by Marvin Kaye
As though they had practiced it a thousand times, and in a way they had, as Dezarn placed his gun on a card table, Matthew Locke grabbed the trophy basketball and threw an outlet pass his idol, Wes Unseld, would have been proud of.
The ball struck Michaels in the nose, causing him to drop the bat. Dezarn was on top of him with a speed that belied his age, wrestling the younger man to the floor and cuffing him.
“I hope you flannel-shirted clowns have all that on tape,” shouted Dr. Seigler, who had undergone a complete transformation into business suit and heels. “Monster Trackers may not be around to use it, but we’ve got enough for the pilot episode of a new reality show, Extreme High School Reunions.”
As the relieved group walked out of the cabin ready to celebrate the anniversary, Kelly turned to her father. “Stolen legacies, hidden identities, and seemingly supernatural beasts … maybe we should call this ‘The Case of the Hounds of Basketballville,’”
Her dad started to laugh when at that moment a loud roar sounding like a cross between a wounded coyote and an angry bear echoed down the hollow to the river.
The Monster Trackers, Sheriff Dezarn, Matthew Locke, and Kelly all screamed at once: “The Appalachsquatch!”
* * * *
HIT ONE OUT OF THE PARK, by Jeff Baker
You’re supposed to look after your little brother. Keep him out of trouble. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. But that’s how I got involved with a gambling ring, a murder plot and Joe DiMaggio’s baseball bat. The one we accidentally sort of stole.
The main reason for all of this was a guy named Diedrich. He ran a respectable grocery store in our New York neighborhood, with a few sidelines. Mainly playing the horses, betting on ballgames and the like. All of it under the table, or rather out of the back of his store. And my brother Ward Keaton was a regular customer, making a nice pile off of a lot of betting which our Mother would not have approved and which I barely approved. Things went really bad in June of 1941. Diedrich managed to stiff my brother out of $200, which he said he’d placed on a game like Ward had asked him to. Then Diedrich says he never made the bet. Swore it up and down. My brother did a lot of swearing, too. Then he did some threatening. As a consequence he was officially thrown out of Diedrich’s store, front and back rooms.
Me, I heard the whole thing when I got off work. Yeah, I worked on a loading dock but looking after Ward was a full-time job, too.
“George,” Ward said, “two-hundred bucks is no ten grand but it is a lot of money. And it isn’t his.”
I tried to get him to calm down but that wouldn’t work with Ward any more than appealing to his common sense would. With my tongue planted firmly in my cheek and trying not to mumble I suggested calling the police. That just made him madder. He started talking about “going down to Diedrich’s and pulling my money outa him with a crowbar.”
Fortunately he wouldn’t go down there alone and he couldn’t get me to go along. I managed to talk him into sleeping on it.
Unfortunately, he slept on it.
The next morning he’d dreamed up an idea: do away with Diedrich and get his money and maybe more besides. I remembered Ward almost getting us in trouble for shoplifting when we were kids. And he’d started more than his share of fights. But neither of us were big guys and he’d lost a lot of the fights, including the one or two he’d dragged me into.
“Ever watch the movies?” I asked. “Ever listen to the radio? The killers never get away with it. The cops are always a couple of jumps ahead of them.”
Ward agreed that he didn’t know just then how he could work his way around it and I suggested that he drop the whole thing as a bad idea. And that was what I thought he did. I was breathing sighs of relief until just after the first of July when the weather was getting really hot and I was hoping that if we got into this war in Europe they’d draft me and send me to the North Pole or something. Ward showed up with a big grin on his face and a crazy look in his eye and invited me into his bedroom, which was really part of the living room with a makeshift curtain and a view of the fire escape.
“Whaddya think this is?” Ward said proudly, pulling a wrapped up something in a newspaper from under his bed.
“I dunno. What?” I said, weighing the thing in my hands.
“The perfect murder weapon,” he said smiling broadly. He patted the wrapping. “Perfect because this thing can’t be traced back to me and the guy I grabbed it from wasn’t supposed to have it in the first place.”
My mouth was hanging open. I felt like asking about a zillion questions but nothing came out. Ward nodded and his expression got serious.
“I did some thinking and I remembered Romano saying in a loose moment that he was about to come into some stuff that nobody was supposed to know about and did I want in on it? I said no but I checked it out, anyway. Pile of stuff in the back of his workshop that all looked kinda dangerous, so I went back later and took this thing. It’s a good thing he usually does the stealing because it was the easiest thing in the world to take this outa there.”
All of a sudden I didn’t want anything to do with the whatever-it-was in my hands that was wrapped in the newspaper. I was worried that it was going to go off or something and I was relieved when Ward picked it out of my hands and tossed it on the bed.
“You haven’t,” I started to say. “I mean, Diedrich. Is he, you know, dead?”
Ward laughed and shook his head no.
“I’ve got it all planned out, see,” he said. “Friday’s the Fourth of July, right? Diedrich always shoots off firecrackers and gets really drunk, right?”
I nodded. Every July Fourth since repeal of Prohibition.
“So when he’s loaded to the muzzle and staggering around back of his store, I sneak out of the dark and get him with this.”
With that, Ward pulled the wrapping off the thing he’d put on the bed and held it in front of me. It was, yeah, a baseball bat. Wood, kinda worn in places, and the handle where someone would grab it looked really worn like someone had filed or sanded it down. I fingered the bat gingerly and felt around until I found what I was looking for, the name engraved on the bat: Joe DiMaggio.
“Don’t you read the papers instead of wrapping stuff in them?” I asked. “This is the bat! His bat! It was stolen last weekend from Griffith Stadium! It’s been in all the papers! On the radio! Romano pinched it and then you pinched it from him!”
“No, some guy Romano knows pinched it and then I …” Ward began.
“No!” I said, trying to yell and keep my voice down at the same time. “You aren’t going to get away with this! I’m amazed you got away with anything.”
I grabbed the bat and sat down on the bed. Hard. Needless to say keeping tabs on Ward while he was planning doing someone in with a murder weapon half of New York was already looking for was making my own day the kind Mrs. Roosevelt usually didn’t write about.
“Can I have my bat back?” Ward asked.
“Yeah,” I said and handed it to him. Then I grabbed it back. “No! You can’t have it back! It isn’t even your bat! This is DiMaggio’s!”
“Well, so?” Ward said.
“So,” I said, thinking quickly. “What’re all the kids gonna say if they find out somebody offed somebody else with DiMaggio’s bat?”
Ward just stared and blinked a couple of times.
“And what about DiMaggio?” I said. “You know how superstitious ballplayers are! This could put him in a slump, end his streak, ruin his career maybe.”
“You think maybe?” Ward asked.
“Yeah,” I said, faking all the confidence I could. “I think so. It’s our responsibility to baseball not to let anything happen to that bat. Like murder.”
“Yeah, well all I’m gonna do is ruin Diedrich’s career,” Ward said. “He didn’t think about mine. And that bat’s mine right now.”
“Yours?”
“Yeah. I stole it. Totally honestly. Now hand it over.”
“Okay,” I said, handing him the ba
t. “But you aren’t going to go any place with it right now? Flash it around the neighborhood?”
“Nahh,” he said. “Not until this weekend.”
I sighed. That gave me a couple more days to think. I thought about pulling something to eat out of the icebox, all the talk about DiMaggio had gotten me to thinking about ballpark hotdogs. I was sitting at the dining room table which was the table shoved up beside the icebox and the stove, about to start in on a leftover chicken leg when I heard a sudden whumping sound over and over. I rushed over to Ward’s bedroom. He’d put two pillows on the bed, one on top of the other and was hitting them with the bat.
“What do you think?” he asked. “From the top or the side?”
“That’s my pillow!” I said.
“Yeah, sorry.” Ward said. “It’s nothing personal.” He started hitting the pillows again. “Probably from the back. I’ll have to sneak up on him.”
“What are you doing?” I asked. I knew exactly what he was doing but it was the only thing I could think of to say at the moment.
“Batting practice,” he said. “I figure I’m not going to get three strikes to hit Diedrich, so I’d better make it good.” He swung the bat again; really hard this time and the top pillow sailed off against the wall. I stared, wondering to myself if he’d be satisfied with just fouling Diedrich instead of permanently hitting him out.
I went back to my chicken leg. I just sat and stared at it trying not to think about how much it resembled a baseball bat.
That evening I was taking a nap when there was a banging on the apartment door. For a moment I thought Ward was practicing with the bat again but I remembered that he’d stepped out and left the bat wrapped under the bed. Then the banging came again and I was wide awake.
The guy at the door wasn’t too big but he was big enough. He gave me the once over and asked to see Ward. Actually he had I-wanna-break-Ward-Keaton-in-half written all over him.
“I’m Ward’s brother George. His big brother.” I tried to stand up a little taller. “Ward doesn’t live here any more. Hasn’t for a while. May I mean, who’s asking?”
I’d almost said ‘May I say who’s calling?’ in the same super-polite tone my Grandmother always used.
“Name’s Malone. Call me Malone,” the big man said.
“Something else I can help you with Mister Malone?” I asked making sure I was blocking the doorway.
“Yeah,” he said. “When your brother comes back here—”
“When I see him, you mean,” I said.
“When you see him you tell him that Mr. Romano did an inventory and he needs to talk to him.” Malone was glaring. “He’ll know where to call.”
With that, Malone turned around and stalked down the hallway. I closed the door as soon as he was out of sight and about collapsed. I wondered if I should’ve just given him the bat back. It wasn’t five minutes later that Ward all but ran into the apartment looking like he was out of breath. He held up a copy of the evening paper.
Right there on the front page was a big picture of DiMaggio grinning and posed like he’s about to swing the bat right into the camera. I looked closer. Yeah, it was definitely the bat we had all right.
“Look at this,” Ward said. “These pictures are all over the city. All over the East Coast. The whole country is after us!” His voice had risen to a squeak. “Ted Williams is probably after us!”
And they aren’t the only ones, I thought.
“This,” I said, “would be a great time to lay low. To stay out of sight.”
“Yeah,” Ward said.
“And to not do anything that would attract, you know, undue attention,” I said. I was faking it but Ward was buying it.
“Yeah, we lay low until Friday night when we knock off Diedrich during the fireworks!”
So much for that.
“We do it during the fireworks instead of after so Diedrich won’t hear himself getting killed.” Ward said.
I felt like hiding under my bed or just getting in bed and pulling the covers up over me until July fifth. Which made a lot less sense in the middle of summer.
“We gotta hide out somewhere,” Ward said.
“Like where?” I said. “The movies?”
“Or the pool hall.”
“We can’t afford to sit in the movies for two or three days,” I said.
“No, just until we get Diedrich.”
“And we’re not gonna get Diedrich,” I said.
“Not right now, anyway,” Ward said. He rushed over to his bed and pulled his jacket out from under it. “I’ve got a couple of bucks, we’re hiding out at the movies.”
“You’re hanging out at the movies,” I said.
“You wanna stay here and answer the door when that big bruiser comes back?”
I just stood there and stared. That was the first thing he’d said that made any actual sense. Ward had taken his jacket and was stuffing the bat up one sleeve.
“You’re not going to wear that like that?” I said.
Ward stopped trying to hide the bat in the jacket and stared at it. If there’s one thing more conspicuous than wearing a jacket like that in the heat of summer it’s probably trying to sneak a baseball bat under the jacket into a theater.
Ward stared around the room. His face brightened when he saw the stove.
“Oh that’s just asking for trouble,” I said, imagining DiMaggio’s bat going up like burned meatloaf.
“Not in the stove, dummy,” Ward said. He got down on his hands and knees and slid the bat along the floor past the corner leg of the stove and into a hole in the wall I’d never noticed before.
“And it just fits, too!” Ward said triumphantly.
“Where? Into the apartment next door?” I asked.
“Naaah! Into the wall. I’ve used it before to hide stuff.”
I just hoped that mice wouldn’t make off with the bat.
I couldn’t enjoy the movies. The cartoon was all about mice hiding something from a cat which made me worry even more. The newsreel was worse, a lot of baseball footage. I kept imagining the announcer saying “Dateline; New York City. Two brothers, George and Ward Keaton, who are sitting in the middle row of this theater, are believed to be the culprits involved in the theft of Joe DiMaggio’s lucky baseball bat. President Roosevelt is ordering the National Guard to close in on the suspects.”
I couldn’t even say what the main feature was. I wasn’t really paying attention. Ward, he was just munching popcorn, happy as a clam.
When the movie was over we decided not to stay for the next showing. Maybe the idea of hanging around in the movie theater was starting to feel silly.
We’d walked out of the theater and Ward was suggesting that we find a pool hall or an all-night diner to go to when someone else spoke up.
“Mr. Keaton. And Mr. Keaton. A word with you, please.”
It was just like in the movies. We turned around. There was an unfamiliar man standing there and he wasn’t smiling.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Romano,” Ward said.
The movies don’t tell how sick you feel when something like that happens.
“Let’s just keep moving,” I said quietly turning back around the way we were heading.
Malone was standing there, looking bigger than he had in our doorway. Ward and I looked at each other. It was either run or fight and neither would do us much good.
“Step this way if you please,” Romano said, gesturing towards a narrow alley between two buildings. I walked in, followed by Malone and Romano with Ward between them. I stared down the alleyway; it ended in a tall fence.
Romano and Malone blocked our view of the exit.
“Mister Keaton, you have something that belongs to me. Something I want very badly,” Romano said.
“Really?” Ward asked.
“Yes, and you’re interfering with a very important business matter. A matter that has already gone very bad.”
Romano smiled; it somehow made the alley seem smaller.
/>
“The item in question is a baseball bat,” Romano said.
“Yeah,” Ward said hoarsely.
“We need it now,” Romano said. “And at the moment we are willing to compensate you for your efforts in returning the item to us.”
To his credit my brother didn’t lose his composure. I would have stood there, jaw dropped, blithering like one of the Bowery Boys. Or more than likely I would have cried. But Romano wasn’t talking to me and so I just stood there stunned.
“How much compensation are we talking about?” Ward asked.
“It is worth far more to us to settle this issue now.” Romano said. “Quickly and quietly.”
Ward just stood and glared.
“A hundred and fifty dollars,” Romano said.
“Five hundred.” Ward said, unflinchingly.
“Two-hundred dollars,” Romano said.
“It’s worth at least a grand isn’t it?” Ward said. “Who you dealing with, DiMaggio?”
“Mister Keaton, consider yourself lucky that we are in this position. Two-hundred-and-fifty and this is our final offer.” Romano had stopped smiling.
“Sounds good to me.” Ward said. “Now, my associate and I will go and—”
Romano cut him off.
“One of you will stay here; the other will bring the required item.”
Ward and I stared at each other.
“Fine,” Ward said. “My brother will go get the, uh, item.”
I nodded, trying to look as calm as he was. He grinned at me, but there was a look in his eyes that was saying don’t be long, Big Brother.
I walked and ran back to the apartment, checking behind me constantly, convinced that I was going to get jumped or killed every step of the way or that I’d find the apartment ransacked and the bat gone. But the apartment was fine and I was able to pull the bat out of the hole in the wall with some effort and to deliver it, wrapped in Ward’s jacket back to the alleyway where I’d left Romano, Malone, and Ward.
They were just standing around talking like they were waiting on a parade to start or something instead of the return of clumsily-stolen merchandise. I handed Ward the bat and he handed it over to Romano who forked over the two-hundred-and-fifty dollars. We made fifty bucks on the deal but I figured we were just lucky to get out of it with our lives.
