Strike Three You're Dead (30 page)

Wagner retired the next two Yankees on pop-ups to end the top of the eighth. While the Jewels went down quickly in order themselves, Wagner filed away at his callus.

When Wagner walked out to the mound for the ninth, the crowd started clapping rhythmically. Wagner took his warm-up pitches slowly, bringing his long left leg up under his chin and kicking it out toward home plate. Even from his position in center field, Harvey could see that more cops were now congregating in the aisles and on the exit ramps of the grandstands around the infield. The clapping spread from section to section. Wagner removed his cap and drew his sleeve across his forehead. Then he tucked his glove in his armpit and turned around to gaze out toward center, looking at the charcoal sky, or maybe at Harvey, or maybe just at the scoreboard. The crowd noise swelled suddenly as Boston’s 5-2 defeat of Baltimore was posted. Seattle had increased its lead over Toronto. If the Yankees didn’t score on Wagner in the ninth, Boston would go to the play-offs.

Hazelwood, the first Yankee batter in the ninth, grew tired of waiting and stepped out of the batter’s box. He stood there and watched as Wagner now revolved to his right, his eyes panning across the crowd in the right field pavilion and the grandstands along the foul line. The fans responded to this attention by clapping even louder. When Wagner faced home plate again, he put his glove on, peered in for Randy’s sign, nodded, exhaled, and smoked a fastball strike over the inside corner. Hazelwood fouled off the next fastball. Wagner followed with an off-speed curve. Hazelwood waved helplessly at it and strode back to the dugout, shaking his head.

Corley, the next batter, tapped the first pitch back to the mound. Wagner fielded the ball and lobbed it over to Battle. The applause rolled out over the field. There were two outs in the ninth.

Wagner paused again on the mound with his glove in his armpit. His head was turned up toward the stands. Fifty Providence cops looked back.

Carlos Bonesoro was at the plate, waiting outside the batter’s box with one proprietary toe on the chalk line. The umpire, both arms in the air to call time out, advanced toward the mound and said something to Wagner. The pitcher picked at the sleeve of his sweat shirt, almost daintily, like a woman removing stray hairs. The umpire settled himself behind the plate. Bonesoro stepped in. Wagner stroked the bill of his cap and performed a deep knee bend. Finally, he mounted the rubber, took Randy’s sign, nodded, breathed once, twice, his shoulders heaving, rocked, and delivered.

Harvey lost the ball momentarily against the backdrop of the crowd, then began sprinting back to his left, tracking it. Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of Wilton gliding over from right.

“Yours! Yours!” Wilton shouted before fading from Harvey’s field of vision, leaving him alone with the ball. He put his head down, listening to his own grunts. The right center field wall was closing in, but it wasn’t on him yet, and as he got another look at the ball, he knew it didn’t have enough to make the fence. He pushed off the spongy turf, extended his body, left arm out; it was so simple and predetermined, the ball drawn into his glove, a soft silent impact, Harvey sliding on the grass, keeping his glove aloft to show the second base ump there could be no question about the catch.

For a minute, he lay where he was, on his side, 20 feet from the 447-foot sign painted on the wall. Wilton was handing him his hat, saying, “Can of corn, Professor, can of corn.” Far away, twenty-three thousand people were on their feet cheering. Circus music poured out of the public address system. Harvey finally climbed to his feet and, ball in glove, started in.

The Jewels were all out of the dugout, swarming around Wagner on the mound, pounding his back. Behind them, two ragged ranks of Providence policemen closed in along either base line. The park’s regular security men were chasing a few young fans who had vaulted onto the field.

As Harvey jogged in, he spied Mickey up in the press box over home plate. She looked down at him, smiled, and waved once with an economical gesture. Next to her, Bob Lassiter was bent over his portable; Harvey knew he was hammering out the final paragraphs of his story. Harvey thought, Tarnished Jewels Pitcher Bobby Wagner Hurls Gold-Plated Complete Game Gem in Season Finale.

In the visitors’ dugout, the second-place Yankees collected their jackets and gloves and bats and filed into their runway. The circus music stopped, and the announcer read the totals in a booming voice: “For the Yankees… no runs, one hit, no errors….The losing pitcher, Lou Gunning. And for the Providence Jewels… one run, six hits, one error. The winning pitcher… with twelve strikeouts and the fifth one-hitter of his career… Bobby… Wagner.…Time of the game… one hour and fifty-nine minutes.…Ladies and gentlemen… on behalf of the players and management of the Providence Jewels… thank you and good night… and please drive safely.”

When Harvey reached the infield, Wagner was still in the clutches of a few teammates. Angel Vedrine had his arm around him while Campy pumped his hand, chattering, “Hey, babe, way to be, where you been all year, babe?” The two rows of police had come to a halt on the infield grass, forming a V. There was nowhere for Wagner to go now. Just as Wagner noticed Harvey behind him, two cops came up, and each took hold of one of Wagner’s arms.

Harvey came around in front of Wagner and opened his glove. Wagner looked at him, then reached in to take the game ball.

“Helluva catch, Professor,” he said quietly, observing his share of the ritual. “Just like picking cherries.”

Harvey said nothing, but before he could move away, Wagner reached out for his arm. “Professor,” he said, “they got Frances, didn’t they?”

“Sure,” Harvey said. “They got her.”

The two cops guided Wagner to the dugout, where Linderman stood with one foot on the top step, hiking up his pants. Harvey started in ahead of them. He wondered if, to the fans still cheering Wagner’s one-hitter, there would seem anything unusual about a bunch of cops protecting one of the American League’s premier right-handers.

“Easy on the arm, boys,” he heard Wagner say behind him. “It just threw a one-hitter.”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Harvey Blissberg Mysteries

I
N THE BEGINNING OF
February, four months after announcing his retirement from major-league baseball, Harvey Blissberg found himself in the thirty-second-floor midtown Manhattan office of a young agent—toothy, trim, preoccupied—who handled athlete endorsement contracts. Harvey couldn’t quite say what had possessed a man who never even talked to sportswriters suddenly to entertain the idea of addressing millions on behalf of household products.

“What team did you say you played for?” the agent said.

This was a bad sign. “Five years with Boston, one with the Providence Jewels.”

“The who?” He plucked an M&M Peanut from a ceramic bowl on his desk.

“Providence Jewels,” Harvey said. “The expansion team.”

“I see,” the agent said. He placed both feet on his desk and admired his Italian saddle shoes. Behind him, the shelves were filled with framed magazine and newspaper advertisements featuring players Harvey knew. They were dressed in nicely pressed underpants, held cans of something or other in front of their faces. In one of the ads, a ballplayer who was widely known among American League personnel to consider anything less potent than Wild Turkey to be a soft drink peeked coquettishly from behind a can of low-calorie beer. “What did you have in mind?” the agent said.

“I had an idea I could make a little money doing endorsements.”

“My clients don’t make a little money; they make a lot.”

“Well, it’s not so much the money as—as having a new career.”

“But nobody knows who you are.”

“Excuse me?” Harvey had been busy devising an elaborate rationalization for this new career, one that might safely pass the lovely Mickey Slavin’s puritanical inspection.

“I said nobody knows who you are.”

Something sizzled in the circuitry of Harvey’s reptile brain. He’d had this same unpleasant sensation a couple of years before on being informed that the Boston Red Sox were banishing him to Providence. When the neurological event passed, Harvey inhaled deeply and said with great false calm, “I don’t know if I’d say that
nobody
knows who I am. If you give me a moment, I’ll come up with a few names.”

“Nobody I know knows who you are.”

“All right, I may not be a Reggie Jackson,” he began, “but…” His voice withered.

The agent offered Harvey a patronizing smile, then the bowl of M&M’s Peanuts. “If you don’t mind, leave me the yellows—they’re my favorite.”

“They’re all yours.”

“Look,
I
know who you are. I saw you play a couple of times at Yankee Stadium. Wonderful ballplayer in your time, Harvey.”

“In my time?” Harvey erupted. “I just retired a few months ago! After the best year of my career.”

“Certainly. But does this mean that you can sell insect repellent? You’re just not a household name, guy.” The agent crunched a yellow M&M between his molars. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think you’re much of a name even in condominiums.” He chuckled moronically at his joke.

Harvey stood up. “I don’t think you’re the agent I’m looking for.”

“Sit down.” For some reason, Harvey did. “The agent you’re looking for doesn’t exist. Look, let’s say you were a Johnny Hazelwood—”

“Hazelwood! What’re you talking about? I’ve got a higher lifetime batting average than Johnny Hazelwood. I won the Gold Glove, which is not something he can say. I came in—”

“Hazelwood plays in New York.” He spoke patiently, rotating another yellow M&M between thumb and forefinger. “You played in Providence, for God’s sake. Bubkesville.”

“Oh, I get it,” Harvey said.

“Of course you do. Look, I can’t get you a national endorsement contract, and that’s all there is to it. But”—he pointed double-barreled index fingers at Harvey—“a face like yours has options.”

“Forget it,” Harvey said.

“I’m thinking of soap operas.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“You know, I like this face. It’s the face of a young doctor, a young lawyer, an unfaithful lover, maybe the one who’s sleeping with his girlfriend’s sister. How old are you?”

“Thirty-one.”

“You could say you’re twenty-seven.”

“But I’m thirty-one.”

“That’s what
you
say; but your face says twenty-seven. Harvey, the more I look at you, the more I get ideas.”

Harvey stood and started for the door. The agent rose to follow him. “The soaps, I’m talking. In fact, CBS is casting this week. Now that’s the way to become a household name. Are you listening?”

Harvey walked down the agency’s long hall.

“The soaps,” the agent called after him. “NBC’s got a new one in development. And there’s a baseball movie shooting right now in South Carolina and they’ve got parts for ballplayers. Sign with me and I’ll sell you as a baseball consultant…”

“Good-bye,” Harvey said over his shoulder. “And thank you.”

“… for this made-for about a young Soviet
refusenik
who gets an exit visa, comes to this country, learns how to play baseball, and makes the majors….”

H
ARVEY UNSCREWED THE CAP
on the blue jar of Vicks VapoRub, dipped his pinkie into the jelly, and anointed each nostril. The vapors rose rapidly into his brain; Harvey could not imagine that a bigger kick was to be had from cocaine.

From the office’s lone window, he caught a sliver of Mount Auburn Street. Harvard Square was slushy with undergraduates. A thick pane of ten years, all of them spent in a baseball uniform, separated him from the world of college students trudging to their somber classes and cute ethnic bistros. Harvey judged the odds of throwing a late-February snowball, scooped from his windowsill, into the air and hitting a Harvard comp. lit. major to be about five to one in his favor. Congestion, he thought, was the better part of Harvard Square’s squalor. He leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, and inhaled a cloud of menthol.

He heard the door of his office open, releasing the sound of squealing videotape being played fast forward in one of the editing suites down the hall. His search for cheap space the month before had landed him in a third-story warren of offices otherwise occupied by independent film producers and editors. One of these officemates, Gary Greschak, was addressing him from the doorway.

“How’s business?”

Harvey opened his eyes. “Coming along.” One arm shot out spasmodically toward a blank legal pad on his desk.

Greschak smiled benignly. “Can’t wait for it to come to you, you know.”

“I’ll definitely keep that in mind.” Harvey in fact could wait for it to come to him; that is what he had been doing for several weeks despite the classified he had taken in the
Boston Globe.

“Just a friendly piece of advice from an independent filmmaker to an independent investigator,” Greschak said.

“And, as you know, it’s much appreciated.”

“No pain, no gain.”

“I believe I get the picture, Gary.”