hand. Then Tilton moved over to the other bay horse. Rexroth attempted to sidle rearward at this point, but Damon strengthened his grip on the publisher’s arm.
“I’ll be damned,” Tilton said after he’d examined the second horse. “This sumbitch’s got the same ID as that horse right there,” he said, motioning toward Lancaster Lad. “Except,” he added, “this one’s a helluva lot newer.”
Agent Ebner elbowed his way through the crowd with Earlene Klinder in tow. The horse tattooer from Kentucky, one elbow in Ebner’s large hand, held her other arm across her chest as if she was going to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Fearfully, she glanced about her before her eyes settled on Byron Stoner.
Once Doyle had told Damon and Karen what to look for, Earlene had not been hard to track down. There were only a handful of horse tattooers in Kentucky. Earlene was the third one on the list to be questioned, and she cracked almost at once, motivated by fear of prison time and leaving her twins to fend for themselves in foster homes.
“Yessir,” said Earlene, “that’s the man that hired me-the short one, standing next to the fat fella. He’s the one paid me to tattoo the horse over at Willowdale with the identification numbers he gave me.”
Stoner sighed, then took off his gold-rimmed glasses and began to polish them. Earlene, cloaked in the armor of immunity granted her because of her cooperation, began to breathe more normally. “And that big lug held the horse while I worked on him,” she said righteously, pointing at Randy Kauffman.
Doyle leaned close to Rexroth’s large, sweaty face. Rexroth’s eyes darted about as sweat beads multiplied on his bald head. “Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?” Doyle said softly.
Rexroth gathered himself. “I don’t understand you people,” he barked. Pointing to Lancaster Lad, he said, “What’s going on here with this horse of mine?”
“No, no, Rexy, you’re too modest,” Doyle answered. “We’re not talking about
“This one here”-Doyle nodded toward Lancaster Lad, who was still dripping wet and blowing from his race efforts-“was shipped to Willowdale last week. I saw him come in.
“And I saw him get his butt kicked over your training track last week by this one
Rexroth started to say something, but Stoner stepped in front of him.
“Stay out of the way, Stoner,” Doyle said. “Your boss wants to ask how I know about this-how these horses got switched so that Rexroth’s guaranteed winner got beat the length of a football field.
“I’ll tell you how I switched these two horses in their stalls at Willowdale two nights ago. They both had halters that said Lancaster Lad, but the halter on the farm’s bay horse was bright and shiny new. So, I took it off him and put it on the new arrival from the racetrack, the real Lancaster Lad. And I took that horse’s halter off him and put it on your homegrown prodigy. Then I switched the horses in the stalls your man Pedro had put them in.”
Doyle poked a forefinger into the middle of Rexroth’s power tie. “When Pedro came to get your fast bay horse the next morning for shipping up here, for your so-called publicity and betting coup, what he got was the
Rexroth’s mouth opened, but he couldn’t manage to convert the garbled sounds into a statement. Damon Tirabassi said, “Interestingly enough, Mr. Rexroth, the bay horse over here”-he pointed to the frisky imposter-“was discovered in a search of your property last night. Acting on a tip from a very reliable source, we served the warrant on Mr. Doyle, your acting farm manager. He cooperated by taking us to the barn this horse was in. We transferred this horse up here today.
“Matter of fact,” Damon said, almost permitting himself a grin, “his horse van had an official escort all the way from Lexington to Chicago. Very unusual for the Bureau.”
Shaking his head in mock dismay, Doyle looked at Rexroth. “You know that old saying around the racetrack, ‘That horse is so slow he couldn’t beat a fat man’? Well, fat man, here’s a slow horse that sure as hell beat you.”
Rexroth said, “I’m not listening to any more of this nonsense.” He began to move away when Damon commanded, “Grab him and hold him.” As the astonished Rexroth was handcuffed, Karen faced him. “And that’s not all,” she said calmly.
At her signal, agent Kamin came through the crowd, pushing Ronald Mortvedt ahead of him. The little man had a sizable bandage on his cheek, covering the cut that Doyle’s fist had inflicted. Mortvedt looked impassively at Rexroth. But when his gaze found Doyle, it carried a charge filled with hate.
“Rexy,” said Doyle, grinning and putting an arm around the publisher’s shoulders, “these colleagues of yours, your fellow criminals, they sold you out and sewed up the case against you. It was a beautiful thing. Dishonor among thieves gaining momentum like a tidal wave. They could hardly wait to give you up, once the picture was made clear to them.
“First, Jud Repke saw the wisdom of telling the truth to the FBI about horse killings on your property. He thought he was a little underpaid, by the way. And Jud was real good in recalling the search for the look-alike horse. That’s what he called the horse he and Mortvedt found in New Mexico, the horse nearly identical to the one you tried to slip into the Heartland Derby today. Old Jud, he was off key at first, but then he got into the sing of things, so to speak,” Doyle said, thoroughly enjoying himself now, as if he were rhythmically drumming the light bag in the gym.
“And that poor little woman that Stoner bribed, the horse tattooer over there? She was what you’d call extremely forthright as well.
“But the star of the linking-everything-to-Rexroth show was that little monster over there,” Doyle said, pointing at Mortvedt. “When it got down to a choice between a reduced prison sentence and nailing your fat ass to the wall, Ronnie got his vocal cords and his testimony in order. Like his buddy Jud, he was kind of miffed over the level of payments you made to him-once he found out the true worth of those insurance policies you were collecting on.
“Ronnie kept a real good record of your payments to him, though-dates, names of the horses you told him to kill. Not to mention the mare you paid him to steal and
“You’re going down, Rexy,” Doyle said with relish, “like a cannonball tossed off the Sears Tower.”
For the first time, Rexroth’s armor of conceit began to melt. He looked at Doyle, then pleadingly at Stoner. As he started to speak, Stoner interjected quickly, “Let the attorneys deal with this.” But Rexroth ignored him. “Why you?” Rexroth said to Doyle. “I don’t understand….”
“It’s a long story,” Doyle said, “but the upshot of it is that Aldous Bolger, he’s a friend of mine.
“There’s a price to be paid for what happened to him. You’re going to be one of the people paying it.”
Four hundred feet above the Heartland Downs infield, General Belliard’s balloon continued its errant descent. The general remained unconscious. Red Marchik had now fought off Junior Kozol and was in charge of the controls. He had no clue as to how or where to land the hated contraption. The centuries-old Marchik paranoia genes boiled and burbled in Red as he fumbled about in the rapidly diminishing altitude.
Track announcer Calvin Gemmer gawked at the approaching balloon. He grabbed his microphone. With an urgency usually reserved for photo finishes, Gemmer shouted, “People, get out of the way down there at the winner’s circle, get out of the way. That’s a balloon coming down at you…GET OUT OF THE WAY, PEOPLE!!”
The fans bunched around the winner’s circle started to scatter. As he looked skyward, Damon Tirabassi blanched, then ordered, “Get them
As Doyle started to follow Maureen and E. D. Morley into safe range from what appeared to be a rapidly impending disaster, he realized that the only person remaining in the winner’s circle was Ronald Mortvedt. His guard, agent Ebner, had moved to assist in the removal of Rexroth, leaving the ex-jockey behind him in what he
