Strike Three You're Dead

by R. D. Rosen

  “Thin build, sort of a pale guy, wears colorful suits. Smokes cheap cigars.”

  Levy rocked back in his chair.

  “Maybe his name’ll help you. Ronnie Mateo.”

  Levy repeated the name and moved the three paper clips back to the other side of the blotter. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  Harvey drummed his fingers on the desk. “What about that?” he said, pointing at the necklace in Levy’s hands.

  “This?” He tossed it across the desk to Harvey. “Gee, I don’t know where he got hold of it.”

  “He wanted to sell me a gross, Mr. Levy.”

  “Well, I’ll be frank with you, Harvey. We have had a little problem with shrinkage lately. Every once in a while a carton disappears off the loading docks. I’ll look into it, I certainly will. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.” He got up, went to the windows, and closed the blinds by turning a thin Lucite rod. “Too much sun,” he said distractedly. “I understand your concern, Harvey. I wish I could tell you more.”

  “You can tell me how much interest Frances owns in the ball club.”

  The weather changed slightly in Levy’s face, and he turned toward the blinds briefly, twirling the rod in his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What did you say?”

  “I’m just curious,” Harvey said pleasantly.

  “I’m curious, too—why you think she owns any.”

  “I don’t know. I guess these things get around.”

  “Well,” he said, giving up. “As you know, it’s not a matter of public record—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Harvey said eagerly. “I just wanted to get the facts straight. I hear various figures.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Why don’t you just tell me the correct one?”

  “I see. Well, Frances owns twenty percent. Can I ask if this has some significance for you?”

  “Should it?”

  “No, of course not.” Levy walked over and stood behind his desk chair. “After all, she’s not involved in running the team.”

  “Not formally, you mean.”

  “Not formally? I don’t get you.”

  “Well,” Harvey said, smiling, “you know how some people interpret her being in the dugout.”

  “Oh, that.” Levy shrugged. “I look at it as her just keeping Felix company. You know, Frances and I go way back. When she was getting her M.B.A. at Columbia, I was there taking a semester of courses; you know, a kind of brush-up for middle-aged executives.” His hand jumped to his tie. “You don’t want to hear about that.” He laughed.

  As if on cue, Harvey got to his feet.

  “It’s been great seeing you, Harvey.”

  “Thanks for your time.”

  At the door, Levy put his hand firmly on Harvey’s shoulder, as if he could keep Harvey permanently in his place by doing so. “My pleasure. And I want to tell you how pleased I am with your performance this year. Gosh, we were smart to grab you in the expansion draft.”

  Harvey smiled again. “Well, I hope you don’t regret having complimented me like that when it comes time to renegotiate my contract.”

  Levy’s left eyelid fluttered. “Here at Pro-Gem, we always aim to please.”

  Harvey offered Levy’s secretary his best smile on his way out. When he turned onto the path to the parking lot, he looked over his right shoulder at the window of Levy’s office. The blinds were open again, and Marshall Levy was looking through them.

  HARVEY PULLED INTO THE players’ parking lot at Rankle Park that afternoon for the opener of four against Detroit and backed in next to Rodney Salta’s Jaguar. Linderman was seated on the Jaguar’s fender in a glen plaid suit, smoking a cigarette.

  “Got a minute?” he said.

  John Rapp and Charlie Penzenik passed on their way in.

  “Hi, John. Charlie,” Harvey said.

  “Professor,” they nodded.

  Harvey stood over Linderman and said, “I’ve got a minute, but not here.”

  “What’s wrong with here?” With enough force to grind glass, Linderman flattened his cigarette butt under a black Corfam shoe.

  “The last time I talked to you at a ball park, someone left me a death threat. Let’s take a walk.”

  They turned left onto Roger Williams Avenue, which ran between one looming gray side of Rankle Park and a block-long warehouse with bricked-over windows. At the curb, a man and a woman unloaded cardboard boxes of souvenirs—pennants, batting helmets, Providence Jewels pen and pencil sets—on the back of their station wagon.

  “A death threat,” Linderman said. “You don’t tell me anything, do you?”

  Harvey was trying to decide whether it merited an answer when Linderman continued: “For chrissakes, Harvey. When you get a death threat, that’s when you’re supposed to go to the cops. Maybe you’re too dumb to be scared. What did it say?”

  Harvey worked his wallet out of his pants pocket and handed Linderman the note. “I suppose you’re going to tell me who wrote it.”

  Linderman held it in his hands. “It so happens I know a thing or two about graphology, but this is written in block letters by somebody’s off hand. Cursive writing is what tells you something.” He gave Harvey the note. “Now, you could go get writing samples from everyone you think might want to write you a note like that, and we could have our handwriting man spend a few days looking them over and comparing them to those block letters, but the odds are pretty slim, and then you’d probably need a handwritten term paper from all the suspects to even have a shot at it.” He gave a rueful laugh. “I wish I liked you more,” he said.

  “It would ruin the symmetry of the relationship.”

  “You’re right. Let’s keep it the way it is. Now look, I wanted to tell you something about your friend Rudy.”

  They turned the corner and headed up another side of Rankle Park. On their left, the stadium light towers rose freakishly over them. On their right, a shadow passed in the window of a leather supply company.

  “After reading the paper this morning,” he said to Linderman, “I figured the trail was cold. Now you’ve got those two strangled kids on the East Side.”

  “Don’t worry, there’s still movement on it. But I hit a brick wall today and thought you’d want to know about it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Let me put it this way. After finding those three typewriters in Rudy’s place, I thought I had a pretty good idea where that money came from. The three thousand bucks.”

  “Ronnie Mateo,” Harvey said.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re making the same mistake I did. Only natural. When you’ve got a bunch of typewriters lying around where they shouldn’t be, some big bills, a guy who’s been soaking in the bottom of a whirlpool overnight, and Ronnie Mateo, it’s easy to jump to conclusions. I mean, the mob’s just not that interested in typewriters, but a guy like Ronnie might be. And the way Rudy was put away was not a professional job, and Ronnie is not a professional-type guy. But when we finally traced the serial numbers on the machines, we ended up with a much different picture.”

  They walked around a stickball game three kids were playing against the back of Rankle Park’s left field stands.

  “Get this, Harvey. There’s an orphanage in Woonsocket. Rudy went there to give talks a couple of times this summer, and he got pretty fond of the kids there and the nuns who run it. Makes sense, right? So one day he tells the mother superior that he wants to buy something for the kids. She tells him the kids have everything they need, but the orphanage staff is banging away on Royal manuals from about 1915 and they’re working on a shoestring, and you guessed it. We traced the machines to an office supply outfit in Cranston, where Rudy went and paid cash for three new IBMs three days before he was murdered. He was just holding them in his apartment until he could get out to the orphanage. Our luck that Rudy told the guy who sold him the machines that he was buying them for an orphanage and he wanted the best they had. Cost about eleven hundred bucks a pop. So
we tracked down the orphanage, and it all checked out.” Linderman brought both hands up to his crew cut and massaged it. “I thought being nice to orphans died with Babe Ruth. Now who the hell would want to kill a guy like that?”

  Harvey didn’t say anything for twenty yards. Then: “Where does that leave Ronnie? There’s still that money.”

  “He says he’s clean, and maybe now I believe him.”

  “Okay, then, why’d I get a visit from him?”

  “I didn’t say he had nothing to hide.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’ll tell you, but I don’t want this thrown around, I don’t want it in the papers, I don’t even want you to repeat it back to me. Because this city needs this ball club, and this is the kind of thing that could get the team in hot water with the league. All right?”

  “All right.”

  Linderman lit another Marlboro. “All right, it’s pretty simple. When Rankle Park was a minor league park all those years, a company called Vendorama ran the concessions. Everything, from the beer to the paper napkins, came from Vendorama. When Levy brought you guys to town this season, Vendorama went to him and said they expected to keep running the concessions at the park, everything as usual. Now Levy may’ve had his own ideas, but when he asked around and found out what kind of muscle Vendorama had, he’s a smart businessman, so he said, ‘Sure, why not?’ And Vendorama dictated terms. So Levy doesn’t see a penny from the concessions.”

  “Bunny Mateo,” Harvey said.

  “You catch on fast. When you do business with that crowd, the deal has nothing to do with the price of doing business with them. It only has to do with the price of not doing business with them.”

  “And Ronnie?”

  “A putz who happens to be related to a guy who definitely isn’t. So he gets to roam around the ball park and try to sell some crap he picks up off the back of a truck somewhere. So he came to see you because he didn’t want to see his name in the papers and lose his special status and get his brother angry and also because he likes to think he’s a leg-breaker. There’s more inside a cannoli than there is in his head.”

  “There’s still that money.”

  “I thought you might have some bright ideas,” Linderman said.

  “What about Frances? Doesn’t she have any?”

  Linderman shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Frances Shalhoub and I are keeping in touch.”

  They had walked all the way around the park. Linderman went one way, and Harvey went into the clubhouse. Most of the team had already suited up and gone out to the field. He could forget Ronnie Mateo and the typewriters. He could forget Ronnie Mateo and the necklaces. Maybe he could forget Ronnie Mateo, period. He could forget Valerie Carty. He couldn’t forget Frances and the three thousand dollars and a lot of bits and pieces, but the only way he could still get Frances and the money into the same thought was if Frances had been paying Rudy to keep his mouth shut about their affair.

  But extramarital affairs were as common as 6-4-3 double plays, and why would Rudy threaten to talk? Anyway, Frances was the sort of woman who would tell Felix, if she had to, that it just wasn’t true about her and Rudy, and Felix would believe her. And if by some chance Felix didn’t believe her, what would he do about it? The guy barely had the energy anymore to leave the dugout and beef to an ump about a bad call. Still, Harvey thought as he tied his spikes and folded the tongues back over the bows, he hadn’t really spoken to Felix at any length since the day after Rudy’s murder. He didn’t really have any bright ideas, but when he passed Felix’s office and saw him sitting alone at his desk playing with a pile of the wooden tongue depressors that the players used to scrape the mud from their spikes on rainy days, he walked in.

  Felix had cleared a space on a desk cluttered with sports pages, lineup cards, mementos, and the vinyl-covered loose-leaf notebook containing the team statistics. He was gluing the tongue depressors into what looked like picket fences.

  “What’s doing, Felix?”

  “Why aren’t you out on the field?” He made a brief attempt to conceal his construction project.

  “I’m a little late getting started today.”

  “Listen, Professor, I’m batting you third tonight. I like the way Stiles has been getting on base lately, and I want to bat him second so you’ll have somebody to chase home. Okay?”

  “Fine, Felix, fine. Don’t worry, we’ll get you some runs tonight. Nice guys shouldn’t have to finish last.”

  Felix looked up at him with sad eyes. His nose had a red, rubbery look.

  “Felix, I’m not going to tell you you look like the picture of health these days.”

  “Good. I hate liars.” He put the cap back on the Elmer’s glue. “Why do I have to have an unsolved murder on my ball club? Isn’t it enough we’ve lost fourteen of our last eighteen? Why couldn’t it have been the Yankees? They’re always fighting among themselves anyway. Why couldn’t it have happened to whoever’s managing them these days?” He chuckled morosely at his own joke.

  “He’s got Morrissey to deal with. You don’t.”

  Felix grimaced at the mention of the Yankee’s principal owner. “At least Morrissey’s got the money to buy himself a winner. This organization’s not in a healthy financial posture. I’ll probably lose half the team to free agency in the next two years. Assuming I’m still here.” He braced his temples with his palms. “Harvey, are you sleeping with my wife?”

  “Excuse me?” Harvey said.

  “I’ve got a right to know, I think.”

  “No, of course not. For God’s sake, Felix, why would it even occur to you to ask?”

  “Don’t you think I know when my wife’s off on one of her romantic expeditions? Just tell me and I won’t ask any more questions.”

  “Felix, I swear I’m not. I mean, not even close.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s more than I could say for someone else, may he rest in peace.”

  “Rudy?” Harvey felt he was shaking his head in disbelief too obviously.

  “It may come as a surprise to you, although God knows why it should. Perhaps you’ve noticed she takes a fancy to younger men. Sometimes I don’t know why she even married me.”

  “You put up with it?” he said, when he couldn’t think of anything else.

  “The marriage?”

  “The younger men.”

  “What can I do? I just about owe this job to her.”

  Harvey pretended to be occupied by something on the floor. “Yeah, I know she owns part of this ball club.”

  “It’s not a matter of public record, Professor, but my wife owns twenty percent. Her own money. That gives her just enough leverage to get her husband the manager’s job. Who else was going to touch me, with my record?”

  “Felix,” Harvey implored, but Felix was on a confessional binge.

  “Sometimes I don’t even feel like the job’s mine. Levy drools all over Frances, and between the two of them they run most of the show.”

  “Can’t you talk to Levy about it? You’re a baseball man, Felix; you’re a good manager. You’ve just had lousy teams.”

  Felix ignored Harvey’s effort at praise. “I’ve gone to Levy. He says, ‘Well, certainly, Felix, you’re the manager, but it’s good for the team to have Frances around, and it’s good for Frances.’ The guy’s telling me what’s good for my wife! Truth is he gets a hard-on just looking at her, and she owns a piece of the property. Money talks. Felix just sits here and spills his guts to his goddamn center fielder.”

  “Does Linderman know about Frances and Rudy?” Harvey asked.

  “If he does, I sure as hell wasn’t the one to tell him. What’s the point, anyway? What’s there to know? If Linderman knew, it’d be all over the place. What’s it got to do with Rudy’s murder?”

  Felix had phrased it as a question, as if he too felt the matter was still open. “You know about the money in Rudy’s sports jacket,” Harvey said.

  “Sure, Linderm
an told me about it.”

  “And you know he feels there’s no way that money was a gambling bribe? There was no unusual betting action on Jewels games.”

  “And no gambler’d be dumb enough to work through a relief pitcher. Starting pitchers and big hitters throw games, not relievers.”

  “And you know the typewriters are out, right?”

  “Yeah, Linderman just told me about that, too,” Felix said. “Now how in hell am I supposed to hate a man who’s slept with me wife when he’s buying typewriters for a goddamn orphanage and then gets murdered in my goddamn clubhouse?”

  “You got any ideas, Felix?”

  “No, and Linderman doesn’t seem to have any, either. Between you and me, Professor, Linderman never seemed too sharp to me.”

  Harvey let the comment pass. “Whoever killed Rudy was extremely smart or extremely lucky, or both.” He stood up. “I know this is crazy, Felix, but you don’t think—”

  “Forget it. And if she was the murdering sort, love’s the last thing she’d kill for, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Sorry, Felix. I must be getting pretty desperate.” Harvey started to leave, then stopped. “What’d they talk about, Frances and Rudy?”

  “Beats me. Only time I overheard them, they were talking about real estate. I gather Rudy was investing in some.”

  Harvey stood in front of Felix. The Jewels’ schedule was taped to the tiles on the wall behind Felix’s chair. Providence had these four against the Tigers, three over the weekend with second-place Boston, a quick road trip to Chicago for four, and back to close out the season with three against first-place New York.

  “Why don’t you go out there and put your mind on the game,” Felix finally said. “At least you can try to salvage a three hundred season for yourself.”

  Harvey waved a hand at him. “I’d just like to see the team finish up on a winning note.”

  “You can save the bullshit for the press. Just go out there and get a few hits tonight.”

  After the 6-3 loss to the Tigers, Harvey went back to his apartment and took out the paper bag that Dunc had given him four days ago in New York and spread the contents on his kitchen table. He threw the half-finished pack of cigarettes, the sunglasses, and the sanitary hose back in the bag and began leafing through the book about real estate investment. He was searching his memory for anything Rudy had ever said to him about real estate when an envelope with a cellophane window fell out from between the pages.