“Will do,” Doyle said, regretting that this communication with what he had come to regard as the real world-even if it was populated by FBI agents dedicated to manipulating his life-was about to end.
Chapter 17
Following his faux pas with Pedro regarding Chisox the teaser, Doyle took to heart Bolger’s advice about doing more listening, less talking. Rather quickly he picked up the daily routine of life on Willowdale Farm, although he never found himself adjusting completely to the fact that his shift, along with those of the vast majority of the farm’s employees, began before six each morning. As he pointed out to Bolger, “My life used to find me coming home at the time you’ve forced me to get up.” Bolger would smile good-naturedly, commenting, “The horseman’s life is not for the lazy man.”
“I was never lazy regarding my nightlife,” responded Doyle.
After the first few weeks, life at Willowdale proved to be a pleasant surprise to Doyle. The steady rhythms of outdoor work, plus the warmth of the Bolger family, were starting to smooth out some of his hard edges. This change did not go unnoticed.
Aldous said to Jack one morning when the last horse had been fed and watered, “After observing you these weeks, laddie, I’ve decided something.”
“What’s that?” Jack said. He bent down to retrieve a rubrag one of the grooms had dropped.
“You remind me of an orphaned colt I was given when I was a boy. I was young, and so was he, and he’d been mistreated in some way or other at the farm my father bought him from.
“When I got him he was the meanest little critter you’d ever see. He didn’t trust anybody and he lashed out at everybody every chance he had. It took me months to convince him the world wasn’t the hell hole he thought it was. Once I got through to him, he’d still pretend to keep his mean ways, but he really didn’t have his heart in it anymore. He’d changed, and we both knew it.”
Jack turned away to hide his grin. “You’re a cheeky lot, you Kiwis,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away.
The more Doyle got to know Bolger, the more he appreciated the man-for his work ethic, his fair treatment of his work force, for the joy he took in spending time with his sister and her children. Bolger’s energy supply was apparently inexhaustible. Not only would he work twelve hours most days, he would reserve the time to spend with Helen and Ian almost every evening, usually taking them to fish in the Willowdale Farm lake, or else monitor their riding of the Shetland pony he had acquired just for their use during their stay.
Doyle sometimes accompanied Bolger and the kids to the fishing hole, but he rarely remained for long. He could appreciate the calm and peaceful setting, and the feel of the lush green grass that draped the sides of the blue lake, and, no question, the obvious joy evidenced by Caroline’s children as they competed with each other to catch the most, or biggest, fish. But as Doyle put it one evening to Bolger as they observed Ian and Helen in their dead-serious competition, “Fishing just doesn’t do it for me. You know what I mean?
“There was a guy I used to work out with, he loaned me a book about some New York newspaper editor who ‘found himself’ fly-fishing? I went fly-fishing once with this guy, spent a whole morning and most of the afternoon up to my balls in icewater, we didn’t catch enough to feed a small cat breakfast.
“Fishing, for me, is about in a dead heat with watching yacht racing, cooking shows, or the first three quarters of NBA basketball games.”
“Keep those opinions near your vest, man,” Bolger said seriously. “A lot of horsemen are serious fishermen, both here and back home. To say otherwise makes you sound even more suspect than you usually do.”
Doyle looked at Aldous. “Really?” Concern showed on his face, until he realized that Bolger was exaggerating nearly as much as he. “Naw, you’ve been cracker,” Bolger reassured him. “I’ve heard some muttering from a couple of the lads, them wondering how I’d picked you for my assistant over them. But that’s been about it-more jealousy than doubt. You’re not a bad actor, Jack Doyle. I’d say it’s good on ya so far.”
On a few of those evenings when Doyle didn’t accompany Uncle Aldous and niece and nephew to the lake, he walked back up the little hill and headed toward his apartment, which was located on the top floor of the Willowdale dormitory. Most times, he walked past Bolger’s two-story brick house. Sometimes, he was happy to discover, Caroline Cummings would put down the book she was reading, wave to him from her chair on the front porch, and invite him to “stop for a drink, if you’d like?” He had yet to refuse her.
Caroline would usually make easy conversation, asking him about his day, about how Doyle liked working with Aldous.
“Suppose I said I hated working for him?” Doyle said to her once. “Suppose I said I can’t stand how overbearing he is, and rude, and bullying to his help? Suppose I said that? Then what would you say?”
Caroline cocked her eye at him-she was looking toward the lake, and he had been admiring her profile as he kidded her, the soft-looking white-blond hair pulled back from her tanned forehead, her long eyelashes-and replied, “What would I say? I’d say you aren’t talking about Aldous Bolger.” She added, “His boss, maybe, yes.”
As the weeks unfolded with Doyle held hostage, as he thought of it, in the heart of Kentucky’s Blue Grass country, he began more and more to look forward to two things: finding the incriminating material needed to hang Rexroth out to dry and thereby get the FBI off his case, and, two, his twilight conversations with Caroline.
In addition to admiring her beauty, and easy and good-humored way of conversing with him, Doyle was impressed with her strength. When the subject of her late husband came up, usually in the context of something to do with the children, Caroline calmly addressed it, never attempting to shield the pain she felt over his loss, but never dramatizing it, either. Grant Cummings must have been a hell of a man as well as a hell of jockey to win this woman for his wife, Doyle thought.
As Doyle sat chatting with Caroline one evening, the telephone rang in Bolger’s house. Caroline went inside to answer it. When she returned to the front porch, she said, “That was the man at the front gate. He said there is a Federal Express package there for you, Jack. He can’t leave his post there. He wants to know if you will go down there and pick it up. What shall I tell him?”
Minutes later, Doyle made his way down the long driveway to the front gate of Willowdale. As he moved past the grazing horses in the broad fields on either side of him, he wondered who might be sending him something via Federal Express. Had Karen or Damon planned to mail him something, he was sure they would have informed him in advance. “This could be Publisher’s Clearing House, or a letter bomb,” he said to himself.
After Doyle had retrieved the package, he opened it as he began his return walk. When he saw what was inside, he abruptly stopped. There were six cashier’s checks, each worth $5,000. Doyle riffled through them twice, his initial disbelief giving way to a growing tide of exultation. “Damn, these things are for real,” he said to himself. “I can’t believe it!” He checked the address label on the front of the package. The addressee was definitely Jack Doyle. The return address was in Hallandale, Fla.
Doyle looked inside the package again. He then extracted a folded-over piece of white paper. The writing on it was from a typewriter. It said: “Dear Jack. Sorry we did what we did to you, but we had a very, very good reason. Look up a three-year-old named Bunny’s Al. If you wish, call this number.”
He read this note two or three more times as he stood in descending dusk. Then Doyle hotfooted it to Bolger’s office. The door was unlocked. Doyle entered and headed for the stack of Blood-Horse magazines Bolger kept on a shelf behind his desk chair. He began to leaf through recent stakes results in the back of the publication. Three issues back, he found the name of Bunny’s Al.