by Howard Owen
Many of his teammates, Jimmy says, were surprised that a guy leading the International League in batting and slugging percentage while playing an above-average game at shortstop would cast his lot with someone who’d already slept with several of his teammates.
“But Frannie was something. I swear to God she could of been a movie star, if she’d of gone in that direction. She could charm the pants off you.”
Obviously, I observe.
“Whitestone had this orange GTO convertible, and they’d come driving up to the park together, waving at everybody like they were celebrities. He’d been able, with his signing bonus I guess, to afford more than the other boys, so he had his own apartment, which gave ’em a little bit of privacy. But the GM wasn’t happy about it, and one day the Yankees sent some suit down to give him a talking to. It wasn’t what future Yankees did, the suit told him. Whitestone told the guy to go fuck himself. Or at least, that’s what he told everybody he said.”
Lucky Whitestone hit .317 for the Vees that year, with twenty home runs. When the IL season ended in late August, he was called up to the Yankees. He was twenty-three years old, and his future seemed as safe as General Motors stock.
Jimmy throws down his smoked-out butt and stomps on it.
“I doubt if Whitestone knew, when he left, that she was pregnant.”
Jimmy says he figures he was the first one connected with the ball club to know. When the 1964 season ended, so did Frannie Fling’s employment with the Vees, because their scumbag carpetbagging owner moved them to Toledo, Ohio, and left us without a team in 1965. Also, the general manager who’d hired her was now convinced that she was a bad influence on the players. So, she was back to waiting tables.
“I went around to see her, must have been late September, to see how she was doin’. Her friend who was at RPI had dropped out, and Frannie was sharing a place with two girls she didn’t hardly know. I could tell something was wrong, and I finally got her to tell me.
“I talked her into writing Whitestone about it, because I thought, you know, he might want to do right by her.”
Instead, Jimmy says, she told him later she wrote him three times and finally got his phone number and called him, at his home down in Florida. He told her they’d do “something about it” in the spring, that she had to give him some time to get his act together, straighten things out with an old girlfriend back home, or some such bullshit.
“I didn’t do enough for her,” Jimmy says. “Nobody did.
“And then, she went back to Vermont, right dead in the middle of winter. I don’t think she had much choice. The other two girls left, and she couldn’t pay the rent.
“I offered to let her stay at my place. Hell, I could of slept on the couch. But she said no, Lucky wouldn’t like that. Like he gave a shit.”
It was early March when Jimmy heard from her again. She called from the Greyhound station, on her way from Vermont to Florida. Lucky Whitestone had sent her money for a bus ticket, she said. Almost as an aside, she told Jimmy that her parents had kicked her out when they saw she was pregnant, and that she had spent the last couple of months bunking in a friend’s folks’ house.
She told Jimmy it wouldn’t be a big wedding, that Lucky didn’t want anything big that would detract from his efforts to become a full-fledged New York Yankee, but that he’d broken off with his now former girlfriend back home.
“She must of been at least six, maybe seven months along by then,” Jimmy says. “I offered to pick her up at the bus station and buy her a decent meal, even drive her down to Florida. I had a lot of energy back then.”
Watching Jimmy hop from one foot to the other, unable to hold still for two seconds, I can only imagine.
“But she said, no, the bus for Miami was leaving in fifteen minutes, she just wanted to say hi, and that she’d be drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice for breakfast. But she sounded tired.”
Jimmy sighs.
“That’s the last I heard from her.”
He found out most of what happened secondhand. He’d gotten to know the Vees, who were now the Toledo Mud Hens. He called Rabbit Larue one day while the team was still in Florida, just to say hi.
They talked a little bit, and then Larue asked him if he heard about Frannie Fling. He said he hadn’t, that she’d called on her way down to Florida to get married.
Larue seemed to think that was funny. And then he told Jimmy what Lucky Whitestone did.
Larue said he was surprised Frannie hadn’t shown up with the cops, and that he bet “Lucky hasn’t heard the last of her.”
Whitestone had been surprised to see her.
“Which made me think that maybe Frannie was maybe paintin’ a little brighter picture than it really was,” Jimmy says. “Maybe gildin’ the lily a little bit.”
They way Jimmy heard it, Whitestone said she came to his room at the motel the next morning after she called from Richmond and said they had to get married. He told the other players that he wasn’t about to get married to “some whore like that.” Whatever he said to her, she must have gotten kind of hysterical, the way you do when you’re in the third trimester, your family’s kicked you out and the guy who knocked you up is calling you a whore.
He told her to take it easy, that he was going to make it right, just don’t call anybody. He told her he’d get her a room and then he’d come by later.
He reserved the room and got her settled and calmed down.
When he called her back after the intrasquad game, his plan was in motion.
He told her he’d found a preacher who would do the ceremony right there in the hotel. There was a big ballroom, and they could have the wedding and some kind of bullshit reception right there.
Frannie had brought along something that would pass for a wedding dress in the one suitcase she had. When Whitestone came to get her, it was already seven P.M. He told her it was OK, that night weddings were kind of special. Larue told Jimmy that Whitestone had even borrowed a tux to set up the gag just right.
So, when they came into the ballroom, the only other person Frannie sees is the preacher. When she looks closer, she sees that it’s actually the Vees’ third-base coach. Whitestone assures her that he is certified to do weddings in the state of Florida.
She asked her husband-to-be, as they’re walking toward the minister, if he has a best man.
“Oh,” Lucky Whitestone is supposed to have said, “I’ve got plenty of them.”
And that’s when the curtain that divided the room into two parts opened, and out came most of the rest of the Richmond Vees’ starting lineup from the year before.
He told Frannie he’d decided that, since they couldn’t figure exactly whose baby she was carrying, they decided she’d just have to marry the whole damn team. They kept her there and made her go through the whole ceremony. Larue said that, for a ring, Whitestone had rolled up a rubber and punched a hole through it. Then he handed her a one-way bus ticket to New York City and said to have fun on her honeymoon.
When she started crying, he apparently explained to her, with all his teammates encircling her, that every one of them would swear that she had willingly screwed them, and that if she knew what was good for her, she’d get the hell out of there before they gave her a wedding night she’d never forget.
She returned to her room, and when Lucky asked at the front desk in the morning, the clerk said she’d already checked out. Larue said he was kind of nervous the next couple of days, but he never heard from Frannie Fling again.
After Larue told Jumpin’ Jimmy the story, Jimmy tried to get in touch with her. She’d shown him a letter her parents sent her the season before, with a return address in that Vermont town. Whoever answered when he called hung up on Jimmy when he told them who he was looking for.
“I didn’t find out what happened to her until sometime in mid-April, I guess,” Jimmy says. “I was hanging out at the ballpark, just because that’s what you do in April. This fella who had been the assistant GM the year
before, looking for a job anywhere he could get one, was there, too, and he told me what happened to Frannie.”
They found her in a motel room in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Nobody has a clue how she got there. She had slit her wrists on the tenth, and the maid didn’t find her body until the next day. The baby was dead, too, of course. It took them two days after that to get in touch with her parents, and it took the parents about three days to sic the lawyers on Lucky Whitestone. She’d sent her parents a letter, telling them that she and Whitestone were going to be married. They didn’t know a lot about what their disowned daughter had been up to, but they knew enough to sue.
“Too bad they didn’t give more of a shit when she was alive,” Jimmy says.
If Whitestone hadn’t been a top prospect, it might have ended differently. But the Yankees dug into their deep pockets and turned a battery of New York lawyers loose on Frances Flynn’s reputation. Lots of guys were willing to testify to her sexual dalliances. There were threats of a countersuit. In the end, the family settled for an amount that was less than Lucky Whitestone’s first-year major-league salary, just to bury their daughter with a little dignity.
“They didn’t care nothin’ about Whitestone,” Jimmy says, “but they didn’t want anything besmirking the fine Yankee tradition. Hell, after the family settled, they traded his ass to Cleveland.
“I visited her grave up there one time,” Jimmy says.
“In Vermont?”
“Yeah. Had a hell of a time findin’ it. The family had moved on, to Massachusetts or somewhere like that. Somebody told me that her father died and her mother sold the house the next year. She might have had other family, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.”
“What did you do? I mean, did you leave flowers or something?”
Jimmy doesn’t answer for a beat or two.
“Yeah. Left some flowers. I remember one time she said she liked yellow roses, so I got some. Her grave was way up some hill. Didn’t see any other Flynns around it.”
I observe that it seems like he went a long way to pay respects to someone he hardly knew.
“Well,” Jimmy says, “she was nice, you know? She might of had a screw or two loose, but she was a good-hearted girl, and she deserved better than what she got.”
I’m thinking Jimmy might have been a little in love with Frannie Fling himself. She could have done, and did do, worse.
CINDY OFFERS to give Peggy a ride home later. I don’t think my mother’s planning to spend any long periods of time away from the hospital, just long enough to make sure the house is still standing. Awesome Dude’s already left. I guess he’s perambulating somewhere between the hospital and Oregon Hill.
I almost forgot I have a meeting with Grubby at two. It’s five after by the time I get there. Sandy McCool ushers me in.
I asked Wheelie about getting a short sabbatical to do the story on the 1964 Vees, but it turns out managing editors don’t have the authority, or balls, to approve such a major undertaking. He said I’d have to ask Grubby.
James H. Grubbs, former boy reporter and present publisher, looks as good as ever, which means “not very.” I don’t know if sunlight bounces off his skin or if he just never goes outside, but he is about the same shade as the copy paper on his desk, and he looks as if a good breeze would blow him away. He’s working his iPhone when I walk in, and he doesn’t stop, barely bothers to look up.
“Five minutes late,” he says by way of greeting.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Oh,” he says, “don’t worry. I’d never let you interrupt anything.”
“After all I’ve done for you.”
He emits a sound that would be a laugh, were it accompanied by any show of merriment whatsoever.
“Like give me gray hair and ulcers?”
I figure it’s a fool’s errand to mention that I’ve also given him some damn good stories when they were in short supply in our ever-shrinking newsroom. It’s an even bigger fool’s errand to mention that selling his soul to the devil probably gave him his gray hair and ulcers.
So I cut to the chase. I explain, in as few words as possible, about my idea for a takeout on the 1964 Vees, our last Yankees farm team.
“We have a sports department,” Grubby notes.
“Bootie says it’s fine with him.”
Grubby does actually laugh at that one.
“Everything’s fine with Bootie. Did you bring him some Scotch?”
I mention that our sports guys don’t have time to go to the bathroom anymore. One guy’s covering the whole prep beat and another one’s responsible for two major college athletic programs plus auto racing.
“And you do? You’ve got plenty of time?”
I say the only thing I can think of.
“I’ll make it worth your while.”
When I mention the Frannie Fling angle, he seems slightly more interested. He can see that there might be a hook.
“Yeah,” he says. “You might be able to get some of the old geezers to talk about that. That’d be interesting.”
I mention that my mother’s “special friend” was on the team.
“Ah,” Grubby says. “So you’ve got an angle. Well, maybe he can tell you some inside stuff.”
I tell him that Les is in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound and a stroke. It was in the paper, I remind him.
“Oh yeah,” Grubby says, as he uses the little stylus to respond to someone in the ether who must be more important than me. “Sorry. I hope he’s OK.”
I’m sure you do, I think.
“Well,” he says, looking up “how much sabbatical do you need?”
“A month.” I try not to make it sound like a question.
“A week,” he replies.
I try to get him to settle for two, but he won’t budge. Hell, if it takes more than a week, I’ll use vacation time. And I’ve got about six unpaid furlough days waiting to be wasted.
We both say OK, and then he doesn’t say anything else, which is my cue to exit.
I blow Sandy McCool a kiss on the way out and tell her to get Grubby a sunlamp.
I’m playing Internet solitaire at my desk when my roomie Abe Custalow calls.
“Just wanted you to know,” he says. “Rand is back.”
Finlay Rand apparently returned from his vacation this afternoon to find his apartment more or less trashed, as much by the cops as by the shooter. That’ll teach him to leave a contact number with somebody before he leaves town.
The police have already been by to play Twenty Questions with him.
“He’s not too happy,” Custalow says. “He says the guy who broke in damaged a couple of old chairs he said were worth $5,000 each. Can a chair be worth that much, Willie?”
“I don’t know. Does it have beer-can holders on the arms?”
“Anyhow, he said he’d like to talk to you.”
“Why?” I can’t think of much that Finlay Rand and I have in common. He’s a fine-wine kind of guy, and the only kind of Burgundy I’ve drunk much of is the hearty kind, Chateau Gallo.
“I guess about the shooting. He knows Les lives with Peggy. Maybe he wants to apologize for not putting a better lock on his door.”
I remind Custalow that Gillespie has told me Rand’s place was entered with a key. No muss, no fuss.
I tell Abe I’ll call on Mr. Rand tomorrow, which will be the first day of my poorly funded sabbatical.
IT’S A zero-sum game in the newsroom these days. If somebody takes a week or two off, somebody else has to double up. No cushion anymore. And if the beat is night cops and it’s starting to get warm on the poor side of town, you can’t just blow it off. People die, and other people want to know about it. Everybody bitches about all the bad news in the paper, but try making a living printing stories about people doing the right thing. The right thing’s boring to Bubba and Mary Catherine sitting on their West End screened-in porch. Reading about the down and dirty is what gets
people’s juices flowing. Shouldn’t be that way, but Les Hacker shouldn’t be in VCU hospital paralyzed on his right side. Shouldn’t doesn’t mean a damn thing.
So, I’m pretty sure Sarah Goodnight’s not being sincere when she stops in front of my desk and says, “Thanks a lot.”
Because she’s been to a dirt nap or two, she gets to be me the next week or so. Wheelie probably expects her to keep covering city council, too. “Excuse me, Mayor. Could you hold off voting on that new sanitation dump for an hour or so? Somebody just caught some lead in the East End.”
Sarah’s a good newshound. As soon as one of our timeworn political reporters dies or retires (which, from the look of them, won’t be too long now), she’ll be covering state politics. Unlike me, she probably won’t screw it up and wind up doing a repeat performance as night police reporter.
I apologize for the inconvenience and promise to buy her a few rounds when I get back.
“You better,” she says.
I tell her I’ll probably be around most of the time. Two or three trips to exotic places like Wisconsin and north Florida ought to be the extent of my travels. Plus, I don’t want to be away from Les and Peggy for too long.
It’s a quiet night. I go to the microfilm and do a little research on the ’64 Vees.
Then, about nine, Kate calls. I tell her I mailed the rent check on the fifth, which is almost true. She interrupts me.
“What do you know about Raymond Gatewood?”
I tell her I know he should rot in hell. I fill her in on the latest on Les.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Shit. This makes it even more awkward.”
“What?”
There’s a pause.
“I’m probably going to be his lawyer. One of them at least.”
It doesn’t compute for a few seconds.
“You’re going to defend the guy who tried to kill Les?”
“Everybody deserves a lawyer, Willie.”
I should have seen it coming. She’s working with Marcus Green now, and he’s a magnet for cases like Raymond Gatewood’s. After getting pulled into a couple of hopeless causes that turned out to be not so hopeless after all, thanks to a little help from yours truly, my ex-wife decided that teaming up with a self-promoting, muckraking defender of truth, justice and the American way was more fun than the corporate tedium of Bartley, Bowman and Bush.