Once he’d identified himself over the intercom at the huge stone gates, Doyle pointed his car up a long, winding driveway that led through Harvey Rexroth’s Willowdale Farm.
Doyle had driven the eleven miles out from Lexington on a blacktop county road that was flanked on each side by miles of rolling green pasture divided by expensive white fencing. Many of those miles had nineteenth- century stone walls still in place nearer the road.
In contrast to the boom times of the nineteen-eighties, not all of the pastures were replete with thoroughbred horses; many of the fields were empty, others contained grazing beef cattle. While the city of Lexington had experienced a tremendous growth of business in recent years, Fayette County’s most visible and famous industry, horse production, had tailed off sharply.
Still, the scenery was striking. Spring sunlight glistened on dew-laden grass, on which lay, lazed, or romped a variety of thoroughbred horses-from mares in foal, to those with foals at their sides, to the stallions isolated in the imperious splendor of their own paddocks. The white fences bordering the lush acreage of the Willowdale property extended for miles.
When Doyle’s car had curved around the white-gravel driveway and up to the columned portico of the farm’s red-brick mansion, the front door of the enormous structure opened and a small, dark-haired, dark-suited man wearing gold-rimmed glasses motioned Doyle to park in a spot beside the steps. “Good morning,” the man said after Doyle had stepped out of the car.
“I am Byron Stoner, Mr. Rexroth’s executive assistant. If you will please follow me, Mr. Rexroth is almost ready to see you.”
Doyle removed his sunglasses, placing them in a pocket of his tan sport coat. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, khaki trousers, and Western boots. The complete assistant farm manager’s look, he hoped. He followed Stoner down a long hallway where walls of dark wood were covered with paintings of horses. The hall led to the rear of the mansion.
Glass doors, like those in airports and hotels, slid open as Doyle and Stoner approached. Then they were at the entrance to an enormous tinted-glass structure covered by a retractable dome. The building housed a huge swimming pool, its border dotted with some comfortable-looking beach furniture.
Circling the area that bordered the pool was a beige-colored, slightly banked track around which sped a gorgeous, long-legged, young redhead on inline skates. Doyle did a double take. All she was wearing was blue knee pads, blue elbow pads, and a red headband.
“Well, good morning America, how are ya?” Doyle muttered to himself as the nearly nude figure flashed past him.
He said to Stoner, “Isn’t that kind of dangerous? Without a helmet?”
“She’s a real daredevil, that one,” Stoner said. “She’s one of Mr. Rexroth’s secretaries and companions. As you may have read in the popular press, Mr. Rexroth is a bachelor who loves women.”
“Likes them active, eh?” Doyle said as the redhead zipped through the far turn of the track and headed toward them up the left straightaway. As she swung her arms from side to side, her breasts shifted sideways like cantaloupes in motion.
“Active they must be,” responded Stoner without a trace of irony on his serious face. “Their assignments are considerably more physical than clerical, but Mr. Rexroth demands devotion to duty in all his employees, no matter what those duties may be. Mr. Rexroth is over there,” Stoner said, gesturing toward the far end of the pool.
Doyle saw a thick-bodied man, five feet nine or ten and over 200 pounds, somewhere in his late thirties. He looked to Doyle to have been one of those naturally pudgy children who grew up packing on firm layers of blubber each year into adulthood, where they topped out in the portly section of their tailor’s files. Rexroth was talking on a cellular phone. His resonant baritone voice was angry and loud. The sun, shining through the open dome, bounced off Rexroth’s large, hairless head. Daddy Warbucks in the Blue Grass, Doyle thought.
Rexroth wore a dark-green velour robe. On his feet were gray Nike cross trainers. In his left hand was a baton-sized cigar that he gestured with as he talked into the phone. Asleep next to Rexroth’s right Nike lay a brown and white bulldog. Like Rexroth, the dog had a broad head, big shoulders, and a large, fleshy jaw. Doyle found himself momentarily gawking at the similarity of appearance between man and beast.
About fifteen feet to Rexroth’s left, leaning forward on a white wicker couch and apparently impervious to the phone tirade taking place nearby, was a very large young man who Doyle, from the description supplied by the FBI agents, recognized as Rexroth’s bodyguard, Randy Kauffman. He looked as ominously stupid and strong as they had said. Kauffman was intently watching, on a small color television, the
Doyle recalled Damon Tirabassi’s description of Kauffman as being “wider than a warehouse door, and just as dumb. He pumps more iron than the Packers, and he eats steroids like popcorn.”
Damon had gone on to say that a Willowdale worker, later fired, reported Kauffman to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “This woman,” Damon said, “called in that she had seen Kauffman knock down a horse with one punch. Evidently Rexroth had ordered him to do it, so Kauffman cracks this old mare right between the eyes with a right hand, and down she goes. The ex-worker said Rexroth just was hopping around, laughing at this, calling Kauffman ‘Mongo.’ The point,” Damon said, “is don’t ever let him get his hands on you.”
Doyle returned his attention to Rexroth. The media mogul sat behind a large, marble-topped desk, an impressive piece of furniture completely at odds with the rest of the mini-pavilion’s casual decor. The top of the desk was piled with computer printouts, notepads, newspapers, and a computer that Rexroth impatiently pecked at as he continued to shout into the phone.
“Phillips,” he said, “the reason I made you editor of
“What? What was that. Bullshit! I don’t want to hear about the
“I want you and that bloated staff of yours to come up with new, different, sensational stories from the racing industry…the Dark Side of the Sport of Kings…jockeys with batteries, crooked trainers, drugged horses…I want those stories and plenty of them.
“I don’t give a shit if they don’t exist. Find them! Fake them! Then put them on page one in headlines you can read from across the street. I want people fighting with each other to buy the
“‘Man Fucks Mare!’ ‘Horse Rapes Jockette!’ Ninety-six point type. That’s what I’m looking for-the racy stuff behind the races, the dirt, the filth, the stuff people love to read!” Rexroth roared.
Finally lowering his voice and allowing the veins in his neck to recede, Rexroth said, “Find those stories, Phillips, or find another job.” He then threw the phone into the swimming pool. Without hesitation, Kauffman got up, grabbed a long-handled fishing net, and adeptly retrieved it. Doyle recognized this as a practiced motion.
Rexroth rose to his feet, briefly shook Doyle’s hand, then motioned him to a chair in front of the desk. The nearly — nude redhead whizzed by on the track behind Rexroth’s chair, her wheels whirring. She peered straight ahead. She was working up a pretty good sweat, Doyle noted, asking himself, I wonder what the other FBI moles are looking at this morning?
Rexroth interrupted this brief reverie with a question, spoken in a voice turned somewhat raspy from the strain of his recent phone call.
“I’ve read your resume, Mr. Doyle,” he said. “Now, I want you to tell me why you want to go to work at Willowdale.”
Spotting the redhead on another revolution of the track, Doyle couldn’t help but respond, “Well, the scenery certainly is attractive.”
“Yes, she’s a winner,” Rexroth agreed. Then he called out, “Darlene, you can take a break now.”
“It’s Darla,” the redhead shouted over her shoulder, irritation obvious in her voice. “Do you need me anymore today?”
“No,” Rexroth said. “I’ll see you tonight. Please send out Deirdre.”
Darla did as she was told and, within seconds, much to Doyle’s amazement, another neo-naked blader appeared on the track, this one a diminutive brunette with legs muscled like those of an Olympic sprinter. How
