Curveball (12 page)

“I’m not sure how
aspiring
he was anymore. I haven’t heard anything about him for the last couple of years.”
He sighed. “Plus, he was eighteen. That’s like a two-day-old donut around here.”

“Huh?”

“Sixteen’s the legal signing age here. If a kid reaches that age with no bite, each
year getting picked up becomes more of a long shot.”

Cat pushed the article away from her. “Chance said he’d looked at him a couple times
but decided not to represent him.”

“Maybe his career went down the toilet and he turned to drugs. Wouldn’t be the first.”

She took another sad look at his sweet photo and flipped the paper over so she didn’t
have to look at it. “Probably won’t be the last.”

Cat waved across the busy restaurant as the hostess escorted them to a window table.
Before they could sit down, the busboy was speeding over.

“Cristian, hi!”

He rested his bus tray on his hip. “Hi.”

“I want you to meet somebody.” Cat turned to Joe and patted him on the arm. “This
is my boss, Joe O’Donnell.”

Cristian’s eyes clouded with confusion.

“He’s the Soldiers scout I was telling you about.”

Cristian froze.

Joe maneuvered his way around Cat and reached for Cristian’s hand, giving it a firm
tug. “
!Mucho gusto! ¿Hablas inglés?
”

Cat had already prepped the large scout on Cristian and told him that he spoke excellent
English, but it was still polite to ask. She couldn’t help but be both impressed and
honored by the gesture. Not a whole lot of men in Joe’s position would worry about
minding their manners to a busboy.

Cristian blinked back to comprehension and finished the handshake. “
Si
—I mean, yes, sir.”

“Great. Well, I hear you’ve got a mean fastball.”

It was Cristian’s turn to be awestruck by Joe’s scouting IQ. “You do? I mean, I do.
It’s my best pitch.”

“How would you feel about the Buffalo Soldiers taking a look at it?”

“Really? That’s gr— oh.” Cristian’s face fell. He looked like a batter who had just
realized his bomb went foul. “I can’t. I’m actually going to America tomorrow. I got
a contract.”

Joe turned to Cat curiously and she passed the expression onto Cristian.

“You are?” She didn’t mean for the phrase to carry so much disappointment. “With who?”

“
Holandés
, uh, a Dutch team.”

Cat narrowed her eyes. “Then why aren’t you going to Dutch—” she shook her head at
her slip. “I mean, the Netherlands?”

“The practice camp is in Florida.”

She turned to Joe. “For a team from the Netherlands?”

Joe shrugged. “It’s about forty-five degrees in Amsterdam right now, plus the November
winds can be up to fifty miles an hour.”

“Okay, what about Aruba then?”

Cristian raised his hand slightly, as though he was asking for permission to speak.
“Mr. Hayward says the owner lives in Florida and he likes to hand-pick each member
of the team.”

“I thought you said you already had a contract?”

“Verbally. Mr. Hayward says meeting me and seeing my pitches is just a formality and
he will sign me this weekend.”

“Oh.” Cat forced a smile. “Well that’s great. I’m happy for you.”

Joe gave him a pat on the back. “Best of luck, young man. How old are you, anyway,
if you don’t mind my asking?”

Cristian smiled, first at Cat, then at Joe. “Nineteen,” he said. “Thank you for your
good wishes. I should get back to my work now.” He nodded down at the dinner table.
“
Buen provecho
.” It was the Spanish way to say, “Enjoy.”

Cat plopped down in the passenger seat of Joe’s roomy Cadillac. She stretched her
feet out in front of her. They were aching and the day wasn’t even close to half over.
Lounging in the driver’s seat, Joe picked at his gums with a toothpick, which he then
tossed in the ashtray. He checked his teeth in the rearview mirror, making a jarring
sucking sound as he did so. Cat’s nose wrinkled involuntarily. Given the way he had
inhaled his
chicharrón de pollo
, he couldn’t possibly have left any food behind in his teeth. She turned her head
out the window, hoping for a distraction, but not even a six-car pileup would have
distracted her from his slobbering. Finally, the noise stopped and the engine turned
over. She turned her attention back to him.

“So?”

“So … what?”

“Cristian. What’d you think about that Dutch stuff?”

Joe rested his thick arm on the back of her seat and cranked his head around as he
backed out of the beachfront parking lot. “I think he’s a nice kid. I wish him well.”
He shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

Cat sighed, frustrated. For someone whose livelihood was based on good instincts,
the experienced scout sure could be dense. “I mean, the Florida stuff didn’t seem
strange to you at all?”

“Stupid maybe, but strange? I don’t know.”

“I think it is. Who turns down an audition with the Buffalo Soldiers for a tryout
camp of some team in Europe that no one’s ever heard of?”

“Could be lots of things.”

“Like?”

“Hard tellin’.” He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it’s a girl.”

Cat puffed up her cheeks while she considered this and let all the air out in a whoosh.
“Nah. He could take a girl with him wherever he goes.”

Joe rapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m sure he’s got his reasons.”

“I’m sure he does, too, but I’m worried that the main one is Chance Hayward.”

Joe came to a stop at the light. Pedestrians scurried across the road. “Okay.” He
turned to her with a placating smile. “Let me ask you this: does Chance charge his
clients anything upfront?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then what would he have to gain from steering this kid the wrong way?”

Cat considered his point. Chance might drive a fancy car, buy expensive liquor and
hit on every girl in a skirt but that didn’t make him evil.

Necessarily.

“I guess.”

“Follow the money trail. If there’s no trail, then you’re not going anywhere.”

A classic Corvette Stingray convertible raced through the intersection as his light
turned yellow and theirs turned green.

Joe waited for him to complete his turn before advancing. “Boy, that was a nice car.
I wonder if I could fit in a seventy-one ’Vette?”

“That was a seventy-two,” Cat said without hesitation.

Joe whipped around to give her an incredulous glance.

She pointed out the windshield at the next stoplight. Her seatbelt pressed against
her chest as she fell forward to the hard braking. When they came to a safe stop behind
a row of cars, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“The front turn signal. The lenses are amber. Seventy-ones had clear lenses and amber
bulbs; seventy-twos had amber lenses and clear bulbs.”

“Ah, you’re a Corvette girl.”

She dismissed him with a casual wave. “I like old cars. Actually, just the other day
I took a ride in a seventy-four Iso Grifo …” She paused as her own wheels started
turning along with the Cadillac’s. “Money trail. The Iso was Chance’s car. If he’s
not charging his clients or making major deals, where does he get all his cash?”

“Maybe he has a trust fund. Maybe he’s in debt up to his eyeballs.” He sighed. “This
Cristian kid is nineteen, right?”

“That’s what he said.”

“This Dutch deal might sound like a bad move and it very well may be, but if that
kid is nineteen years old, he’s not exactly wet behind the ears.”

“At nineteen?”

“Cat, the dirty
buscones
around here aren’t going to waste their time on someone that old. Remember, sixteen
is the signing age here. They prey on twelve-year-olds, taking them out of school
and putting them up with twenty other hopefuls in a two-bedroom apartment too filthy
for cockroaches. They pump them full of performance-enhancers and train them from
dusk ’til dawn in the hopes that they can sign one of them at age sixteen and walk
away with fifty percent of the signing bonus.” He turned into the facility parking
lot. “Please don’t take this as harsh as it sounds, but that kid in there has either
been through that and was never good enough to get signed or he wasn’t even good enough
for a
buscon
to run him through the mill.”

Joe turned off the engine and Cat sat still in her seat, stunned.

The lunch special,
La Bandera
, did a never-ending windup in her stomach. Being down here for just two days had
been enough to put her own crappy childhood into perspective. She knew plenty of kids
whose families couldn’t afford cleats or gloves, but that didn’t mean they were run
through an assembly line in an OSHA-less baseball factory.
Life isn’t fair
was an adage she became familiar with from an early age, but that didn’t make exploitation
like this any easier to stomach.

“You know what I think?” Joe glanced over at her, making sure she was still paying
attention.

She nodded.

“I think your investigative journalism skills are trying to turn a bad agent into
a dirty agent. Just because he’s not very good at his job doesn’t mean he’s a crook.”

Cat brought the pitching stats to Joe’s office. He was about to begin a meeting with
the facility’s two scouting directors. She smiled at his guests and closed the door
so they could have a private meeting.

“Cat.”

Paige popped up from her desk and Cat gasped, jumping back and nearly smacking Joe’s
closed door. As she collected her breath, she frowned and rolled her eyes.

“You scared me. Why are you hiding?”

Paige beamed, looking rather proud of herself, and let out a tiny giggle. “For fun.”

Cat gave her another glare and walked behind her desk, nudging Paige out of the way.

Paige moved around to the other side. “So is Joe going to take a look at that busboy?”

Cat pulled out her desk chair and double-checked it for a Whoopee cushion or sawed-off
wheel, just in case Paige had any more tricks up her sleeve. “Too late. The kid’s
going with that Dutch team Chance was talking about.”

“Whaaaat?”

“Yeah.”

Paige planted on her desktop, crossing her legs off the side. “Dutch?”

“The Netherlands or bust, apparently.”

“So he chose that over a chance with the Soldiers? He’s either very stupid or really
loves Amsterdam.” Paige’s head bobbled back and forth as she considered this. “But
who doesn’t, really?” Her eyes softened in reflection as she smiled fondly. “I went
there my first sophomore year summer with my suitemates. It was something else. We
took a salon boat down the canal, dined at
Ciel Bleu
, went for a stroll down the cobbled streets in the
Grachtengordel
…” She spoke with a romantic, breathy inflection. “Then we woke up topless on a pile
of diamonds in the Coster window display.”

“Wow,” Cat deadpanned. “As helpful as that little omission is, something tells me
the nineteen-year-old Latino busboy isn’t trying to be featured on the latest
Girls Gone Wild
release.”

Paige wiggled on the desktop and crossed her arms. “I can’t believe he turned down
a chance to be scouted by the Soldiers. Was Joe pissed?”

“No. He didn’t think it was in Cristian’s best interest, but he also doesn’t think
Chance is shady.”

“Do you?” Paige said it carefully, raising a shaped dark eyebrow, daring her to answer.

“I …” Cat weighed the facts against her gnawing intuition. Chance could be wearing
a clerical collar and his smarmy smile would still trigger her Spidey Sense.

On the flip side, if bleached toothy grins were criminal, we wouldn’t have daytime
television.

She sighed. “No.”

Paige relaxed. “Good.”

“Why do you care anyway? I thought you were mad at him for flirting with me last night.”

A fake laugh spilled from Paige’s lips. “Flirting with you?” She laughed again, slapping
her knees for obnoxious effect. “That’s funny. No, I’m just a master at playing hard
to get, which is why he sent me those.” She pointed across the room to a giant bouquet
of orchids branching out of a Waterford vase.

Cat walked over to get a closer look at the cut flowers. Her daily pang of Paige jealousy
struck again. Once at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant on the Strip, a basket vendor had
offered her a rose. Benji unleashed a ten-minute diatribe about the global flower
industry and their use of pesticides that subjected their low-wage workers to toxic
chemical poisoning, as well as the devastating impact on animal, insect and bird populations
and the contamination of natural water resources. Suffice to say, she didn’t expect
any lilies with her organic, fair-traded chocolates come Valentine’s Day. On one hand,
Cat agreed with him, but with the other, she stroked the fuchsia-spotted petal with
her fingertip. She leaned over to get a whiff of its sweet vanilla aroma.

“Damn. You should say no to guys more often.” Cat tore herself away from the flowers
and walked back to Paige and her metal desk. “Just be careful.”

“You just said you trusted him.”

“No, I said I trusted
Joe
.” She sat back in her chair. “He’s a good scout.”

“Same diff.” Paige began to rock her top leg. The back of her heel thudded rhythmically
against the side of the desk.

Cat winced. “Don’t you think that stuff with Gaspar Peralta is weird? He claims not
to know a dead guy whose mom blames him for his death?”

“Well, did you read that article this morning?”

Thud.

Cat cringed again. “Yeah.”

“Well then you know that Gaspar the Friendly Beach Ghost was a druggie. That has nothing
to do with Chance.”

Thud.

Cat gritted her teeth. “That was only one theory.” Police, like general managers of
baseball teams, only released so much information to the media. More often than not,
it was up to the reporter to fill the word count in the least libelous way possible.
She didn’t mean to slam her colleagues, but she knew firsthand that their word was
never the whole story and sometimes it wasn’t even part of the story.