The Dead Pull Hitter (14 page)

In the cold sober light of day it became obvious that I had to call Andy Munro. He came right over, showing his gratitude in the oddest way.

“When did you get this?” he shouted.

“Last night, late. It was here when I got home.”

“Where was that idiot MacPherson?”

“He’d already left. And he’s not an idiot. I didn’t even see it until I’d been home for five minutes.”

“And you opened it. Just like that. You didn’t think to call me first, of course.”

“How did I know what was in it? I would have felt like a prize dope if it had been a letter from my mother and I got you out of bed at one o’clock in the morning.”

“What were you doing out so late?”

“What’s it to you?”

“When was the game over?”

I decided not to tell him about luring his constable from the straight and narrow.

“I had a story to write. Do you mind?”

“Don’t you ever,
ever
, pull a stunt like this again.”

He’d stopped shouting, but he was spacing his words ominously, in a coldly controlled voice.

“Now I’m going to take this material to the lab, even though the chances of getting any useful fingerprints are nil now that you’ve pawed over them. And you’re coming with me so I can get your fingerprints for comparison.”

“But . . .”

“NO BUTS. I’ve had it with your meddling. You’re coming with me. NOW.”

I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice calm.

“Look, Staff Sergeant Munro. You can’t just go around yelling at civilians. It’s police harassment. Or something. Badgering a witness. I called you. I gave you the stuff. Now leave me alone. I’ve got work to do. If you want my fingerprints, you can tell Constable Donny to get them tonight at the ballpark. I will not be ordered about by you.”

“Constable Donny?” Munro did a slow take, then cracked up. “You call him Constable Donny?”

“Not to his face.”

“It’s perfect.”

“Well, he is a bit earnest.”

“Earnest? He’s an escapee from
Leave It to Beaver
.”

“Except he’s too young to have heard of it.”

“He’s too young to have heard of the Beatles!”

“Paul McCartney’s old band, right?”

I guess we weren’t mad any more.

“All right,” Andy said. “You win. You don’t have to come with me. But don’t go out. Whoever sent this to you might try to contact you. And don’t tell anybody else about this.”

“Scout’s honour.”

“Do you think you can get through the rest of the day without meddling?”

“I’ll try, sir.”

“I’ll send Constable Donny to pick you up. Try not to get the boy into any trouble.”

The phone rang. I waved him out the door.

“Nice game story,” said Jake Watson. “And the piece on the funeral was fine. Was it as bizarre as it sounded?”

“More. What do you want from me today?”

“I need some stuff for the playoff supplement on Monday. Position-by-position comparisons of the two teams. And a sidebar on what’s happening with the betting odds. Can you call that contact of yours in Vegas?”

“Good idea. I’ll see if I can find him.”

I had done a story several years back about sports betting and dug it out of my files. The guy I had used wasn’t one of the big names, but he was well connected and very helpful. Jerry something. Bergman. Jerry Bergman. His number was in one of my books. It took a while but, luckily, he hadn’t moved.

“The odds have been wild on the American League,” he said. “Up and down like the proverbial toilet seat.”

“That’s not surprising.”

“No, but it’s a headache for the books.”

“I guess. How’s it gone?”

“We don’t set the line until the two divisions are clinched, so that was Sunday for the American League. As soon as the Titans won, we posted the odds at 7–8 for the Titans.”

“Those are pretty good odds, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. The Titans are better, plus they beat the A’s eight games to four this season. But that was before Thorson got killed.”

“One man makes that much difference?”

“Sure. Assuming they go to the three-man rotation for the playoffs, he pitches three times in the seven-game series.”

“I see what you mean.”

“So when he got croaked, the money started coming in for the A’s. What’s happening about that, anyway? Anyone been arrested?”

“Nothing. The players seem to have bounced back.”

“Never saw a ballplayer who would let a little thing like grief get between him and money on the line.”

“You got it. So what happened to the odds?”

“Well, some money came in on the A’s Monday, but when the odds shifted, people began betting on the Titans again. But the action’s been soft. I mean, who cares, right? Not like when the Yankees or Dodgers are involved. Then we get a lot of tourist money coming in.”

“You don’t get a lot of people calling up from Oakland or Toronto making bets?”

“We don’t do phone bets.”

“Really? You’ve got to be there?”

“Strictly cash and carry.”

“I thought people bet on the phone all the time.”

“Only local bookies carry accounts. There are guys here who act as agents for gamblers around the country, but they’re putting cash down at a shop.”

“Hunh. Could you run it down for me day by day?”

“Okay. Sunday, it was 7–8, Titans. Monday, after the murder, it dropped to even money, and that’s a big drop out here. Tuesday and Wednesday, the same. Thursday, we started getting more Titan action and by today it’s back to 6–7 Titans.”

“Okay. Let’s pretend I’m really stupid, here, which won’t be hard. What do these numbers mean? If I bet $100 on the Titans today, and they win the playoffs, what do I get?”

“You’re going at it backwards. I’ll tell you what you’d have to bet to win the $100. All the lines are based on five dollars. You put up more money to bet on a favourite. At 6–7, you bet seven dollars to win five. If you’re betting on the A’s, you bet five to win six. In other words, if you wanted to win $100 on the Titans today, you’d have to bet $140.”

“So I’d end up with $240.”

“Exactly.”

“And on Sunday?”

“At those odds, you had to put up $160 to make your $100.”

“And why did you change the odds?”

“Thorson’s death, mainly.”

“But you didn’t change them after Sanchez died?”

“The line hadn’t been set at that point. We probably set them a bit lower than we might have because of Sanchez, but a player doesn’t make as much difference as a pitcher. Like in football. A defensive end getting injured doesn’t affect the odds the way it does when a quarterback goes down.”

“I’m stupid again. Why does the money coming in make a difference?”

“Because bookies aren’t in the business to lose money.”

“I’m not that stupid. But how does it work?”

“The ideal situation for a bookie is when he has as much money bet on one team as on the other. Then the losers pay off the winners, and the book collects his percentage from everyone.

“But if more money is bet on one side than the other, we have to compensate. That’s where the odds come in. They are set to reflect what we think the action will be. In this case, we assumed that more people would want to bet on the Titans. So the odds make the Titans a little less attractive and encourage betting on the A’s.”

“So if a lot of people bet one way, the odds shift.”

“Right.”

“If just one person makes a big bet?”

“Same thing, if the bet’s big enough.”

“Do people bet big money on the playoffs?”

“Most of it’s just small stuff, but I’ve had three or four in five figures this week. One shop took a ten-grand bet on the A’s Sunday just after the odds were posted. Nice timing.”

“Be nice to have that kind of money to play with, wouldn’t it?”

“Out here, that doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. I’ve got customers who win and lose that much every day. They’re nuts, of course, but they put food on my table. Who am I to judge?”

“Listen, thanks a lot, Jerry. I appreciate it.”

“You bet.”

I wondered if estate lawyers say “will do” a lot.

I was fixing lunch when the penny dropped.

What if that bet wasn’t just lucky timing. What if someone had inside information? Like that the ace of the Titan staff wouldn’t be in the playoffs. I called Jerry back.

“This guy who bet ten thousand on the A’s. Do you know who he is?”

“He didn’t come here. He’s a regular at a little place over on South First Street. A buddy of mine works there. Why?”

I explained my theory.

“Could be. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Could you find out the time he placed the bet, too? Thorson was killed sometime after seven forty-five.”

“Check.”

I called Bergman back a couple of hours later.

“No luck. The guy who took the bet doesn’t get in until later. Where are you going to be tonight?”

I gave him the number of my press box phone and left for the ballpark.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do before the game, for a change. With the pennant clinched, there was no particular need to talk to the Yankees, which suited me just fine. It was a pleasure to be able to treat them as also-rans.

I spent some time with my favourite New York beat writer, Arnie Shapiro. He was a funny little guy from a daily in New Jersey who managed to cover the Yankees without becoming self-important, a rare feat.

He had delicious gossip. One of the outfielders had picked up a woman in a Cleveland bar who turned out to be a transsexual who hadn’t quite finished her/his surgery. The manager had got into a fist fight with his bullpen coach on the plane. And the team bus had been chased by a gang of Detroit thugs after a relief pitcher pissed out the window on their car. An average road trip for the princes in pinstripes.

They weren’t all jerks, mind you. Just most of them. I spent a pleasant ten minutes talking with Gene Ridell, their shortstop. He had his family with him and wanted advice on sightseeing. A friendly man, he was stunningly rare in his interest in people and places outside of the game. He was also a good person to interview about playoffs. He’d been in a lot of them. It might make an interesting sidebar.

“Are you very disappointed in losing the division?”

He shrugged.

“I’ve been there before. I’ll be there again.”

“What about the pressure? Everyone predicts that the Titans are going to blow it because they haven’t been in the playoffs before.”

“Well, by the time you get to the playoffs you’ve already been through a lot of weird stuff. The playoffs are just a little weirder. They’ll do fine if they don’t psych themselves out of it.”

“What’s the hardest thing to deal with?”

“I guess the feeling that in the playoffs everything you do matters so much. Baseball should be peaceful. There should be room for mistakes. Errors are part of the game. Failure’s part of the game. But it’s hard to remember that when there’s so much on the line. The playoffs and World Series turn baseball into a very unforgiving game.”

“So your advice to the Titans would be?”

“Relax. Try to enjoy it. This is what it’s all about. And don’t forget what brought you here. Teamwork. No one wins a game all by himself. If you strike out, that just means it’s someone else’s turn to drive in the run. You’ll be asked to do other things that you’ll do well. Don’t dwell on your failures.”

“Easier said than done.”

“For sure. I was a basket case my first time. You’re talking to the guy whose error cost us a game in the playoffs three years ago. But I also drove in the winning run in the next game.”

“Which do you remember more?”

“Winning felt better, but I’ll never forget the error. I guess I just cancelled myself out. I might as well not have played.”

“You’re pretty philosophical today.”

“You get that way when you know you’re going to be watching the World Series on television.”

“I guess. Have fun with your family here. And have a good winter, if I don’t see you before you leave.”

“You too. And, hey. Watch out for that pressure!”

“Thanks. I’ll just write one game at a time.”

The last series of the season is like the last week of school, with the same schizophrenic blend of relief and anticipatory nostalgia. The world is about to change abruptly. Most of the people you see every day will be gone. And not all of them will be back. It’s great to get away from the schoolyard bullies and teacher’s pets, but you know that in a month you’ll be missing them. Of course, I still had to get through the playoffs and World Series, even if the Titans didn’t go that far. A lot of column inches to fill. I went to the press box to write.

The game was pretty uneventful. There were so many backup players and minor-leaguers in the lineup it looked like spring training. Harry Belcher started in what would have been Steve Thorson’s spot. Since he had spent the season in the minors on merit, no one expected him to do much; but he pitched a pretty good six innings before Red brought in his relievers to get some work. Titans lost, 6–5.

The biggest excitement in the press box was when Arnie Shapiro called his office in New Jersey and found out that Hank Chambers and Jim Wilder, former Yankee stars, had just been arrested.

“What for? Drunk driving?”

“No way. Possession of cocaine and dangerous weapons.”

“Ouch.”

I’d met both players one spring when they’d come to the Titan camp to see Moose. I turned to him.

“Are you okay?”

He was pale. “It’s a shock. Those guys are friends of mine.”

“Have you seen them recently? Did you know they were into this kind of stuff?”

“No, I haven’t. I didn’t. Stupid bastards. What were they messing with that shit for? Damn.”

He sent one of the press box runners to check the sports wire. The kid came back in ten minutes with a scrap of paper torn from the machine. Moose read it and passed it to me. It was an early story, just reporting that the pair had been arrested, along with three others, in a police drug raid. I passed it to Arnie.

“That’s tough, Moose. I’m sorry.”

“That stuff just brings you grief.”

After the game, I stopped by Gloves Gardiner’s locker and told him about Chambers and Wilder.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “They’re maniacs. I thought they were strung out when I saw them last week.”

“Where?”

“At Yankee Stadium. Didn’t you see them? They were there before the game Thursday night. They had seats right next to our dugout.”

“Huh. I guess I didn’t recognize them.”

“I think that’s the day you got there late.”

That late lunch, haunting me again.

“It’s too bad, anyway. They used to be fine players.”

“But not particularly fine people,” Gloves said.

“They had it all once. Now it’s drugs and guns?”

“And greed, same as most people. The most Chambers ever made in his career, even when he was a batting champion, was probably $150,000. Kids two weeks out of the minors get that these days. Maybe he figured the world owed it to him.”

“So he was bitter.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Since writers don’t make that kind of money, I don’t think the temptation will be laid in my path.”

“And you’re probably a better person for it.”

“Thanks, but I think I’d be willing to face the challenge.”

MacPherson drove me home in silence. Something was wrong, but I was too tired to ask. When we got to my house, he spoke, looking embarrassed.

“Did you tell Staff Sergeant Munro about last night?”

“Lord, no. Why?”

“He was acting real funny today. I looked up one time and he was standing there laughing at me. For no reason.”

“I can’t imagine what that could be about.”

“I don’t think it was anything I said or did.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

I realized I hadn’t heard from Andy since I’d given him the blackmail material. Both Joe Kelsey and David Sloane had been at the stadium but I hadn’t spoken to either of them. I thought of calling Andy, but it was almost midnight. He might get the wrong idea. He might be right.

Besides, I had a day game to cover. I went to bed and dreamed I was on deadline, trying to find a phone in Yankee Stadium to file my story. But they were all being used by people who wouldn’t get off: Steve Thorson, Joe Kelsey, Gloves Gardiner, David Sloane, Sam Craven, Jim Wilder, Andy Munro, Moose Greer, Jeff Glebe, even Sally. When I tried to tell them I needed the phone, they didn’t hear me. I shouted. They laughed. I went down a corridor, into another room. A shadowy figure came at me with a bat. I couldn’t move. I tried to scream and woke myself up in a sweat. Elwy was on my chest, sound asleep.