The Natural (19 page)

He nodded.

“We have to face it,” she said. “You’re thirty-five now and that don’t give you much time left as a ball player.”

“What d’ye mean?” he asked, deadpan.

But it wasn’t his blood pressure she was referring to. For a minute he was afraid she had found out.

“I’m sorry to say this, Roy, but I have to be practical. Suppose the next one is your last season, or that you will have one more after that? Sure, you’ll probably get a good contract till then but it costs money to live, and then what’ll we do for the rest of our lives?”

It was dark in the room now. He could scarcely see her. “Turn on the lights.”

She smeared powder over her nose and under her eyes, then pressed the button.

He stared at her.

She grew restless. “Roy —”

“I was just thinking, even if I had to quit right now I could still scrounge up about twenty-five grand in the next few months. That’s a lotta dough.”

She seemed doubtful. “What would you do with it?”

“We’d get hitched and I would invest in a business. Everybody does that. My name is famous already. We will make out okay. You will have what you want.”

“What kind of business?” Memo asked.

“I can’t say for sure — maybe a restaurant.”

She made a face.

“What do you have in mind?” Roy asked.

“Oh, something big, Roy. I would like you to buy into a company where you could have an executive job and won’t have to go poking your nose into the stew in a smelly restaurant.”

A jet of nausea shot up from his gizzard. He admitted to himself he wanted nothing to do with restaurants.

“How much dough do we need to get in on one of those big companies?”

“I should think more than twenty-five thousand.”

He gulped. “Around thirty-five?”

“More like fifty.”

Roy frowned. Talk of that kind of dough gave him a bellyache. But Memo was right. It had to be something big or it wouldn’t pay back enough. And if it was a big company he could take it a little easy, to protect his health, without anybody kicking. He pondered where to get another twenty-five thousand, and it had to be before the start of the next baseball season because as soon as everybody saw he wasn’t playing, it wouldn’t be easy to cash in on his name. People had no use for a has been. He had to be married and have the dough, both before next spring — in case he never did get to play. He thought of other means to earn some money fast — selling the story of his life to the papers, barnstorming a bit this fall and winter, not too strenuously. But neither of these things added up to much — not twenty-five grand. Roy lay back with his eyes shut.

Memo whispered something. His lids flew open. What was she doing with an old black dress on, her hair uncombed, looking like Lola, the Jersey City fortuneteller? Yet her voice was calm…

“Who sent you,” he spoke harshly, “— that bastard Gus?”

She turned flame-faced but answered quietly, “The Judge.”

“Banner?” Somebody inside of him — this nervous character lately hanging around — crashed a glass to the floor. Roy’s pulses banged.

“He said he’d pay you fifteen thousand now and more next season. He says it would depend on you.”

“I thought I smelled skunk.”

“He asked me to deliver the message. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Who else is in on this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Pop?”

“No.”

He lay motionless for an age. She said no more, did not plead or prod. It grew late. An announcement was made for visitors to leave. She rose and tiredly put on her coat.

“I was thinking of all the years you would be out of the game.”

“What does he want me to do?”

“It’s something about the playoff — I don’t know.”

“They want me to drop it?”

She didn’t answer.

“No,” he said out loud.

She shrugged. “I told them you wouldn’t.”

She was thin and haggard-looking. Her shoulders drooped, her hands were bloodless. To refuse her just about broke his heart.

He fell into a deep slumber but had not slept very long before this rat-eyed vulture, black against the ceiling, began to flap around the room and dripping deep fat spiraled down toward his face. Wrestling together, they knocked over the tables and chairs, when the lights went on and waked him. Roy grabbed under the pillow for a gun he thought was there, only it wasn’t. Awake, he saw through the glare that Judge Goodwill Banner, in dark glasses and hairy black fedora, was staring at him from the foot of the bed.

“What the hell do you want here?”

“Don’t be alarmed,” the Judge rumbled. “Miss Paris informed me you were not asleep, and the authorities granted me a few minutes to visit with you.”

“I got nothing to say to you.” The nightmare had weakened him. Not wanting the Judge to see that, he pulled himself into a sitting position.

The Judge, yellow-skinned in the electric light, and rumpled-looking, sat in the armchair with his potlike hat on. He sucked an unwilling flame into his King Oscar and tossed the burnt-out match on the floor.

“How is your health, young man?”

“Skip it. I am all right now.”

The Judge scrutinized him.

“Wanna bet?” Roy said.

The Judge’s rubbery lips tightened around his cigar. After a minute he removed it from his mouth and said cautiously, “I assume that Miss Paris has acquainted you with the terms of a certain proposal?”

“Leave her name out of it.”

“An admirable suggestion — a proposal, you understand, made by persons unknown.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I got a good mind to sick the FBI on you.”

The Judge examined his cigar. “I rely on your honor. You might consider, however, that there is no witness other than Miss Paris, and I assume you would be solicitous of her?”

“I said to leave her name out.”

“Quite so. I believe she erred concerning the emolument offered — fifteen thousand, was it? My understanding is that twenty thousand, payable in cash in one sum, is closer to the correct amount. I’m sure you know the prevailing rate for this sort of thing is ten thousand dollars. We offer twice that. Any larger sum is unqualifiedly out of the question because it will impair the profitableness of the venture. I urge you to consider carefully. You know as well as I that you are in no condition to play.”

“Then what are you offering me twenty thousand smackers for — to show your gratitude for how I have built up your bank account?”

“I see no reason for sarcasm. You were paid for your services as contracted. As for this offer, I frankly confess it is insurance. There is the possibility that you may get into the game and unexpectedly wreck it with a single blow. I personally doubt this will occur, but we prefer to take no chances.”

“Don’t kid yourself that I am too weak to play. You know that the doctor himself said I’ll be in there Monday.”

The Judge hesitated. “Twenty-five thousand,” he finally said. “Absolutely my last offer.”

“I hear the bookies collect ten million a day on baseball bets.”

“Ridiculous.”

“That’s what I hear.”

“It makes no difference, I am not a bookie. What is your answer?”

“I say no.”

The Judge bit his lip.

Roy said, “Ain’t you ashamed that you are selling a club down the river that hasn’t won a pennant in twenty-five years and now they have a chance to?”

“We’ll have substantially the same team next year,” the Judge answered, “and I have no doubt that we will make a better job of the entire season, supported as we shall be by new players and possibly another manager. If we take on the Yankees now — that is, if we are foolish enough to win the playoff match — they will beat us a merciless four in a row, despite your presence. You are not strong enough to withstand the strain of a World Series, and you know it. We’d be ground to pulp, made the laughingstock of organized baseball, and your foolish friend, Pop Fisher, would this time destroy himself in his humiliation.”

“What about all the jack you’d miss out on, even if we only played four Series games and lost every one?”

“I have calculated the amount and am certain I can do better, on the whole, in the way I suggest. I have reason to believe that, although we are considered to be the underdogs, certain gambling interests have been betting heavily on the Knights to win. Now it is my purpose, via the uncontested — so to speak — game, to teach these parasites a lesson they will never forget. After that they will not dare to infest our stands again.”

“Pardon me while I throw up.”

The Judge looked hurt.

“The odds favor us,” Roy said. “I saw it in tonight’s paper.”

“In one only. The others quote odds against us.”

Roy laughed out loud.

The Judge flushed through his yellow skin. “Honi soit qui mal y pense.”

“Double to you,” Roy said.

“Twenty-five thousand,” said the Judge with an angry gesture. “The rest is silence.”

Though Roy had a splitting headache he tried to think the situation out. The way he now felt, he wouldn’t be able to stand at the plate with a feather duster on his shoulder, let alone a bat. Maybe the Judge’s hunch was right, and he might not be able to do a single thing to help the Knights win their game. On the other hand — maybe he’d be himself, his real self. If he helped them win the playoff — no matter if they later dropped the Series four in a row — there would still be all sorts of endorsement offers and maybe even a contract to do a baseball movie. Then he’d have the dough to take care of Memo in proper style. Yet suppose he played and because of his weakness flopped as miserably as he had during his slump? That might sour the endorsements and everything else, and he’d end up with nothing — or very little. His mind went around in drunken circles.

All this time the Judge’s voice was droning on. “I have observed,” he was saying, “how one moral condition may lead to or become its opposite. I recall an occasion on the bench when out of the goodness of my heart and a warm belief in humanity. I resolved to save a boy from serving a prison sentence. Though his guilt was clear, because of his age I suspended sentence and paroled him for a period of five years. That afternoon as I walked down the courthouse steps, I felt I could surely face my maker without a blush. However, not one week later the boy stood before me, arraigned as a most wicked parricide. I asked myself can any action — no matter what its origin or motive — which ends so evilly — can such an action possibly be designated as good?”

He took out a clotted handkerchief, spat into it, folded it and thrust it into his pocket. “Contrarily,” he went on, “a deed of apparently evil significance may come to pure and beautiful flower. I have in mind a later case tried before me in which a physician swindled his patient, a paralytic, out of almost a quarter of a million dollars. So well did he contrive to hide the loot that it has till this day not been recovered. Nevertheless, the documentary evidence was strong enough to convict the embezzler and I sentenced him to a term of from forty to fifty years in prison, thus insuring he would not emerge from the penitentiary to enjoy his ill-gotten gains before he is eighty-three years of age. Yet, while testifying from his wheel chair at the trial, the paralytic astonished himself and all present by rising in righteous wrath against the malcontent and, indeed, tottered across the floor to wreak upon him his vengeance. Naturally the bailiff restrained him, but would you have guessed that he was, from that day on, sound in wind and limb, and as active as you or I? He wrote me afterwards that the return of his power of locomotion more than compensated him for the loss of his fortune.”

Roy frowned. “Come out of the bushes.”

The Judge paused. “I was trying to help you assess this action in terms of the future.”

“You mean if I sell out?”

“Put it that way if you like.”

“And that maybe some good might come out of it?”

“That is my assumption.”

“For me, you mean?”

“For others too. It is impossible to predict who will be benefited.”

“I thought you said you were doing this to get rid of the gamblers — that’s good right off, ain’t it?”

The Judge cleared his throat. “Indeed it is. However, one might consider, despite the difficulty of the personal situation — that is to say, within the context of one’s own compunctions — that it is impossible to predict what further good may accrue to one, and others, in the future, as a result of an initially difficult decision.”

Roy laughed. “You should be selling snake oil.”

He had thought there might be something to the argument. He was now sure there wasn’t, for as the Judge had talked he recalled an experience he had had when he was a kid. He and his dog were following an old skid road into the heart of a spooky forest when the hound suddenly let out a yelp, ran on ahead, and got lost. It was late in the afternoon and he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the dog there alone all night, so he went into the wood after it. At first he could see daylight between the trees — to this minute he remembered how still the trunks were, as the tree tops circled around in the breeze — and in sight of daylight it wasn’t so bad, nor a little deeper in, despite the green gloom, but just at about the time the darkness got so thick he was conscious of having to shove against it as he hallooed for the dog, he got this scared and lonely feeling that he was impossibly lost. With his heart whamming against his ribs he looked around but could recognize no direction in the darkness, let alone discover the right one. It was cold and he shivered. Only, the payoff of it was that the mutt found him and led him out of the woods. That was good out of good.

Roy pulled the covers over his head. “Go home.”

The Judge didn’t move. “There is also the matter of next season’s contract.”

Roy listened. Would there ever be a next season? He uncovered his head. “How much?”

“I shall offer — provided we agree on the other matter — a substantial raise.”

“Talk figures.”

“Forty-five thousand for the season. We might also work Out some small percentage on the gate.”

“Twenty-five thousand for dropping the game is not enough,” said Roy. As he spoke an icicle of fright punctured his spine.