Dead Ball (7 page)

With a sigh he picked up the phone and dialed the number of Debbie Rubino at a real estate firm in Warwick, Rhode Island, that handled the housing arrangements for executive transfers in and out of the state. She had found him the apartment on Benefit Street he rented the year he spent in Providence, and they had dated for a couple of months B.M.—Before Mickey.

“Harvey Blissberg,” she said. “My God, it’s been a long time. How are you?”

“I’m just fine, Debbie. You?”

“I’m still here.”

“That’s just what I was hoping.”

“So what’s going on? What’re you doing? And where’re you doing it?”

“I’m up here in Cambridge, you know, being an ex-athlete. Doing some motivational speaking.”

“You married?”

“Well, I’ve been with the same person forever, but—”

“That sportscaster?”

“Mickey Slavin.”

“Good for you.”

“Fifteen years now. No kids, though.”

“Wish I could say the same for myself. I’ve got three. At least they’re old enough for me to be back at work part-time. What’s up?”

“I need a short-term house down there. I’m going to be doing some work in Providence for a month or so, and I can’t stand the damn commute every day.”

“A month? That’s tough. What’re you looking for?”

“Something secluded. Country squirish. Big lot. Preferably surrounded by woods, but a big yard in front. Mowed. Two-car garage with remote door opener.”

“Jeez,” she said with a laugh, “what color walls do you want in the living room? People who want a rental for a month can’t be too choosy. Why don’t you just stay in a hotel?”

“It’s not that kind of job, Debbie,” Harvey said as he heard Mickey coming down the stairs. He kicked the study door shut with his foot.

“Okay, for you I’m looking,” she said. “I’ve got a house here in Warwick where I could stuff you. But it’s a development with half-acre lots.”

“Needs to be secluded.” He heard Mickey open the front door.

“Boy, this is getting more mysterious by the minute. Here we go. There’s one in Exeter, off Route One-oh-two. It’s a yuppie development. Huge lots. Let’s see. Four bedrooms. Thirty-six hundred square feet. Three-car garage, alarm system, woodsy, but a big yard. It’s a nice shingled colonial. The former tenant just got transferred to San Francisco, and most of their furniture’s still in there until he and his wife get settled.”

“Perfect. How much?”

“I’ll let it go for three grand a month, but you’ll have to pay a month’s security.”

“Fine.”

“This is unorthodox, Harvey.”

“I know. I’d like you to handle all the utilities and the phone bill. I’ll reimburse you in cash. Just makes things easier for me.”

“Okay, okay. When do you want to look at it?”

“Today.”

“That’s fast.”

“Can you show it to me if I’m at your office by eleven?”

“Harvey, I’ve got to tell you, this doesn’t sound like a motivational speaking job.”

He called Marshall Levy to let him know about the house and ask about the cars.

“Two Subarus’ll be at the park by this afternoon.”

“Excellent. How’s Moss doing?”

“The perfect houseguest. Made his own bed, too. Hospital corners.”

“Put him on for a minute.”

Cooley came to the phone.

“Did you sleep well?” Harvey asked.

“Okay.”

“Did you call Cherry Ann?”

“She can’t make it today. But she said I could come by her place late tomorrow morning.”

“That’ll have to do. Now, listen, can you hang at Marshall’s till two or three this afternoon? I think I’ve found a house for us. I want to check it out, and then I’ll pick you up, and we can go to your place and get your things.”

“I feel like I’m in the Federal Witness Protection Program.”

“You’re not, Moss. You’re in the Blissberg Protect-Your-Black-Ass Program.”

Harvey flipped through his Rolodex until he found Professor Roy Hinch of the University of Rhode Island’s Crime Lab in Kingston, where he trained a lot of the Rhode Island BCI forensic people.

“Remember me, Hinch?” Harvey asked.

“I remember hearing you were out of the detective game.”

“I still like to get my feet wet now and then. Can I bring you something later today?”

“My people are more backed up than a bus station toilet.”

“I just want you to eyeball something and give me a low-tech opinion. Nothing fancy.”

“When?”

“Let’s see,” Harvey said, trying to plan his day. If he saw the house by eleven-thirty and liked it, he’d need to make arrangements for heightened security. … “One this afternoon okay?”

“I’ll slip you in,” Hinch said without enthusiasm.

“Hinch, you still into dessert wines?”

“More than ever.”

“Good. I’ll make sure there’s something in it for you.”

The next call was trickier. Detective Linderman had retired soon after he investigated the death of Harvey’s Providence Jewels’ roommate Rudy Furth fifteen years ago. Harvey hadn’t talked to him in years, and wasn’t even sure he was still alive. Linderman answered his home phone on about the tenth ring.

“What took you so long?” Harvey said when Linderman uttered a rumpled hello. “Couldn’t find your walker?”

“Blissberg?”

Harvey had to smile. It was like Old Home Week. Felix, Marshall, Campy, Debbie Rubino, and now Linderman. “It is I.”

“Don’t laugh. My knees don’t work so good anymore.”

“Then why aren’t you in Scottsdale with the other retired cops?”

“I
got
a place in Florida, whaddya want? But it’s frickin’ July, Harvey. I like to spend the summer near my granddaughter. I hope you’re not calling me for money.”

“Something far more valuable. I was wondering whether you could run me a little interference with the Rhode Island AG’s office.”

“What makes you think I still got friends there?”

“Just give me a yes or no.”

“Not until you tell me more.”

“I’ve got a job in your state, and I need a pistol permit for my thirty-eight because your pathetic state won’t honor my Massachusetts concealed firearms permit. I need someone to get my application pushed to the top of the pile. I’m not waiting thirty days. I don’t have that kind of time.”

“Why should I do this for you?”

“How about because I need to prevent a terrible catastrophe from occurring in your beloved state?”

“What’s the job?”

“Only if you can keep your mouth shut.”

“You want your permit or not?”

“One of the Jewels needs protection.”

“The mob?”

“Nobody knows. The ballplayer doesn’t think he has any enemies.”

“All right, I’ll make the call for you. When are you planning on showing up at the AG’s office to fill out the application?”

“Later today.”

“Don’t forget to bring IDs, a recent photo, and your fingertips.”

“I never leave home without them.”

Harvey was leaning back in his chair, hands folded behind his head, basking in the unfamiliar glow of his own competence, when a knock on his study door was followed immediately by the appearance of Mickey Slavin in a loosely cinched bathrobe.

“You were very loving last night,” he said. “I appreciate that.”

“Bliss, I hope this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but you have a headless lawn jockey in the backseat of your car.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go through my things.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I went out to my car to get some files, and I noticed a big box sitting in the backseat of your car, and I just thought I’d have a little peek. You can imagine my surprise.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got the head.”

She glowered at him. It was amazing how good she’d gotten at glowering in recent years.

“I was going to surprise you with it for our anniversary,” he said.

“Anniversary of what?”

“Fifteen years of living together? I’m pretty sure it’s the headless-lawn-jockey anniversary.”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

“It’s just something I picked up at a yard sale. They’re collectors’ items now.”

“I’m sure. Especially with a severed head. You know what I think?”

“I have a good idea.”

“The team’s hired you to protect Moss Cooley because he’s been receiving death threats, one of which has taken the form of said lawn jockey.”

“It’s too early in the morning for this,” Harvey said. “Did you make coffee yet?”

“You just expect me to sit on my hands?” Mickey said as they ate bowls of Familia in the kitchen.

“Yes,” Harvey said.

“For how long?”

“Until it’s no longer a problem. Then it’ll be your exclusive. That’s your reward for putting up with me all these years.”

“Just tell me this.”

“What?”

“Where did the headless lawn jockey show up?”

“At the ballpark.”

“And the head?”

“It showed up later,” Harvey said tersely, head bowed over his Swiss cereal to indicate his disinclination to continue. “What’s your schedule the next couple of days?”

“I fly to New York this afternoon to do the Yankees—Devil Rays tiff tonight.” Unlike Felix, Mickey used sportscaster cliché ironically, and merely to taunt him. “Tomorrow night I’m in Cincinnati for the big Reds-Cubs clash.”

“I’m glad we’ve been able to spend this time together.”

“Don’t give me that shit. You’ve been just as unavailable.”

“I’ve been right here on the sofa.”

“Emotionally unavailable. I’m only geographically unavailable.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You’re suffering from sad man-ism, Bliss. You’re so deep inside sad man—ism I can’t reach you.”

“Every guy’s entitled to a few years of total dysfunctionality.”

“Just remember to put me on your mailing list when you notify folks that you’re fully functional again.”

“I’m coming out of it, Mick. I’m now officially attached to the hip of the best hitter in baseball.”

“Come here,” she said, motioning him closer with her finger.

Harvey leaned in, hoping for a kiss.

Instead Mickey raised her paper napkin to his face. “Let me wipe your chin,” she said. “You’ve got more Familia on your face than a two-year-old.”

A
MAN CARRYING A GUN
is exponentially different from a man without one. A gun has the power to alter any reality into which it enters. But it’s also a beautiful fusion of form and function; a poetic, metallic extension of the hand; deadly jewelry. Shooting a gun has a hard elegance about it not entirely related to its deadlier duties, which is why you can always find cops in the bowels of a police station at two in the morning firing off a couple hundred rounds for the sheer brain-changing, soul-satisfying pleasure of it. At a certain level, firing a gun is just another explosive physical challenge, like hitting a golf ball well, a first serve, or a hanging curve.

Guns were not in Harvey’s blood. He had come to them late, in his thirties, when his new profession demanded it. His rapport with his gun was clouded by a healthy aversion to violence. While Mickey was in her study downloading files from her ESPN producer on the Yankees and Devil Rays, Harvey got down his nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38, removed its chamois swaddling, and laid it on the bed next to a box of hollow-points and the little clip-on buckskin cross-draw holster he used to carry it inside the left side of his belt. History could not be undone, gunpowder uninvented, and so he accepted his gun as an inevitable and morally justified advantage in situations that might otherwise end badly as far as society in general and himself in particular were concerned. But every time he pulled the trigger at a firing range, each shot seemed to leave on his soul a trace of dread, a memory of the damage he might have done. The idea that tools of such instant and remote-controlled violence were available to ordinary citizens—above all teenagers who either had not yet tasted mortality or had become impervious to it—still shocked him.

Harvey dressed in a dark blue short-sleeved sport shirt that draped comfortably over his linen pants. The shirt had been expensive, far more expensive than polyester ought to cost. He was feeling a little Rip Van Winkle-ish these days, rubbing his eyes at a changed world and its oxymorons: expensive polyester, beautiful Providence, The Jewel Box, gun-toting Blissberg. He wiped down his pistol with an oily cloth, then clipped the cross-draw holster inside his pants about eight inches to the left of his belt buckle and slid the gun into it. He practiced drawing it a few times, lifting the tail of his shirt up with his right thumb as he grabbed the checkered walnut grip and raised the pistol into firing position, his left hand gripping the bottom of his right for support.

He put everything—gun, bullets, holster, oily cloth, and cleaning kit—into a small leather bag. Then he packed a week’s worth of clothes and his toiletries in a nylon duffel and put it in the trunk of his Honda, along with his gun bag, his Toshiba laptop, two bottles of Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise 1997, and a pair of dark blue coveralls with the name “Stanley” stitched on the left breast in white thread.

When he came back in the house, Mickey was still at the PC. Harvey went back to his office and called Jerry Bellaggio, the former FBI special agent and Boston private detective under whom Harvey had once worked in the 1980s to earn his license. Bellaggio was retired and almost always at home now, thanks to his emphysema. Leaving the house required him to drag along a portable oxygen tank about which he was self-conscious.

“I need some basic research,” Harvey said.

“Hey, what happened to motivational speaking?” Bellaggio said.

“I was highly motivated to stop motivating people.”

“What’s up?”

“I’ve just been hired to bodyguard Moss Cooley.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised. Aaron had one, you know, chasing Ruth.”

“Some joker left him a headless lawn jockey with a note, then hung the head from his garage ceiling.”

“Any evidence there’s more than one person involved?”

“Not yet. Why?”

“Two or more, and it falls under possible FBI jurisdiction. Title 18, U.S. Code 241, Conspiracy against Rights.”

“Right now we’re not trying to shine a big light on it. It could just be some asshole showboating.”