Dead Ball

by R. D. Rosen

  Cooley thought about it for a moment, his right hand playing with one of the gold rings on his left. “But let me talk to Lassiter myself after the game. I’ll keep it low, mix it in with some other quotes about the end of the streak.”

  “Go for it,” Marshall said.

  “Make it clear I’m only doing this because of my schedule or other obligations.”

  “Good,” said Felix.

  Moss stood. “I better suit up.”

  “Sorry about the streak, Cool,” Marshall said, standing.

  “My mama said all good things come to an end.”

  Felix stood as well. “Rusansky pitched a whale of a game. Otherwise you’d still be chasing the Clipper.”

  Harvey accompanied Moss down to the clubhouse in silence.

  “It’s the best thing,” Moss said to him finally as they got off the elevator.

  “You have to do what’s comfortable,” Harvey replied. “But you should call your friend Charlie at GURCC and tell him what’s going on.”

  “I plan to.” He paused in the concrete corridor and faced Harvey. “I know you think there’s more to this, and maybe there is, but I’m going to give the man what he wants, and maybe he’ll go away satisfied. In the meantime, I want to help the team win a pennant. For now, I’ll let that be my good works.”

  In the clubhouse, Moss’s teammates delivered their death-of-the-streak condolences with silent high-fives and pats on the fanny. As he watched Moss move through the clubhouse, collecting his due, Harvey thought, First prize—baseball immortality; second prize—the team’s equipment manager slaps you on the butt.

  “You’ll get ’em next time,” Monkman said, although everyone knew what the odds were that Cooley—or anybody, for that matter—would ever have a streak like this again.

  “Hey, Blissberg!” It was Andy Cubberly across the way, folding a stick of Wrigley’s into his mouth. “Come over here and motivate me. My average has dropped twenty-two points in the last three weeks.”

  Harvey adopted a smile. “Don’t worry. Moss has been using up everybody else’s hits for the last two months, and now he’s going to give them back.”

  “Yeah, I’m planning on going hitless for the rest of the year,” Cooley said. “That hittin’ thang just wasn’t doin’ it for me.”

  Ray Costa, the light-hitting catcher, deadpanned, “Boy, do I know how boring those hits can get.”

  Harvey wandered off toward the dining area and helped himself to a glass of ginger ale from the soda fountain dispenser. As he sipped it, watching the ballplayers pick at the pregame spread or sneak a look at ESPN’s Sports Center on the TV mounted high on the wall, Harvey felt his mood darken. It was a visceral sensation, as if he were watching a massive cloud front move into the Northeast on a Weather Channel radar map. Except he was the Northeast, and the cloud formation was a massive feeling of frustration, incompleteness, and confusion. With Cooley’s streak over, the case was abandoning him before he was ready to abandon it. It was possible he had never been this flummoxed by a case before. A headless lawn jockey and a black Ken doll, an acrostic and then the note about GURCC—it was like a dream full of strange, elaborate symbols. How could there not be a method somewhere to this madness? Was the man working up to something, or had he already passed it?

  Harvey escaped the clubhouse, hungry for fresh air, and wandered into the players’ parking lot, a gleaming, glinting field of luxury cars. He called retired Providence police detective lieutenant Linderman.

  “The time has come for me to fill you in,” Harvey said.

  “The least you can do for the guy who got your pistol permit processed so quickly.”

  Harvey told him about Cooley, the jockey, and the Ken doll. Then he offered Linderman two bills a day to make himself at home in Moss Cooley’s Cranston house for a few days.

  “I accept.”

  “But keep it under your hat,” Harvey said.

  “I don’t have a hat.”

  “C’mon, Linderman, I’ve already had a run-in with your nephew.”

  “Joshua.”

  “Who found out from a friend what I was doing. I swore him to secrecy in exchange for a piece of whatever action comes out of this.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “I know.”

  “Anyway, I appreciate the opportunity. I can use the bucks.”

  “I can’t promise you much action. This guy’s behavior makes no sense to me. But he has made two visits to Cooley’s house and he might make a third. I want photos if he does.”

  Off the phone, Harvey blinked in the glare of the sun bouncing off all the high-priced automobile hoods. He breathed deeply a few times. He would do as Marshall asked, keep Moss company for a while longer, and hope that his tormentor made another move or backed off forever. But Moss’s tormentor was now Harvey’s too. To follow Moss Cooley around for a few days and then slink home, without answers, feeling useless—that was intolerable. The assignment that had given his amorphous existence some shape, given him a taste of usefulness, now felt demeaning. He had not left the dubious comforts of his Cambridge sofa for this.

  16

  WITH THE PROP OF meaningful work removed, Harvey resumed his life on the sofa. The reprieve that had been his week in Providence was over. The GURCC item had appeared in Lassiter’s Providence Journal column on Sunday morning, and by Sunday night it had entered the nation’s bloodstream of sports minutia, showing up as a brief item on ESPN. Harvey had stayed with Moss in the Exeter house for three more nights, without incident. Linderman had stayed at Moss’s Cranston house for three nights, again without incident. The Jewels’ home stand ended, with the Jewels taking two of three from the Tigers. When the Jewels left on a thirteen-game road trip to New York, Chicago, Toronto, and Tampa Bay, Harvey returned to Cambridge with a bad feeling and a $14,500 check from Marshall Levy for services rendered.

  It was like coming out of the woods without the ball. Without knowing if there even was a ball lost in the woods.

  All he had come away with, really, was Cubberly, and that wasn’t much. A history of racist activity, a creepy rented house, plus two stupid base-running plays might provide some bricks for a case against him, but where was the mortar? On his last night in Providence Harvey had tailed Cubberly after the game, followed the outfielder as he walked from the ballpark to a waterfront bar in Fox Point, near one of the hurricane barriers, two garagelike concrete-and-metal structures out of which metal walls were prepared to slide shut during the next hurricane to block the street and arrest the kind of flooding that had proved so disastrous in 1938. Cubberly sat at the bar, unrecognized, drinking draft beers and trying to lure college girls into conversation. After an hour or so of this halfhearted courtship he returned to his Jeep Cherokee and went home to his depressing Tudor in Wayland Square.

  It was Friday now, ten days since Felix Shalhoub had first called. Mickey had come back to town for a day and a half and left again, flying off to St. Louis for “a Cards-Pirates tiff.” Some tenderness had passed between them, inexplicable, like the sudden remission of a disease. Their relationship just seemed to go on, a strange mix of inertia and destiny.

  He watercolored in the afternoon, completing a passable portrait of a neighbor’s Victorian house in strict late-day shadows. Then he persuaded his old mentor Jerry Bellaggio to let him buy dinner at Socrate’s Newtown Grill, an old haunt in Porter Square. Over linguini with white clam sauce, Harvey described in detail the lawn jockey and Ken doll incidents and the two notes.

  “There’s a confusing lack of pattern,” Bellaggio said, his portable oxygen unit sitting discreetly next to him in the wooden booth. “Almost deliberately so. A deliberate smokescreen, perhaps.”

  “But for what?”

  “If I had to choose, Harv, I’d say the first act was a smokescreen for the second.”

  “That the general threat—to stop the hitting streak—is a screen for the specific one—cutting off his relationship with this group?”

  “Yes.
”

  “Jerry, that presupposes that the hitting streak came along at just the right time to provide a smokescreen.”

  “Fine. So it did. If I’m right, and there hadn’t been a hitting streak to provide cover for his true business, he would’ve used something else.”

  “Like what?” Harvey asked.

  “What else you got? Where else is Cooley vulnerable to racist attack?”

  “He’s got a white girlfriend.”

  “There you go.”

  “But this guy doesn’t seem to know it.”

  “If he knew it, he would’ve used it.” Jerry pointed a forkful of chicken parmesan at Harvey. “Instead he had the streak. Here’s the conjecture, Harv: By using the lawn jockey, the guy wanted to establish himself as a guy who means business, lending force to any later threat or demand, which would be his real demand.”

  “You really think this?”

  “Let’s say I do. Then I’d want to know more about his relationship with GURCC.”

  “Cooley couldn’t think of any reason why his involvement with GURCC would be a specific problem for anyone. He says he’s only been lending them his name. And making financial contributions.”

  “This chicken is delicious, Harv. Want a bite?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Look, I could be all wet. Surely Cooley’s self-interest would prevent him from concealing anything.”

  “You would think.”

  “Just the two threats, huh?”

  “That’s it.”

  Jerry chewed thoughtfully. “If GURCC was the point, and the guy’s really clever, he’ll do something else, an ex post facto smokescreen. Really confuse the hell out of Cooley.”

  “On the other hand, another threat could be taken as evidence that the guy has no specific message other than racial hate.”

  “This is a tough one, Harv.”

  “Well, I’m relieved to know you think it’s a tough one, and it’s not just that I’m out of practice.”

  “How worried are you about Cooley’s safety?”

  “I don’t know. The team’s on a road trip now, so I’m trying to relax about it. Anyway, the owner and general manager took me off the case. It’s their problem now.”

  “Is it?” Jerry said, concentrating on spooling some pasta marinara around his fork.

  “No,” Harvey said ruefully. “Of course not. You know I don’t let go of things that easily.”

  Jerry smiled, his gray face brightening a bit. “That’s why I thought you’d make a good private investigator fifteen years ago.”

  “But I did let go. Four years ago I let go of investigating and became a motivational speaker.”

  “You thought you’d try living life as an optimist, huh?”

  Harvey smiled.

  “Thought you’d try being a cheerleader instead of a player, huh?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “You can run from your melancholy, Harv, but you can’t hide.”

  “That’ll be enough, Jerry.”

  When he got home, Harvey went to his study, where he’d been keeping the headless lawn jockey. He lifted it out of its box and set it on his big rolltop desk. He put the grinning, deferential head next to it.

  When his cell phone started up with “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” he fumbled the phone out of his pocket and brought it to his ear.

  “Bagel Boy?”

  “Moss. Hey, what’s going on?”

  “I’m still on his list.”

  “What happened?” Harvey walked into the living room and sat on the sofa.

  “There was a message waiting for me at the hotel when I got back tonight after the game.”

  “You’re sure it’s from him?”

  “Same cutout letters. It says, ‘You better not be making no Fudge Ripple Babies.’ ”

  “No Fudge Ripple babies?” Now their man was affecting bad grammar.

  “Down South, that’s what they call ’em—half-black, half-white babies.”

  “He’s figured out who your girlfriend is.”

  “He’s in New York.”

  “The letter wasn’t mailed?”

  “It was left for me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Marriott Marquis.”

  “Are you in your room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to go down to the front desk and talk to the desk clerk who handed you the letter. See if he or she remembers who left it for you.”

  “I’ll try, but there was a bunch of messages waiting for me.”

  “Just give it a shot. Did you call Cherry Ann yet?”

  “You think I should?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “She’d be at the club right now.”

  “Can’t you call her there?”

  “I can try. I don’t want to scare her.”

  “You don’t want anything to happen to her, either. See if she can stay with a friend and tell her to call me. Let’s play it safe.”

  “Wait till I get my hands on this motherfucker.”

  “You predicted we’d hear from him on some other subject. And now it’s happened. Listen—don’t talk about this with anybody, okay. Except for Marshall and Felix.”

  “They’re in Providence.”

  “I’ll call Marshall at home,” Harvey said. “See what he wants to do. Now get hold of Cherry Ann and then call me back either way after you’ve talked to the desk clerk. And stay in your room.”

  “Me and my Spectravision.”

  “By the way, Moss, did you ever call your friend Charlie Fathon?”

  “Yeah, I called him and told him about the note and that when this thing was resolved, I’d be GURCC’s boy again.”

  “Did he have any ideas?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” Maybe it was a meaningless, scattershot campaign. Except that he’d gone to the trouble, apparently, of identifying Cherry Ann. “Incidentally, how’d you do tonight?”

  “We lost, three-one.”

  “And you?”

  “Zip-for-four. I had no focus.”

  The rest of the night was a flurry of phone calls. First, to owner Marshall Levy, who rehired Harvey to bodyguard Moss on the road trip until further notice. Next, from Moss, who had had no luck at the front desk. None of the three clerks he spoke to had any recollection of who might have left any of the dozens of letters for hotel guests that evening. There had been, the clerks all agreed, no unusual transactions at the desk, no suspicious characters. One told Moss that letters and messages for guests were sometimes just left on the front desk. There was a brief, angry call from Cherry Ann Smoler, letting Harvey know that she didn’t appreciate being caught up in the continuing intrigue, as if he were responsible for it, and that she would be staying with a friend named Dawn on the East Side. Then he left a message for Mickey on her voice mail, letting her know he was headed for New York in the morning.

  Shortly after eleven P.M., as Harvey was packing his bags, the phone rang one last time.

  “Is that you, Blissboig?” a voice barked in a Brooklyn accent.

  “Arnold?” Harvey said.

  Arnold Slavin, civil rights lawyer, activist, litigator, former all-Brooklyn high school basketball star, was one of those guys who used his courtroom voice whenever possible. It was part of a general strategy to browbeat others into submission. To him, every conversation was a contest that could have only one winner. And that would be him. You came away from a conversation with Arnold feeling psychologically manhandled. Not that he didn’t use humor to distract you from the pummeling. Arnold once greeted Harvey at a restaurant in Manhattan by saying, “I can’t tell you how good you look now that you’ve put on a little extra weight.”

  “You’re not sleeping, are ya?” Arnold said now. “You’re not in the middle of making love to my daughter, are ya?”

  “No and no. Mickey’s in St. Louis tonight, doing the game.”

  “It’s not her I want, anyway. She told me about the job you’ve be
en doing for Moss Cooley.”

  “You know, I keep telling—”

  “You don’t think I can keep a secret? You find the slime-ball yet?”

  “No.”

  “Guy left Cooley a lawn jockey?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Without a head?”

  “That’s right. The head came later.”

  “Well, now that his streak’s been stopped, I don’t know if you’ll be interested, but I’m convinced it must’ve resonated for her.”

  “Resonated? What resonated?”

  “The lawn jockey without a head,” Arnold Slavin said. “You know, sitting around the dinner table in the sixties, she heard a lot of interesting stuff.”

  “Like what, Arnold?”

  “You know, Harvey, the unconscious mind stores all sorts of impressions that can resonate years later with something that crosses your path.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “And that’s why I think she mentioned the lawn jockey to me. She was only six or seven when I represented those SNCC boys after their malicious arrest on bogus state anti-boycott laws. Imagine the impression that would make on a little girl.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Back in the sixties, Harvey, at least when I was close to the situation, Klansmen and their sympathizers used to try to intimidate blacks by spray-painting ‘KKK’ on church doors or throwing acid on their cars or just driving around nigger knockin’—leaning out the window and whipping them with a detached car radio antenna. But there was one Ku Klux Klan klavern outside of Atlanta—the Wyckoff Klavern, if I remember correctly—whose members preferred a more metaphorical twist. They’d leave the decapitated head of a lawn jockey on the front seat of a car, or on the doorstep of the local preacher’s house. And that’s the only other instance of decapitated lawn jockeys I know of.”

  “You’re sure about this, Arnold?”

  “Don’t tamper with my integrity, Harvey. I have to believe that your girlfriend there must’ve picked that up at the dinner table when she was still playing with Barbie dolls, and that’s what I mean when I say it resonated.”