An hour earlier, when he arrived at O’Keefe’s, Doyle had used his government-issued cell phone to call Karen Engel at the Chicago FBI office for an update. They’d become separated in the tremendous confusion that followed the balloon crash, and Doyle had departed the track unclear about some matters, except the main one-he was off the hook with the FBI.
“You did a great job, Jack,” Damon had emphasized. Both he and Karen had hurriedly thanked Doyle before they left, looking as if they meant it.
On the phone, Karen reported that Rexroth and Stoner had both been charged that evening before a federal magistrate and would be held at least until Monday morning, when bonds could be set.
“I talked to Ronald Mortvedt’s aunt down in Louisiana,” Karen added, “Alice Cormier. She was the only relative of his we knew how to find. Alice wasn’t surprised at what had happened to Ronnie, but it hurt her anyway. I hate making those calls.”
“Why doesn’t Damon make them?”
Karen said, “He hates it worse than I do.”
Doyle shifted his cell phone from one hand to the other as he prepared to take out his wallet and pay his bar bill.
“Who the hell were those goofs in the balloon?”
“They were carrying out some kind of protest against Harvey Rexroth,” Karen replied. “People named Marchik, husband and wife, they made these streamers attacking Rexroth. They’ve got a beef against Rexroth for his firing of Mr. Marchik down in Kentucky. At least I guess that was their motive. It’s kind of hard to figure what the Marchiks are about. But the crash was certainly not their fault-it happened because the pilot passed out. That’s as much as we’ve gotten out of them.
“It wasn’t their balloon,” Karen continued. “The balloon’s pilot and owner is a friend of theirs. The Marchiks know him from some off-brand, so-called militia group they all belong to in Louisville. Apparently the pilot-he calls himself ‘General’ Belliard, no less-had a slight heart attack in the course of the flight.”
Doyle said, “I’m starting to get a headache. You’re saying Merchuck or Marcik or whatever his name is gets fired from RexCom, then winds up crashing a balloon at the racetrack on the same day we’re reeling in Harvey Rexroth? I don’t think I can listen to any more of this.”
Trying to ignore Sheila Maloney, who was chattering to him from the other side of the bar in her faux Irish colleen costume, Doyle took a swallow of his drink. Sheila leaned over the mahogany, giving Doyle a cleavage show and a dimpled smile. Doyle resolved to advise Sheila and whatever Cork cuties succeeded her not to try so hard.
Doyle said to Karen, “What about Mortvedt? What are they going to do with him, bury him with a stake in his heart?”
“That’s not funny, Jack,” Karen said. “I know how we all feel about Mortvedt, you especially, but still, there’s a limit….” She broke off that thought, well aware of her unreceptive audience of one.
“Actually,” Karen said, “we’re shipping Mortvedt’s ashes down to Louisiana. Alice Cormier said she’d pay for him to be cremated. Said she couldn’t afford the cost of embalming, or a coffin.”
Doyle watched the ice cubes wobble around the half-finished drink that he started to lift, then put down on the bar. He didn’t know Alice Cormier, but he could feel sorry for her. He sure as hell had known Ronald Mortvedt, and he felt no sorrow whatsoever for him. In fact, he thought to himself, maybe they’ll scatter the little bastard’s ashes in one of those Cajun specialties full of other bottom feeders. They could call it Gumbo Diablo.
As Doyle drove home that October Saturday night through the leaf-strewn streets north of Chicago’s Loop, he couldn’t help but contrast his present feelings to those he’d had four months earlier when, with $25,000 in cash in his pocket thanks to City Sarah’s big win, he’d scoured his neighborhood in a fruitless quest for celebration.
This night, well, this was different. For one thing, he’d made a far larger score off the Heartland Derby than he had by helping to cause City Sarah’s embarrassment, then her lucrative victory. Thirty minutes before the Heartland Derby, Doyle had taken half of what he thought of as the guilt money E. D. and Maureen had sent him-$15,000-and bet it to win on Bunny’s Al.
The size of the wager, previously unthinkable in Doyle’s experience, had seemed as natural as his next breath.
There had been long periods in his up and down life during which Doyle felt far from convinced that he ever really knew what he was doing. Yet, occasionally, moments emerged during which he felt fate’s golden hand gripping him by the elbow and, for a change, not propelling him into another of life’s traffic jams.
Rare moments they were. They sometimes dolphined out of the darkest, most depressing seas of Doyle’s life, as when Moe Kellman, sweating in the Fit City gym, invited him to lunch for the first time at Dino’s Ristorante. For Doyle they represented the “inevitability of the inevitable,” a concept he had attempted to explain to both of his wives before they became ex-, to friends both former and current, sometimes even to complete strangers.
“Situations arise, and you know before they develop what’s going to happen,” Doyle would say. “It’s like deja vu in advance. You just know. Usually what you know is going to happen is awful-but not every time. Not every time. Once in a great wonderful while you just know that a good thing’s coming, finally rolling your way. Get it?”
He had asked that question many times and rarely heard a positive reply. This night was different, he knew it just as surely as he had known his bet on Bunny’s Al was going to be a winner. Doyle’s fifteen grand had swelled to a profit of $75,000-the odds had drifted up to five to one just before the race-in the minute and fifty seconds it had taken Bunny’s Al to run a mile and an eighth that afternoon.
He was on a roll. And it wasn’t just the money that had his spirits surfing about a yard and a half over the roof of his northbound Accord.
Doyle knew that nothing could ever make up for what had happened to Aldous. But Mortvedt’s getting wiped out that way-eliminating the prospect of short prison time because of his cooperating testimony-provided a large chunk of satisfaction. “We forgive but we don’t forget,” Doyle said aloud as he turned west off Clark Street onto Fullerton.
He smiled as he thought of the expression of gratitude he’d received as he drove away from Heartland Downs that afternoon. It had come over his cell phone from Moe Kellman, who on Doyle’s advice instructed his “people” to leave Lancaster Lad out of all Heartland Derby betting they were doing and in whatever bets they were booking.
“Moe, if you don’t mind my asking,” Doyle had said, “how did you get this number? I never gave it to you and it’s unlisted.”
“Do you really care, Jack?” Moe had replied, before urging Doyle to “go out and have the celebration you deserve.”
Before heading for his apartment, Doyle made two stops. The first was at the night deposit window of his bank, just off of Clark Street on Fullerton, where he dropped off the check that the Heartland Downs pari-mutuels had made out to him for his fistful of winning $100 tickets on Bunny’s Al.
The second stop was at McTweedy’s Travel Agency farther west on Fullerton. Doyle double-parked and dashed inside.
The office was empty except for a departing receptionist, nameplate reading Heather, who was in the process of locking the front door. Doyle persuaded her to gather up travel brochures and a schedule of Air New Zealand flights. After thanking Heather and wishing her a good night, he re-entered his car amid a crescendo of car horns and shouted threats from road ragers who had been forced to creep past the double-parked Accord. Doyle gave them a merry wave as he drove off.