of Rexroth’s that Aldous thought should be sold at the fall sales.
“The butler lets me in. He directs me to the indoor pool, and that’s where Stoner meets me. He says Rexroth is too busy to see me, that I should just give him Aldous’ report on the mares. Fine, I say.
“While we’re talking, I can’t hardly help but notice some kind of ruckus on the other side of the glass doors involving a couple of members of the Rexroth Roller Derby. I can hear Rexroth bellowing at one of them, Darla, the redhead. And I can hear her giving it back to him pretty good before she clomps off the track and out the door. Meanwhile, I can see little Deirdre, the one built like a sprinter, kind of simpering and smiling on the sidelines until Rexroth gives her a signal and she starts zooming around the track without a stitch on. So I say to Stoner, ‘What was all that about?’”
Doyle stopped talking as another pickup pulled up near the phone, its front bumper halting about a yard away from him. “Nice driving, Ace,” he said to the driver, who ambled into the store without taking any notice of Doyle.
“Anyway,” Doyle said back into the phone, “Stoner fills me in on this situation. He says, ‘Mr. Rexroth is an extremely superstitious man. Each week that the financial report for RexCom is up over the corresponding week of the preceding year, Mr. Rexroth keeps the same skater working for that full day and rewards her with a handsome bonus.’
“‘But if a week comes that profits are down, Mr. Rexroth immediately changes bladers. If the news is not good and Darla, let’s say, is the designated skater that day, well, whoosh, she’s dismissed and replaced and put on the sidelines for at least two days without pay.’
“‘Most of the girls have come to recognize this as equitable and just part of their job assignments. Some, of course, occasionally react rather bitterly,’ Stoner says.
“Is this the damndest thing you’ve ever heard?” Doyle said. “I wonder if Rexroth learned this at Harvard Business. It could be the basis of a real popular course, providing visuals are included.”
There was a momentary silence on the line after Doyle finished. Doyle then heard Damon say, as if to himself, “This Rexroth truly is nuttier than I’d thought.”
Doyle looked out at the store’s parking lot. Much of it was now completely in shadow, and most of the vehicles were gone. He was about to begin another quiet night alone at Willowdale. Then, motivated as much by the desire to keep talking to the agents as to inform them, Doyle said, “You know that Chicago jockey, Willie Arroyo? Well, he’s been making these kind of quick visits here once a week to work some mystery horse for Rexroth. Aldous doesn’t know what the story is on this horse, can’t even find out its real name. And Rexroth won’t tell him anything about it, either. Kind of interesting.
“Arroyo knows me from when I groomed City Sarah,” Doyle added. “I’ve made sure he hasn’t spotted me, because he sure as hell would think something was up if he saw me working here. But as to this mystery horse, I don’t know what the deal is with him.”
Karen said, “If you learn anything else you can tell us when you call Friday. Unless something comes up. If it does, call right away. And be careful, Jack.”
“Will do,” Doyle said, regretting that this communication with what he had come to regard as the real world-even if it was populated by FBI agents dedicated to manipulating his life-was about to end.
Chapter 17
Following his
“I was never lazy regarding my nightlife,” responded Doyle.
After the first few weeks, life at Willowdale proved to be a pleasant surprise to Doyle. The steady rhythms of outdoor work, plus the warmth of the Bolger family, were starting to smooth out some of his hard edges. This change did not go unnoticed.
Aldous said to Jack one morning when the last horse had been fed and watered, “After observing you these weeks, laddie, I’ve decided something.”
“What’s that?” Jack said. He bent down to retrieve a rubrag one of the grooms had dropped.
“You remind me of an orphaned colt I was given when I was a boy. I was young, and so was he, and he’d been mistreated in some way or other at the farm my father bought him from.
“When I got him he was the meanest little critter you’d ever see. He didn’t trust anybody and he lashed out at everybody every chance he had. It took me months to convince him the world wasn’t the hell hole he thought it was. Once I got through to him, he’d still pretend to keep his mean ways, but he really didn’t have his heart in it anymore. He’d changed, and we both knew it.”
Jack turned away to hide his grin. “You’re a cheeky lot, you Kiwis,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away.
The more Doyle got to know Bolger, the more he appreciated the man-for his work ethic, his fair treatment of his work force, for the joy he took in spending time with his sister and her children. Bolger’s energy supply was apparently inexhaustible. Not only would he work twelve hours most days, he would reserve the time to spend with Helen and Ian almost every evening, usually taking them to fish in the Willowdale Farm lake, or else monitor their riding of the Shetland pony he had acquired just for their use during their stay.
Doyle sometimes accompanied Bolger and the kids to the fishing hole, but he rarely remained for long. He could appreciate the calm and peaceful setting, and the feel of the lush green grass that draped the sides of the blue lake, and, no question, the obvious joy evidenced by Caroline’s children as they competed with each other to catch the most, or biggest, fish. But as Doyle put it one evening to Bolger as they observed Ian and Helen in their dead-serious competition, “Fishing just doesn’t do it for me. You know what I mean?
“There was a guy I used to work out with, he loaned me a book about some New York newspaper editor who ‘found himself’ fly-fishing? I went fly-fishing once with this guy, spent a whole morning and most of the afternoon up to my balls in icewater, we didn’t catch enough to feed a small cat breakfast.
“Fishing, for me, is about in a dead heat with watching yacht racing, cooking shows, or the first three quarters of NBA basketball games.”
“Keep those opinions near your vest, man,” Bolger said seriously. “A lot of horsemen are serious fishermen, both here and back home. To say otherwise makes you sound even more suspect than you usually do.”
Doyle looked at Aldous. “Really?” Concern showed on his face, until he realized that Bolger was exaggerating nearly as much as he. “Naw, you’ve been cracker,” Bolger reassured him. “I’ve heard some muttering from a couple of the lads, them wondering how I’d picked you for my assistant over them. But that’s been about it-more jealousy than doubt. You’re not a bad actor, Jack Doyle. I’d say it’s good on ya so far.”
On a few of those evenings when Doyle didn’t accompany Uncle Aldous and niece and nephew to the lake, he walked back up the little hill and headed toward his apartment, which was located on the top floor of the Willowdale dormitory. Most times, he walked past Bolger’s two-story brick house. Sometimes, he was happy to discover, Caroline Cummings would put down the book she was reading, wave to him from her chair on the front porch, and invite him to “stop for a drink, if you’d like?” He had yet to refuse her.
Caroline would usually make easy conversation, asking him about his day, about how Doyle liked working with Aldous.
“Suppose I said I hated working for him?” Doyle said to her once. “Suppose I said I can’t stand how overbearing he is, and rude, and bullying to his help? Suppose I said that? Then what would
Caroline cocked her eye at him-she was looking toward the lake, and he had been admiring her profile as he kidded her, the soft-looking white-blond hair pulled back from her tanned forehead, her long eyelashes-and replied, “What would I say? I’d say you aren’t talking about Aldous Bolger.” She added, “His boss, maybe, yes.”
