Dead Game

by Michael Avallone

  The small army of fans were starting to whoop it up, too, as Davey Williams marched up to the plate. The sound seemed like mockery in the near-empty park. I punched a fist into an open palm, feeling the fever of a rally coming on.

  Ballen, concentrating too carefully on that clipping for his scrapbook, lost Williams on four pitches. As the little guy trotted down to first, a fan let go with a Bronx cheer. I grinned. That’s baseball for you.

  Whitey Lockman was up next and Ballen’s first serve came rifling back like a bullet over second base into center. Yahoo! Runners on first and second and nobody out. Bobby Thomson coming up with Irvin on deck. That was more like it.

  Instinctively I looked toward the spot just beyond the railing in the lower left-field stands where Thomson had buried the Dodgers forever with a line-drive homer in ’51. But Arongio didn’t. He was still evil-eying Lake at third.

  It must have been a hex because it worked. Thomson went after the first serve, didn’t get enough of it, and topped a slow roller down the third baseline. It was the easiest play in the books but Lake went after it like he had ten thumbs and a bar of soap in both hands. By the time he found the handle on the ball, everybody was safe and eight thousand people were suddenly doing their damnedest to sound like fifty thousand.

  That kind of excitement gets you. I found myself standing and hollering along with everyone else. That is, everybody but the mysterious Mr. Arongio. He was still sitting and still looking. And now with the end of the game suddenly very imminent, his big right hand had strayed close to his armpit and the bulge that couldn’t be a handkerchief or a money belt because it was a gun.

  I cursed. Because it took me away from the game. The way I stopped shouting and sat down and watched Arongio jabbed at my insides. The old vibrations started up again. The smell of the crazy, twisted world I knew was back in my nostrils. And I suddenly understood why I was a private cop instead of a ball player.

  Irvin had taken a called second strike before I tore one eye away from Arongio. The crowd beefed at the umpire’s call and let him know it. But everybody waited to see what Irvin would do when he took a swing with that big bat.

  Arongio hunched forward now and I hunched with him, not losing sight of that gun hand. The runners waited for Ballen to go into his half wind-up, then took their leads when he did. Irvin swished his bat a few times, then froze with it poised over his shoulder. The Raven catcher set for the throw as Ballen dipped, straightened, and then fired the ball plate-ward.

  Irvin met the ball. Met it good. Wood cracked, there was a thick splat of sound, and the shiny white horsehide rose like a tee shot in golf and then soared on a line into deep left center field.

  Everybody was on his feet yelling, each set of eyes was riveted on the flight of that ball, watching the center- and left-fielders churning like crazy after it. It was the longest drive of the afternoon and heading for the base of the bleacher wall. The drive had “there goes the old ball game” written all over it.

  Some four hundred and fifty feet away, the ball came down, crashed up against the barrier, and rocketed off at right angles to the fielders charging after it.

  Williams, Lockman, and Thomson were sweeping around the bases now and Irvin was hurtling along after them, making pretty good time for a guy who had broken his ankle the year before.

  Arongio was on his feet now. And so was I. Watching him and rooting the marvelous Monte home at the same time.

  The crowd was going nuts. Noise sailed down from the seats. Williams had crossed the plate already with the first run, then Lockman for two, and Thomson’s spikes made it all tied up at 3-3. And here came Irvin. It was going to be close. The center-fielder had finally caught up with the white rabbit and fired it into Lake. He gloved it, whirled, and fired home. But halfway down the line, it hit Irvin in the back and Arongio’s evil eye had enjoyed a profitable afternoon. The ball bounced off Irvin’s number and caromed away. Monte crossed the plate with an inside-the-park homer standing up.

  The Giants mobbed him and the Ravens trudged dejectedly off the field. In that split-second of miles-apart emotional reaction, something happened. Happened fast. Looking back at it now, I wonder if I have the sequence of things in proper order.

  Arongio was suddenly clattering down the aisle toward the diamond. And out there on the sun-splashed green was Lake. Lake staggering, his cap pushed back from his face. And then falling, his gloved and bared hands clawing at nothing but air. He seemed to thud to the hard-packed earth.

  Arongio reached him first. For a guy of his bulk, he could move like a miler. But his speed had nothing to do with solicitude. His big hands were racing over the fallen Lake’s body, in and out of pockets, tearing at his belt and cap.

  I was throwing one leg over the box seat rail when Arongio gave up and came charging back at me. It looked funny. Arongio running, the Giants still mobbing Irvin back to the clubhouse in center field, and about four or five ball players and a fat coach in a blue jersey swarming out to where Lake had forgotten about everything.

  Arongio met me head-on. Up close, he wasn’t exactly friendly-looking. I tried to step back into the stands, my free hand going for my .45. But he was way ahead of me. He grabbed my arm and nearly tore it out of its socket. I fell over the low railing in agony.

  I could smell his heavy animal smell as he clambered past me. I scrambled erect, my left arm going dead on me and my right hand freeing my .45 from its holster bed. Arongio’s big back was charging up the steps and then it was gone. Mingling with other backs and other bodies, lost in a crowd of innocent by-standers.

  Somebody grabbed me from behind. I winced and let go of my hardware. A rough voice bellowed in my ear.

  “Easy, boy. You ain’t goin’ any place!”

  He was right. It was a park cop. A big Irish park cop. And one thing I never do is talk back to a big Irish cop. This was a young one besides.

  I straightened him out as fast as I could. He grunted under his breath when he saw my license and permit to carry a gun.

  At third base there was a huddle of uniforms. But I could still see a pair of dirty, spiked shoes pointing up into the blue Polo Grounds sky.

  The park cop let me take over. He looked a bit awed by the whole thing. I guess it was a helluva lot different than quieting disorderly drunks and wild kids who ran onto the field during a game.

  The players fell back as we came forward. A tall, dyspeptic-faced guy was snapping shut a leather case and biting his lips. He wore a jersey, too, but he didn’t look like a ball player. My guess was the trainer, the cuts-and-bruises man that every ball club has to have.

  “Geez, Red, what the hell’s the matter with Lake?” one of the players gulped.

  Red, the trainer, bit his lips again.

  “He’s dead, that’s what the hell’s the matter. And I can’t figure out how.”

  “Take another look,” I spoke up. “And forget about heat prostration and strokes or maybe something he ate.”

  “Who the hell are you?” A young punk with big shoulders glared at me.

  “The Answer Man, kid.” I flung it over my shoulder because I had already bent down to examine Lake. He looked different dead. They all do. His face was contorted something awful, and the rigid clamp of his features ruined my first impression of him.

  I got up when I found what I was looking for. I’d seen too many guys react to it not to have spotted it. I showed the palm of my hand to all of them.

  It was sticky and wet with blood. Not mine. His. Lake’s blood.

  They were a scared bunch of ball players. The way they were staring at my hand they were all batting zero in the eyelash league.

  “What the hell is that?” somebody croaked in a whisper.

  “It’s blood,” I said unkindly. “Lake’s not only dead. He’s murdered. And if you guys will help me roll him over, I think we’ll find the thing that did it. He’s been knifed.”

  My crazy profession. In another profession where the fan playfully yells “Kill t
he umpire!” somebody had killed a ball player. And in the Polo Grounds of all places.

  Talk about your big graveyards.

  TWO

  They helped me roll him over.

  It wasn’t a knife but it had done the job just as well. It was an awl. A shoemaker’s awl. You’ve seen them. Small enough to be palmed in one hand with a steel shaft no longer than three inches. But Lake had gotten all of the three in the small of his back.

  I thought of only one thing. You have to know an awful lot about the anatomy of the human body to count on killing a man with an awl in the small of the back. Either that or you have to be awfully lucky.

  The players standing around were buzzing excitedly like so many bees with a new hive. I got the funny feeling that nobody felt sorry for Lake. But I had done enough thinking already.

  I looked at the Irish cop. His big face was slightly embarrassed at having let me take over.

  “Hadn’t you better phone this in, Irish? The Department will want him while he’s still warm.”

  His face reddened like a color processing.

  “Okay. But you come with me.” He turned to the sour-looking trainer called Red and the players. “You leave him just where he is. And you, Red, I’m holding responsible for that thing we pulled out of him. See that nothing’s touched until we get back.”

  The “thing” was lying in the grass just a foot from Lake’s prone form. Everybody was staring down at it uncomfortably as if they expected it to explode. We left them like that.

  We found a telephone booth off to the left of one of the many hot-dog counters that feed the hungry baseball fan. The big cop dialed Headquarters, leaving the door of the booth open so he could keep an eye on me. That’s the only way for cops to live to ripe old ages. They don’t even trust their grandmothers.

  I didn’t know how old a hand he was on the job, so I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I tried him out for size the polite way.

  “If Lieutenant Monks is in, I’d like to talk with him.”

  He’d gotten connected and was waiting. He looked at me and laughed.

  “Captain Monks, if you please. He got kicked upstairs.”

  That surprised me. First I’d heard of it. He certainly had it coming.

  “Good deal,” I said. “What’s your name, Irish?”

  He eyed me with a funny look. Suddenly he looked like a human being.

  “Walsh—that Irish enough for you?” he said. Then: “Hello, this is Walsh, shield number …”

  He went on from there, giving the party at the other end everything he had. I lit a cigarette. When he had run through most of it, and all of his “yes, sirs” and “all right, sirs” told me he was getting his instructions, he stared at me for what seemed like minutes. Then silently he handed me the receiver and eased his big body out of the booth.

  I guessed what was coming.

  “Congratulations, Captain,” I mocked into the receiver.

  “How in the hell do you do it?” Monks’ frog voice was weary with me. “Do you get tickets in advance or something? Another murder and old reliable Mr. Ed Noon is on the premises. Well, brief me again. And please be brief.”

  “So help me, Mike, it’s ordinary business for me. But it got out of hand again. Look, Mike, do you trust me?”

  There was a pause from his end.

  “Academically or personally? What do you want this time?”

  “Mike, I got a lead. A hot one. I can’t explain it now. But a half-hour from now, ten minutes from now, it won’t mean a thing unless I get moving on it.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Assign Walsh here to come with me. Later, when we get back, I’ll square with you all around. What do you say?”

  “Let me talk to Walsh again.”

  I’d expected him to play ball. Monks never let me down. We’d worked some tough ones the year before that hadn’t hurt his police record any.

  Walsh grunted as he listened. He hung up with a terse “Yes, sir.”

  He looked me up and down with grudging admiration.

  “Rub some of that magic off on me, buddy. And maybe I’ll graduate to plain clothes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “The wagon is on the way. We get one of the other park squad to watch over things. And I go with you. Where might that be?”

  I suddenly noticed that for all of his size he was a pretty young kid. And new, too. Couldn’t have been on the force more than a year.

  “Look, Walsh. I’m crazy. But the few friends I have like me that way. Let’s go.”

  I could see he liked that in spite of himself. He gave me a soft salute and we got moving.

  Walsh knew what to do when somebody started him. He got things organized in a hurry. One of his boy friends in blue stood guard over Lake while he directed another to ring off the rest of the team that was hanging around.

  On an afterthought, he called back over his shoulder, “Take down some names and addresses, Barney. It’ll show the brass you’ve been doing something when they show up.”

  Barney grimaced and dug out his pencil and report book.

  We made our way out of the deserted park, walking fast. I told Walsh what little I had, leaving out the things that pertained only to the Noon Detective Agency. It was easy enough. I’d done a little mental arithmetic that had added up very nicely. After all, if a certain Mr. Arongio breaks his neck rushing to the Chandler Arms Hotel and then dashes to the Polo Grounds to keep the evil eye on a ball player, it wasn’t too hard to figure that the said hotel is where the said ball player is rooming for the game. Especially when you know the player is from out of town and that the Arms is a ballplayer hotel.

  The adding up figured pretty good now. Arongio had rushed to the hotel, been too late to catch Lake because he was out playing a game, and just followed his nose. If anything, this told me that Arongio couldn’t be a baseball fan and more or less underscored the idea I had that he was a foreigner.

  From past experience this meant one or two things to me. But at this stage of the game it was too early to tell.

  Walsh didn’t say much but just tagged along like faithful dog Tray. We grabbed another cab and shot over to the Arms as fast as the law allowed. I peeled another dollar off Mrs. Arongio’s fifty. Walsh couldn’t know why I was shaking my head. I didn’t bother to tell him.

  “This is where you come in, Walsh,” I told him as we swung through the big doors of the place. “That uniform and all those nice shiny buttons will get us past the desk.”

  He knew what to do when you gave him his head. Twirling his night stick, he sidled over to the desk. I waited for him by the elevators.

  He came back wearing a big grin. Keys on a bright metal ring flashed from his free mitt.

  “Tenth floor. The Raven club has the whole layout. Lake’s roomie is a guy named Banjo Brice.”

  “Good boy.” I was beginning to like the kid. You couldn’t hold it against him that he wanted to be a cop, could you?

  A smartly uniformed elevator man gave us a smooth, easy rise up into the guts of the building. The doors split with syrupy smoothness into the richly carpeted hallway of the tenth floor.

  Walsh led the way. “End of the hall,” he said without raising his voice. I eyed the corridor as we soft-shoed it down the hall. There wasn’t a place a mouse could hide, much less an Arongio. Though I couldn’t see how he could have gotten past the desk.

  I unharnessed my .45 and tucked it in my waistband. Walsh chuckled and swung the right key into the right lock. He pushed the door in with a broad, flat palm. I stepped in past him.

  The place was upside down. Walsh whistled. The two matching beds were end over end, the mattressing spilling out its stuffing where long vicious tears showed the handiwork of, if not a razor, a very sharp knife. The one wide bureau was showing all its drawers with half the contents hanging out like so many tongues saying “Ah!”

  Two pictures on the wall were riding sidesaddle like someone had expected to find something beh
ind them. Three scatter rugs had really been scattered, their dusty bottoms topside up. A waste basket was kicked over on its side, and a small secretarial-type desk had had its insides ripped out. The whole room looked like a Kansas twister had just gone through about five minutes ago. But it wasn’t a Kansas twister.

  It was Arongio.

  I was just going for the hardware store behind my belt buckle when he surged out of the bathroom. Walsh was just turning from giving the window a once-over as I yelled a warning.

  I was too late to help myself. I was just a bowling pin to Mr. Arongio. He made a perfect strike on my right shoulder. His big elbow dug in hard and turned me around like a revolving door, the .45 flying from my fingers. I slammed up against the wall next to the opening the bathroom door made. The air kicked out of my chest and I sank slowly, the back of my body throbbing like a drum.

  Arongio bulled for the door. I saw the ugly black-looking thing in his hand. But Walsh didn’t. The kid went for him, his heavy stick coming up from the floor in a sweeping arc.

  “Walsh!” I yelled. “He’s got a gun …”

  Arongio tore at the doorknob with a big, pawing hand. He had it half pulled back when Walsh’s club came down on his shoulder. There was a cracking sound in the stillness. Arongio screamed but he got the door open. The big kid closed in.

  But he was new at the manhunt. He had to be. Otherwise, he’d never have gone for him in the first place with only his night stick.

  I was fumbling to my feet when the awful roar and blast that is gunpowder going off in narrow confines filled the room. The noise reverberated until my ears ached, volleyed around the walls of the room until Walsh was down. Down and dying.

  He was dead when I reached him. His big body in the bright blue uniform was spread-eagled on the floor. And Arongio’s big feet were pounding down the hallway.

  I hobbled to the door, got it open. Then I remembered that my .45 wasn’t in my hand. Remembered that it was somewhere on the floor of the room.

  Remembered that the big nice kid was dead. A cop. He’d been big, he’d been nice. But he’d been a cop. And he was dead. And what was worse, I’d brought him to it.