“What’s the story?” asked Rhiner.
“No story,” said Golden. He did not look at the reporter, or at Lofton, only at Tenace. “Barker just wants to try Hammer as a starter.”
Golden left as soon as he had given Tenace Hammer’s stats. Lofton watched him amble down the right field line. He couldn’t help liking Golden; at least he was intrigued by the man. He had mixed feelings about writing a story that would drag him lower. Given Amanti’s sudden reluctance, he had mixed feelings about writing the story at all. For a moment he felt the same lethargy he’d felt in California during those weeks between the time he’d found out about Hansen and the time he’d quit his job; he felt the inability to do anything that made any sense, the itch to leave.
“That’s the trouble with this team,” Rhiner complained. “Nobody tells you anything. Act like everything’s a goddamn secret.”
“No secret,” said Tenace. “He’s been drinking.”
“Sparks?”
“Nah, Golden. You could smell it all over him. Who knows what Sparks has been doing.”
Rhiner scowled. “I didn’t smell anything.”
Lofton watched Golden cross the field. The general manager had his head bowed, as if deep in thought or brooding. He did not walk as if he were drunk.
“Sparks had himself a bad case of red eye this morning, too. Doesn’t look like he’s been sleeping much. He’s speeding, you ask me.”
“You think everyone’s on drugs.”
“They all are,” said Tenace. “Don’t you read the papers?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of high-strung? That’s what Sparks is. High-strung.” Rhiner lowered his voice, sighing. “Almost took my head off when I asked him how his arm’s been feeling.”
“Either way, he’s losing out, and he knows it.” Tenace nodded with satisfaction. “The Blues’ll never take him up now.”
“It’s just temporary. His arm needs rest.”
“Should’ve rested him months ago,” said Tenace.
Lofton stood up. Golden was headed down the right field line. He decided to catch up to him, even though the idea frightened him a little. It might be risky to broach the subject of the arsons directly.
“Talk about high-strung,” said Tenace, “look at this bastard here.”
Rhiner agreed. “Yeah, you look real tired.”
“Don’t worry, he always looks like that. Been out cavorting. Leading the good life, huh?”
“The perfect life,” Lofton said, and headed out after Golden.
He caught up with Golden in the ballpark men’s room, a small brick outbuilding beyond the first base bleachers. Golden stood over the trough, pissing. He did not look up when Lofton walked in.
Lofton washed his hands in the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He did look tired. His eyes were red, a little crusted, and his cheeks gaunt. He threw water on his face and called over to Golden.
“So no Sparks, huh?” Lofton heard his own voice quaver.
Golden looked over at him dimly, as if peering out of the darkness, up from the bottom of some deep well.
“No. No Sparks. He’s been working his arm too hard; we want to get him into a more normal rotation.” Golden came to the basin next to Lofton. The two men regarded each other in the mirror. Golden nodded. Lofton thought of Golden’s crippled wife and the man’s shattered career. He caught a glimpse of Golden’s profile and saw there was softness to the man’s face, as if he were a compassionate person, but when Lofton glanced back up into the mirror and saw the man’s full face reflected back to him, he noticed Golden’s mouth was twisted into a grimace—as if reacting to a joke more cruel than funny.
“How long you been in Holyoke?” Lofton asked.
“A few years.” Golden combed his hair and wet his face, then dried himself with a towel from the dispenser. Lofton did the same. The rough brown paper felt good against his skin, and the feel of the towel made him think again of Golden’s crippled wife. Did Golden wash her face?
“Have there always been so many fires in this town?” Lofton asked. His approach wasn’t exactly subtle, he realized.
Golden ran the towel over his face again; the towel hid his expression, for an instant, and muffled his voice. “That’s more up your alley, I think. Don’t newspapers keep track of those things?” Golden chucked the paper towel in the garbage.
“I hear it’s arson.”
Golden stood a few feet behind Lofton, off to the side. Lofton studied Golden’s face in the mirror, and Golden studied Lofton’s.
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Golden said. His face was passive, cold. When Lofton turned to look at the man directly, Golden had turned away. All he saw was the back of Golden’s head as he pushed out the door.
Lofton studied himself in the mirror. He was losing hair—have been for years—and when he stepped back to get a longer look, he thought he might be losing weight, too. I still don’t know about Golden. He stuck his fist under his belt. The pants seemed looser at the waist than they had once been—I haven’t been eating, the heat—and then he cursed himself. He was fine; his health, perfect. He remembered a story he had heard, about a pitcher who woke up in the middle of the night, always worried about his arm, swinging it in the air above him to make sure it was all right, no muscles torn, no ruined career. Until one night, waking in a strange bed on the road, he swung his hand into the wall and broke his wrist.
Outside, he saw Golden leaning over the fence, half watching the game, half staring at the ground. The kid with the Redwings’ cap twisted backward on his head stood calmly by Golden’s side. The kid had taken to following Golden lately and seemed happy just to be near the former major leaguer. Lofton knew he should ride Golden harder on this arson routine, but he decided not now. He would do it when the kid wasn’t around.
Standing in the first base bleachers, Lofton looked across the field at Sparks. Sparks stood in the dugout at the end of the bench, holding his cap in his hand. He didn’t have his arm in the ice as he usually did. He was pacing nervously. He would sit down, then stand up again a second later, clutch at the dugout screen, and scan the stands near Lofton—where Brunner and Amanti would be sitting if they were here. When the sides changed, Sparks left the dugout, paced down the line, and stood watching Hammer, the new pitcher, throw. Then he paced back again, all the while holding the sore muscles above his elbow and surveying the crowd.
Sparks’s anxiety, Lofton thought, might not have anything to do with Brunner, or Amanti, or Gutierrez, or any of that business. There might be a more innocent explanation. The team was doing well without him. Hammer lacked grace, but he got the ball over. A lanky young man, with a shock of curly black hair that stuck out wildly from beneath his cap, he held the Lynn Sailors down another inning. The fans applauded.
Sparks stood on the sidelines, watching Holyoke break it open, a long rally loading the bases once, then again, after Elvin Banks had cleaned them with a triple. The inning went on, the temperature dropped, and the breeze stiffened. The night was surprisingly cool after the long heat, a little too cool to be pleasant. Lofton went back to the press box, where the plywood at least cut the wind. He could catch up with Sparks after the game.
A couple of reporters, men who worked the city beat for the Springfield paper, had come by to catch the game. A hawker was taking their orders, then barking them through the screen to a boy who hurried off to the concession. The reporters grumbled about the sudden switch in the weather. Dead heat all day, now too cold for a beer. The hawker stuck around, smirking, watching the press.
The reporters had just returned from a mayoral press conference on the downtown renovation plans. They were full of nervous energy, and full of names, exchanging information like kids trading baseball cards, or like sportswriters trading statistics.
“Mayor Rafferty knew this was going to happen months ago. Don’t know why he’s making such a deal out of it now,” said the smaller of the two men. He also appeared to be the older.
The older reporter spat through the wire and lit himself a cigarette. “Same thing that always happens,” he said. “State budget comes out of committee, kills the Holyoke project, gives more money to Boston. The mayor calls a press conference to cry about it.”
“Not too many votes out this way. Boston won’t care how hard Mayor Rafferty cries,” said the younger one.
His friend ignored him. He turned to Lofton. “Didn’t the guy who owns this team buy an old mill down by the canal?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Small fucking world.”
“Not small, incestuous,” said the younger man. “But Brunner’s getting the dick on this one. No fed money to renovate his building now. Wonder what he’s going to do with the turkey?”
“Burn it,” said the hawker—as if he had been waiting to get out this one remark—and there was laughter in the box.
After a while the boy came with food for the press crew, the hot dogs and pizza and ice cream that passed for a late lunch. The older reporter asked the hawker to go back and get him a beer.
“Ain’t allowed to get you guys a beer. A Coke, okay, but you have to pay for beer.”
“Brunner’s a cheap bastard,” said the reporter.
“He just doesn’t want you guys getting drunk up here and screwing up your job,” said Tenace, then went back to his food, eating greedily, happily, not in the least bit self-conscious.
“No. Brunner’s cheap,” said the hawker.
“He’s going to be a lot cheaper soon, considering the way he’s going to lose out on that mill. Can’t figure out why he bought that mill anyway. Supposed to make it into lots of little shops, some wonderful, charming little thing. But the Hillside Mall is his baby, too, and I know he gets a cut out there. What’s the point of competing with yourself?”
Lofton thought about it. Jack Brunner’s big piece of property, American Paper, was going to be worth a lot less now. Without the guarantee of federal renovation money, the insurance companies would devalue the property. That meant the insurance payoff, if the building happened to burn, would be a fraction of what it might have been before. He wondered what Brunner was going to do now. He guessed Brunner was wondering the same thing.
The game went slowly; it was only the bottom of the seventh. Holyoke loaded the bases again. The Sailors’ pitcher, a tall redheaded boy, was wild as a March wind. Hammer, Holyoke’s pitcher, stood at the plate, ready to bat.
“This Hammer kid shows some promise,” said Rhiner, who said little while the others talked politics, just eyed them occasionally, suspiciously. He was not as surly as he had been the last time Lofton had seen him, but he was still guarded, saying little, as if afraid he might let another news story slip out between his lips and then be unable to recover it.
The redhead ran the count to three balls and no strikes. One more bad pitch would walk in a run. An embarrassment, for one pitcher to walk another. The Lynn catcher went to the mound. The Sailors’ manager stayed on the bench, letting his catcher handle the youngster.
The redhead gave the next pitch his all, a hard strike at the fat heart of the plate. Hammer got hold of it, knocked the ball high to the left field fence. The Sailors’ outfielder backed up a few steps, then kept backing, all the way to the wall. The ball arced away, a high fly that started to come down, then, caught in the wind, kept on going, over the fence and into the street. Hammer had iced it for himself, made his first start in Holyoke something to remember. Rhiner stood on his feet and screamed. The Redwings came out to congratulate the newcomer as he touched home.
“Imagine that,” said the older reporter.
“He must feel good,” said the younger one.
“Yeah, I betcha Sparks feels pretty good, too,” said Tenace. “Punk from nowhere pitches a great game, then knocks himself a homer. I’m sure it makes Sparks feel like a prince.”
After the game Lofton looked for Sparks. He couldn’t find him. The pitcher was not out congratulating Hammer. He was not in the bullpen. He was not in the clubhouse. Lofton asked the old gatekeeper if he had seen which way Sparks had gone.
“No,” the man said. “And it wouldn’t be my business if I had.”
He could be one of two places, Lofton thought, getting drunk or finding someone to console him. Amanti had said that Sparks had a girlfriend, one of the ballpark girls. Lofton figured he could find them if he wanted, but the whole idea of tracking Sparks and the girl down, or rooting Sparks out of some local bar, gave him a cold, sinking feeling in the stomach. Why do I bother? he thought. Liuzza’s check, uncashed, was still in his pocket. He went back to the hotel, to his car, and drove over the Notch to Amherst.
The neighborhood was quiet, the houses dark. Coming up the walkway, Lofton thought he saw a light shining in Amanti’s apartment. Maybe only a reflection; it was hard to tell. He pressed his nose against the kitchen window. The light came from farther back inside the apartment, from the bedroom.
He knocked and waited. The beam of light inside trembled, disappeared, then grew wider, as if coming from behind a door that somebody had pulled shut and then let drift open again. He knocked a little harder. Still Amanti did not come. He sucked in his breath. The night was chilly, like the nights in California. He went to the window and studied the slant of light coming from the rear of the apartment. He saw the light blackened by a shadow, and he stepped back to the door. He stood under the porch light, wondering if Amanti stood on the other side, looking at him through the fisheye. When the door still did not open, he imagined Brunner on the other side, a scene like in the old movies: Brunner firing a gun through the door; Lofton grabbing his stomach, twisting, falling, dying in the yellow light. He reached to knock again. Just as he did so, the door opened. Amanti peered at him through the darkness. She wore a cotton robe. She held the collar closed with one hand; the other hand held the robe closed at her waist.
“Come in.” She sounded sleepy. He followed her back to her bedroom. The thin white robe wrinkled against her back, shining a little in the darkness.
She said nothing. He could not read her silence. A woman’s silence always held him captive. Maureen, though, never had that power over him; she rushed in to fill a silence with her trilling, musical happiness. He had never thought of her voice that way before, or at least not for a while.
“I talked to your cousin today.”
“I thought we were going to drop this.”
“He’s a sharp guy. No wonder your mother liked him.”
Amanti laughed, a sound that seemed to rise from somewhere deep in her throat and then was cut off immediately, so it sounded shrill.
“Your cousin expressed a lot of concern for you. He said you were delicate. And then, later, he offered me a job as a speech writer. He gave me money. A retainer.”
“Oh.” Her voice was noncommittal, polite, the same way she had been on the phone that one time, pretending that Lofton had called about the air-conditioning. Lofton remembered the man’s voice, harsh and sleepy, that had originally answered the phone that day.
“Why did Tony Liuzza give me that money? What do you think he was after?”
Amanti shrugged. Lofton grabbed her hand. Her gown opened at the collar, and he could see the pale white of her breasts.
“Was he bribing me? Trying to get me off this story, away from you? And you, how come you’re backing off?” Lofton thought of the group picture on Liuzza’s wall. It wasn’t simply familial love that had prompted the young lawyer to hang that particular picture. Every photograph, except that of Liuzza’s wife and daughters, had some politician in it. That group shot was no exception.
“You didn’t tell me you knew Senator Kelley.”
<
br /> Amanti’s face became needle-sharp, panicky, an expression that was replaced instantly by the same wide-cheeked innocence he had seen the other day outside the park. Lofton felt the cold fingers on his spine again, but this time the associations clicked. The gruff voice on Amanti’s telephone. The picture of Kelley and the china-faced woman on Liuzza’s wall. Amanti’s long, unhappy story about the man who would not leave his wife.
“Kelley …” he said, then just let it hang.
“What did my cousin tell you?”
He could see Amanti was upset, starting to cry, though there seemed to be something studied about her tears, something theatrical, as if she didn’t quite believe the tears herself. He sat down next to her on the bed. She let the gown stay open. This whole business was more tangled than he’d expected. He wondered again if he should abandon this situation, forget his big story, forget Holyoke. Despite himself, he felt an enormous sympathy for Amanti.
He took her chin in his hand, ran his fingers over her slightly pocked skin, touching the blemish. She reached up, to take his fingers away, he thought, but instead, she gripped his hand and held it tight. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. She seemed calm now, almost indifferent. He moved, thinking he meant to pull himself up off the bed, to ask her some questions and get the story straight, but instead, he found his hand touching her waist. Her eyes opened wider at his touch, surprised, maybe, or pretending surprise.
“Kelley …” he said again, trying to pursue the business, but she moved deliberately toward him. Her lips were warm, but the depths of her mouth, her tongue were cool, as if she had been drinking something cold, sucking on ice. Her robe, too, was cool, damp with perspiration. They slid back together onto the white sheets, their legs intertwining. Her fingertips reached in to pull out his shirttail. Then he felt her stomach against his, and Amanti’s breathing, hot inside his ear, was like the noise of the ocean inside an old shell, only crazier, and he saw the jungle all around him, exotic red plants, all blooming wildly inside his chest, Amanti’s elaborate, teasing tongue, her fingers flat and tense against his skin, her eyes half-open. He raised his head. As he did so, the phone at the top of the bed rang. It startled him, and he pulled away. Amanti did not try to answer it. She lay on the bed, holding her robe at the throat.
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