Rexroth wore a dark-green velour robe. On his feet were gray Nike cross trainers. In his left hand was a baton-sized cigar that he gestured with as he talked into the phone. Asleep next to Rexroth’s right Nike lay a brown and white bulldog. Like Rexroth, the dog had a broad head, big shoulders, and a large, fleshy jaw. Doyle found himself momentarily gawking at the similarity of appearance between man and beast.
About fifteen feet to Rexroth’s left, leaning forward on a white wicker couch and apparently impervious to the phone tirade taking place nearby, was a very large young man who Doyle, from the description supplied by the FBI agents, recognized as Rexroth’s bodyguard, Randy Kauffman. He looked as ominously stupid and strong as they had said. Kauffman was intently watching, on a small color television, the Jerry Springer Show.
Doyle recalled Damon Tirabassi’s description of Kauffman as being “wider than a warehouse door, and just as dumb. He pumps more iron than the Packers, and he eats steroids like popcorn.”
Damon had gone on to say that a Willowdale worker, later fired, reported Kauffman to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “This woman,” Damon said, “called in that she had seen Kauffman knock down a horse with one punch. Evidently Rexroth had ordered him to do it, so Kauffman cracks this old mare right between the eyes with a right hand, and down she goes. The ex-worker said Rexroth just was hopping around, laughing at this, calling Kauffman ‘Mongo.’ The point,” Damon said, “is don’t ever let him get his hands on you.”
Doyle returned his attention to Rexroth. The media mogul sat behind a large, marble-topped desk, an impressive piece of furniture completely at odds with the rest of the mini-pavilion’s casual decor. The top of the desk was piled with computer printouts, notepads, newspapers, and a computer that Rexroth impatiently pecked at as he continued to shout into the phone.
“Phillips,” he said, “the reason I made you editor of Horse Racing Journal, the reason you have a huge salary plus an expense count that you’ve padded so much it could win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction-was to boost, that’s BOOST, circulation. Goddamit, my papers don’t LOSE readers, they GAIN them-all except the one you’re editing.
“What? What was that. Bullshit! I don’t want to hear about the Racing Daily having a built-in advantage because it’s been around for five fucking centuries or whatever. It’s ready to be driven out of business, goddamnit. Are you hearing me?
“I want you and that bloated staff of yours to come up with new, different, sensational stories from the racing industry…the Dark Side of the Sport of Kings…jockeys with batteries, crooked trainers, drugged horses…I want those stories and plenty of them.
“I don’t give a shit if they don’t exist. Find them! Fake them! Then put them on page one in headlines you can read from across the street. I want people fighting with each other to buy the Horse Racing Journal every goddam morning, Phillips.
“‘Man Fucks Mare!’ ‘Horse Rapes Jockette!’ Ninety-six point type. That’s what I’m looking for-the racy stuff behind the races, the dirt, the filth, the stuff people love to read!” Rexroth roared.
Finally lowering his voice and allowing the veins in his neck to recede, Rexroth said, “Find those stories, Phillips, or find another job.” He then threw the phone into the swimming pool. Without hesitation, Kauffman got up, grabbed a long-handled fishing net, and adeptly retrieved it. Doyle recognized this as a practiced motion.
Rexroth rose to his feet, briefly shook Doyle’s hand, then motioned him to a chair in front of the desk. The nearly — nude redhead whizzed by on the track behind Rexroth’s chair, her wheels whirring. She peered straight ahead. She was working up a pretty good sweat, Doyle noted, asking himself, I wonder what the other FBI moles are looking at this morning?
Rexroth interrupted this brief reverie with a question, spoken in a voice turned somewhat raspy from the strain of his recent phone call.
“I’ve read your resume, Mr. Doyle,” he said. “Now, I want you to tell me why you want to go to work at Willowdale.”
Spotting the redhead on another revolution of the track, Doyle couldn’t help but respond, “Well, the scenery certainly is attractive.”
“Yes, she’s a winner,” Rexroth agreed. Then he called out, “Darlene, you can take a break now.”
“It’s Darla,” the redhead shouted over her shoulder, irritation obvious in her voice. “Do you need me anymore today?”
“No,” Rexroth said. “I’ll see you tonight. Please send out Deirdre.”
Darla did as she was told and, within seconds, much to Doyle’s amazement, another neo-naked blader appeared on the track, this one a diminutive brunette with legs muscled like those of an Olympic sprinter. How many has he got lined up back there, Doyle wondered, as Deirdre began zipping around the track with quick little strides.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Doyle said, “how often do the shifts change?”
“As often as I want them to,” Rexroth growled. Then his expression cleared.
“I find the presence of such active beauty to be a remarkable tonic-both physical and mental. Variety…variety kick-starts creativity.
“Variety kick-starts creativity,” he suddenly shouted, startling Doyle, the dozing bulldog, and even the television-watching behemoth.
Rexroth jumped to his feet. “Stoner,” he said to his assistant, “write that down and have bumper stickers made of it for every RexCom employee. Display will be mandatory on each employee’s vehicle. Have the bumper stickers distributed along with paychecks. They’ll be taken more seriously that way.”
Rexroth shook his head, recalling past promotional and motivational schemes that had fallen short of his expectations. “It’s a shame, I sometimes think, that you have to have people working for you in order to run a business.”
Doyle remembered reading, in the background information on Rexroth that the FBI had given him, how the RexCom chairman made it a practice of once each year arriving at each of his major corporate offices to harangue the employees-his “troops.” as he referred to them-while dressed like his hero, General George S. Patton. Rexroth would strut up and down the auditorium stage in front of a huge American flag, snapping a riding crop against his polished boots, bald dome covered by a gleaming silver helmet.
Attendance was mandatory at these performances, so much so that one worried RexCom office manager, hospitalized for hemorrhoid surgery, had himself delivered by ambulance to the auditorium one year in an attempt to demonstrate his fealty. Rexroth fired him anyway once the man had returned to his job. “The troops were paying more attention to that suckass Schullman that day than they were to me,” Rexroth said, in explaining this dismissal.
After Rexroth had riffled through papers that Doyle recognized as his phonied-up resume created by the FBI agents with the cooperation of some prominent West Coast breeders who were eager to be of aid to the agency, the publisher again turned his attention to Doyle.
“I see that Aldous Bolger knows you,” Rexroth said. “He’s quite complimentary about your abilities.”
“Aldous and I go back a long way,” said Doyle, lying resolutely. He then went on to mention other aspects of his fictional career on some of California’s leading horse farms.
“Have you ever trained horses?” Rexroth asked.
“I’ve had some experience on the racetrack,” Doyle replied truthfully, “but I got tired of the traveling around. I’m engaged to be married,” he lied again, “and I thought it was time I tried to find a job with more permanence to it.” He gave Rexroth his most sincere, polished at Serafin Ltd., look. Rexroth didn’t seem either impressed or unimpressed. He looked more uninterested than anything else.
“You know the salary,” he said. “I’ll review your performance with Bolger after your first month, and we’ll see where we stand. Welcome to Willowdale,” Rexroth added, dismissing Doyle as he turned to pick up the slightly damp cellular phone.