“But,” Damon said, “it wasn’t over. These show horse guys were finished, all right. But they were succeeded by crooks working the thoroughbred side of it, primarily involving thoroughbred breeding stock, stallions and mares. There’s huge money involved here, far more than at the show horse level.
“It started in Louisiana, one case three years ago, two the next year. All involved deaths that looked kinky to the insurance investigators, but they had to pay off. These were not major horses, by the way. The best one was insured for two hundred thousand, the others for quite a bit less.
“Then, about eighteen months ago, deaths of this sort began to occur at a major Kentucky farm. It’s called Willowdale, and it’s owned by Harvey Rexroth.”
Doyle looked at the agents with disbelief. “Don’t try to tell me that this Rexroth, the guy who inherited a gazillion bucks, is knocking off his own horses for profit? What the hell would his motive be for that?”
“I think you’d have to know Rexroth to understand this,” Karen replied. “From the time he was a juvenile delinquent saved from jail by his family’s influence, up to this very day, he has continually flaunted the law. He was the kind of kid-we know this from doing deep background on him, back in his hometown-who blew up cats and set fire to dogs. Pulling the wings off flies was too tame for this weirdo. When they packed him off to prep school in the East, he was twice almost expelled for cheating on tests. And for no reason, really. He’s got an IQ of one hundred and seventy-five. But he wants to do things his way.
“When he was in his last year of prep school, he and two other miscreants were believed to have bullied a freshman fraternity pledge into accepting a dare that led to his death. It involved alcohol, and this poor kid drank nearly a fifth of vodka at the urging of Rexroth and his pals. The kid died. Rexroth was reprimanded-there was no proof he was directly responsible-and that was the end of that.
“In his business life, Rexroth has been similarly bullying and overbearing and cruel-all from behind the protective wall of his big money. We’re sure he bought off witnesses in at least one death he caused when driving while drunk. This is a bad, bad man, Jack. He should be wearing a scarlet A on his chest for amoral. And the sad part is that he’s gotten away with every rotten, illegal, or near-illegal thing he’s ever tried.”
“But I still don’t get why he’d kill his own horses.”
Damon nodded. “It’s true he doesn’t have do it for the money. But the money, by the way, isn’t exactly chump change. One of the Rexroth stallions that died was insured for seven million. He collected. There was another for nearly two million. So we’re talking major money.
“Who knows the motives of a man like this? But he’s probably doing it for two reasons. He’s angry at the failure of these horses to live up to the value he placed on them, and he’s found a way to recoup his losses. And, far simpler, because he can. He can get away with it, he believes. So far, he’s been correct. He must be laughing his ass off at the people he’s deceived and cheated and made fools of.”
Doyle said, “Why don’t the insurance companies drop him?”
“Believe me, they’d love to,” Damon said. “They’ve even threatened to do so. But if they fail to pay off a claim of Rexroth’s without having proof that he’s cheated him, or if they refuse to insure any more of his horses, he’ll crucify them in his newspaper and chase them right into court seeking damages besides. Despite their suspicions, the insurance people don’t have a scrap of proof of any wrongdoing on the part of Rexroth. That’s what they are desperate to come up with. So are we. And that’s where you come into the picture.”
Suddenly, Doyle let out a laugh. The agents were startled, but there was no way he could hold back. The absurdity of the situation hit him like a good left hook. Here he was, less than twelve hours from having been held up and stripped of his gleanings from a gambling coup, and agents of the federal government were trying to enlist his cooperation in bringing down one of the country’s richest men. He laughed again before saying to Tirabassi, “Okay, let’s have it. Let’s have the explanation of how Jack Doyle, unemployed sales rep and retired horse groom, is going to come to the aid of his government.”
Karen was the first to respond. “About two months ago,” she said, “we had an inquiry, an anonymous inquiry, whether we had made any progress in solving the mystery of the two sudden deaths of the two expensive horses at Rexroth’s farm. It was a man who called us, one with a very noticeable accent-we later identified it as a New Zealand accent. Anyway, we had to tell him, quite honestly, that we were stymied. We said we’d welcome any help we could get. He said he’d call back. It was a short conversation, and the call was untraceable.
“A week went by. The man called again. This time, he asked to set up a meeting. He wouldn’t give his name yet, but he said he would explain everything when we met with him. The date was two days later, at a forest preserve parking lot on the northwest side of Chicago, not far from O’Hare Airport. Damon and I both went that day, and that’s when we met Mr. Bolger.”
Damon picked up the narrative. “Bolger, it turns out, is the farm manager at Willowdale, a job he’s had for slightly more than a year. He came to this country from England, where he’d worked on some big horse farms. Before that, he’d gotten his start in the horse business in New Zealand. He’s a native of New Zealand-a ‘Kiwi,’ as he put it. He’s pretty proud of it, too.
“Bolger said that he was positive something ‘wonky,’ as he put it, was going on with these horse deaths at Willowdale. He said there’d been two horses die since he’d started work there, both healthy animals who all of a sudden, late at night, keeled over from heart attacks. He didn’t believe these were natural heart attacks. Bolger said he didn’t know how it was being done, but he was convinced these animals were being murdered for the money they were worth in insurance. He was very emotional about this, and very angry. Obviously, the man cares about horses.”
Doyle tapped a finger on the table. “Hold it right here. I’ve got a question. If Bolger is so put off by this business, why doesn’t he just quit his Willowdale job, haul his ass back to Kiwi land?”
“The reason,” Karen answered, “is that he wants to stop what he believes are these murders of horses. He told us it only took him a few months before he came to thoroughly dislike Rexroth. He thought about quitting then. Then the first horse died, the second only two months later. Bolger is determined to get to the bottom of this, and he believes that can only be done if he stays on the job at Willowdale.
“We spent a couple of days, Damon and I, talking this through, then the two of us consulting with our superiors, trying to determine how best to utilize this information. The consensus finally arrived at was that we couldn’t depend solely on Bolger. After all, two of his predecessors had been dismissed by Rexroth. We tracked both of them down, but neither-one was a guy named McCollister, the other an older man named Doherty-would volunteer any information. It’s possible Rexroth either bought them off, or threatened them, in order to insure their silence. Our concern is that Bolger himself might be a target of threats. He sure doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who’d buckle under, but you never know. We can’t take that kind of chance.
“What was decided, then, was to keep Bolger in place and introduce someone to assist him on-site at Willowdale Farm. Naturally, we wanted to use one of our agents, but we couldn’t find one available who had any experience with racehorses, or their breeding. The person we needed had to be convincing enough to be given the job after we had provided him with phony work references, ones good enough to gain him an interview. We also were to have Bolger introducing his name to Rexroth, saying he’d heard he was a good man and worth hiring.”