Saturday, June 16. The Day.
Moe Kellman had phoned Doyle earlier in the week, to touch base and offer congratulations. “You did real nice,” Kellman had said. “I’ll see you Saturday night at Dino’s. Just keep your mouth nice and shut-I know that’s hard for you-and your favorite bank teller will be in for a big surprise.”
Before hanging up, Moe asked, “Doyle, you going to bet some for yourself? Our action’s mainly going down in Vegas. If you want to play some of your twenty-five grand out there just say so, we’ll take care of it.” Doyle turned down this offer.
That afternoon at Heartland Downs, an hour before City Sarah’s race, Doyle-his adrenaline meter on fast-forward-was pacing in front of the horse’s stall when E. D. Morley sauntered up. He was accompanied by none other than Doyle’s counselor from Cork, the elusive Maureen. E. D. had on his “going to the races” outfit of white shirt, pressed jeans, and white cowboy hat atop his dreadlocks. Maureen, wearing a bright green pants suit, regarded Doyle from behind a pair of oversized sunglasses.
She gave Doyle a big smile, then a hug. “You’re lookin’ grand,” she said, “and so’s your little harse. Don’t ya tink so, E. D.?” she inquired of her companion. Morley nodded in agreement, a big grin on his broad, black face.
Doyle said to Maureen, “I tried to call you the other night. Couldn’t track you down anywhere.”
“Ah, well, I’ve moved on from O’Keefe’s,” Maureen answered. “I’d tell you where I’m going to be, but sure I just don’t know that now. I’m kind of between apportunities, as you lads put it over here.”
“Well, speaking of opportunities,” Doyle responded in a low voice, “you might risk an Irish punt or two on City Sarah this afternoon.”
Maureen lowered her glasses and raised her eyebrows. “After the miserable way the poor ting’s been runnin’ here lately?”
“She’ll run big today,” Doyle vowed. Maureen looked at him, smiling broadly. Morley winked at Doyle and clapped him on the back. “Good luck, mon,” he said.
Minutes later, when Maggie Howard stopped to chat, City Sarah was full life, poking her head out of the stall to nuzzle Maggie, then bouncing around behind the webbed barrier.
“Hey, she’s a different horse today,” Maggie said appreciatively. “She’s looking good. You know,” Maggie added, “I hardly ever bet, but I think I’ll put a few bucks on Sarah today.” Maggie handed E. D. a $10 bill. “On the nose, okay? Will you take care of that?”
“Aay, Moggie, we do dat,” E. D. said with an accent more exaggerated than usual. Turning to leave with Maureen, E. D. gave Doyle another broad wink.
After they’d departed, Maggie said to Doyle, “Ain’t you gonna bet on this pretty little horse?”
“Already have,” Doyle said.
En route to Dino’s Ristorante that night, the joyous sounds of Angelo Zocchi’s work force still resounded in Doyle’s ears as he drove through the Chicago streets.`
“She win for FUN, mon….”
“All by herSELF….”
“City Sarah’s BACK!” This from Maggie Howard, who was far more pumped by the filly’s return to regular form than by the proceeds of her bet.
City Sarah that afternoon had romped by five lengths, paying $18.60 to win for each $2 bet. Utilizing his trademark “victory leap,” jockey Willie Arroyo had dismounted from her in the winner’s circle as if coming off a trampoline, vaulting upward from the stirrups before landing lightly aside City Sarah.
“Theez filly run like a little train today,” Arroyo grinned at Zocchi. “No slooshing in her belly,” he added as he patted City Sarah’s neck.
“Nice ride,” Zocchi said, abruptly dismissing the jockey. Zocchi looked very relieved. Doyle felt that way.
Leading City Sarah to the test barn, where she would have to supply urine that would be examined by the racing laboratory for illegal substances-this happened to the winners of all races and to beaten favorites, too-Doyle tried to estimate what this victory might have meant to the Kellman “family” coffers. Besides winning at 8–1, City Sarah had keyed a trifecta that-thanks to the arrival in second and third place of a couple of longshots-paid nearly $4,000 for each $2 invested. Doyle soon stopped speculating about what gargantuan amounts of money were involved here, well aware that he would never be told what they were.
As usual, Dino’s Ristorante was jammed, but Doyle found Moe sitting alone at his usual six-person table. He was burrowing through a serving of linguini in garlic and clam sauce from a platter wider than his concise shoulders.
“Very nice work, Jack,” Moe smiled as Doyle sat down. “Very nice. Have some dinner, and tell me how it went.”
Doyle opened his menu, and the envelope was there, containing the $100 bills-two hundred and fifty of them-as he’d specified. “No dinner tonight, Moe, thanks. I’m not hungry anyway. I feel like having a few pops, but I can’t stand drinking in the same room as your asshole buddy Dino. We’ll get together,” Doyle assured Moe. “I’ll see you at the gym.”
Before turning to leave, Doyle said, “This a one-time deal, Moe. You know that, right?”
Kellman carefully wiped his hands on a napkin before reaching to shake with Doyle. “Understood, kid, understood. Trust me on this,” Moe said, and Doyle departed with a fond look over his shoulder back at Moe’s white dandelion head. Doyle was confident he could do just that.
Twenty-five grand in his pocket, but Doyle could not get off on it. Trying to pinpoint how he felt, Doyle thought long and hard before coming up with “soiled…maybe sullied.”
Doyle hit three of his favorite haunts on the near north side, buying drinks for friend and stranger alike. But nothing worked to lessen his sense of deflation and the feeling of disappointment in himself, not even his final stop, at Andy’s, the near north jazz spot that was one of Doyle’s favorite hangouts. “I needed the money,” he said to himself, “but goddamn it I should have figured out another way to get it. This just wasn’t right, this way.”
“Part of the problem,” Doyle mumbled, “is that you pulled off something few people have, and you can’t even brag about it to anybody.”
The harder Doyle tried to celebrate, the worse he felt. On a night that Doyle had made more money than his salesman father had ever made in half a year, he headed home just after 10:30. Doyle had a bit of a buzz on from the drinks, and he knew it, so he was extra careful, parking the Accord with precision in the dank lot beneath his four-plus-one apartment building.
They had been waiting, crouched, on the off side of the car that bordered the parking space marked “Doyle.” Jack had locked the door and was starting to turn away from the Accord when he heard-much too late-sounds he knew shouldn’t arise.
They were very good. Doyle couldn’t even fully pivot before he felt a knee jam into his lower back and a powerful arm encircle his neck, felt the arm then jerk his chin up and back so quick and hard he thought his eyeballs were going to exit the rear of his head.
Quiet instructions were being issued as Doyle struggled. He heard a mixture of them, urgently whispered: “Keep him like that…Not a sound, now…Up with his sleeve…”And when the needle hit midway up his extended right arm, Doyle realized that they were not going to kill him, realized what this was all fucking about. His body already in the sway of whatever they’d shot him up with, Doyle fought to keep awake and alert. This, too, was a losing battle.
Last Doyle felt, the envelope with the twenty-five thousand was being extracted from his jacket and his assailants were gently positioning him, like a salmon on a bed of slivered ice, across the backseat of the Accord.
Last Doyle heard as they slipped away were the little sounds of rubber soles across the concrete garage floor and what, in his narcotic-driven slippage, he bitterly discerned to be voices, one a man’s, the other a woman’s, in the respective singular accents of…Kingston, was it? And…Cork?