Night Game

by Alison Gordon

  “Yeah, but what if, say, I see a guy in the hotel bar at closing time, two in the morning. He is drunk, he leaves with a woman, and the next day he strikes out twice, grounds into a double play, and makes an error? Then it has something to do with the game.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But what if he hits the game-winning home run?”

  “I’d vote for the woman on the player-of-the-game ballot!”

  We all laughed.

  “Anyway, enough about my journalistic ethics,” I said. “I need some help.”

  I ran down the highlights of the information I had gathered so far, and asked them to help me make a map of who lived where in the complex. Gloves went to get paper while Karin poured our coffees.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said. “We can do the layout better if we look at it.”

  The Gardiners had one of the larger ground-level apartments in the two-storey complex, with a patio under the overhang of the upper floor’s balcony. We sat at a round table looking out over the pool. There were half a dozen kids splashing in the shallow end, being watched by a glum-looking teenager, while the mothers tanned their oiled bodies. I guess they hadn’t heard the news about skin cancer.

  The condo was built around three sides of the pool, opening to the west, overlooking the gulf. There was a ten-foot-high wall between it and the beach, with a wrought-iron double gate in the middle.

  The Gardiner’s apartment was in the central wing, second from the end. There were five apartments up and five down. The side wings had three up and three down each, with stairs curving up each end of the units.

  “The ones at the sides are the smaller apartments,” Karin explained. “That’s where the bachelors stay, or the ones whose families aren’t coming down.”

  “Are all the places rented by Titans?” I asked.

  “All but one in this building are,” Gloves said, “same in the north wing over there, except for the super’s place. The other wing is being renovated, so it’s empty right now.”

  I got out my pen and drew three boxes to represent the buildings. I divided them lengthwise in halves, then made four vertical divisions in the main building and two in the side ones.

  “All right,” I said. “Looking from the pool towards this building, who is where?”

  Karin leaned over my shoulder and pointed, indicating the first apartment on the left.

  “Here is Eddie Carter and his family, then comes us, then the Sloanes. Goober Grabowski is in the next one. His family isn’t arriving until next week. The Swains are on the far end. Upstairs is Jack Asher, the new DH, and his family. The one next to him, right above us, is the retired couple from New York. Then comes Bobby Marchese and his family, next to the Costellos.”

  “We call that Little Italy,” Gloves said.

  “Kid Cooper is in the last one with his wife and new baby,” Karin continued.

  “Where was Dommy staying?” I asked.

  “Okay, that’s in the other building,” she said, pointing to the corner unit. “He was in Alex Jones’s place, on the bottom floor, nearest this building. Archie Griffin was next to him, then Joe Kelsey. On the second floor, Flakey lives on top of Alex and Dommy next to Atsuo Watanabe, who sort of keeps to himself. The far one on that floor is Axel Bonder, the super.”

  “Who is one seriously weird guy,” Gloves said.

  “So I’ve heard,” I said. “He also could have a connection to this case.”

  I told them about his mentally ill son, Lucy’s former boyfriend.

  “He is also rumoured to have a pointy hood and white sheet hanging in his closet, so framing Dommy would make him happy. And, he has access to the apartment. So I think we should check him out. Where was he that night?”

  “Probably spying from behind the curtains,” Karin said. “He’s a real whatchamacallit. Voyeur. He always waits until there are a bunch of us out sunbathing before he does the pool and garden work. I can’t remember if he was around that night.”

  “And aside from him, it’s just the team staying here?”

  “Right now, yes.”

  “And last week, when the murder happened?”

  “Well, there were some outsiders at the party,” Gloves said. “Most of the players were here and some brought local girls as dates.”

  “Including Lucy,” I said.

  “Yes, including Lucy” said Gloves.

  “Was she here as a date?”

  “I think she was doing an interview and was sort of asked to stay.”

  “Who by?”

  “I guess Dommy and Glen Milhouse,” Karin said.

  “My competition,” Gloves said.

  “He’s a cute guy,” Karin teased.

  “Who was she mainly with?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t keeping track,” Gloves said.

  “I was,” interrupted Karin. “She was flirting with everybody, and Dommy wasn’t happy about it. Although I hate to say it. But he was sulking, while she danced with other guys, especially Glen.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Go ahead, sweetie, tell her,” she said to her husband.

  “Okay, I’d better,” Gloves said. “There was kind of a scene when she was talking with a group of guys and their wives. She was asking Tracy Swain about their little girl and Stinger lost it. He was screaming at her and calling her all sorts of names.”

  “I thought he was going to hit her,” Karin said. “All Lucy did was ask when her first birthday was.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Goober grabbed Stinger and got him out of there. Lucy went back to dancing.”

  “That was pretty cool of her,” I said.

  “She seemed to think it was funny,” Karin said. “I asked her if she needed anything, but she said she was fine.”

  “What time did this happen?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t paying attention to the time, but it was pretty late,” Gloves said. “Everyone was pretty much out of it.”

  “Especially Stinger,” Karin said.

  “And Lucy,” countered Gloves.

  “Would it have been after midnight?”

  “Maybe,” Gloves said. “We went to bed not too much later.”

  “So you didn’t see Lucy leave? Or see Stinger again?”

  “No, as far as I know, Goober took him to the beach to cool off.”

  “But I saw Goober again, honey,” Karin said, urgently. “Remember? He was throwing up in the garden when I went to the kitchen to get ice water for you.”

  “And Stinger wasn’t with him?”

  “No. I didn’t see Stinger at all.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” I said.

  “But that was around the time Lucy got shot,” Karin said.

  “What was?” asked a new voice. We looked up.

  “You keep playing detective, one day you’re going to get into trouble,” said Stinger Swain, standing not two feet away in his bathing suit, with a towel around his neck.

  “It’s a waste of time, anyway,” he continued. “The little spic did it. No question. She was showing him up. He had the gun. Maybe smoked a little too much reefer, had a few too many beers, and he snapped.”

  He sighted down the barrel of his right index finger.

  “Kapow,” he said, then blew away imaginary smoke. “Goodbye Lucy.”

  Chapter 24

  We all tried to ignore the remark, but Stinger kept rolling. He couldn’t let it alone.

  “You can’t say she wasn’t asking for it. And those Dominicans have got the big macho-attitude. She should have known better than to jerk his chain that way.”

  “Leave it alone, Stinger,” Gloves said. “This is none of your business.”

  “It’s none of her business either,” Stinger said, then turned to me. “You should stick
to writing your stupid articles, keeping the assholes in the stands coming back for more. But not you. You gotta go where you don’t belong and get in and stir it up. You’re just all bent out of shape because one of your little bobos got in trouble.”

  “Well, you’re right about one thing,” I said. “I don’t think that Dommy killed Lucy. But that’s not because of any special relationship you seem to imagine I’ve got with him.”

  I have a terrible tendency to get pompous when I get mad.

  “He’s not one of Katie’s Cuties? Don’t shit me.”

  “What are you talking about?” I was getting mad.

  “Wait a minute,” Karin said. “You’re way off base here. Kate’s a fair reporter.”

  “Thanks, Karin,” I said. “But don’t waste your breath.”

  Stinger laughed—a sarcastic, incredulous sound.

  “Fair to your old man, maybe,” he said. “Fair to that faggot Joe Kelsey and his girlfriend Eddie Carter. And her darling Tiny Washington. She likes niggers. And all the Dominicans. They’re niggers and spics, even better. She’s fair to the pitchers because she thinks they’re smarter than us. But the day she gives me any good ink, is a day I’m never going to see, because I won’t kiss her ass like the rest of you do.”

  Gloves stood up and put his arm around the third baseman.

  “Hey man, I didn’t think you cared,” he said, laughing. “That’s what you always say. You let your numbers speak, right? Go have your swim and cool off. We got business to discuss.”

  “Well, excuuse me,” he Steve Martined, then strolled slowly over to the beach gate and out.

  “He doesn’t use the pool?”

  “No,” Karin said. “Haven’t you heard? Real men don’t swim in pools. He challenges the mighty ocean every day.”

  “At least the not-so-mighty gulf,” I said.

  “Right,” Karin said. “Big challenge.”

  “He really is a jerk,” Gloves said. “It’s too bad he’s such a good player.”

  Karin glared at him, but said nothing. She began to gather the coffee things from the table. I offered to help and followed her into the kitchen.

  “What a pig,” I said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she said. “There are times I’d leave him if it wasn’t for the kids.”

  “I meant Stinger,” I said, startled.

  “Oh, him,” she laughed. “Him I would’ve left long ago.”

  “Why does Tracy stick around?”

  “Money,” she said. “Status. She grew up beautiful but poor. Being a big-league star’s wife is as good as it’s going to get. Wearing diamonds that spell out his name. Driving her little white Porsche with the personalized plates.”

  “But that can’t make up for being married to someone like him,” I said.

  “Tracy isn’t what you might call deep,” Karin said. “Possessions mean a lot to her, and she doesn’t want to give them up.”

  “Now that she has found Jesus, you’d think that she would be renouncing all those material things.”

  Karin laughed.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, loading cups into the dishwasher. “Tracy Swain is never going to get so religious she gives away her trinkets to the poor. Last year, for example, I thought she was finally going to split. Then he bought her a bunch of jewellery and her new fur coat, and she was good wifey again. Since she’s found God, though, it’s worse. You never see them touch and they hardly ever speak to each other. Sometimes it looks as if she hates him, but she seems to enjoy it, too.”

  “Maybe he’s her cross to bear.”

  “Yeah, the gold-plated kind,” Karin said.

  “Some kind of weird relationship,” I agreed.

  “Welcome to baseball.”

  “Come on, Karin,” I said. “Gloves is a classy guy. Compared to other players, he’s a prince.”

  “Sure, but compared to real human beings, he’s still a ballplayer. The team loyalty shit really gets to me. Stinger is a good third baseman, so we have to tolerate him? That stinks.”

  She stopped, then laughed.

  “Oh, don’t listen to me,” she said. “This happens every spring. We have a great winter, just the family. Then we come down here and I have to get used to the guy with the game face on. It’s always hard to adjust at first.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But you’re right,” she said. “And I do love and appreciate my husband. I just sometimes wish he did something different for a living.”

  “In not too many years, he will,” I said.

  “With my luck, he’ll become a coach,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “The same schedule, with twice the responsibility, three times the stress, and about a tenth of the salary.”

  We both laughed and went back outside. Gloves was next door with Eddie Carter and Joe Kelsey. They called us over.

  “What this? An official meeting of my bobos?” I asked. “Better not let Stinger see us.”

  “Clarice says the cops were here again today,” Eddie said. “There was something about another gun?”

  “Oh, my Cod,” I said. “I forgot to tell you. Sorry.”

  I went over the story and its possible ramifications one more time.

  “When did this happen?”

  “I guess when we were at the funeral,” Eddie said, then called his wife.

  “It was just after you all left,” she said. “They went to Alex’s place and went through it again.”

  “Did they have a search warrant?” I asked.

  “I think Alex told them they could. He told me about the gun after he got back from practice.”

  “Where did it come from?” I asked. “Do you know any details?”

  “Some kid found it in the water yesterday,” Clarice said. “Can you imagine such a thing? He took it home and hid it in his room. He was only ten years old. His mother found it this morning and called the police. Alex says it looks like Dommy’s gun. But so did the other one.”

  “It was a .38, right?” Gloves asked.

  “Cop gun,” Eddie said. I made a note to check what the Sunland police use.

  “Well, it all gets curiouser and curiouser,” I said. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll keep in touch. I’m talking to the mother tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for everything, Kate,” Karin said.

  I went past Stinger’s place on my way out. Tracy was sitting at her patio table, painting her nails with purply-pink polish, while reading a matching leather-bound bible. She greeted me distantly, then went back to her project.

  I walked past the steps leading up to Flakey’s place to the parking lot, past the ground-floor back entrances. The guy in the coverall I’d talked to the first time I had been there was putting garbage into a large bin at one end of the building.

  “Mr. Bonder?” I asked, coming up behind him. His body tensed, and he turned. His was a bitter face, lined heavily under thinning grey hair, slicked back. He wore glasses and looked to be in his late fifties. It’s hard to tell with Florida faces, hides tanned in decades of sun.

  “Looking for something?” he asked.

  “You are Mr. Bonder?”

  He grudgingly admitted his identity, and I introduced myself.

  “Were you here the night the murder happened?”

  “I’m always here,” he said. “Except Sundays when I go see my boy.”

  “Yes, I heard he wasn’t well,” I said. “I’m sorry. He was there last week, was he?”

  “Who told you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, regretting my loose tongue.

  “It’s none of your business, anyway, my family. What do you want? I’ve seen you here before.”

  “Last week,” I agreed. “I’m a reporter for a newspaper in Toronto.”

  “A reporter,” he s
aid, then spat.

  “I guess you see a lot of things around here,” I ventured. “You know what’s going on.”

  “I mind my own business,” he said.

  “What about the party last Friday?” I plowed on. “Were you there?”

  “They don’t give invitations to the employees,” he said, dragging out the last word sarcastically.

  “Did you see anything that went on?”

  “I might have looked out once or twice,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep, with all that noise. Saw her dancing and carrying on.”

  “Lucy?”

  “Shameless. Dancing pert’ near naked, far as I could see.”

  “You’re talking about the murdered girl.”

  “Some would say she got what she deserved,” he said.

  “Would you say that?”

  He stared at a point over my right shoulder.

  “None of my business.”

  “Did you happen to notice when Lucy left, that night?”

  “Can’t say I did.”

  “Was the gate to the beach open?”

  “Not by me.”

  “Do you have the only key?”

  “Tenants have ’em, too,” he said, still looking over my shoulder.

  “What about security? Who is in charge of locking it at night?”

  “Last person to use it.”

  This line of questioning was getting me nowhere. I tried another tack.

  “How long have you been the superintendent here?”

  “Five years.”

  “So you’ve known some of these players for all that time?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Do you decide who gets which apartment?”

  “What if I do?”

  “Nothing. I just wondered how you decide who gets what.”

  “Some of them have favourites. The ones here longer get their choice.”

  And the ones who grease the super’s hand, probably.

  “Which are popular ones?” I asked.

  He shrugged; a small, stiff gesture.

  “Ground floor for them with children and them who like a party, I guess. Upstairs for them who want some privacy.”

  “Are there a lot of parties?”