Dead Ball (24 page)

“I can’t access that information, but I’ll be happy to send a duplicate bill to your house.”

“How about faxing me a copy at work?” He fumbled for Fathon’s business card in his pocket.

“No, I’m afraid I can’t do that, but if I send you a duplicate, you should get it in a couple of days.”

“No, that’s all right. Thanks much.”

“You have a good day now.”

Next he called the Athens town hall, posing as a new resident, and found out that garbage pickup day was Thursday. It was now Sunday, July 28. Thursday would be August 1. Assuming that Clay Chirmside paid his telephone bill on time and that, like most earthlings, he no longer bothered to keep his itemized phone bills, Wednesday night would be a good night to be in the vicinity of 1719 Crosby Road in Athens, Georgia.

Then he called Fathon.

“Charlie?” Harvey said when Fathon picked up the phone at his house. “Or Charles, as Connie likes to call you.”

“How’d it go?”

“People lie to me left and right.”

“That bad?”

“But one thing I know is that Clay Chirmside isn’t writing a piece for
Talk
magazine, or any magazine for that matter.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“You ought to run a simple check on these freelancers, Charlie. I don’t mean to chastise you.”

“Well, shit, I feel like a dentist with bad teeth. None of us thought anything about it. Writers come through here all the time. What was he doing?”

“Trying to steal the picture of the other fellow in the Pettibone case. Says a mysterious man hired him anonymously over the phone, never gave his name, paid him in cash by mail. Chirmside can’t remember the postmark.”

“Goddamn. How’d you get
that
much out of him?”

“Five hundreds and twenty-five twenties.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Not if you’re interested in finding the guy in the photo. Are you?”

“Well, when you told me Maurice’s lady friend thought he looked familiar, my interest went from virtually nothing to fairly lively. Now I think it’s spiking.”

“All right, then, I need a little favor. You ever do much sanitation work?”

“Sanitation work?”

“I need you or one of your people to collect a little garbage from Chirmside’s curb this Wednesday night.”

“You think one of his lies is that he never called the man back?”

“I’m looking for area codes in Rhode Island, Boston, and southern Massachusetts, and maybe eastern Connecticut.”

“I’ll have to put one of the white boys on it.”

“Yeah, of course. Now his phone bill is due on Thursday. Garbage gets picked up on his street Thursday morning, so he’ll probably put it out Wednesday night, but I can’t be sure. Could be an all-night stakeout. I’d do it myself, except I’m nervous about leaving Moss alone too long.” If he flew out of Atlanta today, he could meet the team in Chicago for their Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday set against the White Sox.

“Nothing’s going to happen to Maurice,” Fathon said. It was halfway between a question and a statement of fact.

“Of course not. Charlie, can you also run the plates on the Buick Le Sabre in Connie’s driveway? I want to make sure it’s hers. I’d also be interested if there’s a lien on it. I’d also be interested in whether she owns or rents her place in Smyrna.” He gave Fathon the license plate number and her address. “Will you do that for me?”

“Hell, yeah. This is getting exciting.”

“Well, don’t go calling any press conferences, Charles. Listen, I’ll probably be in Chicago for the next few days with the team. You’ve got my cell phone number, right?”

“That’s not all I’ve got. You left your toothbrush on the sink this morning.”

“Keep it,” Harvey said, “as a token of my appreciation for your fine hospitality.”

“L
ET ME SHAKE THE
hand of the man who shook the hand of history.”

Moss Cooley, who was waiting his turn in the batting cage at Comiskey Park before the opener Monday night against the White Sox, took Norman Blissberg’s hand and said, “Thank you, man.”

“Don’t mind my brother if he’s a little inappropriately poetic,” Harvey said. “Too much academia.” Their conversation was punctuated by the drumbeat of bats hitting batting practice pitches.

“Don’t mind my brother if he’s a little flip.” Norm, almost fifty now, an inflated, nearsighted version of his little brother in an ill-fitting herringbone sport coat and a dark blue novelty tie bearing schematic drawings of demolished major-league baseball parks, touched his little rectangular eyeglasses. “Sometimes I don’t think he shows the proper respect for the game—or the men who actually accomplish something in it.”

“Norm, this is the last time I get
you
a field pass. From now on, you can sit home and watch the goddamn White Sox on TV.”

Norm laughed. “C’mon, Harv, it weren’t for you, I’d have no one to irritate.” He gave a Gallic shrug for Cooley’s benefit. “My son’s in college, and my wife doesn’t care anymore.”

“It’s nice when siblings can do things for each other,” Harvey said, watching a group of Providence Jewels, including Cubberly, play pepper down the right-field line. After his thirty-six hours in Atlanta, baseball looked strange to him—more like the national distraction than its pastime.

Norm leaned closer to Moss. “Just tell me my baby brother’s taking good care of you.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Moss said, not looking at either of them, but surveying the sparsely populated stands. “Though your brother’s friend in New York was a welcome change in bodyguards. This guy Zarg didn’t talk so much.”

“Moss, I had to get away from you for a day or two. Being around so much greatness was getting to me.” Harvey’s heart wasn’t in the banter; he was on automatic pilot.

Moss cackled. “Exactly how I felt about being around so much mediocrity.”

“You won’t be saying that when I bust this case open.”

“Poor Harvey,” Norm muttered. “Never feels he gets enough credit.”

“Now, now, boys,” Moss said over his shoulder as Craig Venora stepped out of the batting cage and Moss moved in to take his cuts. “I hate to see grown men bicker.”

Without an audience, Harvey and Norm dropped their timeworn routine.

“So,” Norm said, “you’re going to ‘bust this case open’?”

“My old ex-FBI friend Jerry Bellaggio got me the name of the guy that the bureau uses for computer age-imaging. I sent him a print of the photo of the second lyncher. In a couple of days, maybe I’ll have the picture of a man I recognize.”

Harvey had let Norm take him out for an early dinner at Greek Islands on Halsted before the game, so Norm was more or less up to speed.

They watched in mute admiration for a moment as Moss launched a shot over the 375-foot sign in left center.

“The man’s a god,” Norm said. “Jesus, I’d hate to be the ball when he’s hitting.”

“You’re so goddamn literary, Norm.”

“Incredible mechanics.” Norm turned his head and spat copiously on the grass. Stepping onto a major-league ball field had a way of making grown men salivate. “You think Cooley’s out of the woods?”

“I’m more worried about his girlfriend. She’s the one who thought she’d seen the guy.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Harv, but whoever it is can’t stop the process now by stopping her, right?”

“It only matters what the guy thinks he can do. He may be desperate enough to want to do anything. Wouldn’t you if you thought you were about to be plucked out of your life and thrown into prison for eternity?”

“What did you say she did for a living, this—what’s her name?”

“Cherry Ann, and I didn’t say. But she’s a culinary school student in Providence. She moonlights as a stripper.”

“Give me a break.”

“And keep it to yourself.”

“Moss Cooley dates a stripper?”

“She’s not a trivial person, Norm.”

“It’s so corny. Although it’s true I once had a Ph.D. candidate who worked as a dominatrix to pay her tuition.”

“There you go. Anyway, I try not to pass judgment on other people’s relationships. You’ll notice I’ve never said one word about your twenty-five-year marriage to Linda.”

“And I know my marriage is the poorer for it.” Cooley launched another long-range missile into the left-field seats. “You’re not worried about someone shooting Cooley from the stands?”

“No one’s stupid enough to shoot someone in front of thirty thousand potential witnesses.”

“Thirty thousand?” Norm said. “When’s the last time the White Sox drew thirty thousand?”

Harvey laughed. “And we’re not even going to be among them, Norm, because, as a special treat for you, I got press box passes for tonight.”

“You do love me.”

“Hey, Blissberg!” someone shouted behind him. Harvey turned and saw Andy Cubberly walking toward the cage with two bats in his hand.

“Hold that thought, Norm,” Harvey said to his brother and met Cubberly about thirty feet from home plate in foul territory.

“Hey,” Cubberly said, leaning on his bats. “We could’ve used you in New York.”

“I took the weekend off. Anything happen in my absence?”

“I hit a triple.”

“How about that?”

Cubberly chuckled. “How ’bout dat?” he repeated in Snoot Coffman’s signature style. “By the way, Snoot was looking for you in Yankee Stadium after the game yesterday. I think he wanted you to be on his show again.”

Harvey looked off toward home plate, where Moss hit a screamer down the left-field line and sauntered out of the cage. “Here in Chicago?”

“Go ask him yourself.”

Twenty minutes before game time, Harvey and Norm climbed to the press box, where a dozen print reporters were already at their laptops and another dozen were feeding their faces at the complimentary buffet table.

“Is that food free?” Norm asked.

“I’m afraid it is.”

His brother took a plate and approached a chafing dish filled with tortellini.

“Norm, didn’t you just have braised lamb shanks an hour and a half ago?”

“That was someone else.”

“Norm. If you had to pay for this food, would you be standing in line?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Harv. Studies show that the sight of complimentary buffet food causes the body to accelerate its digestive and metabolic processes, instantly causing secretions.”

“Secretions?”

“Appetite-inducing secretions. I’m surprised you’re not familiar with the work of Dr. Leonard Risotto.” He piled some tortellini and a breast of roast chicken on his plate.

“You’re pathetic, Norm.”

“Nonetheless,” he said, popping a tortellino into his mouth, “it beats peanuts and Crackerjack.”

“And I don’t care if you never come back.”

“This is good,” Norm said, chewing. “I think it’s got mushrooms inside.”

“Listen, you stand there and get fat while I do an errand.”

Harvey made his way toward the series of enclosed broadcast booths at the far end of the press box, edging past the back row of baseball writers. Bob Lassiter of the
Providence Journal
was hunched over his Toshiba Satellite, thinning gray hair flecked with dandruff, as he pecked a sidebar—Harvey read it over his shoulder—about relief pitcher J. C. Jelsky’s impending rotator cuff surgery. When Harvey tapped him on the back, Lassiter said, “One second,” and finished typing the sentence before turning.

“Just wanted to say hi, Bob,” Harvey said.

Lassiter twisted his body and shook Harvey’s hand. He had an unlit Garcia y Vega jammed in the corner of his mouth. He was like something found in a time capsule marked “Beat Sports Reporter, circa 1962.”

“Good to see you, Professor. I’ve been meaning to catch up with you. Maybe I could do a little story about one of the original Jewels returning to motivate his old team.”

“We should make time for that, Bob.”

Lassiter lowered his voice. “But I hear rumors.”

“Oh yeah?”

“That you’re here on an entirely different assignment.”

“No kidding?”

“That Levy brought you in to baby-sit Moss.”

“Who told you that?”

“Snoot Coffman. He says he found out that Moss may have gotten mixed up with the mob.”

“I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

Lassiter lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Snoot says he discovered that Moss has a nasty habit. A taste for female escorts. Two, three at a time that he likes to entertain in Cranston. Well, you know these services are all mobbed up. So Moss hurt one of the girls, then punched out some wise guy who objected. So Snoot says some mobsters have been threatening him and his girlfriend, and he found out through some connection of his own they’re planning to teach Moss a lesson by getting to her.”

“Oh, for chrissakes. When did he tell you this?” It was a little late in the day to be dealing with Snoot’s rogue theories.

“Last night in New York.”

“I can honestly say that the rumor is incorrect, and I hope you’re not planning to run with any part of it.”

“Okay, okay. Although it does help explain one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Lassiter yanked the wet dead cigar from the corner of his mouth and examined it as if its state of illumination were an issue. “Why Moss would end his relationship with that group in Atlanta.”

“I don’t see.”

“Because who has time for charitable work when the mob’s after you?”

Was it possible that the threat was coming from an entirely different direction? That Harvey had been looking in the wrong part of the woods? He quickly reviewed what he knew, or thought he knew, about Moss, and wondered whether the man who had neglected to tell him about his association with GURCC for so long also concealed a shameful secret about his recreational and sexual habits. With a sinking feeling, Harvey thought about the photo of Cherry Ann in Moss’s cubicle. Wasn’t a man who kept a nude photo of his girlfriend in his locker a man who might also be suffering from a kinky compulsion to party with multiple escorts? Had Harvey been overthinking it? After all, there was nothing yet to connect the man in the lynching photo at GURCC to anyone in Providence, nothing linking Clay Chirmside and his charade to either of the two warnings to Moss, except the curious coincidence of Chirmside’s presence at GURCC the same day Moss and Cherry Ann came to visit. Could Chirmside’s efforts to lay his hands on the lynching photos be unrelated to Moss’s predicament?