The Ninth Inning

by A. J. Stewart

  “I’m not sure making the same mistakes over again makes it any better,” she said.

  I nodded. “You might be right about that. He’s an imperfect guy, and he was an imperfect dad. Maybe they all are, in their own way. Maybe we expect too much from our parents. Maybe we think they’ve got it all sorted out when the truth is, they were making the whole thing up as they went along.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  “I really don’t know. But here’s the other thing. The second sense I got. It was as if he was trying to teach me something.”

  “He did love to do that.”

  “Yeah. And I think what he was trying to tell me was that whatever lies in the future, with you, with me, whatever it is, I should be aware of my shortcomings so I don’t make the same mistakes he did.”

  “Why would he care about whether you make mistakes with your life? I mean, I love you, MJ. But he had never met you before.”

  “I don’t think it was about me, D. I think it was about you. I think it was about him trying to make sure that the mistakes that were made, the hurt that he caused you, doesn’t get repeated by the likes of me.”

  Danielle swirled her wine around in her glass and watched the liquid spin like a centrifuge, then she quietly leaned forward and put her elbows on the table so our faces were only inches apart.

  “Do you really think that’s what he was doing?” she asked quietly.

  “I do.”

  “He barely has his faculties about him anymore. Do you really think that’s where his last burst of mental energy would go?”

  “I do.”

  She took a deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Then she looked into my eyes, or perhaps through them, deep inside, the way her father had earlier that day.

  “It was hard, you know,” she said. “After Mom left. I mean, we could have held her responsible for leaving. She did, after all, leave us behind too, not just him. But we didn’t. We blamed him. She was broken by the end. We didn’t call it what it was, but she was suffering from depression. It took her a long time to recover even a little—she still doesn’t like to go out much. And we blamed him for driving her away, and he retreated away from us even more.” She sipped her wine and then continued. “The final years of high school, we practically raised ourselves. I mean, we never wanted for anything. He paid for everything. But he was hardly there, and when he was”—she shrugged—“he really wasn’t. Jane had always dreamed about going to California for college. Berkeley, maybe. But she didn’t, she stayed in Seattle, went to UDub, so she could look after me. Not leave me alone. And then when it came time for me to go to college, she wouldn’t let me stay. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head.

  “I got accepted to William and Mary, in Virginia, and she made me go.”

  “She’s a hell of a person,” I said.

  “She wanted to study science, biology, I think, at Berkeley. But she stayed and became a nurse.”

  “The world needs more nurses,” I said. “And fewer lawyers.”

  Danielle smiled, finally. I hadn’t seen it in a while. I was starting to wonder if it had dried up. If, like her dad, the muscles had started to fail and I might never see it again.

  “I wonder what she might’ve been,” Danielle mused softly.

  “We all have timelines that never come to fruition. You can’t second-guess stuff like that.” I put my glass down and took her hand. “A wise man told me that change is constant. You can’t control it. The only thing you can do is control how you react to it, what you do with it. Whichever way the chips fall, whatever way you turn, you have a role to play, some good to do.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I do. You are here, you exist, you are real. Jane might not have become a Berkeley scientist, but answer me this: How many lives has she saved by doing what she does, by making those choices?”

  “A lot, I guess.”

  “And you how many have you saved?”

  “I’m not a nurse. The answer might be none.”

  “I’m here,” I said. “So that’s at least one.”

  She smiled a little more and looked at me, but not in any kind of analytical way.

  “So I’m just supposed to forget and forgive?”

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to forget. I don’t think that’s what he wants. I think he wants you—he wants us—to look forward, not back. I think as an academic he wants us to learn from his mistakes, but as a man, I think he does crave your forgiveness.”

  “So we forgive and look forward? Is that the answer?”

  “Actually, I think I had the answer all along.”

  “And that is?”

  “‘Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’”

  “That’s my father talking,” she said. “He used to read us Whitman for bedtime stories.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “But it’s not the words. It’s what they mean. That soon he’ll be gone, and you will be left behind, and you shouldn’t spend your today wallowing in yesterday, at the expense of tomorrow.”

  “You’re a poet philosopher now?”

  Now she gave it to me. The half smile, the whole enchilada. The one that made me do backflips on the inside. I’d fallen in love with that smile before I fell in love with her. And I’d fallen in love with her a little bit more every time she did it. And here we were again.

  “I’m not any kind of philosopher. I’m just an old baseball player long past his prime, trying to make my way in the world.”

  “Poor baby, you make it sound so sad.”

  I shrugged and offered her a sheepish grin.

  “Speaking of old baseball players—”

  “Easy on the old,” I said.

  “Were you at the ballpark today?”

  “No. I was at a bar, meeting my prospective blackmailer.”

  “If he’s already made the demand, he’s more than prospective,” she said.

  “Let’s just say the training wheels aren’t off yet. But you don’t want to hear the gritty details about that.”

  “Why?”

  “Haven’t you got more important things on your mind?”

  “All I’ve got right now is important things on my mind. It would be nice to think about something else for a moment.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I outlined for her the blackmail and the blackmailer, Zed Graham. I told her about the meet in the dive bar and about the mystery woman who Graham didn’t want me contacting but who had claimed, via him, that her child might have been fathered by my de facto client, Ricky Spence. I told her about the link to John Cashman and Spence and the night at the club back in Modesto fifteen years ago. How the guy knew dates and places and details that only someone who had been there would know, or at least someone who had heard it firsthand.

  “But something about it doesn’t ring true,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “It just feels like the whole thing is being overplayed. It happened a long time ago, and let’s face it, consensual sex isn’t illegal.”

  “And there’s no implication that it wasn’t consensual?”

  “None.”

  “But if this baseball guy’s wife doesn’t know . . .”

  “I get that, kind of, but still it feels thin. I mean, baseball guys get accused of stuff all the time. It’s a downside of fame. And sometimes they didn’t even do it, but if they did, they almost always get away with it because there’s rarely any proof. So I don’t get why Cashman’s getting all worked up about it. Why Ricky Spence doesn’t just come out and deny the whole thing. I mean, the names and dates and places are all compelling, but they still don’t meet any level of proof. I can’t believe a knucklehead like Ricky Spence hasn’t had accusations before. Even the clean-cut players get them. And Ricky Spence was no one’s idea of clean-cut, at least back in the day. And I’m willing to bet Ro
n’s bar tab that he didn’t just clean up his act overnight. So this can’t be the first time Amber has heard a story like this and Ricky has had to deny it. So why get all worked up about this blackmail? Why are they so eager to hush this one up?”

  “But if the woman is telling the truth, if there really is a kid, then there is proof.”

  “I don’t know about that, either.”

  “You don’t think there’s really a kid?”

  “There might be a kid, or there might not, but if there is, I’m not convinced it belongs to Ricky Spence. See, what would you do if you were a woman who believed that the father of your child was a famous and rich athlete? Would you take him to the cleaners?”

  “Not everybody’s like that,” said Danielle.

  “Right, I get that. But Zed Graham, he’s asking for cash. He is not claiming child support or monies owed, and by default, then, neither is she. And if the mother of the child has known all this time who the father really is, it seems strange that she’s never been interested in his money or making him part of the kid’s life until now. It seems to me this whole thing is being driven by Graham, and so far he’s the only one with a pure motive.”

  “You think his motive is pure?”

  “Sure. It may not be moral, but it is pure.”

  “And what is it?”

  “Good old-fashioned greed.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning Danielle and I met Jane again for breakfast in the hotel. The eggs had reverted to their globular scrambled form, but I stuck with coffee and a Danish. We walked over to the hospice past leisurely traffic. It was a Saturday morning, I realized, and the workaday rush had eased some. When we arrived at the hospice, the duty nurse told us that Nurse Gabriela would be out directly. She was. Her scrubs were somewhat subdued today, just a plain blue, the color of the Phoenix sky.

  Nurse Gabriela told us that Ryan was tired and tetchy, not having the best of mornings. Jane asked if it would be better not to visit, but the nurse suggested it was always worth a shot.

  I told Danielle that she and Jane should head in and I would wait in the lobby again. I had enjoyed my time with Ryan Castle, in one of those brief moments when he had his full faculties about him, and I wasn’t all that excited by the notion of sitting with him when he didn’t remember anything about our conversation. I wasn’t sure what I was scared of exactly, but Danielle touched my hand and gave me a quick nod and said they would see me shortly.

  Nurse Gabriela took them down the corridor to Ryan’s room and then promptly returned. She headed over to the reception desk to talk with the duty nurse about something on a clipboard, and then she turned and headed back toward the corridor and the rooms beyond.

  I intercepted her before she got there and told her that my plan was in motion, that things were in place, and that the moment she had something to tell me, I would appreciate her call.

  “I will,” she said with her easy smile. “But I can’t promise when, or even if, it will happen.”

  “I understand.”

  She offered me a nod and strode back down the corridor, and I saw Danielle heading in the opposite direction toward me.

  “The nurse was right,” she said. “He’s not that good today. But Jane and I are going to stay awhile anyway. You said you were going to see Cashman?”

  “Only if you don’t need me,” I said.

  “You should do that,” she said. “If you stay here, you’ll be like a cat on a hot tin roof, and that’ll just drive me crazy.” She shot me a smile, and I gave her a kiss and told her to call me if she needed anything.

  I ordered a rideshare that told me I had three minutes to wait, so I spent the time standing in the sunshine out in front of the hospice, and I called Ron. It was midmorning in Palm Beach, but Ron said he and Cassandra were enjoying breakfast before a round of golf.

  “What is it you need?” he said.

  “I’m trying to track down the woman who may or may not be in the middle of this blackmail thing. I’ve got a couple of addresses. If I shoot them to you, can you check them out?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t have to go into the office for that?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Sorry if it messes with your golf game.”

  “It won’t. Just shoot them through. I’ll give you a call, soon as I get a hit.”

  I thanked him and told him I hoped he hit a hole in one, and he told me that if he did, he hoped he did it early, before the bar got too full.

  A young woman with dreadlocks and a megawatt smile arrived in a Toyota Prius to pick me up. She drove me to the hotel where the Oakland Athletics were staying. It wasn’t that far, and I could have walked it in about thirty minutes, but I wanted to get a hold of John Cashman before he took off somewhere. I knew that despite the fact that he was putting a lot of effort into Ricky Spence, Spence was not his only client, either here in Phoenix or at spring training back in Florida.

  I got out of the Prius in front of the hotel and thanked the woman for bringing me, then I strode toward the front door. I didn’t get inside. Coming out of the lobby in a pair of athletic shorts and a tight workout shirt was a guy I used to know.

  His name was Marvin Tibbs, and we had played a bit of ball together back in the minors. He was a catcher, and a darn good one at that. He had made it to the major leagues, but I recalled him battling bad knees even back in the minors, and his major-league career was cruelly cut short. Lots of catchers got bad knees. Some people thought that it was because they spent all that time crouching, but it wasn’t the crouch that did it. Crouching was a nightmare on the quadriceps, but those could be made strong through lots of hours in the gym. But knees were knees. Sure, getting up out of the crouch caused stress, but it was the constantly being charged down by a rampant batter screaming for home plate that really did the damage. At least that’s how it was for Marvin Tibbs.

  He saw me and gave me a wide smile.

  “Well, if it ain’t the Miami Jones,” he said. He offered me a fist, and I clenched my hand and bumped his. In my experience, handshakes resulted in far fewer broken bones, but the fist bump was all the rage.

  “Marvin, my friend. How are you?”

  “I’m all kinds a good,” he said. “You got gnarled.”

  “The Florida sun.” I wanted desperately to shoot back some smart line about how wrinkly Marvin had gotten in the intermittent years, but the truth was that he had skin that spoke of a nightly regimen of creams and ointments, one that I knew he didn’t need to do.

  “You’re with the A’s?” I asked.

  “Bench Coach this year,” he said with a definitive nod.

  It was all he deserved. He had been a great teammate, a good leader, and a smart player, and the fact that he was climbing the rungs toward managing a big-league team didn’t surprise me at all.

  “I thought I saw you with John Cashman the other day,” he said, his face now doing a poor imitation of a frown.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re doing some kind of PI thing down in Florida, is that right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So tell me,” he said, leaning in as if the hotel walls had ears. “Is it about Ricky Spence? Is he gonna be a problem?”

  “I don’t think so, Marvin. No more than normal.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure. But I’ll let you know.”

  Marvin nodded. “Just between you and me, Miami, I’m the one who pimped for Spence to come here. We’re in a rebuilding phase, and we don’t got a lot of batting depth this year. There’s some young guys coming through who’ve got some stuff, but they’re going to need a year or two or three. We’ve got a good enough roster to get a few RBIs here and there, but we don’t have a slugger. Spence’s past his best, but he can still hit a dinger every now and then. But the thing is, we don’t need a bad apple in a young dugout, you know what I mean?”

  “I get you, Marv. I suspect that you will
get out of Ricky what you want, and having an old hand around the clubhouse might teach your kids a thing or two. If I had to guess, I’d say Mrs. Spence will keep Ricky on the straight and narrow good enough.”

  “You seen Amber yet?”

  “No.”

  Marvin raised his eyebrows. “You might have aged badly,” he said with a mischievous grin. “But not Amber.”

  He slapped my shoulder and told me he needed to get out for his morning walk, because it was the only thing that kept his joints working well enough to enable him to get out to the mound whenever he needed to go.

  I told Marvin I’d catch him around the place, and I wandered inside. I found John Cashman at breakfast. It was an altogether different setup than the hotel we had been staying in. For starters, breakfast was served in a restaurant, not the lobby. Second, the eggs were freshly made on the spot, not preformed in any way. But third, breakfast had a cost, and that cost could have gotten a family of four tickets to a minor-league ball game, with all the food and drinks they cared to enjoy.

  Cashman was eating a Denver omelette. He saw me and nodded, and I gestured at the seat opposite, and he nodded a second time, so I sat down.

  “You want some breakfast?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I ate already.”

  “Coffee?”

  I gave a solid yes to the coffee. A server came over with a silver carafe and poured me a cup. As he did, I looked around the restaurant. I didn’t recognize too many faces. That was hardly surprising. Baseball guys don’t tend to wake too early. They play most of their games at night, often finishing late—sometimes very late—and it could be hard to come down from the high of playing a competitive game in order to get some sleep. I suspected most of the team would wake when Marvin Tibbs went around banging on doors.

  “So what’s the skinny?” asked Cashman as he chomped on a forkful of omelette.

  “The skinny?”

  “Isn’t that what you guys say?”