Strike Three You're Dead

by R. D. Rosen

  In it was a July checking account statement in Rudy’s name from the Industrial National Bank. It couldn’t have been his regular account because the balance was only a bit over four hundred dollars. Rudy had made a few relatively modest withdrawals on the account in July and only one deposit—on July 19, for the sum of three thousand dollars.

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 18, Harvey picked up his phone and started dialing. Through his living room window, he glanced at the Industrial National Bank building downtown in sunlight so hard and bright it looked as if it would chip. It was a stout art deco building rising in ever-smaller rectangles that were quilted with windows. On the top was a huge yellow beacon framed by a quartet of stone eagles standing guard over the city. In 1928, it had been considered the greatest thing before sliced bread, but now its elegance was oppressive. With its Stalinist sobriety, the building could have been something in downtown Moscow.

  Somewhere in the bank someone was about to answer his phone call. When a woman did, Harvey asked for Central Records and devoutly hoped that whoever picked up the phone next was not a fan of the Providence Jewels or of baseball in general. If a male voice answered, he would play it safe and hang up.

  “Records,” a young female voice said. “Miss Galizio.”

  Harvey took a breath. “I wonder if you could help me. I’ve managed to lose a few of my monthly statements for my checking account at the bank and my accountant is hounding me for them. Any chance you could have the computer spit them out again? Would that be a lot of trouble?”

  “No, just a modest amount,” she said sweetly. “Why don’t you give me your name and account number?”

  “The name is Furth. Rudolph Furth. F-u-r-t-h.”

  “Yes, Mr. Furth,” she said without hesitation. “And your account number?”

  Harvey read it to her from Rudy’s July statement.

  “One second, please.” There was silence for ten. “Here we go. Oh, I see you only opened your account with us in June. Would you like all the statements?”

  “Yes, that would be fine.”

  “Would you like them sent to this address, on South Main?”

  “No,” Harvey said quickly. “I’ll come pick them up.”

  “All right, then. They’ll be ready for you here tomorrow morning. How’s that?”

  “That’s great. Thank you.”

  “And thank you, sir.”

  Harvey strolled down Planet Street to South Main and had cappuccino and two croissants at a new place with pyramids of Menucci pasta boxes and hanging prosciuttos in the window. As he sipped, he peered across the street at Rudy’s town house. It didn’t look as if it had yet been rented. In front of the town house next to it, a woman in furry slippers was trimming the hedge in her minuscule front yard. Rudy wouldn’t have known her very well; she was not his type. But then, Harvey never would have guessed that Frances was his type, either. He was pursuing the murderer of a man he seemed to know less and less about. Rudy had made a mistake, and he had paid for it, and it was none of Harvey’s business. What did he owe Rudy? What was he trying to prove, and who was watching him prove it? Now that he had decided Rudy was guilty, he should simply look the other way and forget it. But Harvey felt his purpose sharpened; he was like a spurned lover who was now willing to risk everything to find out exactly how he’d been wronged. He brushed the last flakes of croissant from his mouth, paid up, and went home.

  Once again, Bobby Wagner didn’t have it that night. By the fifth inning, he was taking an early shower. By the sixth, with Detroit ahead 7-2, so were the fans. The clouds that had been pulling into position over the park during the game finally broke and shed a warm autumn rain. The grounds crew swarmed onto the field in their green and black windbreakers to drag the tarpaulin over the infield. The box seat customers joined the drier fans under the grandstand roof to watch Mel Allen narrate last week’s baseball highlights on the screen of the electronic scoreboard. The rain outlasted Mel Allen, and Rankle Park’s organist burst into a show tune medley. When the umps called the game after a seventy-minute delay, the Jewels were in the clubhouse and only too glad to be able to undress. Another team might have been sorry not to have the chance to come back and win the game. Harvey showered, dressed, and drove downtown to Leo’s, a roomy bar beneath the I-95 overpass.

  Over the bar at Leo’s were windows cut into the wall so you could look out and watch the cars up on the overpass. For a long time, Harvey sat there looking at them wetly slide by, their headlights fanning out and then disappearing. He was on his second ale when he lowered his eyes from the expressway and saw Mickey on the screen of the television set suspended above the tiers of liquor bottles. She was saying that Toronto had beaten Cleveland and that the Jewels were once again tied for last place. She looked smooth, elegant, and untouchable in her emerald blouse and tweed jacket. Sitting in a row of solitary drinkers at the bar, Harvey felt as if he couldn’t possibly know the woman.

  “Best looking cunt on television,” the man on the stool next to him said. He was in his thirties, heavy-set, with the doughy face of a former college football lineman. Three empty Narragansett bottles were lined up in front of him, and he was drinking from a fourth. Mickey gazed down at them as she editorialized about Brown University’s chances in the approaching Ivy League football season. “I’ll bet you anything she loves to ball,” he said.

  Harvey tapped his glass lightly against the mahogany bar.

  “Yes, sir, I’d like to have those legs wrapped around my neck one of these nights,” the man said. “Wouldn’t you, pal? Hey, pal, I’m talking to you.”

  “How’d you like to have your own legs wrapped around your neck?” Harvey said.

  “What’s that, pal?” He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt with a down vest over it. “What’s that?”

  “Just have a little respect for the woman,” Harvey said, not meeting the man’s eyes. “I’m sure if she likes to ball, you’re the last person she’d want to do it with.”

  The man swiveled on his stool to face Harvey. “How would you know, pal? You don’t look like you’ve had any in a while.”

  “I don’t want any trouble, but I think the point is that you’re a little out of line.” Harvey’s heart was pounding halfway up his esophagus and, with a long pull on his bottle of ale, he tried to wash it back down where it belonged.

  “Or maybe the point is that you’re a little out of line, jocko. If I happen to think that Mickey Slavin is the biggest piece of tail in Providence, I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”

  “It so happens it is.”

  Nick the bartender had come down the bar and stood in front of them, cleaning an imaginary spill with his towel. “Harvey, what’s the trouble?” He looked at the other man. “C’mon, Ken. Don’t you know who he is?”

  “Yeah,” Ken said. “He’s some asshole who—”

  “Easy, Ken,” Nick said. “Not in my place. Anyway, you’re talking to—”

  “I don’t care who I’m talking to. This asshole was telling me I can’t say what I want about Mickey Slavin.” He turned to Harvey. “What’s it to you?”

  “She’s my girlfriend,” Harvey said.

  Ken gave a nasal laugh. “Yeah, and I’m married to Barbara Walters.”

  “Easy, you guys,” Nick was saying. “Whyn’t you just drink your beer, and we’ll all sit here peacefully and watch Johnny Carson together?”

  “Your girlfriend’s probably a boy,” Ken said to Harvey.

  Harvey exhaled. “You know, you’re turning out to be even dumber than you look.” He felt as if Mickey was watching.

  “Pal, how’d you like me to rearrange your face?” He jabbed a finger in Harvey’s shoulder.

  “Not if it’ll look like yours.” Harvey took Ken’s right arm by the wrist and pushed it away. Ken shoved it at his shoulder again. Harvey took a deep breath, rotated his body away from Ken, set his left hand against the edge of the bar, and with his right hit someone in the face for the first time si
nce he was eleven. His punch glanced off Ken’s chin, but knocked him partly off his stool so Ken stood now with his left leg draped over it.

  “Damn it, Harvey,” Nick was pleading.

  “My turn,” Ken said and came at Harvey with a flurry of hands and elbows, dropping him to the floor. Harvey got up, tasting blood in his mouth, and threw his right fist at Ken’s face as Ken’s right struck his shoulder. Almost immediately, Ken’s left hand found Harvey’s forehead, and Harvey staggered back among the tables, tripped over an empty chair, and skidded to a stop on his back. He wiped two streaks of blood from his nose with his shirtsleeve and clambered to his feet. His right hand felt numb, his forehead unusually large.

  Ken was threading his way uncertainly between the tables, as their occupants got up from their seats and backed off. “Let me at that fucker,” Ken was saying over and over. Harvey thought of Carlos Bonesoro decoying him at third in New York two weeks ago, and straightened up with his hands at his sides, looking less than eager to continue. It was not difficult to summon the expression.

  Ken stopped a few feet in front of him and dropped his guard long enough to inquire, “Had enough, jocko?”

  Harvey suddenly slammed his right fist cleanly into Ken’s nose, feeling something cartilaginous give under the impact of his knuckles. Ken danced backwards in a clumsy cha-cha, his arms swimming pathetically at his sides.

  “Jesus, Harvey, this isn’t like you.” It was Nick’s voice at his side. “I’ll get you a towel. Your nose is leaking.”

  “Not yet,” Harvey said. Ken was coming at him again. Harvey tried to land the first blow, but Ken blocked it with a forearm, and Harvey turned his head away from Ken’s flying right. It caught him over the ear, and he stumbled back, bouncing off the Space Invaders game near the door. He steadied himself against it. Ken was getting ready to make another run at him from ten feet away. He was dimly aware of Leo’s patrons circled about him. His legs felt thick and heavy. Ken started to rush, but had only taken a step when two arms came up under Harvey’s armpits from behind and wrenched him aside.

  Ken stopped in his tracks. “Let him go,” he yelled. “I want at him.”

  “No, that’s it,” a voice said easily in Harvey’s ear. “Party’s over.” The hands slipped out from Harvey’s armpits and slowly spun him around.

  “You’re a little tougher than I thought you were, Professor.”

  Harvey tried to focus on the face. “I didn’t know you drank here,” he said, each word costing him a breath.

  “I didn’t know you boxed here,” said Bobby Wagner.

  BOBBY HELPED HARVEY OVER to the bar, Nick wrung out a wet towel, and Bobby cleaned up his face for him. In the background, people were putting the furniture back in order. At one of the tables, Ken was pressing a paper napkin to his nose.

  “Did I look like I had anything left,” Harvey asked Bobby, “or were you just rescuing me?”

  “You didn’t need to be rescued,” Bobby said. “You were doing all right. Just get lower down when you want to hit somebody. That way you come up and put your whole body into the punch. You can’t fight with just your arms.”

  Harvey tested his jaw. “You won’t tell Felix about this?”

  “Naw. What started it, anyway?”

  “We were watching Mickey on the news, and he had a few too many opinions about her.”

  Bobby asked Nick for some ice to put in the towel. “She’s a sweet kid,” Bobby said.

  While they were at the bar, several of the customers came up, most of them to talk to Bobby. They called him Bobby, as though he was part of the old gang. That was the difference between being a pretty good outfielder and being a great right-hander who almost won the Cy Young and sold deodorant on national television.

  Ken approached the bar with his right hand extended. “I apologize,” he said to Harvey. “Friends?” Ken glanced at Bobby, as if he needed permission.

  “No. Not friends,” Harvey said.

  “Go on, Professor,” Bobby said. “Shake the man’s hand.” Harvey shook it sullenly.

  “Those guys told me who you were,” Ken said. “Hey, I’m real sorry. I feel like a jerk.”

  “You are a jerk,” Harvey said.

  “Hey, look, I said I’m sorry. I deserved to get punched.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You’re not hurt bad, are you?”

  Harvey didn’t say anything, and Ken stood there with a contrite, expectant look. Harvey was afraid that he was suddenly going to ask for his autograph.

  “Whyn’t you leave now, buddy,” Bobby said. “The Professor forgives you.” Ken shrank from the bar in small steps.

  “Just another asshole,” Bobby said to Harvey.

  Nick placed a brandy in front of Harvey and he drank it. It took the edge off the pain in his right hand, his shoulder, his forehead, his left ear.

  “So long, Wags,” he said, finally sliding off the stool.

  “Take care, Professor,” Bobby said.

  The next morning, Wednesday, Harvey spread Rudy’s June, July, and August statements from the Industrial National Bank on his kitchen table.

  The only transaction on the June statement was a deposit on the twenty-fifth for $3,000. In July, there was the $3,000 deposit on the nineteenth, which he already knew about, and $4,843 in withdrawals. Harvey put his head in his hand as he read over the August statement. On both the second and the eleventh, Rudy had deposited $3,000.

  From June through August, Rudy had deposited the sum of $3,000 four times in this separate checking account. The crumpled thousand dollar bill in the whirlpool and the two just like it found in his sports jacket made five. Fifteen thousand dollars: for someone who made more than that for a month of bull pen work, it was not the kind of money to risk your life over, but there it was.

  Linderman was sitting behind a gray metal desk at Homicide at police headquarters wearing his red Chemise Lacoste and brown pants. In one hand, he held half of a diagonally sliced tuna salad sandwich and with the other he was fingering Rudy’s checking account statements. He took a sip of chocolate milk from a half-pint carton and with a mouthful of tuna salad and milk said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is very interesting, Harvey. Very interesting.” He sounded like a wash cycle.

  It had crossed Harvey’s mind not to show Linderman the statements at all, but he was more interested in finding out who murdered Rudy than in mistrusting Linderman. Anyway, he had kept a set of photocopies. “Does that change your mind about Ronnie Mateo?” Harvey said.

  Linderman gazed at the August statement. “I don’t know what it does. So Rudy had himself a separate little account. How’d you get hold of these?”

  Harvey told him.

  “That’s not kosher, Harvey.” He sucked the rest of his chocolate milk through a straw and dropped the carton into a gray metal wastebasket.

  “It’s okay. I come from a reform Jewish family,” Harvey said. “Are you going to thank me for those?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks.”

  “So I guess I’ll be going.” Harvey got up.

  “By the way, where’d you get the Technicolor on your forehead and the funny knuckles? You in a scrape?”

  “It’s nothing.” Harvey waved it away.

  “You don’t seem like the type of guy who gets into fights.”

  “No, it was just some guy and me throwing hands last night in a bar.”

  “My, my, you live dangerously.” The detective smirked and lit a Marlboro.

  Harvey felt like someone who had won the lottery and was still waiting for his check to come in the mail. Not only had the documented bank deposits not immediately produced a solution to Rudy’s murder, as Harvey in his frustrated, exhausted state imagined they should, but in fact he did not hear from Linderman at all.

  While the Detroit Tigers crushed the Jewels and Dan Van Auken 10-0 on Wednesday night and beat Andy Potter-Lawn 4-1 on Thursday night, Harvey sat anxiously in the dugout. Arky Bentz had checked out Harvey’s right hand before W
ednesday’s game and told him nothing was broken, but it hurt too much to hold a bat. The bench was quiet except for Campy’s exhortations and Felix’s sad clapping. Everyone wanted the season to end as soon as possible, and the Jewels seemed to be doing everything in their power to shorten the games. They flapped their bats at bad pitches. They dogged it down the line. On Thursday night, Randy ran through Tony’s signal at third and was thrown out at the plate by twenty feet.

  Harvey spent a lot of time at the water cooler at the end of the dugout, just to have something to do. While he was drinking from it late in the game on Thursday night, a voice said over his shoulder, “How’s your investigation coming?” It was Frances, in a white turtleneck sweater, sitting in the corner of the bench with a clipboard on her lap.

  Harvey straightened up from the water cooler. “What investigation?”

  Frances made a notation on her clipboard as Potter-Lawn threw a curve in the dirt to Davis. She looked up, simple gold loop earrings sparkling in her streaked hair, and smiled thinly. “I must have made some mistake. I thought you were conducting an investigation.”

  “You thought wrong,” Harvey said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his warm-up jacket and smiling back. “Chilly night,” he added.

  “Ice cold team,” Frances said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “this is one ball club I’d hate to own any part of.” He felt her penetrating gaze all the way back to his spot on the far end of the bench.

  THE SEASON TICKED AWAY to its last seven games, and the clock was running out on Harvey. His friendship with Rudy had been bounded by baseball, and so his search for the murderer was somehow bounded by it, too. In a little over a week, Harvey would crate the few things in General Burnside’s mansion, and he and everyone else on the club would withdraw to unfamiliar lives and wait for spring training.