The Hollywood Chicken did not emerge from his trailer until the end of the second inning, when the Redwings were already down, 2–0. Two bodyguards escorted the Chicken. One man cleared the way, the other walked behind, and children streamed all around, trying to touch the Chicken’s plumes. The Chicken ran through the gate into the midst of the Holyoke players as they retook the field. After looking at the scoreboard, the bright yellow bird somersaulted clumsily down the third base line and attacked the umpire.
Lofton had seen the Chicken do the same routine before, at Bees Stadium in San Jose, but the stunt did not have much punch tonight. Even so, the kids enjoyed it, screaming louder, making more noise than they had at any time earlier in the game.
“Some Chicken,” said the kid with the baseball cap. He had moved lower in the stands, closer to Lofton, and spoke quietly, nervously, as if attempting to exchange secrets. The two, Lofton and the kid, exchanged a long glance, and Lofton realized the boy saw through his disguise; in fact, he did not even notice it. Lofton remembered what Amanti had told him about the boy: how sometimes the kid mixed up faces and times, forgot where he was, and how other times he noticed things most people did not see.
Below him the game was looking bad. Holyoke needed to win tonight, and the next night, too, if it wanted to stay in the pennant race, but Hammer, the young fastballer, was beginning to lose control. He walked the first batter, then threw a fastball to the next—a sweet white flash. Too sweet. The West Haven batter socked it away, a hard liner that arced and twisted, skipping past Porter into the right field corner.
The batter now stood on third, pleased, clapping his hands, and the Chicken went into a fit. He grabbed his heart and fell backward onto the ground. The crowd hooted and screamed. Later in the inning, when the opposing player scored, the crowd got excited again. It gave them another chance to see the Chicken’s antics: a flip and a handstand on the third base sidelines. A man near Lofton hoisted his little boy into the air, trying to give him a better vantage point. But the Chicken’s gymnastics were poor, and the man’s wife complained. “Is that the big deal? They do better on TV.”
“What do you expect? It’s just minor league ball. They got a minor league Chicken.”
“No, it’s the Hollywood Chicken,” their son protested.
“I don’t understand,” said the mother, shaking her head.
Lofton did not understand either. He had met the Chicken once. The Chicken played parks all over the country, and Lofton had interviewed him in San Jose. The Chicken, a sandy-haired young man, had described how he started out at Los Angeles football games, coming to the gate in his homemade suit, buying a ticket like everyone else, then racing through the aisles, leading the crowd in cheers. “One day the game was close, and I wanted to lead the crowd, everyone. I raced out onto the ledge in front of the Scoreboard.” Stadium management was angry. It evicted him and told him not to come back. But the fans objected, the papers made a storm, and the team reneged. They put the Chicken on salary. Now he had a national career, so many engagements he could barely keep up with them all. “That first night, when I came back to work and the fans applauded, thousands of people in that big stadium, all applauding for me, it was the experience of my life. I cried inside my chicken suit.”
Though it was a ridiculous story, Lofton had believed the man’s emotion. He’d seen the Chicken perform again, years later, in Denver. That time, also, the performance had been far better than tonight. Maybe the man had lost enthusiasm, lost heart. Something had happened. This was not the same Chicken.
The Chicken retired to his trailer, the crowd seemed to lose track of the game, the Redwings fell farther behind, and the PA man announced the presence of Richard Sarafis. Sarafis stood, and a crush of gray-suited agents hurried to form a circle around him; they looked as if they had not expected the announcement.
“They shoulda run Sparks for governor,” said the kid. Lofton had forgotten all about him. The kid seemed unnaturally excited and looked at him, eyes wide, as if he wanted to talk but did not know how to begin. “You seen Sparks?” he asked.
“No,” Lofton said. He noticed the irritation in his voice, the anger, and immediately was sorry. The kid flinched but went on talking, scrutinizing Lofton as if ready to jump, to run.
“Well, yeah, he’s probably back in the clubhouse, soaking his arm, always back there these days,” the kid said in his stumbling nasal voice. Lofton turned back to the field. Holyoke batted—down one, two, three—then retook the field. The team showed no real enthusiasm. The deadly grace of their winning streak had vanished. The kid elbowed Lofton.
“You friends with the girl?” The kid smiled oddly. He touched his cheek in the place where Amanti’s cheek was scarred. “The pretty girl?” he said. Lofton looked around, checking the gates, the crowd. “Did they beat you, too?” the kid asked.
“Did who beat me?”
The kid couldn’t answer the question. After struggling with it for a second, he looked up at Lofton as if all sense had left his head. The kid was shaking. A bad case, this kid, Lofton thought, and wondered what had happened to the kid when he was younger, what the kid’s parents—or the people who took care of him now—had done to make him this way.
“Pay attention to the game,” Lofton said, and touched the kid on the shoulder.
“You sound like Barker. He wouldn’t talk to me either, he just shouted me away. And he tells me everything before the games.”
Lofton had seen the kid hanging around during practices, leaning over the fence, asking the players, and sometimes Barker, questions that they sometimes answered and sometimes didn’t, tossing off flip cracks instead and laughing among themselves.
The kid made an overhand motion with his arm, like a pitcher throwing a baseball. “Yes, Spark ’em right by ’em, strike ’em out. Then we’d win.” The kid had suddenly calmed. He seemed normal, like any kid anywhere. Too normal, Lofton thought.
Lofton fell silent, staring out at the field. The kid fell silent, too, imitating him, staring seriously. Then, as the West Haven shortstop lined a single to right, the kid elbowed him again. He wished the kid would go. He longed for the spiteful silence of the press box.
“See,” the kid said, “they got that guy standing out front the clubhouse door so anybody just can’t go in.”
He ignored the kid, and the kid repeated himself.
“I tried to go in, down in West Haven, just wanted to say hello to old Rickey, but they wouldn’t let me. The guard made a goon face and pushed me away. But then Golden came along and yelled at the guard. He let me in special. Golden let me talk to Rickey.”
The kid elbowed Lofton again. Lofton, irritated despite himself, elbowed him back; the kid smiled shyly, frightened, but he moved closer. Lofton remembered Golden’s brusque manner with the kid, how the kid dogged him everywhere anyway. Down below, West Haven’s runners stood at first and second, the cleanup batter at the plate. The Sox hitter smacked a double off the center field wall.
“Bastard,” Lofton said.
The kid stood up and screamed at the field, “Give us Sparks, bastards!” Then he sat down, turning to Lofton. “Yup, I’m his best fan, and I saw him in Waterbury, too.”
“That right?”
“I went down there every night, and it was the same thing, except for the night he pitched. ‘Rickey’s in the clubhouse, soaking his arm,’ that’s what he told me. That same one down there. He doesn’t like letting me in.”
Lofton arched around toward the clubhouse. A ballpark cop stood by the door, pacing first one way, then another.
“But it didn’t matter. Golden let me in down in Waterbury, too.”
“You go to the Waterbury games?”
“Sometimes the counselors take us down there.” The kid’s face had changed strangely. “But you know something, I don’t think Golden will let me in anymore.”
“Why not?”
“He’s dead,” the kid said, without smiling, his eyes black and glassy. Lofton wi
nced.
“No, that’s not true. I saw him just the other night. I talked to him in the clubhouse.”
The kid was not listening.
“Dead, like Gutierrez, all dead and bloody.” The kid let out a squirrellike cry; tears welled in his eyes. Lofton grabbed the kid’s hands, trying to calm him; then, looking down, he noticed again the kid’s scars—burn marks, perhaps from the abuse he’d suffered as a child—which covered his arms and forearms.
“Dead. Dead. Dead,” the kid cried out, louder now. “I saw the Latinos kill him.”
“The Latinos?” Lofton asked. The kid nodded, frightened. Lofton was not sure what the nod meant. The kid wandered all over town, almost everyone knew him and teased him and used him for errands, and maybe he’d run into the Latinos.
“Yes, yes! The Latinos!” the kid yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Shh,” Lofton said. “Shh. Shh.” Grabbing the kid by the arms again, he tried to calm him. The kid babbled on, not so loud as before, but shaking furiously, as if on the verge of some sort of fit. “I followed Golden on the street and down to the tunnel, to the tracks, and the Latinos waited in the tunnel and talked, and I couldn’t understand. Golden came up in the tunnel, and they wrestled him. I saw his face full of blood. Then they saw me and started to run to get me, to chase me to the ballfield. And I ran, and they jumped on Golden. They took money from his pockets and threw it into the air. They killed him!”
The kid was yelling again. His cap had fallen off, and his lower lip shook visibly. Lofton watched the boy, waiting until he quieted.
“What tunnel, where? Was it Golden that you saw, are you sure?” Lofton asked, but the kid said nothing. Lofton waited, then asked again, and again. The kid wouldn’t talk. His features were twisted, his eyes were glazed, and Lofton could see it was hopeless.
The seventh-inning stretch was starting. A new set of sirens wailed in the distance, and Lofton set out into the stands. Somebody should stay with the kid, he thought; somebody should help him. But Lofton went off alone to find Amanti.
He spotted her at the concession, near the top of the stands on the first base side. She was standing behind Kelley. Lofton pushed through the crowd. It became denser the closer he got to the top, not so much because of the concession but because of the sirens. People wanted to see the fire.
Finally he reached her. He took her by the elbow, gently, and waited for her to turn and recognize him.
“It’s me. Lofton.”
Her lips parted. She glanced nervously back at Kelley—the man still had not turned—and she gestured toward the rear of the concession, indicating she would meet him there.
Lofton backed away. The sirens rushed by again on the streets outside MacKenzie; a group of teenagers, bored with the game, with the Chicken, with waiting in line, bolted away.
“It’s a fire, a big one,” said a girl nearby.
“So?” said her friend, but they went off together, toward the top of the bleachers, for a better look.
When Amanti came, Lofton grabbed her hand, pulling her closer, deeper into the bleachers. They stood inches apart. Her skin seemed dark now, wonderfully dark, set off by her soft white blouse and her glistening jewelry. She smelled of perfume.
“Your kid, the one who runs errands around here, he just told me he saw the Latinos kill Golden.”
Amanti looked confused. “The boy’s hysterical. You know how the kid is. He mixes everything up; he tells stories.”
“I have to find out what’s going on, and I might not get back in time to meet when we planned. I’ll have to meet you later.”
Amanti did not respond. They stood quietly together; the crowd pressed toward the fire. He touched her waist. She was an odd woman: putting him on to the arsons, trying to clamp the lid on Kelley and Brunner, but never leaving, not completely, the circles of power in which she was enmeshed and which she wanted to destroy.
“Listen, I shouldn’t be talking to you,” she said. “I never planned on meeting you anyway. Just take the money Brunner gave you. Go. Leave town. Write the story or don’t. It doesn’t matter. If you run, I’m safe, I got rid of you like they wanted. If you write the story—if you do it right—then they won’t dare touch me. I’ll be all right.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Lofton said.
“I think you’re wrong. One way or the other—”
“One way or the other they’ll control you forever. I’ll meet you as soon as I’m done and help you get out.”
Amanti looked at the ground. “Listen, don’t play saint. Get out of town.”
“Oh, but I am a saint.” He pulled Amanti through the crowd, to the top of the stands. There were more sirens in the streets, smoke plumes rising over the Flats. He whirled her around and grabbed her by the collar.
“Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
She held her lips open, slightly, and seemed to look at him but not to see him, like a face inside a photograph, one that you study for a long time. The people nearby muttered to themselves. They saw how he held her collar in his fist, and they backed away.
“I was supposed to set you up,” Amanti said. “Brunner and Kelley arranged everything just like I told you the other night, only they had no intention of letting me meet you. They were going to have you killed.”
“At Barena’s?” Lofton asked.
“No, I was supposed to tell you to meet me at the old railroad depot at eight o’clock, about an hour ago. I told you the wrong place and the wrong time. I did it on purpose.”
Lofton let go of her collar. He could see flames, bright and orange, leaping up over the factory district, down toward American Paper. There was screaming and whooping in the streets.
“Don’t you understand? When they found out how much you knew, how much I had told you, they figured a way out—to set you up. I was supposed to tell you to meet me, that we would leave town together. As far as Brunner and Kelley know, I did everything they asked. It’s not my fault if you decided not to meet me, if, on your own, you take the money and run.”
“Why didn’t you let me in on this?”
“I couldn’t take the chance. I didn’t want them to think that I was deliberately fouling their plans.” Amanti paused and looked out over the city toward the flames. “I had no idea they were going to start the fires again so soon.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to get out of here—just to escape, leave them all behind?”
“Write your story, or don’t, it’s up to you. I did what I could,” she said. “Now I have to watch out for myself. The rest is yours.”
She twisted away into the crowd. He started to follow but saw the security agent waiting, watching her descend the stairs. Lofton ducked away, behind the concession stand. Amanti and Kelley were together now, arm in arm. Brunner approached them, smiling. He closed his fingers around Gina’s other arm.
Lofton hurried to the exit. On the way he passed the Chicken’s trailer. Through the trailer window he caught a glimpse of the young man, half in his suit, half out, the costume head on the chair beside him. The man’s head was glistening with sweat, Lofton noticed, and his cheeks were wet and shining.
The streets were always unpredictable, sometimes quiet, stretching out long and empty, the buildings seemingly deserted; other times whole blocks were seething, people rushing back and forth, shouting at one another, pushing, shoving. Now the air overhead was filled with smoke, the engines crying, wailing, whistling, and the sky was lit by the crazy glare of American Paper burning at the bottom of the hill, across the canal. People left their tenements to watch, to get close enough to see the reflection of the fire in the water, and kids ran up High Street, pulling alarms, smashing glass, grabbing cassette decks, cameras, anything from the shattered display windows. Lofton turned down the railroad tracks and hurried toward the river. In the tenements beyond High Street, more fires had broken out, set—Lofton guessed—by looters to create distractions, to keep the police busy, or simply for the fun of it.
He followed the trestle across the canal. He stood where the Penn Central tracks ended, not far from the river, near the bridge where he had found himself earlier that day. A large rusted turbine lay in the weeds nearby. The breaking glass, the alarms—all seemed distant now, like something in a dream, except for the fact that he could turn his head and see the smoke and glare of American Paper. The lights of the river houses shone pale and yellow from the other side of the Connecticut. People must be watching from their back porches, Lofton thought, and he imagined Brunner’s wife, her blue robe shimmering as she worked her way through the willows to the riverbank. When he asked himself why he wanted to catch up with the Latinos, he could find no answer. He wanted to see the story through to the end, that was all. The kid at the ballpark had told him he had seen the Latinos kill someone in one of the underground tunnels; Amanti had said that Brunner and Kelley had planned out Lofton’s own death, down near the old depot. These were the two stories he’d been tracing all along—Brunner’s intrigues on one hand; the gang warfare on the other—and now at last he was approaching the place where the stories converged. The tunnels were somewhere nearby, down near the railroad tracks and the canals.
He remembered he still had the money with him, and he decided he’d better get rid of it for now. He put the envelope beneath a railroad tie. Then he heard footsteps. He turned. A man stood about twenty yards away, just in front of an old Dumpster. He was thin, and he wore a white T-shirt that stood out against the darkness.
“¿Quién es?” the man said. His voice was soft. Lofton did not know whether to answer. He considered running, but he didn’t think he could outrun the man. He was too close. Then Lofton glanced back and saw two more men behind him. They stood like the other one, shoulders arched, feet spread, hands loose and ready. The Latinos. He had stepped into the middle of them again.
The men walked around Lofton in a circle, always facing him, the circle growing smaller, tighter, with each revolution. They called back and forth to each other in Spanish. It was too dark for Lofton to tell if these were the same gang members he had encountered on the street.
The Spoiler Page 28