by Harlan Coben
“So you would have done it?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I guess I do.”
“Who would have mourned their passing?” Win asked. “Two scums in the night who freely chose a profession that bullies and maims.”
Myron did not answer. The train stopped. Passengers exited. Myron and Win stayed in their seats.
“But you enjoy it,” Myron said.
Win said nothing.
“You have other reasons, sure, but you enjoy violence.”
“And you don’t, Myron?”
“Not like you.”
“No, not like me. But you feel the rush.”
“And I usually feel sick after it’s all over.”
“Well, Myron, that’s probably because you’re such a fine humanitarian.”
They exited the subway at 161st Street and walked in silence to Yankee Stadium. Four hours to game time, but there were already several hundred fans lining up to watch the warm-ups. A giant Louisville Slugger bat cast a long shadow. Cops aplenty stood near clusters of unfazed ticket scalpers. Classic détente. There were hot dog carts, some with—gasp!—Yoo-Hoo umbrellas. Yum. At the press entrance Myron flashed his business card, the guard made a call, they were let in.
They traveled down the stairs on the right, reached the stadium tunnel, and emerged into bright sunshine and green grass. Myron and Win had just been discussing the nature of violence, and now Myron thought again about his dad’s phone call. Myron had seen his father, the most gentle man he had ever known, grow violent only once. And it was here at Yankee Stadium.
When Myron was ten years old, his father had taken him and his younger brother, Brad, to a game. Brad was five at the time. Dad had secured four seats in the upper tier, but at the last minute a business associate had given him two more seats three rows behind the Red Sox bench. Brad was a huge fan of the Red Sox. So Dad suggested that Brad and Myron sit by the dugout for a few innings. Dad would stay in the upper tier. Myron held Brad’s hand, and they walked down to the box seats. The seats were, in a word, awesome.
Brad started cheering his five-year-old lungs out. Cheering like mad. He spotted Carl Yastrzemski in the batter’s box and started calling out, “Yaz! Yaz!” The guy sitting in front of them turned around. He was maybe twenty-five and bearded and looked a bit like a church image of Jesus. “That’s enough,” the bearded guy snapped at Brad. “Quiet down.”
Brad looked hurt.
“Don’t listen to him,” Myron said. “You’re allowed to yell.”
The bearded man’s hands moved fast. He grabbed the ten-year-old Myron by his shirt, bunching the Yankee emblem in his seemingly giant fist, and pulled Myron closer to him. There was beer on his breath. “He’s giving my girlfriend a headache. He shuts up now.”
Fear engulfed Myron. Tears filled his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them escape. He remembered being shocked, scared, and mostly, for some unknown reason, ashamed. The bearded man glared at Myron another few seconds and then pushed him back. Myron grabbed Brad’s hand and rushed back to the upper tier. He tried to pretend everything was all right, but ten-year-olds are not great actors, and Dad could read his son as if he lived inside his skull.
“What’s wrong?” Dad asked.
Myron hesitated. Dad asked again. Myron finally told him what happened. And something happened to Myron’s father, something Myron had never seen before or since. There was an explosion in his eyes. His face turned red; his eyes went black.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
Myron watched the rest through binoculars. Dad moved down to the seat behind the Red Sox dugout. His father’s face was still red. Myron saw Dad cup his hands around his mouth, lean forward, and start screaming for all he was worth. The red in his face turned to crimson. Dad kept screaming. The bearded man tried to ignore him. Dad leaned into his ear à la Mike Tyson and screamed some more. When the bearded man finally turned around, Dad did something that shocked Myron to the core. He pushed the man. He pushed the man twice and then gestured toward the exit, the international sign inviting another man to step outside. The guy with the beard refused. Dad pushed him again.
Two security guards raced down the steps and broke it up. No one was tossed. Dad came back to the upper tier. “Go back down,” Dad said. “He won’t bother you again.”
But Myron and Brad shook their heads. They liked the seats up here better.
Win said, “Time traveling again, are we?”
Myron nodded.
“You realize, of course, that you are far too young for so many reflective spells.”
“Yeah, I know.”
A group of Yankee players were sitting on the outfield grass, legs sprawled, hands back, still kids under the collars waiting for their Little League game to start. A man in a too-nicely-fitted suit was talking to them. The man gestured wildly, smiling and enthusiastic and as enraptured with life as the new born-again on the block. Myron recognized him. Sawyer Wells, the motivational speaker né con man of the moment. Two years ago Wells was an unknown charlatan, spouting the standard reworded dogma about finding yourself, unlocking your potential, doing something for yourself—as though people weren’t self-centered enough. His big break came when the Mayors hired him to do talks for their workforce. The speeches were, if not original, successful, and Sawyer Wells caught on. He got a book deal—cleverly monikered The Wells Guide to Wellness—along with an infomercial, audiotapes, video, a planner, the full self-help schematic. Fortune 500 companies started hiring him. When the Mayors took over the Yankees, they brought him on board as a consulting motivational psychologist or some such drivel.
When Sawyer Wells spotted Win, he almost started panting.
“He smells a new client,” Myron said.
“Or perhaps he’s never seen anyone quite this handsome before.”
“Oh, yeah,” Myron said. “That’s probably it.”
Wells turned back to the players, shouted out a bit more enthusiasm, spasmed with gestures, clapped once, and then bade them good-bye. He looked back over at Win. He waved. He waved hard. Then he started bounding over like a puppy chasing a new squeaky toy or a politician chasing a potential contributor.
Win frowned. “In a word, decaf.”
Myron nodded.
“You want me to befriend him?” Win asked.
“He was supposedly present for the drug tests. And he’s also the team psychologist. He probably hears a lot of rumors.”
“Fine,” Win said. “You take the roommate. I’ll take Sawyer.”
Enos Cabral was a good-looking wiry Cuban with a flame-throwing fastball and breaking pitches that still needed work. He was twenty-four, but he had the kind of looks that probably got him carded at any liquor store. He stood watching batting practice, his body slack except for his mouth. Like most relief pitchers, he chewed gum or tobacco with the ferocity of a lion gnawing on a recently downed gazelle.
Myron introduced himself.
Enos shook his hand and said, “I know who you are.”
“Oh?”
“Clu talked about you a lot. He thought I should sign with you.”
A pang. “Clu said that?”
“I wanted a change,” Enos continued. “My agent. He treats me well, no? And he made me a rich man.”
“I don’t mean to knock the importance of good representation, Enos, but you made you a rich man. An agent facilitates. He doesn’t create.”
Enos nodded. “You know my story?”
The thumbnail sketch. The boat trip had been rough. Very rough. For a week everyone had assumed they had been lost at sea. When they finally did pop up, only two of the eight Cubans were still alive. One of the dead was Enos’s brother Hector, considered the best player to come out of Cuba in the past decade. Enos, considered the lesser talent, was nearly dead of dehydration.
“Just what I’ve read in the papers,” Myron said.
“My agent. He was there when I arrived. I had family in Miami. When he heard abou
t the Cabral brothers, he loaned them money. He paid for my hospital stay. He gave me money and jewelry and a car. He promised me more money. And I have it.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“He has no soul.”
“You want an agent with a soul?”
Enos shrugged. “I’m Catholic,” he said. “We believe in miracles.”
They both laughed.
Enos seemed to be studying Myron. “Clu was always suspicious of people. Even me. He had something of a hard shell.”
“I know,” Myron said.
“But he believed in you. He said you were a good man. He said that he had trusted you with his life and would gladly do so again.”
Another pang. “Clu was also a lousy judge of character.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Enos, I wanted to talk to you about Clu’s last few weeks.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you came here to recruit me.”
“No,” Myron said. Then: “But have you heard the expression killing two birds with one stone?”
Enos laughed. “What do you want to know?”
“Were you surprised when Clu failed the drug test?”
He picked up a bat. He gripped and regripped it in his hands. Finding the right groove. Funny. He was an American League pitcher. He would probably never have the opportunity to bat. “I have trouble understanding addictions,” he said. “Where I come from, yes, a man may try to drink away his world, if he can afford it. You live in such stink, why not leave, no? But here, when you have as much as Clu had …”
He didn’t finish the thought. No point in stating the obvious.
“One time Clu tried to explain it to me,” Enos continued. “‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to escape the world; sometimes you want to escape yourself.’ ” He cocked his head. “Do you believe that?”
“Not really,” Myron said. “Like a lot of cute phrases, it sounds good. But it also sounds like a load of self-rationalization.”
Enos smiled. “You’re mad at him.”
“I guess I am.”
“Don’t be. He was a very unhappy man, Myron. A man who needs so much excess … there is something broken inside him, no?”
Myron said nothing.
“Clu tried. He fought hard, you have no idea. He wouldn’t go out at night. If our room had a minibar, he’d make them take it out. He didn’t hang out with old friends because he was afraid of what he might do. He was scared all the time. He fought long and hard.”
“And he lost,” Myron added.
“I never saw him take drugs. I never saw him drink.”
“But you noticed changes.”
Enos nodded. “His life began to fall apart. So many bad things happened.”
“What bad things?”
The organ music revved immediately into high gear, the legendary Eddie Layton opening up with his rendition of that ballpark classic “The Girl from Ipanema.” Enos lifted the bat to his shoulder, then lowered it again. “I feel uncomfortable talking about this.”
“I’m not prying for the fun of it. I’m trying to find out who killed him.”
“The papers said your secretary did it.”
“They’re wrong.”
Enos stared at the bat as though there were a message hidden beneath the word Louisville. Myron tried to prompt him.
“Clu withdrew two hundred thousand dollars not long before he died,” Myron said. “Was he having financial problems?”
“If he did, I didn’t see it.”
“Did he gamble?”
“I didn’t see him him gamble, no.”
“Do you know that he changed agents?”
Enos looked surprised. “He fired you?”
“Apparently he was going to.”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I know he was looking for you. But no, I didn’t know that.”
“So what was it then, Enos? What made him cave?”
He lifted his eyes and blinked into the sun. The perfect weather for a night game. Soon fans would arrive, and memories would be made. Happened every night in stadiums around the world. It was always some kid’s first game.
“His marriage,” Enos said. “That was the big thing, I think. You know Bonnie?”
“Yes.”
“Clu loved her very much.”
“He had an odd way of showing it.”
Enos smiled. “Sleeping with all those women. I think he did it more to hurt himself than anyone else.”
“That sounds like another one of those big, fat rationalizations, Enos. Clu may have made self-destruction an art form. But that’s not an excuse for what he put her through.”
“I think he’d agree with that. But Clu hurt himself most of all.”
“Don’t kid yourself. He hurt Bonnie too.”
“Yes, you’re right, of course. But he still loved her. When she threw him out, it hurt him so much. You have no idea.”
“What can you tell me about their breakup?”
Another hesitation. “Not much to tell. Clu felt betrayed, angry.”
“You know that Clu had fooled around before.”
“Yes.”
“So what made it different this time? Bonnie was used to his straying. What made her finally snap? Who was his girlfriend?”
Enos looked puzzled. “You think Bonnie threw him out over a girl?”
“She didn’t?”
Enos shook his head.
“You’re sure.”
“It was never about girls with Clu. They were just part of the drugs and alcohol. They were easy for him to give up.”
Myron was confused. “So he wasn’t having an affair?”
“No,” Enos said. “She was.”
That was when it clicked. Myron felt a cold wave roll through him, squeezing the pit of his stomach. He barely said good-bye before he hurried away.
CHAPTER
23
He knew Bonnie would be home.
The car had barely come to a full stop when he shot out the driver’s door. There were perhaps a dozen other vehicles parked on the street. Mourners. The front door was opened. Myron headed inside without knocking. He wanted to find Bonnie and confront her and end this. But she wasn’t in the living room. Just mourners. Some approached him, slowing him down. He offered his condolences to Clu’s mother, her face ravaged with grief. He shook other hands, trying to swim through the thick sea of grief-stricken and glad-handers and find Bonnie. He finally spotted her outside in the backyard. She sat alone on the deck, her knees tucked under her chin, watching her children play. He steeled himself and pushed open the sliding glass doors.
The porch was cedarwood and overlooked a large swing set. Clu’s boys were on it, both dressed in red ties and untucked short-sleeve shirts. They ran and laughed. Miniature versions of their dead father, their smiles so like his, their features eternal echoes of Clu’s. Bonnie watched them. Her back was to Myron, a cigarette in her hand. She did not turn around as he approached.
“Clu didn’t have the affair,” Myron said. “You did.”
Bonnie inhaled deeply and let it out. “Great timing, Myron.”
“That can’t be helped.”
“Can’t we talk about this later?”
Myron waited a beat. Then: “I know who you were sleeping with.”
She stiffened. Myron looked down at her. She finally turned and met his gaze.
“Let’s take a walk,” Bonnie said.
She reached out a hand, and Myron helped her to her feet.
They walked down the backyard to a wooded area. The din of traffic filtered through a sound barrier up the hill. The house was spanking new, large and innately nouveau-riche. Airy, lots of windows, cathedral ceilings, small living room, huge kitchen flowing into huge California room, huge master bedroom, closets large enough to double as Gap outlets. Probably went for about eight hundred thou. Beautiful and sterile and soulless. Needing to be lived in a bit. Properly aged like a fine Merlot.
> “I didn’t know you smoked,” he said.
“You don’t know a lot of things about me, Myron.”
Touché. He looked at her profile, and again he saw that young coed heading into the fraternity basement. He flashed back to that very moment, to the sound of Clu’s sharp intake of air when he first laid eyes on her. Suppose she’d come down a little later, after Clu had passed out or hooked up with another woman. Suppose she had gone to another frat party that night. Dumb thoughts—life’s arbitrary forks in the road, the series of what ifs—but there you go.
“So what makes you think I was the one having an affair?” she said.
“Clu told Enos.”
“Clu lied.”
“No,” Myron said.
They kept walking. Bonnie took a last drag and tossed the cigarette on the ground. “My property,” she said. “I’m allowed.”
Myron said nothing.
“Did Clu tell Enos who he thought I was sleeping with?”
“No.”
“But you think you know who this mystery lover is.”
“Yes,” Myron said. “It’s Esperanza.”
Silence.
“Would you believe me if I insisted you were wrong?” she said.
“You’d have a lot of explaining to do.”
“How’s that?”
“Let’s start with you coming to my office after Esperanza was arrested.”
“Okay.”
“You wanted to know what they had on her—that was the real reason. I wondered why you warned me away from finding the truth. You told me to clear my friend but not dig too hard.”
She nodded. “And you think I said that because I didn’t want you to know about this affair?”
“Yes. But there’s more. Like Esperanza’s silence, for one thing. Win and I theorized that she didn’t want us to know about her affair with Clu. It would look bad on several levels to be having an affair with a client. But to be having an affair with a client’s wife? What could be dumber than that?”
“That’s hardly evidence, Myron.”
“I’m not finished. You see, all the evidence that points to an affair between Esperanza and Clu actually points to an affair between you two. The physical evidence, for example. The pubic hairs and DNA found at the Fort Lee apartment. I started thinking about that. You and Clu lived there for a short time. Then you moved into this house. But you still had the lease on the apartment. So before you threw him out, it was empty, right?”
