The Significant Seven Read online

  “I only met him a few times,” Tenuta said, “when he came out with the rest of the syndicate members. Seemed like a class act. I talked to Arnie Rison this morning. He and the other five are all planning to go up for the funeral in Madison on Monday.”

  They finished their coffee. It was a little after ten a.m. Tenuta’s trainees had been excercised, cooled out, and put away. The stable’s morning work was finished.

  “Jack, you might want to bring some betting money when you come back this afternoon. Forget about the two-year-old filly in the second race, she’s in there just for the experience. But Editorialist should blow them away in the stakes race, even if it is on the grass.”

  “I’ll meet you in your clubhouse box,” Doyle said.

  ***

  Two mornings earlier, in his role as Tenuta’s stable agent, Doyle had walked into the Heartland Downs entry clerk’s office after Tenuta had instructed him to enter Editorialist “in Saturday’s turf course stakes.” It was a $150,000 event, Doyle knew. He said to Tenuta, “Has that nut case ever been on the turf?”

  “Only when he was a baby, roaming the Kentucky pastures. But I want to give him a shot. His granddaddy was Theatrical, a helluva grass runner. Maybe those genes will transfer. And the way he moves, I think he’ll like the turf. Anyway, there’s no other race for him here for several weeks. So, we’ll experiment.”

  Personnel in the entry clerk’s office had come to know Doyle. Clerk Chris Polzin looked at Doyle in surprise when he had read the entry slip. “Jack, you putting Editorialist in the grass stakes?”

  “Just doing what the boss says, Chris.”

  ***

  After getting a haircut, Doyle arrived back at Heartland Downs a couple of hours in advance of Editorialist’s race. He had a Chicago-style hot dog (“drag it through the garden”) before he rode the escalator to the second floor of the clubhouse where he bought a Heineken from his favorite racetrack bartender, “Las Vegas Lou.”

  Lou DiCastri worked at Heartland Downs in the summer, a bar at McCarron Airport most of the rest of the year. He was a big, bluff, fifty-eight-year-old man with an engaging line of patter and an impressive memory for his regular customers’ drink choices. He also touted horses a bit, and evidently fairly well, for Doyle had seen many of Lou’s clientele tip him lavishly.

  Lou was chatting up two heavily made-up, fortyish women, both dressed as if they were in their early twenties, with tanning bed hues and bleached hair. They laughed loudly at something he’d said, the bracelets jangling on the shorter one’s wrist as she lifted her margarita to her lips. When Lou noticed Doyle standing behind the two women, he winked over their heads. He began to draw a plastic cup of Heineken. “Jack,” he asked, “what’s the word on Tenuta’s horses today?”

  “Pass on the filly in the second. That screwball Editorialist? Lou, nobody ever knows what he’ll do. He’s been disqualified four times in his career for attacking other horses. If he runs straight, he wins. That is, if he doesn’t decide to take a bite out of the starting gate.” Doyle paid for the beer, left a tip, and started moving away from the bar. “For what it’s worth, Lou, I’m betting him,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  The taller woman, whom Lou always flattered by calling Lucky Linda, said, “Who’s that guy, Lou?”

  “He works for the trainer Ralph Tenuta. Name’s Jack Doyle. Nice guy.”

  “Is he married?” said the woman with the noticeable jewelry.

  “Ladies,” Lou said, “drawing on my long experience observing human nature from behind the wood, I’d say ‘no.’”

  Walking through the crowded clubhouse, Doyle again marveled at the nonhomogeneity of American horse players. There were a couple of dozen white senior citizens, female and male, sitting in chairs in front of a bank of large television screens. In the next section, all thirty-six carrels, each equipped with a small television set and writing desk, housed the most serious of gamblers present, all male, all poring over statistics and Racing Dailys and file folders filled with what they believed to be notable notations on horses competing this day. Three Asian men, probably Chinese, Doyle guessed, had lined up in front of the $50 betting window. Congregated on the terrace overlooking the track’s paddock was a group of Latinos, all dressed as if they had just come from their demanding jobs in the barn area. Next to them, a half-dozen loud, beer-drinking college boys laughed and jived, trying to impress the two very impressive-looking coeds in their midst. Situated in the far corner of this balcony, where the hint of marijuana could often be discerned, seven or eight young men with strong Jamaican accents debated the merits of the horses in the upcoming race.

  “Only at the racetrack,” Doyle said to himself, “would this kind of collection collect.”

  ***

  Doyle bet $100 to win, $50 to place on Editorialist before joining Tenuta in the box overlooking the finish line. Arnie Rison was there with the trainer. “Arnie,” Doyle said, “we were all very sorry to hear about Judge Toomey.”

  “Thanks, Jack.” He dug a Marlboro out of his jacket pocket. “Believe me, that was hard to believe. Henry kept himself in terrific shape all his life. Who would think a heart attack would take out a guy of his age who’d never had a hint of heart trouble?”

  Rison turned as his daughter came down the steps to the box. “Jack, I think you know Renee.” She smiled at Doyle. Her outfit this afternoon was a cunningly cut sundress that did her shapely, petite figure complete justice. “Nice to see you again, Jack,” she said. She handed her father some pari-mutuel tickets. Arnie didn’t bother to look at them. He raised his binoculars to key in on Editorialist, who was bouncing up and down behind the distant gate at the start of this one-mile race.

  Rison said to Tenuta, “Did you bet him, Ralph?”

  “Do they keep a good kitchen in the Vatican?” Tenuta answered. “Of course. So did Jack and the rest of the stable crew.”

  “Let’s hope he comes through,” Rison said. “After we heard about Henry, the rest of us talked and talked and then decided to dedicate every dollar Editorialist wins from now on to a Henry Toomey Scholarship Fund at the University of Wisconsin law school. We’d like to kickstart that fund today.”

  Tenuta said, “We’re kind of in luck, because Editorialist drew the one hole. With the rail right next to him on his left, he can only ram into the horse on his right if he wants to, instead of pinballing between two of them, trying to do damage, which he is very fond of doing.”

  The gate doors clanged open. Editorialist, Doyle saw, had come out straight and true. But the Number Two horse, outside Editorialist, almost had his feet go out from under him. Recovering quickly, and despite his jockey’s attempt to straighten him, Number Two veered over and banged into Editorialist’s hind quarters, almost turning him sideways.

  “Christ almighty,” shouted Tenuta.

  Rison lowered his glasses and sank down into his seat next to Doyle. His dejection was obvious. He reached into his coat pocket for his pack of Marlboros. “Wait,” Doyle said, seconds later, elbowing Rison, “he’s straightening out.”

  Unlike many previous races when Editorialist, feeling he’d been abused or disrespected and responding by trying to bite the hide of any horse within range, this time lowered his head and powered up the rail like a bullet train. He had the lead after a half mile, a lead he continued to extend. Jockey Javier Hidalgo tucked his whip away and sat still on this combustible creature. Editorialist won by four widening lengths.

  Tenuta, face flushed, looked around excitedly. He said “How about that son of a gun? Is he something else?” Rison embraced him, as did Renee. Tenuta reached over the little woman’s shoulder to give Jack a hearty high five. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go to the winner’s circle.”

  Rison stood up. His sweat-soaked seersucker suit looked like it had been worn out from the inside. On his long, creased face was a look of both pain and relief. He gave his daughter a hug. “That
one’s for Henry Toomey,” he said. “It’s a start on the scholarship fund.”

  “That’s a nice start,” Doyle said to Renee as they left the box. “Editorialist’s winner’s share today is $60,000.”

  They hurried down the indoor stairs to the trackside level of Heartland Downs, where they were ushered by a security guard to the winner’s circle. Editorialist was being led in by two of Tenuta’s grooms. He skittered about as the photo was taken. Jockey Hidalgo cautiously reached up to remove his saddle from the fractious horse’s back.

  Tenuta gave the jock a hearty hug. “Nice job, Javvie. You took a serious knock there, coming out of the gate.”

  Hidalgo wiped his sleeve across his sweaty forehead. “That just made the ’orse mad, Mr. Ralph. Then,” the jockey grinned, “he decided to run his ass off and show ’em who is the boss.”

  Tenuta laughed. He clapped Hidalgo on the back. “Editorialist, that son of a bitch, is always mad,” the trainer said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  May 10, 2009

  Doyle parked his Accord in the trailer park lot, noticing that his vehicle, a 2006 model, stood out amidst a generation of much older cars and pickup trucks. A couple of families sat under the two scraggly trees at the far end of the property. The men drank beer as they talked and and occasionally tended to the meat broiling on the battered Weber grill. The women sat at the scarred picnic table, watching their children chase each other around the dusty perimeter of the property.

  The drive over from the track had taken longer than he’d expected. It was evening traffic time in the western suburbs. The previous year, Doyle had finally broken himself of his habit of reading every bumper sticker and vanity license plate that came into his view when he was behind the wheel. It was a ridiculous habit, and he knew it, but it had taken him time to change his compulsive ways. But he managed.

  Unfortunately, he’d replaced those two addictions with a concentration on car names, the likes of which astounded him. At the intersection of Highway 53 and Keno Road, waiting for the very slow-to-appear left turn signal, he started saying to himself, “A car named the Equinox? There’s an Avalanche over there. Whoops, don’t drop onto the Canyon next to you, man.”

  The light changed with Doyle muttering, “The Vibe? The Stanza? The Sonata? Enclave? What the hell does an Enclave have to do with a car?”

  Doyle had bumped into Cindy that morning as she was leaving the Tenuta barn, having exercised four horses for Ralph. It was a literal bumping, Doyle turning right at a corner of the barn just as Cindy veered left coming from the opposite direction. There was a moment of surprise, shock, then laughter. Doyle, involuntarily reaching out to grab her, felt the work-created strength of her arms, smelled the combination of sweat and perfume that she emanated.

  “My fault,” Doyle said.

  “No, just as much mine,” Cindy replied. “I had my mind on a couple of things besides backstretch foot traffic.”

  They chatted for a few minutes before Doyle said, “Hey, how about I buy you dinner some night?” He gave her what he believed was his most sincere, engaging look. For a change, it worked. “I’d like that,” Cindy said. “Tonight’d be great.”

  Home from the track, Cindy played with Tyler, the two of them doing rudimentary puzzles at the kitchen table. Then she showered and walked into the trailer’s kitchen, wrapped in a towel, blond hair damp, and poured herself a shot of tequila from the bottle on the door of the refrigerator. She heard her mother say, “Now, just exactly what knight missing his armor will be calling for you here tonight?” The remark was followed by the combined laughter of Wilma and her best friend, Doris Bush, visiting from her nearby trailer.

  “I wouldn’t be making fun of my date before you meet him,” Cindy shot back. “You two haven’t had anything to do with men for twenty years. Except the clerks you harass at Walmart. Or the old farts you bully at church bingo.” She heard them cackle at that, too.

  “What’s he like?” Cindy said to herself. “Nice looking, good manners, good sense of humor. An interesting man.” And single, she said to herself. She decided she’d withhold that last bit of info from Wilma for the time being. Cindy frowned, remembering that she’d heard Jack was a university grad, University of Illinois she thought, compared to her total of five spread-out semesters at three community colleges.

  Showered and dressed, Cindy checked herself in the small mirror over the old brown bureau in her tiny bedroom. It was one of the several pieces of third-hand furniture she and Wilma, Tyler in tow, had hauled into their leased home two years earlier. “As good as I can get now,” she murmured, tucking a still moist tendril behind her ear.

  ***

  Cindy opened the door before Doyle had reached the top of the four trailer steps. “Hi, Jack. Welcome.” She motioned him forward. Doyle’s eyebrows lifted as he watched her proceed him. This evening Cindy was a startlingly feminine contrast to the woman he saw racetrack mornings.

  She led him into the living room of the trailer, its largest room. The centerpiece was a large television set. Staring at it intently were two elderly women. They were watching Wheel of Fortune. Each had a half-finished highball in her hand. Both women had their feet up on a wooden table in front of the couch on which they sat. In front of the table was a floor fan, cleverly aimed to cool them up their skirts, which were pulled up knee high. They smiled merrily as Cindy introduced Doyle. “My mother, Wilma, and her friend, Doris. My friend, too.”

  “Glad to meet you, ladies.”

  Cindy went over to the left door leading to that side of the trailer. “Tyler, c’mon out here,” she said. A thumping of feet was followed by the arrival of a chunky, fair-haired youngster wearing Spiderman pajamas and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap turned sideways. There was a surprised expression on his round face. He took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes before looking directly at Doyle. “Tyler,” Cindy said, “this is Mr. Doyle. Jack, this is my son Tyler.”

  It was then that Doyle recalled Ralph Tenuta saying Cindy was a single mother of a child with some disability. Doyle had assumed she was just single, one of the numerous independent feminine members of the backstretch work force who’d filled out their census forms that way. He held out his hand. “Tyler, how are you. Good to meet you.”

  Tyler regarded the hand warily Then he responded with a quick grab and a gap-toothed grin. “Gotta finish…gotta finish…see cartoons,” he said. He rapidly reversed course back into his bedroom.

  Minutes later, in the car, Doyle said, “I made a reservation at Tom’s Charhouse, over on Palatine Road. Is that okay with you?”

  “I’ve never been there,” Cindy said. “I’ve heard it’s really good.”

  “Ralph recommended it. He takes his wife there a lot.”

  “Ralph Tenuta’s got money,” Cindy said softly, looking out her window into the advancing dusk.

  Doyle shrugged. “I have, too,” he smiled, “at least for tonight.”

  He turned north on Wilke Avenue. “How old is Tyler?” he said.

  Cindy gave him a sharp look before saying, “He’s eight. He’s short for his age.”

  “Nice-looking kid,” Doyle said.

  They rode in silence for several blocks before Cindy said, “You must be aware that Tyler’s different, right?”

  Doyle hesitated before saying, “A cousin of mine has a daughter who kind of reminds me of Tyler. About the same age. She’s a wonderful kid named Naomi. She has Down syndrome.” He banged his horn as a tiny, gray-haired woman driver attempted to enter his lane in her old Buick. She responded by angrily raising a middle finger.

  Cindy said, “Tyler was unlucky to be born with Down. But I’m lucky to have him. He’s the light of my life. He’s what I live for, knowing that he lives for me.” She looked out her window, talking now with her head turned away from Jack. “And we were lucky he doesn’t have some of the worst things that Down kids can have, like congenital heart defects. Like severe mental retardation.
My husband was killed when Tyler was four. But those four years we all had together, I thank God for them.”

  Doyle zipped through the next intersection before saying, “Gotta be very, very tough.”

  Cindy laughed an are-you-kidding laugh. “Sure it’s tough. How could it be any other way? Finding Tyler the right kind of schooling, near us, that I could afford. Watching him struggle with simple things. Watching people give him the strange looks that people do, for kids that look like he does. Or adults like him, for that matter. They stand out from a physical standpoint, no question.”

  “But then, after awhile,” she said with a smile, “watching Tyler get stuff. That was so exciting for me. Way after most kids his age, but still making progress. The look on his face when that window opens in his mind, that makes my heart lift. And my Mom’s. She’s a character, had rough times of her own, but she is great with my Tyler. And she loves him like I do. We’re going to get him into a great school next year.”

  She paused. Turning to Doyle, she said, “I’d really rather not talk about this anymore tonight, okay?”

  Doyle turned on the Accord’s CD player. He advanced it from the vibrant sounds of New Orleans luminary Dr. John to the quieter work of another Crescent City legend, Wynton Marsalis, playing ballads.

  Cindy sat back in her seat. “What are you smiling at?” Doyle said.

  “Not anything very interesting,” she said. She relaxed her tired shoulder muscles, thinking how nice it was to have a rare night out with an apparently nice guy, no financial worries on her mind right now. Not another Friday night at the Pic-n-Save market, hoping her endangered credit card passed muster as the bagger packed up her modest collection of necessities. Those nights, the continual war between solvency and savings and debt that enveloped and defined her working life chafed her nerves. Not tonight. She glanced at Doyle. He looked good in profile, even with that slight bump in his boxer’s nose.