Green Monster

by Rick Shefchik

  Frankie pressed the handkerchief to the gaping wound, but it quickly became soaked with blood, and looking at it made him woozy. He had to come up with something soon, think of something before he couldn’t think anymore, before Mink shot him in the head. They wanted something from him, or he’d be dead already. What was it?

  “Now, you’re going to tell me how your little scam worked,” Mink said. “How you thought it up. How you got to Miranda. Did he throw ball games? Was he on the juice? I wanna know, Frankie—that ain’t information you’re gonna wanna take to your grave.”

  “He was on the juice, Sid—Christ, anybody could see that,” Frankie said, between gasps of breath. His arm felt like it had been ripped off his body. “We train at the same gym. I got his injection schedule from the doctor who was givin’ him the stuff.”

  “You usin’ too, Frankie?”

  Even at a time like this, when his life was dangling by a sinew, Frankie was reluctant to admit that he’d been on the same powerful mixture of steroids, HGH, and muscle-building supplements that many of the ballplayers used. All the work at the gym wouldn’t have got him ripped without it. He wanted the punks on the street, Mink’s mob, and the Hollywood crowd to think it was all about the lifting, but the barrel of a gun was powerful truth serum.

  “Yeah, yeah, I use, Sid.”

  “But bullets don’t bounce off you.”

  “No, guess not.”

  Joey and Leon laughed. Frankie, for all his pain, tried to laugh too. It came out more like a choking sob.

  “So, what, you figured you’d blackmail Miranda? Poor guy comes over here from Colombia, or wherever the fuck he’s from, and he gets mixed up in steroids so he can get better at his job. He wants to be an American baseball hero. Then a drug-shooting piece of garbage like you—doing the same shit, just to try to look tough—you threaten to rat him out if he don’t throw World Series games?”

  “Yeah, that’s about how it was,” Frankie groaned. Not entirely, but he had to hold onto something to bargain with.

  “You know what really pisses me off, Frankie?” Mink said.

  Frankie flinched, hearing the anger return to Mink’s voice and expecting another shot to be fired.

  “It’s baseball you’re fuckin’ with. There’s enough shit in this world. Why you gotta fuck up one of the only good things we got left?”

  Frankie didn’t answer, and Mink made a disgusted grunt at the back of his throat and turned to watch the freeway. Leon had gone east on the 105, and then merged onto the 110 heading north toward downtown. Frankie couldn’t figure out where they were headed. It looked like they weren’t going to toss him off a cliff into the ocean. Maybe up into the hills to dump his body in a canyon.

  “Sid, what do I gotta do to stay alive?” Frankie said. His heartbeat raced and his breath came in short, panting gulps.

  Mink faced forward, watching the road and saying nothing.

  “Half, Sid. I’ll give you half.”

  Mink remained silent, while Joey chuckled to himself, his gun still poking into Frankie’s ribs like a letter from the future.

  “Where we goin’?” Frankie asked.

  “Since you love baseball so much, I thought we’d let you out at Dodger Stadium,” Mink said. “Nobody there now—you’ll have the parking lot all to yourself.”

  Frankie immediately visualized his own body, lying crumpled on the asphalt in a lined parking space outside the ballpark, waiting to be discovered by the first employees to arrive in the morning. He couldn’t let it end that way.

  The light traffic allowed Leon to reach Chavez Ravine in twenty minutes. Mink was still holding Leon’s Walther—it looked like he was going to do it himself, instead of having Leon or Joey Icebox do it. It didn’t normally work that way, but Mink probably wanted word to get out that he was the trigger man. It would boost his sagging ratings.

  Leon had reached the outer gates of the stadium parking lot and was pulling in when Joey’s phone rang.

  “Shut that fucking thing off,” Mink said. “We got work to do here.”

  Joey pulled the phone out of his pocket and looked at the number on the display.

  “It’s Skarda.”

  ***

  In Pacific Palisades, Sam heard Joey’s voice and the background sound of a car’s engine. They were driving somewhere, probably with a gun in Frankie’s mouth.

  “Joey, put Mink on the phone,” Sam said.

  It was past two now. Sam had gone inside Miranda’s house to make the call. He’d started to shiver, and he didn’t know whether it was because of the falling canyon temperatures, or the certainty that if he didn’t stop Mink from killing Frankie Navarro, Miranda would never see his mother again.

  Technically, Sam had no stake in Elena Miranda’s fate. But he had a big stake in whether they could prove Frankie was behind the extortion plot. Miranda’s say-so wasn’t good enough.

  “Make it quick, Skarda,” he heard Mink say. “Frankie’s about to become unavailable for comment.”

  “Where are you?” Sam said.

  “Let’s just call it an undisclosed location. A smart private eye like you should be able to figure it out by tomorrow night’s news.”

  “Don’t kill him, Sid.”

  “Funny, he’s been saying the same thing. But I haven’t heard a good reason not to.”

  “Because he’s not the guy who dreamed this whole thing up. He’s just the front man.”

  “What do you mean?” Mink said. He’d been projecting a cold confidence, the kind he would have needed as he was rising up through the ranks in the ’60s and ’70s, and had undoubtedly lost in recent years. But now Mink sounded less sure of himself again.

  “Think about it. Miranda says his mother has been held captive for at least three weeks now. Even in Venezuela, that costs money. You need at least two guys, probably three, to keep up a round-the-clock watch in a kidnapping. Has Frankie Navarro got the kind of money or contacts it would take to recruit a foreign kidnapping team, keep them in supplies for a month, and pay them enough to keep them on the job?”

  Mink didn’t say anything. Sam could almost hear the rough, scaly skin on Mink’s fingers, nervously rubbing the smooth metal of the gun he was about to use to kill Frankie.

  “Is he smart enough to put something like this together?” Sam continued. “Is he a deep thinker, a patient guy, or more of an impulsive type?”

  “How the fuck should I know?” Mink bellowed into the phone. “All I know about him is he tried to blackmail Miranda. He admitted it. That’s good enough for me.”

  Sam could sense Mink’s finger tightening on the trigger. He had to get through to him.

  “Of course, he admitted it,” Sam said. “He’s trying to save his life. But he knows more than he’s telling you. If you kill him, you’ll never find out who put him up to it. Kenwood will never know. Hell, Kenwood might get another note from Babe Ruth tomorrow afternoon. He’ll pay up. Miranda’s mother will be dead and somebody else will have gotten away with 50 million, right under your nose.”

  Again there was a pause. Mink had to realize that he was about to make a big mistake killing Frankie.

  “Yeah, well, we took a vote here,” Mink finally said. “Three of us want to kill the cocksucker. Even with your vote, it’s still three to two. The polls are closed. So long, Skarda.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Caracas, Venezuela—

  “How much longer?” Elena asked Jefe, in a dreamy, defeated voice.

  She lay on the filthy mattress, disgusted by her own smell, beyond hunger and now simply wishing to sleep until someone came to set her free, or until she died. She didn’t care which anymore.

  Jefe knelt at her side, a plate of pabellon con baranda—plantains, rice and beans—on the floor and a forkful of the food in his hand. He held it up to her mouth, but Elena would not open for him. He shrugged and ate the forkful himself.

  “No se,” Jefe said. “Maybe tw
o days, maybe three. Not much longer.”

  He scooped up another forkful of the food and held it up to her mouth. Elena rolled her face away from him. A fly landed on the fork, and Jefe blew it away, scattering a few kernels of rice into Elena’s hair. He reached out and picked the rice out of her hair, kernel by kernel, and threw it on the floor.

  “You must eat,” he said to her.

  “I don’t want to.”

  He reached over to her and gently turned her chin toward him. She’d been a beautiful woman; Jefe could see that. She still had admirable features, with just enough peasant stock to differentiate herself from the usual society whores of the Venezuelan aristocracy that Jefe hated so much. Elena had new money—her rich ballplayer son had allowed the Mirandas to leap from the working class to the status of landowners. She bore her new station well, but the fierce pride that had been in her eyes the night they’d kidnapped her had all but burned out. Her expensive clothes were now soiled rags, her hair was a tangled, matted mop, and sores were forming on her arms and legs. It couldn’t be helped, Jefe told himself; he was not going to wash and dress her each day. But he did have to feed her. A dead hostage does no one any good.

  Besides, he liked her. She had shown enough courage, when she still had the strength, to try to escape. She had never lost her dignity or her defiance, and in their conversations she had passionately and convincingly defended the capitalism that had allowed her son to sell his athletic abilities for American riches. But she was now rapidly losing her strength. If she didn’t eat, she’d be dead in a couple of days.

  Holding her chin, he pulled her lower lip down with his thumb and put the forkful of food to her mouth. She would not move her jaw, but even the effort to keep it from being opened was too much for her. Jefe put the food in her mouth, and to keep from choking on it, she attempted to chew and swallow. It was difficult at first, and she gagged, half sitting up to clear the food from her throat. She managed to take a few more forkfuls, then lay back on the mattress and covered her face with her arms.

  “No mas,” she said.

  “I will put this aside for later. You need more.”

  “My son is going to pay,” Elena said. She had slipped back into her near-trancelike state. “Then I will go home.”

  “It’s not that simple. I have told you before. It is not your son who must pay. We are waiting to hear from Kenwood, who has far more money than your son will ever have.”

  “Kenwood,” Elena said. She repeated the name slowly as though she’d never heard it before, though Jefe had told her who Kenwood was several times.

  “A rich Yankee, very rich,” Jefe said. “When he pays, you are free to go.”

  Jefe laughed to himself. He knew enough about American beisbol to know that Lou Kenwood, of all people, would not want to be referred to as a Yankee. But Elena would not get the joke.

  Jefe wanted this to be over, too. A million dollars—his share—would set him up for life, allow him to leave the police department and become a landowner like the Mirandas—though certainly in another country. But there was so much more to do, and the waiting, the constant watching over Elena, and worrying that someone would discover them, perhaps try to rescue her—it had been a long, aggravating month. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it. Truthfully, if he had not had Elena to talk to, an intelligent, prideful woman instead of those two ignorant fools he’d hired—now down to one—he might have gone crazy. He was earning his million, no doubt. He would not have the slightest pang of guilt when he killed that drunken lecher, Hector. He deserved Hector’s share, too.

  He was not so certain about killing Elena Miranda. She had been through so much, and he really did admire her son for all he had accomplished. It would have been easy for an Alberto Miranda to accept the crushing poverty and lack of opportunity in Venezuela, slip into a gang, deal drugs, and end up dead or in prison before he turned twenty. That was the fate of so many in Caracas; as a cop, Jefe saw it every day. But, like Jefe, Alberto Miranda wanted more from life, and had the focus and determination to achieve his dreams. Those dreams were about to end, but there were far sadder stories in Venezuela. Soon, it would be Jefe’s turn to have what he wanted.

  The only light in the shanty came from a table lamp in the corner of the room, on the opposite side from the waste bucket. Elena now dozed on the mattress. Jefe hated it when Elena slept. There was nothing to do here, ever, except talk to her. Hector was not due to arrive for three more hours, and Jefe had no faith in Hector’s abilities or character. Now that Paquito was dead—his body carried to the nearest landfill in the middle of the night and dumped like a sack of garbage—Jefe had assumed his shift. He took time off from the police department, stayed later at the shanty and returned earlier, so Hector would not have to put in more hours. He thought Elena’s dirty, weakened condition might have lessened Hector’s obvious lust for her, but he still hated to take that chance. As Elena got weaker, Jefe wondered if he should just kill Hector now, and assume full-time guard duties. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Jefe was sleepily opening and shutting the cover of his cell phone when it rang. He checked the number on the incoming call. Jefe was surprised; he wasn’t supposed to get a call for two more days.

  “Hola,” Jefe said.

  “How is she?”

  “Getting weaker,” Jefe said. “I’m trying to make her eat.”

  “She can’t die. Not yet.”

  “She can’t last much longer, and there’s nothing I can do about that. She’s been here too long.”

  “Do you have some place you can move her to?”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a detective asking questions. I think he’s getting close.”

  “How can he find us? The only ones who know…”

  “I don’t trust Frankie. I never have. If that detective finds him, he might talk.”

  “So kill him.”

  “Who, Frankie?”

  “Him, the detective…kill whoever you have to kill.”

  “Jefe, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the U.S., but it’s not like Caracas. You don’t just kill people here and dump them in the street.”

  “I have seen that on American TV many times.”

  “Anyway, get ready to move Elena. Where could you take her?”

  Jefe thought for a minute. His house was out; he lived in a nice enough place that the neighbors would notice if Elena managed to wander out of the house, or if they saw Hector coming and going every five or six hours. But Hector—he lived in a place not much better than this shanty. He used to have a wife and three daughters, but they moved out a few months ago after the oldest one accused Hector of touching her. He lived alone now, with nothing, which was why Jefe had known he’d be a good hire for this job. Moving to Hector’s house would work for a couple of days. Then, when the money came through, Jefe could blow Hector’s brains out in his own house, put the gun in his hand and leave a stupid, illegible suicide note, just the kind a man like Hector would write.

  Though she deserved to die in a better place, he would probably have to kill Elena there, too.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Mink hung up,” Sam said.

  “He’s going to kill Frankie,” Miranda said. “My mother will die. Call him back. Please.”

  “Let me call him,” Heather said.

  She took the phone from Sam and pushed the redial. Sam wasn’t even sure Joey would pick up. Mink might have told him to turn his phone off while they dragged Frankie out of the car, made him kneel down in a ditch, and put a couple of hollow-points in the back of his skull. Nobody liked being interrupted in the middle of a job.

  Heather stood in the living room with her right arm across her midriff and her hand under her left elbow, listening to the phone ring. She looked as though she were waiting impatiently for a vendor or a sponsor to answer her call. She showed no signs of panic, despite the reality that this was the most important business
call she’d ever made: If she got no answer, or—absurd as it might have seemed, the mobster’s voice mail—Frankie Navarro was history, and so was Elena Miranda.

  But Heather got through.

  “Is this Sid? Oh, Joey. Hi. My name is Heather Canby. I work with Sam Skarda, for the Boston Red Sox. Listen to me: Don’t kill Frankie Navarro. My boss will pay you to let him live.” There was a momentary pause, then Heather said, “Sure. I’ll talk to him.”

  Heather glanced up at Sam. The cool expression on her face perplexed him. Was she doing this for Miranda, out of concern for his mother? Was she doing it so she could find out who was really behind the extortion plot? Or was she doing it because she was part of Frankie’s scam, and was trying to save her co-conspirator’s life? Sam wished they printed scorecards for shake-down operations. He had no idea who was playing for which team anymore.

  He sat down on a leather armchair and waited to see what happened when she talked to Mink. That’s all he could do now. Two lives were in Heather’s hands from this point on.

  “Is this Sid?” Heather said, turning on the charm in her voice like a charity fundraiser buttering up a wealthy donor. “Hi, Sid. Heather Canby, executive assistant of the Boston Red Sox. Look, I’ll make this simple. Frankie Navarro has information we need. We’ll pay you $1,000,000 to not kill him.”

  She waited for a moment, then said, “Any way you like. Wired to a bank account, cash in untraceable bills, securities…you name it.”

  Another pause.

  “Yes, we’d like to talk to him tonight. Where can we meet you?”

  She looked around for something to write with. Sam tossed her a small notepad he always kept in his pocket, and a golf pencil with an eraser. He had hundreds of those pencils lying around his house, and he was in the habit of carrying them for taking notes. When one got dull, he threw it away and put a sharp one in his pocket.

  Heather wrote something down, then showed it to Miranda.

  “How long will it take us to get there?”