Come Back for More

by Al Fray

  “He needs help,” I said simply. “There’s nothing that can’t be corrected happening to the kid; he just gets himself tangled up.”

  “And you, I gather, will untangle him. I wonder why?”

  I looked up quickly and her eyes were cool and knowing now. I’d gone too far too fast but there didn’t seem to be much chance of worming out. Instead I tried to push it so far it would be humorous.

  “Hidden motives. I figure it’ll grease the boards for promotion in other directions,” I said in a low voice and with a short laugh.

  “I hope you’re kidding,” she said evenly, and low enough to keep others from hearing. “If you aren’t, you’re in for a disappointment; I’d have to spoil your winning streak.”

  We broke it up then because there was a substitution down on the field. A new player was trotting toward first base and Bub, obviously lower than the underside of a dachshund’s belly, headed for the bench. The game ended half an hour later and we drifted out with the crowd. Gail waited for Bub and I stood there too until he came out, then said I’d see them after while and went home.

  Keep an eye open, Vehon had said, and I was making the first steps. I spent an hour on trivial details—some time under the sun lamp and a touch-up job to keep the blond roots from showing through. A little later I hiked up the street toward the brick bungalow that was both home and office for the Tylers. Bub and Gail were sitting on the front porch when I came into the yard, Gail in the swing and her brother on the steps.

  “C’mon, Mac, let’s get started,” Bub said eagerly. He jumped down from the porch, tossed me a glove, and thumped the ball into his first base mitt. Gail dropped the magazine on the swing and stood up.

  “I’ll drive you old pros over to the ball park,” she said, “just a sec.” She slipped into the house for a few moments and when she came back she jingled car keys and the three of us climbed into the Pontiac and went out to Little League Park.

  “Your trouble, Bub, is in your feet,” I said, as we walked toward the diamond.

  “His feet?” Gail asked.

  “I’m no big leaguer but I’ve seen some pretty good players and I think your feet are lousing you up, Bub,” I said. “It’s a little deceptive, but underpinning is about the most important factor in sports. A fighter swings with his fists, sure, but he’s fighting on his feet all the time—every minute; that’s why he goes in for all that roadwork. And a ball player is only as good as his legs, and how he handles them. You—well, you’re getting your feet all tangled up out there, Bub.”

  “Gee. Can you help me straighten it out, Mac?”

  “Maybe. When you’re covering first base and the ball is thrown right at you everything’s fine. But when she’s wide you somehow manage to step with the wrong foot and keep the wrong one to tag the bag. Here’s the way it should he.” I took a position in front of the base, a heel not far from each corner as I faced second base.

  “Suppose the peg is to your left. You step with the left foot, you see, and tag up with your right.” I demonstrated, then straightened again. “See how it goes, a long reach and you’re still on balance. Now when the throw is wide to the right, step off in that direction with the right foot and tag up with the left.”

  I showed him how you get a lot more reach with your glove if you use the proper footwork, then said it for him again. “When the peg is wide, step with the foot on the side to which the ball is thrown. Another way of saying it is never cross those feet. Never cross the feet, when you’re fielding those pegs from the infield. Got that?”

  “Can I try it?”

  “For about an hour,” I said, and picked up the ball. I took a position near second and began to throw ’em at the kid. To his right, to his left, low and to the right, low and to the left, high, all over the place. I shifted to short and we worked some more, and before long it was obvious, even to Gail, that the kid was showing great improvement.

  “You’ve got good hands,” I said, when we took a breather, “and there’s no reason why you can’t be a real first baseman. You’re doing a lot better already.”

  “Thanks, Mac,” he said.

  “No charge.” I grinned. “Let’s go to it some more.”

  Darkness finally ringed us in and he had to call it a day. When we got back to the house Gail poured lemonade and the three of us sat on the front porch in the cool of the evening and chatted a while. At nine Arno Walchek came along the street and turned into the drive toward his room over the garage. We said hello.

  “Care for some lemonade?” Gail asked. Arno said maybe he’d take a small one if it wasn’t any trouble. When Gail went into the house Bub said his good nights and left, and Arno turned to me.

  “She’s a great kid, Mac,” Arno said.

  “No chance for an argument on that.”

  “I drove for Bill Tyler before either of the kids were born,” Arno said slowly, his eyes steady on my face. “Sure would hate to see anyone hurt either of Bill’s kids.”

  “Stop worrying. We’re all on the same team,” I told him, and then Gail brought his lemonade. He downed it dutifully, nodded to both of us, and disappeared around the corner of the house.

  “Nice night for a walk,” I said.

  “Or a ride?” she asked. I glanced toward the house and she said, “We’ve never worried about Bub when Arno’s home.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. This time I climbed into the driver’s side of her car and we nosed toward the edge of town.

  “Any particular spot?” I asked. I wasn’t supposed to know any of the shady lanes around River City.

  “There is a lake,” Gail said. “It’s about three miles west and then you turn—”

  I didn’t have to pay any attention to the directions; I’d spent a few evenings out there myself. Lake Corbit had a shoreline about two miles around, overhanging shrubbery in spots, a few sand beaches, and a minimum of mosquitoes. With the car radio playing softly behind us, we sat on the bank and watched miniature waves lap pebbles at the water’s edge. I trapped her hand and fell the quick tight pressure as our fingers interlocked.

  “Where are you from, Mac?” Gail asked.

  “The road. You knew that when you hired me.”

  “You know I don’t mean that. You blew in out of nowhere—no talk about how many trucks you’ve driven or where, just that you’re a truck driver and wanted a job.”

  “So the world’s full of truck drivers. If they didn’t have a union you could hire them for a buck an hour and they’d be standing in line for a job.”

  “Not good ones, Mac; they’re hard to come by. But even if we go along with that, there’s this trouble with the rugged characters Mr. Vehon keeps on hand. One short lecture seems to have been enough to make all of the other men we’ve hired see the light, but not McCarthy. McCarthy fights and wins. Then comes baseball and in just one hour you pinpoint a small boy’s trouble at first base and straighten him out. A pretty good man, this McCarthy, I’m beginning to believe.”

  “You can’t be on the road very long before you learn to scrap a little,” I told her. “You fight or else. And baseball—well, every kid plays ball. I just happen to have played a little more than some.”

  “But you have the time and interest it takes to give Bub a helping hand.”

  “I’m getting quite a build-up,” I said. “What’s the pitch? Where does all this lead after McCarthy’s been larded down good and thick?”

  “No pitch, Mac. I’m just wondering where you came from and the towns you’ve lived in and how you’ve spent your time.”

  “Ah, yes, the story of my life.” I laughed, and then I said, “The town I was born in wasn’t much different from River City. Where have I been since? A lot of places, mostly for short periods. What have I done with the years? I’ve lived them. Isn’t the lake beautiful tonight?”

  “A man with a past?”

  “Hell no. But if a guy’s bumped around a little and talks about it too much he usually winds up with the reputation of an amusin
g liar or, if he lacks humor, simply a liar. Neither of these appeal to me, baby.” I slipped an arm around her and drew her close and went into that practiced routine but she caught the line and turned it aside. I shilled the campaign and made fust base but when I tried to steal second she tagged me fast. She was curvy and cute and a kid stacked like that soon learns her way around. This girl had plenty of practice on the defense and although we put in some time horsing around on the lakeshore, the evening ended with McCarthy dying on base.

  Chapter 6

  It rained incessantly on Sunday and I tucked in a few loose ends. One of them was the transfer of the henna into an empty Purex bottle—I didn’t want the landlady to stumble onto the dye. The next order of business was the writing of two letters. The first I addressed to The Catholic Church, Brawley, California, and I enclosed a short note asking if anyone could tell me the whereabouts of Ernest Kelly. I didn’t know any Kellys there and maybe there weren’t any but either way my note was sure to bring a reply on church stationery and addressed to Warner McCarthy. The second letter went to the Bank of America in Long Beach and was equally vague. I said I intended to move to California in the near future and wanted to know the procedure for establishing bank credit in that area.

  On Monday I dropped the letters into a mailbox, flipped the henna bottle into the river as I crossed the bridge, and made my early morning hike out to Tyler Trucking. The day’s run called for an empty run up to the city where I loaded on a full van of merchandise for one of River City’s largest department stores. I made it back to the truck yard by three in the afternoon—just in time to catch Gail’s frantic phone exchange with the police. Even before she hung up the receiver and turned toward me I’d heard enough to know that one of the trucks had piled up.

  “It’s Arno,” Gail said. “They think he’s—he’s badly hurt.”

  “Where? What happened?” I asked quickly.

  “On highway nineteen. At the underpass, but I don’t understand why Arno was over there in the first place.”

  “We’d better have a look,” I said. Gail handed me the keys to the Pontiac and a few seconds later the two of us were speeding toward the outskirts of River City. I put the gas to the floor when we passed the last of the houses and the speedometer needle began to climb.

  “Exactly how far off his run would highway nineteen be?” I asked. “Where should Arno have been?”

  “On six. He had a load of imported silk going to—”

  “Silk? How much—and how expensive?”

  “A lot. And very expensive, Mac, but our insurance covers damage to merchandise.”

  “I think the wreck is up ahead,” I said, and began to slow. We rolled off onto the shoulder and joined a couple of dozen other cars, then hurried toward the concrete underpass and the wrecked truck. A siren sounded and an ambulance slipped past on its way to town. Two police cars were on hand and they were keeping people back but Gail identified herself and they let us go over to the wreck. When she asked about Arno Walchek one of the cops shook his head.

  “He’s bad hurt, ma’m, and at his age it’s going to be pretty rough. Never made the turn at all; just piled right into the solid concrete. Does he have a record of—I mean did he ever have a heart attack before?”

  “No,” Gail said, “not that I know of. And I would have known; he’s driven for us a long time.”

  “I see. Well, they’ll know when he gets to the hospital, ma’m.”

  We turned to the remains of the rig then, and there was no doubt that the policeman was right about Arno never even putting the wheel over at the bend. Highway nineteen was pretty straight but met the railroad diagonally so the pavement made an S dip as it crossed under the tracks. The dip began just a little before the turn. Arno had gone down the dip and failed to turn, hadn’t even hit the brakes. There were no skid marks at all on the pavement. The cab was smashed to a twisted, crumpled mess and the van itself had a door hanging ajar. When I went to swing it open one of the cops yelled across to me.

  “Don’t touch the rig, please,” he said.

  “I only wanted to see—”

  “Nothing to see, mister. She’s empty, almost.”

  “Empty!” Gail’s head came up and she stared at the officer. “But Arno had a whole load of silk—en route to—”

  “That’s what the bill of lading says,” the cop said, his face wearing a wry smile. He tapped significantly on the yellow sheets attached to a clipboard, the clipboard that Arno carried in his truck. “We’re checking into this wreck all the way, so keep clear of the van.”

  Gail looked at me and I shrugged my shoulders. We spent the next hour trying to get what little information was available. A car following the truck had stopped to help and had managed to get Arno out. The men were gone now but they’d given what aid they could until the police arrived and sent for an ambulance. One fact was obvious, the officer told us; Arno hadn’t bothered with the safety belt. I didn’t use one either but Arno was more than a little proud of being safety minded, was a real bug for the web belts; and now the cop said that it hadn’t been fastened. Then the wail of a siren rolled in and before long an official car screeched to a stop near the underpass. A police sergeant got out of one side and Captain Domms out of the other.

  I moved a little farther toward the outskirts of the crowd—confidence that he wouldn’t recognize me was one thing, pushing my luck was another. It was strange to see him again. For four years I’d felt put upon in the bank robbery incident; he’d been awfully eager to have me testify and a damn sight happier still to get me off his hands after the blast. You could safely say that Captain Domms wasn’t one of my favorite people in River City; but he had a job to do and I suppose that in his way, he played it as he saw it. He was businesslike now as he went to the cop with the clipboard, listened, walked to the van, and swung the big door. But somehow I wasn’t quite sold. Four years hadn’t changed my opinion of the man—to me he was still a square peg fitting very poorly into the round hole.

  Angling over to the right spot I could see some boxes and a couple of cans about like gallon varnish tins but if Captain Domms made any sense out of them he was pretty careful to keep it to himself. A little bit later Gail and I got into the Pontiac and headed for town.

  “Will they pay enough insurance to buy another truck?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Mac.” She bit her lip momentarily and then said, “Let’s stop by the hospital and see how Arno is.”

  “Sure,” I said, but when we got to the receiving hospital Arno wasn’t there. He had died on the way without ever regaining consciousness.

  I drove Gail back to the truck office and when we pulled into the drive Bub stood in the glass porch, the phone to his ear and his arm waving excitedly as soon as he saw us. Gail hurried in to take the receiver, then came back out.

  “I have to go down to police headquarters, Mac,” she said. “They—there’s something they want to ask me.”

  “Oh?” I thought a minute, then tossed her the keys to her car. “Maybe I’d best stay here with Bub,” I said. “We’ll hold the fort until you get back.”

  It wasn’t a strong excuse but I couldn’t think of another at the moment. With a questioning look in her eyes, Gail caught the keys and got into her Pontiac. I didn’t go in for any extended explanations but I wasn’t going to force myself under the scrutiny of Domms if I could help it. Instead, because it was well past the dinner hour, I walked Bub down the street to a café, bought him a bite to eat, and then came back to the truck yard. Parking in the porch swing, I moved slowly back and forth as I weighed what little we knew about the accident. It was almost Bub’s bedtime when Gail finally drove into the driveway and got out. “What’s new downtown?” I asked.

  “Nothing important, Mac,” Gail said, but her voice made the words a lie. She turned to Bub. “It’s been a pretty tough day, Bub. Maybe you’d better turn in.”

  When we were alone on the porch I repeated my question about what might be new.
/>   “The silk was taken off the truck before the accident, Mac.”

  “Do they know where? Or who got it?”

  “Not yet. There were some boxes with scraps of silk, trimmings and the like, and there were two cans of highly combustible fluid, the same thing they sell in small cans to get the charcoal burning for a back yard barbecue. Captain Domms has a theory, but it isn’t going to help us any, I’m afraid.”

  “What theory? Why?”

  “We’re insured for accidents, Mac, but the drivers aren’t bonded. We—may not get replacement on the truck.”

  “I don’t understand, Gail.”

  “Domms thinks that Arno arranged for someone else to take the silk and intended to set a phony fire to the scraps of silk. The way Captain Domms sees it, the burned scraps would be the same as burned silk that had once been expensive merchandise—the ashes would be the same, that is, and no one would have known that the good silk wasn’t lost in the fire. But according to the theory, Arno lost control of the truck or had some sort of attack and failed to make the turn. He was wrecked while on his way to a place back on the route he should have taken.”

  “He was going to get back on the right highway, then set what he hoped would be considered a spontaneous combustion fire?”

  “Yes. And if the insurance company goes along with that they can refuse to pay off on the truck. They insure against accidents but of course in that light they couldn’t consider this to have been an accident.”

  “My God,” I said, “surely you don’t believe that Walchek—”

  “I don’t know what to believe, Mac.”

  “Is there any evidence beyond the captain’s pipe dream?”

  “Not that I know of, except the two cans of combustible fluid. But how do we prove that—where do we start to show that Arno wasn’t selling us out?”

  I said, “If I think of an answer I’ll let you know, but right now I haven’t the vaguest notion.

  It didn’t seem like a good night to hit the poolroom and somehow sleep wasn’t the answer. I read awhile, then tossed the magazine aside and began to pace the floor. Somewhere there was an inconsistency about the wreck of Arno’s truck. Several, in fact, and the seat belt was one. And of course there was always the possibility that he’d had a short snort, as someone at the accident suggested, but in the little time I’d been with Tyler, Arno hadn’t seemed like the drink-on-the-job sort of guy. And I’ve seen a lot of wrecks, including those where a drunk was piled up but the wheels don’t run a straight path to destruction. Invariably at the last moment there is at least an attempt to avoid hitting a wall or an oncoming car, but Walchek had rolled full tilt into the concrete side of the underpass.