already trimmed-down physique. Unfortunately, his limited life savings were undergoing similar diminution while the Chicago job market had not yet opened its arms wide to him.
Moe Kellman, his T-shirt sodden with sweat, entered the locker room as Doyle was toweling off following his steam bath and shower. Doyle grinned at the little man. “How many sit-ups today?” Doyle asked Moe.
“In the seven hundreds, kid. It’s the garlic powder pills I started. They’ve turned me around.”
Doyle said, “Turned you around? You’ve been knocking off sit-ups and pull-ups like a machine since I’ve known you in here.”
Moe blushed. “C’mon, lunch is on me,” he said. They went to Dino’s Ristorante on Chicago’s near north side. As usual, the place was jammed, with a long line of hopefuls at the reception desk. The restaurant was a popular one with the city’s movers and shakers, and those who ardently desired to join that category. Dino, the owner, quickly spotted Moe, who was slicing his way through the taller crowd like a Munchkin drum major. He was wearing a beautifully cut Italian silk suit, dark beige, with a tan silk shirt under a glistening white tie. Doyle, in his black sport coat, red and white checkered sport shirt, and tan khakis-he’d pushed his business suits to the back of the closet-followed closely in Kellman’s wake.
Maybe that’s why Moe wears his hair frizzed up like that, Doyle thought, makes him easier to spot.
After Dino, a stocky, swarthy man had bowed, scraped, fluttered and fawned for a couple of minutes, and Moe ordered the garlic soup, to be followed by shrimp-garlic pasta. Doyle didn’t feel all that hungry; he opted for an Italian beef sandwich and a Bushmills Manhattan.
“So,” Moe said, “you got yourself bumped out of your job, I hear. What’ve you got in mind for yourself?”
Doyle sat back in his chair. The Bushmills was in there, doing its job. He felt relaxed, expansive. “No more bullshit jobs, I can guarantee you that,” he said. “I need to make some nice money. But I’m all through jollying up to assholes worse than me. Like my Grandpa Mike used to say, ‘I’d rather curry horses than curry favor.’”
Moe smiled at this, then turned to signal Dino. Waiters charged forward bearing the steaming food. Dino hovered as Moe swirled a forkful of pasta, departing only when Moe had indicated his approval of the dish.
Doyle was irritated by the fact that Dino had made no attempt to check with him about his meal. “I’ve had better Italian beef at the state fair in Idaho,” Doyle said.
The little man shrugged. “The beef here is dreck,” he said. “I would’ve told you that if you’d have asked. But you don’t do much of that, do you?” Moe nodded in agreement with himself. He went back to vacuuming up his meal, noodles and beans and shrimp disappearing beneath his neatly trimmed white mustache as if via conduit.
Doyle looked Moe in the eye. “You’re right,” he admitted.
“I know I am. If you’d just listen-and I know you’re smart enough to at least listen-I’ve got something for you.”
“Name it.”
Moe said, “I want you to fix a horse race.”
What Kellman had in mind was a race at Heartland Downs, the big Chicago track, in late June, during the third week of the thoroughbred meeting there. “My people,” Moe said, leaning forward over his empty plates, “want to cash a nice bet on a little horse called City Sarah.”
“What do you mean, ‘my people’?” Doyle asked. “The nation of Israel? Your family?”
Moe shook his head in disgust. “See, that’s what I’ve heard about you. It’s your mouth gets you hung out to dry for what, what are you, thirty-eight, forty years? Why don’t you shut it and do some business for yourself for a change,” he advised, adding, “There’s twenty-five grand in it for you.”
Doyle was stunned by this offer. He pondered it as he polished off his second Manhattan. No question, he could use the money. And he definitely needed something brand-new to do, having found himself absolutely unable to muster another charge at the corporate barricades. He realized that, surreal as it might seem to him, Kellman’s offer was at least the extension of a helping hand, something that Doyle had, over the years, hardened himself to reject. Since late childhood he had created a persona of iron independence so strong that it might well, at this stage of his life, be threatening to crush him.
In the weeks since his firing, Doyle had found his life deteriorating into a succession of anxious days, fretful nights, pain-drenched dawns. He was starting to drink more, and more often, than he should. And he didn’t like that about himself. In the past, Doyle had managed to limit what he called his “Celtic dark periods” to no more than a few days of dipping into booze and the most mournful items in his jazz collection. He’d once played Billie Holiday’s version of “Good Morning Heartache” for nine hours straight while holed up in a darkened apartment, emerging hung over but cleansed.
Now, influenced by this latest Serafin Ltd.-administered life jolt, Doyle had begun to identify with the hapless creatures on the “Dogs for Adoption” show, a staple of early morning cable television toward which he frequently found himself channel-surfing. Peering blearily at the screen, Doyle had occasionally been poised to dial 1-800- PUPSAVE, but he never did. Most of the canines on offer, Doyle figured, were cute enough now when young, but would probably grow up to bite his nuts off once they got to know him.
Instead of dialing, Doyle would force himself into sleep, where he frequently hosted the same dream: it featured Doyle confiding in a beautiful blond female psychiatrist who busied herself replenishing his cocktail glass while assuring him that his myriad fine qualities were soon to be universally recognized. With the dream’s departure, depression would come to Doyle with a
Depression was something Doyle knew about, going back to the year of his brother’s death. Owen Doyle, Jack’s only sibling, ten years his senior, was the acknowledged star of the family. Big, good-natured, a natural athlete with a natural penchant for charming and pleasing people, Owen had enlisted in the Marines right out of high school, wanting to toughen up for two years before accepting a college football scholarship. Eight-year-old Jack hated to see Owen go, for he idolized his brother. Nineteen months into his enlistment, Owen died in a Camp Pendleton helicopter training accident, and everything changed in the Doyle family.
Jack’s insurance salesman father disappeared into drink, his mother into mournful silence. Nothing Jack ever did, no achievement of his, could ever match their memories of the beloved Owen. Jack became convinced his parents would trade him in a second for a return of their eldest son.
Jack found himself hating Owen, and hating himself for doing so. His grades plummeted as his school discipline problems escalated. He felt his parents didn’t give a damn what he did. Finally, a high school phy-ed instructor had channeled Jack’s aggression into boxing. The sport was his salvation, providing Doyle with a sense of worth even though he never became much more than an average amateur fighter. As a resident of his emotionally damaged home, Jack had been an island unto himself. Enrolled at the university, escaped from that depressing scene where he’d grown up, he felt emancipated. But, as Jack well knew, the residue of Owen’s snuffed-out life would always dust his soul.
Doyle looked across the table at Moe, who was drinking espresso and finishing off a half-order of roasted garlic that Dino had slavishly proffered.
“How would you do something like this?” Doyle asked.
Speaking in a soft voice, Moe said that Doyle would go to work for a horse trainer named Angelo Zocchi, a distant relative of the fawning Dino. Doyle would be on the menial shift at Heartland Downs for trainer Zocchi, walking sweaty horses back and forth after they had gone through their morning exercises, and also, with shovel and pitchfork, cleaning up their lower GI products. That would be the start. Further instructions would follow, Moe said, after Doyle’s initial efforts were assessed.
“Eventually, if things work out,” Kellman said, “you’ll pull off the stiffereeno.” Seeing the puzzled look on Doyle’s face, he added, “Stiff the horse-so it doesn’t win.”
“Stiffereeno?” said Doyle. “That sounds like something Sinatra’s Rat Pack used to call their boners.” He shook his head. Then Doyle found himself laughing at this employment scenario.
“Are you kidding me?” he said to Moe. “I’ve shoveled marketing and sales and advertising shit most of my adult life. Now you want me to work with horse shit? What are you, an ironist?”
Doyle pushed his plate aside. “Why doesn’t this Angelo do this himself? Or have one of his regular employees do it? Why bring me in?”
Kellman looked appreciatively at Doyle. “That’s an excellent question, Jack. First off, you looked to me like a prime candidate for a number of reasons, one of which is that you’re not the kind of guy anybody will walk all over out there at the racetrack. But the main reason is that Angelo Zocchi has held a trainer’s license for over thirty
