Underneath the name, which was in white type on a black background, was the following: “Whirlaway Stakes, Florida Park, June 22, $75,000 added, value of race $83,200, three-year-olds, seven furlongs, 1:23 4–5, track fast.”
Doyle read further. The next entry repeated Bunny’s Al name, then gave his color (chestnut), age (three), and weight carried in the race (118), plus his winner’s share ($49,920).
The names of his sire and dam were next, but they meant nothing to Doyle, nor did the name of the horse’s breeder.
He continued to examine the Blood-Horse entry. On the next line, after the letter “O” for the horse’s owner, Doyle read “M. Hoban.” No clue there, he thought at first, although something was niggling at his memory. But the next piece of information jumped out at him. After “T” for trainer, was this: “E. D. Morley.”
Stunned, Doyle looked around the area in which he stood, as if he were going to suddenly find someone there to consult with concerning this astonishing revelation. “Didn’t Maureen tell me her last name was Hoban?” He ransacked his memory. Doyle was pretty sure he was right about that.
“I’ll be a triple-decker son of a bitch,” he said aloud. Then he began jogging up the drive to his Accord. Doyle couldn’t wait to get this pair on the phone, although he knew he’d much rather have his hands around their necks.
Chapter 18
The parking lot where Doyle stood, outside the Wildcat Jiffy-Shop station and store, was relatively quiet. Not so the background noise on the other end of the receiver when, after several rings, it was finally picked up and a woman’s voice said hurriedly, “Fado. How can I help you?”
Doyle said, “Fey-dough? What the hell does that mean?” He hadn’t intended to be impolite to this stranger, but the thought of the thieving twosome bit at him. The woman replied, in a chilly voice, “Fado, that is spelled F-a-d-o, means ‘long ago’ in Gaelic.”
Long ago and far away, with my money, Doyle thought. “What is the Fado you’re talking from?” Doyle asked. “I mean, what sort of business is it?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Somewhat impatiently, the woman said, “Fado is an Irish bar and restaurant. And a very popular one.”
Doyle said, “Isn’t that Bob Marley and the Wailers I hear on your sound system?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And this is an Irish bar and grill?”
For a moment it seemed she was going to take the time to explain Fado’s choice of music. Instead, though, she said, “It is indeed an Irish bar. Now, again, how may I help you?”
“Let me talk to your lady bartender from Cork by way of Chicago,” Doyle said. “Tell her it’s Mr. Doyle. From Immigration.”
There was another lengthy pause, then Doyle heard the phone being set down. He waited, tapping his foot to the reggae beat and looking up at the star-packed Kentucky sky. Finally, he heard a familiar voice say, “Jack Doyle, you lovely man. Isn’t it a great thing now that you’re calling?”
“Hello, Maureen,” said Doyle.
After adding a few more sentences on to her warm greeting, Maureen said, “Jack, I can’t talk to you from this phone. Give us your number up there, please, and I’ll call you back in five minutes. I’ll be paying for the call that way.”
“You should be,” Doyle growled. He waited eagerly for the phone to ring. When a pickup truck pulled into the parking lot, he snatched up the receiver, making it look like the phone was in use, then replaced it. Seconds later, the phone rang.
“Jack, we’re both on here now,” Maureen said. Then Doyle heard E. D. Morley’s deep voice, on another extension, say, “Hey, mon, what you op to?”
“Don’t start that Jamaican jive with me,” Doyle snapped. “E. D., I want to know what the hell you were doing when you robbed me of my money. And hit me with that dose of knockout juice.” Doyle could feel the heat rush to his face as he relived the ambush in his parking garage.
“Aw, sheet, Jack,” E. D. said in his rumbling bass while reverting to his natural Chicago West Side accent, “it’s a long story.” There was a pause, then Morley said, “But you got a right to hear it.”
“True that tis,” chipped in Maureen. Doyle was about to lash out at his one-time counselor from Cork when he decided it was best for him to just shut up and listen.
What Doyle heard over the course of the next half-hour or so was a combination of explanation and justification, interspersed with elements of sincere apology. All this was jointly offered by Maureen and E. D., who vowed repeatedly that they had never intended to keep the money they stole from Doyle, only use it as the basis for an investment that “couldn’t go wrong-and didn’t.”
Maureen said she had first met E. D. the previous year at a St. Patrick’s Day party hosted by one of Angelo Zocchi’s clients, Jim Dunleavy, for all the stable help. It was held at O’Keefe’s Ale House. Maureen, of course, had been working on this busiest night of O’Keefe’s year, and she helped serve the Dunleavy party.
“It was brilliant, Jack,” Maureen gushed. “We hit it off right away. E. D. came around the next night, and then we started going out, and now-well, we’ve been together since right before we left Chicago.”
Interjected Morley earnestly, “My mama’s grandma really was from Jamaica, a white woman name of Cullerton.”
“Look,” Doyle said, “don’t take this as being anti-romantic, or anything, but I’m not real interested in this reggae version of Abie’s Irish Rose, if you know what I mean. Why’d you take my money?”
Morley and Maureen had seen their chance, they explained, when Jack had confided in her about his deal with Moe Kellman. “What ever made me trust you?” Doyle said, groaning into the phone.
Spurring them on, they said, were Maureen’s desire to get out of the barmaid’s life and E. D. Morley’s long-harbored hope of obtaining his own trainer’s license and horses to train. “I groomed and did the scut work for years,” Morley said. “I worked as Angelo’s assistant. I wanted to go out on my own. Only two things standing in my way: my color, and my bank account.”
“Your color,” Doyle said, “what’re you talking about? There are black trainers, I’ve seen them at Heartland Downs.”
“How many you seen?” Morley shot back. Doyle realized that the number was, indeed, very small. “I guess, well, two,” Doyle said, thinking of Clifford Spraggins and Scotty Hunter.
“I’m telling you, it’s almost impossible for a black man to get a good stable to train,” Morley emphasized. “So, I was looking to get started with horses of my own. All I needed was the capital.”
E. D. had gotten a call from a friend of his in Florida, telling him that there was a promising, obscurely bred but well put together three-year-old gelding for sale.
“Horse had never started, the owner had died, the widow was anxious to sell off this gelding and a couple of other horses her husband had owned. My buddy told me this gelding, Bunny’s Al, could be a steal at the price. The widow lady would let him go for $20,000 and throw in one of the old claiming mares to boot.”
E. D. said he’d taken a week off of work and driven to Ocala, Fla., to examine Bunny’s Al. “I liked this horse from the get-go,” Morley said. “I told the widow lady, ‘give me a week to get you the money.’ She promised she would. Then I drove back up north fast as I could and talked this all over with Maureen.”
“So this is where I came into it,” said Doyle.
Once Maureen and Morley agreed that they knew what Doyle was up to, they simply sat back and watched the plot unfold. When City Sarah won her “target” race after the maneuverings of Zocchi and Doyle, they had indeed bet on her.
“But we made our big bet on you, Jack,” Maureen said. She then went on to vow that “we had always, always intended to pay you back. The proof is in those checks we sent in the Federal Express. Jack, it was just kind of a loan we had of your money. That’s all it was.” She sounded sincere.