Strike Three You're Dead (29 page)

T
HE YANKEES CRUSHED THE
Jewels in the opener of the doubleheader that afternoon, 12-5. With one game to go in the season, New York and Boston were tied for first place, Providence and Toronto for last.

Between games, the public address announcer informed over twenty-three thousand fans that the scheduled starting pitcher for the nightcap, Bobby Wagner, would be replaced by rookie left-hander Eddie Storella. The actual decision had been made several hours earlier, when Detective Linderman explained over the phone to a bewildered Felix that Wagner would soon be indisposed by handcuffs.

So far this had proven wishful thinking on Linderman’s part; Wagner had eluded both the state and city cops who were fanning out across Rhode Island.

“Find him, damn it,” Harvey told Linderman, when he had phoned him from Felix’s office. “I’ve got another goddamn game to play, and I’m crapping my pants.”

“Don’t worry, Harvey. We’re looking,” Linderman said. “We’ve got a net over the state. He can’t go too far.”

Harvey exhaled loudly into the mouthpiece. “Did you tell Felix about Frances?”

There was a pause on the other end. “I didn’t have the heart yet. Besides, you know all we’ve got is circumstantial evidence.”

“I’ve got more than that, Linderman. Mickey—”

“Save it for later,” Linderman said abruptly. “Harvey, you haven’t told anybody about this, have you?”

“Just a reporter named Mickey Slavin who’s going to break the story tonight at six and eleven. So don’t start having any ideas about being nice to Frances Shalhoub, Linderman.”

Fifteen minutes before the second game, Harvey anxiously walked the grass in front of the Jewels’ dugout, where ten hours before Wagner had tried to kill him. He would have loved to get his hands on Frances now, but she hadn’t turned up at the park, in or out of custody. There was nothing to forgive in her; she had turned a triple play, taking Rudy, Wagner, and herself out of baseball, and all on the off chance of paying a twenty-seven-year-old pitcher $250,000 a year instead of letting someone else pay him half a million. Bobby Wagner would go down in history as the first major leaguer to kill a teammate. Rudy would be remembered mainly as Wagner’s victim, and, by those with exceptional memories, as a victim of Frances. Poor Felix. The whole thing seemed to have gone right by him, splattering him with mud. In all likelihood, the Providence Jewels themselves would be the answer to a fairly difficult baseball trivia question in twenty years. Harvey felt sick to his stomach again.

“Hey, Professah, ova heah, Professah.”

Ronnie Mateo was a few feet away from him in a first-row box seat. He was wearing a black sports jacket with white stitching around the lapels and pockets, and a yellow knit shirt with red and black diamonds running up the left side.

“Professor,” he said, “I bet you don’t have a tape deck in that jalopy of yours.”

“You win,” Harvey said.

“I’ve got overstock on some first-class ones. Nice merch. Nice price, too.”

“Get lost.”

“But, Professor, you can’t lose when it’s the music you choose.”

“I said get lost.”

“I’m doing you a favor, Professor,” Ronnie said.

Harvey closed the distance between them and put his face where Ronnie could get a good look at it. “You wanna do me a favor?” he said in a low voice. “Then take those tape decks, pop in some music you like, and shove the whole thing up your ass.”

Ronnie’s mouth opened slightly and showed his tiny teeth. “Sure thing, Professor,” he said, his palms up in front of him. “Sure thing.” He looked past Harvey at the diamond. “Sure hate to see the season end, Professor, don’t you?”

When Harvey turned toward the dugout, he started. Thirty feet away was Bobby Wagner, in uniform, on his way to the bull pen. He walked quickly with his head up and with an air of distracted calm.

Harvey stood motionless, watching him for several seconds, then ran into the clubhouse and picked up the phone in Felix’s empty office. He got through to Linderman almost immediately.

“Wagner’s here,” he told the detective. “What’s wrong with you? He’s here, and he’s in the bull pen warming up.”

“Don’t kid me, Harvey.”

“I’m not kidding, Linderman. Get your ass and the ass of every cop you’ve got down here.”

“Harvey, don’t do anything foolish till I get there.” Linderman said. “In fact, don’t do anything at all.”

Harvey returned to the dugout. Wagner’s head and shoulders were visible over the bull pen fence as he warmed up with Happy Smith. After two minutes, the bull pen gate opened, and Felix came out alone and began the long walk back toward the dugout.

Harvey returned to the clubhouse. It was empty except for Dunc, who was wiping off the tables in the trainer’s room. Harvey was about to ask him about Wagner’s unexpected arrival when Linderman burst in the door from the players’ parking lot. Behind him were four uniformed Providence policemen, and Frances Shalhoub. In one arm she cradled the clipboard she used for charting pitches, and she was tapping a silver pencil against it.

“Where is he?” Linderman said to Harvey.

“In the bull pen,” Harvey said, “and in a couple of minutes, he’ll be on the mound.”

Linderman motioned two of the cops toward the runway. “Get him,” he said.

“You want us to just walk right across the field?” one asked.

“I just want you to get him,” Linderman said.

The two cops moved for the runway. Felix stood at the mouth of it, blocking them. He passed his hand nervously across the green Jewels logo on the front of his uniform. “Wagner’s pitching,” he announced.

“The hell he is, Felix,” Linderman said. Behind him, Frances posed with the two other cops.

“Let him pitch, Linderman,” Felix said. “It’s the last time he will.”

“He killed a man, Felix.”

“I don’t care what he’s done. Right now he’s my starting pitcher for the second game. Then he’s all yours.”

“I’m sorry, Felix; he’s coming with us.” There was a touch of sadness in Linderman’s voice.

“Look,” Felix tried again. “He’s not going anywhere. You’ve got cops crawling all over the park. I saw them out there. I’m not going to let you arrest the man in front of twenty-five thousand people.”

Linderman couldn’t have told Felix where Frances fit in; if he had, Felix wouldn’t be making this stand.

“Wagner’s not going anywhere yet,” Felix said.

“Neither am I, Felix,” Linderman replied. He turned back to Frances. “And neither are you, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll be glad to help you any way I can, Detective,” she said, tapping her silver pencil against the clipboard. She had on the black dress she had worn at the barbecue she and Felix had held in May.

“You’ll help by making yourself available for questioning.”

“And what answers would
I
have?” she said.

“For starters, why you paid Rudy Furth to pin a few losses on Bobby Wagner.” The words sounded rehearsed.

Felix’s shoulders twitched. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said to Linderman.

“You’ve got quite an imagination, Detective,” Frances said.

“Was it because you couldn’t stand the thought of losing Wagner after this season?” Linderman asked her. He still didn’t sound like his heart was in it.

“You haven’t told me the whole story, have you?” Felix said to Linderman.

“No, Felix,” Linderman said. “And neither has your wife. Isn’t that right, Frances?”

“Frances?” Felix began.

Linderman coughed lightly. “The money in Rudy’s clothes the night he was killed, the payments he kept depositing in his special little account—that was your money, Frances.”

“I don’t know about any money except what you found that night, and I can assure you it wasn’t mine.” She exhaled. “I have no idea why I’m bothering to dignify this whole ridiculous conversation. Detective, am I mistaken or are you trying to accuse me of something?”

“I’m sorry, Frances, but—”

“Then you better have some proof, Linderman.”

Linderman glanced at Felix, then back at Frances. “You had a”—he rubbed his jaw—“a relationship with Rudy.”

“Well, let’s say I did,” she snapped. “So what?”

The four cops in the clubhouse stared straight ahead into space.

“Proof,” Frances said. “Proof, Linderman, or the next thing you know you’ll be working a desk job in traffic.”

The detective’s head retracted slightly into his neck.

Harvey took a step forward. “Excuse me, Detective, but I think what Frances is referring to is the proof a gentleman by the name of Stanley Brolund will provide.”

Frances’s thin silver pencil slipped from her hand to the locker room floor.

At Burger King, Mickey had explained to Harvey why she had asked for Sharon Meadows’s name at the batting cages a week ago. She and Harvey had been trying to figure out where Frances fit in, and Mickey figured that if Frances did pay off Rudy in cash, she needed a lot of cash that didn’t leave a paper trail. She couldn’t just withdraw it from her bank account, or sell off some securities without it being easily detectable. She needed someone who owed her a lot of money. On a hunch, Mickey called Sharon Meadows, posed as one of Frances’s former clients, and got the name of the man who bought Frances’s firm from her. Mickey tried to reach Brolund, but he was out of the country on business. So she forgot about it; it had been a long-shot hunch anyway. She forgot about it until Harvey left her bed to go to Rankle Park at four in the morning. Mickey had asked him if Frances
was
behind it. When Harvey had said yes, she knew she had to get hold of Brolund. But she had fallen back asleep as soon as Harvey left, and only when Harvey called at six did Mickey gather her nerve and try Brolund again. She woke him up out of a sound Sunday morning sleep, told him she was associated with Frances Shalhoub in Providence, and was calling on behalf of her accountants, who desperately needed some financial information. She told Brolund they didn’t have any record of some payments he had made to her. Did he recall anything irregular?

“Brolund?” Linderman was saying to Harvey now.

“Stanley Brolund purchased Frances’s public relations company,” Harvey said, looking right at Frances as he spoke. “I don’t know how much he paid her up front, but a little birdie told me he pays her about ninety-five hundred dollars a month, and he was kind enough to make two of those payments in cash over the summer, at Frances’s request. Seems she told Brolund she needed thousand dollar bills for a team promotion. It was all the same to him.”

Frances had still not bent down to pick up her pencil. Harvey felt Felix’s incredulous gaze on him.

“Two times ninety-five hundred, Linderman, was more than enough to cover her expenses with Rudy.”

The two cops near Frances instinctively moved closer to her.

“Like any good businessman,” Harvey continued, “Mr. Brolund kept records of those cash transactions, and I’m sure he’s more than willing to share them with you. Of course, in the time it’s taken me to tell you this, Frances has probably come up with some other reason why she needed almost twenty grand in cash.”

For a moment, no one said anything. Through the open door to the trainer’s room, Harvey watched Dunc busy himself with some dirty towels. The sound of the Rankle Park crowd drifted down the runway and into the clubhouse. Several pairs of eyes were on Frances, none more intently than her husband’s.

Harvey broke the brief silence. “Linderman, I have a feeling Frances is about to tell you her sad story. Aren’t you, Frances?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, too bravely.

“It’s too late for your bluffs, Frances,” Harvey said. “It won’t work anymore.”

Frances looked wildly around her. “I won’t stand here and be abused,” she said.

No one said anything for a moment; then Linderman said to her, “I’m afraid you’re going to need your lawyer, Frances.”

“You might also consider a good public relations agent,” Harvey said, and regretted the remark when he looked over at Felix. The manager stood stunned, watching his own feet.

“I think we should have a little talk,” Linderman said to Frances. “I wonder if your husband will mind if we use his office. Felix?”

Felix didn’t appear to realize that Linderman had addressed him. When the detective repeated the request, Felix finally looked up and nodded heavily.

Harvey watched Linderman and Frances disappear into the manager’s office, then turned to Felix. “C’mon, Felix,” he said. “Let’s go out and win this game.”

For six innings that afternoon, Bobby Wagner and Lou Gunning of the Yankees threw nothing but smoke. Wagner’s money pitch, his rising fastball, had more hop on it than at any time in the last four months. By the seventh inning, the fall air had grown sharp, but the big dark green 52 on the back of Wagner’s uniform was outlined with a wide border of perspiration. He had given up only one hit, a single in the first. The Jewels had only two meaningless singles off Gunning. The game was scoreless.

The Jewels had company in the dugout—two Providence cops who sat restlessly on the bench. One paid special attention to Wagner, who, when Providence was at bat, sat hunched over in the corner of the dugout, filing a callus on the index finger of his pitching hand with an emery board. The stands were dotted with more cops, at least fifty of them.

In the bottom of the seventh, the Jewels got lucky. Rapp singled and then went to second on Byers’s groundout. Salta fanned for the second out, and Manomaitis walked. Gunning then worked Harvey to a count of two-and-two with sliders and a curve, then showed him a fastball tailing away. It was a smart pitch—away from Harvey’s strength, but too close for him to ignore. Harvey flung his bat at it, got most of the ball, and had enough wrist behind it to drive a ground-ball between first and second into right field. It wasn’t pretty, but Byers scored easily. After Battle struck out, Providence took the field for the top of the eighth with a 1-0 lead.

Wagner was working deliberately now, savoring each pitch. When he fanned Rumpling for his tenth strikeout of the game, the electronic scoreboard blinked “W
AGNIFICENT
” on the screen above the out-of-town scores. Boston was leading Baltimore 5-2 in the eighth inning of their second game, and Seattle led Toronto 6-3 in the seventh of theirs. If nothing changed there, or at Rankle Park, Boston would win the division championship, the Jewels would escape a last-place finish, and Harvey, who had scratched out two hits against Gunning, would end the year at an even .300.