Riders Down (14 page)
Authors: John McEvoy
As usual, Dino’s Ristorante was wall-to-wall with loudly talkative diners. In the crowded foyer, an impatient throng waited in line for tables, or at least for access to the jam-packed bar. And, also as usual, as soon as he said the magic words “Moe Kellman” to the harried hostess, Matt was whisked past the crowd and conducted immediately to the booth in the rear of the dining room.
Kellman sat in his regular booth against the back wall, beneath an enormous black and white photo of owner Dino Nigro with Frank Sinatra. Photos of other show business luminaries covered most of the wall space in the restaurant, but Sinatra’s was the largest by far. Photos of Dino with one ex-president of the United States and two former Illinois governors were far more modest in size and placement.
Kellman placed his cell phone on the table as he greeted O’Connor. “Matt, good to see you, kid. Let’s have a drink.” He tapped his nearly empty Negroni glass and a waiter hurried forward. Matt ordered a Jack Daniels on the rocks. He was tired from his long day at the track and long drive into the Chicago Loop. He hoped the most famous product of Lynchburg, Tennessee, would have its usual salutary effect on him. “I don’t have time for dinner, Moe,” he said. “But there are some matters I want to go over with you.”
The first subject was Bernie Glockner, and Matt had to admit that the old bookie’s death remained a mystery. “There are some weird things going on in racing,” Matt said, “but I can’t see how they tie to Bernie’s murder.”
“What are they?” Kellman asked. He sat back in the booth and shoved his cell phone to one side before taking a drink of his crimson-colored cocktail.
Matt began with his suspicions that the recent deaths of three American jockeys—by rifle shots, fired by an unknown gunman or gunmen—were somehow linked. “I don’t know what the hell is actually going on, and neither do the police,” Matt said. “But I do know that two of the dead jocks have relatives in the sport—one has a brother who is an active jockey, another has a half-brother who is one. Both very good riders, too, although they sure as hell haven’t looked like it in a couple recent major races.
“Then,” Matt continued, “there is the case of one Oily Ronnie.”
“Schrapps?” Moe said sharply. “I thought that bastard was still doing time. He took an old friend of mine for about $300,000—all she had. What’s he up to now?”
“Same cheating game, just a different chapter.” Matt described Oily Ronnie’s preying on gullible oldsters such as Tom Jaroz’ Aunt Sophie. The problem, Matt said, was obtaining solid proof of what Ronnie was doing.
“There’s got to be a way to set this guy up, Moe. God knows he’s got it coming. But I don’t know where to go with this. And I’d like to work with, or through, somebody who’d promise that I get first crack at publishing the story. It’d be a big one for me. I figured you might know somebody helpful.”
Moe finished his Negroni before answering. He said, “I got a guy.”
Matt nodded, in recognition of what he thought of as the “Chicago Syndrome.” It involved a surprisingly large percentage of people he knew who, when confronted with problems, major or minor, “had a guy” to guide them safely through the shoals of local vicissitudes. He thought of parking tickets fixed, liquor licenses miraculously restored, jury duties ducked, premier concert or sporting event tickets scored, reduced-price Bar Mitzvah and First Communion celebrations. It was a mantra woven into the soul of the city’s sharpies, the movers and shakers…Moe’s world.
“Guy’s name,” Moe continued, “is William Popp. He’s a Sheriff’s Department detective. He and I go back a long way. Good guy.”
Matt looked doubtful. Kellman picked up on it. He chuckled before taking a swallow of his newly delivered drink. “I can’t tell you how good this makes me feel,” he smiled, “getting Oily Ronnie in our sights. I’d love to see that bastard nailed. But I can see something’s bothering you. Let’s hear it.”
Matt, trying to be as diplomatic as possible, hesitated before saying, “I thought that your sphere of, well, influence, was more on the other side of the law. Not with a Cook County Sheriff’s detective.”
Kellman laughed so hard his Don King-like hairstyle shook. When he’d finally finished, he smiled at Matt and said, “Matt, my boy, you might be surprised at what you refer to as my ‘sphere of influence.’ It’s fairly wide.
“And I suppose, kid, that you might be wondering whether an old cocker like me still has juice, right? Up in my seventies now, working up in my Hancock suite, way off the street. You’ve got your doubts about how much heft I’ve got left, right? Be honest. Am I right?”
Matt nodded sheepishly. In return, he got another broad smile from the little man across the table. Moe leaned forward. “You’ve put me in a good mood,” he said. “Let me tell you a story that a guy told me once.
“Years ago there was this young couple here in Chicago, deep in love, struggling through the Depression but wanting to get married. So they do. They’ve got no money for a real honeymoon—he’s a hotel desk clerk going to law school at night, she’s a third grade teacher—so after the wedding, and their little reception just with their immediate families, they take a train north up the lake shore to this little resort town in Wisconsin. Their honeymoon haven! There’s a short main street, a dozen stores, three gas stations, two hotels. They check into one of the hotels, the cheapest one, all they could afford, late in the afternoon.
“They take to the nuptial bed, later order sandwiches from the lone bellhop, and a few hours later the bridegroom takes a look out of their window and says, ‘Darling, there’s a theater lit up across the street. They’re advertising an act called The Great Zambini. What do you think? Shall we go?’ His bride says, ‘Why not?’”
Moe paused to sip his drink. Matt declined Moe’s offer of “a fresh one.” Then Moe continued his story.
“This was back when theaters still had live acts between movies. The newlyweds pay a modest admission fee and enter the theater. Pretty soon the theater owner comes onstage and announces, ‘Now, the featured act of the evening, the one and only Great Zambini.’ The theater is packed and excitement is running high.
“The curtains part to show a table in the center of the stage. On the table are three walnuts. The spotlight shines upon them. Then out from the wings comes a short, well-built, good-looking young man with a bushy black mustache. He’s wearing a tall red turban and a long red robe. He bows to the audience. Then he walks over to the table. He opens his robe. The crowd gasps—he’s not wearing anything under the robe, and he’s hung like a horse. There’s a drum roll from the pit band. The Great Zambini takes his big schlong in one hand, steps up to the table, and cracks the walnuts open, one by one. Then he closes his robe, bows modestly, and walks off stage. The crowd goes wild cheering him.”
Moe took another sip of his drink. Matt watched him, bemused—he had never before heard the little man tell a joke.
“Now,” Moe resumed, “shift forward fifty years. That young couple I described is now about to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. He is a very successful but now semi-retired attorney, she’s raised their four children. They can afford to celebrate anywhere they want in the world. How will they mark this grand occasion? In a sentimental mood, they decide to return to the little town where they spent their joyous honeymoon.
“To their delight and surprise, the same hotel is still there in that little Wisconsin town. They check into the same room they had all those years ago. The man looks out the window. There, across the street, is not only the same theater, but on its marquee in huge letters is the notice ‘The Great Zambini Appears Tonight.’ The couple is amazed. It can’t be him! They laugh, the woman saying this is like something out of the Twilight Zone. But they can’t resist. After dinner that night, they go across the street to the theater.
“After a preliminary act there’s a drum roll announcing the featured attraction. The curtains part. Out comes this little, wizened-up guy wearing a red turban and a red robe. His bushy mustache is white, but the man and his wife look at each other in astonishment—it’s definitely him, The Great Zambini, from fifty years ago.
“There is another roll of the drums. The Great Zambini walks up to the table that’s placed at midstage. On it are three coconuts. With a flourish, he opens his robe, takes out his big schlong, and cracks open the coconuts. The crowd goes wild.
“The couple can’t resist. They go backstage to his dressing room and introduce themselves to The Great Zambini, who receives them graciously. They tell him about first seeing him a half-century ago on their honeymoon weekend.
“Then the husband says, ‘One question, if you don’t mind: why did you switch from cracking walnuts in your act to cracking coconuts?’
“Replies The Great Zambini softly, ‘To tell you the truth, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.’”
Matt broke up, his laughter startling the customers in the next booth. Moe smiled and took another drink of his Negroni.
“Anyway,” Moe said, obviously pleased at Matt’s reaction, “the moral of my story is this: I’m no Great Zambini. But even at my age, kid, I know how to get things done. I’ll have my old friend Detective Popp call you in a day or two.”
After signaling the waiter for the check, Moe looked at Matt. The smile was off his face now. He said, “Oily Ronnie has made a big mistake. He may not know it yet, but he has. He’s a bad thief and an egomaniac to boot, and he’s going to pay.
“Like the old wiseguys used to say, ‘If you eat steak, you shit blood.’”
Vera Klinder walked rapidly through the Oscar Mayer Company employee parking lot, past the famous Weinermobile, stopping only to light a cigarette on the way to her Ford Falcon, a faded green vehicle riddled with dents and creases. It was just after 6 a.m. Vera finished her first Pall Mall of the last eight hours as she slid her tall, lanky form behind the wheel, then immediately fired up another as she pulled out of the lot on this early Wednesday morning in Madison. Smoking was not permitted inside the giant meat packing plant. It wasn’t until she’d driven around the state capitol square that she cranked open a car window. Even after three years in the bologna packaging division of the huge facility, Vera hadn’t gotten used to the powerful odor of processed meat that pervaded the neighborhood near the Mayer factory.
Vera was tired. She never wore makeup at work, or did much more to her straight, dirty blond hair than just pin it up so it would fit under the plastic caps the Oscar Mayer workers were required to wear. Fatigue showed on her face, the result of a couple of sleepless afternoons—her normal bed time—and the strain of the fight she’d had last night with Jimbo Murray. Ordinarily after work she’d head home to shower, change clothes, and go out for something to eat. But as she watched the sun rise in her rearview mirror—one of the few aspects of her factory night shift that she appreciated—she altered her normal routine.
Instead of going straight to the Dahle Street apartment she shared with Jimbo, Vera stopped at a 7-Eleven for coffee and a breakfast burrito. Then she drove west to the Curtis parking lot of Madison’s famed Arboretum. She took her coffee, burrito, and cigarettes to a picnic bench that overlooked the Nakoma Golf Course. Wiping dew off the bench, she sat down to review the list of things that concerned her. Jimbo and Claude Bledsoe led the list.
As Vera’s gaze wandered over the lush golf links, her mind returned to the previous weekend’s argumentative exchange with Jimbo. It was an unusual conflict for them, since Jimbo normally acquiesced to just about anything Vera asked of him. That was one of his qualities she found so attractive. The two husbands she’d divorced had been abusive drunks. In contrast, ex-convict Jimbo was one of the most even-tempered people she’d ever known. That’s why their argument had so stunned her, leaving her thinking about it days later.
They had just finished their evening meal—Jimbo’s dinner after his shift at the muffler shop, her light lunch before they caught an early movie and she headed for Oscar Mayer and the ten to six shift. It had begun with what Vera thought was an innocent question: “Jimbo, why are we getting so little money out of this stuff you’re doing with Bledsoe? Don’t you hate to be taken advantage of?”
Jimbo looked at Vera in disbelief. He got up from the table and stomped around the room. Then he erupted. “Are you crazy?” he shouted. “The man pays us almost a hundred and fifty grand for cashing a couple of goddam mutuel tickets? A hundred and fifty? And you’re bitching? I can’t believe you.”
He had stalked to the apartment door, but then reversed himself, pulled back by the tether of her pleading voice saying, “Jimbo, can’t we at least talk about this? C’mon back, baby.” He plunked down on the opposite end of the couch, before reaching for the remote control and muting the taped rerun of a recent NASCAR race.
So they had talked, Vera reiterating her belief that Jimbo was being “played for a sucker. If this is such a simple and safe thing to do, cashing these tickets, well then why isn’t your friend Mr. Bledsoe doing it himself? And if it
isn’t
such a simple and safe thing to do, how do you figure what he’s been giving you is enough?”
Vera lit a cigarette and took a slip of paper from her jeans pocket. “I did some numbers,” she said. “That Pick Four ticket we cashed at Heartland Downs that you signed for, it came to $460,000 after they took out the tax. The one I signed for paid $245,000 after taxes. Claude gave us a total of $140,000 for the two tickets. Now, hell, that’s only twenty-five percent when you total them up and do your damn division. Doesn’t seem like enough to me,” she said, looking at Jimbo from behind a haze of exhaled smoke.
Jimbo knew the numbers well. Following Bledsoe’s instructions, he had asked the Heartland mutuels manager for payment in cash just as Vera had. The manager, Terry Dart, had congratulated him on his win but warned him about his choice of payment form. “Taking payment in a check is safer and easier on everybody,” Dart had said. “We had a young woman in here a few weeks back that I gave the same advice to,” he went on, but Jimbo left the office without listening to any more.
The Monday after the race, Bledsoe deposited most of the money in a safe deposit box, rented under a fictitious name, in a Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, bank. Two days later he met with Jimbo and Vera at their apartment and gave Jimbo and Vera their share.
“We’re not going to do it this way again,” Bledsoe said, after he had counted out the money.
“Why not?” Jimbo asked.
“Because we can’t have the same person signing for these payouts. Vera signed for the first one, you did the next one. We need somebody else for the third one, which is coming up soon. We have to go a different route with that one.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Bledsoe said impatiently, “we don’t want the same faces showing every time we cash. Too risky. I don’t want to spend the money to fly the two of you to another track. Heartland Downs works fine for us, both as a place to put down our bets and to collect them. But we don’t want that mutuels boss down there getting too familiar with either one of you. We’ve got to hire some outside help we can trust.”
Vera had been pretending to watch “Survivor” from the living room couch of the apartment, but she had turned down the sound in order to better monitor their conversation. Then she heard Jimbo say, “Vera, can you come in here?”
As Vera took a seat at the kitchen table, Bledsoe said, “I understand you have a grandmother living near LaCrosse. Jimbo says she’s quite a character.”
“Well,” Vera replied, “Grandma Vi is eighty-four but she can still drink any of those river rats up there under the table. She’s a tough one.”
Bledsoe smiled. “My kind of woman,” he said. “I have a proposal for her, one that can make her some money.”
He explained that he would like Grandma Vi to cash one winning Pick Four ticket on a date to be determined. “We’d cover all of her expenses. She’d have to go down to Chicago, but we’d pay her a generous fee for her services. Think she’d be interested?”
“Hell,” Vera replied, “Vi’s game for about anything. Most of her old girlfriends have passed on. About the only thing she looks forward to now is visiting me, or her trips to the Indian casino near where she lives. She still drives,” Vera added, lighting another Pall Mall. “Her car’s got a bumper sticker on it that says ‘Custer Had It Coming.’ Vi thinks the Indians treat her nicer at the casino because of that.
“And,” Vera continued, “Grandma Vi goes to Vegas at least once a year to bet horses. Spends about a week. They don’t have horse rooms at those Indian casinos in Wisconsin. So, I’m pretty sure she’d be game to do what you want. But let me call her tomorrow.”
When Vera phoned her the next day, Grandma Vi was eager to cooperate. “I’m always looking for some excitement, honey,” she told Vera, promising to be ready to travel whenever she was needed.
It was this plan that prompted Vera to begin thinking about gross receipts from Pick Four tickets. “Maybe there’s more money to be had from Bledsoe. Why shouldn’t we at least talk to him about it,” she had said to Jimbo, thus sparking their bitter exchange. That was when Jimbo hit the ceiling.
***
After stomping around their apartment for ten minutes or so, hollering about what an “ingrateful bitch” she’d revealed herself to be, Jimbo finally cooled off enough to take a seat next to Vera on the couch. “Maybe you forgot something here,” he said, “the fact that Claude has cut me in for more money than I can make in five years slapping on mufflers, or any other sort of shit job an ex-con like me can get.
“You’ve got to understand,” Jimbo continued, “that Claude runs this whole show. He’s the mastermind, the idea guy. I don’t agree with everything he does,” Jimbo admitted, momentarily recalling Bernie Glockner’s fatal fall—something he had never told Vera about—“but I go along. Because, to tell you the truth, he’d have no more regret about booting me out if I complained about our cut than, well, he just wouldn’t have any regret, that’s all.
“And it might just piss him off. You wouldn’t want to see that happen, Vera, I guarantee you.”
“What do you mean?” Vera said.
Jimbo hesitated before saying, “Just take my word for it.”
Vera thought that over before pressing on. “Has he ever killed anybody?”
Jimbo jumped as if he’d been cattle-prodded. “Jesus, Vera,” he said, “don’t talk about shit like that. Just don’t talk about it.”
The morning dew was disappearing from the lush golf course grass as Vera finished her coffee and lighted another cigarette. She remained deep in thought as a couple of elderly duffers flailed away in a nearby sand trap, alternating miss-hits. One finally threw his ball onto the green. The other just pocketed his ball and stomped over to their golf cart and drove it to the next tee.
Jimbo’s fear of Bledsoe was very real, Vera could see that. She had to keep that in mind. At the same time, it angered her to see her man being shortchanged, not to mention herself. Vera frowned, knowing she’d have to give some more thought to this aggravating situation. She walked back to her car and used the burrito bag to wipe the dew that had accumulated on the back window.
