woman who was the victim of a
As Doyle tuned in Gary’s good jazz station, in the middle of an Oscar Peterson tour de force titled “Nigerian Marketplace,” he began to review his assignment. He went over what Engel and Tirabassi had told him about the horse killings, went over his meeting with Aldous Bolger. Then his thought-train quickly went onto a siding marked by Doyle’s pleasant memory of meeting Bolger’s sister.
“Caroline,” he said to himself, “nice name…nice girl…Wonder how many other New Zealand women are as great-looking as she is?”
Doyle’s car, at the suggestion of Maggie Howard, was unwashed and unkempt, the interior packed haphazardly with his possessions, backseat strewn with horse industry magazines and old copies of the
“You got to make it
This advice Doyle had received the previous morning after he’d driven out to Heartland Downs. He had wanted to say goodbye to City Sarah and Maggie, not necessarily in that order, and also ask that if any word was received in the Zocchi barn of former employee E. D. Morley, it be forwarded to Doyle in Kentucky.
Doyle had caught up with Maggie right after training hours. “I got on ten this morning,” meaning she’d exercised ten horses, she said happily, “and I’m starving. I’ll even let a suspicious character like you buy me breakfast.” Her black eyes crinkled with good humor.
Once they were seated in the track kitchen, where the morning orders were just about evenly divided between fried eggs and huevos rancheros, with bottles of beer being sold to many members of each faction, Doyle said, “What do you mean, suspicious?”
Maggie smiled at him from over her platter of ham and eggs. “Jack, you know what I’m talking about,” she said. “Ever since you came to work for Angelo, everybody around here figured you were up to something. Like I told you from the get-go, you weren’t any kind of horse person then.
“Sure, you picked up the routine pretty fast. And you showed up and worked hard, I’ll give you that. But that didn’t change the fact you weren’t really one of us.”
Doyle stepped away from the table for a coffee refill at the cafeteria counter. When he’d returned to his seat, he said, “Maggie, what you say may be true. But I’ll tell you this, my dear, I better look the part where I’m going next.” Without coming close to getting into the subject of his involvement with the FBI, Doyle recounted how he had found a position on a farm in Kentucky.
“Doing what?” said the incredulous Maggie Howard.
“Working for a friend of mine. Name is Bolger.”
“What farm you going on?” Maggie asked.
“It’s called Willowdale.”
Maggie looked even more amazed at this statement. “Jack, that’s one of the major farms down there.” Taking off her black exercise rider’s helmet, Maggie shook her black curls in another sign of disbelief. Then, her eyes narrowed as she regarded Doyle across the scarred plastic table.
“Jack Doyle, you’re up to
“I’m just going about making a living, Maggie,” Doyle replied. “I don’t know how this is going to work out for me. But I haven’t got anything else going. I refuse to go back to the kind of bullshit jobs I used to do. And Angelo hasn’t exactly offered me any bonus money to return to work for him. So, I figured I’d give it a try down in the old Blue Grass.” He reached for his coffee cup, avoiding her gaze.
Maggie went back to the counter, evidently convinced she wasn’t going to elicit any more useful information regarding Doyle’s upcoming employment. She returned with two bran muffins nearly the size of croquet balls, then quickly polished them off. Doyle shook his head admiringly; the girl had about a twenty-inch waist. “Don’t tell me,” she said, laughing at the look on Doyle’s face. “I know, I know, it’s what everybody says-I’ve got the metabolism of a hummingbird. Well, enjoy it is my theory.”
“So,” Doyle said, trying to be as nonchalant as possible, “anybody ever hear from E. D. Morley?”
Maggie shook her head. “Not a word,” she said. “That was real strange. E. D. worked for Angelo for four, maybe five years. That’s a long time these days on a racetrack backstretch to work for the same man. Everybody figured they got along real good.
“But then E. D. just never showed up one day. Never even picked up his last check, Angelo said. And that was
“Say,” Maggie said, frowning at Doyle. “Wasn’t it just about the same time you left the stable that E. D. did?”
“Right about the same time, I guess. I’m not positive,” Doyle shrugged.
Maggie’s big black eyes burrowed into Doyle. “Jack, there’s something here you’re not telling me about, something funny. Am I right?”
Doyle stood up, smiling. “You’d know a lot more about me if you would have accepted my kind-no, make that
As they headed toward the track kitchen door, Maggie said, “Somehow, Jack, I get the feeling I did the right thing. Don’t get me wrong,” she added, “it’s not that I don’t like you. But you remind me of a story an old boyfriend of mine told me.”
Maggie waved hello at a trainer coming their way, then resumed talking as they walked.
“This fella, this one-time boyfriend, grew up in Detroit and went to school with the son of one of those Mafia dons, or whatever they call them. Anyway, Jimmy, my friend, stayed in touch with this guy, his name was Mario, over the years. Jimmy wound up as a horse trainer, Mario went into the family business. And about five years ago, Mario got nabbed in a big crackdown in Detroit, and he got sent to prison.
“My friend Jimmy kept in touch with Mario. And Mario wrote him back these long letters. He was a real good letter writer. Jimmy said Mario had been the editor of their high school newspaper.
“Anyway, Mario is in prison for about three years, and near the end of his sentence, he gets to know a new arrival-a congressman from near his home back in the Detroit area. They get to be good buddies.
“The congressman reads one of Mario’s letters one day, and he tells Mario, ‘You’re a terrific writer. I’d like to write a book-about my experiences in politics, and my bad luck that brought me here, and so forth.’ And then he says to Mario, ‘Would you help me write this?’
“According to Jimmy, Mario tells the congressman, ‘No, I can’t do that, as much as I’d like to. The reason is, there’s not enough time. I’d like to help you, Congressman, but I’m getting paroled out of here in two weeks.’
“I guess the congressman was pretty disappointed at this. He says to Mario, ‘Well, that’s too bad. I wish I would have gotten to know you sooner.’
“And Mario takes a long look at this guy, this congressman, and he says to him: ‘Believe me, if you would have known me longer, you would have
Maggie stopped walking. They had nearly reached the south end of Angelo Zocchi’s barn by now, where her car was parked. She looked up at Doyle.
“Jack, I can’t hardly help but think that there’s something about that story that brings you to mind. I don’t know what you were up to when you were here before. And I don’t know what you’re up to taking this farm job in Kentucky. Tell you the truth, I’d rather not know.
“You’re a cool guy, Jack. But I do believe that getting into your life could be a risky thing.”
Maggie Howard extended her strong, brown, right hand, and Doyle gripped it briefly. He couldn’t argue with her. Maggie seemed like a very nice, straight-ahead young woman, equipped with one of those built-in bullshit detectors like the kind that Jack Doyle carried through life.
Chapter 12
