by Howard Owen
We’re not half a mile down the road when the blue lights go off like some kind of state police light show in the rearview mirror. Heartsick, I pull over. I’m thinking this is the worst possible scenario. Being the son of a light-skinned African American, I seldom even think about race these days. I know we’re not past it, but I’ve been a noncombatant in that sad, ridiculous war for a long time. I’m in the deepest South right now, though, and I’m feeling a major dose of paranoia coming on. Even if the state trooper thinks I’m some kind of Middle Eastern mélange, that has its own downside. Either way, it’s DWIANW—driving while intoxicated and not white.
“Quick,” Cindy says, already undoing her seatbelt. “Switch.”
It is not one of the noble moments of my life, but I’m barely back to full driving status again after an unfortunate incident in downtown Richmond in which everyone but me seemed to be going the wrong way on a one-way street.
Somehow, we manage to switch seats and even buckle up before the state trooper ambles up and shines his light in Cindy’s eyes.
“Have you been drinking, ma’am?” he asks her, as polite as a cat contemplating a canary. He looks over at me suspiciously. I look straight ahead.
“Two glasses of wine, officer,” she says, and she’s not lying by more than one. “I’m the designated driver. This one”—she points dismissively in my direction and shakes her head—“sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to get me back to the hotel safely.”
She’s really laying the southern accent on thick. She dipped at least two states toward the equator.
He takes her driver’s license, making a note that it’s from Virginia, which probably qualifies as Up North down here. Then he hands it back.
Because she’s minding her manners and is pretty, he doesn’t make her get out and walk the centerline or recite the alphabet backward. He does, however, make her blow into the breathalyzer. I’m holding my breath, but Cindy doesn’t seem fazed.
“How’d I do?” she asks the officer, bright as a penny.
He grunts.
“Good enough,” he says, “but not by that much. You know, I could take you in anyhow.”
“Oh,” Cindy says, “I hope you don’t. I need to get this jerk back to the hotel.”
The trooper finally manages a smile.
“Well, you do that,” he says. “And be careful out here. Don’t want to have somebody as pretty as you get in an accident. You all be safe now.”
He gives me one more look, like he’s trying to figure out what the hell I am.
She thanks him, then slowly pulls out into the road. In the five minutes between there and the hotel, I don’t say anything. All that blue-light adrenaline has gone a long way toward sobering me up.
Finally, in the parking lot, I clear my throat.
“Thank you.”
I can’t think of anything else to say. I feel like Mr. Johnson has shrunk about two inches. I am not feeling very manly.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cindy says, then turns off the ignition and turns to me.
“Willie,” she says. “I’m not going to be a nag. I’m not going to be that person. We are who we are. I’ve got my faults, which I’m sure you’ll discover if you stay around long enough. Andy warned me—well, not warned, maybe, but told me—that you can hit it pretty hard when you get going.”
She’s quiet for a few seconds. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop like a block of concrete on my muddled head.
“Here’s the thing, though. I’ll never hound you, never ask you why you drink so much. But I’m forty-five, and I’ve been through some shit. If things get bad, if I come to think you’re giving me insomnia and frown lines, I will leave, and I won’t look back. Life’s too short. That’s not an ultimatum or a threat or anything like that. It’s just the way it is.”
She says it quietly, calmly.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. Seldom have I been more sincere in that sentiment.
“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “Be better. And get your ass out of the car. The night’s still young.”
Inside, though, the night gets a bit older.
I check my cell phone, which I can never hear in restaurants or pretty much anywhere else these days.
There’s a call from Kate.
“Willie,” the voice mail says, “call me. Now.”
I do, and the news isn’t good. At least, it isn’t good for Raymond Gatewood.
For some reason, the cops didn’t get around to giving Gatewood’s jacket a good going-over until today.
“They found the key,” Kate says, and I hardly have to ask which one.
The missing key from Finlay Rand’s apartment, the one somebody took from the vase outside his door, turned up in Gatewood’s coat pocket.
I observe that this might just about seal the deal. Let’s get on with the hanging. I’m eager to put somebody on the scaffold, especially now, with Les holding on by a gnat’s eyelash.
“Well,” Kate says, “if he’s telling the truth about somebody dropping the jacket and him picking it up, the key thing doesn’t necessarily prove he was the shooter.”
I tell Kate it’s good enough for me until a better suspect comes along. And I’m pretty sure it’s good enough for Richmond’s finest and probably for the jury.
“It’s late,” I tell her. “I’ve got to go.” And I hang up.
I fill Cindy in on what’s happened.
“Sounds like they’ve got the right guy,” she says.
“Maybe.”
“Why only maybe? I mean, he was wearing the same clothes as the guy the camera caught leaving the building after the shooting, right? And he had the key in his coat pocket.”
It’s time to tell Cindy about the numbers.
“Holy shit,” she says, when I’ve finished. “I should’ve figured that out, as many scorecards as I’ve filled out over the years.”
“Well, sometimes things are so obvious you can’t see ’em.”
When Roy Haas’s widow first mentioned the postcards, I made notes, mental and otherwise, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. But then, when I called back and she told me there were nine of them, and which ones had been crossed out, I started to see the light.
I’ve never known why baseball scorecards list the players the way they do. I should look it up sometime. I mean, I can understand why the pitcher is No. 1 and the catcher is 2, and then it makes sense to make the first baseman 3 and the second baseman 4. But why skip over the shortstop and make the third baseman No. 5, then go back to shortstop for 6? And why go from right to left across the infield, then left to right, 7 through 9, in the outfield?
The only numbers not crossed out on Brenda Haas’s last postcard were the 2 and the 9. Catcher and right fielder.
As far as I can tell, Buck McRae is still alive and kicking in North Carolina. And Les is still with us, for the moment.
I know Roy Haas, third baseman, had his heart attack four years ago. I know that Lucky Whitestone, shortstop, has been dead twenty-four years. I know that Phil Holt died in that convenience store holdup in 1985. I know Jackson Rittenbacker, center field, drowned in Lake Michigan eleven years ago, and that Rabbit Larue, second base, disappeared while walking the Appalachian Trail in 1990. I know about Paul Bonesteel, left field, who met his demise under a subway train in 1993.
All that leaves, in addition to Les and Buck McRae, is Jack Velasquez, the first baseman, and I’m not feeling too good about old Jack.
Most of the starters for the 1964 Richmond Vees seem to have met their fates, in a variety of ways and over a period of at least twenty-three years. It’s not unusual for people to die. Happens all the time. And it’s not unusual for former athletes to buy it while they were out hunting or fishing or walking the AT. But the only starters to get to their seventieth birthdays are Les, McRae and Velasquez, assuming he’s still living.
All this combined misfortune might make a nice hook for my story. The Curse of Parker Field or some such shit.
There’s only one thing that makes it more than a coincidence:
Somebody’s keeping score.
Chapter Eleven
SUNDAY
We barely make our flight out of Mobile at seven. I don’t think I slept two hours, because Cindy was so jazzed up after I told her about the scorecards that she kept asking me questions.
I run into a men’s room at the airport just before they start boarding us, and the glimpse I get of myself as I rush out, drying my hands on my pants, makes me wonder why Cindy Peroni, who could pass for thirty-five instead of forty-five even after forgoing sleep, is willing to spend a minute with me, let alone a weekend.
“Come on,” she says, holding a place for me in line. “If we miss this one, we might have to drive back to Richmond.”
We’re lucky somebody or somebodies slept later than we did, late enough to miss their flight to Atlanta and forfeit their seats to us.
It’s still shy of ten thirty when we get back home. We both agree that brunch at Millie’s might be just the restorative we need.
They don’t take reservations. Most of my favorite joints don’t. There’s a crowd milling around outside the place, young and old, black and white, hipster and Commonwealth Club, all undeterred by the roar of motorcycles as the two-wheel crowd descends on Poe’s Pub down the street. The owner greets me and takes our names. One thing about Millie’s: they never lose your name. You might wait an hour, but the guys who came in right after you will wait an hour and five minutes.
I’m into my second Bloody Mary and Cindy’s switched from chardonnay to iced tea by the time they call us. On a nice spring day like this, it’s almost a disappointment when you don’t have to wait outside savoring the hair of the dog.
“Don’t worry,” I tell Cindy. “I’ll take it easy.”
“Your call,” she says, shrugging.
Richmond’s a big enough city to keep me entertained, but it’s small enough that you never know when two of your little universes are going to collide.
And so it is that I look up just in time to see Awesome Dude headed toward us. Even among the eclectic mix waiting for a table, Awesome attracts attention. And, of course, he spies me immediately. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have acknowledged him anyhow, but I don’t have the chance.
“Willie!”
Everyone looks at me. I greet him the way you should greet the guy who’s been at your mother’s side in her hour of need. I give him a man-hug, noting to myself that he seems to have showered in the last three days. Cindy, who knows him from the hospital, asks him if he wants a drink.
He declines. He’s on one of his walkabouts. Despite the fact that he has housing when he needs it in Peggy’s English basement, Awesome is still a little on the feral side.
“How’s Les?”
Awesome shakes his head.
“Aw, Willie,” he says, “I don’t know. He just stares up at the ceiling. He ain’t got the will no more.”
I tell him that my next stop is the hospital. He says he’s just taking a break to clear his head. I avoid saying that it might take a way-back machine to do that. I can’t remember when Awesome Dude’s head didn’t need clearing.
Just then, the owner sticks his head out the door and shouts, “Black!”
We start walking toward the door before we lose our slot and have to drink for another forty-five minutes outside.
“Wait,” Awesome says, tugging at my sleeve. The way Awesome says it, sans a few teeth, it comes out as “Ait.”
I tell Cindy to go on and secure our table.
I wait.
“That fella, the one they said shot Les?” Awesome says.
“Yeah?”
“I know him. He ain’t like that.”
I’m aware that Raymond Gatewood’s nonmilitary record seems to stop short of actual killing, but maybe Awesome, who spends more time on Richmond’s streets than a stray dog, can tell me something I don’t know. It’s my experience that everybody can teach you something, if you just shut the hell up and listen.
It turns out that Mr. Gatewood has spent some time in the same homeless hangouts as Mr. Dude. Awesome, who is a better observer of human nature than most of his species when he’s not drug-addled, has seen the bad side of Les’s accused shooter.
“He’ll fuck you up,” Awesome says, speaking a little louder than your average brunch goer and getting a quick glance or two from the assembled. “But if you don’t mess with him, he don’t mess with you. I never seen him start nothing. And Les, he dudn’t mess with nobody.”
No, he dudn’t. I thank Awesome for his insight and bid him bon voyage, stopping short of asking him inside to share our table. I care for Awesome, but I don’t want to do anything to mess up my status at Millie’s.
I find Cindy, sipping a black coffee and studying the board.
I pass on Awesome’s information. I also thank Cindy for not high-hatting a guy the whole world has high-hatted.
“You don’t know when that might be you,” she says.
One Cajun mess and a crab enchilada later, we leave for the hospital.
Peggy, Andi and Jumpin’ Jimmy are there when we arrive, along with a couple of characters who used to do roofing for Les. I think Peggy’s glad to have a crowd here. She looks like she’s lost a pound a day in the ten days Les has been here, and my dear old mom didn’t have any weight to lose. Peggy’s always been running at a higher gear than most of us, enough to burn off the effects of half a century of the munchies.
We step outside for a couple of minutes to let some of the others carry on one-sided conversations with Les. Jumpin’ Jimmy seems capable of holding up his end of the conversation for hours.
“I don’t know if he’s going to make it,” Peggy says. “You know, I even prayed, for whatever good that’ll do.”
It can’t hurt, I tell her.
“I told whoever’s up there that I promise I’ll take care of Les, no matter what shape he’s in. I just want him back.”
I give her a hug. She’s snuffling against my shirt. I assure her that Les is going to get better. The hope of the hopeless is better than no hope at all.
I manage to have a few words with Jimmy. As quickly and simply as I can, I tell him about what I found out in Florida and Alabama. When I tell him about the scorecards, he’s about as speechless as Jumpin’ Jimmy Deacon ever gets.
When I start to go back inside, Jimmy grabs my sleeve.
“So, you think maybe that asshole, excuse my French, they got locked up has been killing ballplayers?”
I tell Jimmy that I doubt it, that whoever did it, if one person did, has been doing a lot of traveling, and he’s been at it for, by my count, twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years ago, Raymond Gatewood would have been about six years old.
I warn Jimmy that this all could just be a string of coincidences, but when he asks me if it was a coincidence that everybody was getting those scorecards, I didn’t have an answer for him.
“But why?” Jimmy says. And I don’t have an answer for that one, either.
We stay a couple of hours. I drop Cindy off at her house, thanking her again for all she’s done for me, including saving me from my second DUI in less than two years.
“You got lucky when you found me,” she says. “Maybe I got lucky, too. Don’t screw it up, Willie.”
BACK AT the Prestwould, I have a message to call Finlay Rand. That can wait, though.
There are two more calls on my list. I’ve already tried Rabbit Larue’s daughter once, and no one answered. And I want to talk to Paul Bonesteel’s brother, the closest relative I could find.
Still no answer at the daughter’s house, but Anthony Bonesteel himself, residing in Babylon, Long Island, answers on the third ring.
It takes me awhile to get across to him what I’m trying to do. From the information I got online, Paul Bonesteel’s older brother is eighty-four or eighty-five years old, and his hearing’s not so great.
Being a lifelong Yankees’ fan, he finds
the story of how the Richmond farm team had to be called the Vees amusing.
“You guys,” he says, and I can hear a kind of creaky, old man’s laugh. “You never got over losing the war, did you?”
I concede that this might be the case, at least with some of my fellow citizens.
Once I get him started, though, he’s willing, even eager, to talk about his brother.
“Paulie, he was like a god. He always made straight As in school, was always the best at whatever sport he played. I told him he should oughta stick to football, but he said he’d last longer in baseball. Hah!”
Paul Bonesteel, “Boney” to his teammates but not to any of his family back home, was just about done in 1964, his fourth year in Triple A with nothing but a cup of September call-up coffee with the big team to show for it.
“But he was smart. He got his degree while he was playin’ ball, and then he went to work on Wall Street, and he made a killing.”
Paul Bonesteel’s wife, I learn, moved back to her hometown, Atlanta. Their kids, already grown when Paul died, live in the Atlanta area, too. He gives me her address and phone number.
“Tell her to call me once in a while.”
I ask Anthony about the way his brother died.
He’s quiet for a few seconds. I hear him clearing his throat. “He didn’t fall on no damn train tracks,” he says. “He had the best balance of anybody I ever seen. And they said he was maybe drunk. Paulie never got drunk. He could drink like a champ, and he might should of slowed down. He’d put on some weight. But nobody never, ever saw Paulie Bonesteel drunk.”
I wait for it.
“He was pushed. That’s all there was to it. The cops didn’t want to hear that. Too damn much trouble, I guess. But he didn’t fall, and I can tell you, sure as shit, he didn’t jump. Paulie and Barbara were together almost thirty years, raised two kids. They were like lovebirds.”
I ask him who would do such a thing.
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. Some maniac. Some kid fucked up on drugs. I hope he’s rotting in hell, whoever he is.”
