The Significant Seven Page 5

  “That’s me. That was a great summer and fall.”

  Tenuta’s look was now more respectful. “My old friend Tom Eckrosh, who trained Rambling Rosie, told me about you. Didn’t you save his life?”

  “His, mine, and several other peoples’.”

  “You had to kill somebody, right?” Tenuta said softly.

  “Right,” Doyle said, then changed the subject by walking over to examine the photos on the wall behind Tenuta. He said, “You must have had a lot of fun training The Badger Express for that partnership.” The largest photo showed all of The Significant Seven surrounding their wonder horse in the Keeneland winner’s circle. Tenuta was dwarfed by most of the men, as was jockey Davey Morales.

  “That was The Badger’s sixth straight stakes win. He had a dozen stakes win all told when he was retired the following year.”

  Doyle said, “That’s a happy-looking bunch of owners.”

  “They were that, all right,” Tenuta said, “and real, real good guys. They always staked my barn help when the horse won. And he won enough money to make my fifteen percent of his earnings into a pretty good pile. Enough for me and my wife to buy a small farm down in Florida. We’ll retire there some day.”

  Doyle continued to examine the frame containing The Badger Express’ lifetime past performances. The horse’s career earnings were slightly more than $3 million. He whistled softly, calculating that Tenuta had gleaned some $450,000 from his trainee’s heroics.

  “And they paid how much for him? A hundred thousand?”

  “Ninety-five,” Tenuta said proudly. “One of racing’s greatest bargains. And I helped pick him out at the Kentucky sale.”

  Doyle returned to his chair in front of the desk. He said, “What horse is that back there that you were working on?”

  Tenuta said, “The meanest creature to come on the racetrack during my time. His name is Editorialist. Great-looking horse. One of the fastest milers in the Midwest. And one with the worst temperament. Editorialist doesn’t like people, he doesn’t like other horses, he probably doesn’t like himself. But he loves to run. And he can. I won three stakes with him last year and one already here at this meeting.”

  “I remember reading about him,” Doyle said. “He was a fairly expensive sales yearling, wasn’t he? With good breeding?”

  “Yeah, but all his ‘good breeding’ is in his pedigree, not in his nature. If it weren’t for that groom back there with Editorialist, Jose Ruiz, I don’t believe I could keep the horse here. Some grooms can communicate with horses like nobody else. They have a gift for it. Jose is one of those, thank God. I go to take a look at Editorialist in his stall and he stands in there in the corner, baring his teeth at me. Other times, he turns his back on me, and drops a load.

  “But with Jose, it’s a whole different story. Jose comes up to Editorialist’s stall door and the horse’s ears are pricked, standing straight up, he’s happy to see Jose. A horse is like a person. You don’t need words to figure out what they want, what they don’t want. You just have to take your time with them. And, of course, if you’re lucky enough, have a guy like Jose Ruiz working for you.”

  “Who owns Editorialist?” Doyle said.

  “The Significant Seven, that syndicate. You just missed one of the owners, Arnie Rison. He came out to watch Editorialist work this morning. Came with his daughter Renee. Look, they’re over there at their car, talking to one of my grooms.”

  Doyle saw a tall man in a blue golf shirt and khakis, sunglasses up on his head. He recognized the woman. Renee had on a tight white tee shirt and tighter beige slacks that emphasized the admirable contours of her ass. Her sunglasses were down on her face.

  “You want to say hello to the Risons?” Tenuta said.

  “Naw. I’ve met the girl. I’m sure I’ll meet her father some other time if he comes out here often,” Doyle said. “Ralph, can I ask you something? Did they ever think about gelding Editorialist? I know that’s supposed to calm down a lot of stud horses.”

  Tenuta laughed enough to make his chair creak. “Doyle, that ferocious creature in there was gelded. A year and a half ago! Think it improved his disposition. Hah!”

  “Why do you put up with a horse like that? One that is so hard to handle, so much trouble? Hell, so dangerous?”

  “Because he can flat out run.”

  Doyle smiled. “I guess that’s a good reason. But what’s that mask, or metal thing, or whatever it is, over Editorialist’s mouth? He looks like an equine Hannibal Lecter.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. What is that contraption anyway?”

  Tenuta said, “Right after he first came to the track, Editorialist turned into a cribber. He’d grab the top of the stall door with his front teeth, arch his neck, pulling back on the door and sucking in air. The veterinarians say horses get a kick out of this, some endorphin or some shit, makes them feel good. But it’s bad for the door, for their teeth, for their energy, screwing around like that. Editorialist would spend hours doing that if I let him.”

  Tenuta stopped to take a phone call from an owner whose mare was to run the next afternoon. “All is well, Mr. Steiner. Bring betting money. Your horse is sittin’ on ready.

  “Where was I?” he said to Doyle.

  “That device you’ve got on Editorialist.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not just to prevent that son of a bitch from cribbing. It’s to protect me and my help so he doesn’t bite our arms off. You’ve got no idea, Jack, what that devil can be like. We take the mask off only when he eats, drinks, and runs. It goes on right after each of those times, usually taking three of us working together on him.”

  After Tenuta fielded another phone call, he said, “People will put up with a lot if the animal produces. There was a stud horse down in Kentucky several years ago named Ribot. He was a genuine terror. They had to build him a padded stall and even put padding on the ceiling, because he’d get up on his hind legs and try to tear the roof off from the inside. They had special equipment to control him going to and from the breeding barn. Those poor stud grooms that had to deal with Ribot, they had to be pretty damned quick on their feet. But the horse sired tons of stakes winners.

  “Now, Editorialist is right up there with Ribot for being hard to handle. But my daddy years ago trained a mare that’d make either one of them seem like angels. Her name was, believe it or not, Sweet Girlie. You had to fight to rub her, to bandage her, she hated just about everything that you had to do with her. And she didn’t like anybody on her back. She tossed off so many jocks, my Dad had to pay extra to the rider who would take her on. But she could win races for you.”

  Doyle grinned. “On the Meanness Meter, where would you rank Editorialist and Sweet Girlie?”

  “Sweet Girlie. Not even close.”

  “Really? Why?”

  Tenuta said, “She had one habit worse than the regular ones that came out of her rotten disposition. Sweet Girlie hated to be whipped. You’d never dare use it on her. And my Daddy always had to instruct the riders about that.

  “Sometimes, though, in the heat of the race, a rider would forget and give her a few whacks. Sweet Girlie would then start pissing while she was running. If she was hit again, she’d let go with another spray.

  “This,” Tenuta said, “was awful tough on the horses and riders behind her, as you could imagine. That’s what I call real mean.”

  Chapter Seven

  April 22, 2009

  Orth was splitting logs for firewood in the yard behind his cabin when the call came on his cell phone. It was barely an hour and a half past dawn, but he had already run his four miles through the adjacent forest, taken his daily two-mile swim in the cold waters of the spring-fed lake bordering his property, and was enjoying the exercise with axe and awl.

  These spring mornings began misty, then cleared into a radiance beneath the tall pines that Orth had treasured since growing up in these woods. He looked at the cell phone scre
en, saw the number, said into the phone, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  He cleaned and put his tools in the woodshed, got into some town clothes, and drove his black Jeep Cherokee to Boulder Junction, the town nearest to his backwoods home. He pulled into the parking lot of the Qwik Stop service station and walked to the outdoor phone at the east end. The phone rang almost at once.

  “Got something, something primo,” said the familiar voice. It was his fellow ex-Navy SEAL, ex-private security worker in Iraq, and continuing “asshole buddy,” as Orth liked to refer to Scott Sanderson.

  Orth and Sanderson met at the U. S. Navy’s Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California. The two Midwesterners and enlistees bonded during the course of the extremely demanding twenty-six weeks spent training to become members of the Navy’s elite SEALS program. On the surface, they seemed an unlikely pair. Orth was a paragon of reticence, Sanderson a voluble, sociable young man. What they had in common was great aptitude and liking for the training they were receiving. Unlike more than 60 percent of their carefully selected entering class, they passed, Orth ranking second, Sanderson third, and began fulfilling their fifty-one month obligation to their government. More than eighteen of those months saw them together in the same unit, engaged in reconnaissance, then direct action, in various dangerous sections of Afghanistan. Their efficiency was noted and rewarded with medals and promotions. They were born killers.

  Before putting in for their discharges in the summer of 2002, Orth and Sanderson discussed their futures. Sanderson had a young family, no job to go home to, and major financial issues courtesy of his free-spending wife. Orth had no obligations, except to himself, and hoped to find something he enjoyed doing while making good money. Stateside, they arranged to be interviewed by the president of a rapidly growing private security firm headquartered in northern Alabama. The young, politically connected firm had won lucrative contracts from the U. S. government to provide security for private contractors in Iraq. Sanderson’s eyes widened as he listened to the conditions of the contracts they were being offered, especially the pay scale. Even the normally stoic Orth could not hide his surprise at the terms. The two ex-SEALS looked at each other, then rose to shake the hand of their new employer.

  Two months later, Orth and Sanderson arrived in Baghdad to join their division of the Aqua Negro Company. They found themselves among men much like themselves, ex-military personnel in some branch of special forces, many with shaven heads and muscled up like products of the weight rooms of American prisons. Some were fleeing bad marriages, or debts. Others, like Orth and Sanderson, were seeking work they loved and more money than they could make anywhere else that they knew of. For riding shotgun in armored SUVs for various contractors, or providing personal security for chosen individuals, they each drew down $5,000 a week. Some weeks, swimming smartly in the ocean of loose U.S. cash washing over Iraq, their rewards were much greater.

  Since the two men’s rapid and secretive departure from Sadr City in the winter of 2006 and the subsequent dustup over the disaster they’d been involved with that led to the death of several innocent citizens, Orth and Sanderson had gone their separate geographical ways while maintaining low profiles and a strong thread of common interest in violence and money. Sanderson now lived in a Dallas, TX, suburb with his wife and three children. The lifelong loner Orth had gone back to his roots in the northern Wisconsin woods, just a few miles from where he’d been raised. Orth bought a dilapidated fishing cabin and spent four months meticulously renovating it. He worked alone, patiently awaiting the next thing life might bring to him. At thirty-eight, he had a decent bank account, tremendously good health, and no inclination to engage in anything other than lethal work.

  It was the resourceful Sanderson who had discovered a network of American enterprises looking for talent to do what he and Orth were so good at. He learned that a great portion of the U.S. underworld, for decades dominated by Sicilian-Americans, was experiencing a shortage of trusted, trained, efficient killers.

  “They just can’t come up with enough of their own guys,” Sanderson gleefully told Orth. “The young talent is going into banking, or lawyering, or politics, not murder. I see us as filling a need.” Even his humorless buddy chuckled at that. “And,” Sanderson said, “some of the guys we were with in Iraq can steer us other business. They take a percentage for doing so, but so what? The money is still great.”

  Beginning with the discreet suffocation of a St. Louis accountant who had learned things he shouldn’t have, Orth and Sanderson worked efficiently and profitably. Typically, Sanderson would either conduct surveillance of the intended target or hire a member of the Agua Negro alumni to do so. Armed with the target’s daily schedule, habits, addresses, vices, virtues if any, Orth then carried out his deadly work. He and Sanderson were rarely in the same city at the same time, communicating mainly via cell phones that they purchased cheaply and changed often.

  Sanderson took pleasure in paraphrasing the long dead baseball magnate Branch Rickey, who had famously declared that “luck is the residue of design.”

  According to Sanderson, the work that he and Orth did was indeed the product of cautious and thoughtful design. The jobs Sanderson found for them were at various places throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Not once had they ever been close to being caught.

  On the phone this afternoon, Sanderson said, “We’ll have to meet to get this deal set up.”

  “Shit. Why?” Orth said. “The last one was straightforward.” A woman walking toward her car at the Qwik Stop saw the look on Orth’s face and moved faster.

  Sanderson said, “This is a deal on a different level for us. We’re just going to have to talk about this mano o mano. Copy?”

  “When. Where?”

  “I’ll meet you tomorrow night in Madison. The Holiday Inn Express on John Nolen Drive. I’m flying into O’Hare, then I’ll drive up. I’ve reserved the rooms. You register as Ray Warren. I’m there under Jay Winston. Like always, pay cash.”

  Orth said, “This must be big, you coming up that far.”

  “You got it, brother,” Sanderson said. “It’s big.”

  Before ringing off Sanderson said, “Hey, bro, let me ask you something. Are you feeling your usual fine self?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Sanderson said, “I saw on the Internet last week that Al Casey, the guy who was with us that summer in Kabul, died. They said the cause of death appeared to be from natural causes. How about that? Casey was as fit as we were when we started there. He was what, thirty-four, thirty-five. Just like us, ex-mil trying to make good money. His wife insists Casey died of cancer. She’s trying to sue Agua Negro, which had cremated him and shipped him home to Tulsa. And quickly.”

  “Scott, I don’t get it. Sue Agua Negro for what?” Orth said.

  “Casey’s widow has a lawyer who claims that Agua Negro employees were, I am quoting now from the story on the Net, ‘Knowingly exposed during their work to a toxic chemical, a carcinogen, which is known to cause cancer.’”

  Sanderson said, “Hold on a second.” Orth heard him hollering, “You kids, keep the damn noise down in there. Hear me?” Back on the phone, Sanderson said, “Sometimes here in my house, it sounds almost louder than one of our war zones.”

  “No way,” Orth said. “What was this toxic crap that we were supposedly exposed to?”

  “I was getting to that. It was at the water pumping station we guarded that summer. Remember? A gazillion degrees hot. We were breathing in all that bad air. Mrs. Casey’s lawyer says his research shows that water plant was, quote, contaminated with sodium dichromate, a known carcinogen. Unquote.”

  A silence. Orth said, “Maybe Casey got sick some other way.”

  Sanderson said, “Maybe.” Orth could hear the snapping open of what was undoubtedly a pint of the Australian lager his buddy had favored during their years in Iraq. “But maybe Casey didn’t,” Sanderson said. “Take care of you
rself, bro. Let’s get going with this big project, and get the green, and hope for a long, healthy retirement.”

  Sanderson heard Orth say, “I remember Casey real well. Good man. You think Casey’s wife will get any money?”

  “Doubt it. The Agua Negro lawyers will fight her claim for years.”

  There was a pause before Orth said “Scott, you think we got fucked over over there? With this cancer shit? While we were protecting this country?”

  ***

  Driving the two hundred and thirty miles south the next day, Orth thought, not for the first time, about the unlikely partnership he had entered into. Orth was the only child of a Wisconsin lumberjack who drank himself to an early death and a woman who quickly followed her husband’s path once her son had joined the service out of high school. Orth neither had nor saw the worth of social skills beyond that elementary level needed to move unobtrusively through life.

  Scott Sanderson’s background was very different. He was the third of five children of a South Dakota couple who doted on their offspring. Scott’s three sisters became teachers, his brother went into the family drugstore business. Scott enlisted in the Navy after two years at the University of South Dakota, where he’d majored in drinking and raising hell. He was loud yet likeable, and very ambitious. Once admitted to the SEALS program, he thrived in that ultrademanding organization. When they met early in their training, Sanderson and Orth sized each other up, competed fiercely against each other, and eventually bonded. Their Afghanistan action taught to them to trust each other in a way few other members of their unit understood.

  Orth checked into the Holiday Inn late in the afternoon. There was message for him, a note saying only “three eighteen.” He went to his room, unpacked his light gear, and walked next door. Sanderson opened his door, grinning, a can of malt liquor in one hand. “My man,” he said, “come the fuck in.” They gripped hands.

  Sanderson had ordered room service for them both. They ate as they talked casually about Sanderson’s family, about the respective chances of the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers in the next football season, about what they agreed was “the shit war in Iraq.”