Wanda kept urging Red to “let it go, honey,” but Red just couldn’t bring himself to do so. The Marchiks never took insults lying down, he told Wanda, “never have, never will.” Hearing this for the umpteenth time, Wanda usually interrupted the cleaning of her handgun arsenal to light a joint. Eyes slitted against the smoke, she would regard her husband and try to figure how long it would take him to get to the point in his life where he could turn to other concerns.
In the years Wanda had known and loved him, Red had entertained a number of obsessions-video poker, the self-improvement guru Diplok Shewphat, bait worm farming on a share-cropping basis by mail-but they eventually evaporated. She was sure this one, too, would pass. The question was when.
Red, with two failed revenge attempts against Rexroth behind him, felt stymied, and he didn’t like it. So far, he had succeeded only in killing his former employer’s bulldog Winston. The mystery surrounding that incident (“What Had This Dog Done to Deserve to Die?” was a question posed by Rexroth in an uncommonly personal Letter From the Publisher) had caused a furor, the publicity serving to make Red lie low for weeks, considering options. Now, Rexroth had trumpeted his plan to win the upcoming Heartland Derby with “my rejuvenated horse Lancaster Lad.”
“You’re right about me being out of the assassination business,” Red said one night to Wanda. “That man is not worth a murder charge in case something went wrong.”
His options now, Red thought, pushing the leaves into a pile at the back corner of the yard, were either to somehow put this whole matter behind him, and lose face with Wanda, or come up with a new idea. It was at that moment, just as Wanda pulled up to the carport and began unloading groceries, that the lead squadron of the South Louisville Hot Air Balloon Club hove into view in the sky over the Marchiks’ yard, brilliant in its monthly flight on this clear day. Soon, the first four balloons were joined by several dozen others.
As the richly colored balloons sailed south over the gawking Red, he put down his rake and began waving at the figures gliding past, some of whom waved back. Red thought he’d never seen a more beautiful sight than these vehicles of the air smoothly traveling across the vivid, blue sky.
“Damn, that looks like fun,” Red said to himself. He waved some more, and more pilots and passengers waved back, much to his further delight.
Then a thought came to Red. He bounced it around for a few more minutes as he watched the tail-end of the airborne procession. Why not? he concluded. Then he yelled, “Wanda, come on out here. And bring a bunch of Pabsts along with you.”
What had just occurred to Red was that his friend Oscar Belliard, commandant of the Underground Militia, was an avid balloonist. Often at Militia meetings General Belliard had invited Red and Wanda to “come on out some day and we’ll give you all a ride. You haven’t seen anything till you’ve been up there in the azure blue.”
As the empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans piled up in the nearby garbage can, the possibilities multiplied in the mind of Red Marchik.
Chapter 31
The Heartland Derby plan had first come to Harvey Rexroth a week earlier. On a bright October morning, as Darla whirled around the indoor track enthusiastically, Rexroth summoned Byron Stoner to poolside at Willowdale.
Rexroth, wearing a lavender velvet jumpsuit and brandishing a huge Cuban cigar, proceeded to unveil his Grand Plan. His little pig eyes danced with excitement. He rose to his feet and began pacing vigorously up and down alongside the track that bordered the massive swimming pool, talking loudly all the while.
Stoner never took notes, never needed to, for his memory was first-rate. And caution, to which the Canadian was devoted, also suggested that there never be anything in writing that might come back to plague him.
Over the years, Stoner had been privy to a number of amazing Rexrothian schemes, many of which he’d helped bring to fruition. But this one boggled the mind of even the cautious, ultra-pragmatic Stoner. I’ve never him seen as full of himself as this, Stoner thought with a shudder.
“This will be the single greatest, most audacious stroke of brilliant planning and execution in horse race cheating since John Cabray’s remarkable coup of 1909,” Rexroth boomed. “It will make me famous-strike that, more famous-and it won’t be a matter of me taking advantage of a bunch of ravenously greedy small town businessmen, like Cabray did.
“Instead, Stoner, I’m going to provide a sure-thing winner for readers of the Horse Racing Journal, whose numbers I predict will swell dramatically after this is over. I’m going to invite the great unwashed and everybody else to share in a winning bet-that Lancaster Lad will win the Heartland Derby! A publisher predicting-no, guaranteeing-a win by his own horse! Who’s ever done anything like that, I ask you?
“Or at least,” he said in an aside to the attentive Stoner as Darla rounded the near turn and headed for them, “the horse purporting to be Lancaster Lad.”
Stoner said, “I don’t know that much about the racing part. I trust your judgment, Mr. Rexroth. But, isn’t this kind of a, well, a stretch, to think that Donna Diane’s colt could win a Derby in the first start he’d ever made at a racetrack? Could he actually be that good?”
Rexroth’s expression hardened. He hated being questioned. Angrily, he threw his cigar into the center of the pool. Randy Kauffman immediately reached for his retrieving net.
Stoner was steadfast. “Mr. Rexroth,” he intoned, looking straight ahead and not at his boss, who hovered over him, “that is what you pay me for-to ask questions of this sort.”
Moments passed before Rexroth said, “You’re right, Stoner, to raise that point. Of course you are.” Rexroth sat down in the chair behind his desk, and his expression softened. “Of course you are,” he repeated. “That is, as you say, your job.
“But worry not, Stoner, worry not, my friend. I know exactly what I’m doing here.”
Rexroth, relaxed again, resumed describing his plans. He said to Stoner, “I want Douglas Phillips down here tomorrow morning so I can personally give him my instructions. Phillips is so dim sometimes that I want to be looking into his eyes so that I can tell for myself exactly what isn’t registering. Can’t do that over the phone, right? Har har har!”
Stoner chuckled in agreement. He was positive that Phillips was much smarter than Rexroth gave him credit for, but that the Horse Racing Journal editor was for the most part nearly stultified by terror when dealing with his boss. Stoner couldn’t help but ask, “Why don’t you just replace this Phillips?”
Rexroth gave Stoner an incredulous look. “Replace him? As cheap as Phillips works?”
When Horse Racing Journal’s executive editor Douglas Phillips heard the red phone ring on his desk, he reflexively reached for his flask. The red phone was for one thing only: direct calls from Phillips’ employer. The sound of this instrument, which might ring twenty times in one day and then not at all for a week, invariably made Phillips feel as if he were undergoing a colonoscopy without benefit of anesthetic. To combat this feeling, he administered his own. Phillips took a lengthy swig before saying, “Yes, Mr. Rexroth.”
When Phillips reached Willowdale the next morning, he was astounded at the orders he was given. “I want you to turn your best writers loose on this story,” Rexroth sternly instructed. “This is to be played at the top of page one of the Journal every day from tomorrow to race day.
“I will personally author a front-page piece in which I promise that Lancaster Lad, up to this point a pretty ordinary performer, will come to life and carry off the Heartlands Derby a week from next Saturday. His remarkable improvement will be the result of a startling new training regimen that will be revealed later. Or maybe not. We’ll iron out those details down the line,” the publisher said, puffing expansively on his cigar.