money they were worth in insurance. He was very emotional about this, and very angry. Obviously, the man cares about horses.”
Doyle tapped a finger on the table. “Hold it right here. I’ve got a question. If Bolger is so put off by this business, why doesn’t he just quit his Willowdale job, haul his ass back to Kiwi land?”
“The reason,” Karen answered, “is that he wants to stop what he believes are these murders of horses. He told us it only took him a few months before he came to thoroughly dislike Rexroth. He thought about quitting then. Then the first horse died, the second only two months later. Bolger is determined to get to the bottom of this, and he believes that can only be done if he stays on the job at Willowdale.
“We spent a couple of days, Damon and I, talking this through, then the two of us consulting with our superiors, trying to determine how best to utilize this information. The consensus finally arrived at was that we couldn’t depend solely on Bolger. After all, two of his predecessors had been dismissed by Rexroth. We tracked both of them down, but neither-one was a guy named McCollister, the other an older man named Doherty-would volunteer any information. It’s possible Rexroth either bought them off, or threatened them, in order to insure their silence. Our concern is that Bolger himself might be a target of threats. He sure doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who’d buckle under, but you never know. We can’t take that kind of chance.
“What was decided, then, was to keep Bolger in place and introduce someone to assist him on-site at Willowdale Farm. Naturally, we wanted to use one of our agents, but we couldn’t find one available who had any experience with racehorses, or their breeding. The person we needed had to be convincing enough to be given the job after we had provided him with phony work references, ones good enough to gain him an interview. We also were to have Bolger introducing his name to Rexroth, saying he’d heard he was a good man and worth hiring.”
“It was at that point that you kind of fell into our laps, Doyle,” said Tirabassi, permitting himself a small smile.
“This goes beyond mind-boggling,” Doyle said, again unable to contain his laughter at what he deemed the absurdity of this scenario.
“I don’t know the first thing about a thoroughbred breeding farm,” Doyle said forcefully. “Why would you think I’d be able to pass any inspection I’d get?”
“Because,” Damon said, “Bolger will be the man doing the main inspecting, as you put it. He can brief you on the basics. Doyle, we know you’re a smart guy, and a fairly quick study-you showed that when you worked for Angelo Zocchi. We think you’re just the man for this job.”
Said Karen, “Think about it, Jack. You can, we might put it, clear your name with us while doing something very useful. Providing you cooperate and work with us on this, you’ll never have to worry about any unofficial ‘discouraging’ we might do in regard to your future employment. In fact, if you keep your end of the bargain, you can expect an endorsement from us.
“This whole project should not, we hope, take more than a couple of months. We want to nail Rexroth before he can do any more damage. You and Bolger, we hope, will be able to lead us to the evidence we need. We don’t want this case prolonged. And I’m sure you don’t, either,” Karen said.
“Let’s assume,” Doyle said, looking skeptical, “that I somehow pass the employment test. Let’s assume I actually get this job at Willowdale. What do I do, when I do? I’m no undercover agent.”
“Whatever suspicions Bolger has about Rexroth’s crimes,” Damon said, “he can’t be too obvious about seeking confirmation. Otherwise, Rexroth’ll get on to him. And, obviously, Bolger can’t be everywhere on a big farm like that. He needs an ally, a confederate, somebody he can point in the right direction. Somebody he can trust.”
Karen leaned forward, elbows on the table, looking Jack directly in the eye. “Do you think this is the scenario we would have written? Having to involve somebody, well, like you? But we’ve been thoroughly frustrated in trying to get Rexroth.”
Damon said quietly, “Desperate situations demand desperate measures. I think that’s what this amounts to, Mr. Doyle.”
Jack said, “Why in hell would Bolger trust somebody he’d never met-somebody like me?”
Karen smiled at Doyle. “Because we told him he could, Jack. We gave him assurances. Now,” she added, “you’re going to live up to them.”
Doyle wasn’t laughing now. The sound that came out of him was more a groan. I could probably refuse, he thought, as he looked at the expectant faces of the two FBI agents, and they couldn’t really nail me with any charges that would stick. But there’s no question they could prevent me from getting any kind of decent job in the future.
Doyle shook his head in wonderment at the watershed moment he’d just reached in his rapidly changing life. “Jesus Christ-Jack Doyle, junior G-Man. I can’t believe this is happening.” He plunked his coffee cup down on the table, then slid the check onto Damon’s placemat.
“How do I start with this thing?”
Chapter 7
“Jack, I feel bad about how it worked out for you. That’s why I asked for a meeting today.”
Moe Kellman had phoned Doyle the previous night, three nights after Doyle had been robbed and laid low, literally and figuratively. “How did you find out about what happened to me?” Doyle had asked.
“I hear a lot of things, Jack,” Moe had replied. “How I hear, that’s not important. What I hear is that you got ripped off, that somebody took all you earned from us. I was sorry to hear that, Jack.”
The two sat in bright sunshine on this summer day in first-row box seats directly behind home plate at Wrigley Field. These were the best seats Doyle had ever had at a baseball game, and he said so. “Had them for years,” Moe shrugged.
Moe Kellman, Doyle had learned, was a man who always had the best seats no matter where he went. His business was fur, luxury level fur, which was still a staple of his “people,” be they Outfit higher-ups or the members of the police and judiciary that helped them continue to thrive in an increasingly competitive criminal world. The animal rights, anti-fur movement had failed to make any inroads whatsoever with the stratum of society served by Moe Kellman.
When Doyle had arrived that afternoon, he’d said to Kellman, “I didn’t know you liked baseball.”
“I don’t,” Kellman replied. “I’m a Cubs fan. There’s a difference.”
Doyle looked around at what legions of loyal Chicago Cubs fans referred to with reverence as the “friendly confines.” The grass almost shone in the sunlight, a slightly lighter shade of green than the ivy that covered the outfield walls of this compact old ball yard.
Doyle hadn’t been at Wrigley Field since a September afternoon two years earlier when he had chaperoned a group of wide-eyed Serafin clients from Salt Lake City to a Cubs-Dodger game. The men in that middle-aged group had almost genuflected at their first sight of this Chicago sports landmark. The women had occupied themselves by ogling the goodly number of good-looking athletes occupying Cubs uniforms. How they played was secondary.
Today, Doyle noticed, although it was a Wednesday afternoon, the Wrigley stands were nearly filled-filled, as usual, by an almost exclusively white crowd of northsiders, suburbanites, and out-of-towners. The many youngsters in the crowd were almost matched in number by the suit-coated businessmen who talked on their cellular phones inning after inning.
Out in the bleachers, halter-topped girls sat with their bare-chested boyfriends, spending as much time applying suntan lotion and ordering from the busy beer vendors as they did watching the action on the field. Behind them, from the rooftoops of the old apartment buildings that bordered the ballpark on Waveland and Sheffield Avenues, gatherings of young people monitored the game in progress from amidst clouds of smoke that billowed skyward from barbecue grills.
Don’t any of these people work? Doyle wondered.
Aloud, he said to Kellman, “How can you be a Cubs fan? How can anybody? They haven’t won a pennant since World War Two.”
“Listen,” Moe replied, “this is a great place to get a tan. And a great place to relax. There’s no pressure to concentrate-these schlubs are hardly ever involved in games that mean anything, so you’ve got a nice, comfortable
