“I fired Paul when you told me to,” Kenwood said.
“You owe him an apology.” Sam took another step down the aisle. He was about four long strides from Bruce now. “So do I.”
“But Bruce said Paul was his inside source,” Heather said.
“Sure he did. But it wasn’t Paul, was it, Bruce?”
Bruce cackled, as though Sam had told a tremendously funny joke.
“No, no, no,” he said, shoulders heaving. “God, I wouldn’t work with some street scum from Southie. Are you out of your tree?”
“But you would work with one of the richest women in America, even if you hated her. Somebody who sent you off to prep school, and summer camp, and then to college, keeping you away from your dad. Never letting you get close to the Red Sox.”
“Is this true, Katherine?” Kenwood said.
Katherine nodded. Lou sagged to one side, grabbing a seat back for support.
“Whose idea was it?” Kenwood said.
“Mine,” Katherine said. “I needed Bruce’s…mobility.”
“I thought of the kidnapping,” Bruce said. He appeared indignant that his stepmother wasn’t sharing the credit. It was clear that there was still no affection between them.
“Who decided to try to have me killed?” Sam asked.
“Nothing personal, Sam,” Katherine said. She managed a wan smile. “I didn’t want Lou to…hire a private investigator…but Heather talked him into it. You were…inconvenient.”
“The guy on the boat was almost too good, wasn’t he?” Sam said. He took another step closer. Bruce was beginning to look at him warily. “You got hit.”
“I did that…to myself,” Katherine said. “Down below…with my little gun. It didn’t hurt much…and it threw you off…didn’t it?”
“For a while.”
“How…where did you get the money?” Kenwood said to his wife. “It must have cost a fortune to put this thing together. I’d have noticed if you were spending that kind of money. So would Heather.”
“You did,” Katherine said. “But you thought it was…going for my treatments. I stopped. What was the point? It’s emphysema, Lou. I was going to die anyway. I had more important things to do.”
“I don’t understand, Katherine…why?” Kenwood asked.
“Because I wanted our life…to be about something more… than winning trophies,” Katherine said. “How many times…did I ask you about setting up a trust…a foundation in our names?”
“I wasn’t ready,” Kenwood said.
“It might have escaped your attention…but I didn’t have much time to wait. Each year you became more hesitant. There was always something the team needed…a free agent…a new section of seats…new suites…an outdoor mall…something that would add to your legacy…as the Curse Killer.
“You were going to get all the credit…there was nothing for me. I had no children…I gave all my time to you and the team…yet 100 years from now, there would be nothing bearing my name. It would be all Lou Kenwood.”
Rainwater flowed from the corners of her yellow hat, but Katherine was oblivious to the steady downpour.
“I begged you to establish…the Louis and Katherine Kenwood Charitable Trust. Eventually, I realized you would never do it…All you cared about was…beating the Yankees every year.”
“Katherine, a charitable foundation is a lovely idea for after we’re gone,” Lou said. “But I have to think about the future of the club.”
“I worked as hard as you did…to make the Red Sox great again,” Katherine said. “I did the Jimmy Fund…I organized the reunions…I took care of Ted Williams when he visited…You got all the credit…but I deserved…my legacy, too.”
“So you blackmailed me?”
“If you paid the money, my half…would set up a foundation in my name…after we both died,” Katherine said. “I wasn’t going to be…the forgotten second wife…of the great…the immortal…Lucky Louie.”
“And if I didn’t pay?”
Katherine looked at Heather, but said nothing.
Still in a daze, Kenwood put his hand up to wipe away the rain that was plastering his silver hair to his forehead. At that moment, Bruce grabbed his father in a choke hold around the neck and pulled him between two of the swivel seats at the edge of the Green Monster. Kenwood fell back into the rainwater that had pooled on the beverage counter.
“Get back, Skarda,” Bruce screamed. “Get back! He’s going over!”
Bruce was not a physically imposing man, but his stunned, elderly father was no competition for him in a wrestling match. Kenwood’s feet left the ground as Bruce pushed him backward, his shoulders extending over the edge of the wall and the warning track below. Bruce stood up on one of the swivel chairs, then braced one of his purple pumps against the back of the chair and kneeled on the beverage counter for the leverage he needed to push his father all the way over the edge, while Sam struggled to get past Katherine’s wheelchair and grab Bruce’s leg. Bruce saw Sam lunging for him, and tried to tuck his legs underneath him while he pushed his father closer to the edge of the wall. But the counter was slick and wet from the heavy rainfall, and as Sam finally got his hand around a bare ankle, Bruce’s other leg slipped out from under him and his weight pitched forward. Sam switched his grasp to Lou’s leg just as Bruce let go of his father and tried desperately to grasp the low backsplash on top of the wall. There wasn’t enough surface to hold on to, and the momentum taking Bruce over the edge was too great. His pumps scissored furiously but got no traction on the wet counter, and in an instant he had disappeared over the edge, screaming all the way down.
Sam pulled Lou Kenwood to safety, then both men peered cautiously over the edge of the Green Monster. Bruce’s twisted body lay far below them on the wet warning track, face up, the neck bent in an impossible angle. His purple shoes had both come off on impact and lay a few feet away. Sam turned back toward the seats, but Lou kept staring at his son’s body.
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” Kenwood said, his voice choking as he finally turned away. “I thought he was dead. I’d made my peace with that.”
And now it was going to get worse for Lou Kenwood.
Sam glanced at Heather, wondering when she intended to tell Kenwood about Alberto Miranda. She had not gone to the edge of the wall to look down at Bruce’s body; instead, she merely stood in place a few feet away and hung her head in silence. Sam knew that in every way, Heather must be feeling like an outsider now to this family that she had once hoped to join—the cause of much of their pain, and the bearer of even more bad news for one of them.
No, this was not the time for Heather to tell Lou that she was leaving him. Anyone could see that.
“I need…a cigarette,” Katherine said.
Her hands and her head were visibly shaking. Sam watched as she put her hands under her blanket. The beauty he’d thought he’d seen in her just a few days ago seemed to have vanished. Before him now was a wet, withered, bitter woman with nothing on earth to live for.
He watched her pull out her cigarettes, and then reach under her blanket again for a lighter.
“What do we do now, Lou?” Sam said, looking at the owner.
Kenwood just shook his head. He glanced back at the field behind him, knowing that he had no idea how to explain to the press why his son had fallen from the top of the Green Monster to his death.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Heather?”
Both turned to look at her just as they heard the crack from Katherine’s Beretta Bobcat and saw Heather crumple to the ground from the bullet that tore through her heart.
Sam lunged toward Katherine’s chair, afraid she might shoot again. Instead, she held out the gun and handed it to Sam.
“You were right, Sam,” Katherine said. There was a hard, satisfied glint in her eye and a wet, unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. “If you put it…in the right place…it only takes one.”
&
nbsp; Sam turned away from her and joined Kenwood at Heather’s side. Blood had seeped out of Heather’s chest wound, and he knew even without checking her pulse that she was dead.
“Get an ambulance,” Kenwood said. “Call 9-1-1. Sam, call the police!”
Sam pulled out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. When the dispatcher said an ambulance was on the way, Sam took the phone away from his face and said, “Lou, are you sure you want the police now?”
“Yes,” Kenwood said. He stood up, looking at his wife in stupefied disbelief. “Yes, call the police.”
Sam’s call was routed by an emergency dispatcher to the Boston cops. There was nothing else to do but wait for the squad cars and ambulances to arrive.
“I’m not sorry, Lou,” Katherine said.
Kenwood sat down in one of the swivel seats with his back to Heather, hanging his head and holding his temples.
“Why, Katherine? Why?”
“Because she was going to end up…with everything,” Katherine said. “The house, the boat, the team…you. You ignored my idea…my legacy…you were going to give it all to her.”
“I don’t understand,” Kenwood said.
“She was willing to ruin you before you married Heather,” Sam said.
Kenwood looked up slowly, staring first at Sam, then at Katherine.
“What are you talking about?”
“You and Heather would sink every dime…back into the team,” Katherine said. “Then someday you would be gone…and Heather would have what I never had…The chance to run the best team in baseball…A dynasty…She’d spend all the revenues on the Sox…pleasing the fans…improving her image…
“Sooner or later…she’d marry some slick hunk in a suit…they’d have kids…and God knows who’d end up with the team…Meanwhile, I’d be totally forgotten…nothing to say I’d ever been a part of it…nothing of me…”
Lou walked up to Katherine, put his hands on either side of her wheelchair, and lowered his face close to hers. She flinched as though expecting Lou to strike her, or scream at her, but instead he spoke to her with the quiet sadness of a bewildered old man.
“Where’d you get the idea I was going to marry Heather?”
“Heather told me you promised to marry her after Katherine died,” Sam said.
“I knew it all along,” Katherine said.
“Never,” Kenwood said. “May God strike me dead if I ever told her that.”
It was Sam’s turn to be stunned.
“Then where did she get that idea?” Sam said.
“God rest her soul, she was brilliant and beautiful, but I think she must have been a little crazy,” Kenwood said. “Yeah, we had a fling. That wasn’t hard to guess. But marry her? All in her imagination. I’ve been married twice. That’s enough.”
He looked at Katherine. The streaks running down both of their faces were tears mixed with the rain.
“I’d already found the love of my life.”
Chapter Thirty-three
The clouds parted well before game time that Sunday, but the Red Sox-Yankees showdown was postponed anyway. It would be made up the day after the regular season, if necessary. The Sox went on to sweep the following series with the Rays, while the Yankees were losing two of three to the Orioles, and Boston had a one-game lead with three, or at most four, games to play.
Katherine Kenwood was arrested for murder and was released from the Suffolk County jail when Lucky Louie paid her $500,000 bail. He wanted to take her home, but she was too frail. She died at Mass General two days later. Lou Kenwood scheduled a memorial ceremony for her prior to that night’s Rays game at Fenway Park, and was persuaded by his staff to include Heather, too. Katherine’s video tribute lasted five minutes, and included the announcement of the establishment of the Katherine Kenwood Foundation. Heather was mentioned once.
Sam called the L.A. police and learned that Frankie Navarro and a Kimberly Ryan had been detained after the Palos Verdes shootout, and eventually released. Joey “Icebox” Mattaliano had been found unconscious on Ryan’s back deck, and was still in custody. No arrests had been made in the Laswell Gym murders; Sid Mink was seen in his oversized Dodger Stadium box seat Sunday afternoon. No one seemed to know where Frankie Navarro was, but his girlfriend Fawna had been found shot to death at the home Frankie owned. Frankie was the prime suspect in a presumed domestic dispute, but Sam knew otherwise. Sid Mink’s boys had gone back to Frankie’s house after the car wreck, forced Fawna to tell them where Bruce lived, and then killed her. She had been acting when she told Sam and Heather she didn’t know who Bruce was. She’d actually been damn good.
Acting was not in Frankie’s future, at least not in L.A.
Sam remained in Boston until Thursday, answering questions about the case for the police, the press, and the Commissioner’s office. Lou Kenwood was convinced that it was safe to talk about the plot now, with Miranda willing to refute the allegations and no other proof ever having been brought forward. To deal with the increasing crush of worldwide media attention the story had gathered, Lucky Louie scheduled a press conference at Fenway Park for Thursday at one p.m.
Russ Daly flew in from Los Angeles on Wednesday for the press conference, and called Sam at the Taj Boston. Sam invited him up for a drink. He had a bottle of Woodford Reserve, which Daly gladly helped him finish.
“You owe me, Skarda.” Daly eased his bulky frame into one of the stuffed armchairs by the fireplace. “I could have blown this story open last week.”
“I know,” Sam said. “That’s why I decided to call you in L.A. I knew you wouldn’t.”
“I think I deserve something for my remarkable discretion.”
“What do you want?”
“Something other than the B.S. Kenwood’s been feeding the Boston writers.”
So Sam told Daly the whole story, starting with the call he got from Heather in Minneapolis, the shooting outside the Boom Boom Room, and almost everything else right up to the moment that Katherine pulled the trigger on the gun Sam had helped her learn how to use.
He did hold back on a few details. He didn’t tell Daly that the hitman in the boat was somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic off Marblehead Neck, and he didn’t tell him that the fatal blow to Guillermo “Jefe” Llenas had been struck by Alberto Miranda; nor did he tell Daly that he’d placed the gun in Jefe’s hand before the Caracas police arrived.
“Use whatever you want,” Sam said when he was finished. “As long as you get the lead right: Alberto Miranda did not throw the World Series. The Sox won it.”
“Some people will never believe that now,” Daly said.
“Do you believe it?”
“Doesn’t matter what I believe.”
“Yeah, but I’m curious.”
Daly took a long sip of his bourbon and then put his glass down on the table next to him.
“I believe it. That’s the trouble with being a sportswriter. With all the shit I’ve seen, I’m still too fuckin’ gullible. I want the fairy-tale ending.”
“Not much of a fairy tale,” Sam said. He swallowed some of his own bourbon and felt its effects moving like sorrow through his system. “Heather’s dead, Katherine’s dead, Bruce is dead…Fawna’s dead, and Lou’s going to be dead, too, before too long.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Daly said. “If I was a beautiful blonde with office skills, I’d be applying for a job with the Red Sox tomorrow morning. Could end up owning the team.”
Sam thought about hanging around through the weekend to see how the Sox did in their season-ending series with the Orioles—Lou had almost begged him to watch the games with him in his owner’s suite—but he knew he needed to get away from Fenway, the Green Monster, and the Red Sox. He would watch the Sox in the playoffs, if they made it that far.
Sam placed two calls before leaving Boston. One was to Caroline, assuring her that he was still in one piece. Caroline had read about the Green Monster deaths in the paper, an
d asked if the woman who was killed was the same woman she’d helped fly to Caracas with Sam. Sam said it was.
“Sam, come to Tucson as soon as you get a chance,” she said in a soft voice. “We need to be with each other for a while.”
The other phone call was to Alberto Miranda. His elation at saving his mother’s life had turned to despair at the news of Heather’s death.
“She loved you, Alberto,” Sam said. “She knew you were a good man.”
“I loved her,” Miranda said. He sounded much farther away than the 2,200 miles between Boston and Caracas.
“Honor her memory. Play the game the right way. Play it clean. That’s all she would have asked of you.”
“I know, man. I know.”
***
Kenwood sent a car to the hotel Thursday afternoon to take Sam to the airport, and Sam was happy to see Paul O’Brien get out of the driver’s seat and greet him in front of the hotel.
“Afternoon, Mr. Skarda,” Paul said. “Let me help you with your luggage.”
Once they’d pulled away from the hotel, Sam said, “Paul, I want you to know how sorry I am for what happened.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Paul looked back at Sam in his rear-view mirror. “It was a bad deal, but it wasn’t your fault. You risked your life.”
“I got you fired.”
“No harm done,” Paul said. The accent was creeping back into his voice, the “r” disappearing from “harm.” “Mr. Kenwood explained what happened. I got a nice raise, too.”
“How’s your dad?”
“Hanging in there. Thanks for asking.”
For the rest of the ride to the airport, Sam and Paul did what guys do: They talked baseball. Hurtado had agreed to a new four-year contract at $20,000,000 per season. He’d be 36 years old at the end of the deal, and Paul didn’t think he’d be worth that kind of money in two more seasons, but how could you let him go after what he’d done in the last week? The pitching staff—especially the bullpen—was worn out after the furious effort it had taken to string together the 11-game win streak that had put them in first place. But the Yankees’ pitching was in even worse shape; their bullpen was in tatters, and they’d had to call up a starting pitcher off their Scranton roster to start Friday’s game in place of their 18-game winner, who had a sore elbow.
Green Monster Page 29
