The Ninth Inning

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The Ninth Inning Page 14

by A. J. Stewart


  I sipped my soda as I wondered about what I had learned and whether it had been worth the effort. I was pretty convinced that I could have learned a good eighty percent of what I now knew without having to leave Phoenix. Ron, and especially Lizzy, were pretty good at tracking down information on folks via their many and varied online and offline sources. It seemed like a fairly expensive way to learn what could have been gleaned with a phone call. On reflection, I had to admit that maybe a phone call wouldn’t have gotten me quite as far as it needed to. Sometimes people are more cooperative when they see the whites of your eyes, and sometimes the opposite is true.

  We landed back at Falcon Field, and I thanked the two pilots for their time and for getting me there and back in one piece. I wandered back into the terminal and used my phone to order a rideshare. There were taxis lined up right outside the terminal, but I had to walk a good distance to meet the driver of my rideshare. It seemed old habits died hard—people still liked bad springs and smelly cabs. I didn’t really understand why the whole thing was called a rideshare, anyway, when I wasn’t sharing it with anyone, but I let it go.

  I wanted to get back to the hotel to see how Danielle was doing, but I decided since it was still only late afternoon that I should drop in on John Cashman.

  Ricky Spence was playing that day, so Cashman was at the ballpark. I had to buy a ticket to get in, so I bought one for the lawn seats and then went through the same rigmarole with the same woman about getting up into the suite area, and Cashman sent the same helper to come down and retrieve me.

  He offered me a beer when I saw him, but I declined. We stepped outside the suite into the stadium seating. All of the guests in the suite were enjoying the hospitality, and no one was out in the seats watching the game.

  “So what do you know?” asked Cashman.

  “I met the woman,” I said. I didn’t tell him her name, and he didn’t ask. “She says the kid doesn’t belong to Ricky Spence.”

  “Can we trust her?”

  “I’m pretty confident. I think you’ll find a DNA test will show no match.”

  Cashman shook his head. “No, we don’t want to do that.”

  One of the Oakland batters hit a line drive double, and we watched him hustle around to second base.

  “But she does think that she slept with him.”

  “She thinks?”

  “She was drunk. And he wasn’t in great shape, either, if my memory serves me correctly.”

  Cashman shrugged. “How old was she?”

  “She’s in her thirties.”

  “No, I mean back then.”

  “She said she was eighteen, underage but . . .”

  “Underage?” Cashman frowned.

  “To drink, I mean.”

  Cashman nodded. “So is this Graham guy making the kid up?”

  “No, there’s a kid. Pretty good baseball player, too.”

  Cashman spun to look at me. “Baseball player?”

  “Yes, but don’t get your panties in a bunch. The kid’s a dead ringer for his mother.”

  Cashman let his attention drift back to the ballpark. “So it’s done. The guy has nothing.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll take care of it. Just send me your bill.”

  Cashman stood and made to return to the suite.

  “I’m pretty sure the woman I met today wasn’t the one in Ricky’s bedroom the night I rescued him.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Cashman. “You said that was a hooker.”

  “That was my impression at the time.”

  “Like I say, don’t worry about it. The upshot is the woman is cool, and our blackmailing friend has nothing. So it’s done. I’ll call Graham tomorrow and tell him that we know Ricky’s not the father, that he’s got no evidence at all.”

  “You might want to hold on that,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Graham’s a deadbeat. He’s after any play he can make. It would be better if he didn’t turn back and think his best play was the woman and the kid.”

  “They’re not my business,” said Cashman.

  I was about to say something about it being the right thing to do, when the stadium announcer called out the next batter to the plate as Ricky Spence. My attention, along with Cashman’s, turned to the field. Ricky had been around the traps for longer than most, but he still looked in good shape as he took his practice swings and then dug his cleats into the clay, the way the coach had up in Vegas. The pitcher wound up and threw a fastball.

  I couldn’t help thinking of Travis and his heater—and the lack of anything else. I hoped that he would put the effort in, that he would spend his ten thousand throws learning a trick or two. I was thinking it as the heater reached the waiting Ricky Spence, and he sent a humdinger over the left-field fence beyond the lawn seating and out of the entire park.

  I glanced at Cashman, and he at me, with a smile.

  “That’s my business.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I walked back to the hotel and met Danielle and Jane in the lobby. The happy hour didn’t seem to happen on the weekends, which seemed understandable in a hotel that derived most of its trade from weekday businessmen as opposed to hospice visitors.

  Despite the lack of happy hour, the sisters had procured a bottle of sauvignon blanc from somewhere, and they were sitting out in the courtyard with their glasses of wine.

  They seemed in good spirits despite the nature of their conversation, which was about how long they could each stay in Phoenix. Jane had received indefinite compassionate leave from her hospital. It was compassionate in the sense that she was being paid for the next month, but indefinite in the sense that after that she could stay away on her own dime. Danielle had no such luck. The FDLE was trying to play nice, but she was already getting text messages hinting at the need for her to return ASAP. She was using her annual leave to visit with her father, and that was rapidly running out.

  “If he’s not going to be better, I don’t know what the benefit is in staying,” said Danielle.

  “I understand,” said Jane. “Ultimately, we came here to say goodbye. I’d hoped he would have a few more lucid moments than he has, but it’s possible he’s just too far gone.”

  “I want to be here for him,” said Danielle. “But I need to get back. And if he’s not going to remember us anymore . . .”

  “I can give it about a week,” said Jane. “Beyond that I feel like I really need to get back, too.”

  Danielle took a long sip of her wine, and I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she was self-medicating. I was all for self-medicating. It was sometimes a necessary coping mechanism. But it was a short fall from coping mechanism to one is too much and ten is never enough. I resolved to keep my eye on her in that regard.

  “I just feel so heartless,” said Danielle.

  Jane put her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “You’re not heartless,” she said. “I’ve seen this many times. Family members get torn between wanting to be there for a loved one and the life that they have to live. You came here to have a final chance to speak with Dad, and you did that.”

  “But I didn’t say anything. I feel like I should’ve said something.”

  “Life isn’t a fairy tale, D. You and I both know that. Remember, we didn’t do anything to cause this situation. We weren’t the ones who were distant when we were children. We weren’t the ones who moved to Phoenix, and it isn’t our fault he developed the disease. We didn’t make that happen. It just did. It’s hard, and it hurts. But life doesn’t always end with a glass slipper on a princess’s foot. Sometimes it’s ugly. Sometimes things get left unsaid.”

  “If he could only come back one more time . . .” Danielle said, sipping more wine.

  “Maybe you need to talk to him, regardless. Maybe you just need to say what you need to say, whether or not you know for sure he can hear it.”

  Danielle shook her head. “I don’t even know what I want to say.


  Jane nodded and sipped her own drink.

  Danielle glanced at me. “You can’t stay here forever, either. You need to get back.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Ron and Lizzy keep the home fires burning. And let’s not forget, I’ve actually got a job right now.” I shrugged. “Had a job.”

  “Had a job?” asked Danielle.

  “It seems I answered all the questions that the client wanted answered.”

  Danielle raised an eyebrow. “Why do I get the sense there’s more to it?”

  “Because you know me?”

  “You’re quite the pair,” said Jane, smiling.

  “Go on,” said Danielle.

  “It’s not about answering the questions the client wanted answered. The thing that’s gnawing at me is whether they were asking the right questions in the first place.”

  “Is it to the client’s detriment if they weren’t?” said Danielle.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but even then . . .”

  “So what’s on your mind?”

  “Why I was engaged at all. Sure, it was a bit of a coincidence that I was even in Phoenix at the same time as Cashman, but he called me anyway. Thinking I was in Florida. He must’ve figured I could do what I needed to do from there. You know how it is. We trace people using online tools these days, at least as much as treading the sidewalks.”

  “True.”

  “But instead he had me fly to Vegas to learn what I’m sure I could’ve mostly learned without leaving here. It was like he wanted some kind of visual confirmation.”

  “Visual confirmation of what?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know. All of this stuff, the reason behind the blackmail, it all happened fifteen years ago. There’s nothing to see.”

  Now I needed a drink. All that was left to do was send Cashman the bill, and here I was tying myself up in knots.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “Ricky Spence was a bit of a man about town back in those days. A young buck, you might say. A ladies’ man. It was pretty well known. And it was also pretty well known that he was married, even then. Right out of college. Now, I don’t subscribe to the theory that a man can’t change”—Danielle offered me a smirk—“but a leopard does find it hard to change his spots. At least overnight. There’s a whole growth process involved. So it’s pretty unlikely that Ricky went from ladies’ man to family man instantly. If at all.”

  “So what are you saying?” asked Jane.

  “I find it hard to believe that his wife doesn’t know. Amber is smarter than that. Now sure, everyone’s capable of self-denial. You can be a certifiable genius and still convince yourself that you’re a size thirty-two jeans when you’re in fact a thirty-six. We’re all capable of it. But I just don’t see that with her, not about this. She could be in self-denial about the state of her marriage, or whether the knucklehead even loves her, but that’s something different. I don’t see her in self-denial about Ricky’s infidelity. She knows and understands every aspect of his career. He is the brawn and she’s the brains of their little operation.”

  “So?” said Danielle.

  “So, Cashman implied there were two motivations for hiring me. The first was to ensure that Amber didn’t find out. But if she already knows, then that’s just baloney. The other reason for calling me, according to Cashman, was to ensure the A’s don’t go sour on signing Ricky for this last season. Now that one I can buy, to a point. But again, all this happened fifteen years ago. And even more, it’s all hearsay. The woman doesn’t remember, and she doesn’t even seem to care. She remembers smooching with the guy on the dance floor, but that’s about it. So, no evidence, and no one really gives a damn—except for Ricky’s agent. Enough to not only hire me—without even asking my daily rate, I might add—and even to the point of sending me in the company jet to lay eyes on the woman at the center of the whole story.” I sipped my beer, and we all thought about what I’d said. Neither of the women came up with any further input, so I finished my thought.

  “A drunken fling isn’t the kind of behavior you want to be teaching your kids, but it’s not that out of the ordinary, and it certainly isn’t illegal.”

  “Unless it is,” said Danielle.

  I nodded at her and she at me. We did that thing where we communicate without speaking. I knew what she was getting at. Nobody cared about the story, about Lily Barkin or Travis or even Zed Graham, when all was said and done. Except that somebody did. Somebody was very concerned about something that happened fifteen years ago. Cashman was pulling out a lot of stops worrying about a blackmail attempt that could be bonked on the head with a simple DNA test, or even, as it turns out, the woman’s testimony.

  I had been there, briefly, that night in Modesto fifteen years ago. I thought I knew more about what had happened than anyone. I was beginning to think I was wrong. Something had happened. Something that I didn’t know. Something that John Cashman wanted everyone to forget.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  By the following morning I had convinced myself that I needed to visit the scene of the crime. Whatever crime that happened to be.

  The club where Lily Barkin had met Ricky Spence, the same place I had pulled Ricky out of a second-story window to get away from the press, was an illegal club situated in an old Victorian house just outside of Modesto’s downtown. Unlike Lily Barkin and her high school friends, I didn’t need to find somewhere that served underage students. When I lived in Modesto, I was old enough to drink wherever I chose and smart enough to find a bar to do it. As it happened, I was also poor enough not to get the opportunity all that often. Despite not frequenting Club Mediterrano, I had heard the stories. When Ricky Spence had called me that night, I knew where he was. The tale was that the club was the domain of a local small-time Mafia family, an offshoot of a larger San Francisco–based operation. I didn’t know if the stories were true back then, and I didn’t even know if the club had been shut down in the fifteen years since. But such places had a curious way of keeping on. Whether it was true the local law enforcement received payoffs to turn a blind eye, I couldn’t confirm. But it was the kind of operation that got tolerated as long as it didn’t cause too much of a disturbance.

  Underage drinking was a fact of life. The idea that a person could be old enough and mature enough to vote, to drive at fifty-five miles an hour, or to sign up and fight in a war but not be old enough to have a drink was utterly ludicrous to me. Up in Canada they seemed to think that all of those things more or less went together. But not in South Florida, and not in Phoenix, Arizona, and certainly not in Modesto, California. My opinion on it started to change when the drinking was done by people still in high school, however, but not everyone felt that way.

  I enjoyed an early breakfast with Danielle and Jane. They were getting ready to go over and see their father, and I had suggested to Danielle that maybe I should hang around. That if there were things she needed to say, she might need someone to vent at afterward. She told me to go and do my job. She said if she needed to vent, she had Jane, and Jane had her. She said they’d be all right, which I knew would be true.

  After breakfast I made two calls. The first was to Sally Mondavi.

  “What time is it there?” he asked.

  “Still early,” I said.

  “Please tell me you’re not doing it now.”

  “I’m not, but if and when won’t be determined by me.”

  “Fair enough, fair enough. What’s up?”

  I told him about Club Mediterrano in Modesto and about the stories I had heard years ago of the link to the San Francisco mob. I asked him if he knew if there was any truth to the stories and if the same people still ran the club today.

  “I don’t know the place,” he said. “But yeah, I do know people in San Francisco. It ain’t like it used to be, that’s for sure. A lot of the Italians got out. Plenty of Irish still there, and lots of Chinese. But I can make some calls, see who knows what.”

  “I ap
preciate it, Sal. I prefer not to have to knock on their front door without some kind of introduction, but I will if I have to.”

  “Roger that. Things have changed a fair bit in that part of the world since those days, but leave it with me and I’ll get back to you.”

  I thanked Sal and made my second call. I still had the pilot’s number from the previous day, so I hit him up and asked him if he was okay to take me on one more flight. He asked where the destination was, and I told him Modesto. He didn’t ask if I had Cashman’s permission to use the jet again, and I didn’t get into it. He appeared to be working on the assumption that if it was good yesterday then it was okay today, and it suited my purpose to let him wander along that line of thought. Plus it saved me having to lie.

  I got a rideshare out to Falcon Field once again and found Captain Smith and his copilot drinking coffee in the terminal. He asked me if I wanted catering on this flight, having had nothing more than corn chips the previous day, and he said the flight was about twice as long, so he could try to rustle up a meal. I told him I’d already had breakfast, and a soda would be about the extent of my culinary requirements.

  “Roger that,” he said, echoing Sal’s comment earlier.

  The flight to Modesto was about an hour and forty-five minutes. We landed at Modesto City-County Airport. The terminal building was smaller than a Greyhound depot, and the pilot ignored it completely. He cruised by the terminal and then along by a parking lot until he reached a series of hangars. After he shut everything down, he came out of the cockpit and gave me the address of the aviation company that owned the hangar so I could order a cab or a car. I used the app on my phone to request the rideshare, and then I followed the pilot into the hangar and right through to the road outside.

 

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