Swain, the third baseman, was a vicious racist and sexist with a large repertoire of faggot jokes.
“He already treats me like dogshit, Kate. How could it get any worse?”
“We’re talking about a very conservative bunch of guys, Joe, you know that. I don’t want to be rude here, but even the nicest ones aren’t going to want to share the shower with you once this story is published. You’re going to lose friends.”
“Who is this bitch?” Sandy got up from the table and began to pace. “I thought you said she’d understand.”
“I told you, I don’t have any, problem with it myself. I’m happy for you, Joe, if you are. But I just want to make sure you know what you’re in for.”
“Cool it, Sandy” Joe said. “She’s trying to help.”
“One more thing, then I’ll shut up. What about the church? That’s been an awfully important part of your life. Are you ready for them to shut the door in your face?”
Preacher sat quietly for a moment.
“That’s what has kept me from admitting I’m gay all this time,” he said. “I turned to Jesus to help me deny that I’m this way. But it didn’t work. And all around me I saw hatred of what I am. I hated what I am. But I don’t hate it any more. Sandy has helped me. We both belong to a small gay congregation at home. I’ve made my peace with Jesus. If the church can’t make peace with me, that’s their problem.”
I poured more tea while I thought. He was certainly sincere. Joe’s a grown man. I thought he was being naive, but nothing I could say would change his mind. If he wanted to come out of the locker, as it were, I couldn’t stop him.
Besides, it was a great story. I’d wondered for a long time how gay players coped. And you know there have to be gay players hidden in locker rooms all over both leagues. This was going to be interesting.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I said. “You’re right, it’s quite a story. Do you want to start now or wait?”
“I’m ready to talk now, if it’s not too late for you. I’d like to get it over with.”
What followed wasn’t that unusual a love story, except for its context. When it was published it would be a bombshell, but in the small hours of a Wednesday morning it was rather sweet.
Joe told me about his confusion as an adolescent, his attraction to men, and his denial of it. Again, not a new story. When he was playing in the minor leagues he went to the gay baths to see what it was all about.
He never found out, ironically, because the joint was raided shortly after he got there and he had to confront what it would cost him if his teammates or the Titan organization had found out. It scared him, if not straight, celibate. It also sent him into the born-again fold and five years of extreme self-loathing.
Then came the blackmail, of course. When Sanchez was murdered, Kelsey was relieved. But he still felt vulnerable. There were new people who knew about it, for one thing: the police, me. And who else?
“I worried about it until I was sick,” he said. “Then I realized that one of the things bothering me was that I didn’t know for sure whether I was gay. I decided to find out.”
It wasn’t hard to know where to start. He took the bridge across San Francisco Bay and went into the first gay bookstore he came to. He bought a guide and found the upscale health club where he met Sandy.
“It’s a really nice place, Kate. I had thought these places were kind of seamy, you know, like that club in Knoxville. I was pretty scared. And all the AIDS stuff kind of freaked me out.”
“That was the first lecture I gave him,” Sandy said.
“I spent the winter doing my training there,” Joe continued. “It was just like any other club, except that I didn’t have to pretend.”
Sandy smiled.
“But he was, you will pardon the expression, the belle of the ball,” he said. “He’s a celebrity, after all. A major leaguer in a town that loves baseball. Joe didn’t lack for invitations.”
Kelsey laughed.
“Yes, but only one mattered. Sandy has opened a whole new world to me. It’s like going to college. My new friends talk about things I’d never thought about before. I don’t mean sex. Books, politics, stuff like that. I’m not used to talking about anything but baseball. None of the guys on the team are very interested in what goes on in the world.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
The three of us laughed like old friends. I poured more tea.
Chapter 9
Sandy and Joe left just after 2:00. They seemed very happy together. I had twinges of suspicion that Sandy might be using Joe for his own political purposes, but he seemed genuinely fond of him, and willing to stand by him if things got ugly. The change in Joe was remarkable. I’d never seen him so at ease. He had lost his shyness and gained confidence.
Selfishly, I asked them to promise to keep quiet for a few more days. I wanted time to put together a blockbuster for the Saturday paper with its half-million circulation. Hey, if I’m going to get a scoop, it might as well be a big one. I needed time to discuss the handling of the story with Jake and get some photographs. Sandy also agreed to stay out of sight until the weekend.
I slept through my first alarm in the morning, but had set a backup across the room, and was at the Planet by 10:00. Jake knew the story by a quarter past. He looked at me, stunned, for a few seconds, then broke into a smile.
“National Newspaper Award, for sure,” he said. “I knew putting a broad on the beat would pay off one day.”
“Thanks for the recognition of my talents,” I said. “How do you want to play it?”
“The happy couple will pose for pictures?”
“As far as I know. I thought we could send Jay. She can keep her mouth shut.”
“I wonder if they’ll hold hands. That would be cute.”
And Jake is what passes for an enlightened guy in this business.
“Do you need any sidebars or anything?” I asked. “I suppose I could do something on homosexuality in sport, but I don’t really feel like phoning around for it this week. The more people I talk to about this, the better chance that we’ll lose the exclusive.”
“That’s all right,” Jake said. “Let’s not dilute the impact of what we’ve got. We can do that stuff afterwards, while the rest of the papers are matching our story. I expect there’s going to be a lot of pretty heavy reaction, too.”
“I guess that’s the end of my weekend off,” I said.
“Why? I’ll just send one of the kids out to cover the team reaction. I’m sure Roger will be able to handle it.”
“Bastard. Just get someone else to do the game stories.”
“Starting tonight. I don’t want you near the team until Saturday.”
“Thanks. I have enough to do.”
I was at the door when Jake stopped me.
“Be sure you find out which one’s the wife.”
I left without answering, my high spirits dampened. The story was a great coup for me, but Joe was leaving himself open for a lot of crap, even from people like Jake.
I settled in at my desk for a day of slogging. The first job was to transcribe a couple of hours’ worth of tapes. I found the departmental tape recorder easily enough, but it took me half an hour to track down the earphones, which had been borrowed by the entertainment department, and the foot pedal, which turned up in the business section.
Then I had to put up with chirping from the next desk.
“We haven’t had that beer yet, Kate. How about it?”
“I’ve been pretty busy, Dickie. Maybe later today, if I can get through this.”
“What are you working on?”
“A feature for the weekend.”
“What’s it about?”
“Sorry, Dickie. I can’t talk about it right now.”
“Well, excuse me for living,” he said. “I’ll ca
tch you later, when you’re not involved in top-secret projects.”
He made one of those obnoxious pistol gestures with his index finger, shot me, winked, and went back to the phones.
By the end of the afternoon I had a backache from hunching over the keyboard and eyestrain from looking at the screen, but I had finished transcribing. I took a printout to work on at home, then used a security feature of our computer system to put the whole thing in code. There are hackers in the newsroom who spend most of their shifts figuring out passwords and browsing through other people’s files.
I signed out of the system and told Dickie, tied to his desk by phone calls from his high-school correspondents, that we’d have that beer real soon.
I was just about out of there when Jake grabbed me and marched me in to see Ron Wilson, the managing editor. He wanted the story to run on the front page—big deal—instead of in the sports section, so he had to get into the act.
His office was on a direct diagonal across the newsroom from the sports section, but we had to thread our way through an obstacle course of little gatherings of workstations representing the various departments. We turned right at Entertainment, left at Foreign, right again at Business, and left past the feature writers into his outer office.
I could see him at his desk, gazing out the window while he played with a paper clip. Wilson is a little man, not much older than I, who works with his jacket off so everyone can admire his old-fashioned sleeve garters. He would wear a green eyeshade, too, if he didn’t think people would laugh.
Jake rapped on the doorjamb. Wilson turned, saw us, and jumped from his chair and strode across the room. He shook my hand conspiratorially.
“What a bombshell! Out of the closet and into the locker room,” he said, by way of greeting.
“I trust you’re not writing the head,” I said.
“Great story, Kate, just great,” he said. “It will sell a lot of papers.”
Oh, Joe will be so pleased, I thought.
“There’s going to be a lot of interest in you, too,” he said. “I thought maybe you might do a first-person piece about how you got the story. How ’bout that?”
I looked at Jake, who was trying to keep a straight face.
“He just handed it to me,” I said. “I didn’t do anything to get it. I’m not really comfortable writing in the first person.”
“But a scoop like this deserves something extra,” he said. “See if you can’t work a little personal angle into it in your section, Jake.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” Jake said, as we edged towards the door.
“A world copyright exclusive, by our Katie. Way to go! Keep in touch.”
“I think our Katie deserves a drink,” Jake muttered as we made our way back across the newsroom. “My treat.”
“Let me just call Andy first,” I said. “We’re supposed to be meeting for supper.”
“I’ll catch you downstairs, then.”
“Order me a scotch.”
Chapter 10
The Final Edition, the bar and restaurant on the main floor of the Planet building was packed, usual at the end of the day. But no one was eating. The food is terrible. Planet staffers have been known to warn off unwary tourists who blunder in after a day at Harbourfront. It’s just our way of helping Toronto’s world-class image. The Ministry of Tourism and Recreation should give us an award.
Jake had grabbed a table in the middle of the room, surrounded by the usual collection of complainers drinking away a day of ego-busting. At the reporters’ tables they were whining about the stifling of creativity. The editors, at their own tables, talked about the decline in standards of journalism. Sometimes the cocktail hour ended in fist fights. Other times, the two factions joined together in sloppy camaraderie. The later it was in the week, the wilder it got. This was Thursday night. I manoeuvred myself into one of the bucket chairs brought in during the most recent renovation and looked around.
I cringed when I saw who was at the next table. Bill Spencer was centre stage, showing off his collection of photographs. As well as snapping me in action, he also specialized in getting disgusting pictures of famous people: the mayor with his finger up his nose, the prime minister adjusting his crotch, that sort of thing.
From what I could see, he was showing off windy-day shots. Most photographers loathe weather assignments, but Spencer, who got more than his share, loved them. Windy days mean skirts over the head, of course, and he had collected hundreds of crotch shots of hapless secretaries over the years.
“Don’t these people have homes to go to?” I asked.
Jake laughed.
“Since you hooked up with that cop, you’ve forgotten the rituals of your profession. For shame.”
“Where’s my drink?”
“I haven’t managed to get Lenore’s attention yet,” he said, flailing a wild semaphore across the room. It worked.
“Sorry, love, what’ll it be,” said the fiftyish waitress, wiping the table with a rag. Her hair is always bleached blonde, she wears a pointy bra under a tight white sweater, and behaves as either a mother or a bouncer, whichever is most appropriate.
Jake stroked her skinny bum in its polyester miniskirt.
“A pair of scotches,” he said. “Johnny Walker Red, not your watered-down bar shit.”
“Keep your hands to yourself or you’ll get nothing, buster,” she said.
“Go get him, Lenore,” I said, “but since I am not sexually harassing you, it would be right sisterly if you would bring my drink. I try my best to keep these guys in line, but they’re so old, they can’t change their mentality.”
“They’re so old, all they can do is touch anyway,” she said, slipping expertly between the jammed tables.
“She got you, Jake,” I said. “And, semi-seriously, you really should keep your hands off her. How would you like it if Ron Wilson pinched you on the cheek whenever you came up with a good idea in the features meeting?”
“Come on, Kate. Lenore and I are old friends. She understands.”
“She probably does, but she might like you better if you weren’t like all the rest of the pigs in the bar. Besides, you’re likely to get a drink in your lap one of these days.”
Lenore, bless her heart, had done just that to one of the more obnoxious representatives of the rewrite desk a few weeks before. It was the talk of the newsroom.
When she returned to our table with a loaded tray, my scotch was noticeably larger than Jake’s. I raised one eyebrow at him, a trick I perfected at university after spending more hours practising it in front of my mirror than studying at my desk. I flunked out, but I have a devastating eyebrow.
“Thank you very much, Lenore,” he said, reaching into his pocket and putting a crumpled handful of bills on the tray.
“Don’t mention it,” she said, with a smug smile. Turning, she almost collided with Dickie Greaves.
“Get me a Blue,” he said, then snagged an empty chair and pulled it up to our table, oblivious to the fact that he was blocking an aisle.
“This is a break, finding you both here,” he said, with his best boyish smile. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“No, not at all,” Jake said, downing his drink. “I was just leaving. You can keep Kate company.”
I glared at him. He reached over, pinched my cheek, and told me he’d see me tomorrow.
“Perhaps,” I said.
Dickie moved into Jake’s chair, and started to push the other one back to its proper table.
“Leave it,” I said. “A friend of mine should be joining us in a few minutes.”
“Who? Don’t tell me I’m going to meet Staff Sergeant Munro?” he asked. I nodded.
“That’s great,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to meet the man who has broken the hearts of the entire sports department by stealing you away.”
“Give it a rest, Dickie. Practise your charm on another victim. I’m old enough to be your mother, and you’re married already. How’s the baby?”
“He’s just great. He can roll over.”
“And Beth? How is she liking motherhood?”
“I think she’s getting the hang of it.”
“And are you a good modern father? Diaper detail and all that?”
He smiled uncomfortably and ran his fingers through his well-cut hair. He looked around for his beer before answering.
“Well, I’m pretty busy with work, of course. That stuff is Beth’s department. She doesn’t want me messing around with it.”
“But you’ve already given him his first baseball glove, right?”
“Darn straight.”
We were laughing when Andy appeared in the door. I waved. Dickie craned his neck around and watched Andy cross the room. So did I. I never get tired of looking at this man. He is slight, but strong, with dark curly hair, strong cheekbones and jaw, and gentle grey eyes. He’s a knockout, in my eyes. He looked tired, but sexy.
“Hi, darling. I’ve saved you a chair,” I said. “I’d like you to meet a colleague of mine. . . .”
Dickie jumped up and stuck out his hand.
“Richard Greaves,” he said. “It’s a great honour to meet you. I’m an admirer of your work.”
“Richard is in charge of our school sports section,” I explained.
“How interesting,” Andy said. He looked around for service. Lenore, spotting an interesting new face, was at his side in a flash.
“I’d love a Martini,” he said.
“Not here, you wouldn’t,” Lenore answered. “Stick to the straight stuff.”
“She’s right. She watches out for her friends. So I’d better introduce you. Andy, this is Lenore, who is the protector of all innocents who enter here. Lenore, this is my friend Andy Munro.”
Andy rose halfway from his chair and shook her hand.
“I’ll have whatever Kate’s having, thanks,” he said. “And Richard?”
“I ordered a Blue ten minutes ago,” he grumbled.
Safe at Home Page 5
