by Leo W. Banks
I made a face that said what I thought of the idea.
“I know, crazy,” Wilson said. “But have you seen Fausto? I mean, the kid’s handsome. My source figures he can work the media pretty good, a town like Tucson. That’s why he came up with that name, El Bailador, for the Mexican fans. It gives the writers headline material. It’s a big part of his marketing scheme. It means ‘the dancer.’”
“I know what it means, Danny. I lived in Mexico for five years.”
“It’s an okay name, but the ball doesn’t dance like a knuckleball. It just dives out of the zone. If you think about it, it just might work. We build this bandwagon thing until Fausto’s the guy everybody in baseball’s talking about.”
“That’s an agent,” I said. “Can’t be a scout. Nobody knows scouts’ names.”
Wilson wouldn’t take the bait. He sat watching the players gathered at the batting cage. They were doing what ballplayers do, elbowing, joshing, stretching, and scratching the usual places. Fly balls banged against the outfield wall with a loud thwack.
Springsteen wailed.
After a long silence, Wilson said, “This source of mine thinks he’s all that. But he’s got a vindictive streak like you wouldn’t believe.”
“That’s definitely an agent.”
Wilson watched a fly ball sail over the centerfield wall. It took a long time getting out, a white dot against a perfect blue sky. “How about I talk to the ABC gal about doing a spot on you?”
“You haven’t told me anything, Danny. Just give me the name.”
“If it gets back to this guy, he’ll make life miserable for the Diamondbacks, and that’ll come back on me. I’ll be toast. I can’t do it.”
Past Wilson’s far shoulder, two men walked down the center aisle and settled into the premium box seats on the third base side of home plate. The lead one was young, well dressed, and commanding, and something about him rang a bell. The second one stayed back, about the right distance for a lackey who knows he’s a lackey.
A girl in khaki shorts and a Thunder shirt ran between the seats and bent over with her hands between her knees to ask the lead man something. He answered with a wave of his hand, without looking at her. She hurried off, undoubtedly to bring him whatever he’d asked for.
Thwack. I watched another ball sail over the fence.
When you turn your attention away from something you’re trying to remember, the answer sometimes pops into your brain.
“You know, Danny, I still read SI, watch SportsCenter, the whole bit.”
“You still follow the game. That’s terrific.”
“I’m thinking about a particular agent.”
“Forget it, Whipper.”
“Read a long piece about him at Bleacher Report. Born in New York, a DiMaggio fanatic.”
Wilson snapped his head around, worried eyes bearing down.
I said, “They talked about him as the guy no GM wants to see walk into his office.”
Suddenly agitated, Wilson twisted in his seat, sighing and fussing. “Promise me, Whip! Really, promise me you won’t sell me out to this guy!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Keep my voice down? Why should I keep my voice down!?”
I tapped Wilson on the arm and leaned into his ear and whispered, “Over your left shoulder. Cream pants, black hair. The guy we’re talking about is sitting right over there.”
Wilson looked and saw Max Mayflower, the man Bleacher Report called the hottest young agent in baseball.
“Shit. Shit, shit.” Wilson buried his face in his hands. “Look, I didn’t tell you squat. You came up with the name on your own, okay?”
“Who’s the guy with him?”
Wilson peeked between his fingers. “His assistant, Ed Bolt, a real sleaze hammer. They’re both sleaze hammers. Mayflower plays it like he’s your best friend, but cross him, and he’ll burn you down. I can’t lose this job.”
He made a pretzel of himself, scrunching toward me to shield his face from Mayflower.
“He hasn’t seen you,” I said. “I’ll take off, and Mayflower will never know I was talking to you. I’ll wait until after the game to make the approach.”
In a low voice that dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, Wilson said, “Okay, go. Go now! Wait, you’ll talk to Roxanne Santa Cruz?”
Even in a time of peril, he couldn’t resist making a plug to fill the seats.
“They do live promos in the evening, right?” I said. “Ahead of the ten o’clock?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, usually.”
“I’ll do a promo and then talk to the ABC people for the ten. But only if they agree to the promo first.”
“I don’t control what they do, Whip.”
“Lean on them.”
“Swear to God, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Have them come by the first base dugout, and I’ll say a few words. They’ll be unforgettable.”
THIRTEEN
Roxanne Santa Cruz was tall, square shouldered, and thin, though not so thin you wanted to feed her a cheeseburger. Everything fit together nicely. She had a wide red mouth and swooping eyebrows that took the long route over eyes that were lively and dark, not quite black, not quite brown. Her tan skin was fine and smooth, and she had long black hair with a strip of purple coloring behind her left ear.
That flourish told me things weren’t what they seemed. I assumed that already by the way she carried herself. She had an elegant jaw. She held her head high and had that contained, confident manner that always set me on edge, waiting for the come down.
She spent a lot of time on herself, and that was television. But she would’ve looked fine without the makeup. She was a stunner. Women like Roxanne Santa Cruz have trouble walking down the street.
It was the middle of the fourth inning. The seat to my left was empty. She sat in it with her cameraman to my right. The crowd around me had dutifully and without complaint cleared away at the sight of the camera and microphone.
Make room, you people. The kings of the culture have arrived.
This is television, dammit!
Santa Cruz wasn’t like the usual on-air creatures the TV stations sent out. She was intelligent and knowledgeable about baseball. At interview time, she pulled at her hair and shook it out, letting it spread across her shoulders and down her back. She wiggled her neck to loosen up and spat her gum into her palm and stuck it under the seat. I’d never seen anyone do that.
When the camera light blinked on, she mouthed the microphone, and without looking at notes, rattled off the relevant facts of my career, including my twenty-strikeout game. When she asked what it felt like to return to Hi Corbett, I ditched the script she’d written and took off on my own.
“It’s bittersweet. The man who made that game possible is missing. His name is Rolando Molina. He was my catcher, and I’m here tonight trying to get answers on his whereabouts. Anyone with information can find me west of the Tucson Mountains at a place called Double Wide. Look for a red Bronco parked outside an Airstream trailer.”
Santa Cruz had no idea what I was talking about and hid her confusion like a pro. She looked straight into the camera and said, “The long, strange trip of Prospero Stark, tonight at ten.”
When the camera light went off, she barked at me: “What was that? Goddamn you, Stark!”
She used words I’d never heard outside a locker room. When she cooled down, I told her more about Rolando, our careers, and our friendship, and said she needed to investigate his disappearance. The more I talked, the calmer she became. She was smart enough to know that a former pitcher looking for his missing catcher was a good story.
“I’ll call my assignment editor,” she said. “It might take some talking.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“He’s an idiot.”
“I just handed you a potential Murrow Award.”
“I said I’d look into it. Don’t be a tool.”
“A tool? Can you defi
ne that for me?”
“No.” Santa Cruz had a barrette in her mouth as she pulled the hair off the back of her neck. “Tonight we’ll run two minutes on you, and then we’ll see if Rolando Molina’s a go.” She got her hair clip in place. “After you do the on-field thing, meet me by the Heroes’ Wall. We’ll stand you up there, and no nonsense this time, okay?”
We did the shoot, and it went well. When Santa Cruz was done, her manner changed. Her voice lost the energy of the camera and went back to being a little hard and a little cynical, in that put-on toughness reporters use.
Coolly, she said, “I’ll call you about Molina.”
“Sounds like I’ve got a partner. Can I call you Roxy?”
She gave me an icy look and walked off, glancing back over her shoulder at me as she went.
FOURTEEN
I was leaning against Max Mayflower’s white Lexus when he emerged from the stadium with his sidekick. I knew it was Mayflower’s Lexus because it was the only luxury car in a reserved space with a license plate holder that said, MAX IS HERE. I decided that was a clue.
Ed Bolt hollered at me from twenty feet away. “Nobody leans on Mr. Mayflower’s ride. Let’s go, mister. Off you go.”
When I didn’t move, Bolt stepped forward to force the issue. But Mayflower elbowed him and said, “Do you know who that is, Eddie?”
“Somebody that don’t hear good,” Bolt said.
“That’s Whiplash Stark,” Mayflower said, pointing at me with admiration. “That man could’ve made all of us rich, the way he threw a baseball. Unbelievable talent. Once in a generation.” Mayflower threw out his hand for me to shake.
“I thought it was time we met,” I said. “I’m making my comeback.”
Mayflower studied me through a tough-looking face. His eyes angled down in an odd way, the left one lower than the right. His black hair was combed straight back. Some cream must’ve been holding it down because it glowed under the parking lot lights. He had a swimming pool tan, and wore linen pants, a black belt, and a light-blue short-sleeved shirt with gold trim.
His gold watch blinked under the lights. At what a Gucci watch costs, it should sing Sinatra.
I had no plans to get back in the game. But I didn’t want to spook Mayflower by immediately bringing up his connection to Rolando and Fausto, something I wasn’t supposed to know. My plan was to engage him in friendly comeback chatter, putting him at ease, and then drop Rolando’s name and see what happened.
“If you’d be willing to represent me, I’d love to have you.”
“My list is full.” Mayflower parked his hands on his hips. “But I might be able to make room for the Phenom. I’ve always wondered what happened to you.”
That question again.
“I’ve been working out, running to bring my legs back.” That part was true, although it had nothing to do with a comeback. I liked to run.
“What about that shoulder? Wasn’t it the shoulder that got you?”
“Feels strong. I’m tired of sitting around. Let’s make money together.”
Bolt drew up close to Mayflower. “I remember this guy, Maxy. He hit ninety-nine on the gun. Regular, he done that.” Bolt talked around a lump of tobacco in his cheek.
Mayflower held up his hand to silence Bolt.
But Bolt kept going. “He got pinched in Mexico, a cocaine thing. Remember on the TV all the time? They showed it on the TV.”
Slowly, Mayflower turned to glare at Bolt, and Bolt stepped back.
Mayflower looked me over carefully. “America loves a come-back story, and name recognition certainly won’t be a problem. Every GM in the game remembers you.”
I talked about my repaired shoulder and my desire to pitch again. He bought it, offering to set up a throwing session to see if I still had it.
“I’m free all this week,” I said.
Mayflower handed me one of his cards. “Call my secretary, and she’ll set it up. We’ll do it right here at Hi Corbett.”
More fans were leaving the park. Cars crawled past us to the exit lane. Horns sounded. Dads barked at their kids to keep up and watch the traffic.
“One thing, though.” Mayflower held up a cautioning finger. “Nobody knows about this, and definitely no media. I work quiet.”
The time had come to drop Rolando’s name. “First I need to find somebody. Rolando Molina, my old catcher. I can’t make a comeback without Rolando.”
Mayflower’s face got stony. His eyes drew back and became hostile. The smile stayed glued to his face, but everything real had gone out of it.
Bolt’s demeanor hardened too. He stepped closer to me. He wasn’t an inch above five foot five and looked like a bulldog. Small nose, small eyes, and a shadow of whiskers over a round face pockmarked by acne scars. He glistened with sweat.
“Thing is, I can’t find Rolando,” I said. “I know he was working with his brother, Fausto, down in Monterrey. But he’s gone missing.”
“I assure you I have no knowledge of that.”
“Sure, you do. You went down there to watch him work.”
Mayflower stiffened. The lines around his eyes gathered to spider webs.
I continued. “Fausto last saw Rolando two weeks ago and now he’s missing. I have reason to believe he came up here.”
Breaking eye contact, Mayflower turned to his car. He looked to be done, conversation over, and then he whirled to face me, his eyes full of anger: “That boy is mine! You stay away, Stark!”
He hit the doink button on his key chain, and the Lexus doors unlocked. Bolt shouldered me out of the way and grabbed the passenger door. Mayflower climbed in and Bolt closed the door, giving it a two-handed shove to make sure.
The window inched down and Mayflower angled his hard gray eyes into the crack. He had calmed himself, the voice smooth again. “As I indicated, I try not to make my business public.”
I leaned close. “One way or another, I’m going to find out what happened to Rolando.”
“Good night, Whip. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
He pressed the up button, and the window moved. I grabbed the glass. My fingers were about to get crushed when Bolt’s hands clamped down on my shoulders. His mitts were like iron. With sudden violence, he jerked me clear of the car and threw me away like a doll.
Somehow I stayed upright, and when I regained my balance and turned back, Bolt was standing with his legs spread, clenching and unclenching his fists as he snapped his left knee back and forth. Something told me he’d used that pose before.
He glared at me with lifeless eyes. His mouth was a bent nail. Tobacco stains made half moons at the corners of his mouth. “Come on, Stark, you ain’t a tough guy.”
“All I am is smart. It’s my only pitch.”
“Smart don’t cut it in parking lots.”
I was straightening my clothes. “What do you do for Mayflower anyway? Community outreach?”
“You can have that workout now, you want.” He leaned over and spat, a brown blob that landed on the pavement with a loud splat. Something told me he had done that before too.
“Say, how about a cut of that tobacco?”
He tossed his jaw. “Bounce, Stark.”
“Doctors hate chewing tobacco, but it helped me pitch.”
“You say so. You’re the smart guy, right?” Bolt spoke with barely a twitch of his lips.
I realized something. We were having a conversation from one of my detective stories. In trying to find out what happened to Rolando, I’d become one. Specialty, missing persons. No license, no experience, and no idea what I was doing. Call anytime.
“That’s how this is supposed to go,” I said. “I say something clever, you say something clever, and we go on like that.”
“The heat’s got you talking nuts, Stark. Saying stuff you don’t know what it means. It causes distractions and so forth.”
Bolt walked around the Lexus and opened the driver’s door and looked over the roof at me. He made his neck disappear with a hunch o
f his shoulders. “Whatever happened to your pal, it’s got Maxy upset. But he don’t know what it is, so don’t come around bothering him again. You do and it becomes my business.”
Bolt got in. The Lexus started with a mild cough.
I called, “What about my tryout?” but all I got in return was brake lights.
Years ago, I played for a minor league outfit whose owner had a guy walk at his ankles like a kitten. Nobody knew what this fellow did except not talk and look tough.
That taught me that baseball is more than young men gamboling across pretty green fields. The business end of the game is as hard as it gets, and so are the men who run it. Sometimes they need guys like Bolt to stay competitive, and staying competitive means keeping secrets in the courting of big-time prospects.
But whatever was going on with Mayflower went way beyond typical business secrecy.
FIFTEEN
Charlie O’Shea managed to sleep through the clearing of the parking lot. Only now he was covered in popcorn. It looked like some smart aleck leaving the game had dumped a bag on him. I plucked a piece out of his ear and drove toward home, stopping on the way at Opal’s sketch spot.
My sign was there but no Opal. I sat in the Bronco for a few minutes waiting and looking around, but that wasn’t getting me anywhere.
With Rolando and now Opal, my list of missing persons had doubled.
As I drove west on Speedway toward Gates Pass, I thought about the dead man on the trail. Who was he? A friend of Rolando’s. Had to be. Why else leave the hand on my step? He wanted me to know what happened and do something about it.
I drove under the I-10 freeway past the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind and the entrance to Barrio Hollywood. Right off Speedway, a block south, is Guadalajara Bakery, where I get my beans and tortillas. The building slumps on its foundation and looks like it might collapse in a strong wind, but the Mexican food doesn’t get any better.
No rain fell, but the sky was overcast. The clouds threw down occasional bolts of lightning.
What were you involved in, Rolando? Was it gold?