by Howard Owen
Rand originally had something more mundane planned for Roy Haas, but a gun that fired a poison dart that melted? He couldn’t turn it down. Four years after he failed to kill Buck McRae, it was good-bye, Roy Haas.
“He was on his knees, trying to install a piece of carpet, when I found my chance. I explained who I was and why I was there to kill him. I’m not sure he understood my mission. He pretended to not even remember Frannie. After I shot him, I duct-taped his mouth to keep him from making too much noise until the poison took effect.”
Rand says he stuck around the Sacramento area for a couple of days and even drove by the apartment where Roy Haas died.
“And then I moved to Richmond.”
He got to know Les Hacker’s habits. Rand was getting careless by this point, I guess, and arrogant. Nut jobs like Rand, the kind who believe they’re smarter than everyone else and will never be caught, get that way. He said that, when he realized Les showed up in Monroe Park most days, he managed to buy a unit overlooking the park. Wasn’t that damn hard, the way prices plummeted after the housing market sank like a stone.
“It was just too delicious. I could dispatch this one right from my living room window.”
He says it like it’s a goddamn game. I would give my 401(k) to get my hands around his well-tanned neck for a few seconds. I have no doubt that Finlay Rand stopped thinking of people as people a long time ago.
He says the little scorecards he sent in the mail every time to each of the present or future deceased or their next of kin were just part of the game.
“I wondered if any of them or their loved ones would figure it out, but no one ever did. People constantly disappoint me.” Rand looks down at his watch.
“I feel a sense of regret that there is one player left, Mr. Black, but time is running out. And maybe my misstep was a sign. Maybe the gods just did not want Buck McRae just yet. I hope, though, that poor Frannie will be satisfied with what I have accomplished.”
He turns to look at me.
“When I say time is running out, I’m not just referring to my Biblical three-score and ten. My doctor tells me I have pancreatic cancer. It’s particularly effective, and my life already is drifting into the land of diminishing returns. Time to take control.”
He pulls out the pistol.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “I’ll give you a fair chance.” He fishes a penny out of his pants pocket.
“Heads, I use this first bullet on myself, and you get to write the most amazing story of what I imagine is a mediocre and star-crossed career. Tails, you go first, and whoever finds us here hopefully discovers the tape recorder I’ve been using for the last hour.”
He holds it up and smiles.
“Either way, the world finds out what I did for Frannie. The world finds out that evil is not always allowed to run rampant, with no consequences.”
He places the penny on his thumb and flips it. I see it glint in the dim light. He catches it and turns my way. He shows me the coin. I guess I’m not going to win that Pulitzer.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Black. It looks as if you go first.”
Chapter Twenty
My only hope seems to be that Custalow will come looking for me before Finlay Rand pulls the trigger. If I could get this damn gag off, I think I could scream loud enough to penetrate even the brick walls of the Prestwould. Fat chance of that, though.
Rand, like he could read my mind, says, “Well, it’s only a matter of time until that big oaf you live with comes looking for you.”
Then he seems to have an inspiration.
“I know,” he says, “we’ll do it at that baseball stadium. What a nice way to tie everything up all nice and tidy, don’t you think? Plus, I hate to mess up the apartment. The cleaning lady would be so upset.”
He actually giggles. He sounds like this is some kind of damn caper, something we’ll laugh about later. But, since Finlay Rand is holding a loaded gun and death delayed could be death denied, I nod my head.
“That’s the boy,” he says.
He blindfolds me and ties something around my ankles so I can’t run, then jerks me out of the chair and leads me down the hall. With me shackled, it takes awhile. I can tell that we’ve gone past the front door. When he turns left into what my nose tells me is the kitchen, I know where we’re going: the service elevator.
It can take us all the way down to the basement, without anyone hearing or seeing us. I hear it creak and wheeze its way toward us. Rand pushes me inside. I stumble and fall.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Black,” I hear him say as he helps me up, “but we must hurry.”
No need to apologize, I want to say. You’re only going to kill me. Being a psychopath is never having to say you’re sorry.
I think I can hear the other main elevator as we descend, no doubt Custalow coming, too late, to my rescue. Oh, well. It’s the effort that counts.
On a weekday, someone might have been down here. Custalow perhaps, checking on the boiler. But it’s Sunday, and Rand leads me, unchallenged and one halting foot at a time, up the steep steps. I can see daylight through the blindfold. Then, we’re on level ground, the alley behind the Prestwould.
“The car’s only a few feet away, Mr. Black,” he says, poking me in the ribs with the instrument of my demise as we stumble along. I remember that Rand’s Lexus is, damn the luck, just across the alley from the building.
Maybe, I think, Abe will break into Rand’s unit and, eventually, look out the window and see what’s becoming of me. But you can’t see the alley from Rand’s unit, and “eventually” probably would be too late anyhow.
Then, I’m in the car, pushed down in the back seat.
It takes all of five minutes, way too fast, before I feel us turning into what must be The Diamond’s parking lot.
“Ah,” I hear my captor say, “that’ll do.” He parks, yanks me out of the car and leads me, stumbling, through what seems like a small opening. I have to turn sideways to get through. We take a few more steps and then stop.
“Et voilà!” I hear Rand say as he rips off the blindfold.
We are in foul territory down the right field line, not far from the bullpen. It isn’t, all things considered, a bad place to die.
“So it all ends where it began,” Rand says. “Right where those animals played their stupid games. Frannie probably walked right where we’re walking.”
I see him pull the pistol out of the pocket of the $800 jacket he’s chosen to spatter with our blood.
Then I see my salvation, walking on tiptoes, carrying what appears to be a thirty-three-ounce Louisville Slugger.
Jumpin’ Jimmy Deacon’s world is pretty much confined to The Diamond, as it once was to Parker Field. He doesn’t really have much of a life away from the ballpark. He never married, and doesn’t seem to have a lot of hobbies.
At his age, he should be working shorter hours. I know the Flying Squirrels wouldn’t mind if he cut back a little. They probably sit around and wonder how they can get rid of the old goat without pissing off the whole city. Jimmy’s become kind of a mascot. You might offend fewer people by pulling down Robert E. Lee’s statue than by deep-sixing the baseball team’s oldest and most faithful minion.
I owe much to Jumpin’ Jimmy’s devotion to baseball.
“Willie,” he says, “is this the one?”
I nod like a bobblehead doll as Rand turns and fires one shot just as Jumpin’ Jimmy catches him on the chin with a home-run swing.
Jimmy saw us from the time the car rolled up, it turns out. No math major, Jimmy still was able to put two and two together, and I’m glad I told him as much as I had earlier about Finlay Rand’s vendetta against the 1964 Richmond Vees.
He likes to carry a bat with him as he makes the rounds, like a baseball nut’s walking cane. He said he just likes the feel of it in his hand. This day, he has chosen a Chris Davis model, which he proceeds to use with great enthusiasm on Finlay Rand. His first swing leveled Rand, whose pistol went flying.
“Is this the asshole that shot Les?” he asks me. I nod. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because that’s Jimmy’s signal to begin batting practice.
I might have tried to stop him if my hands had been free. I might have tried to persuade Jimmy to let the courts take care of Finlay Rand if I hadn’t been gagged. I might have.
The way it works out, all I can do is stand here, handcuffed, shackled and gagged, and watch Jimmy administer justice with a Louisville Slugger to Rand’s various body parts. It isn’t a pretty sight. He doesn’t stop until an overly enthusiastic swing causes the bat to splinter.
Rand’s blood is seeping into the dirt. He hasn’t moved since the second blow to the head.
Finally, Jimmy puts down the blood-stained bat remnant. He walks over and takes the gag off, then undoes my legs. He finds the key to the handcuffs in Rand’s pocket.
“Jesus Christ, Jimmy,” I say while he’s unlocking me, “you didn’t have to kill the son of a bitch.”
He looks at me like I’m speaking in tongues.
“He shot Les,” he says. “Jumpin’ Jimmy doesn’t believe in no half-ass measures.”
Chapter Twenty-One
MONDAY
The church is packed. Someone managed to get a video feed set up in the community room for the overflow. Who knew Les Hacker had so many friends? I don’t remember seeing a big line of people going in and out of Peggy’s place when he was alive.
But who am I to judge? How many times have I seen some old acquaintance embalmed and looking like he’s ready for the wax museum and realized that I really liked that guy, had some great times with him once upon a time, but hadn’t called him in two years?
The place is nearly full by the time Peggy and I, Andi, Awesome Dude, and Les’s brother and niece from Wisconsin, are led in. Walking up that aisle is like taking a trip back through my misspent life.
There are Abe and Andy Peroni and R. P. McGonnigal, who have known me since we were in single digits. Sitting next to Andy and his wife, I’m glad to see, is Cindy. This may mean nothing, but Cindy’s not being here would definitely have meant something. There are other old faces from Oregon Hill. I even catch a glimpse of Walker Johnson, who seems likely to avoid much if any jail time for his much-applauded assault. I hear they’ve started a legal defense fund for him on the Hill. Put me down for fifty bucks.
On the other side of the aisle, I spy Mal Wheelwright, Sarah Goodnight, Sally Velez, Enos Jackson and a few other folks from the newspaper. For the most part, they didn’t know Les, so I feel that drinks all around on me are in order in the near future.
Clara Westbrook, Louisa and Fred Baron, Patti and Pete Garland, Marcia the manager and some others from the Prestwould are here, too. This hasn’t been a great time to live inside the old gray lady, with all the unwelcome publicity the place has gotten. Although, hell, it’ll probably add to resale value. If the old saw about some publicity being better than none is true, Finlay Rand might have made everyone in the place a little richer, on paper at least.
And you have the Former Wives contingent. Jeanette and Glenn and their boys have come. So has Kate, accompanied by Mr. Ellis and by Marcus Green, whose grieving demeanor belies the fact that he never met Les.
The Oregon Hill crowd is in the majority, but there are many faces I don’t know. I’ll discover later the anonymous (until now) good turns Les did for many of them over the years. Cast your bread upon the waters, and they’ll come to your funeral.
The service itself is something of an anticlimax. I am glad I suggested that the minister invite others to speak of Les. I go first and manage to get almost all the way through without breaking up. R. P. steps up, and then Awesome surprises me and everyone and says a few mangled words.
“Les treated me like I was somebody,” Awesome says. After a silence that is drifting into uncomfortable, he adds, “That’s all.”
More people want to speak than get a chance. I see the minister glance at his watch.
Finally, it’s over, and we can join the crowd already in the community room, probably already chowing down on the funeral feast in there.
JUMPIN’ JIMMY Deacon isn’t here. We expect him to be out on bond by tomorrow. Marcus has already agreed to be his lawyer.
Finlay Rand is not dead. He should be, with the clubbing Jimmy gave him, but he still has a pulse. They don’t expect him to make it. If he does, they’re pretty sure he’ll have an IQ somewhere between a squash and a rutabaga. I hope he’ll be sentient enough to suffer.
Somebody called the cops, and a gunshot and severe clubbing along the right field line at The Diamond got their attention. They came charging up, all piss and vinegar. While we waited for them, Jimmy had a few questions.
“So he was really her brother?” he asked me.
“Can’t you see the resemblance?”
Jimmy squinted, trying to find some remnant of Frannie Fling in the tenderized lump of human meat in front of him.
“I guess so. He must of had a hard time. But that didn’t give him any right to shoot Les. That was uncalled-for.”
He had picked up that splinter from the bat, out of habit I guess, and was still holding when the cops came busting in. It turned out that I had a slight concussion, but I was alert enough to make it clear to the horde of police that Jimmy had saved my life by clubbing Rand. The cops could tell that Rand had been hit many times with a baseball bat and thought Jimmy was perhaps a little too enthusiastic in his heroism.
I told them how full of crap they were for taking him off to jail, and they damn near arrested me instead of sending me to the hospital. I’m not supposed to head butt anybody for a couple of weeks.
As they were putting me into the ambulance, one of the cops asked me what was going on between me and the nearly deceased anyhow. What were we doing out here on an off day? I suspect, because cops have learned to expect the seamiest explanation possible, that he’s imagining the worst, or at least the most salacious. Night cops reporter, antiques dealer and baseball lifer involved in sex triangle.
“Why don’t you ask the chief?” I asked the cop as they shut the ambulance doors.
L.D. JONES is already playing defense. He knows I’m going to write, and soon, about how unresponsive he was to my earlier misgivings about Raymond Gatewood as a sniper. He held a press conference this morning to tell the TV mouth breathers that the department had been pursuing an alternative theory to Les Hacker’s shooting, acting on a tip from an unnamed source, and that Finlay Rand might have panicked, knowing that the authorities were closing in on him.
Yeah, right. Sarah covered the press conference for the paper, as I was in the process of getting out of the hospital, and asked as many uncomfortable questions as she could. Oh, L. D. When are you going to listen to me?
Jones made it clear that, based on the tape that police found at the scene of the crime, Rand was involved in several other felonies. Sarah inquired as to whether they were all in the Richmond area. I had briefed her, from the hospital, so she knew all the answers before she asked the questions.
“We aren’t at liberty to say,” the chief said.
“Did some of them happen in Florida, Alabama, California and New York, among other states?”
So L. D. knew that I’d told her everything. All he could do was sputter and claim “ongoing investigation” while the TV types turned their cameras from the chief to Sarah, who told them to buzz off and do their own work.
That damn tape. By the time I thought of it, the cops had already stumbled on it in Rand’s apartment and claimed it as their own. I’m sure they’ll have a great time taking credit for all this, but the handful of people who still read the newspaper will know better. L. D. wants to talk to me, but by the time we talk, I guaran-damn-tee you my version will be in print.
I just wish I could have that tape. I’m working on memory. Bootie Carmichael used to tell me about one of our former sportswriters who had total recall. He could do a forty-five-minute interview without taking a note and qu
ote it back verbatim. When a college football coach called him on it, after saying something he wished he hadn’t and then reading it in the next day’s paper, they told the sportswriter to pretend to take notes.
That guy ain’t me. I have the gist of it, though, and I have all those interviews leading up to this. All over the country, next of kin are going to find out what really happened to their dearly beloveds, and why.
Peggy is still reeling a little, trying to take all this in. She’s staying fairly smoked-up most of the time. What else is new? She understands that some nut who had it in for a long-ago minor-league baseball team shot Les Hacker just because his name happened to be on the opening-day lineup card. I’m not sure she really understands about Frannie Fling and all the rest. I’ll have time to explain that later.
I called Grubby while I was still in the hospital. Sandy McCool put me through to him right away, which told me that my publisher was, for once, eager to talk to me.
I assume he still reads his paper. The story was on B1 this morning. Sarah wrote it. She was off and probably hung over, but she got word via one of our Facebook friends about nine cop cars converging on The Diamond and was on it like white on rice, long before anybody called Chuck Apple, the Sunday cops guy. The story had some pretty shapely legs. Reporter abducted. Local baseball lifer beats wealthy antiques dealer nine-tenths to death. “Reporter abducted” probably doesn’t elicit much of a response from our readers, beyond “good,” but the rest of it was much more moist than the dry toast we usually try to serve our readers on Monday mornings. Sarah followed the ambulance to the hospital, where I told her everything I wanted to relay to our readers.
I told Grubby he might want to bump the paper up a few pages on Tuesday, and that he might want to take this one from sports for A1. When I told him all the gory details, the kind of details that sells papers, I could practically hear his drool hitting the phone. Grubby could use some good news, something to make those little numbers that rule his life do a U-turn and take at least a temporary turn upward. The best thing that could happen to the paper, just about everyone agrees, is for somebody to buy the damn thing and maybe uncouple it from the shit pile of bad-judgment debt the suits across the street have piled on us.