The Conman

by Mike Murphey

  Conor, Basil and Brad sat at a table in a lounge situated adjacent to Harrah’s casino floor. When Basil initially headed alone toward the bar, Conor intervened. “You agreed to the rules. You’re not doing your voodoo girl mesmerizing trick. Just stay here and enjoy the company of your friends.”

  A.J., though, had departed under the pretense of a restroom break.

  “I won it, playing blackjack,” A.J. said. “Yeah, I know I wasn’t supposed to. But it’s crazy, man. It’s like I can’t lose.”

  “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “I’m covering our expenses. As of now, everything’s on me. I’ve kept a couple of hundred bucks to play with. If I blow the two hundred and ask you for more, don’t let me have it.”

  “Why don’t we let Brad hold the money?”

  “No, because he’d just give it to me. Wouldn’t you, Brad?”

  “Well, probably.”

  Conor pocketed the money. Five minutes later, A.J. returned.

  “I need two hundred dollars.”

  “No,” Conor said.

  “Come on. It’s my money.”

  “No. You told me not to give it to you.”

  “That’s when I didn’t think I’d need it. Now, I need it.”

  “Five minutes ago, you had two hundred dollars.”

  “Right. And now I don’t. So, give me two hundred of my dollars.”

  The whirr and ding of slot machines drifted through the darkness of the lounge. Cigarette smoke lingered everywhere.

  “Fine,” said Conor, shifting in his chair and withdrawing the wad of cash from his jeans. “Here’s your money.”

  “Not all of it. Two hundred dollars. Then don’t—”

  “Hey, I’m not holding your money anymore.” He shoved the bills across the table. “Give it to Brad.”

  “All right,” A.J. said. “Brad, I’m counting on you. Don’t give me any more.”

  The interval this time lasted ten minutes.

  “Brad, I need the money.”

  “Okay, here.”

  As A.J. disappeared into the casino a cocktail waitress, wearing a non-existent sort of costume displaying her bulging breasts as if they were being offered on a platter, placed a glass of scotch over ice before Basil.

  “Here ya’ go, honey,” she said, adding a wink. “This is from me and the girls.”

  “No,” said Conor. “No. Take it away. He’s allergic. Baze, you agreed . . .”

  Basil raised the glass as tribute and returned her wink. “Hey, it’s not my fault.”

  A flurry of activity followed by shouts cut his response short. They saw A.J. flash past the lounge entry at a dead run.

  “What’s going on?” Basil stood and took a few tentative steps.

  “Stop that guy!” someone yelled. A pair of burly security guards raced past.

  “They’re after A.J.!” Basil sprinted in pursuit.

  “Oh, shit,” Conor said. “Basil’s going after the security guys. We’ve gotta stop him.” He flung a few bills on the table. He and Brad turned the corner just as Basil was swallowed by darkness outside the Harrah’s entrance.

  Conor envisioned a scrum with Basil and A.J. beaten bloody by an entire company of security guards. Instead, they found Basil under a streetlight kissing the cocktail waitress. Although she wore a trench coat to protect her against the cold, she still managed to display two thirds of her boobs.

  “Where’d A.J. go?” Conor demanded.

  Basil disengaged himself.

  “I lost him.”

  “And you found her?”

  “She told me Happy New Year.”

  “So, you had to stop and kiss her?”

  “Well, yeah . . .”

  “Okay, say good night, because we’ve got to find A.J.”

  The waitress offered Basil an alluring smile and got into a car.

  “Where do we even begin—” Brad said.

  “There!” shouted Basil.

  He pointed to the Harvey’s Casino entrance on the other side of the street.

  A.J. ran into the distance, followed by a different set of security guards.

  They searched for three hours, looking through casinos and bars and scanning shrubbery at the edges of parking lots.

  “All we can do,” Brad said finally, “is wait until morning and see if he’s been arrested.”

  “We’ve got an early-morning flight,” Conor said. “A.J. has to be on it, or he’ll miss his carpet meeting.”

  They made the rounds again. Finally, their only alternative was returning to their rooms and packing.

  “I’ll meet you at the airport,” Basil told them. “I’ve got an appointment.”

  Conor unlocked his door, opened his suitcase and threw it onto the bed. The bed sneezed.

  “A.J.?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Why are you under my bed?”

  “I assumed sooner or later they’d figure out who I am and search my room. The safest thing is hiding here.”

  He wiggled into view and brushed dust bunnies from his shirt and hair.

  “Why were security guards chasing you?”

  “A misunderstanding at a blackjack table. Well, okay, two blackjack tables.”

  A.J. shook his head and confessed. He’d lost the rest of his thousand dollars over the course of a few minutes at Harrah’s. He went into his wallet for the emergency hundred-dollar bill he stashed there.

  “Money plays.”

  The dealer showed a ten. A.J. held two kings. The dealer turned over a six. A.J. prepared to receive his payout. Until the dealer hit with a five.

  “I don’t know what happened,” A.J. said. “The guy’s been pulling cards out of his ass for a dozen straight hands. I grabbed my hundred dollars before he could, and I ran.”

  “Jesus, A.J., you can’t—”

  Someone tapped at the door. A.J. dove back under the bed.

  Brad entered carrying a small bag.

  “Come out, A.J. It’s only Brad.”

  A.J. repeated his story to the point of Brad’s interruption.

  “I outran the security guards, hid behind some cars, and then I joined a bunch of Chinese people who were getting off a bus and snuck into Harvey’s.”

  “Yes, we saw you running from Harvey’s being chased by their security guards,” Brad said.

  “Yeah, well, all the Chinese people were going to the blackjack pit. I figured I’d blend in. After all, I still had my hundred bucks.”

  “Money plays.”

  Again, his heart soared as he found himself holding a ten and a queen against a dealer’s jack. The dealer flipped over an ace.

  “So, I grabbed my money again. I don’t think they got a good look at me there.”

  “How did you get away from two different sets of security guards?”

  “Casinos should hire security guards who don’t weigh so much. Those guys are really slow.”

  They shared a moment of silence.

  “So,” A.J. asked Brad, “how much trouble am I in?”

  “A lot, if they catch you. Nevada’s laws are pretty harsh when it comes to casino theft and cheating.”

  “And then there’s the Mob,” said Conor. “Doesn’t the Mob run casinos?”

  Color drained from A.J.’s face.

  “Look,” Conor said, “let’s just leave. Get packed and—”

  “No. Forget my stuff. I can’t go to my room. They might be waiting.”

  Conor bought a Lake Tahoe baseball hat at a gift shop. A.J. pulled it low, right above his eyes. They left the elevator and lingered among slot machines until they spotted a throng of retirees heading toward a tour bus.

  “What about Baze?” A.J. asked. “Where’s he?”

  “Out with some of the cocktail waitresses,” Conor said.

  “Shit, we can’t wait. I can’t miss this flight. I can’t be late to my carpet meeting.”

  “Basil’s a resourceful guy. He can get to the airport by himself.”

  They
dropped their rental car at the Reno airport and sprinted through the terminal, each clock they passed ticking toward A.J.’s doom.

  “We’re not gonna make it,” Conor called to A.J.

  “Yes, we will. We’re almost . . .”

  They skidded around the corner to find the gate entry closed, the aircraft slowly backing away. A.J. ran straight to a woman standing behind the desk guarding the gate. He spoke using broad, imploring gestures, and urgent whispers.

  She shook her head no.

  “What do you suppose he’s telling her?” Conor asked Brad.

  The woman’s expression softened, then evolved to a look of concern. She lifted a phone. The plane began a slow turn toward the runway. A man wearing an official-looking blazer strode purposefully toward the woman. A.J. repeated his imploring gestures and urgent whispers. The man shook his head no. The woman offered imploring gestures and urgent whispers of her own. The man took the phone. The airplane stopped, reversed its turn, and crept back toward the terminal.

  A.J., Conor and Brad boarded, confronting a host of angry glares from other passengers. As they buckled their seatbelts, one more commotion occurred at the forward cabin.

  Basil walked down the aisle, being led by a smiling stewardess.

  “Boy, it’s lucky your departure was late,” Basil told them, “or I’d have missed the flight.”

  As Basil fastened his seatbelt, the stewardess returned.

  “Sir,” she said, “we’d be happy to offer a vacant seat in our first-class section.”

  As the plane repeated its slow backing turn, A.J. glanced frantically at his watch.

  “Damn, I’ll have to go straight to the carpet factory.”

  “You need to change clothes and shower,” Conor said. “You look like you’ve been hiding under a bed all night. And you don’t smell very good, either.”

  A.J. ran his hand over a stubble of beard.

  “Let me borrow your razor. I’ll shave on the plane.”

  Conor reached under the seat ahead of him and unzipped his bag. “Here, I don’t have any shaving cream.”

  As soon as the seat belt sign flashed off, A.J. rose and made his way to the aft lavatory.

  Conor settled himself for a brief and bumpy ride over the Sierras into San Francisco.

  A.J. emerged from the lavatory ten minutes later. He’d gotten his hair under control. His face, though, was covered with dots of toilet paper stained by tiny red blotches.

  “Never shave during turbulence,” he said.

  A.J. didn’t make his meeting on time. When he finally did appear, he was disheveled, wrinkled, lacerated, and generally unpresentable.

  I saw A.J. that night.

  “My dad fired me. He said he finally realized my heart would never be in the family business. He gave me a hug and told me to go find myself.”

  sixteen

  El Paso Diablos

  Double A Baseball

  1979

  “Moose, I need a favor.”

  Conor only reluctantly asked his manager’s indulgence, because, for the first time in his professional career, he was struggling. He counted Stubing among his strongest advocates. Conor had been the ace of Stubing’s Salinas pitching staff the year before and they’d been promoted together to El Paso.

  Stubing sat behind a steel war-surplus desk in a sweltering cubbyhole of an office cooled only by the rhythmic sweep of an undersized electric fan.

  The Diablos played at Dudley Field, circa 1924. Located adjacent to the El Paso Zoo, Dudley Field stood a few miles south of the Texas border with New Mexico, and a few miles north of Juarez. Metal bleachers faced unrelenting sun along the first and third baselines, flanking a covered grandstand crafted of adobe bricks. Cramped and stifling locker room facilities smelled like fifty years of sweat, tobacco, pine tar and Flex-All. Infield and outfield grass baked under the Texas sun, and offered the only relief from the brown tones of the desert.

  “What do you need, Conman?”

  “My friend A.J. is here this week. He and I’ve played baseball together since we were seven years old. He’s like a brother . . .” Stubing’s eyebrows arched. He’d met Conor’s brothers in Salinas. “. . . and I wondered if you might let him participate in pre-game workouts while he’s here. He’s a good player. He’d love to get on the field.”

  Stubing aimed a stream of tobacco at a metal wastebasket and regarded Conor with a furrowed brow.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “He can play some catch before the games. As long as it doesn’t disrupt anyone’s workout routines.”

  For A.J., slipping into the baseball culture was like putting on a comfortable old suit. He borrowed a pair of Conor’s pants and a t-shirt, played catch and bantered with the players before batting practice, then showered and sat with Kate and Mark’s wife behind home plate.

  The Brouhards and Nashes shared the same apartment complex located at the edge of Biggs Airfield and the Fort Bliss Army base, a rough neighborhood at best.

  A.J. slept on Conor’s couch, and during the mornings before he and Conor left for the ballpark, talked about his plan to buy a sandwich shop on an attractive downtown San Francisco corner.

  “You’ve gotta start somewhere,” he said proudly, “and this will be my start. I’ve got my financing put together. We close right after I get back.”

  A.J.’s personality beamed full force during his week among the Diablos. Everyone liked him. Moose liked him so much that the day before they departed for a road trip, he invited A.J. to take a few cuts at batting practice.

  Players teased A.J. as he stepped to the plate.

  “Hey, don’t hurt yourself.” and “Try and get at least one into the outfield.”

  A.J. lunged at the first pitch, dribbling the ball along the third base line. The second pitch, though, he drove toward the left-centerfield gap.

  Stubing snapped his head around at the sound of the ball off A.J.’s bat. A.J. blasted the next pitch into the desert beyond centerfield. Moose and a couple of players sharing A.J.’s hitting group gathered behind the turtle to watch.

  “Your friend has a good swing,” Stubing told Conor, who joined the others. “He’s got some power.”

  At the close of BP, Conor headed toward the bullpen and A.J. retreated to the clubhouse to shower. Conor saw Kate find her seat and expected A.J. to join her. A.J. remained absent, though, until he appeared behind the dugout wearing a huge grin. He beckoned to Conor.

  “You won’t believe this,” A.J. said.

  “What did you do now?” Conor asked.

  “He offered me a contract.”

  “Who offered . . . what kind of contract?”

  “Moose. He offered me a contract to play baseball. He said I might have to go to Salinas for a while, but he thinks I can hit at this level.”

  He pumped his fist. “Wouldn’t that be something, Connie? Playing ball together again. It’s what we’ve talked about since the second grade!”

  “Yeah,” Conor said, forcing a smile. “Yeah. That would be something.”

  Conor brooded through the game. Every time he looked at Kate and A.J., he saw his friend talking with excited animation. And each time, an empty place at the pit of his stomach felt a little emptier.

  Had Conor not been struggling so mightily, had he not been staring his own baseball mortality in the face, he might have been more willing to celebrate his best friend’s happiness.

  A.J.’s excitement continued during their drive to the apartment. Brouhard offered his congratulations. Conor rode in silence. As they walked into Conor’s living room, A.J. asked, “Okay, Connie, what’s wrong?”

  Conor studied his shoes and took a moment to gather himself.

  “A.J., it’s great that Moose made the offer. Now, I’m asking you to turn it down.” A.J.’s expression of puzzled injury tore at him. “You know I love you like a brother,” Conor said. “That’s why I have be honest.”

  “What, you don’t believe I’m good enough?”

  “Yea
h, you’re good enough. For here. I’ve also heard you talking for weeks about your sandwich shop, that it’s your starting point. You’d have to give it up.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “I’ve been around these guys for three years. I can tell who the good ones are. Mark, Kenny Shrom, Brian Hunter, they’ve got a real chance. Here’s what will happen if you sign. You’ll go to Salinas and do well. Come here a year later and do okay. Then you’ll start bumping your head against the next level. They sign guys who are good enough for A or Double A, because they’ve gotta have teammates and opponents for the real prospects to test their talent.

  “Another three years or five years, and those guys will be in the majors. And you’ll be three or five years older and get released. Now, compare that to what you’ll accomplish with your sandwich shop. Think about what the next step will be, and the one after that. That’s where you belong. We both know it.”

  A.J. said nothing, only stared at Conor for long, long minutes.

  “I’m sorry,” Conor said. “I hate to—”

  A.J. forced a smile. He hugged Conor, then stepped back. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry for telling me the truth.”

  “Hey, go be a millionaire,” Conor said. “I’ll play baseball for both of us.”

  El Paso

  1979

  My collapse started with a single errant pitch.

  Following my year at Salinas, my shoulder soreness persisted so I didn’t play winter ball at Golden Gate Park. I didn’t pick up a ball again until Spring Training. When I did, my shoulder felt okay, but something was still off. The simple act of playing catch felt awkward. I attributed the problem to inactivity.

  Wilbur Spaulding remained minor league pitching coordinator for the 1979 season. He messed with all the lefthanders’ mechanics throughout spring training. Regardless of their past effectiveness, Spalding insisted on tweaking some nuance of their delivery. He offered no explanation. He just said do it and remained stoic and unapproachable.

  I stepped onto the mound to throw my first bullpen under Spalding’s critical eye. He watched my medium speed warm-up pitches with an air of impatience.