The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant

by Tee Morris

  He gave a snort, looked at the back of Landis’ head (probably considering the best place to plant a mace), back at me (and where to hit me as his second target), and then stormed out of the room. He was the last man out, and the door slammed shut.

  Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock…

  I walked over to where Landis stood. I judged distances, what was around us, and then stepped back to the chair that McCarthy had occupied earlier. With a grunt, I angled the chair to face Landis. When I turned back to Landis again, I caught him peering over his shoulder at me. I heard a few sniffs coming from him.

  Yeah, he was laughing at me.

  I gave the tip of my nose a quick pinch, straightened up, and returned to the Commissioner’s side. “Sir, if you wouldn’t mi—”

  “Son, I don’t know what you are intending to say or do right now, but if your intention is to change my mind I’m afraid you’re only talking to air.”

  Not yet. “Commissioner, if you would please have a seat,” I replied, motioning to the chair. “I would like you to consider—”

  “What? A compromise?” he barked, still looking at the ball field. “Perhaps you are not aware—nor do I expect you to be aware—of something about me: I don’t compromise.”

  Eye contact was out of the question. Still, not the time. “Actually, Commissioner, I’m not going to ask you to compromise. Not at all. Please, have a seat,” I said motioning to the chair with one hand and gently placing the other on the sleeve of his coat.

  Landis wrenched his arm back as if my touch was covered in slug bile. A nerve caused his face to twitch lightly as he looked down on me. Finally, I had his attention and he was facing me. “Whoever you think you are, don’t presume to lay hands on me! I’m a Federal Judge and the commi—”

  Now.

  My fist thrust forward, connecting square with his balls. As he was a commissioner and not a player, I thought the odds were in my favor that he was not wearing an athletic supporter.

  When the Mountain crumbled, I lent him my support and spoke gently, “How about you take that seat now, Commissioner?”

  He managed to catch his breath just as he flopped into the comfortable chair, the seat probably retaining some of Joe McCarthy’s warmth. Landis’ eyes flicked open. His skin had turned quite pale from the shock of what just happened. His gaze, though, was dark and smoldering, promising a wrath of apocalyptic scale.

  “I know you’re about to explode, Commissioner, but before you find your voice I suggest you set your prejudices aside and you listen to me because I’m about to tell you how you’re going to handle this whole mess. I know this isn’t something you’re accustomed to, but this is an extreme situation and as you’ve just noted, I’m a guy of extremes. Nod if you—” I considered what I was going to say, and then shook my head. “Nah, screw it. Just nod so I know you can hear me.”

  Landis took another breath, his hands still cupping his crotch, and with a soft groan he nodded.

  “Commissioner, you are going to make a formal announcement that due to the underhanded business dealings with Miles Waterson and Bruce Halsbrook and the deviant behavior of the Mariners’ players known as Trouble, you are removing the Mariners from the League’s records. Coach Barton and the remaining team members will still be allowed to play in the Minors, and they will all be eligible for advancement to the Majors...”

  Landis took in a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. In response I lifted my index finger and repeated, “And they will all be eligible for advancement to the Majors. This was not their problem. Never was, and nor should it be now. The games the Mariners played and subsequently won will not even appear as forfeits. You’re going to erase them from the standings. The only hint of their existence will be a few newspaper snapshots and a few headlines. That’s it. The season continues as if nothing happened. If the players prove their worth in sovereigns, then maybe they’ll find themselves a spot on the Reds, or even the Giants.”

  “And why,” he wheezed, “would I even consider doing this?”

  I leaned in close. Landis didn’t like that. I knew he wouldn’t. “You heard Coach Barton. You’re a fan with a title, and because you’re a fan you’re going to do this because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing to do?” It was time to give Landis some room. His composure was back. “This coming from you?”

  Okay, he had me there. I could see some of that ire he was sporting right before I punched him in the baby bagpipes. “You may not approve of my methods, but you needed to be reminded why we are told not to interrupt others. Rude things happen to rude people.”

  He was out of the chair and towering over me. “I don’t have to sit here and take—”

  My arm swept behind his calves, sending him back into the leather chair.

  “I’m afraid you do.” I said. My buffer of courtesy was gone. He could squirm for all I cared. “I want you to seriously think about the judgment you’re planning to pass. Is that the right thing to do? According to the laws of the land and the rules of baseball as set up by the League, yes. But is it the right thing for the sport, and the right thing for the country?

  “Open your eyes, Judge. Look past the headline,” I said, motioning to the Tribune on Wrigley’s desk. “Our corner of the world is spiraling down into a maelstrom of hurt, and the Black Magic of Black Thursday is kicking all of us in the ass. It’s not even been a year, and yet you open your eyes and take a look—we’re not doing so good. It’s going to get a hell of a lot worse.”

  “And your point?” he grumbled.

  “Did you ever stop to ask yourself why, with all the shit that is being stirred up from the bottom of the moat, people still come to ball games? The good times of the Twenties came to a screeching halt in October, but when the season opened they were there, dogs of war merely waiting for their master’s hand to snap and let them go.

  “Maybe you are a fan with a title, Landis, but you are a fan. You make an example of the Baltimore Mariners and baseball will be nothing more than a dragon with a broadsword in its gut. People won’t trust its players or its managers. Owners will probably be regarded as the Capones and Morans of the ballparks. The sport will die and it won’t die gracefully. When baseball dies, a lot of hopes and dreams die with it. The guys will still play. I’m not worried about that. They’ll play for the love of the game. But if you do what you’re thinking about doing, it’s all gone. The prestige. The poetic beauty. The belief in something that’s still worth believing in.”

  Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock…

  Goddamn clock. If my axe were within reach, I’d be making time stop. At least, for this office.

  After staring at me for what felt like a few solid years, Landis got up and returned to the window he had been staring out when I first entered the room. He was mulling it all over, or at least that’s what I was hoping. Landis wasn’t howling for my head on a pike like some berserker in the midst of a blood-rage, so I was going to regard his pensive demeanor to be a good thing. No, he didn’t compromise, but I wasn’t asking for him to settle on anything. I was telling him—a Federal Judge and Commissioner of Baseball—to do as he was told. The only way I could make this argument stick was to appeal to that fan, to that passion that we both shared in common. (Not that he would admit to having anything in common with me.)

  What Landis asked me came out of Left Field. Seemed appropriate. “You are a private investigator?”

  “That’s my chosen trade. I’m pretty good at it, too, as you see.”

  “Then you have an understanding of the law, of what is right and what is wrong?” He looked down on me, the hard lines in his face appearing to reach deeper into whatever was warring in his soul. “At least, you should have.”

  “I’m supposed to dig into people’s lives and impartially surrender the facts discovered to my clients. That’s how my business works.”

  “My business is a little different,” he said, before returning his stare out to the ballpar
k. “I am supposed to uphold the law, the rules that govern our great country. When I took on this role as commissioner, I swore to uphold the sanctity of this great pastime, because that is what this sport is to me. Sacred.”

  He cleared his throat and bowed his head for a moment. When it came back up, his eyes nursed a soft sparkle that resembled the raindrops striking the glass. He knew. He knew, and he hated it. “You’re asking me to go against everything I practice in my sworn duty as a judicial officer of the Federal Courts.”

  “No, I’m not, Commissioner. I’m asking to you think about what will happen if you handle everything as a judicial officer of the Federal Courts. This call you have to make is not going to decide who’s taking home the pennant, who’s losing the season opener, or even if two teams head into extra innings. Approaching this with the same absolute judgment that you did with the Black Sox will backfire. Why? Because the first time a scandal hits, it’s a shock. The second time a scandal hits, credibility that was once thought rebuilt is questioned, or worse—dismissed. I don’t envy you, Your Honor.” Figured he would like to hear that title. Inflate that ego a bit. Make him feel good about himself. “You’re at a crossroads. Do you follow the rules, or do you do what is truly best for the game?

  “Baseball is something more than a game,” I was rounding third. Now I had to beat the ball to home. “This might sound like I’m sprinkling Pixie dew, but there’s no other way I can put it. This sport’s got a kind of magic about it. A genuine, sincere magic. Destroy that and you destroy something more. You plant a seed of suspicion concerning all things in here,” I said, tapping the center of my chest.

  My heart wasn’t located there, but if I had pointed to where it was, it would have ruined the point I was trying to make.

  His smile took me by surprise. “Are you certain you’re not running for office?”

  “No thanks,” I scoffed. “I’m too honest for politics or the bar.”

  Landis’ laugh made my shoulders drop a bit.

  “You missed your calling , then,” he said. “You would have made persuasive closing arguments as Defense Counsel.” He glanced at his crotch, and then back to me. “I still think you have potential, though, as a personal bodyguard.”

  I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a card. “My rates are reasonable. Call me anytime.”

  No, I didn’t think he ever would. I wanted to drive a point home: I’m not intimidated.

  “For the love of the game, Commish,” I said over my shoulder as I started to leave.

  “And what if I change my mind?”

  There was a playful lilt in his voice, but I really didn’t feel like dicking around anymore. One last thing I still needed to do in this case, and just thinking about it made my heart sink.

  I stopped at the door and, again over the shoulder, replied, “What secrets do you keep, Judge Landis? And do you want to keep them secret?”

  This time, I think Landis noticed the clock.

  Okay, so I’d saved the institution of Baseball. Now it was time to save a man’s soul.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  To Thine Own Self, Be True

  I checked my watch again. I do love the game, but by the Fates, I hate the smell of locker rooms. Balmy nights huddled in muddy trenches smelled nicer than these places. One more time, I checked my pockets to see if I had any of that alcohol that numbed up my sense of smell, or maybe a forgotten stick of rubenna root. I had neither on me ten minutes ago. Not fifteen minutes before then either. My sigh echoed lightly around me as I glanced at the time again. I saw Coach Barton make the call. I knew he was on the way. I had to relax.

  A door opening pushed me back into the shadows. If he had been looking my way, he would have probably caught sight of me. He was heading right for his locker which, when you looked at it, really wasn’t a locker. It was just an open space amongst a row of other spaces, all of them keeping the various uniform odds-and-ends of the Baltimore Mariners.

  Stuff left here, provided it wasn’t too valuable, would be safe. But what would someone breaking into a locker room deem as “valuable”? More to the point, what would a fan breaking into a locker room deem as “valuable”? It might make your stomach roil harder than catching a whiff of Orc shit. Sweaty socks, athletic supporters, and undershirts were all fair game to the fans, and revered as highly as baseball jerseys.

  Jerseys would be harder to fence, though. If you were to steal anything truly valuable, you could incur the vengeance of other fans.

  Still, you would want to be careful if you did leave anything behind here. From the way this player was checking his locker, he was thinking he hadn’t been. Now he was starting to sweat a bit.

  This situation was bad enough. Why make it torturous?

  “It’s not there,” I said.

  Eddie Faria turned around. He was looking too high to see me at first. When he spotted me walking out of the shadows, his head jerked back slightly. Then those baggy eyes of his widened as I held up the Pendant of Coe, passed it to the other hand, and let it sway.

  “You,” the pitcher finally whispered. He then pointed to the pendant. “That’s mine.”

  “No, it’s not,” I replied. “It’s not yours. It’s not mine, either. And if you make a move for it, you’re going to really, really regret it tomorrow.”

  He was thinking about it, but he could see that I wasn’t bluffing. He also knew what the pendant in my hand was capable of.

  Faria straightened up to his full height, sucked in the paunch, and snorted. “And why would I regret it?”

  “You’ve already been accused of a lot of things you didn’t do. Do you want to continue that streak and get in bed with a group of murderers?”

  Eddie blinked. I wondered if this time he was so damn desperate to hang on to this illusion, he wasn’t going to put it all together. Come on. Say it ain’t so.

  “Murder?”

  “Murder. Grand larceny. Fraud. I’m telling you, the laundry list is long and it’s nothing less than impressive, and you don’t really need to be affiliated with these guys. In fact, you’ve got a real shot to walk away from all this, unscathed.” My grip tightened on the chain in my hand. How long have you been using this? How much damage has it done to you? “You don’t need this kind of heat again.”

  Finally, the pitcher took a seat on the bench, running the past season through his mind. He had been trying to look the other way for so long; that much I could see. The fact that someone outside of Trouble knew about his lucky charm, and knew what else this lucky charm was capable of doing, lifted the weight of both this world and Acryonis off his shoulders.

  “You got to let it go,” I said gently. “This has to be in your sight and you’ve got to let it go. The more you want it, the longer you stay connected. The longer you stay connected, the worse it’s going to get for you.”

  He nodded, exhausted.

  I could still catch a faint whiff of electricity over the ingrained stench of body odor. “What do you want?” I asked.

  The pitcher took a deep breath and finally said, “I miss Katie. I told her I was on the road with a special exhibition team. Pay’s been good so she didn’t mind, but it’s been empty because…”

  “Because she can’t see you play.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his eyes welling up slightly.

  I asked again, “What do you want?”

  “I want to go home,” he answered, his voice dry and cracking. “I want to be me again.”

  The tingling in my hand ceased, the scent of electricity dissipated, and Eddie “Shadow” Faria began to change in front of me.

  His paunch drew inward, not of his accord but naturally. The face lost its sagginess, those haversacks under his eyes disappearing while his chin and nose lengthened, high cheek bones replacing the roundness that once had been there. A transformation like this would have apprentices or unwilling victims to a transformation spell howling in pain, but Eddie—or the guy that had called himself Eddie—seemed to be lost in
a sweet euphoria.

  The change slowed until finally it stopped. His wardrobe had not transformed with his face or body, and now the clothes seemed to hang on him.

  I dropped the pendant into my coat pocket and brushed my hands together. Not sure why I felt the need to do that. Maybe it was that old Acryonis magic making me nervous.

  “Shoeless Joe,” I said, sticking out my hand, “it was a real thrill to see you play.”

  Joe scoffed. “With whatever that thing is, I got to wonder how much of what was out there was really me.”

  “All of it,” I assured him. “I’ll skip the details, but what this thing does depends on the desires and wants of its wearer. Your desire wasn’t to be the better ball player or even to play on a championship team. Your desire was to play, and that desire was so intense that the pendant created a near-perfect disguise for you.”

  “Near-perfect?”

  “You didn’t notice, Joe, how everyone’s attitude changed around you in the diamond? Other ball players saw it. Saw you—Shoeless Joe Jackson—on the pitcher’s mound, at Home Plate. No one said anything, because if anyone had the right to be out there playing, it was you.

  “Maybe Trouble had just enough respect for the sport to also see through your disguise, and that was how they figured out you had a ‘lucky charm’ that you always wore every time you played.”

  Joe swallowed hard. “I was practicing for a game. Semi-pro. No real cash to talk about. Strictly for the love of it, you know?”

  Oh yeah, Joe, I know.

  “So I get out to the park early, just to walk around, get a feel for the place. By the pitcher’s mound, there that thing was. I was pretty anxious about this game, as I am about every game, and I thought, ‘Why not? Good luck charm couldn’t hurt.’ When I put it on, I knew something was different, but I didn’t notice it until the coach was asking me to my face who I was. At first I thought he was just kidding me, you know? But then I could tell he really didn’t know.”

  I chuckled. The coach didn’t recognize Shoeless Joe because he apparently wasn’t an equal. Sometimes, magic can be brutally honest.