Dead Ball (18 page)

“GURCC,” Marshall was saying, smacking as he chewed a bite of roast beef on onion roll. “As a card-carrying liberal, I’m sure I’m on their mailing list. Probably even gave them some money. I had no idea you had a friend there, Cool. You know, I get so much goddamn stuff in the mail. Sometimes I think I’d like my epitaph to read: ‘I’d rather be here than have to go through any more mail.’ What do you think, Harvey?”

“I believe it’s the lawn jockey guy, and we need to look a little deeper into it.”

“What if the guy’s just going to come up with one thing after another?” Felix asked.

“That’s what Moss thinks,” Harvey said.

“I think he’s just going to keep going,” Moss said. “One thing after another.”

Harvey popped a pitted black olive in his mouth. “We can sit and wait for the next thing, but my guess is this asshole wants Moss to quit his association with the organization, and he wants him to do it for a reason.”

“Which is?” Marshall said.

“Moss says he doesn’t know,” Harvey said.

Moss stood and slammed his fist on Marshall’s desk. “For chrissakes, I
don’t
know.” Moss, his face clenched, appealed to Felix and Marshall. “Harvey over here seems to think I’m holding out on him.”

“Look, Moss,” Harvey said, “I believe you.”

“Then why do you think it matters so much to someone out there if I’m involved with GURCC? That’s why I think this guy’s just yanking my chain. Why would it matter if I don’t know anything?”

“I can’t figure that part out.”

Felix raised both palms abruptly, like a third-base coach holding a runner at third. “Professor,” he said, “I’m a man of modest intellectual means. If Moss can’t think of a reason why anyone would write him telling him to quit GURCC, except as part of a scattershot racist campaign against him, why should we pay special attention to it?”

“Look, here’s what I’m saying,” Harvey said. “The most significant threat that came Moss’s way during the streak—the lawn jockey—comes from the same man who sent this.” He gestured at the Ken doll. “The man is serious, and the issue’s not a black man overtaking Joe DiMaggio. The streak’s over, but he’s still at it. I don’t think the lawn jockey was about the streak at all.”

Owner Marshall Levy stirred. “What about the note that came with it?”

Harvey opened his notebook to the leaf on which he’d written “DiMaggio evades apprehension. Do nothing in greatest game. Escape retribution.” He held up the notebook for the other three men to see. “This is what the note said, right?”

“What’s your point?” Marshall said. “The note basically says for Cool to stop his own hitting streak or else.”

“That’s what it
says.
” Harvey took out his pen and, reaching over the top of the notebook page like a first-grade teacher showing her class a picture book, circled the first letter of each word. “Here’s the message, though.”

“ ‘Dead nigger,’ ” Moss said. “When did you figure that out?”

“At your place. I don’t know, but I figured the same guy, different-style notes. Made me wonder why the first one was so strange. So I started playing with it, and I got ‘dead nigger.’ First the words ‘dead nigger,’ then the dead nigger Ken doll.”

“What’s next, full-size inflatable dead nigger?” Moss said, not laughing.

Harvey looked at Marshall and Felix. “Look, we’re dealing with a smart crazy person. He likes to play games. We just don’t know how serious the game is.”

“Question,” Felix said. “If the real issue is GURCC, why didn’t the man just come out and say it the first time? Why waste any time at all with a lawn jockey and pretend it’s only the streak?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was trying to obscure his real objective. Not draw too much attention to it.”

“Don’t overthink it, Professor,” Marshall Levy said.

“Why don’t we wait to see what else we get from the guy?” Felix Shalhoub said.

Marshall nodded. “I agree. Let’s wait. But, Harvey, I’d like you to look after Cool until further notice. You might as well keep your safe house for a little while. I’m paying for it, anyway. Meanwhile, can we keep Cool’s house under surveillance for a few days?”

Harvey sighed. “I know a guy I can put in Moss’s house with a gun and a camera with a telephoto lens.” He was thinking of Linderman senior. “But I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough.”

“What do you propose?” Marshall asked, polishing his glasses on his tie. “Bring in the cops?”

Harvey looked at Cooley. “Moss?”

Moss, who hadn’t touched any food, took a tiny sip of orange juice. “Would it be all right with y’all if I went back to playing baseball?”

“Sounds good to me,” Felix added.

Cooley nodded. “I’ve had it with this motherfuckin’ nonsense. I’ll cut my goddamn ties with GURCC and get back to playin’ some ball.”

“Give in?” Harvey said. He had thought that history—the larger playing field—mattered to Moss.

“This crazy-ass wants me to break my ties? Fine.” Moss turned to Felix. “Let’s put out a press release saying I’ve ended my relationship with GURCC, that I’m not their spokesman, whatever. We’ll get it in the papers where this asshole can see it,” Moss went on, “and that’ll be that. If the guy’s agenda is GURCC, as you say it is, Harvey, then we won’t hear from him again. If it’s not his agenda, we’ll hear from him on some other motherfuckin’ subject.”

“What reason are we going to give for your severing your relationship with GURCC?” Marshall asked.

“Why not tell them the truth?” Felix suggested. “Then they’ll print it. Hell, it’ll be all over ESPN. Because of an anonymous death threat to Moss Cooley urging him to sever his relationship with GURCC, Mr. Cooley has decided to end his association with the civil rights organization. He was slated to become GURCC’s national spokesman. Etcetera, etcetera.”

“Wait a minute,” Harvey said. “You want to advertise that you’re the subject of a death threat, go ahead. Then we got the cops and the feds all over us for more information. You want that, Moss?”

“No.”

“How else do we let this guy know Moss is not in bed with GURCC anymore?” Marshall asked, helping himself to a tuna salad on whole wheat.

“Give it to Bob Lassiter of the
Providence Journal,
” Harvey suggested. “Give him an exclusive, but don’t mention the death threat. Just say you’re quitting GURCC ‘for personal reasons.’ If you mention the jockey or the doll, you run the risk of either encouraging or antagonizing the guy. This way, it’s really just a private communication between Moss and this asshole.”

“I like it,” Felix said. “Give the old scribbler an exclusive.”

“What if the guy doesn’t see it?” Marshall asked.

“He’ll see it,” Harvey said. “He lives here. Or near here. I don’t think the guy drove long-distance to deliver sixty pounds of lawn jockey. In any case, if you give the story to Lassiter, it’ll be picked up. It’ll still end up on ESPN. If Moss picks his nose, it’ll end up on ESPN. What do you think, Moss?”

Cooley thought about it for a moment, his right hand playing with one of the gold rings on his left. “But let me talk to Lassiter myself after the game. I’ll keep it low, mix it in with some other quotes about the end of the streak.”

“Go for it,” Marshall said.

“Make it clear I’m only doing this because of my schedule or other obligations.”

“Good,” said Felix.

Moss stood. “I better suit up.”

“Sorry about the streak, Cool,” Marshall said, standing.

“My mama said all good things come to an end.”

Felix stood as well. “Rusansky pitched a whale of a game. Otherwise you’d still be chasing the Clipper.”

Harvey accompanied Moss down to the clubhouse in silence.

“It’s the best thing,” Moss said to him finally as they got off the elevator.

“You have to do what’s comfortable,” Harvey replied. “But you should call your friend Charlie at GURCC and tell him what’s going on.”

“I plan to.” He paused in the concrete corridor and faced Harvey. “I know you think there’s more to this, and maybe there is, but I’m going to give the man what he wants, and maybe he’ll go away satisfied. In the meantime, I want to help the team win a pennant. For now, I’ll let
that
be my good works.”

In the clubhouse, Moss’s teammates delivered their death-of-the-streak condolences with silent high-fives and pats on the fanny. As he watched Moss move through the clubhouse, collecting his due, Harvey thought, First prize—baseball immortality; second prize—the team’s equipment manager slaps you on the butt.

“You’ll get ’em next time,” Monkman said, although everyone knew what the odds were that Cooley—or anybody, for that matter—would ever have a streak like this again.

“Hey, Blissberg!” It was Andy Cubberly across the way, folding a stick of Wrigley’s into his mouth. “Come over here and motivate me. My average has dropped twenty-two points in the last three weeks.”

Harvey adopted a smile. “Don’t worry. Moss has been using up everybody else’s hits for the last two months, and now he’s going to give them back.”

“Yeah, I’m planning on going hitless for the rest of the year,” Cooley said. “That hittin’ thang just wasn’t doin’ it for me.”

Ray Costa, the light-hitting catcher, deadpanned, “Boy, do I know how boring those hits can get.”

Harvey wandered off toward the dining area and helped himself to a glass of ginger ale from the soda fountain dispenser. As he sipped it, watching the ballplayers pick at the pregame spread or sneak a look at ESPN’s Sports Center on the TV mounted high on the wall, Harvey felt his mood darken. It was a visceral sensation, as if he were watching a massive cloud front move into the Northeast on a Weather Channel radar map. Except he was the Northeast, and the cloud formation was a massive feeling of frustration, incompleteness, and confusion. With Cooley’s streak over, the case was abandoning him before he was ready to abandon it. It was possible he had never been this flummoxed by a case before. A headless lawn jockey and a black Ken doll, an acrostic and then the note about GURCC—it was like a dream full of strange, elaborate symbols. How could there not be a method somewhere to this madness? Was the man working up to something, or had he already passed it?

Harvey escaped the clubhouse, hungry for fresh air, and wandered into the players’ parking lot, a gleaming, glinting field of luxury cars. He called retired Providence police detective lieutenant Linderman.

“The time has come for me to fill you in,” Harvey said.

“The least you can do for the guy who got your pistol permit processed so quickly.”

Harvey told him about Cooley, the jockey, and the Ken doll. Then he offered Linderman two bills a day to make himself at home in Moss Cooley’s Cranston house for a few days.

“I accept.”

“But keep it under your hat,” Harvey said.

“I don’t have a hat.”

“C’mon, Linderman, I’ve already had a run-in with your nephew.”

“Joshua.”

“Who found out from a friend what I was doing. I swore him to secrecy in exchange for a piece of whatever action comes out of this.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, I appreciate the opportunity. I can use the bucks.”

“I can’t promise you much action. This guy’s behavior makes no sense to me. But he has made two visits to Cooley’s house and he might make a third. I want photos if he does.”

Off the phone, Harvey blinked in the glare of the sun bouncing off all the high-priced automobile hoods. He breathed deeply a few times. He would do as Marshall asked, keep Moss company for a while longer, and hope that his tormentor made another move or backed off forever. But Moss’s tormentor was now Harvey’s too. To follow Moss Cooley around for a few days and then slink home, without answers, feeling useless—that was intolerable. The assignment that had given his amorphous existence some shape, given him a taste of usefulness, now felt demeaning. He had not left the dubious comforts of his Cambridge sofa for this.

W
ITH THE PROP OF
meaningful work removed, Harvey resumed his life on the sofa. The reprieve that had been his week in Providence was over. The GURCC item had appeared in Lassiter’s
Providence Journal
column on Sunday morning, and by Sunday night it had entered the nation’s bloodstream of sports minutia, showing up as a brief item on ESPN. Harvey had stayed with Moss in the Exeter house for three more nights, without incident. Linderman had stayed at Moss’s Cranston house for three nights, again without incident. The Jewels’ home stand ended, with the Jewels taking two of three from the Tigers. When the Jewels left on a thirteen-game road trip to New York, Chicago, Toronto, and Tampa Bay, Harvey returned to Cambridge with a bad feeling and a $14,500 check from Marshall Levy for services rendered.

It was like coming out of the woods without the ball. Without knowing if there even
was
a ball lost in the woods.

All he had come away with, really, was Cubberly, and that wasn’t much. A history of racist activity, a creepy rented house, plus two stupid base-running plays might provide some bricks for a case against him, but where was the mortar? On his last night in Providence Harvey had tailed Cubberly after the game, followed the outfielder as he walked from the ballpark to a waterfront bar in Fox Point, near one of the hurricane barriers, two garagelike concrete-and-metal structures out of which metal walls were prepared to slide shut during the next hurricane to block the street and arrest the kind of flooding that had proved so disastrous in 1938. Cubberly sat at the bar, unrecognized, drinking draft beers and trying to lure college girls into conversation. After an hour or so of this halfhearted courtship he returned to his Jeep Cherokee and went home to his depressing Tudor in Wayland Square.

It was Friday now, ten days since Felix Shalhoub had first called. Mickey had come back to town for a day and a half and left again, flying off to St. Louis for “a Cards-Pirates tiff.” Some tenderness had passed between them, inexplicable, like the sudden remission of a disease. Their relationship just seemed to go on, a strange mix of inertia and destiny.

He watercolored in the afternoon, completing a passable portrait of a neighbor’s Victorian house in strict late-day shadows. Then he persuaded his old mentor Jerry Bellaggio to let him buy dinner at Socrate’s Newtown Grill, an old haunt in Porter Square. Over linguini with white clam sauce, Harvey described in detail the lawn jockey and Ken doll incidents and the two notes.