Authors: John McEvoy
Riders Down (13 page)
“Flight okay?”
The Fount asked Matt the question without taking his eyes off of the computer screen before him. Matt closed the door behind him and entered The Fount’s Delano Towers work room. He nodded at the only other person in the medium-sized, carpeted, and functionally furnished space that contained the dozen television sets, two couches, a dining table with four chairs, a pari-mutuel machine, and a huge desk with a swivel chair behind it in which sat The Fount, hard at work.
The other person in the room was Wally Jensen, a longtime employee of the Delano Tower race book who now served as The Fount’s personal attendant. Wally sat on a stool behind the pari-mutuel machine, which was located back of a wooden counter at the room’s north wall. Near Jensen in that area was a refrigerator stocked with beer, sodas, three bottles of champagne and a huge deli tray, half emptied. Wally also had access to a house phone, which he was using to order The Fount’s lunch.
“…No mayo on the smoked turkey sandwiches…double Cobb salad…four bean burritos…large anchovy-pepperoni pizza with double cheese…Yeah, that’ll be it for now. I’ll talk to you again in a few hours. Thanks.”
The Fount called out, “Pimlico, sixth race. Two thousand to win on the seven. Hit it, Wally, they’re going into the gate.”
Wally quickly punched in the numbers. The machine kicked out a ticket, which Wally carefully placed atop a pile that had grown to nearly four inches high since his work day began. The Fount had thus far bet about three-quarters of his normal daily action—around $40,000.
Matt set his travel bag down and stretched out on the couch. He rubbed his eyes. He was worn out. He’d risen early and written that day’s column, then pounded out another one for the next day before driving to O’Hare for his flight to Vegas. He hadn’t had time to see Maggie in two days and felt bad when all he could do was leave a final message on her voice mail. “Duty calls, Scoop-Sleuth answers,” he had said jokingly. “Be back tomorrow night.” He hoped she thought it was funny.
The Fount said, “Matt, why don’t you go up to my suite and take a break. I’ve got to stay here through the third at Bay Meadows. There’s a two-year-old in there I want to see. After that we can talk.”
When there was no answer, he looked over at his friend, who was already asleep beneath the bank of TVs that carried the Midwestern night tracks. He turned his attention back to the television set showing the sixth race at Pimlico. Number seven was crossing the finish line nearly four lengths clear of his nearest rival. The Fount smiled.
***
Ninety minutes later the two men were seated at the dining room table. Matt was now refreshed, while The Fount appeared fatigued. “I’ve been working fourteen hours, so excuse me for being kind of out of it,” he said. “I’ve got just about two hours for you. Then I’ve got to grab some sleep before I start working on tomorrow’s races.” When The Fount was working—which was twenty-four/seven for forty-eight weeks a year—nothing could make him deviate from his iron-clad schedule. A few weeks earlier his mother had begged him to return home for his Uncle Morris’ funeral. “Ma,” he had told her, “I can’t do it. I’ll visit his grave on my vacation in December. He’ll still be there.”
“This is an amazing existence you’ve carved out for yourself. Who could ask for anything more?” Matt said ironically. “You live in a hotel. You work eighteen hours a day, watching races, making figures, calculating odds, busting your brain. You have no social life. Wally is probably the person you say the most words to each day.” Matt shook his head.
“Who could ask for anything more?” replied The Fount happily. “Pass me those tortilla chips and the dip bowl, will you? Then tell me why you’re here.”
Matt began by describing the death of Bernie the bookie, then told The Fount about his relationship with Bernie’s nephew Moe. The Fount’s eyebrows went up when he heard the name Moe Kellman. “Moe I’ve heard of,” he said. “I’m impressed. His name still means something to the old Vegas guys.”
“Look,” Matt said, “I’m not here just on Moe Kellman’s behalf. I think there could be a hell of a story for me—if I can figure out what the hell the story is.”
The Fount said, “What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for your expertise. There isn’t a man in America who watches and bets more races a day, or a year, than you. What I’m asking is this: have there been any kinky races that you’ve noticed the last few months? You know what I mean—strange reversals of form, hard-to-explain upsets. Anything along those lines?”
The Fount gave Matt a long look. Then he hit a mute button that silenced all twelve TVs. He signaled over his shoulder for Wally to end his shift. Wally left slowly, ears wide open as he neared the doorway. Like most longtime Vegas residents, Wally knew information was currency, and he would have liked to glean some here. He closed the door reluctantly. Horses dashed about in silence on eleven of the TV sets. The Fount went up to the set in the middle of the wall and inserted a videotape in the VCR.
“It’s not funny you should ask, Matt. I’m just kind of surprised that nobody else has. Take a look at this.”
The tape was of the Dell Park Derby. The announcer calling the race seemed astounded at what he was describing: “And here they come down the stretch. It’s longshot Chuck A Lot leading the way by two, now three lengths. Grisham’s Dream is second, Wing Warrior third…and the overwhelming favorite Lord’s Heir is not doing enough…he’s beaten today, folks!”
The Fount hit the pause button. He said, “Well?”
“Well what?” Matt answered. “I saw the result of that race last month. It was a big upset. Lord’s Heir, the heavy chalk, finished out of the money. That happens.”
“Yes, he did,” said The Fount. “The chalk, Lord’s Heir, huge favorite, ran out. Let’s run this race back in slow motion, okay? Then you’ll see why the ‘overwhelming favorite’ Lord’s Heir flopped through no fault of his own. Watch this closely.”
***
On board his return flight to Chicago the next morning, Matt reviewed what he’d learned the previous night while watching two significant races with The Fount, who had first concentrated on the Dell Park Derby and Lord’s Heir.
“Take a close look as they come out of the gate,” The Fount said. “Lord’s Heir breaks inward just enough to lose about two lengths. The jock, Randy Morrison, is pulling hard on the left rein, just for an instant, just enough to get the horse off course. This horse runs his best races on the lead. But after this kind of start, he can’t get to the front like he usually does.”
The Fount was silent as he and Matt watched the field go around the first turn and then down the backstretch, Lord’s Heir buried in the middle of the pack and stuck down on the rail. “Okay,” The Fount said, “now they’re going into the far turn and Morrison’s still got him down inside with nowhere to go. He’s waiting for an opening—or, he
seems
to be waiting for an opening. Look right there! The opening comes when the five horse drifts out, but Morrison doesn’t go through. He pulls Lord’s Heir to the right and goes around two horses instead of zipping up the rail when it was clear. It looks like a bad decision, and it was. When Lord’s Heir finally gets rolling in the stretch, he’s got too much ground to make up. He doesn’t hit the board, although he only misses third by a length. The winner pays $48.40. Payoff on the National Pick Four is $460,000 for $1. Two winning tickets.”
The Fount hit the mute button and turned to Matt. He said, “Randy Morrison is one of the top five riders in the country. He’s been ranked up that high for several years and for good reason. He’s terrific. I’ve watched him in hundreds and hundreds of races. And he just doesn’t
make
mistakes like that. What he has done here is very cleverly, very subtly, stiff his horse. Lord’s Heir didn’t lose that race. Randy Morrison lost it for him.”
The Fount extracted the tape from the VCR and inserted another. Before hitting the play button, he went to the refrigerator and got a quart of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. Matt declined his offer to share the ice cream. The Fount began polishing it off out of the container, accompanying the ice cream with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “Haven’t eaten in a while,” he explained. Between bites he started the videotape and resumed his lecture.
“Now here’s the Gorham Stakes from New York two weeks ago. Another heavy favorite—Sena Sena. He’s ridden by another top jock, David Guerin. On paper, Sena Sena stands out in this field. Pure class. He’d won his last five in a row. Horse is a stone cold closer—usually comes from way back with a big rush in the stretch and wins going away. Not many sprinters run like that, but he does, and he’s a big crowd favorite because of it, as you know. Watch this.”
Matt saw Sena Sena come shooting out of the gate as if there was a flame thrower scorching his rump. The horse’s ears were back and he looked startled as Guerin whipped him hard right-handed while urging him forward. Sena Sena got the message. He dug in and sped to the front, opening up by two lengths, three, then five as the field went down the backstretch. The fractions were torrid. Guerin kept his hands moving on the horse’s neck and Sena Sena entered the turn nearly seven lengths in the lead. Then the gas started to go out of Sena Sena. At the eighth pole this exhausted leader was passed by four horses. He staggered across the finish line seventh. Matt saw Sena Sena’s trainer, red-faced and steaming, give Guerin hell. Guerin didn’t even look at the trainer after he dismounted, just hurried away to the jockeys’ room, his face averted.
The Fount stopped the tape. “That winner paid $34.60,” he said. “The National Pick Four that day returned $245,000.”
The Fount tossed the empty ice cream container into a wastebasket. He shook his head as he looked at Matt, his expression serious. “This is very weird stuff, man—two front rank riders evidently doing everything they could do to get their horses beat in a National Pick Four finale.
“In the thousands of races I’ve watched over the years,” The Fount continued, “I’ve seen a few examples of bad jocks trying to lose. But those examples were very obvious, to me and any other racing expert.” The Fount laughed. “One guy at one of the minor tracks last year pulled his horse so hard the horse’s head was turned sideways. The horse was looking at himself on the infield television screen as they came down the lane. They got beat in a photo. The stewards suspended the jock six months for ‘insufficient effort.’
“But a top jock wouldn’t do it that way. They’re smarter, they’d be way more subtle. They’d get themselves boxed in, and stay there. Or get carried wide and then go wider. Maybe drop the whip if they’re desperate. Look like they’re going to run up on the heels of a horse in front of them, when they’re really not, and stand straight up in the saddle pulling back on the reins. You lose valuable lengths that way, enough to get beat.
“They can also miss the start, losing ground there. Or fall off at the start. Nobody wants to fall off going thirty-five miles an hour. But if you take a little tumble when the horse comes out of the gate, you’re probably not going to get badly hurt. Remember, these guys are terrific athletes. When they were in high school they were gymnasts or wrestlers. Ever watch them play table tennis in the jocks’ room? Their reflexes are off the charts.”
The Fount stopped and took a gigantic bite out of a triple deck club sandwich he’d just removed from the refrigerator. Then he said, “The stuff I’ve shown you today falls into the subtle category. That’s for sure. These are two expert riders intentionally losing races in ways so that they can’t be accused by the stewards of wrongdoing. I heard that when the stews called Guerin on the carpet after the Gorham, he gave them some song and dance about ‘experimenting with new tactics’ with Sena Sena. Randy Morrison in California wasn’t even questioned officially about his performance on Lord’s Heir. After that race he told the press the ‘race just didn’t unfold’ the way he’d anticipated. Bullshit. But there’s no way for the officials to prove otherwise. What Morrison did, what Guerin did, these were masterful exercises in deceit, carried out by two of the finest jockeys in the world. The question, of course, is why?”
Matt said, “You can’t believe that money is the motive, not with what these guys earn. Come on.”
“No,” The Fount replied, “I don’t see it that way. Randy Morrison and David Guerin and each grossed over a million bucks in earnings last year. And for years before that. What would entice them to jeopardize lucrative careers like that? It can’t be money.”
“Well, then, what
could
it be?”
“Matt, I’ve got no idea. Why don’t you ask them?”
***
When Matt arrived at his apartment early that evening, he went to his PC and pulled up the
Racing Daily
charts of the two races The Fount had showed him. He read each one carefully. Besides the fact that the favorite had flopped what stood out, of course, were the National Pick Four payoffs—the largest of the year by far. On the Dell Park Derby, the chart reported, there were two winning tickets sold nationwide following Randy Morrison’s machinations. There had been ten winning tickets cashed on the Gorham Stakes, the outcome of which had been orchestrated by David Guerin.
Matt unpacked his traveling bag, made himself a sandwich. He shuddered as he remembered The Fount at dinner last night, demolishing three prime rib plates, a whole sea bass, and a platter of roasted chicken. Then he reached for his Rolodex and flipped to the phone number of the Professional Jockeys’ Union. When the phone was answered, he said, “Tyree Powell, please.”
At Heartland Downs the following morning, Matt stopped at Maggie’s barn to say hello. It was a busy place. Grooms were walking horses that had just exercised around the interior of the long wooden building, cooling them out as feed buckets banged amid the sound of pitchforks scraping. Other workers were cleaning stalls empty of everything but horse manure that had to be removed, then laying fresh straw over the floor before the animals were returned to the stalls in which they stayed for more than twenty hours each day. Spanish-language music played loudly from a radio placed at the center of the barn. One of the young Mexican-American women grooms was watering the geranium-filled flower baskets that hung every ten yards down the shedrow. An elderly countryman of hers carefully raked the dirt pathway beneath the flowers into the familiar herringbone pattern favored by meticulous trainers, such as Maggie. Matt stepped to the side of the walking path as two exercise riders guided their mounts toward the main track for workouts.
Maggie was about to pony a nervous filly to the training track and had time only to smile a greeting to Matt before saying “See you tonight.” Then he heard her say, “Pedro, are you using the same brush on all three horses you groom?” There was a muffled answer. Maggie said, “Well, don’t. No wonder all three have got skin infections. One had it, and you’ve given it to the other two. Throw that brush away. Go into my office and get three new brushes out of the trunk behind the door. Keep one for each of those three horses.
Comprende
?”
Matt heard “Si, senorita” as he began walking away from the barn to the Heartland Downs track kitchen. It was a bustling place with a long cafeteria steam table, three pool tables, and dozens of Formica-topped tables populated by trainers, exercise riders, grooms, and a few owners, all breakfasting under a canopy of cigarette smoke. The crowd was some eighty-five percent male, thirty percent Anglo, seventy percent Hispanic, with a very small scattering of African-Americans. Among the latter segment, sitting alone at a table in the rear of the large room, reading the
Wall Street Journal,
was Tyree Powell, the man Matt had come to see.
Powell was a couple of years older than Matt and, at five foot five, considerably shorter. His handsome, dark brown face was marred only by a thumb-size scar on his right temple, souvenir of having been kicked by a two-year-old behind the starting gate one long ago morning at Lincoln Downs. With his blue blazer, gray slacks, white shirt and muted red tie, Powell looked as if he could be sitting at a vice president’s desk in a major metropolitan bank.
Matt bought coffee and two Krispy Kreme doughnuts, then stepped between the tables, saying hello to the many people he recognized. He smiled at Maggie’s stable foreman, Ramon Martinez, who was using his work break to concentrate on a plate of huevos rancheros. “Buenos dias,” Matt said. “Hi, Matt,” Martinez replied with a friendly wave.
Before picking up a fork, Matt noticed, Martinez took off his ball cap and blessed himself. He bowed his head while making the sign of the cross. Observing Martinez, and then others of the large Mexican-American contingent at the track kitchen tables, Matt smiled as he remembered a comment made a few weeks before by Rick Rothmeyer. “How many bald Mexican men do you know or have you ever seen? I’ll bet not two in your life. It’s amazing when you think about it,” Rick had insisted.
Tyree Powell nodded hello as Matt sat down at the table. He raised an index finger, indicating he wished to finish the newspaper story he was reading. Still silent and concentrating on the newspaper, Powell took one of the doughnuts that Matt offered.
Sipping coffee, Matt looked at Powell, recalling their first meeting eight years before, when Powell became the first black jockey to ride regularly in Chicago in some twenty years. It had come after the jockey’s biggest career win, in the $250,000 Heartland Downs Handicap. Powell had driven a rather nondescript bay horse named Took Over up the rail in the late stretch to score a shocking nose victory over a heavily favored invader from New York. Took Over had paid $152.20. What had made Took Over’s triumph even more noteworthy was the fact that he was owned and trained by another African-American, Manfred Stuart. On his way down to the winner’s circle from the press box that afternoon, Matt noticed that the very short lines of people waiting to cash tickets on Took Over were comprised almost exclusively of black men and women. There was hardly a white face in this jubilant collection. Matt smiled, realizing that he had never before seen so many blacks at a racetrack. They’d evidently come out to bet on Took Over, and Manfred Stuart and Tyree Powell were their heroes that afternoon.
Powell enjoyed some other success, too, but a combination of ingrained racial prejudice and increasing weight finally compromised his career. For years he had struggled to “make” one hundred sixteen pounds on a frame much more suited to the one hundred and forty that he carried today. The physical toll involved in that for a relatively large-framed man was extraordinary. It involved one-thousand calorie per day diets, sweating weight off in a hot box, running while wearing a rubber shirt, taking diuretic pills to force liquid out of the system. A few riders regularly resorted to “flipping,” which meant they ate and then forced themselves to immediately vomit up that intake. Some became so proficient at this they were legendary. Matt had heard stories about a Florida rider who, his first year in Miami, each night for a week visited an all-you-can-eat, $7.95 buffet. He’d go through the line, pile his plate with food, down it, then repair to the washroom and regurgitate. He was doing this three or four times an evening before management caught on and barred him permanently.
Finally, after years of growing frustration from battling weight and being denied opportunities his talent warranted, Tyree retired from riding, earned a business degree from a local college, and went to work for the Jockeys’ Union, the organization that represented him when he was riding and that today was the major labor group for the nation’s seventeen hundred active riders. Powell served as the organization’s Midwest representative.
Matt had once written in his
Racing Daily
column that Powell was “not only one of the strongest and coolest under pressure members of the local jockey colony but also one of the smartest. Powell seems to perceive race patterns before they unfold. Put this man on the best horse, and that horse wins.”
Powell had been grateful for Matt’s endorsement and the two became nodding acquaintances. But Matt was under no illusion that today’s conversation would be easy for either of them. Powell was a cool customer and, like most from that little world of small people who rode horses for a living, was fiercely protective of the group ethos, particularly when it came to privacy. Because of their size, and what they did, these men and women regarded each other with understanding, and looked warily at most of the rest of the world. Once a rider, always a rider, is how Matt had heard one old-timer put it.
Powell finished reading and folded the newspaper. He smiled at Matt and reached across the table to shake his hand. “How you doing, Matt?”
Matt said, “Tyree, you may not be smiling when you hear what I have to say.”
Over the next twenty-five minutes, Matt laid out his reasons for believing that two of the most prominent members of Powell’s organization, Randy Morrison and David Guerin, had intentionally lost their two recent National Pick Four races. At first Powell listened quietly, eyebrows raised. As Matt detailed his suspicions, Powell’s expression turned cold and he folded his arms across his chest. As Matt continued, the expression on Powell’s face changed from concern to shock to incredulity and, finally, anger. Still, he said nothing until Matt had finished, saying, “Believe me, Tyree, I wish I was wrong about this, but I don’t think I am. I need you to help me get to the bottom of this. If we don’t, this sport could be destroyed.”
Powell took a deep breath before responding. “You know, this year already has the making of one of the worst in our history. There’ve been three riders shot to death at various places around the country, all three murders still unsolved. Not a one of them. Then, you’ve got the sudden death of Marnie Rankin, which didn’t make sense to a lot of people. Now you’re talking about accusations, the most serious kind you can make about a rider? I can hardly believe this.”
He glanced around the room. “First things first,” Tyree said in a low voice. “I don’t think for a minute that Randy Morrison or David Guerin would do what you say they did. I know both of those boys. They’re squeaky clean, for God’s sake, always have been.”
Powell leaned forward, arms on the table, exasperated, his eyes drilling into Matt’s. “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about here, Matt? Crimes being committed by men who make more money in two years than you and I will make in half our working lives? That’s so off the wall, it’s…hell, it’s out of the ballpark.”
Powell stopped drumming his fingers on the table long enough to look around the room. Then he again leaned forward, speaking softly but forcefully.
“You know what I went through as a rider, the battles I fought just trying to make a living. You even wrote about that. And I appreciated it.
“Now I’ve got this great job, doing work that I like and that I’m good at. It wasn’t easy for me to
get
the job. There were still a few good ole boys on the Union’s board of directors who didn’t want to hire some upstart nigger. But they got voted down.
“This job means everything to me, Matt. I don’t intend to mess it up. If I’m seen being involved with you when you’re poking around asking personal—no, insulting—questions about two of our leading Union members, this job could be taken away from me. You see where I’m coming from?”
Matt nodded. “Yeah, Tyree, I see where you’re coming from. But you’d better consider this: if something lousy
is
going on, the truth will come out eventually. It always does. How’s it going to go for you if it appears you completely turned your back on the situation?
“The results of these Pick Fours, with just a handful of winners each time, the result of amazing reversals of form, just don’t compute. There’s something going on. I’m sure of it.”
Matt paused and looked around the track kitchen before speaking. He said, “You ever hear of a New York newspaperman named Jimmy Breslin? Wrote some good novels, too.”
Tyree shook his head no. “Well,” Matt went on, “Breslin was great. He was the source of a lot of classic lines. One of my favorites was when he wrote ‘Figures, of course, are notorious liars, which is why accountants have more fun than people think.’”
Tyree smiled slightly before Matt continued. “These figures, these payoffs on these races, Tyree, they don’t lie to me. And they’re sure as hell not funny. I’m no accountant. But I can count. They say, ‘Something rotten is going on.’ They say it loud and clear.”
Matt crumpled his coffee cup and got to his feet. He said, “Tyree, I don’t want the image or reputation of the Jockeys’ Union damaged any more than you do.” Matt continued, “And I’m not after some sensational bullshit story that ruins reputations.
“I’d just like to find out for sure what happened in those two big races. You should want to find that out, too.”
Powell stood up abruptly, the cartilage in his knees making the audible popping sound familiar to retired jockeys and ex-football players. Matt thought Powell was going to walk out of the room. Instead, he went over to the water cooler and drank, said hello to some trainers playing cards at a table near the south window, then returned to where Matt was still standing.
Tyree said, “You’re right in the sense that this has to be looked into. I’ll see what I can find out—very quietly, very unofficially. Then I’ll get back to you. I owe you that.” He picked up his newspaper and walked out the door.
***
In Madison that same morning, Claude Bledsoe was about to go out his apartment door to his Chaucer seminar when the phone rang. He pivoted, picked it up, and heard a woman’s voice say, “Mr. Altman calling for Mr. Bledsoe please.” Bledsoe put his briefcase on the kitchen table and sat down. “This is Bledsoe,” he said. “Please hold a moment,” the woman said.
It turned out to be nearly three minutes before Bledsoe heard attorney James Altman say, “Good morning, Claude. Do you have a minute?”
“That’s what I’ve got.”
There was a pause. Altman said, “Well, then, I shall be brief. I’ve given quite a bit of thought to your situation since we had our talk concerning your grandmother’s codicil. Finally, I must admit, my curiosity got the best of me.” Altman chuckled. “I’m just calling to inquire about your progress in acquiring the needed million dollars.”
Bledsoe was sure that he then heard muffled laughter on the line. He got up, phone in hand, and walked over to the window. He attempted to calm himself by looking down into the yard next door, where one of Madison’s organic gardening specialists, Gayla Hilton, was busy weeding an impressively disciplined congregation of vegetation, her broad-brimmed hat almost sideways on her head, padded knees in the soil.
Altman broke the silence. “Mr. Bledsoe. Are you still there?”
“Keep cool,” Bledsoe told himself. “When I dump my pile of cash on this little prick’s desk, Altman will soil his pleated lawyer pants. I’ll save my gloating for then.”
Forcing himself to speak in calm, polite tones, Bledsoe said, “I would have to say that I’m on track, Altman. Be assured, I am on track.”
He crashed the phone down and went out the door. He didn’t want to be late for class.
