown horse-as close to identical as he could find.
“So the official papers aren’t a question, not considering the advances in technology along those lines.”
“Say what?” said Doyle.
“I’m saying that forged documents are all over the place. You don’t need printing presses any more. All you need is some larcenous computer genius with an inkjet printer and a scanner. Jack, from what I’ve been told, nearly half of the counterfeit money passed in this country is made that way. Papers for a horse would be no problem for the right guy to produce.”
“The tattoo. What about that?”
“No problem. Not for a guy with Rexroth’s money. That guy Stoner he’s got working for him could find an abortionist in the Vatican. They’ve got resources, my friend.
“What they could do is buy, on the sly, the services of one of the official horse tattooers. Maybe they use muscle, or blackmail. Maybe just money. But they get the guy to put the correct tattoo of the slow horse on the unknown horse, who has never been tattooed because he’s never been near a racetrack. Yet. Then they switch the horses, and they run the fast one under the slow one’s name. Get it?”
Doyle slumped back in his chair. All that Kellman had theorized, Doyle realized, could very well become reality under Rexroth’s guidance. The bay horse from the Annex…that must the betting tool that had been polished up and honed over the past few years.
“But what I still don’t get,” Doyle said, “is why a guy like Rexroth would go to all this trouble. Get involved in something like this? The bastard’s got all the money he’d ever need.”
Kellman said, “Jack, why does Rexroth kill horses for the insurance like you think he does? You tell me what this guy’s all about. I’ve got no answers for that. He is what he is.”
“I don’t know where to go with this stuff,” Doyle said. He felt overwhelmed. He went over to the window again, gazing out as unseeingly as before.
Doyle’s formerly ultra-high self-confidence level, for years near the top of the charts, was in free fall, a descent that was picking up enough momentum to qualify as a plummet. Aldous’ beating, the FBI tie-in, the hovering factor of Mortvedt-all this had invaded his life in just a few months, changing everything for him. Mentally, he tried to gather himself, as in his boxing days, when after being caught with a good wallop he’d always say to his opponent, “Is that all you’ve got?”
Doyle took a deep breath. Before turning away from the window he found himself wondering again why Moe Kellman was being so helpful. Kellman wasn’t the sort who would feel any great guilt over Doyle’s being robbed of his City Sarah payoff. He was too practical for that, though he had been generous enough with the added five grand. He’d also suggested that Jack not get too cozy with the FBI agents who had visited him. A bribe in a velvet glove, Doyle considered it.
No, Kellman’s willingness to help must have its source elsewhere. Perhaps it was traceable to something else that he’d once said to Doyle: “I like to know things. A lot of what I learn winds up making money for me.”
Doyle sat down again. “What could we do to stop Rexroth and his ringer caper?”
“Not we,” Kellman replied, the twinkle in his eyes obvious once more. “You.”
He offered another neatly quartered piece of apple to Doyle.
“Can I suggest something to you, Jack?”