Saltwater in the Bluegrass (21 page)

By spring Milford was rebuilding.

As summer concluded, the heat that had once been rising from the dry dirt and sand track was now becoming softer and cooler with the turning of the leaves. Inevitable signs of cooler weather once again began to show. Colder, wetter weather was moving in from the northeast.

The fall meet was now in full swing.

Lamar was back in the middle of the racing operation and was happier than he had been in years. He was the first person into the barns and stables most mornings, helping Jim, his trainer, and Jim’s people.

He was truly once again becoming a full-fledged member of the

“Dawn Patrol.”

To Lamar and Milford, it just seemed that they were touched with the gift of winning. Throughout the spring and summer meets, they had continued to win more than their share of stake races. In April the I & L Racing Syndicate posted wins in the Lincoln Memorial Stakes and the McAlpine Ventura Stakes. In June they won the Bluegrass Inaugural Classic, and in July they took first and second in the Pleasure Ridge Fall City Stakes.

Unfortunately, Lamar and Milford weren’t looking at the overall picture. It was becoming conspicuously apparent to the financial gurus employed by the Kentucky Horseracing Commission in Frankfort that something was up; something was going just a little too perfect for the people involved with the I & L Horse Racing Syndicate.

The Commission had noticed some apparent trends. They began charting the activities of the horses owned by the group. The commission began meeting as a unit and secretly put together an investigation report. A task panel consisting of ten members was organized to begin watching and charting the activities of any race, having I & L horses participating in it. They would chart all the occurrences, a frequency of ratings, prepare a file for the commission to review, and then take action that was deemed necessary. A red flag had come up in the Commission Office. There were a numbers of races throughout the last two seasons where substantially larger than normal wagers had been bet, especially when I & L horses ran in the races.

Lamar and Milford were still on the outside looking in when it came to the investigation and Steve and Dennis’s involvement. As far as they knew, Jim, their trainer, was just doing an excellent job in his preparation, his running and caring for the large number of horses they owned. Little did they both know that Steve and Dennis where involved in a cover up, a blind side that would eventually blow up in all their faces, including all the investors, Katherine included. Steve and Dennis were well on their way from a case of probable cause and fraudulent activities to serious felony indictments as they continued to feed information to the Bad Boys in Cincinnati.
Charlie didn’t have a clue.
He didn’t have a worry or a care about the Ingram–Langston Horse Racing Syndicate. He had been out of the country when it had started up, and he was not the least bit interested about becoming a member.

Charlie was not a joiner. He was not a follower.

In school he did not go out for band. He was not into team sports. He was reluctant to be around anyone who was always joining groups and social activities, kids that needed to be in the forefront. He felt sorry for the people who could not be alone.

Charlie was more enamored by the kids being themselves, not concerned about being part of an activity or going with the masses. He wanted no part of becoming a part of the domestic family community social calendar either. Seeing his family on Christmas and Thanksgiving was hard enough.

Charlie could not fathom the idea of seeing them on a scheduled weekly basis. He was more than happy growing up standing on the outside looking in. In Charlie’s eyes too many people spoiled the party. He wanted no part of that.

Throughout the following year, Lamar and Milford prepared Cost Me Plenty for future greatness, for the possible running of the roses next year.

Jim’s training had been magnificent. He was convinced, more than ever, that they had a champion in the making. He was consumed with the mannerisms and strength that this two-year-old horse showed. The thoroughbred was strong and had considerable horse sense for its age, when it came to running alongside or in front of the other horses his age. He seemed to know just how much effort he had to let out to stay in front of the other horses during races.

Each day Jim was convinced that he saw the same talents in Cost Me Plenty that he had seen in his great grandfather Dancer’s Reflection.

Jim was doing his best to put this horse through his paces to bring him from an immature yearling into his second year as a possible contender.

Soon this young thoroughbred was beginning to form a prestigious portfolio of achievements that would put him into contention as one of the top five elite two year olds in the country, with the possibility of winning the next year’s three premier races.

That was the goal.

Bring him along in a slow but methodical pace to prepare for a particular two-month period in this horse’s life as a three year old. Nothing else mattered. No other races would be as important and mean as much. Special handling was the objective.

One horse. One chance. One race.

Win the Kentucky Derby and nothing else would matter, ever, in the eyes of the racing community. With a Kentucky Derby winner, breeding would become the main event for the I & L, with a Kentucky Derby winner, stud fees would be in the vicinity of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per yearling and fifty thousand dollars just for each try.

If that same horse was capable of winning all three of the premier races and became the twelfth all-time Triple Crown Winner, and first since 1978 when Affirm won the Kentucky Derby, The Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes all in the same year, stud fees would be enormous. They would round the field of five to six hundred thousand per conception and one hundred thousand non-refundable just for making an effort.

Artificial insemination was not an option.

This is where the real money of horse racing would come in, and Lamar and Milford were seeing it, feeling it, and praying it. They were putting all their time and effort into one horse, one basket. It became an obsession with them.

Cost Me Plenty was going to go all the way.

Jonathon Arcaro was chosen,
after great painstaking hours of deliberation, to be the jockey. After two weeks of deliberations, he agreed to the terms and conditions of the contract and signed with the I & L. He would ride the next two years exclusively for them. Jonathon came from legendary stock when talking about great jockeys. He was the great-nephew of Eddie Arcaro.

Eddie Arcaro was one of the top all-time money-winning jockeys in thoroughbred racing history. He rode in a record 24,092 races, winning 4,779 of them, including 549 stakes races. He won the Kentucky Derby five times, the Preakness and Belmont Stakes six times each, and was the winner of two Triple Crowns with Whirlaway in 1941 and Citation in 1948.

In Lamar and Milford’s eyes, they were sure they had put together a winning team, and the I & L Horse Racing Syndicate was on its way to greatness.

Katherine had contacted a top fashion designer in Lexington and had him create the perfect silk for Jonathon to wear in the races: The number one encircled by roses in Kentucky Blue and the I & L

insignia below the circle in gold trim, small horseshoes on both sides, with the opening at the top, representing the holding of good luck. The blanket under the saddle was made with tweed rainbowcolored material with a dark blue trim. When it came to Cost Me Plenty, everything down to the feed was talked about, all in preparation for the first Saturday in May.

It was one of those delusional, rainy,
spectacles of a morning in Louisville. I was sitting in my room refusing to get out of bed, not that I was afraid that the rest of the world had passed me by. My only alternatives were to either get out of bed or call in sick, and who was I going to call in sick too.

My cable had gone out for the second time this week. My maid refused to give me an extra towel for the shower without a signed document stating that I would not put it in my suitcase. This was after she knocked on my door at seven thirty asking if I really meant to leave the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging on my door.

It was not as much a matter
of whether
or not the well was deeper than the bucket on the rope in the everyday scheme of things. I mean, I had clean underwear and the gas to get from the bed to the shower. I just did not want to.

Once the cable came back on, the only thing on the television was an infomercial about having enough fiber in your diet to give you a shinier coat and a firmer stool in this “all-natural” world we now live in.

Sally Cartwright, Kristina’s
bubble-headed, bleach
-
blonde of a friend was into
macadamian nuts, chilled grapefruit, and avocados. She lived for happy hour,
Days of Our Lives
, and
The People’s Court
. She especially liked Judge Judy. Sally looked up to her as the future world leader of the All Women’s Bitch Club Sally was trying to start. Then
Judge Judy
was taken off the air and replaced with reruns of
Mash
. After that, Sally gave up on the idea and went back to drinking instead of thinking.

Sally worshiped her own ground, the ground she walked on. She loved the men who serviced her and refused to ponder questions about tomorrow and her very existence because it was not trendy. She had friends in high places. Below that she did not spend much time looking. She was not into volunteering. She hated the thought of giving to the underprivileged and needy.

To Sally,
Miracle on 34th Street
meant Macy’s was having a sale. In Sally’s world, fifty percent off meant buying two of each item and

“last call” meant it was time to trade in her old husband for a new model or going to the club and having long massages in the nude by some guy named Hanz.

Sally had better things to do, better than sitting around drinking lemonade with the other rich ladies in town. Sally was still young, tan, hard-bodied, and, down to her silicone-stuffed bra, was still catching the eye of everyone.

I could not help but watch, along with all the other men, as Sally walked into the establishment, protruding from a white cotton blouse one size too small that left nothing to the imagination. It was as though the queen herself had entered the establishment and was sashaying to her table.

Texi and I were still
in Buzz Parson’s.

We had decided to sit back and watch for a little while as Sally and her friends sat at their table ordering this and that from the menu. It was as if the waitress was their peasant girl and they were the only three overachievers that ever existed. I quickly realized they were the cosmetically-enhanced, money-pit babes of Louisville, each married into prominence, celebrity status, and money, rulers in their own little piece of the world, adored by the little people until the well ran dry or their plastic faces mysteriously popped and caved in.

Texi and I concluded that Sally most likely knew where Kristina was and that she would eventually lead us to her. We decided to stay, and then I would follow her when she left.

Service was slow due to the crowd, but the food finally came, and the prolonged agony of waiting subsided when I took the first bite of my sandwich. I washed it down with a cold glass of tea. Sally and her friends seemed to be here for the duration of the day. After about an hour and a half, Texi and I made plans to meet later at Buck Horn’s across the river. Texi left, and I went out and sat in my Corvette and waited for Mrs. Cartwright to leave. Finally, around two thirty, she made her way out to the parking lot.

She pulled out of the lot and drove east towards Prospect, stopping into the Nails and Smells Body, Bath and Fingernail Emporium, where she spent twenty minutes. Then she returned to her car and proceeded to the local Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone. She then had her car filled with gas.

From there I was starting to wonder if trailing Sally was going to lead me to Kristina, or if this was only going to show me a piece of Sally’s mundane little world. By three forty-five, I began to have some hope again.

I followed Sally into the Port of Call Condominium Complex off Indian Springs Road. In the front of the driveway for Condo Fourteen, building K, sat a red Porsche with a license plate that read “Paper Cut.”

Sally had done her job. She had led me to Kristina, or at least to her car.

Sally parked behind the car, got out, climbed the steps, unlocked the door, and went inside the condo. The shades were drawn. I found a place to park in the shade beside a Mountain Shadow’s water service supply truck across from the building. Here I could watch the comings and going and take notes of anything and everything that was happening. Anything, that is, that would make me believe Kristina was actually inside.

Texi made her way
back across town to the Kentuckianna Tribune in time for the daily tour of the newspaper facility. The tour was being given by an overpaid, out-of-work, Vanna White look a like. As Texi had described her later, she was someone who was good at pointing and saying things to the public in creative little ways, something obviously rehearsed over and over in her head. Texi and I had devised this plan earlier at lunch. If one of us could get inside the newsroom we would have a better idea of how to flush Kristina out of her cubbyhole, if indeed she was in her office. Then again, we thought if Kristina were scared of Katherine, the last place she would be hiding would be some place where most of the people were on Katherine’s payroll. Even so, we decided it would be a good idea to find out if anyone in Kristina’s office was loyal to her and would help her hide if the time ever came.