Intent to Kill

by James Grippando

  What really blew people away, however, was his ability to work anagrams in his head.

  “Hey, Babes,” a Sox player called out from the line of batters. It was Ivan Lopez, the team’s ace pitcher and jokester, and Ryan’s best friend. Ivan cupped his hands over his mouth and shifted to his stadium-announcer voice, as if it were suddenly the bottom of the ninth inning at famous Fenway Park: “Next batter for the Boston Red Sox, the designated hitter: number thirty-four, David Ortiz.”

  The wheels immediately began to spin in Babes’s head, and he worked it out aloud, rearranging the name of one of the most famous Boston Red Sox sluggers into something else entirely: “David Ortiz, David Ortiz—Diva or ditz?”

  That one just about had Ivan and the rest of the players rolling on the grass. Babes and his anagrams were a steady source of entertainment for Ryan and his teammates. The possibilities were endless. A diehard Sox fan, Babes, of course, hated that team in pinstripes from the Bronx: Yankee Stadium became “Nauseate my kid.” The great Ted Williams was “I’m still awed.” And on it went. It was such a compulsion that sometimes he was even forced to insult his own favorite team: “Red Sox win the World Series” became “Ex-losers with new disorder.”

  “Say good-bye to that one,” said Ivan at the crack of the bat. Ryan had just sent his third consecutive home run over the left-field wall, this one right between the billboard ads for Honey Dew Donuts and Hasbro’s Mr. Potato Head. It was only practice, but he seemed to be on fire.

  “Little wager on four in a row?” asked Ryan.

  “Only if I’m pitching,” said Ivan. He picked up his mitt, but before he could take step one toward the pitcher’s mound, the PawSox manager emerged from the dugout.

  “Save it for tonight, boys.”

  “Come on, Coach,” said Ivan. “It’s only going to take me three pitches to strike him out.”

  Ryan howled.

  “I said save it.” His hands were on his hips, a surefire sign that he wasn’t kidding around.

  Manager Joe Bedford was a foulmouthed, tobacco-chewing baseball relic who everyone said would probably be buried in his uniform. He was usually easygoing, but things were serious today. They were just three hours away from the final game of minor-league regular-season play—the PawSox against the Toledo Mud Hens. Since 1896 the Mud Hens had served as the minor-league affiliate of several major-league teams—the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, Cleveland Indians, and Minnesota Twins—but perhaps no one did more to put the team on the map than the character Klinger on the old television hit M* A* S* H, the diehard Mud Hen fan from Toledo whose dresses and high heels never did get him kicked out of the army. The PawSox and the Mud Hens were the two best teams in the International League, and tonight’s game in Pawtucket was seen as a preview of the postseason championship. Ivan was slated to be the starting pitcher. With a wicked breaking ball and the lowest earned-run average in the minor leagues, Ivan was without question on his way up to the majors next season. No one begrudged his success. Every Triple-A team had its share of bitterness—players who’d been passed over year after year or, even worse, who’d tasted the major leagues for a time, only to be sent back down to the minors. But even they had to recognize a future star like Ivan.

  “Come over here, you two goofballs.” Bedford was smiling now, looking more like his normal self.

  Ryan and Ivan jogged to the dugout. Ryan said, “What’s up, Coach?”

  “Got some news for you. Wasn’t going to say anything tonight, but you’re big-league material, and you can handle the pressure.”

  Ryan braced himself. It didn’t sound like he was being fired, but in the minor leagues you never knew. “What are you telling us?” said Ryan.

  “John Henry will be here watching tonight’s game.”

  Ryan felt a rush. Henry was the principal owner of the major-league Boston Red Sox.

  The manager said, “He’s got two players on his short list. I have it on good authority that it’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

  “I think he means us,” said Ivan.

  “I must be Dee,” Ryan said. “Which makes you Dum.”

  Bedford rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why, but I’m gonna miss you guys. Please, just don’t blow it tonight, all right?”

  Ryan couldn’t wait to share the news with Chelsea. As soon as the team finished practice and hit the clubhouse showers, he grabbed his cell phone from his locker and hit speed dial number one. The call went to her voice mail. He was about to leave a message, but he’d already pressured her enough. More than anything, he wanted her to want to come tonight.

  He put the phone away, hoping not to be disappointed.

  Chelsea James was having a bad day.

  The Boston area was well known for its prep schools—Phillips, Milton, Roxbury Latin, Groton, and Winsor, to name a few—but for the one-stop option of “pre-K through 12,” Brookline Academy, where Chelsea taught, was of singular distinction. The upper grades had a separate facility to accommodate boarding students. Preteens attended classes on the original campus, where the ivy-clad halls were among the finest examples of neo-Gothic architecture outside Europe, inspired by the British Houses of Parliament. Ninety-five percent of the faculty had a postgraduate degree, and no class was larger than twelve students. Annual tuition was roughly the cost of a luxury sedan. To families that didn’t qualify for financial aid, it was nothing compared to what their children would be asked to donate after they graduated. An alumni roster that read like “Who’s Who in America” funded an eight-figure endowment.

  Chelsea’s trouble began at her 7:45 A.M. meeting with the headmaster to discuss the all-important fund-raising auction at the school’s upcoming gala, which she had volunteered to help organize. Chelsea thought it would be nice if students in the lower grades worked with their teachers to create quilts as one of the marquee items.

  “I’m excited about these quilts,” said Chelsea.

  The headmaster was smiling, but that was not necessarily a good sign. Arguments were not allowed at the academy, only “discussions”—by edict and by example of the headmaster, a consummate administrator and gifted peacemaker who had the ability to smile through the worst of circumstances, whether she was telling you that your house was on fire or, far worse, that your child wasn’t going to be in the math honors program. She reminded Chelsea of Margaret Thatcher with a New England accent.

  “Anything wrong?” said Chelsea.

  The headmaster folded her hands atop the antique mahogany desk that had served her for the past twenty-nine years, and every head before her.

  “Chelsea, I like you very much. But do you have any idea how much our annual auction raises for the school?”

  “A lot of money.”

  “A lot of money,” she said. “Now, why don’t you try thinking more along the lines of an annual pass to Canyon Ranch or lunch with Baryshnikov? Starting now.”

  For a moment, Chelsea thought she was serious, but then they shared a genuine smile. As the headmaster escorted her out of her office, she tossed enough bones of praise to keep Chelsea from feeling completely shot down. The quilts were dead, but Chelsea reminded herself that a woman didn’t get to be the Margaret Thatcher of Brookline Academy by thinking small. This was a great school, and Chelsea hoped that in a year Ainsley would enroll as a three-year-old in the preschool program. Every institution had its bureaucratic land mines.

  But why did Chelsea seem to be stepping on every single one of them today?

  At 4:00 P.M. the entire faculty was summoned to the upper-grade campus for “a very important meeting.” Getting to Ryan’s game on time was going to be next to impossible, and Chelsea was already starting to feel it. Guilt. With a two-year-old daughter who saw her mother so little that she sometimes called her grandmother Mama, her heart had no more room for it.

  She made a quick stop in the faculty restroom and checked herself in the mirror. Chelsea had the heart-shaped face of a classic beauty, but late ni
ghts with the law books had turned her into a real fan of concealer. She fixed her makeup and gave her hair ten seconds of attention. At her job interview a year ago it had been long and blond, but on the headmaster’s advice, she never wore it down on campus, and she’d colored it a slightly darker honey shade. Ryan said he liked it, but she still wasn’t sure.

  She entered the conference room two minutes early and took the seat nearest the door. She was leaving at four-thirty, not a minute later. Only the truly important meetings at the academy were convened with no advance notice of the time or topic, no chance for the faculty to shape its collective thought into any form of meaningful opposition. But at this point, she didn’t care if the meeting was about the closing of the school. She couldn’t let Ryan down. Not again—and definitely not at the last ball game of the season. She was determined to get there on time.

  Even if it killed her.

  2

  SEVEN-THIRTY WAS GAME TIME IN PAWTUCKET.

  The final home game of the PawSox season was a sellout, but the seats behind home plate that Ryan had scored for Chelsea and Ainsley were empty.

  “Play ball!” cried the home-plate umpire.

  The crowd cheered the PawSox players onto the field. Ivan was all business as he climbed atop the mound and started his warm-up pitches. Ryan and the other infielders scooped up practice ground balls and fired them to first base. The PawSox manager paced nervously in the dugout, chomping on his plug of chewing tobacco while checking his crumpled roster card. The sun had set, the lights were up, and the National Anthem had been sung. It was sixty-two degrees, with not a cloud in the raven sky, and a light breeze was blowing out over the left-field wall. The night was perfect for a ball game.

  Where the heck are you, Chelsea? Ryan thought as he settled into position. The PA system crackled with the introduction of the Mud Hens’ first batter. A wiry young man from Puerto Rico stepped up to the plate, crossed himself, kissed his gold crucifix, tugged at his crotch, spit in the dirt, and then glared at Ivan with contempt. Ivan wiped his brow into his sleeve and looked over at Ryan, who gave him a little nod for encouragement. The first two pitches popped like gunshots in the catcher’s mitt. A rumble of approval emerged from the crowd, and on the third pitch the batter chased after a knuckle curveball that he couldn’t have hit with a tennis racket. Gone in sixty seconds. The PawSox faithful cheered, and one of Ivan’s fans started the strikeout count by hanging a card with the letter K on the fence by the bullpen.

  Ivan was unbeatable when he started out this strong. If Chelsea didn’t arrive soon, she’d miss the entire first inning.

  Keep your head in the game, James, Ryan told himself. But it was hugely disappointing. The final game of the season. The principal owner of the Red Sox in attendance. Ryan could feel the electricity in the air, the excitement of the fans. Ten thousand people had managed to arrive on time. How many of them were married to a player on the field who had dreamed of baseball since he was five years old and was now on the short list for the major leagues?

  At the crack of the bat, a screaming line drive sizzled down the third-base line. Ryan went completely horizontal, diving to his right, and snagged it for the out.

  “Attaboy, Ryan!” his manager shouted from the dugout.

  Ryan dusted himself off and fired the ball off to the second baseman. Ivan gave him a look that said Thanks for saving my ass. Half the crowd gave him a standing ovation. The play was a defensive gem worthy of the ESPN highlight reel.

  And Chelsea had missed it.

  Two outs. The Mud Hens sent their third hitter to the plate, a big left-hander who rarely hit the ball to the left side of the field. Ryan shifted a few steps closer to the shortstop, then glanced over to the dugout to make sure the manager was happy with the defensive adjustment. The manager wasn’t looking at him and was instead talking on the telephone, which was odd. He used the phone only to communicate with the bullpen, which usually meant a change of pitchers. Surely they weren’t thinking of taking Ivan out of the game.

  Ryan checked the seats behind home plate one more time. No Chelsea.

  He glanced again into the dugout on the third-base side. The manager was still on the telephone. He was pacing now, but it wasn’t the thinking man’s long, deliberative walk from one end of the dugout to the other. These were spasmodic bursts, no more than two or three steps in one direction before he turned and marched back the other way. Clearly he was upset.

  Ivan hurled the first pitch to the new batter. Ryan heard the pop but didn’t see the ball hit the mitt. His focus was elsewhere, his gaze shifting back and forth from the empty seats behind home plate to the PawSox dugout. His fingers tingled with a strange numbness. The familiar game noises—the jabbering of fans, the hawking of vendors, the stadium music—suddenly sounded foreign to him. Things didn’t seem to be moving at the right speed. He was picking up a very bad vibe.

  The manager was still on the phone.

  Chelsea’s and Ainsley’s seats were still empty.

  Ryan knew his manager’s mannerisms well, and the old man didn’t appear to be upset. He seemed distraught. Finally, the phone call ended. The manager signaled the umpire for a time-out and called a player off the bench. After a moment of surprise, the kid, just two weeks out of Double-A ball, jumped up, grabbed his cap and mitt, and ran out of the dugout. He went straight to Ryan.

  “Coach needs to see you,” he said, not looking Ryan in the eye.

  Ryan knew this was no routine substitution, not with the owner of the Red Sox in the stadium to watch Ryan and the other players on his short list. Ivan stepped off the mound, confused. Ryan’s teammates on the field looked at one another and shrugged, and the wave of speculation carried over with equal force to the opposing team’s dugout. The fans, too, seemed baffled, and a few started booing the decision to pull Ryan from the game. The umpire behind home plate removed his mask and planted his hands on his hips, as if to say that someone owed him an explanation.

  Ryan jogged to the dugout, slowly at first, then faster, reeled in by his manager’s seeming refusal—no, inability—to look at him. Finally, his gaze met Ryan’s, and the expression on his face was unlike any Ryan had ever seen before. His lips moved, but it was as if no words would come, and when this big bear of a man could hardly find the strength to put his arm around Ryan, it was painfully obvious that something terrible had happened.

  “It’s bad, son,” was all the old man could bring himself to say.

  3

  RYAN RODE SHOTGUN AS THE TEAM CAR SPED TOWARD MEMORIAL Hospital, the major trauma center in the area. There hadn’t even been time for him to retrieve his own phone and car keys from his locker. One of the PawSox trainers drove while Ryan tried to gather information on the cell phone he’d borrowed from him.

  “Faster, you gotta go faster,” said Ryan.

  They were already doing seventy in a forty-mile-per-hour zone. The trainer edged it up past seventy-five.

  “Let me call you back,” Ryan told his father-in-law on the line. “I want to check with the hospital again.”

  The only thing he knew for certain was that there had been an automobile accident, a serious one. Both Chelsea and Ainsley had been in the car, and both were alive when the ambulance had arrived at the hospital. The ER nurse had shared all this information in the previous phone conversation with Ryan just minutes earlier, and she had nothing new for him when he got her on the line again. She could only confirm what he already knew. He closed the flip phone.

  “How much farther?” Ryan asked.

  “Two minutes.”

  “Make it one.”

  Ninety seconds later the car screeched to a halt at Memorial’s emergency entrance. Ryan jumped out, the pneumatic doors parted, and he ran straight into ER pandemonium. A drug addict paced across the waiting area, arguing with the television set. An old man with an icepack on his head was mumbling about some kid who’d gotten away with his dog and his wallet. A homeless woman with mouth agape, and no teeth, slept in the
chair beside him. Pawtucket wasn’t Newport, and while violent crime no longer riddled neighborhoods like Pleasant View and Woodlawn the way it had in the 1980s and ’90s, 30 percent of families with young kids here lived below the poverty line. The crowded ER waiting room was graphic testimony of the city’s continuing problems with crime, drugs, and general hard living.

  Ryan threw a quick glance at the mob scene around the registration desk and kept running. He’d visited this same ER last year for his shoulder, so he didn’t need directions to the examination bays down the hall and just beyond the double set of doors.

  “Sir!”

  He tried to keep going, but the intake nurse practically tackled him.

  “I need to see my wife and daughter! Where are they?”

  The PawSox uniform left no doubt as to his identity. The nurse checked her clipboard. “Your wife is in surgery right now.”

  “How’s Ainsley?”

  “Your daughter is going to be fine,” she said in a voice that tried to calm him.

  “I didn’t ask how she’s going to be. I said how is she.”

  “Fortunately, your daughter was in the rear seat in a child safety restraint. Her injuries are minor.”

  “Thank God.” Never before had Ryan felt such relief and terror simultaneously; he was afraid to ask the next question. “What happened to Chelsea?”

  “Right now I think you need to be with your daughter.”

  “What happened to Chelsea?” he said, completely unaware that he was shouting.

  The nurse didn’t flinch. She was a pro. “Her injuries were more serious. As soon as we have any news from the OR, I will let you know.”

  “I need to be with her,” he said as he tried to push past.

  She took his elbow. “You can’t.”

  “Which way is it?”

  “Please, Mr. James. It’s a sterile environment.”

  Ryan’s uniform was covered in red clay from his diving catch at third base. “I can scrub.”