Be the One

by April Smith

  “Raymond,” begs Cassidy, “we brought him here. We made a commitment.”

  Raymond looks at his watch.

  “What if we got him out of LA?”

  “That would help.”

  “We can ship him out to Vero early—”

  He and Simms are walking away.

  “The victim—” Cassidy is running after them— “can’t anyone down there identify her?”

  “Down exactly where? We don’t know if it is the DR, we don’t even know how she was killed.”

  “You said she was beat up with a baseball bat.”

  “I said it looked that way.”

  “She’s covered with mud,” Raymond explains.

  “Like a human balloon covered with mud. You’ve seen the Thanksgiving Day parade?”

  “Mark!”

  “In scientific terms, okay? The body is bloated from lying out in the open,” Simms says, “and parasites have begun the natural process of decay. We’re going to have a hell of a time even coming up with cause of death. The country was hit with a hurricane. There were mud slides and floods and God knows what. She could have been killed a hundred different ways. Hard to make a determination when you can’t examine the body or the scene.”

  Raymond has been thinking. “So it’s possible these guys—jealous rivals, drug dealers, or whatnot—found some messed-up body and said, This is cool! Let’s drag it to the house and use it to terrorize Cruz?”

  Simms: “Told you they were amateurs.”

  Raymond shakes his head. “Seems a little out there.”

  “The lab is on it.”

  Cassidy has been walking along with a brisk gait, as if she were simply an interested spectator.

  “Could you really know the cause of death if all you have is a tape?”

  “It’s been done,” says Simms, impatient now. “We’re already into the high-tech stuff, sent the tape to the top guy in digital forensics. Also, to a special unit of the FBI.”

  12

  Cassidy has been waiting on the sidewalk outside the club level for twenty-five minutes, nodding hello to every publicist, account manager, receptionist, community relations person, human resources assistant, gardener, archivist and interpreter going in or out of the stadium, while pacing back and forth in front of the entrance like a demented troll on a cuckoo clock.

  Finally Joe appears across the parking lot at a lope, tall, one hand outstretched, head bent at an apologetic tilt. The sight of him only tightens her gut.

  “I apologize for keeping you waiting. Some guy made me park way over there.”

  “Tall gentleman in a golf cart? Resembles a large grasshopper?”

  “We had words. The whole place is empty, I don’t get it.”

  “No one does.”

  Joe is wearing one of his million-dollar double-breasted suits, pale chalk stripes on navy, a silk satin tie. The discreet ovals of the sunglasses seem aggressively small for his face, as if wanting to make a statement about the character of the decisive nose and lean cheeks, that they are unrepentant. The glasses are jet black as his hair, although now, in the sun, she discovers reddish highlights. Was Harvey Weissman serious? Does he really dye it?

  “This is what I mean about Dodger Stadium.”

  Joe has hands on hips, looking at the blue facade.

  “It’s an understatement.”

  Cassidy pulls a bottle of spring water from her backpack.

  “—See, that’s what I call ‘thin’ construction. No masonry, no concrete—all metal. Typical of the early sixties, but not enough great stuff going on. It’s not … entertaining.” He squints. “More like the back entrance to a warehouse.”

  The water is lukewarm. She closes her eyes and chugs half.

  “It fries me when people want to put Dodger Stadium on the National Historic Register. The building is a shrine, I know, it creates memories and a sense of pride—but you can’t say it’s architecturally significant.” The ovals come back to Cassidy. “Did you want to go home and change?”

  “Sorry,” glancing down at her mud-stained khakis, “I meant to. I was going to. But something’s come up.”

  Joe looks perplexed. “Do you need to cancel?”

  Just then the clubhouse attendant, Doc Ramsey, strolls by with a wave. Out of uniform, wearing a cardigan sweater and wire-rims, he looks like an affable librarian. Who doesn’t miss a trick.

  “We have to go someplace and talk.”

  They trudge up a rise through the empty parking lot where the Bentley is a small and arbitrary object in three hundred acres of sun glare.

  They get in. The doors seal shut with a heavy exhale.

  “What’s the problem?”

  Joe’s tone is suddenly cautious. They haven’t touched. This is hardly the reunion Cassidy had been imagining in the shower all week.

  “It has to do with you, me and Alberto.”

  “You have a very unusual face,” says Joe. “It can take all kinds of light, did you know that?” He’s leaning away from her, slumped against the door. “But go ahead.”

  Her hands are clasped over her stomach as if to contain the ache in her bowel.

  “I think I know the reason for the blackmail notes and I hope to God I’m wrong.”

  Joe is still.

  Her throat closes up. She has to get the water bottle out.

  “Remember how we talked about, when we were driving, Alberto clipped a horse? I don’t think it was a horse and I don’t think he clipped it. I’m afraid it was a person. A woman.” Her voice almost evaporates. “And she died.”

  Cassidy sobs once, clamps a hand over her mouth.

  Slowly Joe sits up. He strokes her hair, then the strength seems to go out of his arm.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The blackmailer sent a videotape to the house in LA where Alberto is staying.”

  “They know where he lives?”

  “They must. They’ve been following him.”

  Her eyes skim the palm trees at the far edge of the property, focus on a metallic haze going all the way out to the desert.

  “What was the tape?”

  “It was a female, bloated up and covered with mud so she couldn’t be identified. I didn’t see it but they said her head looked like it was bashed in with a baseball bat. They don’t really know how she was killed”—her voice hits a note of hysteria—“she could just as well have been run over by a car—”

  “Shhh. Calm down. Where is the tape?”

  “The cops have it. I was just in there. It makes perfect sense, Joe, that’s what ties us together, we were all in the car, that’s the reason they’d—”

  “Okay.”

  “There was another threat on the tape, like, if you don’t pay, this will happen to you. Or your mother or your sister, I don’t know. They may have no idea this is the actual woman we killed.”

  “First of all, we didn’t kill her—”

  “We certainly were in the car. And we certainly were drunk. That’s going to be the closer.” She rubs her scalp at the temples. “Am I crazy? Could this have really happened? Could he have killed someone and left her in the rain?”

  “If anything, it was a tragic accident,” says Joe thoughtfully. “It was pitch-dark, a blinding downpour, you couldn’t see a thing. You don’t remember?”

  “I was out of it.”

  “We hit something. We did a three-sixty—”

  “All I know is waking up on the floor of the backseat, staring at a little plastic dog that was under there, and realizing I was swallowing my own blood.”

  “Let me reconstruct this as best I can. I wasn’t thinking too clearly myself.”

  Joe speaks slowly. His eyebrows knit, eyes shut.

  “Alberto wanted to see what happened. I said, Forget it, we’re in the middle of a hurricane. He got out anyway, out the driver’s side, and I stayed in front. When he came back he looked like he’d taken a shower in his clothes. He said he’d hit this pony but there was nothing we
could do, it ran away into the field. The left headlamp was gone to hell but basically the car was okay, so I dropped him off somewhere, some relative’s house, and drove you back to the resort.”

  “Is that why we didn’t sleep together? Was I really gross?”

  “No, darling, you were a delightful drunk.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “Let’s say neither one of us was at our best.”

  A sense memory comes back to Cassidy: the stinky wet floor mat against her cheek. She can see, in macro close-up, a small plastic Dalmatian that must have belonged to Nora’s daughter, lying on its side. It had a smile.

  Joe is shaking his head. “I’m still not convinced this woman, rest her soul, has to do with the extortion. How did they know it was us in the car?”

  “Somebody saw the accident.”

  “There was nobody out there and nothing but cane.”

  “We don’t know who was out there,” Cassidy replies. “It was dark and pouring rain.”

  “Why didn’t they threaten you?”

  “Me? I don’t have money. He’s the big league player. You’re the rich American. I’m the girl.”

  “If he really did this, if it’s true,” says Joe, “we’re all fucked.”

  Silence is a wonderful thing. You can slip into it like a hammock and float.

  Cassidy lays her neck back on the headrest. Maybe she’ll take a sun-bath.

  Joe: “Now what?”

  “I’ll talk to Alberto.” She doesn’t open her eyes.

  “When?”

  “I’m leaving for Vero Beach on Saturday.”

  Suddenly they are in each other’s arms.

  “She’s a person. With a family. What if we killed her?” whispers Cassidy. “How can we live with that?”

  “We’ll make it right. Whatever we have to do. Even if it means giving up our illusions about a kid I know we really care about.”

  Cassidy’s arms tighten around his neck.

  “He couldn’t have done such a thing.”

  “Desperate times.”

  Desperately poor young boys will do anything to get off the island. Alberto told her that.

  It seems they have been sitting for a long time in the open car, the light reflecting off the bowl of Chavez Ravine like a telescope dish. Joe’s forehead has become a burnished red. He presses a button and the roof performs a complicated choreography, enfolding them in privacy.

  “I have to tell my boss.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “That Alberto killed somebody.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Joe, I don’t think I can handle this alone.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  They kiss.

  “We’re amazing together,” says Joe.

  They kiss again. They haven’t gotten tired of it.

  MARCH

  13

  Two little touches always make her heart sing whenever Cassidy returns to Dodgertown.

  One is the baseball lights—white globes hand-painted with jolly red stitching that sit on top of black posts along the walkways winding through the campus-like grounds—playful reminders of why everybody’s there, reassuring as a child’s night-light in the dark. Cassidy loves those baseball lights. Few things in life have a purpose so plain and yet so completely fulfilled.

  The other is the Hall of Fame, a corridor in the administration building where great moments in Dodger history have been captured in a series of massively enlarged period photographs. How can she pass Jackie Robinson’s imperial face, or “Roy Campanella tags Spider Jorgenson out as Billy Cox looks on,” without an uplifting sense of hope?

  Especially when outside the sun is bursting with the sweetness of a perfect Gulf morning—tamer than the Caribbean, more luxuriantly moist than California—lulling you into a pregnant balmy state of mind, dreaming what is to be born; while inside this cool dim passageway the fecund breakfasty reek of coffee and warm maple syrup and the clatter of good-natured talk still breeze from the dining room as Cassidy moves along in a pleasant wash of greetings from members of the far-flung Dodger family—Triple A coaches and Vero Beach administrative assistants, big-league starters, sportswriters, publicists, legendary scouts, Sandy Koufax himself—all of it, all of them, new as spring.

  And waiting at the far end of the corridor, backlit in the doorway like a ghost at the end of that dark tunnel in an out-of-body experience, is Pedro Pedrillo with arms open wide.

  She hurries to his strong embrace, breathing in the reassuring cedary scent of cigars.

  “God, I’m glad to see you.”

  He plants a kiss on her hair. “Come on, we got a lot of boys to see.”

  As they walk outside she asks, “How was the drive from Miami?”

  “Boring!” Pedro complains. “You drive and drive and what do you see? Nothing. A lot of green. But Rhonda is happy to make a visit to the grandchildren.”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “Sure I got.”

  He pats his briefcase. He is wearing a tropical weave Panama hat and a blue satin Dodger jacket (so is Cassidy), and the moment they hit the gusty paddock where a crowd of fans has gathered on the other side of a yellow rope waiting for autographs—now turning eagerly to see if these two are worth something—they both affect the baseball man’s stare: a look of pure disdain that refuses to make eye contact, aimed just above the shoulder at a higher cause than you.

  “Seen Cruz?”

  “Not yet.” Cassidy unfolds a training schedule.

  “You talk with Hoot about him?”

  “No.”

  “He’s not playing his game.”

  Her stomach goes bad.

  “Why?”

  Pedro’s stare sharpens toward the playing fields. “We gonna find out.”

  Suddenly from behind them comes the rhythmic tromp of cleats as a squad of minor leaguers in crisp blue shirts and clean white pants trots out of the clubhouse to the batting cages while the fans call out to the coaches, some of them retired big-league stars.

  A twenty-something with wavy blonde hair down to her skimpy lingerie shorts rubs up against a white-haired grandpa who used to play for Boston.

  “Will you be my coach?” she purrs.

  “Sure.” He winks and signs a faded baseball card older than she is. “I’m a great coach.”

  Cassidy says to Pedro, “It’s the uniform.”

  They thread their way through the crowd, past the Old Lady in the Lawn Chair who calls out familiarly to players by their numbers, “Hello, Nine. How’s that new baby?” and the Cat in the Hat, a lost-looking young woman wearing six or seven Dodger caps stacked on top of each other, and the Pear, universally despised not only because of his pin head and wide mushy hips but because of the fat loose-leaf folders filled with multiple cards he aggressively demands to be signed, for profit at trading shows.

  The leather-skinned security guards, who have been eating baseballs for breakfast the past forty years, keep a close eye on the Pear.

  “What exactly are you hearing about Alberto?”

  By his silence Cassidy recognizes Pedro has already heard a great deal, in the locker room, the strings, in certain bars and pasta joints in town she doesn’t even know about, casual talk among coaches and scouts filled with richness she as a woman will never have access to, and that’s the way it is.

  “Don’t make me find out at a staff meeting.”

  Pedro considers this. Finally, as they near the field, he reluctantly explains that some of the coaches do not believe Alberto has the “maturity” to play in the major leagues.

  “He comes here with a certain buildup. So the coaches are maybe a little disappointed.”

  “What do they say?”

  “They say, ‘I know you told me about this guy but what I hear and what he is are two different things.’ ”

  “He has the tools,” Cassidy objects.

  “He does have the tools, no question, but he is not making the adjustment,” Pedro r
eplies steadily. He has had a long life in this game.

  “Adjustment to what?”

  “Being a professional. Living in the United States.”

  “Do they have any idea the kind of pressure he’s under?”

  “Hoot says he talks about how he is worried for his family. The mill is gone in the storm and there are no jobs. And naturally, aside from those things, he is concerned about making the cut, the same as every kid.”

  “It isn’t only that—”

  “They heard about the blackmail letters but you can only take it so far. They ain’t gonna care about his problems until Alberto shows to them the kind of ballplayer you and I know he can be.”

  Cassidy struggles with it. She promised Joe she would tell no one about what Alberto might have done. But Pedro is here beside her now; even while they are talking business, she can feel the power of his belief in her—a belief that got her through the bad years and brought her back to the game, and most likely would not falter now if she confessed to the bewildering ache in her heart over this boy.

  So she tells Pedro about the accident and the woman on the videotape and he keeps striding along, head up, eyes straight, no reaction, as if they were talking free agents and draft picks.

  “Alberto’s got to be going nuts inside. If he really killed her, Uncle Pedro, this isn’t about a kid with an adjustment problem, it’s a serious mess and Raymond will go through the roof, this will go straight to the top—”

  Pedro squeezes her arm. “Don’t get yourself upset.”

  “I’m very upset—”

  “We don’t know nothing.”

  “That’s what Joe said.”

  “Who is Joe?”

  “The guy I met who owns the car we were driving in. He has to be kept out of this. You can’t mention his name.”

  “What do I care about any kind of Joe? I care about my kids. I don’t believe my kid could do what you say.”

  “Well he sure hit something, big enough to send me flying, almost break my nose—”

  “He says it was a pony, I believe him.”

  “You believe him.”

  “Cassie, I been looking at boys almost thirty years. I’m not always right about where they end up, but with Cruz, I know he’s got the good face. You know it, too. You saw with your eyes.”