by Manuel Ramos
We gave up looking for him by midnight.
We were exhausted, but Soapy and Corrine said they were hungry. I parked the truck at the all-night diner at the intersection of Colfax and Speer.
Jerome called as I slammed the pickup’s door shut.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Lots of stuff, but not your guy. Sorry. One old timer admitted knowing him, but said it’d been years since he’d seen him. I think he was feeding us a line. A woman said she could take us to him if we bought her a bottle of whiskey. I figured that was a dead end.”
“Thanks anyway, Jerome. And thank your friends.”
“I will, and so will you, soon. You owe them a drink or two, probably some happy hour apps, too.”
“Goes without saying. Glad nothing went haywire out there.”
“Yeah, but there’s a story. I’ll save it for happy hour.”
The diner was busy with potheads and drunks, and we waited ten minutes until one of the tables was wiped clean. Soapy ordered pancakes, Corrine asked for a salad, and I just wanted coffee.
“He’s gone,” Corrine said. “He must have left town earlier today, before he was supposed to talk with Soapy. Probably hitchhiked and by now could be in New Mexico.”
“Or Grand Junction, maybe Wyoming,” Soapy said.
“We could go to Colorado Springs,” Corrine said. “Tomorrow, maybe he’ll . . . ”
“You’re not serious,” I said. “He’s not going to be there. He’s taken off, and we’ll be better off if we forget him. I’m sorry I got you two involved. Sorry I introduced you to Leo Hudgens. I’ve wasted your time for a guy who didn’t deserve it.”
We talked a few minutes more about Hudgens and the places we’d seen that night. I cursed more than talked. Then the food and drinks arrived, and we quit talking. By the time we left the restaurant, Corrine and Soapy were in better moods. Soapy tried to tell a joke she’d heard in one of her classes, but she botched the punch line, and we laughed at her instead. I paid the bill with one of the wrinkled and stained fifty dollar bills that Hudgens had given me as a deposit for “future services.”
“At least his body didn’t turn up,” Corrine said when I dropped her off at her house.
“That’s something, I guess,” Soapy said as she also climbed down from my truck.
I said goodnight and left it at that.
Later, when I sat in the darkness of my house, nursing a beer, I imagined Hudgens passed out on dope, his clean clothes and barbered hair stained with mud and vomit. I wanted to think the worst about him. He’d betrayed Corrine and Soapy, and for that I wanted him to suffer. I kept myself off that short list, since I’d never believed he would follow through on his fantasy of publicly humiliating Dominick Alito, or his Hollywood ending of heroically facing the music by turning himself in to the police. I remembered the stench he left in my office the first time I met him, and that was how I chose to think of him.
I recalled the ragged children we’d encountered in our search. Young but already losing hope with every cold day without a warm meal or bed. Again, I saw the men and women who were crippled by booze or drugs or their own minds and who lived with constant desperation, or the veterans wounded first in their service and then again by their country’s neglect. I felt the anger and fear and fatigue, and it made me hate Hudgens more. He had a chance to rise above it all, although it meant going to prison. Somehow, I concluded he owed that to the people waiting in the food lines and sprawled on the sidewalks. Instead, he’d thrown it away without even bothering to show up.
I drank several beers, one after the other, without tasting them. I fell asleep in the recliner, my television on without sound, my brain turned off, the only noise a low-level hum of resignation that vibrated through my core.
— Chapter 23 —
NEVER ON SUNDAY
A few weeks later, on a Sunday, I drove the several miles to my office to retrieve the newspaper and, along the way, to buy a latte from Jerome at his coffee shop.
Jerome wasn’t in. I ordered the coffee to go.
I read the newspaper at my desk. While I read, my used and banged-up radio was tuned to Pocho Joe’s show, La Raza Rocks. The mix of Chicano soul, oldies and new Latino rock reminded me of my father’s musical tastes. He would’ve been a big fan of Pocho’s, like I was.
I didn’t intend to work. “Never on Sunday,” I told myself.
The start of baseball season was less than a week away, which meant that on Friday night a snowstorm blew across the state, dropped the temperature into single digits and iced the freeways. I-70 westbound was closed at Georgetown; eastbound was locked down at Limon. I shoveled my way out of my house Saturday morning, and I couldn’t warm up my feet that night until I put on two pairs of socks and covered them with a blanket as I watched TV.
Sunday morning was a different story all-together. The sun turned the piled and drifted snow into brilliant white flashes. The temp climbed into the forties, melted snow flowed in the gutters, and it almost felt like spring.
After all the excitement of Cuba, and the wear-and-tear on my delicate psyche from the Hudgens episode, the past weeks of work were a vacation: I finished off several jobs that had simmered while I was gone, I let attorneys and potential clients know I was back, cleaned up the office, resumed my exercise routine and finally slept better. I ate more food and basically put to rest the vague shadows that’d haunted me. I thought I’d turned a corner.
I planned to do the crossword after I caught up on the latest rumors from Spring training. I couldn’t help myself: the Rockies had become tabloid fodder. Several stories in March focused on the antics of Rockies players. The team was more entertaining than any of the Mexican soap operas Corrine watched with religious regularity.
A backup catcher was stopped for running a red light in Phoenix. The city police arrested him for drunk driving. His passenger, a stripper whose stage name was Champagne Sunset, posted his bail. The next news story about the catcher confirmed that his wife filed for divorce—the stripper was her sister.
One of the middle relievers tripped on his infant son’s scooter. He broke the index finger of his throwing hand and was expected to miss the first six weeks of the season. Twitter exploded with speculation that the pitcher was addicted to painkillers from a previous injury and he was high when he fell, but that’s as far as that went.
Three days after that episode, the Rockies camp was shaken with an announcement from the Commissioner’s Office. The all-star second baseman, a young Texas kid raised near the El Paso border and a finalist for last year’s Rookie of the Year Award, was suspended indefinitely. Turned out his mother brought him to the States from Mexico when he was an infant. The kid had always assumed he was a citizen of the United States. One of the owners of the rival San Diego Padres challenged that assumption, and now everyone scrambled to figure out the complicated immigration status of the young man and whether he could legally play baseball in the United States.
“All I want to do is play ball,” he said to the Post reporter. “I love my country: the United States.”
There were others, but the story that popped up repeatedly described, in agonizing statistical detail, the horrific spring Joaquín Machaco was enduring. The exhibition games were nightmares, the first few games of the new season not much better.
He couldn’t buy a hit. He made several errors in his usual position at center field, and there was talk that the manager might try him at first base, more as a wake-up call than as a serious look at a new position for Kino. At times he appeared lost, especially on the rare occasions when he got on base. More than one ESPN commentator pointed out that the Rockies had another potential superstar center fielder waiting in the wings, and that maybe it was time to give the minor-leaguer a chance to show his stuff. It was so bad that the sports writers and analysts simply referred to “The Slump,” and everyone knew they were reporting on Kino Machaco.
I wondered if there was more to Kino’s slump than simply a
slow start. Had the recent events in Cuba affected him more than anyone realized? As if he was listening to my wandering thoughts, I got a call from one of the few people in the world who might be able to answer my question.
“Gus? This is Ben Sardo. Remember me?”
“Kino’s agent. Sure. What you up to?”
The home opener for the Rockies was that week. The city eagerly awaited the party around the stadium in lower downtown Denver that started off each season since the team played its first home game back in 1993. This opening day promised to be extra special because of the team’s World Series appearance the year before. Trophies would be handed out and speeches made about the great year the team had had. The fans would be eager to watch the first home game of a season that they expected to finish with a follow-up Series that, this year, the Rockies would win. I assumed Sardo was in town for the game, but I had no idea why he’d call me.
“I got good news. From Kino. He wants to give you tickets to opening day. Kind of a bonus for all your hard work, all the trouble you went through for him and his family. How many you want? These are good seats, Gus. VIP, top of the line. You can have a party. No one will bother you.”
“He doesn’t have to do that.”
“It’s already done. How many?”
I quickly calculated whether any of my sisters or friends would go to Coors Field with me. Why not? Opening day was all about fun in the sun and the National Pastime, and it was Denver’s favorite sports day, when the Broncos weren’t in the Super Bowl, or the Avalanche wasn’t playing for the Stanley Cup, or the Nuggets . . .
“Six. I’ll take six.”
I knew at least five people who would go to a game with me, didn’t I?
The irony was obvious. Gus Corral, a guy from the old Northside streets, an ex-con with a mistake-riddled history, would bump elbows with the rich and famous, the movers and the shakers. The power brokers of Colorado’s booming economy and ravenous growth could be behind me in the beer line. I might sit next to one of the state’s new marijuana moguls, who couldn’t spend his millions fast enough; or the developer who’d stripped my neighborhood of its history, culture and personality; or the politician who had the president’s private line in his contacts list. If I’d thought too hard about it, I might’ve gotten dizzy, even sick.
“They’re yours, Gus. Gonna be a great game. The Dodgers will be in town, you know that, right?”
“Sure.”
“The tickets will be under your name at Will Call. See you then.”
The guy was in a perpetual rush.
“Before you go, how’s Kino doing? He okay? From what I’ve read, he’s still not hitting.”
He paused. He must’ve bit his lip. “Yeah, he’s good. Don’t believe what you read about him. He comes alive when the real season starts, usually a few weeks into it. Always been that way. I won’t be surprised if he busts out for the home opener. We’ve seen this before.”
He was upbeat, confident, covering his client’s back.
“Yeah, okay. I guess. But it sounds different from past seasons. Hope he’s not hurt.”
“Don’t worry about Kino Machaco.”
The slight edge that creeped into his voice told me he was tired of answering questions about the dependability of his biggest meal ticket. How many times would he have to defend Kino and explain The Slump?
“You and everyone else are gonna see some amazing baseball from Kino this year. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“You took a load off his mind with the work you did in Cuba. So, it’s all good, no worry.”
“Glad to hear that. I’d still like to meet with him. That possible? We never talked when I got back from Cuba. He must’ve heard all about the trip from Alberto and Lourdes, but I would like to talk with him, if it can be arranged. Share thoughts about Cuba.”
“This is a crazy week, you realize that, right?”
“Five minutes. I really appreciate that he came to me.” Although the trip almost killed me, I thought. “I want to tell him that myself.”
“The team’s out of town. They opened in San Francisco.”
“They have to be here Friday for the home opener.”
“It’ll be tight.”
I could almost see him looking at the calendar on his cell while he talked to me.
“Thursday’s their travel day. That evening, the night before the game, he’s scheduled for an appearance at the fan appreciation party in the big tent outside the stadium. He’ll sign autographs and pose for photographs with fans. When he’s done there, he’ll be in my office for about an hour, around eight o’clock. We have to dot i’s and cross t’s. If it’s important, you could talk to him then. Five minutes, Gus. That’s all.”
“I’ll be there and gone before you know it. What’s the address?”
“It’s my new office in Denver. I think you’ll like it.”
He gave me a downtown Seventeenth Street address in one of the high rises that stood out in photographs of Denver’s skyline. It might as well have been in another country. Although I could see the top of his building through the grimy window of my office, in truth, Sardo operated in a different world. I had no doubt I’d be impressed with his office.
After the call I thought about why I wanted to talk with Kino. I’d been paid, the job was over. The money was back in whatever account he decided on, and the threat to Alberto was dead, really dead. No good reason to meet with the super jock, unless I’d suddenly become a fan and wanted his autograph on a baseball. That wasn’t it. I told myself it was something I needed to do, even if I didn’t understand why. What I did understand was that there were unanswered questions lingering, fluttering, nagging. Details to be taken care of and accounted for. Like Sardo said, dotting i’s and crossing t’s.
Without thinking about it, I went through a half-dozen files. Gus Corral, private eye, was on the case. Or, rather, counting hours on a variety of sexy assignments: serving subpoenas, following wayward husbands and wives, digging into personal and private matters that should have stayed personal and private. I finished the reports, memos, affidavits and invoices I needed to close out the accounts and mail my final bill. When I looked up from the desk and realized I was clearing it, I stopped. What happened to “Never on Sunday”?
I texted Maxine, my younger sister. Was she interested in opening day? I had tickets. She and Sandra could have a pair, if she wanted them. She responded almost immediately with emojis of balloons, fireworks, a unicorn, a baseball bat and a beer mug. I took all that as a yes. I texted back that she should meet me at Will Call at the stadium an hour before the game. She sent an animated pair of ruby red lips, blowing a kiss.
Maxine loved baseball. She’d played the game as a kid and developed a reputation as a tough little infielder. No one slid into her at third unless they were willing to risk a bruised rib from a hard tag or a bloodied nose from a knee blocking the bag. And she could hit, not for power necessarily but for a timely single to bring in the tying run, or a double when she put everything she had into her swing and connected.
Maxine studied baseball and baseball history. Her senior year in high school she sought out an elderly great aunt who lived in the small town of Florence because of our mother’s stories about the aunt’s baseball days as a young girl. The aunt grew up in the mining town of Chandler, a company town that died when the mine played out. A few years before Chandler became a ghost town, one of the miners organized an all-girl softball team that played games throughout Southern Colorado—Pueblo, Cañon City, Penrose, Westcliffe, Beulah and others. The coal miners’ daughters were Mexicans, Italians, Eastern Europeans. According to the aunt, the team was excelente, winners. The woman’s stories amazed Maxine.
“In those days,” she told me when she returned to Denver, “you could still find signs in restaurants that said, ‘No dogs or Mexicans.’ This was in the forties. Can you imagine what it must’ve been like? But this miner, their coach, a
Mexican himself, did all he could for the girls of the mining camp. He found rides for them to games, dug up mitts, bats and balls . . . and he coached them at night after his shift in the mine. It’s a great piece of Colorado history, and Aunt Eladia couldn’t stop talking about playing baseball with the tough Chandler girls. She may not remember what she had for breakfast, but she remembers playing baseball in Chandler.”
For a guy who wasn’t much of a sports fan, I looked forward to enjoying the game with Max and Sandra. We’d drink beer and talk about her band, married life and the latest Corrine squabble. Most important, she could explain that there really was something going on when it looked like everyone on the field, including the umpires, were standing around, playing with their mitts, spitting or grabbing their crotches.
I made one more call.
Jerome hesitated when I asked him if he wanted the remaining tickets for himself and the guys who’d joined in the search for Leo Hudgens.
“We have a balance class on Friday. Hate to miss it.”
He finally accepted when I said he could give the tickets to anyone if he couldn’t make it.
I caught myself stealing glances at files and some of my notes. I decided I should leave and do something that involved sunshine and brisk air.
I was about to lock up when someone knocked on the door. I opened it and recognized the collection agency receptionist from down the hall. She wore skinny jeans and a loose sweatshirt, a big difference from her usual uptight office-serious look.
“I thought I saw you come in,” she said. “I was glad. I hate being in this place by myself. It’s creepy.”
Another first: she talked to me. Normally, she avoided me like the building mice ignored the janitor’s cat. She always seemed to be typing demand letters, filing papers or answering the telephone, and certainly without any time for small talk with me.
“You’re working today?”
“Finishing a few things. We have so much work. Feels like nobody pays their bills.”
“I can sympathize with that. What can I do for you?”