Riders Down (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

Three mornings after his luncheon meeting with Moe Kellman, Matt was hailed in the Heartland Downs parking lot by his friend Tom Jaroz, the clerk who manned the pari-mutuel machine in the track’s press box. They had known each other for years. “Matt, you got a minute?”

“Don’t give me another of your losing tips,” Matt kidded as he backed away from Jaroz.

“No, no,” Jaroz said, “this is serious. I need to talk to you. Not now, I’m running late and I’ve got to punch in. How about after the races?”

As they walked rapidly to the clubhouse entrance, Jaroz added, “There’s something screwy going on that you might want to look into for a story.
Real
screwy.” Matt grimaced. “Not you, too.”

***

They met after the races at Jeers. After ordering drinks at the bar, they took a booth near the front window. Rush-hour traffic was bumper to bumper on Wilke Road. Jaroz said, “You know a guy they call Oily Ronnie? Big, dark-haired guy, mid-forties maybe? Always around the track, trying to look like he knows what he’s doing?”

Matt took a drink of his Daniels and water. “You mean the guy who ran the Ponzi scheme on those Turf Club members a few years back? Paid the investors twenty percent every three months before he closed the accounts and took off with the cash? I think they finally ran him down in Los Cabos. Some chick he stiffed down there turned him in.”

Jaroz said, “That’s the guy. Ronnie Schrapps—they call him Oily Ronnie. He took his friends for about four million. Got convicted and did fifty months of federal time for mail fraud, up in that Minnesota country club where they put the white collar bandits. The money was—surprise, surprise—never recovered. Ronnie claimed he blew it all on dope and horses. Lot of people think he went and recovered it from some good hiding place after he did his time. But maybe not,” Jaroz said, finishing his Manhattan.

“Why ‘maybe not’?”

“Because he’s back running another scam. So, either he really did blow his first pile, or he just can’t help himself. But he’s got something going now.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know this from my Aunt Sophie,” Jaroz answered. “Will you do me a favor? After the races tomorrow, come with me to meet her and listen to her story. I had her tell this to a cop friend of mine, but he just shrugged it off, like she’s loony. She isn’t. I don’t think this cop had much interest in it, some old broad with a weird story.”

Matt said, “Where does she live?”

“She’s in an assisted living facility in Schaumburg. And, no, she’s not in the Altzheimer’s wing. Just the Gullible Old Lady section,” he said bitterly.

Matt tried to lighten his friend’s mood. “I saw a great bumper sticker last week. It was on a car driven by a little old guy whose forehead barely reached above the steering wheel. The sticker said ‘Altzheimer’s: The Cure for Nostalgia.’”

“That’s not all that funny,” Jaroz said.

***

The next afternoon Matt met Jaroz in the parking lot of Sunshine Meadows, the facility in which Aunt Sophie had resided for the last four years. A glass-enclosed sun porch ran across the front of the nearly block-long building. Matt glanced at its occupants: a dozen or so white-haired ultra seniors, most of them dozing with their chins on their chests. “Heaven’s Waiting Room,” he commented to Jaroz as they passed this depressing scene.

After registering at the reception desk, they walked to a modest but comfortable suite, one that may have in the past overlooked a meadow, but which now fronted a paved parking lot.

Aunt Sophie was nearing her ninetieth birthday. She had inherited a sizable estate from her husband, Stanislaus, the former plumbing king of Milwaukee Avenue on Chicago’s northwest side. Stanislaus had passed away eleven years earlier.

“She and Stan always liked to play the horses,” Jaroz had told Matt on their ride over to Sunshine Meadows. “They were the ones that first took me to the track when I was a kid. And Stan had a solid gold connection with the mutuel clerks’ union—that’s what got me a track job one summer before I’d even finished high school.

“Sophie’s a sweetheart,” Jaroz continued. “She and Stan never had kids, but they were extra good to me. That’s why I kind of look out for her. She’s in great shape physically for her age, but she does get confused in her mind now and then. Goes with that age, I guess. Sometimes she’ll tell me the same thing three times in ten minutes. It’s sad, you know? But what can you do?

“When Sunshine Meadows took a group of their—what would you call them. Inmates? Residents?—to the races last fall, Oily Ronnie somehow glommed onto them. Fresh suckers in the pool, I guess he must have figured. Anyway, he introduced himself to the group and got to know Aunt Sophie. A week or two later, he took Sophie and a couple of her friends on another outing to the track. Then, he began to visit Sophie at Sunshine Meadows on a fairly regular basis.

“Sophie never said a word about any of this to me. I found out from the Sunshine Meadows director, who told me one day how pleased she was that Sophie had made a new, younger friend. Jesus! And it didn’t take long before Oily Ronnie got around to asking Sophie how she’d like to be partners in a racehorse. Why, it was her ‘lifelong dream,’ she told him.

“Well, did Ronnie have a deal for her!” Tom had concluded.

After Matt and Tom had settled on her couch, and Aunt Sophie had brought out cookies and tea, Tom said, “Auntie, tell my friend Matt about how you got into the horse business.”

Sophie blushed with pleasure. “Oh,” she said, “it all started with this nice man I met at Heartland Downs, the racetrack, on one of our Seniors Trips from here. He looks just like that old actor Victor Mature. Very handsome. And he’s as sweet as he can be,” she added, leaning forward to carefully refill the teacups.

Mr. Schrapps, Aunt Sophie continued, was nice enough to even let some of her good friends in on the horse deal. “I put in $40,000,” she said, “and he let Marjorie Gainer and Dorcus Rohmer get in with $25,000 apiece—even though a lot of other people wanted to join and were on the list before them, Mr. Schrapps said. They were just thrilled.”

Matt said, “Exactly how did Mr. Schrapps say this partnership works?”

“Well,” Sophie replied, “he said he likes to keep our syndicate kind of hush hush. He works behind the scenes in the horse business. That way he gets better horses and better prices,” she said with a wink.

Sophie passed the plate of cookies. “You put your money in,” she went on, “and you get to be in a group that owns several horses. When the horse wins, you get a dividend. Mr. Schrapps guarantees a return of ten per cent every month! None of my old CDs can do that!

“And, just between us,” Sophie whispered, “Mr. Schrapps says we might have next year’s Triple Crown winner in our stable already!”

Matt groaned softly as Tom said, “Auntie, please show Matt the papers on the horses you own now.”

She proudly proffered them. Matt looked at a faded copy of an official registration form for a thoroughbred racehorse, one issued by the sport’s ruling body, The Jockey Club. The original horse’s name had been crudely whited out. In its place was written the name of Birdstone, that year’s Belmont and Travers Stakes winner. Other, similar papers bore the names of other currently famous American racehorses.

Sophie reached into the file and took out a money order for $4,000. “That’s my payment from Mr. Schrapps,” she said, “for our first month. It was a little late coming, a few weeks even I think, but that’s because he had a little trouble buying one of our horses. But all the monthly payments will be right on time from now on,” she smiled. “Mr. Schrapps promised that.”

Matt turned to Tom. “This is pitiful,” he said quietly, so that Sophie couldn’t hear him. “It’s got Ponzi scheme written all over it.” Matt riffled through the papers again. Nowhere did Oily Ronnie’s name appear. Nor was there any written contract covering the purported partnership. Just the phony registration papers, and copies of several newspaper and magazine articles heralding the joys of horse ownership.

When Sophie went into her tiny kitchen to get more tea, Tom said angrily, “Auntie and her friends all made out their checks for the partnership to cash. With nothing in writing, Ronnie can deny any involvement. All he’s got to say is, ‘These crazy old people are accusing me of what? Prove it.’”

Sophie returned and passed the cookie plate again. “What were you saying, Tommy?”

Tom reached over to take his aunt gently by the hand. “Auntie,” he said, “will you please promise me you will never buy any more horses without telling me about it first?”

“Why, sure, Tommy,” Aunt Sophie replied. She patted his hand. “I only wish Mr. Schrapps would let you in on one of these partnerships. But,” she said regretfully, “he says he sets aside these great deals just for us seniors. Isn’t that sweet?”

Chapter Twelve

Bledsoe drove from Madison to Baltimore in two days. He could have done it faster had he gone straight through, but he stopped three times on back roads off the turnpike to look for places to re-test his rifle. In western Pennsylvania he found what he was seeking near Livonia, adjacent to a state forest. He didn’t dare go to a rifle range, where he might be remembered. He needed isolation and a target. He found both in the isolated backyard of a red brick ranch house on land abutting the woods: a ceramic deer, its brown paint flaking off, poised with one front foot up in the air in a patch of sunlight now being threatened by the advance of late afternoon shadows.

Bledsoe had purchased the Model 700 Remington from a private gun collector who lived outside Rhinelander, Wisconsin, two hundred miles north of Madison. Bledsoe found him on the internet, called for an appointment, and acquired not only the weapon but a Leopold 10x scope, a suppressor, or silencer, and a supply of seven millimeter Remington Magnum shells. He told the man he wanted to experiment with the suppressor during the next deer season. The seller accepted Bledsoe’s cash and explanation without comment. Bledsoe then drove seven miles to an abandoned quarry to try out his equipment. Two hours later, having collected every one of the dozens of cartridge casings and the shredded paper targets, he drove back to Madison.

In the course of his lengthy education, Bledsoe one year had enrolled in the University of Wisconsin’s ROTC program. During his training it became clear that, even as a twenty-nine-year-old novice, he was a natural-born marksman. He easily outshone his fellow cadets in every aspect of their arms training. His instructor saw so much talent and potential in Bledsoe that he urged him to consider trying to qualify for the U. S. Olympic rifle team. Bledsoe never gave the suggestion a serious thought. He just accepted the discovery of his new talent as nothing out of the ordinary—just like his ability to, without any training, bench press three hundred and sixty pounds, or do the
New York Times
Sunday crossword in nine minutes.

Lying on his belly and elbows in a copse of birch trees some two hundred yards from the statuette, Bledsoe carefully sighted the rifle. He exhaled abruptly, then was still for the instant before firing. Down the grassy slope before him, the deer’s head disintegrated. Bledsoe grunted with satisfaction. He still had it. If he could hit a target that small from this far away, he would have no trouble hitting the future targets he had in mind. His body relaxed. The rifle was perfect, and so was he. For a moment or two he listened to the wind ruffle the birch leaves above him. Finally, he got to his feet and jogged up the hill toward his car.

***

It was 12:58 p.m. as the field of skittish two-year-olds approached the starting gate. Carlos Hidalgo reached forward to stroke the neck of his mount, Alki Alley, while continuing to mutter soothing words to him. Alki Alley, like all other members of this eleven-horse field, was about to have the first official race of his life. He had joyfully raced fellow foals through green pastures in his native Kentucky, had competed in trial races both on the farm and at the racetrack, but this was different. Alki Alley was nervous, sweating, and noisily apprehensive as he was led toward the rear of the massive iron starting gate. On either side, other similarly inexperienced young horses tossed their heads, or planted their feet and balked, all the while neighing loudly. Only two members of the field walked into their stalls in the gate without encouragement from the hard-working crew of assistant starters. It was two minutes to post-time for the first race at Pinckney Park.

An impassive expression never left Hidalgo’s dark, handsome face. His slim body was almost motionless, and this sense of calm finally was transmitted to Alki Alley, who settled down and waited fairly patiently to be loaded into the gate. Carlos had always had a gift for handling young horses, since his earliest days on a farm outside of Taluca, Mexico, the farm where he had begun riding when he was four years old.

Carlos’ father, Reyes, had been a prominent quarter horse jockey at the southwestern tracks in the United States Growing up, Carlos rarely saw his father, whose career finally came to a spiraling halt fueled by weight problems, alcohol, drugs, and a growing indifference to his craft. But Carlos had inherited Reyes’ innate ability to horseback. After moving to the states as a teenager, he had quietly carved out a rewarding career for himself. Carlos was not cut out to be one of the sport’s superstars. But he was regarded as a solid professional, winning some one hundred and fifty races each year at the Maryland and Pennsylvania tracks and thus providing a very comfortable living for his wife, Maria, and their four children.

Now thirty-six, Carlos had begun to plan seriously for his retirement. His body was increasingly beset with aches and pains from the numerous injuries he had suffered through the years (six broken collarbones, two broken legs, broken right arm and left shoulder—about normal for a jockey with twenty years of experience). Unlike his father, Carlos had saved his money. He now had nearly enough to buy a small farm near Ocala, Florida, where he could begin a new phase of his life breaking and training young horses. That, according to his calculations and those of his accountant, was perhaps a year away. He had more riding to do before that plan became reality. Today, as 1 p.m. approached, he concentrated on guiding Alki Alley into the Pinckney Park starting gate.

***

Jimbo Murray had gone to Baltimore two weeks earlier and rented a room in a house adjacent to the Pinckney Park backstretch. He paid cash for a month’s rent, telling the landlady, Katrina Schulte, he would be “in and out” during the upcoming race meeting because he was a horse van driver for a company that serviced the East Coast racetracks. Katrina had rented rooms to racetrackers for nearly forty years. Cash in hand was her primary interest.

When Murray flew back to Madison, he met with Bledsoe to give him the key to the rented room and describe the setup. The room was on the top floor of Schulte’s three-story house, in the northeast corner. There were two windows that overlooked the Pinckney Park backstretch: a small bathroom window, and a large one that shed light into the combination bedroom-sitting room with its sway-backed bed, small television set with a coat hanger aerial, and three-cushion couch missing one cushion. That window offered an unobstructed view of the racetrack’s backstretch, the southern portion of which was seventy-five yards away.

Bledsoe slipped up the stairs and into the rented room on Tuesday night. He looked around approvingly. It was perfect. A transient’s special, no questions asked, except for “how many weeks are you paying for?” His duffel bag contained a change of clothes, some sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, and the Remington, broken down. He slept soundly that night and was up in plenty of time to observe horses working out in the gray haze of the next morning. As they galloped past, he practiced sighting the rifle. Then he went back to sleep until he heard, coming from across the track infield, the sound of a bugle calling horses to post for the first race, the one with Alki Alley, jockey Carlos Hidalgo up.

Bledsoe patiently examined the approaching field of horses through his rifle’s scope. He had no trouble identifying the most visible jockey—Hidalgo, whose silks were a flaming red with white slashes. “He’ll do,” Bledsoe muttered as Alki Alley sidestepped and threw his head. Bledsoe smiled with satisfaction when Hidalgo, expert horseman that he was, settled the anxious colt. For a couple of seconds Hidalgo’s riding helmet sat almost still in the sights of Bledsoe’s silenced Remington. The time was 12:59 and twenty-seven seconds. The target was slightly less than eighty yards from the open window at which Bledsoe crouched.

Seconds later Carlos Hidalgo’s head was blown apart in a blood and bone and tissue-smeared moment. Hidalgo tumbled to the dark ground, off the wheeling Alki Alley, landing amid the shocked and panicked jockeys, horses, and gate attendants. At the rail across the infield, where fans basked in sunshine, there was a sudden outcry as some noticed the unusual activity behind the starting gate. “There’s a jock off his horse,” a man shouted, and the news rippled along the rail. When the terrified Alki Alley bounded away from his dead rider and ran wildly down the track, the grandstand erupted with sound.

With all the rest of Katrina Schulte’s renters at their jobs at the track, the rooming house was empty. Katrina was tending the rose bushes that ran along the back fence of her property. She looked up when she thought she heard the familiar sound of crowd noise. But when she glanced at her watch she saw it was 12:59. She was puzzled, because she knew it couldn’t have been an exciting finish to the first race—the first race hadn’t gone off yet. She shrugged and returned to her roses.

Bledsoe retrieved the shell casing that had spurted onto the floor near where he’d stood aiming the Remington. He quickly pocketed it, broke down the gun and packed it in the duffel, and took the stairs two at a time. He’d worn thin rubber gloves throughout his stay in the room, so he wasn’t concerned about fingerprints. He made it to his car, two blocks away, in less than two minutes.

Driving away from the track and the sound of approaching police sirens, Bledsoe realized he was hungry as well as pumped up from what he’d done. But he decided to wait until he was a good ways west on Interstate 70, maybe even past Hagerstown, until he picked up something to eat on his way back to Madison.

That night, as he sped past Cleveland on Interstate 80, Bledsoe fought off advancing fatigue by again mentally congratulating himself on his progress thus far. Things had really been set in motion now. He’d taken giant steps in his quest for Grandma’s millions.

What would he do with the $15 million? Live very, very well, for one thing. That was a given. No more secondhand cars and third-floor walkups. Then he was struck by the thought that besides elevating his standard of living, this coming bonanza could serve to buy him some immortality at the university he had long attended. A chair there—he would endow a chair at UW! Two or three of his future millions should do it.

What department should he favor with his generosity? There were so many in which he had studied over the years. Then it came to him, and he laughed aloud at the thought: the economics department, of course. The Claude Bledsoe Chair of Economics. Perfect.