Rexroth swirled the champagne in his stein, looking pensive. “John B. Cabray,” he said softly. “Oh, how I would have liked to have known that man.”
After a few minutes of silence, Rexroth put his stein down on the desk. Senzell looked expectantly at his employer.
Rexroth gazed benignly back at Clyde Senzell. He said, “This is excellent stuff. Should make a terrific series. Go to it, Senzell, give it your best. We’ll publish this over the weekend of July Fourth. Tell Phillips to promo it heavily in advance.
“And,” Rexroth added, “tell Phillips to give that librarian a good pinch on the ass for finding this material.”
After Senzell had gone, Rexroth sat without speaking for several minutes. Stoner busied himself reading that day’s RexCom financial summaries which he’d retrieved from the nearby fax machine. As usual, the figures looked good.
Rexroth leaned back in his chair, his right hand, with its Ivy League Squash Champion ring gleaming in the light, resting lightly on Winston’s cranium. As Rexroth ruminated, the slumbering bulldog silently passed some powerful gas, something that only Stoner seemed to notice.
Finally, Rexroth looked at Stoner and said, “I can’t get over this Cabray story. What an achievement it was to pull off a caper like that! He was brazen, and bold, and thoroughly dishonest and, best of all, he got away with it! He took their money and got away with it!”
Rexroth realized that nothing in his already privileged life would please him more, bring him more satisfaction, than to somehow emulate Cabray in some strikingly larcenous way. He poured the last of the second bottle of what he called “Donny P” into his stein.
It was then that Rexroth’s thoughts turned to the royally bred son of Donna Diane, grazing these days in total obscurity in one of the far Willowdale pastures.
Rexroth had originally orchestrated the theft of Donna Diane only to exact revenge on his hated foreign rivals. It had been, up to then, simply a matter having the mare’s offspring for himself, and fuck those Micks and Brits. Now, with Cabray’s caper fresh in his consciousness, Rexroth’s mind fastened upon the plain bay yearling.
And then the Grand Plan suddenly arrived full-blown in the devious mind of Harvey Rexroth, a criminal epiphany that caused him suddenly to leap to his feet and thrust his thick arms into the air.
“Ah…fucking…hah!” Rexroth shouted, loud enough to cause the surprised Stoner to drop the sheaf of financial reports, to startle the bulldog Winston, who awakened with another vicious fart, and to cause Randy Kauffman to turn away from the television screen whereon a group of dwarf transvestites of different races were embroiled in a scuffle that had carried them, along with the talk show host, into the front rows of the studio audience.
Chapter 16
“It’s going okay,” Doyle said. He was at an outdoor wall phone of the Wildcat-Jiffy-Shopper gas station and convenience store located at an intersection of country roads three and a half miles from Willowdale. It was early dusk of a warm summer evening, and Doyle was talking to Karen Engel in Chicago. He thought the FBI agent sounded a little anxious. This prompted Doyle to play it as cool as he possibly could manage. “Nada to worry about so far,” he said.
“Nothing I want to talk about,” Doyle might have added, but did not. Embarrassed as he was at what had happened, Doyle had decided to refrain from mentioning the major
He had been standing outside the Willowdale stallion barn, leaning on a paddock fence and rubbing the nose of a friendly black horse named Chisox. It was nearly lunch time. Doyle, having completed his morning duties under Aldous’ supervision, was passing the time talking with the stable assistant named Pedro. He asked the young Mexican-American about Chisox’ stud record.
There wasn’t any such record, Pedro said, shaking his head. Chisox, he said, was a teaser.
“Huh?” Doyle responded. After a few moments during which Pedro looked quizzically at Doyle, he proceeded to briefly describe the teaser’s role, to which the amazed Doyle said, “A teaser does fucking
Pedro gave him another puzzled look. “No, no, he does
Doyle cringed as he recalled how he’d become indignant on behalf of the teaser-much to Pedro’s astonishment, Pedro having been long aware of such a traditional breeding practice. When Doyle realized he had revealed a huge gap in his knowledge of animal husbandry, he’d attempted to pass it off as a joke, slapping Pedro on the back and laughing. “Pulled your leg pretty good there didn’t I, amigo?” Doyle said. Pedro had responded by looking at Doyle with the impassive expression many Latino busboys reserve for the gringo customers in upscale American restaurants.
Engel and Tirabassi had asked Doyle to report to them at least twice a week. “And if anything looks like it’s going to break, call us right away, any time,” Damon had emphasized. “This number is good twenty-four hours a day. And always use a public phone.”
As he cupped the receiver in his hand, Doyle looked across the store’s crowded parking lot. It was filled primarily with pickup trucks, some owned by workers Doyle recognized from Willowdale. They emerged from the store carrying packages of groceries, or six-packs of beer, or both. They then drove off in the direction of the farm, where they lived either in the two-story dormitory on the north side of the property or, if they had families, in one of the small wooden cottages near the east border.
This was Doyle’s fourth telephoned report to the agents in Chicago, and it was as uninspiring as those preceding it.
The calls had begun at the end of Doyle’s second full day at Willowdale, a day he had spent in the good- natured and informative company of Aldous Bolger. Putting his best efforts into first creating, then teaching, a crash course in farm management, Bolger had given Doyle a tour of nearly every yard of Willowdale’s six hundred acres and most of the structures thereon.
There had been capsulized descriptions of the roles of the employees, from top to bottom. Bolger showed him grooms at work, described the various aspects of breeding season “in case anybody brings it up,” Bolger had emphasized. “We’re past the real breeding season now. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have the time to trot you around the place like I’m doing.”
Other topics touched were the horse sales held at various times each year, and the preparation of horses to be sold; the function of the on-site laboratory and its adjacent X-ray facility. Doyle was shown the feed barns, stallion barns, broodmare barns; the tool and machinery sheds; even the lake stocked with fish and home to a pair of swans. Doyle shook hands with dozens of people whose names he attempted to memorize.
Toward the end of the tour, Bolger led Doyle over to the railing of Willowdale’s one-mile training track, a meticulously manicured strip of loam that lay just outside an equally neat turf course.
“Not many places in the country have training tracks the quality of these on their property,” Bolger said.
Doyle watched as a lone horse headed into the homestretch of the dirt course. He was going very fast, very smoothly. The rider was hunched down on the bay horse’s withers, hands still. When horse and rider sped past the spot where he and Bolger stood, Doyle was very surprised to see that the rider of the brown colt was Willie Arroyo-City Sarah’s jockey. Doyle ducked behind Bolger. “Let’s get out of here,” he said urgently. “I don’t want that jock to see me here. He could recognize me.” Bolger and Doyle then walked rapidly back toward Bolger’s office.
“You know Willie Arroyo?” Bolger asked as they hurried up the road.
“Kind of,” Doyle said. “I won’t bore you with the details. But it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to see me here. He might think something was going on, and he might talk about it. I don’t want to take the chance.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Bolger replied as they entered the air-conditioned haven of his office, “there’s something ‘off’ about that colt we just saw. Rexroth is very interested in that colt’s workouts. Everybody around
