by Jack Getze
Torres broke and put one more ball in and then I ran the table. “Yes!” I said, and made the “cha-ching” guesture of triumph. Torres made a face and handed me a twenty dollar bill, twisting his face further in disgust. Dusty stuck his head out of his office.
“Halliday! In here.”
I glanced around at the few teammates still there. “Skip’s gonna give me a bonus, I bet. Probably a new contract.”
Over in the corner, Barry Bonds in his Barcolounger, looked up from staring at his own eight by ten glossy and smirked. “Yeah, you the man, Pete.” The other players laughed.
I breezed into Dusty’s office, happy as a traded NY Yankee, kissed the twenty dollar bill Torres had just handed me, and stuck it in my pocket.
“Siddown,” Dusty said. He took the chair in front of the manager’s desk.
Someone else was in the office. I hadn’t seen him come in so he must have come in through the back. It was the Blue Suit from the stands.
“Sign this,” Dusty said.
“What is it?” I said. I leaned forward to see the paper Dusty shoved at me.
“Your outright release.”
I was floored. “What the fuck? I missed one lousy sign, Cap. Clark even misses signs. Bonds doesn’t even look for ’em.”
Dusty sighed, took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “You ain’t Clark, son, and you sure ain’t Bonds. It ain’t that, anyway. It’s your gambling.”
“Gambling? Who the fuck says I been gambling?” I looked over at the blue-suited man, gave him a good glare. Somehow, this guy was behind this.
“Me,” the man said. “I say you’ve been gambling.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Vernon Strassler. League office. You want to hear a phone tape?”
I couldn’t help it. I groaned and slumped forward in my chair. Strassler placed a small tape recorder on the desk and punched a button.
A deep voice said, “You got the Fatman.”
I heard my own voice reply. “Yo, Fat. Me, Pete. Gimme a dime on Oakland. Same on the Red Sox. Clements goes tomorrow, right?”
The deep voice said, “Pay what you owe, Halliday, and we’ll talk. By Friday. That means all of it, hotshot.”
I moaned again and louder as I listened to my own voice. “Hey, man. I’m good. I’m winning this one, big-time. You know I’m...” A click sounded, followed by silence. Then: “Yes. That’s right. The bedroom—”
Strassler turned off the machine.
Dusty shook his head sadly. “Sorry, son. Sign this for your severance pay.”
I straightened up. “Dusty, I’ll lay you five to one, if you give me another chance you’ll never catch me gambling again. I—”
“The check’s for ten thousand, Pete. You can thank me for the extra. The club was only going to give you five. We’ll keep this out of the papers and expect you to do the same.”
There wasn’t anything left to do. I picked up the check and looked it over. I started to say something and ended up shaking my head and picking up the pen on the desk and signing the release form.
Dusty stood up and I followed his lead and took his offered hand for a last handshake.
“You know, kid,” Dusty said, indicating the meeting was over. “It’s none of my business, but you might want to look at your life. Gambling’s cost you a wife and now baseball.”
Bright and early the next morning, a woman teller counted out bills, put them in an envelope and handed it to me. I thanked her, stuck the envelope in my pocket and left.
I was walking down the bank steps when two men came up, one a beefy mountain of a man and the other slight and swarmy. They came up beside me, took me by the elbows and hustled me down the steps. All three of us walked to the alley beside the bank and went on back to a pair of dumpsters.
The big guy spun me around and pinned an armlock on me. The little guy snatched the envelop from his pocket, tore it open and counted the money. “Damn,” he said, “Where’s the other five?”
I frowned. “It’s in the mail? You buy that?”
The little guy placed the wad of bills in his jacket pocket and nodded to his large partner who gripped me tighter. “Wise guy, huh?” the little guy said.
“Well, you wouldn’t know it by my SATs. You know what? You look familiar. I got it! Your mom.”
“My mom?” the little goon said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Your mom. We been dating. Whenever I have an extra twenty. I just love it when she takes out her false teeth. You know...” I went on. “I might end up your stepfather. Think she’d grow a mustache for me?”
The little guy hauled off and socked me in the gut. I collapsed and struggled to right myself and get my breath back.
“Yeah,” I said, wheezing my words out. “You hit about like your mom. I can see you’re related. I suppose you wanna give me a blowjob now?”
“You fuck,” the little guy screamed, and hit me again. As I folded in half like a WWII Japanese foot soldier unexpectedly finding himself in the same room as the Emperor, the little guy grabbed my hand and brought it around and secured it between his arm and chest. He bent four of my fingers back until they cracked. Audibly. Almost as loud as the scream I gave out, feeling like a complete bitch when I did, but couldn’t help it.
When I woke up, I was lying in a hospital bed, my hand splinted and bandaged and feeling like I imagined those pennies we’d put on railroad tracks when we were kids might have if they had nerves running through Lincoln’s face. Worse.
At least it wasn’t my pitching hand. Not that it much mattered any more.
Two men were sitting there, staring at me. A white man and a black man.
My teammates. Rod “Shooter” Beck and Willie McGee.
Willie, said, “Dusty wanted to come, Pete, but the club had a fit.”
“Loyal fuck, isn’t he. At least you guys came.”
Both men looked at each other. Rod said, “Some shit, huh, Pete? Almost make it to the Show and this is what you get. What’re you gonna do now?”
Up to that minute, I hadn’t thought much about it. I made my decision right then. “I’m going home to New Orleans.” I worked up a grin. “This little setback is just a speed bump on my way to riches.”
“You gonna keep on gambling, Pete?” Rod said. “Might want to reconsider that.” Willie nodded in agreement.
“Nah,” I said. “I’m done with that. It’s time I used some of my mental dexterity.”
“You’re gonna keep feedin’ that gamblin’ jones, aren’t you?” Willie said.
“No way, Jose. Gambling’s a loser’s game. I found that out the hard way. No, I bet you guys a hundred bucks each I’m back on my feet in a week. A month, tops. I’ll be watching you guys in the World Series from my private box. Lighting Cubans with C-notes.
“I’m giving two to one odds,” I said as they made their way out of the room. “No, three to one. Wait!”
They must not have heard me.
Back to TOC
Here’s a sample from Richard Barre’s Lost.
Puntarenas, Costa Rica
Four Months Earlier
The woman’s jacket catches on the door handle, and she curses before it releases her, mitigating the din inside the crowded bar. As she steps off the stoop and away from the slanting light, her heels click on the worn paving. Unsteadily at first, then with greater resolve.
For at least a block her ears ring with the noise she’s left, lips burning from Ramiro’s roughness at the back table where they’d sought refuge. Ramiro, drunk and showing off—bold from their afternoon together and the hundred-proof guaro.
A wiser-now Ramiro.
Nobody called her that.
Two blocks, her senses gradually adjusting to the waterfront: soft creaks, muffled laughter from dimly-lit doorways, the kiss of tide against lapstrake and aluminum. Breaths to chase the cigarette smoke and body odors: night air laced with hints of diesel, fish smell from wood grids and railings, cooking grease, backed-up gutters
, alley rot.
A cat darting between buildings with a rat in its mouth.
Three blocks, and the shadows have begun to harbor eyes, footsteps to echo her own. Not that matching Ramiro shot for shot has tempered her ability to filter real from abstract. Actually the guaro is her ally. Like the hot and swarming impersonality of the bar, it helps her deal with what she is doing.
More accurately, the one she is doing it to.
Not that she doesn’t deserve her fun, God knows—try raising two children with a husband who’s always gone. Bodies were to enjoy, and hers isn’t getting any younger. Besides, what woman had a husband whose idea of a wild night was listening to Bizet or reading Garcia-Lorca? None of her friends, that was sure, most giving her a wide berth once they hear who she married.
They have no idea what it’s like. And what it isn’t.
Hell with it, she thinks, almost losing a heel in a grate. He wouldn’t harm her. He wouldn’t dare. But it’s hollow, and with each step her imagination flays her nerves. What if someone is following her? What if he has found out? What if they have been seen together, the rum fueling her defiance also drowning her caution?
So empty her bravado seems in the deserted streets.
Finally, there is the bus stop, a pool of light against the darkness, her island of safety. And after standing in its shelter a moment, headlamps. Better than a bus, she thinks, elated now at her good fortune—a taxi responding to her wave and pulling over. Someone in the back seat willing to share the ride. The front, too, it appears...getting out to open the door, let her in back so she can thank her benefactor. Maybe even get him to stop at a liquor store, the night still relatively young.
Until the door shuts and the taxi speeds from the curb.
Until the front passenger hands her a bottle and, with eyes like struck flints, tells her, “Drink up, Serena. Tonight’s on us.”
Until she becomes aware that the man propped up beside her is Ramiro through all the blood.
Part One
BEN
1
Newport Beach, March 10
Ben Metcalf walked right into it.
Just outside The Score, his favorite sports bar, his kind of people—Loren the bartender, for openers. Two guys just materializing as he was chirping off the locks in his year-old Grand Cherokee, the red one Shay liked to be picked up in, not Kate’s Lexus. The one guy, he recognized: Walter. Thick black dude he occasionally saw bench-pressing about half the gym, telling him now, “Nothing personal, Mr. Metcalf. You understand. Just something to jog the memory.”
“Till next time,” the thin one Ben didn’t recognize chortled as Walter’s first blow landed, a kidney punch that spun him off the Cherokee’s door and into the uppercuts that left him on his knees, airless and slack-jawed. At which time the thin one joined in, stereo rib kicks, Ben thinking his thirty-seventh birthday was a hell of a day to get shown the exit.
At least they gave him a second while Thin said, “Your wallet, if I might?”
Through the shallowest of breaths, Ben nodded and felt his left rear pocket lighten. “Well?” he heard Walter ask.
“Forty bucks, living in a house like that.” Thin shaking his head for emphasis. “Fucking pathetic.”
Ben smelled the damp asphalt inches from his nose. Letting it play out, not aware of anything broken.
That would come later.
There was a moment’s pause, the sound of a paper being torn from a notebook to land in front of his eyes. Thin saying, “Your lordship’s receipt for the forty. Nod if you’re clear the next one gets delivered closer to home.”
“Clear,” Ben managed.
Hearing Thin observe, “Walt must like you, Mr. Metcalf. Usually they don’t talk for a week.”
“Mr. Metcalf’s okay, he’s gonna make this right. Aren’t you, Mr. Metcalf?”
“Yeah.” Barely recognizing his own sound; more squeak than voice.
Thin next: “And is there a date we might pass along to Mr. Devore?”
“April,” Ben wheezed—holding up an index finger to signify the first. Commission date on the Carver Aft Cabin the actor had been drooling over. Johnny What’s-his-name, Ben all too familiar with the look: dreamy eyes, faraway expression, half short of breath this close to his dream. Hours spent explaining every feature to the guy as he mooned into the chrome.
Commission date provided Johnny’s financial history found a star-struck loan officer, Ben half-wondering how it would play if he referred Johnny directly to Little Al Devore. Out of one pocket and in the other.
One big circle jerk.
“April Fool, Mr. Metcalf,” Thin was saying now. “I don’t know, Walt—maybe we should start on that pretty daughter of—”
Ben heard something thud against the Cherokee, then Walter.
“We don’t do that, Tommy. I don’t do that.”
“Fuck, Walt, it’s a figure of speech,” Thin Tommy came back about two registers higher. “Don’t you go to the movies?”
Using the distraction to expand his air intake, Ben heard a familiar voice: “Ben...you all right? You need help out there?” He felt a hand grasp the back of his jacket—then Walter hoisting him to his feet. Bent against the pain and laying odds on how much ice and Ibuprofen before this one was under control.
“Well, hotshot?” Tommy said, smoothing the suede. “Tell the lady how it feels to act responsible for a change. That glow that comes with paying down your debt.” Chortling again as he and Walt eased their way across the street and down the block.
“Okay, Loren, thanks,” Ben tried after they’d turned the corner, letting a wave compensate for his voice as he pocketed the receipt and brushed grit from his hands and pants. Deciding as she came toward him that a little more Loren and another birthday beer wasn’t such a bad idea in light of things.
Heading home looking like shit for one.
“Just business,” he thought to add.
Ben checked his wrist: nearly seven already.
Time—there was another one.
“Just what a girl likes to see,” Loren said. “The guy she’s with looking at his watch.”
He put a hand on hers, stroked her wavy blonde hair, ran a finger down her perfect profile. “Sorry, I’m just distracted.”
“Tell me about it...”
“Probably the birthday. I’ll be better next week.”
She was silent, gazing out at the waves thumping in on The Wedge, where he’d bodysurfed as a kid. Corona across the channel, Balboa aglitter behind them, the pier just visible from there, his own house up the rise behind PCH one of the pinpoints. And Jeb’s, of course—Jeb who owned the boat dealership he worked for, not to mention a fair part of Newport Beach—somewhere back there on Lido.
Jeb Hallenbeck.
Kate’s father.
Ben watched a Sea Ray heading in, one of the big sedan bridges, likely from Catalina. Followed by a Hatteras rigged for fishing and a vintage Bertram—three portside red lights nose to tail. And what might be a Hunter 43 tacking toward the west jetty; pretty thing out for a sunset sail, champagne by moonlight. He caught himself imagining it: that feeling of weightlessness.
“Ben…?”
“Sorry, Loren, what were you saying?”
She sighed and shook her head, tried it again. “The film guy I met, the one who agreed to read my treatment? He was in earlier and said it had potential.”
“That’s terrific.”
“Meaning don’t hold my breath.”
“Meaning congratulations. Way to go.”
“At least say it like you mean it.”
“Of course I mean it.”
“Probably seems trivial to you,” she said, her face set. “The money you have.”
That edge—not so much subject as phrasing—the unspoken married into. Or maybe it was just him: still ticked that he’d let himself get into this position. Not to mention a kidney that likely would pass blood later.
“Things aren’t always as they seem, Loren.”
No shit...
“Tending bar is a means, Ben, not an end. I’ve said it before.”
They sat watching a Hampton, that distinctive profile, sliding out toward the channel’s mouth: San Diego, maybe Ensenada.
“Some fine night,” he said. “Will you look at that moon?”
She leaned forward, stared down at her hands. “I really have to get back. Besides, I’m getting chilled.”
“Yeah. Me, too,” he said, thinking pizza with Shay and a video—the high times of Ben Metcalf. He got up gingerly, surprised he didn’t feel his stomach more: tomorrow, and especially the next day. He put an arm around her as they walked up the breakwater to the turnaround. Pausing at the Cherokee to feel his trial kiss come back with something like passion.
“Happy birthday,” she said as they broke.
“I just wish we could spend some time together,” he said, nuzzling her hair. “Hit a B&B or something.”
She regarded him. “And have your daughter spot us again.”
“I told you how I handled that. You were interested in a boat. End of story.”
“And she believed it...”
“Why not? You are, aren’t you?”
“Drinks at the Pelican, my hand on yours...”
He let her in the Cherokee and started it, levered into gear. Quiet on the way back through Balboa’s now calm streets. At one point, eyes straight ahead, she asked him if he was sore from his slip back there—how he’d put it when she’d pressed for details.
“Some. Not as bad as I thought.”
She took in a breath, seemed to decide on something. “Ben, I don’t like to harp, but nobody’s getting any younger here.”
All of twenty-six. Or was it seven?
He smiled at her: white shorts, The Score polo shirt, suede coat unbuttoned over it, those legs extending down to ankle socks and white-on-white Avias. Miss All-American sports bartender. What all the guys wanted to chase their drinks with. He’d stumbled into deep conversation with her one wet Sunday during a Niners-Packers debacle—missing the point spread and feeling particularly alone, Kate out of town on a presentation, Shay weekending at a friend’s. He’d been impressed, the more they’d talked, with Loren’s outlook and drive. Maybe even a little envious.
