Blind switch

As he struggled to recall the happenings of the night before, Doyle was aware of some pounding noises as he looked up at the crack in his ceiling, a fissure in the plaster that meandered like the Mississippi. Some of those sounds, he knew, were reverberating in his head, after-effects of the powerful sedative that had been so rudely administered the night before. Then, he realized, there were other sounds as well, evidently emanating from the other side of his front door. Doyle struggled to his feet, temporarily losing his balance as he did so, then staggered toward the source of the noise.

“Rock fucking bottom,” he said to himself, “that’s what I’ve hit.”

When he unchained the door, that assessment was immediately confirmed. On the threshold, badges displayed in raised wallets, stood a dark-complexioned man of medium height and a tall, brown-haired woman. The man, whose black hair came to a widow’s peak, wore a navy blue blazer, gray slacks, white shirt under a dark red tie. “Mr. Doyle,” he said, “my name is Damon Tirabassi. I’m an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So is Ms. Engel, Karen Engel,” he said, nodding to the woman. She, too, had on a navy blue blazer. Her skirt was gray and her white blouse buttoned at the throat. Agent Engel’s green eyes appeared to reflect bemusement, if not sympathy, for Doyle’s obviously painful condition. She was as pretty as her partner was serious, Doyle noted.

“What time is it?” Doyle blearily managed. “And what do you want?”

“Eleven o’clock of the morning after,” Tirabassi answered, adding, “the morning after the night of your race- fixing payoff.”

Doyle took a grip on the door. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said, struggling to reconstruct his recent hours. Then it all came back to him like a cascade of mountain water: the footsteps in the garage, the arm around his neck and needle in his arm, the whispered sounds that he was absolutely sure he knew too well.

Maureen and E. D., those dirty bastards, Doyle thought. Heat rushed to his face as a tide of embarrassment swept over him. Goddam, they’d played him for a world-class sap. And what had he fallen into with these FBI agents? He shook his head, attempting to rattle some sensible thoughts into place. Then he motioned the two of them inside and closed the door.

“Mr. Doyle, how about a cup of coffee?” Karen asked, a hint of kindness in her low voice. “Then we can sit down and discuss your situation.”

“Why not?” Doyle replied, wondering what kind of situation this might be. Rock fucking below bottom, maybe. He thought about calling a lawyer. The problem was, the only lawyer he had ever employed was Dave Rutchik, who had represented him in his two divorce proceedings. Doyle got skinned both times, and after his parting from Erma had fired Rutchik, telling him “I’d rather be represented by a junior bail bondsman than another night school lawyer like you.” Doyle dismissed any thought of legal advice for the time being.

The three of them went into the tiny kitchen of Doyle’s three-room furnished apartment, decorated in a theme of contemporary haphazard. The apartment had a small bedroom; a living room that contained the couch, armchair, bookshelves, and a desk that fronted the north-facing windows; and the kitchen, whose stove was spotless from not having been used except for boiling water since Doyle had taken up residence. Also unchanged was the large poster of Thelonius Monk left behind by the previous tenant, a local jazz pianist currently working out of town. Doyle was an avid jazz fan, and he also liked the expression on Monk’s slyly knowing face.

Tirabassi and Engel sat at the small table as Doyle boiled water, then filled cups with instant coffee. Even this small effort seemed to exhaust him; whatever E. D. and Maureen had doped him up with, its residual effects were strong. Doyle needed a day on the couch, then a night at the gym, maybe including a stint in the sauna, to work all this out of his system.

The agents broke their silence as Karen asked, “Do you have any cream? Or milk?”

Doyle started to rise, but she moved before him to the refrigerator. After peering inside, she said, “Are you culturing specimens for a laboratory?” Doyle remembered the several carryout items he had intended to either reheat or remove, items that continued to lurk on his refrigerator shelves.

“The milk is toward the back,” Doyle said. “I don’t take it with coffee. I hardly ever use milk,” he added weakly. Karen sniffed at the quart carton. “No kidding,” she said. “You should throw this out.” Without waiting for a reply, she did so.

Doyle put his elbows on the table, resting his head in his hands. Then he said, “When you’re all done critiquing my housekeeping, could one of you maybe get around to where you tell me what business you think you have with me?”

Though his head was still pounding, the coffee was working to help clear Doyle’s mind. He began to further size up his uninvited visitors.

Tirabassi appeared to be close to Doyle’s age and was of similar medium build. His forehead was furrowed with worry lines. He reminded Doyle of Father DiCastri, the assistant pastor at the parish of his boyhood, a man so laden with concern for his fellow man that his rare smiles were widely reported by parishioners whenever they appeared.

The woman, Karen, was another, decidedly different story, in Doyle’s grudgingly admiring estimation. With her tall, athletic figure, attractively wide-set eyes, and open expression-one that suggested she was not going to be as quick to judge Jack Doyle as was her partner-Karen sat in pleasant contrast to Tirabassi, who impatiently tapped two fingers of his right hand on the table as he coldly regarded his host.

The woman was the first to speak.

“We’re here, Mr. Doyle, as a result of information we received suggesting your involvement in a fixed horse race.” She paused, allowing time for that to sink in.

Doyle felt his heart skitter briefly into overdrive, but he looked at Karen without changing expression. He said nothing.

Tirabassi said, “The race in question was at Heartland Downs. It was a race won by a horse you used to work with when you were in the employ of a trainer named Angelo Zocchi.”

Doyle cleared his throat. “Yes, I worked for Zocchi. Then I quit working for Zocchi. So what? And what ‘fix’ are you talking about?”

Tirabassi shrugged. “Maybe ‘fix’ is overstating it,” he said. He leaned toward Doyle, frowning, the intensity of his expression nearly bringing together in a horizontal line Tirabassi’s thick, black eyebrows. “But maybe not,” he said. “Something went on with that race, something kinky.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “And you were part of it, Mr. Doyle.”

Doyle said, “Something kinky? What the hell does that mean? I think you’re blowing smoke,” he added, looking at Karen.

Said Tirabassi, “Let me spell it out for you. The Bureau was alerted to this situation by an extremely reliable source, a man named Scotty Roxborough. He’s a bigtime linemaker in Las Vegas. Roxy sometimes helps us out with information, and sometimes we help him out. He informed us that there was an unusual amount of action on that race at Heartland Downs, most of it going down on that horse you groomed, City Sarah. Roxy said race books all over Vegas were hit with money on that horse.”

Tirabassi reached into his suitcoat and extracted a notebook. He began to read from it. “According to Roxy- and this is a guy who knows-the win payoff was suspicious in itself. The horse was listed in the track program and the Racing Journal at odds of twenty to one. But she went off at only eight to one. Even more suspicious was the number of bets using the horse in what Roxy called the ‘gimmicks’-exactas or trifectas. Roxy said there hadn’t been a race like this for several years, since a trifecta race at Gateway Meadows. That one eventually led to the conviction and imprisonment of half a dozen participants.”

Karen cut in. “Horse racing, Mr. Doyle, is one of the most closely monitored businesses in the country-both by its own operators and regulators and, in some cases, with help from people like Roxborough. For the most part, the sort of massive attention it gets works well to keep racing clean. As you may know,” she smiled, “there’s more fraud in banking than horse racing.”

“The racing people,” Tirabassi interjected, “want to insure that the sport is on the up and up in order to maintain the public’s confidence. And the Vegas people want it to be that way so that they don’t get taken by crooks putting something over on them. They react very unkindly to that. They watch horse race betting as carefully as they keep track of the off-the-field associations of NFL quarterbacks. And NBA referees, for that matter.”

Doyle shifted in his chair, but remained silent. The pounding in his head had settled into a low, steady thrum, punctuated by an occasional sharp flash of pain, as if Mongo Santamaria were at work in there. Even the pleasant sound of Karen Engel’s voice failed to offset this rhythmic discomfort. He