Forced Out

by Stephen Frey

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m gonna get you a tryout with the Yankees. The New York Yankees.”

  Kyle’s wide eyes raced to Jack’s. “No, no, I can’t do that.”

  “Easy,” Jack said reassuringly. “Cheryl told me about what happened back up North. About the mob and why you were down here using that other name.” The Kid might be angry that Cheryl had violated some pact they’d made last night, but it was better to be up front about it.

  “She told you?”

  “Of course she did. She’s my daughter. She tells me everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Sure. What would you expect?”

  Kyle ran a hand through his long, dark hair. “Look, I really appreciate your offer, but I can’t go back to New York. Ever. Those people are still looking for me. I know it.”

  “It’s been two years. They’ve forgotten.”

  “No way. They haven’t forgotten. Listen, I—”

  “Let’s not get into it now,” Jack suggested calmly. “I know you’re worried about it. We’ll talk, but not now. Okay?”

  Kyle nodded hesitantly. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Good. Hey, look, I want to show you something.” Jack pointed down at the box. “It’s really cool.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just look.”

  It was one of the oldest gags in the baseball book. When the top opened, a nasty-looking stuffed raccoon with bared teeth and claws came springing out, scaring the person who didn’t know what was going on half to death. Big leaguers did it to rookies all the time. And sometimes front-office people did it to new front-office people. It had been one of Jack’s trademarks.

  “Come on,” Jack urged, groaning as he knelt.

  “You all right?” Kyle asked, kneeling down beside Jack.

  “It’s my arthritis, Kid. A lot of pain, but nothing to worry about. Now look at this,” he said, his voice growing quieter the closer he got to the box, drawing the Kid in. There was a button on one side that released the door, the spring, and the stuffed raccoon, and he slid his finger subtly to it. “Closer, come on.”

  He was just about to push the button when he felt something on his shoulder. He glanced over. At the head of a huge snake.

  “Jesus Christ!” he shouted, tumbling away from the box, pushing the button in the process, his heart in his throat. He thrashed about on the lawn for a few moments, finally grabbing the snake and tossing it toward the shed. “Damn it! Kill that thing!” he yelled at the Kid, making it to his feet as fast as he had in years.

  Then he noticed that the Kid was bent over, hands on his stomach, laughing uncontrollably. And that Cheryl was standing at the screen door, tears running down her face—she was supposed to have left for the office ten minutes ago. Suddenly he realized what had happened. The tables had been turned. “Fake, right?” he asked, his heart still pounding. Aware that the snake hadn’t moved from where he’d tossed it.

  “Very fake,” Cheryl confirmed, trotting across the lawn and jumping into the Kid’s arms.

  Jack watched as the Kid caught her and spun her around twice before gently letting her to the ground again.

  “Both of you in on this?”

  “That’s right, Daddy.” She shook the Kid’s hand. “Congratulations, Kyle. You got the master. Too bad we didn’t take a video. Lots of people in the Yankee organization would love to have seen that.”

  Jack watched Cheryl and the Kid embrace again. Interesting. It wasn’t bothering him. He couldn’t remember the last time a guy hugging his daughter hadn’t bothered him.

  Johnny headed out of the Tampa airport in the rental car with the windows down, air rushing all around him. God, it was nice down here in South Florida. Eighty-five degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The air seemed cleaner and the sun seemed brighter. You started feeling healthier the moment you got off the plane, even while you were still in the terminal, even with a hole in your body. His shoulder was actually feeling much better. He could move his fingers a little, and it had stopped bleeding.

  Now if he could just lose this awful premonition of peril. It had hit him hard again as he was boarding the plane this morning at LaGuardia and had intensified with every mile closer to Florida he flew. Now it was as if it had attached itself to his heart because with every beat he was acutely aware of it.

  Johnny took a quick check of his mirrors and pressed the accelerator. He just wanted to get to his condominium. Just wanted to get inside it and lock the door. Then maybe he’d feel safe.

  40

  JACK CLIMBED OUT of the Citation and glanced up at the sun, shading his eyes. It was after four o’clock, but there still wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It had been one of those picture-perfect South Florida days, one of the prettiest he could remember. Maybe it was an omen.

  He’d talked with the Kid for a while after the fake-snake incident, and it seemed like Kyle might be letting his guard down, might be softening his stance on going back to New York. Like he was starting to convince himself that the Lucchesi family wasn’t so hot on his trail anymore. And that if the Yankees gave him a big contract, the organization could help with the situation if the old boss—Angelo Marconi—was still alive and kicking. Still looking for revenge. Maybe, just maybe, Jack dared to consider for the first time, everything he’d been dreaming of might actually be coming together.

  He opened the back door and reached inside to lift Rosario from her car seat. When he raised slowly back up with her in his arms, MJ was heading down the rickety, warped wooden steps of the Billups’ front porch.

  “Hey, pal,” he called.

  MJ waved. “How you doing, Ahab?”

  “All right. Where’s your mom?”

  “Fixing supper.”

  “Does she know I’m here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What’s she fixing?”

  “Ribs and mashed potatoes.”

  Man, that sounded good. Suddenly Jack wished he wasn’t on such a tight schedule. “I think I just drooled,” he muttered.

  “Stick around,” MJ suggested. “There’s enough for one more.”

  Jack wondered if that was really true. Or if he’d be taking food out of somebody’s mouth. Well, either way, he was going to make a difference for the Billups family this afternoon. At least for the short term. “I’d love to, but I…I can’t.”

  “Why? Because you don’t want to have dinner with a black family?”

  Now, that was crossing the line. “Come on, MJ, you know I—”

  “I’m kidding.” MJ grinned. “I just wanted to see if I could still get a rise out of the old man. I know where your heart is, Ahab.”

  MJ was a firecracker, no two ways about it. “You know I’d have dinner with your family anytime. Hell, I’d fix your family dinner at my house anytime. I will fix your family dinner at my house sometime soon.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see. So how’s the Kid doing?”

  “Fine. He and my daughter are hanging out right now.”

  Jack had asked Cheryl to work on the Kid some more while she took him shopping for some new clothes, to get him more comfortable with the idea of the Yankee tryout and going back to New York. But she’d sort of balked at it. Hadn’t rejected doing it out of hand, but Jack got the feeling she was still worried that the mob was after Kyle. Clearly she was starting to care for him, which, surprisingly, still didn’t bother Jack. Even if she wouldn’t help convince the Kid to stop worrying about the mob. It was weird. Jack even tried to make the idea of a relationship between them bother him. No luck.

  “She took the day off to help him buy a few things.”

  MJ gestured at Rosario. “I know what that means.”

  “What?”

  “It means you wouldn’t mind having the Kid as a son-in-law.”

  “What? Are you out of your mind? She’s thirteen years older than him.”

  “So?”

  Jack tried to make it seem like the whole thing was crazy. But MJ h
ad him pegged. Again. “How the hell did you come up with that?”

  “Why else would you take care of the baby all day? You hate doing that more than you hate talking money. You did it because you wanted them to have some time together.”

  “She hasn’t even known Kyle for twenty-four hours. My daughter doesn’t fall for anybody that fast.”

  MJ smiled that broad, pearly white smile. “You haven’t known him for twenty-four hours yet, either. But you’re already in love with him.”

  Jack raised one eyebrow. “You might be right.”

  “I bet you’d rather have the Kid dating Cheryl than that guy…” MJ snapped his fingers a couple of times, trying to remember. “What’s his name? Bobby something?”

  “Bobby Griffin.”

  “You hate that guy, don’t you?”

  “I don’t hate anyone.” Which wasn’t accurate. But it sounded better than the truth. “She’s supposed to go out with Bobby tonight, which is why I can’t stick around. I don’t want to leave the Kid by himself at the house for too long. I don’t want him getting lonely.”

  “Don’t you have another commitment tonight?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Tarpons have a game. Or did you already quit?”

  “Of course I did. I’m not dressing up like Ralph Kramden one more night I don’t have to.”

  “Ralph who?”

  “You know, The Honeymooners.”

  “You mean that movie Cedric the Entertainer did a few years ago?”

  “Cedric the who?”

  “That black comedian.”

  “Black comedian? No, no, no. It was—”

  “I know, I know.” MJ was cracking up. “Keep your shorts on, Ahab. You’re talking about the character Jackie Gleason played. The bus driver on the old sitcom. The one Cedric the Entertainer re-created. My mother loves that old show.” MJ shook his head. “Relax, old man.”

  Jack still couldn’t always tell when MJ was putting him on and when he wasn’t. And he had to give the young man credit. There weren’t many people in the world who could do that. “Point is I need to make sure Kyle doesn’t get any crazy ideas, doesn’t talk to anybody he shouldn’t.”

  “All of a sudden you sound a lot like an agent, Ahab. And a lot less like a hunter.”

  “Well, I hooked the whale. Now I just gotta convince him to live in this big aquarium and perform every day.”

  “And give you a piece of the take.”

  That sure would be nice, but he didn’t know anything about being an agent. He’d mangled his own contract, for crying out loud, given away his pension in the process. He didn’t want to screw up Kyle’s deal. Nah, leave that to a pro. To one of those big Wall Street lawyers turned agents. He’d be happy just getting his job and his pension back for bringing the talent of an era to the organization.

  “He doesn’t have to do that,” Jack said quietly. “He’s under no obligation.”

  “But he should,” MJ argued. “If he’s any kind of man, he will. If you got him that tryout and the Yankees got interested in him, he’d owe you big time. I mean, Single-A straight to the majors? That’s a big jump.”

  “He belongs in the majors. We both know that. The jump would have nothing to do with me.”

  “Maybe not. Except now that he’s been in Single-A for a while, he’s got a credibility problem. He’s got stats, and they aren’t phenom stats.”

  True. Last season and the beginning of this one were in the books. And the record wasn’t very good. Of course, when the front office confirmed that McLean had been emulating Mickey Mantle almost perfectly this season, and saw him hit a couple of five-hundred-foot home runs in the tryout, the stats would probably be tossed out the window.

  “He needs somebody like you to get him that tryout,” MJ spoke up. “To make people believe he really belongs. It’s not like he’d get his own tryout now. He’d have to work his way up through the ranks.”

  “It wouldn’t take him long.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Jack shook his head, thinking about Kyle’s situation. “Poor guy. The last two years he’s had nothing to keep him going but baseball. No family, no friends, no money.” It was amazing to think about. “Not even a television, for God’s sake. He told me this morning he’s read more books in the past two years than he’s read in his entire life before this.” The Kid had surprised him with how sharp he was. Jack hadn’t been expecting much. “He’s no dummy, either. He’s smart.” Jack grinned. “Not as smart as you, MJ, but smart. Of course, I haven’t met many people smarter than you.” He could see that MJ was suddenly struggling with his emotions. They’d developed a special bond, and now Jack had been the first one to actually say something about it. Which was how it should have been. Most teenagers didn’t even know how to carry on a conversation with a sixty-three-year-old, let alone verbalize meaningful emotions between them. “And I doubt I ever will.”

  MJ kicked at the dusty ground. “Stop it, Ahab.”

  “I mean it.”

  “All right,” MJ said softly. “By the way, the suspension’s over.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. The Tarpons’ owner called me ten minutes ago to let me know it was over.”

  “Mitch Borden called you? Holy crap. Why?”

  “I rode my bike out to the stadium this morning to see him. We had a meeting.”

  “A meeting?”

  “Sure,” MJ said, as if it was no big deal. “I sat down with him and told him that the thing about the Kid stealing McDaniel’s wallet was all bull. I told him what really happened. That Whitney was the crook. Borden promised he’d look into it fast. I guess he did, because the Kid and I are back in uniform tomorrow night. He said he wanted to talk to Lefty today, but we could count on being in the locker room tomorrow. Said neither one of us would lose any pay, either.”

  “How could he figure out what had happened so fast?”

  “Cameras,” MJ said matter-of-factly.

  “In the locker room? What is he? Some kind of—”

  “No, no. In the hallway leading to the bullpen. Said he had tape of Whitney looking at the wallet just inside the doorway to the bullpen, then hiding it in a vent or something. He’s off the team. Gone.”

  Well, that was good news. Sort of. Jack had been kind of glad Kyle didn’t have anywhere to go for a couple of weeks so they had time to really get to know each other while he was setting up the tryout. “Good for you. You want to call Kyle and let him know? I’ll give you my daughter’s cell number. You can talk to him right away.”

  MJ shook his head. “No. You tell him he’s playing again. Make him think you got him back on the field. I already told Borden that was how it was gonna be. He didn’t get it, but he said he’d play along.”

  “But—”

  “Kyle needs to feel like he owes you. This’ll help.”

  “I haven’t even paid you yet.”

  “You will,” MJ answered confidently. “You won’t let me down.”

  “You’re right,” Jack said softly. “More right than you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jack put Rosario down on the driver’s seat, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. Twenty crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. “Here’s two grand. This ought to settle us up.”

  MJ blinked several times in disbelief at the sight of so much cash. “That’s more than you owe me, Ahab. Way more.”

  “It includes severance,” Jack said with a smile, holding the bills out. “Sorry, but this ends the business relationship. At least for now. I wish it didn’t, but I can’t afford you anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll help you get another job.”

  “Thanks.” MJ took the money. “I’ll probably do the batboy thing for a few more games. I actually like it. And I want at least one more chance to look Reggie McDaniel in the eye and tell him what I think of him.”

  “Don’t go looking for trouble in life,” Jack couns
eled. “Enough of it’ll find you all on its own.”

  “Uh-huh. So where’d you get this?” MJ asked suspiciously, holding the cash up before slipping it in his pocket.

  “Don’t ask. It’s too depressing.”

  MJ chewed softly on his lower lip for a moment. “How about you answer another question for me, and I won’t ask you where you got the money again?”

  “Depends on the question,” Jack replied, smiling at Rosario, who was grabbing the steering wheel tightly with one of her precious little hands.

  “What the hell happened in New York a coupla years ago?”

  Jack’s eyes flickered to MJ’s. “What do you mean?”

  “Why’d you get fired from the Yankees? I tried researching it on the Internet,” MJ continued, “but there wasn’t much there. The articles mostly just said you and the Yankees decided to go in different directions. There were a couple that implied you did something wrong, but there weren’t many details.”

  Jack laughed harshly. “‘Different directions.’ What a crock.”

  “So what happened?” MJ asked again.

  “I don’t want to go into it.” The weird thing was, he actually did. Suddenly he realized that enough time had passed, and he couldn’t think of a better person to talk about it with than MJ. “I really don’t.”

  “You sure?”

  “It still hurts.” Rosario was giggling as she grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. “I got framed.”

  “For what?”

  Jack took a deep breath. Man, this was hard. “I was supposed to have given some information to the Boston Red Sox right before we played them in the 2004 American League Championship Series. Inside information.”

  “Jesus,” MJ whispered. “About what?”

  “About who,” Jack corrected. “I was supposed to have given them an injury report on Derek Jeter, on the Yankee captain, on the main man. I was supposed to have told them that Derek had a bad right wrist that nobody knew about. So if you jammed him inside with fastballs and hard sliders, he wouldn’t be able to get the bat around.”

  “Whoa.”

  Jack nodded. “Yeah, whoa. Serious stuff. Because usually Jeter’ll take you over the fence if you do that. But the Red Sox did pitch him inside with fastballs and hard sliders, and if you look at the tapes, he couldn’t get the bat around. He went six-for-thirty in seven games. Terrible for him. Just one extra-base hit, a double. He didn’t have a home run the entire series. It was a nightmare for him. A nightmare for the entire city.”