by R. D. Rosen
Harvey ordered a bourbon on the rocks and tried to grab a piece of the conversation. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, too. I always wondered what Frances’s former associate was like.”
“Oh, Frances, of course. You know, I almost forgot why we—you know, it’s a mystifyingly funny thing how the mind works, how it—of course, you wanted to ask me something about Frances. The Wicked Witch of the East herself.”
“Wicked Witch? Why’s that?”
She nibbled from a bowl of dry-roasted cashews. “Oh, I guess I felt like poor Dorothy compared to her, I really did. The PR business, you know, has its share of kooks and crazies. It’s such an intense way to make a living. And there’s so much hype, so much exaggeration of what people really are. PR people tend to start believing all those marvelous things and simply lose their perspective.”
“I can well imagine.”
“And so, to make a long story short, it’s so highly competitive, and so many people will do just anything to get ahead, but, what I mean is—”
“But what, Sharon?”
“What I mean is that Frances was, well, at least as far as my moral ethics and value systems were concerned, Frances did get—get what? Out of bounds, you might say. Well, I suppose that’s why she got ahead. I mean, other people I know in this business actually used to envy my working for a successful firm like Frances’s. If only they knew. Well, she did one thing, I remember—well, but usually she would just treat clients in a kibbitzing but underneath, I guess the word for it is mean way.”
“For instance?”
“Well, for instance, we represented several restaurants in New York, and there was one very fancy, very visible restaurant whose account we were trying to get—I mean, it’s like you couldn’t check your coat for less than ten dollars—and, well, I remember Frances on the phone with the owner, and she was simply merciless with him, but I guess in a funny sort of way.”
“A funny sort of way.”
“You know, Frances has got what—a certain patina of charm, and so she’d say things like, ‘Alan, if you don’t give me your business, I swear to God I’ll never talk to you again, I mean it, you know what a great job we did with that French place on Fifty-third, and they’re absolutely in your league, Alan.’ Stuff like that. Oh, and, ‘Not only that, Alan, if you don’t come with me, I’ll make sure that no one I know—and I do know a lot of people in this city—ever sets foot in your place again. Alan’—this is just how she sounded—‘Alan, you know I have a way with restaurants, and I’ll hate you for the rest of my life if you don’t come with me. But worst of all, Alan, believe me, you’ll hate yourself. You wouldn’t want all that hanging over your head, would you?’ Honestly, it was so New York. She would say, ‘Alan, it just so happens that a couple of big clients of mine are looking for a place to hold their Christmas parties, and I don’t mean finger sandwiches and crudités, either, Alan. We’re talking sixty, seventy dollars a head, and it would be a shame if you weren’t in a position to get that business, because I know you would do a perfectly splendid job.’”
“You mean she’d threaten them?”
“Well, exactly. You know, she’d plead and threaten and just keep at it to the point where I would be sitting there at my desk listening to her on the phone with this look of utter disbelief on my face, to the point where—well, but she did treat the people who worked for her extremely well, you understand. I’m not complaining; it’s just that she would do anything to get clients.”
“Anything to get clients” was the phrase Resnick of ABC had used to describe Frances on Monday night in Boston.
“I mean, she wouldn’t resort to kidnapping,” Sharon Meadows went on. “She wouldn’t lie down on Fifth Avenue and threaten to take her own life just to get an account, I mean, but she would cheat and she would lie. Well, of course, I don’t have to tell you that she didn’t have any clients who were interested in having Christmas parties at this restaurant.” She finally touched her Pernod and Perrier. “That wasn’t the worst of it, of course.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Oh, no. You know, there was this computer dating service a couple of years ago that was trying to decide between us and another PR firm. Frances got wind of which other firm it was, and she wanted this account in the worst possible way, so she called the head of the dating service and told him to come to the office so we could really sell him on what we could offer them. So this macho type—I mean, the guy looked like he was wearing a pair of rolled-up sweat socks in his crotch—this macho man comes by and Frances and I take him into the conference room and we lay out our wares and Frances is pounding the table, telling him absolutely everything we’d do to give them the deepest possible market penetration, the highest recognition factor. And then suddenly—and I mean I was not prepared for this one—suddenly she tells him she knows that they’re talking with another firm—which happens to be run by two wonderful gals I know personally—and Frances suddenly tells this macho man, ‘You can’t possibly go with this other firm, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because the women who run it are lesbians, and the last thing a dating service needs is to be represented by two goddamn lesbians.’ And, of course, they’re not lesbians. They’re not lesbians at all. But Frances got the account.”
Harvey drained his bourbon.
“And you know what I can’t figure out?”
“What’s that, Sharon?”
“I can’t fathom for an instant how a sweet man like Felix ended up with a woman like Frances.”
“That utterly fascinates me, too,” Harvey said. He swiveled and scanned the bar to make sure that neither of the Shalhoubs had sneaked in for a nightcap. “On the basis of what you know about her, what do you think her interest in baseball really is?”
“Oh, I think it’s intense, which is the way she does everything. I read somewhere, I think, that she sits in the dugout with Felix. Just like her, you know, close to the action.”
“What do you make of that?”
“Well, if you owned a piece of something, wouldn’t you absolutely want to have a say in how it’s run?”
Harvey blanched. “Frances doesn’t own a piece of the Jewels.”
Sharon shook some bracelets down her forearm. “Of course, I can’t be absolutely sure, but I’m almost positive that’s why Frances sold the firm. She bought into the team. I mean, she wasn’t going to sell an immensely successful business and move to that dumpy city just to be with poor Felix.”
“How much of the team do you think she owns?” Harvey had begun to gobble cashews.
“That I simply couldn’t say. The firm was sold for nearly a million and a half, and then, of course, there’s the family money. Her father made a mint in scrap metal or some dreary thing like that. Frances is very restless, you know, can’t stay put, and she’s always looking for the opening, always looking.”
Harvey fiddled with the table lamp. “You’re sure she invested in the team?”
“Like I say, I can’t be absolutely sure, but I do remember early last fall when she said to me, she said, ‘Sharon, I don’t know what owning part of a major league baseball team is like, but I’ve never failed at anything in my life.’”
Harvey’s ankle had begun reminding him that it was sprained. He winced, more noticeably than he might have had he not been stricken with the need to take leave of Sharon Meadows. “Excuse me,” he said, “but as you probably saw, I did something to my ankle tonight, and it’s acting up.”
“Oh, my goodness,” she gasped, as if he had just revealed a terminal condition. “Oh, it must be so painful, and here I am, going on and on about Frances and probably boring you to tears. Does it hurt badly? Let me buy you another drink, and we’ll talk about something else. We’ll talk about baseball. I’d love to know what it’s really like.”
Harvey made a particularly good wince. “I think all this ankle needs is a little ice and a little rest.”
Sharon’s face fell, then rose hopefully. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. But thanks.” He reached for his wallet.
She put her hand on his arm. “I’ll get this one. But look, I’m in the book. I mean, that is, if you’re in New York again and—Well, look, anyway, it’s been awfully nice, and just between you and me, you will let the Yankees win one or two from you guys, won’t you?”
There were two things he liked about her. The first was that she had given him information that sounded extremely useful. The second was that he had not even had to ask for it. In his room, lying on his back on the floral bedspread, he dialed Mickey’s number in Providence. After Sharon Meadows’s torrent of words, Mickey’s voice was soothing.
“How’s the ankle?”
“Word travels fast,” he said.
“So does the electronic transmission of light waves into radio waves and then into light rays. We had the game on television in the newsroom tonight. Nice win. And you looked safe to me, by the way. Your sprain also came over the sports wire. It must be nice to twist your ankle and have the whole world know about it within minutes. So how is it?”
“I wish you were here to kiss it.”
“I don’t do ankles.”
“How are you?”
“A little depressed. They’ve been on my case at the station. I don’t think they like the fact that I’m talking with ABC, so they’ve got me doing a lot of soft features as punishment. They had me fill in for Gail today and do a story on the biggest cauliflower at a farmer’s market in Rehoboth.”
“I always thought the station’s coverage of the cabbage family was pretty weak.”
“Yuk, yuk,” she said. “And Providence depresses me.”
“How could you say such a thing? It’s the heartbeat of the nation.”
“Sorry, Bliss. I’m too tired to laugh tonight.” She demonstrated by yawning into the mouthpiece. “I mean, where is Providence? I have this fantasy that I’m going to look at a map of New England one day and it’s not going to be there. And no one will miss it. How come you’re in such a good mood?”
“Hardly. I saw Linderman at Yankee Stadium before the game, and there’re still no leads except for Ronnie Mateo. It’s unbelievable.”
“Did you hear that the baseball commissioner’s announced a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction?”
“Certainly can’t hurt. But what I really wanted to tell you, Mick, is that someone stuffed a death threat in my glove tonight. I found it when I went out to center in the bottom of the first.”
“No.”
“Yes. Wait a second, here it is: ‘Play ball, not private eye, or you may be the next to die.’”
“My God, what’s going on? Bliss, maybe it’s time to let Linderman take over.”
“No one’s stopping him.”
“If you got killed, it would put a real damper on our relationship. Sounds like someone on the team’s getting pretty nervous.”
“Mick, after the game I had drinks with a woman who used to work for Frances at her PR firm in New York.”
“Harvey!” She hadn’t used his first name since they’d met.
“Mick, according to Sharon Meadows, Frances is baseball’s answer to Muammar el-Qaddafi. Guess what?”
“What?”
“This woman is almost certain Frances owns part of the team.”
“Can you be sure?”
“I can find out for sure.”
“And if she does, where does that fit in?”
“Damned if I know,” Harvey said.
After a pause, Mickey said, “I don’t know if nice Jewish boys should be getting mixed up in things like this.” Another pause. “What else did this woman say?”
“Now you’re interested, aren’t you?” Harvey told her more about Sharon Meadows.
“So much for sisterhood,” she said when he was through. “Frances sounds perfectly charming. But do me a favor, Bliss, and just lie low, okay? Don’t stick your neck out. Someone out there is getting pretty serious about you. Frances probably isn’t even involved in this thing.”
“That would be nice.”
“Nice?”
“The less I have to do with that woman, the better. But if she is involved….” Harvey ran out of words.
“Can’t you leave it alone?”
Harvey said nothing.
“You feel guilty about Rudy, don’t you?”
Harvey said more nothing.
“Are you there?” she said.
“There’re some pieces missing, Mick,” he said.
“I’ll say.” She blended a sigh and a groan. “I’m coming down to New York on Monday to see ABC. I’ll miss you.”
“We’ll be in Baltimore,” Harvey said.
“So I guess I’ll see you in Providence, then. In a week.”
“Yeah. Be good, Mick,” he said and hung up, visualizing himself and Mickey as two little dots moving randomly across a map.
He went to the desk in his room and found some creamy Warwick Hotel stationery and made three lists.
RUDY
slept with Frances
presents for Mick and me
typewriters
$3,000
Wisconsin real estate seemed
depressed on night of murder
FRANCES
gets her own way
slept with Rudy
owns stock in team?
helps Felix in dugout: how?
wants to sleep with me
HARVEY
doesn’t want to sleep with her
rat
death threat
nice guy
now batting .302
would really like some Japanese food
Harvey looked it over a few times, but the only item that caught his attention was the last one under his name. He threw on a sports jacket, hobbled down to the street, and took a cab to a place on Columbus Avenue that served sushi all night.
“I HURT ABOUT YOUR hankle,” Mr. Molikoff said in a crusty Eastern European accent, sitting in the wingback chair in Harvey’s hotel room on Friday morning. He was a gaunt man with a small, mottled face and a blizzard of white hair that formed a high drift on one side of his head. He was wearing a brown suit that probably was not the best one he owned, and there was room for another neck in his yellowing shirt collar. Mr. Molikoff had phoned an hour earlier from the offices of a Yiddish daily newspaper in New York to ask for an interview. Now he held an incongruous reporter’s notebook in his large hands, ribbed with veins. “I hope it’s not in too bat shape,” he said.
Harvey was reclining on the bed with a hotel heating pad wrapped around his ankle. “With heat on it,” he answered, “I should be back in the lineup in a day or two.”
“That’s goot,” Molikoff said, finding an empty pipe and sucking airily on it. “I thought I might ask you about the relationship between baseball and a Jew.”
Harvey had other things on his mind, but he had agreed to the interview, and he forced himself to pay attention. At least it did not promise to be an ordinary clubhouse give-and-take. “I guess I don’t think about it much,” he said, stuffing another pillow behind him. “You know, there’re only three of us in the majors now, and I don’t think anybody notices anymore, except a reporter now and then. It’s not the most obvious career for a Jew, but”—he unclasped his hands behind his head and held them out—“here I am.”
“There is no, let us say, anti-Semitism?” Molikoff was writing with birdlike movements as he talked.
“I remember when I was with Boston, once one of my black teammates said to me in the clubhouse, ‘Your people are the ones who own all the slums in the ghetto, aren’t they?’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, that’s right. And your people are the ones who’re shiftless and eat watermelons all the time.’ After that, we became fast friends.”
Molikoff removed his pipe in order to smile appreciatively. “Let me tell you, bink a Jew in baseball used to be sometink,” he said, suddenly shaking a fist proudly at Harvey. “I’ve stud
ied this. In nineteen forty-one, the New York Giants opened the season with four Jews. Let us see, Harry Feldman was pitchink, Harry Dannink was catchink, and in the outfield, you hat Sid Gordon and Morrie Arnovich. Hah! You remember Wally Moses? When the managers found out he wasn’t Jewish, they kept him out of the majors for many years!” He tilted his head back and regarded Harvey professorially. “Now I will tell you sometink else you don’t know. There was a player named Moses Solomon. He only played a few games for the Giants in nineteen twenty-tree. For his whole career, he was only tree hits in eight at-bats, and he did not hit any home runs. No home runs, but you know what they called him? They called him the Rabbi of Swat! The goyim hat their Sultan of Swat, and we hat our Rabbi!”
Harvey was smiling at this unlikely fount of baseball lore. “You were here during those years?”
“No. After the war. The second one. But I like baseball. A peaceful game. Maybe not so peaceful now. That was certainly terrible what happened to that pitcher on your team.” He shook his fragile head. “How does this happen?”
“I wish I knew,” Harvey said. “He was my roommate, you know.”
“No one knows? It is somebody’s responsibility to know what happened.”
“They’ll find out who killed him. Eventually.”
“They? Who’s they?” Molikoff was on the edge of his chair, pointing at Harvey. “Let me tell you an old Hasidic story. Do you mind? There was going to be a big weddink celebration in a small village, and all the guests were to brink a bottle of vodka to pour into a big barrel for everyone to drink. So there was one man who had the thought—with all this vodka, who will know if I put water in my bottle? So the weddink came, and hundreds of people came and poured their bottles into the barrel, and then the first man drew a glass. He brought it to his lips and he drank it. It was water. The whole barrel was water.”
Harvey found himself nodding. “I know,” he said. “Somebody has to bring the vodka. Speaking of which, can I order up something to drink for you?”
