The Heartland Derby plan had first come to Harvey Rexroth a week earlier. On a bright October morning, as Darla whirled around the indoor track enthusiastically, Rexroth summoned Byron Stoner to poolside at Willowdale.
Rexroth, wearing a lavender velvet jumpsuit and brandishing a huge Cuban cigar, proceeded to unveil his Grand Plan. His little pig eyes danced with excitement. He rose to his feet and began pacing vigorously up and down alongside the track that bordered the massive swimming pool, talking loudly all the while.
Stoner never took notes, never needed to, for his memory was first-rate. And caution, to which the Canadian was devoted, also suggested that there never be anything in writing that might come back to plague him.
Over the years, Stoner had been privy to a number of amazing Rexrothian schemes, many of which he’d helped bring to fruition. But this one boggled the mind of even the cautious, ultra-pragmatic Stoner. I’ve never him seen as full of himself as this, Stoner thought with a shudder.
“This will be the single greatest, most audacious stroke of brilliant planning and execution in horse race cheating since John Cabray’s remarkable coup of 1909,” Rexroth boomed. “It will make me famous-strike that, more famous-and it won’t be a matter of me taking advantage of a bunch of ravenously greedy small town businessmen, like Cabray did.
“Instead, Stoner, I’m going to provide a sure-thing winner for readers of the Horse Racing Journal, whose numbers I predict will swell dramatically after this is over. I’m going to invite the great unwashed and everybody else to share in a winning bet-that Lancaster Lad will win the Heartland Derby! A publisher predicting-no, guaranteeing-a win by his own horse! Who’s ever done anything like that, I ask you?
“Or at least,” he said in an aside to the attentive Stoner as Darla rounded the near turn and headed for them, “the horse purporting to be Lancaster Lad.”
Stoner said, “I don’t know that much about the racing part. I trust your judgment, Mr. Rexroth. But, isn’t this kind of a, well, a stretch, to think that Donna Diane’s colt could win a Derby in the first start he’d ever made at a racetrack? Could he actually be that good?”
Rexroth’s expression hardened. He hated being questioned. Angrily, he threw his cigar into the center of the pool. Randy Kauffman immediately reached for his retrieving net.
Stoner was steadfast. “Mr. Rexroth,” he intoned, looking straight ahead and not at his boss, who hovered over him, “that is what you pay me for-to ask questions of this sort.”
Moments passed before Rexroth said, “You’re right, Stoner, to raise that point. Of course you are.” Rexroth sat down in the chair behind his desk, and his expression softened. “Of course you are,” he repeated. “That is, as you say, your job.
“But worry not, Stoner, worry not, my friend. I know exactly what I’m doing here.”
Rexroth, relaxed again, resumed describing his plans. He said to Stoner, “I want Douglas Phillips down here tomorrow morning so I can personally give him my instructions. Phillips is so dim sometimes that I want to be looking into his eyes so that I can tell for myself exactly what isn’t registering. Can’t do that over the phone, right? Har har har!”
Stoner chuckled in agreement. He was positive that Phillips was much smarter than Rexroth gave him credit for, but that the Horse Racing Journal editor was for the most part nearly stultified by terror when dealing with his boss. Stoner couldn’t help but ask, “Why don’t you just replace this Phillips?”
Rexroth gave Stoner an incredulous look. “Replace him? As cheap as Phillips works?”
When Horse Racing Journal’s executive editor Douglas Phillips heard the red phone ring on his desk, he reflexively reached for his flask. The red phone was for one thing only: direct calls from Phillips’ employer. The sound of this instrument, which might ring twenty times in one day and then not at all for a week, invariably made Phillips feel as if he were undergoing a colonoscopy without benefit of anesthetic. To combat this feeling, he administered his own. Phillips took a lengthy swig before saying, “Yes, Mr. Rexroth.”
When Phillips reached Willowdale the next morning, he was astounded at the orders he was given. “I want you to turn your best writers loose on this story,” Rexroth sternly instructed. “This is to be played at the top of page one of the Journal every day from tomorrow to race day.
“I will personally author a front-page piece in which I promise that Lancaster Lad, up to this point a pretty ordinary performer, will come to life and carry off the Heartlands Derby a week from next Saturday. His remarkable improvement will be the result of a startling new training regimen that will be revealed later. Or maybe not. We’ll iron out those details down the line,” the publisher said, puffing expansively on his cigar.
“Each day’s edition of the Journal,” he continued, “will carry several photos of Lancaster Lad, his jockey Willie Arroyo, trainer Kenny Gutfreund, and, of course, me.
“Other angles will be daily interviews with horse racing people, most of whom if I know them at all-except for the reliable cadre of suck-ups we can always count on-will be pooh-poohing Lancaster Lad’s chances. That’s fine. That’s great. Give their opinions plenty of play, so that they’ll look like the fools they really are once this horse wins the Derby.
“Also.…” Rexroth interrupted himself to look at Phillips, who was frantically scrambling to record every word of his boss’ orders on a yellow legal pad that was becoming blotched by drops of sweat falling from his brow. “Are you getting all of this, Phillips?” Rexroth suddenly shouted. The editor jumped in his chair, dropping his ballpoint and barely managing to hold on to his notepad. “Yes, sir, I am,” he responded. Rexroth grinned maliciously.
“Summing up, Phillips,” he said, “the repeated emphasis-the guts of this story-is that I will make history by guaranteeing a victory by my thus far ordinary horse. That is my vow, that is my promise. And this amazing triumph,” he added grandly, “will be my racing legacy.”
Douglas Phillips’ reaction to Rexroth’s Grand Plan was to think, “He’s really gone over the edge now. He can’t do this.” Of course, Phillips kept his thoughts to himself.
Rexroth, some years earlier, in overruling an objection Phillips had meekly lodged, quoted the late press critic A. J. Liebling, a man Rexroth despised for his liberal politics. “That leftist looney made just one accurate statement in his life,” Rexroth had shouted at Phillips. “I’m going to quote it to you now, and I want you to remember it: ‘Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.’
“Well, goddamit, I own a bunch of them. And I’ll use them the way I want to. Get it, Phillips?”
The massive publicity campaign got into high gear two weeks prior to the Heartlands Derby. Phillips dutifully saturated the Horse Racing Journal with the story, and all the rest of racing’s trade publications reported it to a lesser extent. So did other media outlets: People Magazine and the Wall Street Journal both carried items describing Rexroth’s “unique promise to the public.”