Strike Zone

by Mike Lupica

  Nick wanted to stand and cheer, but stayed fixed in his seat as the judge said, “Is there anything else, Mr. Gasson, before I make my ruling?”

  Mr. Gasson took one last look at his watch, and then back at the door, before shaking his head.

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Mr. Gasson was about to sit down on his side of the chamber when the door to the courtroom creaked open.

  Through it walked Michael Arroyo.

  44

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Your Honor,” Michael said. He was wearing a tailored navy-blue suit, and it took Nick a minute to recognize him without his Yankees uniform. But when he did, his mouth hung open in shock. “I’ve lived in this city a long time, and still never account for all the traffic.”

  “Nor do any of us,” the judge said, chuckling.

  “My name is Michael Arroyo.”

  The judge’s lips turned up into a smile. “I know who you are,” he said.

  “Your Honor, I’d like to now call Michael Arroyo to the stand to testify in support of Mr. García’s request for bond,” Mr. Gasson said.

  The ICE attorney didn’t object. The bailiff swore in Michael, and he sat down at the bench.

  “Please tell us in your own words about your relationship with Mr. García,” Mr. Gasson said.

  Then Michael Arroyo began to speak about having come to know Victor García after visiting him at the detention center in New Jersey. Nick’s eyes went wide in disbelief when he heard that. Mr. Gasson happened to be looking over at him at the time and gave Nick a wink.

  “Victor’s son, Nick, is already a friend of mine,” Michael said, “a baseball child of the Bronx the way I was. We both understand loss, though in different degrees. My dad was taken from my brother and me when he died of a heart attack. Now Nick’s dad has been taken from him.”

  Michael looked over at Mr. Gasson.

  “Are you supposed to ask more questions?” he said.

  Mr. Gasson grinned. “You’re doing fine on your own.”

  Michael told the story of his own childhood then, about how his dad had risked everything to get to America, taking his sons on a dangerous boat ride across the Florida Straits from Cuba. He spoke of how his father had suffered a fatal heart attack while trying to break up a fight on a New York City sidewalk. And how afterward, he and his older brother lived on their own, with the fear of the government threatening to break them up.

  “But the government didn’t separate us,” Michael Arroyo said. “It didn’t just allow my brother and me to live out our dreams, but to live out my father’s dream of America, the one for which he risked everything, and gave everything. They kept what was left of our family together, and that’s really all Mr. García is asking: for his family to remain together in America.”

  Then it was the ICE attorney’s turn. If he was a Yankees fan, he didn’t show it. His expression hardened. “Despite your dramatic appearance here today, this isn’t a baseball game, Mr. Arroyo.”

  Michael grinned. “Thank you for pointing that out.”

  “Do you really expect this court to believe you have actual knowledge of Mr. García after only meeting him once?”

  “I do,” Michael said flatly.

  “And how is that?”

  “Because he reminds me of my own father,” Michael said. “He didn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve. He wore his honor.”

  “Do you follow the laws of this country, Mr. Arroyo?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you think everybody should?”

  “I do,” Michael said. “But I was also raised to believe there can be a difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. And by the spirit of the law, Victor García is a good man, not a criminal.”

  “Maybe you’re just used to people agreeing with everything you say,” the ICE attorney said, acting almost insulted that anybody in the room would disagree with him.

  “Or maybe you are, sir.”

  Nick was sure he saw the judge crack a smile.

  “Victor García is a criminal,” the ICE attorney stated.

  “Is that a question?” the judge said.

  “I’ll rephrase,” he said. “Are you aware that by the laws of this city and country, Mr. García is a criminal?”

  “What I believe is criminal, sir,” Michael said, “is having this man locked up and separated from his family. Maybe you think that’s the America you should be representing. But it’s not my America. And not the one my father dreamed about in Cuba.”

  They went back and forth like that for a few minutes longer. But the attorney couldn’t shake Michael or make him lose his temper. Nick pretended the ICE attorney was swinging and missing at each fastball Michael Arroyo pitched him. Finally, after the questioning was completed, Michael left the stand and walked past Mr. Gasson, before taking a seat in the row behind Nick. He leaned forward and whispered, “I told you I wouldn’t forget you.”

  Nick whispered back, “Talk about bringing the heat.”

  There was a brief fifteen-minute recess while the judge deliberated. Then he returned to the courtroom, stepping up to the bench. The image of Victor García came back up on the screen, and the judge announced he had reached a verdict.

  Nick held his breath, and Michael placed a hand on Nick’s shoulder from behind as extra support. Amelia held his hand, and their mother held hers. This was the moment they’d waited for, and yet it was terrifying all the same. Whatever happened, they would face it together, as a family.

  The judge cleared his throat and read some legal information about the case off a sheet of paper. Then he peered out at the courtroom over his glasses.

  “Mr. García will be released from the detention center in New Jersey as soon as he posts a five-thousand-dollar bond,” he said.

  Nick couldn’t restrain himself. He’d never cried happy tears before, but his face was wet with them. Amelia’s, too. They stood up and hugged each other tight, but when they turned to their mom, she was still seated.

  A single tear drifted down Graciela García’s cheek.

  “We cannot afford that kind of money,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  Nick’s heart sank. Then, from behind them, Michael Arroyo said, “But I can.”

  The judge said that court was adjourned, and a few minutes later they were all standing outside on Varick Street. First Nick’s mom, then Amelia, then Nick thanked Mr. Gasson for everything.

  “You never gave up hope,” Nick said.

  “And neither should you,” he said. “I told you miracles can happen.”

  Then Nick turned to Michael Arroyo.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.

  “I ought to thank you,” Michael said. “Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget the boy I used to be. You’ve helped me remember.”

  “We still have a long fight ahead of us,” Mr. Gasson said. It was true. This was only the first step on their journey.

  Nick looked up at Michael. “But we’re on a winning streak now, right?”

  Michael winked in reply. “See you at the Stadium,” he said.

  Then he stepped into the back seat of a black SUV waiting for him at the curb. Before long, the car was pulling away from the courthouse, and then Michael was gone.

  45

  A little after nine o’clock that evening, after Michael had sent his car to New Jersey to pick him up, Victor García walked through his front door. He was home.

  Nick was in his arms first, followed closely by Amelia, and then Graciela stepped in and closed the circle, her and Victor’s arms enveloping their children in a long embrace. There was such a commotion, they were sure even Mrs. G could hear downstairs. Tonight, as she predicted, their story ended the way it was supposed to, at least for now.

  “As happy as we all are in this moment,” Victor said after h
e finally pulled away, “you know this is really more of a beginning than an ending, right?”

  “We know,” Graciela said, taking her husband’s hands in hers. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it for the time being.”

  “It’s just important for all of us to keep in mind that we have a long way to go, and there are no guarantees.”

  “Dad,” Nick said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  For a brief moment, Nick thought his dad, as tough and brave as he was, was about to cry.

  “This is still a crazy dream,” Victor said, wiping his eyes.

  Nick smiled. “Only until it happens.”

  Before Michael Arroyo played for the Yankees, he was a little league pitching phenom.

  Turn the page to read the first two chapters of HEAT—the #1 New York Times bestseller

  Text copyright © 2006 by Mike Lupica

  1

  Mrs. Cora walked slowly up River Avenue in the summer heat, secure within the boundaries of her world. The great ballpark, Yankee Stadium, was on her right. The blue subway tracks were above her, the tracks colliding up there with the roar of the train as it pulled into the station across the street from the Stadium, at 161st Street and River.

  The two constants in my life, Mrs. Cora thought: baseball and the thump thump thump of another train, like my own personal rap music.

  She had her green purse over her arm, the one that was supposed to look more expensive than it really was, the one the boys upstairs had bought for her birthday. Inside the purse, in the bank envelope, was the one hundred dollars—Quik Cash, they called it—she had just gotten from a Bank of New York ATM. Her food money. But she was suddenly too tired to go back to the Imperial Market. Mrs. C, as the kids in her building called her, was preparing for what could feel like the toughest part of her whole day, the walk back up the hill to 825 Gerard from the Stadium.

  Now she moved past all the stores selling Yankees merchandise—Stan’s Sports World, Stan the Man’s Kids and Ladies, Stan the Man’s Baseball World—wondering as she did sometimes if there was some famous Yankee who had been named Stan.

  He hit her from behind.

  She was in front of Stan’s Bar and Restaurant, suddenly falling to her right, onto the sidewalk in front of the window as she felt the green purse being pulled from her arm, as if whoever it was didn’t care if he took Mrs. Cora’s arm with it.

  Mrs. Cora hit the ground hard, rolled on her side, feeling dizzy, but turning herself to watch this…what? This boy not much bigger than some of the boys at 825 Gerard? Watched him sprint down River Avenue as if faster than the train that was right over her head this very minute, pulling into the elevated Yankee Stadium stop.

  Mrs. Cora tried to make herself heard over the roar of the 4 train.

  “Stop,” Mrs. Cora said.

  Then, as loud as she could manage: “Stop, thief!”

  There were people reaching down to help her now, neighborhood people she was sure, voices asking if she was all right, if anything was broken.

  All Mrs. Cora could do was point toward 161st Street.

  “My food money,” she said, her voice cracking.

  Then a man’s voice above her was yelling, “Police!”

  Mrs. Cora looked past the crowd starting to form around her, saw a policeman come down the steps from the subway platform, saw him look right at her, and then the flash of the boy making a left around what she knew was the far outfield part of the Stadium.

  The policeman started running, too.

  * * *

  • • •

  The thief’s name was Ramon.

  He was not the smartest sixteen-year-old in the South Bronx. Not even close to being the smartest, mostly because he had always treated school like some sort of hobby. He was not the laziest, either, this he knew, because there were boys his age who spent much more time on the street corner and sitting on the stoop than he did. But he was lazy enough, and hated the idea of work even more than he hated the idea of school, which is why he preferred to occasionally get his spending money stealing purses and handbags like the Hulk-green one he had in his hand right now.

  As far as Ramon could tell at this point in his life, the only real job skill he had was this:

  He was fast.

  He had been a young soccer star of the neighborhood in his early teens, just across the way on the fields of Joseph Yancy park, those fields a blur to him right now as he ran on the sidewalk at the back end of Yankee Stadium, on his way to the cobblestones of Ruppert Place, which ran down toward home plate.

  “Stop! Police!” Ramon heard from behind him.

  He looked around, saw the fat cop starting to chase him, wobbling like a car with a flat tire.

  Fat chance, Ramon thought.

  Ramon’s plan was simple: He would cut across Ruppert Place and run down the hill to Macombs Dam Park, across the basketball courts there, then across the green expanse of outfield that the two ballfields shared there. Then he would hop the fence at the far end of Macombs Dam Park and run underneath the overpass for the exit from the Deegan Expressway, one of the Stadium exits.

  And then Ramon would be gone, working his way back toward the neighborhoods to the north, with all their signs pointing toward the George Washington Bridge, finding a quiet place to count his profits and decide which girl he would spend them on tonight.

  “Stop…I mean it!” the fat cop yelled.

  Ramon looked over his shoulder, saw that the cop was already falling behind, trying to chase and yell and speak into the walkie-talkie he had in his right hand all at once. It made Ramon want to laugh his head off, even as he ran. No cop had ever caught him and no cop ever would, unless they had begun recruiting Olympic sprinters for the New York Police Department. He imagined himself as a sprinter now, felt his arms and legs pumping, thought of the old Cuban sprinter his father used to tell him about.

  Juan something?

  No, no.

  Juantarena.

  Alberto Juantarena.

  His father said it was like watching a god run. And his father, the old fool, wasn’t even Cuban, he was Dominican. The only Dominican who wanted to talk about track stars instead of baseball.

  Whatever.

  Ramon ran now, across the green grass of Macombs Dam Park, where boys played catch in the July morning, ran toward the fence underneath the overpass.

  It wasn’t even noon yet, Ramon thought, and I’ve already earned a whole day’s pay.

  He felt the sharp pain in the back of his head in that moment, like a rock hitting him back there.

  Then Ramon went down like somebody had tackled him from behind.

  What the…?

  Ramon, who wasn’t much of a thinker, tried to think what had just happened to him, but his head hurt too much.

  Then he went out.

  * * *

  • • •

  When the thief opened his eyes, his hands were already cuffed in front of him.

  The fat policeman stood with a skinny boy, a tall, skinny boy with long arms and long fingers attached to them, wearing a Yankees T-shirt, a baseball glove under his arm.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  The one on the ground said, “Ramon,” thinking the policeman was talking to him.

  The cop looked down, as if he’d forgotten Ramon was there. “Wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Michael,” the skinny boy said. “Michael Arroyo.”

  “And you’re telling me you got him with this from home plate?”

  The cop held up a baseball that looked older than the old Stadium that rose behind them to the sky.

  “Got lucky, I guess,” Michael said.

  The cop smiled, rolling the ball around in his hand.

  “You lefty or righty?”

  Now Michael smiled and held up his left hand, like
he was a boy with the right answer in class.

  “Home plate to dead center?” the cop said.

  Michael nodded, like now the cop had come up with the right answer.

  “You got some arm, kid,” the cop said.

  “That’s what they tell me,” Michael said.

  2

  Papi was the first to tell Michael Arroyo he had the arm.

  Michael thought it was just something a father would say to a son. But he knew there was a look Papi would get when he said it, as though he were seeing things Michael couldn’t, back when it was just the two of them playing catch on that poor excuse of a field behind their apartment building in Pinar del Rio, outside of Havana.

  Back home—what Michael still thought of as home, he couldn’t help himself—everybody knew his father as Victor Arroyo. But he was Papi to Michael and his brother, Carlos. Always had been, always would be.

  “You cannot teach somebody to have an arm like yours,” Papi would say, walking out from behind the plate and sticking the ball back inside Michael’s glove. Like they were having a conference on the mound during a game. “It’s something you are born with, a gift from the gods, like a singer’s voice. Or a boxer’s left hand. Or an artist’s brush.”

  This was when Michael was seven years old, maybe eight, long before they got on the boat that night last year, the one that took them across the water to a place on the Florida map called Big Pine Key….

  “Someday,” Papi would say, “you will make it to the World Series, like the brothers Hernandez did. But before that, my son, what comes first?”

  Michael always knew what the answer was supposed to be.

  “First, the Little League World Series,” he would say to his father.

  “On ESPN,” Papi would say, grinning at him. “The worldwide leader in sports.”