Ball Park

by John Farrow

  The Role

  (Whisky warriors)

  ‘So,’ Ciampini summed up, ‘you’re looking for some girl. A man like you I don’t insult, but isn’t everybody?’

  ‘So don’t insult me, Joe. I praise you. You’re an intelligent man. How else could you elude me all these years? I’m heading into my bloody retirement without my number one prize. And that, Joe, is you.’

  ‘Can’t help you put me away, Armand. Can’t help with the girl neither. If I could, I would.’

  ‘Let’s say somebody else grabbed her. Could you help me then?’

  The crime boss grimaced. In that situation, he could help.

  ‘Then if you won’t help me, what does that show?’

  Ciampini mulled over the implication that all but proved his guilt. If he was unable to help the captain, then he must be holding the girl. ‘You’re a tricky fucker. That’s not an insult. If I’ve been smart enough to escape you, is because I had to be. The man after me is one tricky cop. Tough, too. I hire mean guys. But tough guys? They’re a different breed. I think of you first.’

  ‘Listen to us, so kind to each other. I want you locked up, you want me in a box underground.’

  ‘Visit me in Tuscany. I’ll settle for that.’

  ‘I’ll settle for you living there. But, like you, I can’t go just yet.’

  ‘This girl. Why so important?’

  Touton accepted that he owed Ciampini an explanation. Why freeing the girl mattered more than the man’s head floating in a soup tureen.

  ‘Look at life differently, Joe. You win this round. Hell, I’ll give you the fight. Split decision. You win it.’

  ‘How you figure?’

  ‘Let’s say I have the baseball in my possession. I could show it to you. The girl walks on the streets again, but I don’t have your ass in the can. For her to be safe, I need to bargain with you. What’s my bargaining chip? I give up your arrest, in exchange I get her release. An OK trade. Except, it defeats me. I fail in the main mission of my career to take down Giuseppe Ciampini.’

  ‘You can’t win them all. I did not win them all.’

  Ciampini was easing into their talk and adopting a vaguely wistful manner. Two old guys, evoking the old days while ruminating on a current dispute. Despite their differences, comrades-in-arms. Old foes who could let bygones be bygones. Touton wanted to lull this man if not into trusting him – too much to ask – then into underestimating him.

  ‘Joe, I lose twice. Imagine this girl walking the streets. A thief again, or she goes to school, marries, has kids. Whatever she does, she’s vulnerable. She doesn’t have the baseball because let’s say I found it and gave it back to you, but she still has a story to tell connected to the baseball. A risky tale. Your rivals can extract that story if they want. If she is grabbed again, made to tell the tale of a baseball stolen from the home of your daughter, how safe is that for you? I wouldn’t be using the word “vulnerable”.’

  ‘My rivals?’ Almost a scoff.

  ‘Your cousins, family. I don’t want to say.’

  ‘If they think a story exists,’ Ciampini conceded, ‘somebody might ask her to tell it. Verify old talk. Safe? Does not look like it to me.’

  ‘My point. Who has heard this story? Savina’s husband? Dead now. Arturo Maletti? Maybe yes, maybe no. But, he’s dead too. And Quinn Tanner. Who is missing. Not yet presumed dead. At least, I have not dredged the river. She can say where a baseball with a certain signature and another name on it – Mr Sal – was hiding in recent times.’

  Ciampini clicked his fingers. ‘Patron!’

  The owner came through the swinging door.

  Ciampini indicated the empty glasses. The restaurateur skipped back to the kitchen to fetch the bottles and returned to their table in a jiff. He poured and, upon receiving a nod from both men to indicate their thanks, departed.

  ‘The cousins,’ Ciampini confided, ‘fingered me for the hit. They’re not stupid. But I’m family, too.’

  ‘Good point, Joe. Here’s mine. They had suspicions. Only that. Suspicions forgive, suspicions forget. To do so is good for business, and you made sure that business was good. But proof? Proof changes everything. With proof, you must do something. You cannot lose face. The something they do will not be good for you.’

  As Touton rendered his opinion, Ciampini reviewed the matter in his own way.

  ‘You don’t have the baseball,’ he stated.

  ‘True. The exercise last night, which I might start up again when we’re done here, depends on how this goes. That exercise has two purposes. One, find and release the girl. Two, find the baseball to convince the New York families that you murdered their favorite uncle.’

  ‘You’re a cruel man, Captain.’

  Touton laughed. ‘I’m searching for a bargaining chip that works. The baseball could work. The ball for the girl. A trade. What do you think?’

  ‘You, so optimistic in your nature. This is a dirty town. If this ball, like magic, shows up with Jackie’s signature and the old godfather’s name on it, I’m sorry to tell you it doesn’t prove I whacked someone who is dead long ago. These days, I’m a peaceful man. I will be left alone.’

  Touton deflected the man’s opinion of himself with a dip of his chin. ‘You weren’t always peaceful. Like me. I used to beat the crap out of the bad guys. Sometimes your own boys. These days? I go through the courts.’

  ‘You’re like me. You miss the old ways. Which is why last night. Attacking, raiding my places, roughing up my waiters, my busboys, scaring my girls, arresting … These are innocent people. This might be a kick for you, Armand, but it’s not civilized. It’s beneath you, Armand.’

  ‘Kidnapping an innocent girl, that’s not beneath you, Joe?’

  ‘It’s a tough town. What is it we can do to improve the situation? Yours and mine. Explain it to me. Like I say, the ball proves nothing except to put a bad idea inside the wrong head. And still a girl walking on the sidewalk on a sunny day is not safe.’

  ‘Let’s say I have the baseball, find it before you do. Let’s say you have the girl. You don’t, you tell me. Fine. But let’s say you find her first.’

  ‘We’ll say those two things.’

  ‘Like in the old days, we make a deal. One you can live with when you wake up in the morning. One I can sleep with when I go to bed at night. A deal, Joe, that permits the girl to stay alive. Even when walking down the street anytime during the rest of her life. That’s the bottom line. A deal, Joe – this is the hard part – that’s never undone by nobody.’

  The tumblers revealed the first number. Jim Tanner dialed through select choices for the second and third, based on finger-oil stains. Discouragement, running each digit twice, then the next one over, two back, then switching the numbers, then trying again, then their opposites, then the safe opened. Like that. A vault of heaven winding up its doors. On his knees, Quinn’s father was too stunned to believe it. Then he experienced a release that felt heaven-sent. His life at that moment was scored as worthy.

  Trepidation quickly returned.

  He did not know what awaited him inside the safe.

  No one did. The entire gamble nothing more than a fool cop’s gambit.

  Jim Tanner took a deep breath and pulled open the safe door.

  At the front, in the center. Better than the Hope Diamond. A lonely old baseball.

  He took it out. The august signature shone under the beam of his flashlight and shocked him with its veracity. The name Jackie Robinson trammeled through him with the bright joy of childhood. He went to games back then when the first black man was playing in the white man’s leagues. So much hope, so much wonder, so much joy in childhood. Now life burned through him again, with the twin blessings of hope and wonder. Quinn might be freed by the ball’s retrieval.

  Another name on the ball. A blast from the past. Mr Sal. A mob boss.

  Time to get a move on.

  Jim Tanner scooped up his tools, repacked them, dropped the baseball in the bag
and locked the safe. He was leaving bracelets and necklaces behind, rings and earrings, diamonds, gold and precious stones. In the old days, a killing. All that valuable junk was meaningless and worthless to him now. If he ever doubted it, he no longer did: He was a thief no more.

  Set to leave, Jim Tanner slid open the heavy bolts on the rear door. Then returned to the alarm box to determine what might be accomplished. Alarms were never his specialty, and this one required cutting a wire. He flipped a coin in his head to choose which one. Snipped the blue. Wrong choice. The alarm was nasty. Loud and grating and pulsing. He skipped to the rear door, tried tugging it open. It wouldn’t budge. The noise was bursting through his head now, wrecking his nervous system. He went over the door with his flashlight beam, hunting a hidden latch or a secret lock. Nothing. Then the alarm saved him. It infuriated him, a useful rage. Frustrated, desperate, he heaved on the latch and, stupidly, heaved again. Convinced now that he was trapped inside, that he’d be caught, that Quinn would die, that he’d not be free to exact revenge on the mob bosses, he hurled himself against the damn door.

  Suddenly, it gave way. Merely stuck, having not been opened for millennia.

  He shoved it further and stepped outside.

  As he closed the door behind him, a car came speeding down the laneway.

  It braked hard.

  He tumbled into the back seat and pulled the car door shut.

  As they tore off, he looked up. ‘Who’re you guys?’ he asked, fearful again.

  He was expecting Émile Cinq-Mars. Neither of these two were him. Then he recognized the Einstein haircut. Caron turned around in the passenger seat and said, ‘Detective Cinq-Mars has a lead on your daughter, Mr Tanner. We got a real chance here. Did you get the ball?’

  Jim Tanner clutched the man’s shoulder and squeezed hard. Caron yelped, and flinched from the pain.

  The restaurant owner ventured into the room. Sheepish, he was frightened to intrude. He addressed Captain Touton. ‘Sir, the telephone. A message.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  The man appeared embarrassed, as though his news was not sufficiently consequential for the proceedings.

  ‘Jackie Robinson.’

  He attempted to apologize. ‘I’m sorry, sir, your man told me to say only that.’

  ‘Appreciated.’

  Giuseppe Ciampini raised his right hand. ‘Bruschetta. Do you have? For two.’

  Delighted, the patron leaped to do his bidding. He made the best bruschetta in the business.

  Touton failed to contain his glee. ‘I’ll tell you what that message means.’

  ‘Code,’ Ciampini assumed.

  ‘The baseball is mine. Got it first, before you. Now, we talk about releasing the girl. I can take that ball down to New York myself. Make sure the Italian families understand its significance. Or we can talk of how the girl will miraculously be found, by you or your people, and set free.’

  Ciampini studied the cop’s rugged visage. Touton was inscrutable, yet his conviction could not be doubted. Their negotiation was no longer hypothetical. The old cop had something tangible on offer.

  Touton needed to keep the mob boss in the room. Whatever happened with the next play in their maneuver, Ciampini had to remain unaware.

  Later, his awareness might be necessary, after it was too late for him to protect himself.

  Cinq-Mars stopped one block from Savina Vaccaro Shapiro’s house.

  ‘Your trunk.’ Giroux asked, ‘Vests? Shotguns?’

  ‘It’s my personal car, Yves. Maybe next time.’

  ‘No next time if we’re dead this time. Tell me you’re armed, at least.’

  ‘Of course. You?’

  ‘Rain or shine.’ They were crawling out of the VW Bug. ‘Something else. How come her name’s Vaccaro? Why not Ciampini?’

  ‘Ah,’ Cinq-Mars said, and started in. ‘His first wife was a Vaccaro. Their wedding annulled, the Catholic Church their friend. Savina didn’t change her name after she switched families in her teens, moving in with her old man. Guess what? The first wife kicked it under mysterious circumstances.’

  ‘Mysterious how?’

  ‘Poison.’

  ‘Nice. Daddy did it?’

  ‘An accusation that didn’t stick. I might know why.’

  ‘Sure you do. Why?’

  ‘The daughter.’

  Giroux stopped walking and stared at Cinq-Mars. Then started walking again.

  ‘Not just me. The detectives thought so, too. They couldn’t make a case.’

  ‘Fine folks. You looked this up, huh? You’re one of those types. You look things up. How do we play this? Walk by? One at a time. Different directions. Call for a back-up that makes the most sense?’

  Cinq-Mars was of a different mind. ‘I say we go straight in.’

  ‘Get serious.’

  ‘We’ll take your look around, then decide.’

  ‘We’re not going in through the front door. We don’t know their firepower, their numbers. Forget it, Cinq-Mars.’

  ‘No doors. There’s another way in.’

  Giroux took two seconds to catch up. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘We’ll meet on the other side of the gate into Park Ex,’ Cinq-Mars suggested.

  ‘I’ll take the shorter walk-by. Easier for you to drag your nose the long way around than me my belly.’

  They completed a preliminary reconnaissance and passed through the gate, out of sight of the house. Traffic noise inhibited conversation. They spoke only when it let up, or when cars stopped on the red.

  ‘Nothing new,’ Giroux declared. ‘No sign of them. In a shoot-out, the girl’s their cover. Call it in. Surround, contain. Flush them with numbers.’

  ‘That makes Quinn a hostage and puts us in a weak position.’

  ‘Weak? Give us the girl or die. How is that weak?’

  ‘Bring it on and the girl dies, they say back. Then what? What if one guy prefers death to prison?’

  ‘We’ll get him psychological counselling. What do you want from me?’

  ‘I say we go in on our own recog.’

  ‘And what? Ring the doorbell? “Excuse me, ma’am. Remember us? Are you holding a young lady hostage? Could you check, please? Thanks.”’

  ‘We know the way in, Yves. It’s been done before.’

  Giroux expected his partner to come back to that. If a seventeen-year-old girl could break into the premises aided by a boy, surely two grown men could do the same.

  ‘Look,’ Cinq-Mars pressed him, ‘it’s the timing. Her life or another minute of torture. Which do you want to risk?’

  ‘I suppose you want to climb on my back.’

  ‘Your belly fat. Too much for me.’

  ‘Yeah, and you’re the one with shit for brains.’

  An impasse.

  A cop car was coming toward them from Jarry, turning onto l’Acadie. Cinq-Mars flagged it down, identified himself, and ordered the driver to park the car up ahead and hustle back on foot.

  ‘Ask,’ Giroux shouted, ‘for extra vests!’

  They didn’t normally carry them, an officer replied. They didn’t have their own, either.

  ‘Terrific,’ Giroux said when he learned that.

  Waiting for the uniforms to return, Cinq-Mars commented, ‘I recognize that guy from somewhere.’ Out of the car and on foot, the patrolman’s identity became apparent. ‘You were first on the scene,’ he said when the young man returned. ‘You found the dead boy in the car.’

  ‘Brandon Wyatt, sir. What’s going on?’

  Cinq-Mars didn’t reply. He looked in one direction, then the other, down the long stretches of chain-link fence and hedge. Something about that divide struck him. Poor on one side, nouveau riche on the other. Immigrants on one side, established generations on the other. High-density traffic and racket alongside peace and calm. One side denoted by struggle, the other by privilege. The divide spoke to him.

  ‘What?’ Giroux demanded, as though his partner had been thinking aloud.

&n
bsp; ‘Why is Quinn in Savina’s house?’ Having asked the question, he answered it. ‘Because it’s the least likely place for her to be. Not in a back room in one of Ciampini’s strip joints or bars, or in the meat locker of one of his restaurants. Not in the attic of some flophouse or junkie shooting gallery. She’s in a nice house in a quiet neighborhood, because nobody is looking for her here and we’ve been blindly raiding his other spots.’

  ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘Her house is not a fortress. They don’t expect a raid. They don’t have ten guys inside with automatic weapons. Two guys, maybe, to spell each other off. One might be sleeping, high odds on that. We can go in, Sergeant-Detective. Don’t turn this into a hostage situation. Give the word. We take them out now. We got at least a fifty-fifty chance that it’ll be easy, especially with the element of surprise and now we’ve got these two to shoot anybody who flees.’

  The uniforms glanced at each other, intrigued.

  Giroux gazed back at the house, largely hidden by the hedge. In his life and career, he’d worked both sides of a different fence. In deceiving people to believe that he worked both sides, his life and his career had been adversely affected. A sacrifice, and it wasn’t as though he couldn’t use a boost. Enjoy a victory. Take a lap. This could be that moment.

  ‘We go in,’ he said.

  ‘We seem to do better,’ Touton paused to make sure he had the right word, ‘when we talk hypothetical.’

  Ciampini was taken aback. ‘Big fucker of a word.’

  ‘How’s the bruschetta?’

  ‘Help yourself. The wine, too. You’re a Frenchman, Armand. You should drink wine, not whisky. Whisky’s for the Irish, the Scots. In our blood, the wine – for the French, the Italians.’

  ‘Whisky’s for warriors,’ Touton rhapsodized. ‘Wine, for lovers and Italians.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad that’s cleared up. But what’s going on? Do you delay here? What you want for the baseball? How we do this if I find the girl for you?’

  Touton leaned in. He glanced back, in case someone was listening at the kitchen door. He whispered, ‘What do you think about Cooperstown?’

  ‘Never been. You’re talking Hall of Fame?’

  ‘Baseball Hall of Fame,’ he repeated. ‘Yeah, baseball …’