Dead Ball (10 page)

Harvey tapped Campy’s skull, bristling with short white hairs. “But that’s what counts. There’s a lot of baseball up there. I see what you’ve done with Moss.”

“That’s because he respects his elders. Most of these boys, they don’t get it. That’s why Felix brought you back.”

“Yeah,” Harvey said dubiously.

Campy leaned close to Harvey’s ear and whispered, “But I don’t know if I’d wear a piece in the clubhouse. Felt it under your coat when I hugged you. Either that, or you’re glad to see me and have a strange way of showing it.”

“You know?”

“Nothing gets by Campy. But hum babe’s the word.”

Harvey lowered his voice. “Do you know if anybody on the team’s involved in any right-wing activities? The only reason I’m asking is that this thing Cooley got was left near the entrance to the players’ parking lot.”

Campy shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, Harvey. I remember back in the fifties, when I was with the Indians, Larry Doby got all sorts of threats.”

“How about white prayer groups on the team? Any of that?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Cubberly?”

Campy shook his head. “But I’m just a crumbly old man, Professor.”

“But you will keep your eyes open for me, won’t you, Campy? Just in case something’s not completely kosher here at the old ball yard.”

“You the one, babe,” Campy said, putting his own arm around Harvey’s waist, where his hand fell against the .38. Campy patted the butt of it, saying, “Hum babe, you the one, babe.”

Harvey smiled. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you, Campy. You, Felix, and Marshall are the only familiar faces around here.”

Campy did an absurd little dance, rocking out for an instant in his jockstrap. Then he danced away, his buttocks flapping, saying, “Tell Moss I’ll see him in the batting tunnel in five minutes.”

Moss Cooley sat in his uniform at one of the tables in the kitchen area, reading and sorting a mound of mail into two piles.

“Mind if I sit?” Harvey asked, pulling out the chair next to Cooley.

“Go ahead.”

Harvey pointed at the much bigger of the two piles of letters that Moss had slit open and read. “Marriage proposals?”

“It’s not marriage they’re proposing. It’s enough to make Cherry Ann blush.” He laid a hand on the smaller pile. “Now this shit’s a different story.”

Harvey unfolded the top letter on the smaller pile and read: “You crazy spearchucker you better leave the game of the baseball to us I am sick and tierd of seeing your big lips and your big nostrels everywhere.” It was handwritten in an unschooled mixture of small and capital letters. Unsigned and postmarked Floral, Massachusetts.

He opened another: “I’ve got some good friends who’ll see to it you don’t take Joltin’ Joe’s record away from him. A word to the wise is sufficient, but since your just another dumb nigger, let me put it this way: you better find a way to go hitless in the next few days or they’ll be feeding you through a tube for the rest of your life.” The envelope was postmarked Joliet, Illinois.

“You know what I hate about playing up here?” Moss said as Harvey unfolded the next letter.

“What?”

“No fried okra. Can’t find fried okra anywhere.”

“You keep the other hate letters you’ve gotten?”

“They’re in my cubicle.”

“You mind if I take a look at them?”

Moss stood and disappeared briefly, returning with a stack of twenty or twenty-five letters, neatly secured with a rubber band, and two bats.

Harvey took today’s haul and added them to the stack. “My homework,” he said.

“And here’s mine.” Moss handed him a single sheet of paper, folded into a square. “My lists. And now,” he added, grabbing three bats leaning against the table, “I’m off to see the wizard.”

As Harvey shoved the stack of hate mail in his jacket pocket, he had a disturbing thought. Last night in Marshall’s skybox, when Felix suggested talking to Cavanaugh about dropping the slumping Cubberly down in the lineup—a move that would prevent Cubberly from sabotaging Cooley’s streak, if that’s what he was doing—Marshall was quick to object, saying he didn’t believe in interfering with his manager’s prerogatives. A hypothesis swept across Harvey’s brain like a brush fire: What if Marshall Levy himself was behind a conspiracy to use Cubberly to prematurely end Cooley’s hitting streak? What would his motive be? All Harvey could come up with was that Levy might be trying to depress Cooley’s market value so Levy could save a few bucks at contract renewal time. But Cooley had just signed a multi-year deal, so that made no sense. Moreover, Marshall Levy was a good liberal. And the whole notion of one teammate threatening another in so elaborate a fashion just didn’t wash fifty-five years after Jackie Robinson. No, this was pure paranoia, an occupational hazard. Harvey recognized the weakness: the absence of actual progress had pressured him into manufacturing some of his own. He needed to be patient, wait for his pitch.

He stepped outside the clubhouse into the bleak concrete corridor under the grandstands and used his cell phone to dial Marshall Levy’s skybox office.

“I need to see you,” Harvey said.

H
ARVEY CAME UP
the tunnel into the dugout, the field at eye level before him a thicket of legs. Foul territory was swarming with players, coaches, reporters, TV production people. Security men in dark green blazers already ringed the ball field, their backs to the field, hands clasped behind their backs. Scanning the stands, Harvey saw that Marshall Levy hadn’t wasted any time beefing up security with uniformed Providence Police patrolmen. The air was sticky and stank of oversalted commercial popcorn. The seats were filling with early birds, Cub Scout troops, and old men who had lived most of their Providence lives without major-league baseball and weren’t about to miss a single moment of the team’s first summer of glory. Someone had unfurled a bed-sheet over the left-field upper deck facade that had a crudely painted bull’s-eye painted on it and the words “
47 WOULD BE BASEBALL HEAVEN
.”

Aided by the names on the backs of their unies, Harvey introduced himself to some of the players lingering in the dugout. Serious-faced second baseman Arturio Ferreiras. Twitchy third baseman Craig Venora, pacing and picking at his uniform, as if removing cat hairs. Catcher Ray Costa, built like a six-slice toaster. First baseman Jeff Barney, built like an SUV. Coffee-colored shortstop Amos Owens, pounding his glove as gleefully as a Little Leaguer in anticipation of the game. With each of them, Harvey struggled—vainly, he thought—to produce the sort of ebullience he imagined was expected of a motivational coach. The players regarded him with varying mixtures of suspicion and confusion, as they might a friend of a friend who had been allowed into the dugout for no apparent reason. Harvey found the charade depressing.

He was rescued from his discomfort by Moss, who bounced down the dugout steps after taking fungoes in the outfield. He slapped Harvey on the butt with his glove and dropped it on the dugout’s top step. Overhead, young fans were pleading for him. Several of them lowered autograph books on the end of strings for him to sign. They dangled in midair like bait.

Harvey was going to whisper something reassuring to Cooley—say again how safe the ballpark was—but he could see that death threats were the last thing on Moss’s mind. He was already deep inside the game.

“Campy had some nice words to say about you,” Harvey said.

“Man’s like Yoda,” Moss said, sliding a couple of his bats out of the rack.

Small bats, Harvey thought, for such a big man. “I’ll tell you how good he is. He added a good twenty points to my average. And
that
wasn’t an easy thing to do. What size bat is that, Moss? Looks like a thirty-three.”

“Thirty-three inches, thirty-three ounces. Campy wanted me to go lighter, and it’s worked. This one”—he handed Harvey one of the bats, its upper shaft black with pine tar residue—“this one here’s my baby.”

Harvey held it for a minute cocked in a batting stance, taking its measure. For an instant he felt the old electricity of the game flow through the bat into his body. “You got a special name for your bat?”

Moss took the bat back and raised the head of it in front of his own face. “Yeah. I call it Bat.” He laughed an easy, wheezy laugh, and pretended to be talking to it. “Bat, get me a goddamn hit today, Bat.”

With that he bounded up the dugout steps toward the batting cage. As soon as he emerged onto the field, the fifteen thousand fans already in their seats started a rolling tide of cheers, which Cooley ignored as if it had nothing at all to do with him.

A moment later Harvey climbed the steps as well into the dusky golden air and made his way toward home plate through little clouds of mosquitoes, stepping over television cable and ball bags. He could see manager Terry Cavanaugh standing just in front of second base, hand on jaw, watching his players take batting practice, quietly studying their swings, seeing who was ready to play that night. Not every manager did that, and Harvey, standing near the on-deck circle, was wondering whether he should revise his low opinion of him when he heard a burnished baritone voice over his shoulder.

“God love this game.” It was Snoot Coffman, the Jewels’ radio play-by-play man. He was carrying a loose sheaf of papers in one hand—stat sheets, rosters, scrawled notes.

“Mr. Coffman.”

“Oh, hell, call me Snoot.”

“Snoot,” Harvey said.

“Millions of radio listeners know me by that name.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“I got it when I was ten or eleven. I had a buddy who thought I was a little uppity. Always had a lot of opinions. Guess that’s why I had to become a broadcaster.”

Cooley overswung on the first batting practice pitch and topped a weak roller to third.

“Where were you a kid?”

“Oh, that was in Tennessee. But I grew up all over. Army brat.”

“Some great baseball announcers come from the South,” Harvey said. “Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell, Lindsay Nelson. You.”

“I guess we just like to talk so much they had to invent a profession for us.”

Cooley sent the next pitch soaring into the left-field upper deck, not far from the sheet with the bull’s-eye.

“That one was strictly for the fans,” Coffman said, watching the ball disappear into the stands. “In games, he leaves his home run swing in the dugout. Cool’s the new poster boy for patience. You’ve got to admire the discipline involved. We live in a society where everything’s got to be bigger, faster, more sensational. See, the home run’s the celebrity of baseball. And our country is addicted to celebrity. Your McGwires and your Sosas may put fannies in the seats, but your Maurice Cooley’ll win you a pennant. I wish Cool’s values would rub off on these other clowns.”

“You think there’s a pennant involved here?”

Cooley lined the very next pitch into the right-field seats, and Coffman said, “He’s just trying to get it out of his system before the game. Pennant? Well, let’s see, it’s July eighteenth, and the Jewels are eight games out. It’s entirely possible if the starting rotation stays healthy. They’ve won thirty-one of forty-seven during Cool’s streak.” Cooley sliced a long drive that made the right-center-field fence on one bounce. “They’re on the cusp. I have high hopes. Incidentally, Harvey, one of my hopes is that you’ll come up to the booth some time during the home stand and give me an interview.”

“I don’t have much to say.”

Coffman affected astonishment. “Harvey Blissberg, charter member of the Providence Jewels? A man who solved the worst crime ever committed in baseball? Who’s now back in Providence with a mandate to motivate a team that’s on the cusp of greatness? And you don’t think you have a lot to say? Well,
I
say that a million radio listeners would love to hear you tell a story or two.”

“I’m not talking about Moss’s difficulties.”

“Of course not. How’s it going?”

“High-priced baby-sitting.”

“You’ve got to wonder what kind of lowlife would pull a stunt like that. The jockey. That’s ugly.”

“You’re the man with the overview,” Harvey said. “What do you see?”

“What do I see? A sick society. A society that still hasn’t recovered from that first boat full of African-Americans that landed on our shores. We’re still grappling with that single monstrous fact, Harvey—of one man owning another. I don’t care how many black multimillionaires we manufacture out of our need to be entertained.” He cast his eyes toward the field and said in a low tone, “Actually, I’m mulling over a crazy notion.” He paused.

“What would that be?”

“It’s between you and me, right?”

“As always,” Harvey said. The last thing he needed was an amateur detective in the mix.

“Every team’s got fault lines, you know. Hidden dissensions. The one aspect of this that concerns me is that this lawn jockey shows up at the gate to the players’ parking lot. How the hell did someone manage to leave a big box there during or right after a game without being detected? Who could get away with that?”

“Someone in a truck posing as a delivery man,” Harvey said.

“Or a player.” Coffman bit his lower lip, Bill Clinton-style.

“Go on.”

“I know Moss rubs some teammates the wrong way. He’s seen as arrogant.”

“He’s not, though. He’s a quiet kid who makes a lot of money and suddenly finds himself in the spotlight.”

“I hear he’s got a white girlfriend.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

Coffman inspected Harvey’s face. “Well, put it all together, and some teammate’s imagination could’ve been inspired.”

“Are you nominating, or just speculating?”

“I don’t want to say any more until I’ve given it some more thought. I want to look into the backgrounds of a few players.”

Harvey looked askance at the radio man. “I’d be careful, Snoot. I’d rather you just come to me with your suspicions.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course not. In any case, if it turns out to be a teammate, I’ll actually be relieved. Better a disgruntled teammate than some stranger with a serious grudge.”

Coffman nodded thoughtfully. “Anyway, rest assured I’m not trying to do your job. My daddy was an army colonel, and I must’ve gotten his gene for maintaining order.” He looked off. “Ladies!”