The Ninth Inning
Page 19
“So that’s it? Nothing to break the case open?”
Now I sipped my wine. I was right; it was an excellent delaying tactic. At any other time, on any other day, I would have readily shared my story with Danielle. But today I wasn’t sure it felt right. I was thinking about telling her that was all, that was my day, but I messed up. She saw the look on my face. Back when I was a pitcher I had better control of my emotions and even better control of my expressions. I could look as cocky as all hell even when I was trembling in my boots. Somewhere along the line Danielle had read my book and knew every page.
“What is it? What happened?” she asked.
I told her about Monica Sewell, the librarian. About how she went with her older sister and her friends to a club that served underage patrons. I told her about hooking up with Ricky Spence, the big man on campus. Danielle and Jane looked like they were hearing yet another story of a woman having an encounter that was anything but the romantic ideal.
Then I told them that Monica had been fifteen years old.
I saw Danielle’s jaw clench, and I glanced at Jane to see her reaction. She didn’t look quite as ready to pull out a firearm and go looking for Ricky Spence, but the snarl on her face suggested Spence would be smart not to appear at our hotel anytime soon.
“That’s not fair,” said Jane. “It’s not fair that she had to make that choice, that she had to live with it or not live with it.”
“I agree,” I said. “But she seemed okay. Like she put it behind her.” Until I brought it back up again, I didn’t say.
“Well, that’s also not the point,” said Jane, louder than before. “The reason for the law isn’t about deciding which fifteen-year-olds are emotionally ready. It’s not about the fifteen-year-olds at all. It’s about adults acting like adults.”
“I’m not sure Ricky Spence falls into that category even now.”
“I hear about stuff like this from friends—therapists and consulting psychologists. It might not hit a fifteen-year-old girl until she’s fifty that she wasn’t ready, that the damage wasn’t felt immediately and was a long time coming, but it’s real when it comes. A child should not have to make that call.”
“He should be locked up,” said Danielle.
“The statute of limitations has passed,” I said. “And even if it hadn’t, I think it would hurt Monica more than it would hurt Ricky to bring it up again.”
Danielle shook her head. “Well, if he can’t be locked up, then someone should just go find him and punch him in the nose.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
By the next morning I had calmed down somewhat but not completely. Danielle and Jane took me out for another run, and I was starting to wonder whether they were planning on training for a marathon. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps they were using the physical activity to work out the anxiety that had clearly built up within the two of them. Any anxiety I had I preferred to work out in a completely other way. After a shower I went over to the hotel where the A’s were staying. I headed straight for the restaurant, expecting to find John Cashman making calls back to Florida over his eggs and granola. But he wasn’t there.
I went to the check-in desk and asked to have them call his room, but the guy behind the desk nodded and smiled and said, “He’s in the Ponderosa room.”
I nodded like this was exactly what I expected to hear. I assumed the Ponderosa room was some kind of meeting space in the hotel, so I asked the guy for directions, and he pointed me toward the partitioned ballroom where I had spoken to Amber Spence on my last visit.
The doors were closed and I wasn’t sure if Cashman was holding some kind of meeting, perhaps glad-handing some rookies he had brought into the fold. I didn’t really care either way. I opened the door and stepped inside.
The room looked very similar to the way it was when Amber Spence had dragged me in there previously. It was set up with white cloth-covered tables and a coffee station in the corner. The difference was this time it wasn’t an urn of coffee and platter of pastries. There were just two carafes and a bowl of fruit.
There had clearly been some kind of meeting because notebooks and folders and pens had been left on the tables. But at least some of the people involved in the meeting had gone because there were only two people left in the room, and I wasn’t of the opinion that they needed to rent a space to talk to each other.
John Cashman and Ricky Spence were sitting side-by-side. Cashman was sipping coffee; Spence was washing down some orange juice. They both watched me as I stepped in, apparently assuming I was someone else, if the looks on their faces were anything to go by. I strode around the side of the U-shaped configuration toward them.
“What do you want?” asked Ricky Spence.
I didn’t stop moving toward him. “You’re a dirt bag,” I said.
Cashman must have gotten the sense that all was not well because he stood quickly and stepped between Ricky and me.
“What the hell were you doing with my jet?” Cashman asked. “I heard you went to Modesto yesterday.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Did you think about getting permission to use my plane?”
“First of all, it’s not your jet. Second of all, you already gave me permission.”
“And then I discharged your services, if I remember correctly.”
“You don’t remember correctly. You hired me to find out what the hell was going on.”
“I hired you to find out about Zed Graham.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “You lied to me, John. Or at the very least you left out the most important parts.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You could’ve bonked the whole Zed Graham thing on the head straightaway. You weren’t worried about his story. It wasn’t a question of whether or not meathead here had fathered a child.”
Ricky Spence stood up, knocking his chair over. “Who you calling meathead?”
“I know what you did, Ricky. You slept with a minor. That’s the news you didn’t want to get out, isn’t it, John? When Zed Graham came to you with his blackmail story about that night back then, you were worried not about him but about the girl. You knew there was an underage girl in meathead’s past.”
“I said, who are you calling meat—”
Cashman put up his hand to tell his prized client to quit it. As he did, he shook his head. “You found her. That wasn’t why I hired you.”
“You should’ve been more specific, John. And more honest.”
Cashman didn’t flinch at the suggestion that he wasn’t honest. But I had never had question to doubt his honesty before. He was a player’s agent, so he was a type A personality, the kind of guy who would tiptoe the moral line on behalf of his client.
“So,” said Cashman. “Tell me what I’m paying you for. Is the girl going public?”
Now I shook my head. “She’s a woman now, and she wants it forgotten.”
“Okay, then. We’re good. It’s over. Send me a bill. Good work.” He glanced back at Ricky and then quickly back at me. “And stay the hell away from my jet.”
Cashman looked at me as if our little chat was done. I didn’t feel done. I looked around at the previously used but now vacated chairs. A couple of folders and notepads were left behind, as if only temporarily.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
“That’s none of your damn business,” said Spence.
“We’re just putting the final touches to Ricky’s new deal,” said Cashman.
“Where is everybody?”
“They’ve stepped out to make some calls to Oakland,” said Cashman. “We’re just haggling over one last clause. You know how it is. Now, if you’ll leave us to our business . . .”
The two men glanced at each other, and then Cashman put his hand on Ricky’s shoulder and stepped around him to retake his seat. Ricky gave me the evil eye. He was pretty good at it, but it didn’t faze me. What I couldn’t believe was that they were moving on without a ca
re. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen. Perhaps for Ricky to fall to his knees and ask for forgiveness. I knew there wasn’t going to be any kind of payback—Monica Sewell didn’t want that, so it wasn’t my place to look for it. But at a bare minimum I wanted to hear some contrition from Ricky. Even the slightest admission that it had been an error of judgment, at the very least.
“You don’t even care, do you?” I asked. “That you had your way with some girl who was underage. Did you know? I bet you knew.”
Ricky grinned. “You just don’t get it, do you, Jones. You always were a low-T guy.”
“Low T?”
“Low testosterone,” said Ricky. “You always were soft. A pansy. That’s why you never made it to the big leagues. You were never a winner. You’re just some low-T has-been. A loser.”
I didn’t think it was possible to hold Ricky Spence in any lower regard than I already did, but he was digging his way to new depths in my estimation. I knew he was the one who didn’t get it, and he probably never would.
“It’s funny,” I said. “I seem to remember pitching to you back when we were in Modesto. I don’t remember you hitting too many of my throws.”
“You’re cannon fodder, low T.”
“You couldn’t hit a curve then, and you still can’t. Can you?”
Ricky puffed up his chest, and I sensed Cashman getting back up from his chair, when the door to the meeting room opened and we all turned to see a team assistant for the Oakland A’s come in.
“What is it?” asked Cashman.
The guy was dressed in track pants and a team polo. He nodded at Cashman. “Just collecting Mr. Spence’s equipment,” he said. “I was told it was in here.”
Cashman pointed to a large equipment bag lying in the corner near the carafes of coffee. The guy nodded and headed for the bag. I turned my attention back to Spence.
“You’re such a jerk,” I said.
Spence smiled. “Once low T, always low T. If you were a real man, you’d understand.”
“Understand what?”
Spence took a step toward me and leaned in. “The need for fresh meat.”
I knew Ricky Spence was no gourmand. I knew his reference wasn’t about dry aged steaks or sushi. I knew exactly to what—or who—he was referring.
So I matched his step forward and punched him in the nose.
Ricky Spence dropped like a sack of potatoes. That’s how my dad would have phrased it. I never really knew why a sack of potatoes was referenced in a fight, but I imagined the sound that Ricky Spence made as his backside hit the carpet would have been similar to a large burlap sack of spuds. He wasn’t expecting the punch, but it wasn’t a sucker punch either. I don’t do that. If I’m going to hit someone, I’m gonna hit them from the front. Unless there is a very good reason to do otherwise.
As Ricky landed with a thud on the floor, I noted that John Cashman was frozen in his seat. I suspected Ricky Spence had been involved in one or two altercations on the field during his career. It was a tactic long favored by the Yankees to upset away teams with an errant pitch and an all-in brawl. But I also knew that those fights were mostly pantomime. Baseball wasn’t hockey, for crying out loud. Bones were rarely broken, and noses were rarely connected with. So Ricky was in some kind of muted shock. I hadn’t expected Cashman to be the same.
The only person who wasn’t in shock was the team assistant. I heard the sound of the equipment bag being discarded and then the word hey, and I turned to see the team assistant running at me. He came fast and swung a wide and wild haymaker at me. I had to commend his commitment to the team. Technically Ricky hadn’t even signed on the dotted line—or the team hadn’t signed in return—but here was a team assistant coming to the rescue of one of his players. It was the kind of clubhouse dedication a good team culture engendered. I wondered how much of it had to do with my old friend Marvin Tibbs.
The only trouble with the swing was that it was telegraphed from way out, so all I had to do was lean back and watch the guy’s fist flail by in midair. But his momentum was toward me, so despite the fact that he almost swung himself off his feet, his momentum continued right in my direction.
I’d like to think it was reflex that kicked in next. I didn’t really want to get punched or knocked to the ground, even by a team assistant saving the honor of a player, so when the guy got just a little too close, I instinctively laid a punch on him.
Unlike his, mine landed. It wasn’t wild and it wasn’t full of anger. It was on point, at the top of his chest. Designed to stop him more than hurt him. But the hit combined with his forward momentum saw him fly backward off his feet, and he landed on the floor, his head connecting with the carpet, hard.
I was conscious of the fact that Ricky Spence was now behind me, and although he was sitting on the floor, I didn’t fancy getting hit from behind. He might not have been able to hit a curve, but he had forearms like tree trunks, and even by mistake a punch from the big knucklehead could kill. But I also wasn’t planning to come to his aid. I stepped to the fallen team assistant and dropped to my knees.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
His head rolled from one side to the other. “What happened?”
I was about to say something witty when the door to the meeting room opened once more and I saw Marvin Tibbs, the bench coach of the team, step inside. He froze as he took in the scene. I watched his eyes bounce from me to the guy on the floor, then further along to Ricky, also on the floor, and then to Cashman still sitting in his seat.
Marvin Tibbs had been in the baseball game for a long time. I figured there wasn’t a lot that he hadn’t seen already. You get a bus full of young men and give them a bucketload of cash each, you tend to end up with some pretty brainless activity being done. I bet Marvin could tell some stories.
Once he had taken it in, Marvin moved into the room. “What the hell is going on?”
He crouched down on the other side of the fallen assistant. I had always liked Marvin, and my impression of him was only further enhanced by the fact that his first instinct was to come to the aid of his support staff and not the multimillion-dollar meathead that was lying on the floor behind me.
“Sorry, Marvin,” I said. “I punched him in the chest. Self-defense. But I think he banged his head on the floor.”
“Self-defense? Why was one of my guys taking a pop at you in the first place?”
“He was sort of defending Ricky.”
Marvin’s eyes drifted from the assistant over to Ricky, who was now sitting up, holding his nose, and trying to give the evil eye through his tears.
Marvin looked back at me. “You hit the slugger?”
“He was asking for it.”
“Well, this is trouble, Jones. Do you know what you’ve just done?”
I considered what it was that I had just done. I had committed assault on a famous athlete, with witnesses. I had potentially injured a multimillion-dollar asset of a major-league baseball club. I wasn’t sure what my explanation to a judge might be, but I didn’t feel like my story was as strong legally as it was morally. I just glanced at Marvin and shrugged.
“What have I done?”
“You just knocked out the bus driver.” He looked down at the guy between us. The team assistant/bus driver tried to suggest that he was fine to drive, but as he eased up on his elbows, his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell back down.
“We got practice to do. We got a game this afternoon. How the heck do we get to the park now?” Marvin Tibbs started shaking his head like a disappointed schoolteacher. Then as quickly as he started, he stopped. Like he just had a lightbulb moment, a golden idea. It didn’t feel that golden when he turned his gaze on me.
“If I remember it right,” he said, “back when we was at Port St. Lucie, you used to drive the team bus every now and then.”
I nodded with all the enthusiasm of a man who knew his agreement would only cause trouble. “It might have happened once.”
“All righ
t, then. You owe me one. For smashing my driver.” He pointed his finger at me. “Now you’re the driver.”
Marvin turned his attention to the driver, and together we helped him sit up. He didn’t seem in any imminent danger, but double vision is not a great thing to have when you’re in control of a motor coach holding a few hundred million dollars in baseball talent. As Marvin helped his driver into a chair and got him a glass of water, I looked at Ricky Spence.
It seemed he had had the bravado knocked out of him. His eyes were still watering, but there was no blood coming out of his nose. I also was encouraged by the fact that John Cashman was not tending to him the way Marvin was helping his driver.
Marvin made a call on his cell phone, and another team assistant arrived to help out the fallen driver. Marvin told him to see the team doctor and then get some rest. He’d be back with the team tomorrow, of that Marvin was confident. Then as the assistant helped the driver away, Marvin looked at me.
“Come on, flash, I got a team I need to get to a ball game.”
We moved toward the door, and Marvin held it open for me. As he did, he looked back into the room.
“Cashman,” he said.
I saw Cashman nod.
“You get your boy to the park,” said Marvin. “We got batting practice in an hour.”
I followed Marvin Tibbs across the lobby and out under the portico of the hotel. A large tourist bus sat waiting, the flat doors to the cargo bays open and the bays full of bags and boxes and crates of equipment. A guy I recognized as the first base coach was waiting by the steps into the bus, and he nodded as we approached.
“All present and accounted for,” said the coach. “Except Ricky Spence.”
“He’s coming with his agent,” said Marvin. “Let’s get going.”
“You got it,” said the coach as he turned to me. “Who’s this?”