Swing (Gun Pedersen Book 2)

by L. L. Enger

  “Ah,” said Cleary, shaking his head. “You see, that’s the piece I was missing. I didn’t know about the call to Harold.”

  “I don’t get why the card meant anything at all to you,” said Gun. “Rott never had to use the alibi.”

  “No, he didn’t have to use it. But at the time, he didn’t know he wouldn’t have to use it. So what did he do? He tried to get the card back. Listen. Next day, who should show up at my place but that dim-witted Louis character, wanting back the card I’d signed for Rott. I had the presence of mind to tell him I’d already gotten rid of it. Sold it to the College of Baseball Knowledge, I told him. A little shop they had on the west side of town. Cards, memorabilia. And of course Louis believed me.” Cleary paused, then added quietly, “That night the place burned to the ground.” The old man lifted both hands to his face and for an instant Gun saw flames in his eyes. “I never knew exactly how that card fit the puzzle, but I knew Rott was behind it I knew it.”

  “And you didn’t do a thing,” Gun said.

  Cleary closed his eyes and nodded. For a few moments his face seemed to register remorse, but then his eyes snapped open again and the glint was back in them. “I am a very intelligent man, Mr. Pedersen, and I don’t say that boastfully. It’s a fact. Intelligence and courage, however, are two very distinct and different

  qualities. But, the truth is I did do something. Not for a long time, true, but if you think I wasn’t taking my miserable life into my hands, walking into the bar like I did last week and showing off that card to you boys, you’re very mistaken. Bravest thing I’ve ever done. Now, I advise you to go directly to a dismal little place called Rory’s on the Water. You know it, I’m sure, right next to the drawbridge on the Intracoastal. This side. The older ballplayers love it there. Seems to attract the groupies who are past their better days.”

  Gun, already heading for his rented car, shouted thanks over his shoulder.

  “You’re welcome, sir,” said Jacobson Cleary.

  Rory’s was just a couple miles away and Gun hit mostly green lights and made it in less than five minutes. The building was rounded at both ends and fashioned to resemble a tugboat. It sat almost directly beneath a drawbridge spanning the intracoastal waterway between mainland Florida and the long strip of offshore island where the money showed. Gun went inside and found Rott sitting in a booth with a pair of men Gun recognized as coaches for the Toucans.

  “Hey, Gun Pedersen, whatch you all doin’ here?” Rott was at his southern best, beer-happy and welcoming. “Sit down and join the party. Slide over, Harry, and make room.”

  Gun sat down and let himself be introduced to the two men and given a draft beer. He sat for fifteen, twenty minutes listening to baseball talk. Tonight was the first game of the last series between Tallahassee and West Palm, and Tallahassee had a two-game edge. Rott was confident and loud, sure of a Senior-League championship saying, The big’s need me. His coaches mostly listened, wagging their heads and making agreeable noises. Gun excused himself and went

  to make a couple phone calls. One to Sergeant Morrell of the West Palm Police Department. One to Diane Apple.

  When he came back, he told Rott they needed to talk.

  “Shit, Gun, you look pretty serious. What’s the deal?” Rott swallowed the last of his current beer and pulled back a little from the table, blinking.

  “It’s about Moses, sort of. Something you need to know about. Let’s take a little walk.” Gun nodded out the window, where he saw the drawbridge lifting and a long white yacht with a high mast approaching from the north.

  “Well, hell. Okay. Moses, you say?”

  Gun and Rott left Rory’s and walked up the steep sidewalk toward the street fronting the intra-coastal, then toward the bridge, which was fully raised now. The yacht was still a hundred yards north.

  “Let’s hear it,” Rott said, glancing over at Gun. His milky blue eyes were red from the beer, and he licked his lips nervously.

  “Like I said, it’s only sort of about Moses. It’s also about you,” Gun said. “And about Ferdie. And Billy, and Ibbins and Neil Faust.”

  “What the hell kind of a thing to say is that?”

  Gun stopped at the edge of the bridge, thinking, Let’s not put this off any longer. “Rott, listen.”

  “I’m listening, and you better watch what you say, old buddy, ‘cause it sounds pretty goddamn careless to me.”

  “I had a long talk last night with your uncle,” Gun said. “I learned quite a bit, too.”

  “My uncle?”

  “Casper Leavitt.”

  Rott’s eyes cleared a little and he straightened up, tucked his shirt into his pants, and pulled his belly in. “Say it,” he said. “Leavitt told me about you and Neil Faust, the arrangement you two had. He also doesn’t think Ferdie Millevich killed himself. He thinks you killed Ferdie.”

  “He’s a goddamned liar, then.” Rott looked over his shoulder, then ahead. The yacht had passed through now, and the long halves of the bridge were beginning to come down, slowly. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Maybe,” Gun said. “Your uncle might not be a fellow you can put your trust in. But there’s something else, too. I heard some tapes of Billy Apple’s. He had them hidden in his boat.”

  “Boat?” Rott said quickly.

  “Bet you didn’t know he had one. But he did, and that’s where he kept his notes and tapes, everything he knew about you and Faust and everybody else. He talked to your old friend Ibbins, too, and wouldn’t you know, Ibbins remembered that little story you gave him about staying with some girlfriend in Miami, same night Ferdie died. Same night you gave Cleary your John Hancock in Orlando. And then it hit me. A guy can’t be in two places at one time. Just isn’t possible.”

  He felt Rott tense, almost sensed the ripple going through his legs like they were getting ready to spring. Gun put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t think about going anyplace. It’s too late for that.”

  Rott’s eyes were sharper than Gun had ever seen them, the milkiness gone completely. “It’s not true, Gun, you gotta believe me.”

  A police car swung into view, two blocks north, and came toward them. No speed, no sirens.

  Gun said, “You can tell your side of it to all the right people now, Rott. If I’ve got it wrong, set me straight.”

  The police car came on and now a second one appeared, from the south. Rott looked from one car to the other. He seemed to momentarily shut down, then suddenly awoke, threw a fist into Gun’s midsection,

  and ran past the lineup of waiting cars and straight up the middle of the descending bridge. The incline was about thirty degrees and dropping, and he ran in a crouch, fast, almost on all fours, like a lanky, poorly coordinated dog. Gun chased after him, feeling the angle of rise shifting beneath, the work becoming easier as the bridge fell to horizontal. He caught up with Rott at the end of the half section of bridge, put a hand on the waistband of Rott’s pants and pulled him back. Rott spun around, swinging, and Gun felt the impact on his temple, the rough hot surface of concrete on the palms of his hands. He shook his head to bring sight back into his eyes and looked up in time to see Rott leap from the end of the section, arms reaching for the end of the other half, which was ten feet away now and closing fast.

  Rott’s jump was too short.

  His feet missed their target but his hands caught the end of the section and then he was hanging there— legs kicking, his arms flexing but unable to pull his body upward, and he was screaming for help—and the bridge was still coming together, coming down, dropping into place, and Rott’s hands still clinging onto it, right there for the amputation, Gun thought.

  “Let go! Take the water!” he shouted.

  He watched the bridge lock together, heard its uncompromising sound, then ran to the edge in time to see Rott hit the surface of the Intracoastal and disappear. Come up, come up, then bob to the top again a few yards down, limbs flailing, wild screams coming from his throat. Gun looked toward shore. Already a boat
was launched and heading in the right direction, police officers leaning forward in the bow.

  Now Gun turned to the spot where he didn’t want to look, the place where the bridge separated and joined, and saw there, still moving with life, a set of five fingers: pale, and indistinctly connected with whatever crush of bone and forearm must be locked in the bridge’s jaws.

  “Oh, my Lord.” Gun looked away and then Diane Apple was in his arms, her hair against his face, the smell of it reminding him that the world was, after all, a place he didn’t mind most of the time.

  “We better call an ambulance or something.” She pointed at Rott’s fingers without looking, then ran to the edge of the bridge and threw up over the railing.

  Below, Gun saw the policemen pulling Robert Weiler from the water into their boat.

  38

  Gun and Diane spent until four o’clock that afternoon at the police station going over Billy’s notes again. Then, from a conversation with somebody at the D.A.’s office, he learned that Rott’s trial wouldn’t happen for a few months, and for now Gun was free to go home to Minnesota. At six-thirty he lay down on his bed in room number four of the Gates To Home Motel, thinking he needed a short nap; at eight the next morning he woke up, still fully clothed.

  It was cowardly—Gun knew this—but he arranged to say good-bye to Diane at the airport, with Moses present. They met at nine for breakfast, the three of them, and spent the first half hour answering each other’s questions. Mostly it was Moses doing the asking. He hadn’t heard Billy’s tapes.

  “I don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it. Your brother, he was a bitchin’ hard-ass, smart-headed writer, wasn’t he? Had all that stuff underwater. I’m tellin’ you, that is brilliant.” Moses hadn’t stopped smiling since he sat down, and once every few minutes he put on a deep scowl, probably just to keep his face from getting stuck. “I loved him,” Moses said. “Billy was the sweetest guy I ever met, and I mean it, Diane.” He reached across the table and took Diane’s small wrists in his oversize hands. Then his smile crumpled and he shook his head and his whole body seemed to wither up. His shoulders fell, his chest sank away and the joy he’d been filled with fled the room.

  “He thought a lot of you, too, Moses.” Diane pressed her cheek against her own shoulder and looked away. Gun touched her on the back. “When we were kids,” she said, “and you were Rookie of the Year, he always pretended he was you, every time he played ball. ‘I’m Moses Gates,’ he’d say and then cock his bat down low the way you did.”

  “I wasn’t much more than a kid myself,” said Moses. “And all this—it’s not worth it. It isn’t. None of it means a thing next to Billy.”

  “What it means,” said Diane. “Billy wanted the truth and now we have it. Don’t tell me that’s not important. I couldn’t bear to think it’s not important. No, Moses, listen to me. I want everyone to know what he did and then I want to see you get voted into the Hall of Fame, just like you deserve and just like Billy wanted. And then maybe I’ll be satisfied. Not that it’s worth Billy’s life, or that anything could be, but at least finally he will have accomplished what he set out to do. And that’s important.”

  It was a rainy, overcast day, clouds low and ugly—a rare kind of day in this part of Florida—and Gun watched a plane leave the ground and disappear almost at once. He was anxious to be going. He felt no hope of resolution here. With Moses, yes, the man’s life had gone from upside down to right side up, all in a few days. But not with Diane: grieving for her brother, looking to Gun for a kind of support he couldn’t give. Not that he didn’t want to. But the fact was, in some cases you couldn’t help one person without letting someone else down miserably. It was a hard sticky little truth, but damn it all, there it was.

  Gun took his hand away from Diane’s shoulder now, looked at her small exquisite ear and asked her what she planned to do next. What a dumb question.

  “Next? I don’t know,” she said, laughing just a little. “That word sounds funny, though. Kind of overconfident. Like there’s always a next. A next day, a next job, a next life, a next whatever. I really don’t know. How about you?”

  Another plane disappeared and Gun looked at the clock. Ten-thirty. His flight wasn’t departing for another forty-five minutes. “Life on the lake,” Gun said, smiling, not feeling the words. He stood up then and said he had to leave, his plane was taking off in ten minutes.

  Diane stood too and hugged him, asked him to please stay in touch. He said he would. Her arms didn’t want to let go of him. His didn’t want to let go of her, but he made them. Then he was shaking hands with Moses, not listening to the things Moses was saying about friendship and loyalty. And now he was walking quickly down the concourse, not turning to wave good-bye.

  39

  Asleep and drifting Gun floated back to the Gates To Home Motel, where he lay on his back trying to see the tiny gears of the blasted gas heater that had gone off again. Middle of the night and Florida was seeing weather like it hadn’t since before the Spaniards slogged ashore in their chain mail. Had to be zero degrees, the windows stuck open and snow wisping in like the devil’s tail and settling on the bed. Up in the dreamy recesses of the heater Gun thought he espied the sooty place where one lit the pilot light. With his fingers numb he scratched a match, got the thing going, then righted himself and kneeled by the register. The fan kicked in with a whirr and Gun put his face down to get the first warmth. What hit instead was an Alaskan wind that spat prickles of ice at his cheeks and he jerked back. The room was filling with snow and the gas heater had changed; now it was an air conditioner, decorator blue with a stylized caricature of Moses grinning on the front, and the logo: chill YOUR NOSE WITH A FROSTY-MOZE.

  It took another snowy gust to sit him up and slap him back to where he was, in his own bed with the window cracked half an inch for sleeping and Minnesota flexing its January muscles. He sat up. His bedroom faced east, and the wind was easterly, unusual; that was why it had come in so strongly. A little snow now but if the wind held there’d be some real weather. No unworkable gas burner in this house. He’d need a fire.

  There was a good week’s worth of wood split and dried in the breezeway between Gun’s log house and garage. He went out in long Johns and got an armload and kindling, got it snapping in the black stove and set coffee up to brew. The cold from the dream still had him by the joints, along with the stiffness adrenaline leaves behind like residue. He stretched some of it out and forced himself down to the bare wood floor for push-ups. They hurt his fists more than usual.

  Diane Apple, blast her, he had been unnecessarily cool to her there at the end. Thought at the time it’d been best.

  Well. It probably was. Still, Gun thought, his joints working looser now with the stove’s close heat, it’s so easy to see her here. Standing at the big paned windows at night with the light coming blue off the snow. He realized she had the grace that came with solitude, with knowing there’s no crime in staying away from the mainstream. He finished his push-ups and sat back with the stiffness gone. He thought, You can’t get a lot more solitary than this. She would approve, he thought, and it bothered him only a little that this mattered.

  Carol Long arrived in midmorning carrying hot crusty bread and a mysterious plucked bird in a roasting pan. “Goose,” she said, though it didn’t look like it to Gun; too fat, not like the lanky birds he’d taken down in the fields of North Dakota.

  “You’re early.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Snowstorm’s on the way,” she said, whirling off her knee-length leather coat. Today her lipstick was red as Christmas and her green eyes pranced so that he felt how long he’d been gone. She said, “Wouldn’t it be something if I got snowed in?”

  Catching her up on things took the rest of the morning and through the afternoon. They sat at the big maple table watching the frozen surface of Stony Lake go snow-cloud gray, she waiting out his silences for once instead of pushing in with questions. He told her how Rott Weiler, bigot, went over
the top when he learned about Harold Ibbins’s lineage; how he took that hate and fed it to Neil Faust, working it into a clubhouse loathing for Ferdie Millevich, the Minnesota boy with too much bat and too much conscience; how he made sure everyone would think he’d been out of town the day Ferdie died, and how the autograph man proved otherwise, all these years later.

  “It’s strange,” he finished, “how it runs in the family. Rott’s uncle, old Casper Leavitt—he’s the one who paid off Faust to set up Ferdie and then Moses. Just another doting relative. His only regret is that he wasn’t a little more subtle trying to get Billy Apple off the story. He sent those apes out to chase off the reporter—”

  “And it just made Billy dig in harder,” Carol said.

  “Yes.”

  The clouds were putting an early end on the afternoon. Out on Stony they could just see the distant fish houses and pickup trucks, the little black figures moving slowly about. Gun could smell the fat goose roasting and the warmth of it along with Carol’s nearness gave him a sense of discomfort, of fleeting claustrophobia, like wearing too many sweaters.

  “It almost seems,” she said, her words sounding vaguely awkward to Gun, “like you really knew Billy Apple. Like you met him. Doesn’t it?”

  “Mmm.” It did and it didn’t. When it came down to it, Gun realized, it was Billy’s sister he was glad he’d met

  “I’m freezing,” she said suddenly. He took her

  hand and it was true. He cupped her fingers in his and blew on them, a gentle father-daughter gesture. It had always warmed her before, made her smile. Now it didn’t

  “You’re distracted,” she told him. He was. He was busy realizing, with guilt growing in him like an ache, that he wished Diane would somehow appear. That she’d just show up, drive in smiling through the big pines. Or write him a letter, even. Or call mm.