Dead Ball (4 page)

When the cheering finally subsided, Levy leaned toward Harvey. “No chance involved there, eh, Professor?”

“Touché,” Harvey admitted.

What impressed him was Cooley’s effortlessness, as though he were merely demonstrating an opposite-field hitting technique rather than executing one of the most difficult hand-eye feats in all of sports: hitting an eighty-five-miles-per-hour major-league slider thrown from a distance (when you calculated the actual point of release) of fifty-four feet. Harvey was thinking about how Cooley must feel, getting his hit out of the way early, like a man who steals a successful kiss early on a first date and can relax for a while.

“Professor,” Marshall said, “what did Felix tell you over the phone about our wanting to hire you?”

“He said the two of you thought you needed a motivational coach. But I’ve got to tell you—”

“He was lying, Harvey.” Marshall rotated his glass of Scotch in a tight circle, the melting cubes chattering against the glass.

“Not that we don’t think your presence will be influential,” Felix said as Guercio, the designated hitter, stepped in. “Teach these boys that winning’s up here.” Felix jabbed a finger at his own head. “That baseball’s a game of funda
mentals
. Get it? Mentals.”

“I get it,” Harvey said, snapping a carrot stick between his teeth. “Suppose one of you tells me what’s going on.”

“Officially, we want you to be our motivational coach. Unofficially—”

“Can I get you gentlemen another drink?” The black steward was suddenly at their sides. “Some spicy chicken wings?”

“No, thank you, Robert,” Marshall said, and the steward deftly retreated.

“Unofficially?” Harvey prompted the Jewels’ owner.

“Unofficially—and we’re completely at the mercy of your discretion on this matter, okay?”

“Understood,” Harvey assured him.

“We want you to protect Moss Cooley.”

“From the Chihuahuas?”

“Oh, no,” Marshall said, swirling his Scotch. “Something worse than Chihuahuas.”

“Cool got something the other day,” Felix said. “An ugly thing that worries us.”

“What?”

“We’ll show it to you after the game,” Marshall said. “Let’s just say the gist of it is that someone doesn’t want him breaking DiMaggio’s record.”

Harvey knew enough not to push it. This was the owner’s skybox, after all, not the dugout. But it made him edgy as hell. It was only the first inning, after all. “Why’d you make up all this bullshit about a motivational coach?” he asked Felix.

“Everybody said you weren’t taking on any cases. That you’d lost the taste for it. So I had to get you down here some other way. Even you have to admit what a hard sell you are.”

In the eighth inning, with the Jewels comfortably out in front 6—2, Cooley got his second hit, a topped grounder he beat out by a step, and the fans cheered as lustily as though it had cleared the remote 417 FT sign in center. “
There’s
your chance for you,” Harvey tweaked Marshall Levy.

“Cool’ll get his hits,” the owner said smugly. “One way or another.”

By now, it was really beginning to annoy Harvey, the way Marshall kept using the nickname “Cool.” It reminded him of the way parents ingratiate themselves with their children by using their lingo, the way his own late father, for a year or two in Harvey’s adolescence, had kept referring to things in Harvey’s presence as “boss.”

“Does Cooley know about me?” Harvey asked.

“Not yet,” Marshall replied as Jewels catcher Ray Costa flied out to end the bottom of the eighth. “But soon.”

Just after Jewels closer J. C. Jelsky sealed the Jewels’ 6-3 win, meaty storm clouds began rolling in from the west. It was as if nature had politely waited for the national pastime to conclude its business. Within minutes The Jewel Box was under a thick dome of gray licked by lightning. The temperature dropped ten degrees. To the accompaniment of thunder and under the first big raindrops, the grounds crew removed the bases and drew the big tarpaulin over the infield. The tarp itself billowed like a great green cloud before settling down. The crowd drained out of the park and was replaced by the maintenance crew snapping back seats and sweeping the fans’ litter into the aisles.

Harvey, Marshall, and Felix retired to Marshall Levy’s glassed-in office right behind the skybox to talk baseball. Marshall sat in a Naugahyde executive chair behind his desk sipping Scotch, while Felix and Harvey sat in molded plastic chairs opposite him, both now nursing ginger ales. The office looked as if it had been furnished after a fifteen-minute stop at Office Max. On Marshall’s otherwise sparsely populated desk sat a big brown cardboard shipping box.

After several minutes, their conversation was interrupted by a portly, shortish middle-aged man poking his head in the door. He had lost all his hair on top, leaving a friar’s fringe of brown hair, but had retained, like many stout men, a boyish face bulging with good cheer. He wore a sport shirt open at the neck under a summery linen sport jacket with a light check.

“How ’bout dat, gentlemen? History in the making!” the man said in a rumbling singsong baritone, and Harvey knew at once from the overmodulated voice that he was a broadcaster.

“Snoot Coffman,” Marshall said, sweeping his open palm from Snoot to Harvey. “Harvey Blissberg. Snoot here does the games on radio for WRIX. And Harvey used to play this game.”

“I remember the Professor,” Coffman said. “But you traded in your bat for a gun, as I recall.”

“For a while, anyway.”

“You here for Cooley?”

Harvey glanced at Marshall.

“Snoot knows,” Marshall said.

“We thought he might have some insight,” Felix added. “He knows what goes on with the ballplayers as much as we do.”

“That’s what I get from having to interview them ad nauseum.”

“And he can keep his mouth shut,” Marshall said, “although you’d never know it.”

“You can bet Granny’s bustle on that,” the broadcaster said with a resonance entirely unnecessary for casual conversation. This, Harvey thought, was a man in the throes of a love affair with the sound of his own voice.

“So I guess I’m the only one here who’s still in the dark,” Harvey said.

“Not for long,” Felix replied.

Coffman rubbed his hands together briskly. “Well, I’ll leave you gentlemen alone.”

“You have any thoughts, Snoot?” Marshall asked.

“Nope, but give me a chance to think about it. I love a good mystery. Really, I just stopped in to commend you on another fine victory and share my excitement about Moss. You know, DiMaggio was great the moment he came up, but Moss has really blossomed overnight. I’m honored to be broadcasting this amazing streak. As you were,” he added, sliding back out the door.

When he was gone, Harvey said, “Snoot?”

Marshall laughed. “Hey, I don’t name ’em; I just pay ’em. No one can say he hasn’t brought a lot more pizzazz to the broadcasts. Not that there was anything wrong with Scott Sipple, our play-by-play man before last year. But Scott was a little… subtle. Snoot’s one those big fans of the game. He’s got half of Providence saying, ‘Now how ’bout dat?’ ”

Sipple. He was now one of ESPN’s stable of anchors Harvey would occasionally catch at three in the morning on a sleepless night. Harvey wondered if Mickey knew him.

Soon after the lights of The Jewel Box started to go out in an orderly procession around the park, there was another knock on the door, and Moss Cooley himself came in, larger than life. He wore an expensive navy blue shirt with a nice drape to it, brown slacks, two-tone fabric-and-leather shoes. His espresso-colored face was topped by a nest of six-inch dreadlocks that fell about his head in a moplike fashion. He wore one thin gold chain around his neck and two gold rings on his left hand. He was carrying, incongruously, a brown paper lunch sack. Harvey wondered if it contained a sandwich. That would make good copy—baseball’s biggest hero brown-bagging it.

Harvey watched as Cooley’s eyes fell on the cardboard box on Marshall’s desk. There was a slight ripple in his composure, signaled only by a blink, and then his eyes were up again, surveying his hosts, who had risen.

“Congratulations, Cool,” Marshall said. “I hope it never ends.” He came around the desk to bang fists with Cooley, like one of the brothers.

“Everything comes to an end, Mr. Levy,” Cooley replied.

“Way to go,” Felix said, opting for a traditional handshake. “Moss, this is Harvey Blissberg, who played center field for us many years ago.”

“Oh, yeah,” Moss said. “I had your card once. You played for Boston before you ended up in this dump.”

“Five years.”

“ ’Course, I was just a little thang back then.” He put his hand, palm down, at knee level.

“And now look what happened to you,” Harvey said.

“He got bigger,” Marshall said.

“And luckier,” Moss added with a smile that revealed a gold bicuspid. “Thank God for that hit in the first inning. I’d be ashamed to keep the streak going on that sorry-ass squib in the eighth.”

“Chance favors the prepared mind,” Marshall suddenly said. “And the prepared bat.”

“Wiser words have never been spoken,” Moss said, humoring the man who signed his enormous paychecks.

“Actually, wiser words
have
been spoken,” Harvey said. “Just not by Marshall Levy.”

“How true,” Moss said, laughing.

“Have a seat, Cool,” Marshall said. He motioned him to an empty chair and retreated to his own. They all sat. “You’re probably wondering why we brought Harvey down here from Boston.”

“I was?”

“Well, in any case, you may be seeing a lot of him. Harvey’s a licensed private investigator.”

“Wait a second,” Harvey said. “I haven’t agreed—”

“Of course not,” Marshall said, making a meaningless adjustment of his eyeglasses.

“I’m a little confused,” Moss said.

“You’re not alone,” said Harvey.

“Wait a second.” Moss looked from Marshall to Harvey and back. “You want him to look after me?”

“With your permission,” Felix said. “Look, I think we all agreed yesterday that, for the time being, the less attention we call to this thing the better. You know what the press would do with something like this.”

Moss nodded. “For the Chihuahuas it’s like fuckin’ crack.”

“And we agree, if I’m not mistaken,” Marshall added, “that we don’t want to involve the Providence police.”

“They’ll talk to the Chihuahuas.”

“Plus, once this gets out, you’ve got to worry about the copycats getting into the action,” Marshall added. “We need to handle this quietly, if we can, and let you go about your business.”

Harvey listened, looking at the box.

“We’re going to do a routine security upgrade here at the park,” Felix said. “But we’re mum about the threat, right?”

“That’s right,” Moss said. “Let’s keep it low.”

There was a knock at the door. Marshall and Felix quickly exchanged looks and shrugs. “Who’s there?” Marshall called out.

“Mickey Slavin. I’m looking for Harvey Blissberg.”

Harvey was out of his chair in an instant, opening the door only a foot or so. “Hi,” he whispered.

“Can I come in?” She asked. Her complexion was orange from her TV makeup.

“Not right now.”

“Who’s in there?”

“Nobody.”

Mickey craned her head for a better look. “That looks like the back of Moss Cooley’s head.”

“It’s not.”

“Bliss, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. We’ll talk later.”

“Okay. Meet you at Haven Brothers?”

“Give me an hour.”

“Okay. Bliss, that’s the back of Moss Cooley’s head.”

“Whatever.”

“And, if I’m not mistaken, that’s Felix Shalhoub’s leg.”

“No comment.”

“And you’re in Marshall Levy’s skybox office.”

“That I can’t deny.”

“Something’s going on.”

“We’re having a motivation meeting. I’ll see you in an hour.”

When Harvey sat back down, Moss was shaking his head, muttering, “Chihuahua.”

“More like a fox,” said Marshall Levy. “Is she going to be a problem, Professor?”

“Meaning?”

“Nobody can know about this, not even Mickey.”

“She won’t be a problem.”

“You two an item?” Moss said.

“More like a deeply flawed long-term proposition.”

“Then I apologize for my comment.”

“Forget it,” Harvey said. “I don’t like the press, either. Now where were we?”

“The cops,” Marshall said.

Moss shook his head. “No way.”

“Exactly,” Felix said.

“Not until we know what we’re dealing with,” Marshall said. “Which is where Harvey comes in.”

“Anyway, Harvey was a private investigator after he left baseball,” Felix explained to Cooley. “Till he entered the lucrative world of motivational speaking. But we’d like him to keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” Moss said.

“Just think of him as handling the situation,” Marshall said calmly. “Officially, we’d be bringing him on as a motivational coach. You’d have to go along with that. Look, Cool, there’s just too much at stake. You’ve got a chance to make history.”

Harvey coughed lightly. “What’s in the box?”

“Yes, the box,” Marshall said, standing, placing his hands ceremoniously on top of it, as if it were the Torah or something. The box had no markings on it. “Two nights ago, someone dropped it off outside the gate to the player’s parking lot. It was addressed to Cool.”

“We figured it was just another gift from a fan,” Felix said.

“You wouldn’t believe the shit I get,” Moss said. “Someone sent me a Toast-R-Oven. Note said, ‘DiMaggio’s streak is toast.’ ”

“This is no Toast-R-Oven,” Marshall said, opening the top flaps of the box. “Give me a hand, Cool.” With Marshall’s help, Cooley reached in the box and, grunting, lifted out the headless lawn jockey.

“Lovely,” Harvey said.

“Wait till you see the note,” Marshall said, handing him a piece of white paper folded in thirds.

Harvey opened it. The note was made up of letters cut from magazines and glued to the page: