by April Smith
“Again, sir, are you his legal representative?”
“No, but I’m sure it’s late for all of us, so can we just cut through this?”
Joe is half smiling in a condescending way. You can see the sergeant’s aging face go cold and congealed.
“Then you’re not his legal representative?”
“I am a very concerned friend. Ms. Sanderson represents his employer.”
Cassidy says, “I can get a lawyer on the phone—”
The cop cuts her off. “The attorney of record can pick up a copy of the arrest report tomorrow.” Crisply, “This young lady was first—”
But the young mom isn’t listening. Her eyes are watery. She is wearing cutoffs and a sweatshirt with a picture of a California mission. Souvenir of a trip down the coast.
“He can go ahead of me.” Tears break loose and roll. “That’s all right.”
“No, ma’am, it is not all right,” the sergeant replies angrily. “You’ve got to stop letting men roll over you.”
“Oh, kiss my ass,” mutters Joe.
Cassidy whirls toward him. “Cool out.”
“This woman just said it’s okay. And I’m the insensitive male? I resent that.”
The sergeant turns his card over. And over.
“What gives you the right?” she says evenly. “Because you have a fancy car out there? Because your name,” squinting dismissively, “is Galinis? What’s Galinis? Is that supposed to make me jump? Because believe me, I can tell you, we have a lot more important names coming through those doors every day of the week.”
Joe struts forward, finger jabbing.
“You want Mr. Cruz’s legal representative?” raising his voice. “No problem. We’ll call the general counsel for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the mayor of Glendale and three council members I happen to own, and wake them up and get them down here and see why a young black ballplayer with no criminal record has been locked up by the police and the police say, ‘No comment.’ ”
Cassidy says, “Joe? You can leave now.”
She gives him a little shove on the chest. He grabs her hand, for a fraction of a second, so quickly she cannot be sure he really did that, pressed her fist against his heart.
The mom, perking up, “He’s a baseball player?”
“Joe?” says the cop, liking it now. “What kind of car is that?”
“A Bentley.”
“Well, it’s parked in a red zone.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me.” She picks up the phone.
“Please,” says Cassidy. “Move the freaking car.”
Joe lifts his head and takes a deep breath. When his gaze comes back to the sergeant, it is level and contained.
“This will be addressed,” he promises, and walks out the door.
“How do you know a baseball player?” asks the mom.
“I’m a scout with the Dodgers,” shrugging as if to acknowledge the whole thing is absurd and, yes, she should be selling condos in Maui. “Alberto is one of my prospects. Eighteen years old, been in this country a month.”
“He must be psyched. The majors.”
“I think the biggest thing to him is getting his underwear back. Are you a fan?”
“I love the Dodgers! Been taking my daughter to Dodger Stadium since she was born! What position does he play?”
“Outfield.”
“Another Raul Mondesi?” yawns the sergeant.
“Alberto could be Raul.”
“Is he hot?”
“Let’s see, ladies, are we talking about his bat?”
Slowly, through the glare of champagne, vodka, two fat glasses of sauvignon blanc and a wall of static created by Joe Galinis, Cassidy reawakens to the magic of baseball, which is always present and always beside us.
“Raul ended the season at .306,” rattles off the mom, “when he was Rookie of the Year. He had, like, eight triples? Are you saying this kid, right now in this jail, is on that level? God, that is so exciting!”
“Yes,” she says emphatically, “we think Cruz has that kind of potential. I need to see him, now,” showing her game face, as full of equanimity and respect as she can make it.
“He’s only a rookie.” The mom appealing to the cop. “Give the kid a break.”
The sergeant stretches, arms overhead. The heavy bosom just about splits the uniform.
“You want to see him, see him. But not your date.”
“He’s not my date.”
The sergeant smiles with tired cynicism. “I’ll tell you what. For once, let’s win the pennant.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck,” calls the mom, the joy draining out of her face as she leaves the serenity of ballpark space for her useless papers and stolen child.
Cassidy walks back and gives each of them her card.
“Box seats. Call me.”
She follows a brown line on the floor of the police station around a corner, past an ominously padlocked refrigerator, to a door out of a forties prison movie—dirty banana-colored paint, a metal grate, faded red lettering: NO GUNS BEYOND THIS POINT. The door swings open and Cassidy glimpses a three-hundred-pound bald jailer wearing rubber gloves.
She realizes with a nauseating chill where Alberto has been. He has been in a holding cell, in a foreign country, with a bunch of diseased, deranged drug addicts and violent felons. Her anger at whatever reckless behavior got him in here shrinks at the sight of the jailer. Anybody’s balls would shrink. The blank expression. The rubber gloves.
But Alberto flies into the interview room like an enraged demon, slamming both palms against the Plexiglas divider and then—one, two, three—on all the other walls, as if to curse every direction that brought him here. Cassidy flinches with each smack but waits until he throws himself into the chair and folds his arms, kicking at something, muttering, “I don’t believe it! How you believe this happen?”
His voice comes out all squawky through the microphone. He is wearing his club attire—leopard-print velour shirt, two gold earrings in one ear.
“What happened, Alberto? Did someone come after you? Were they threatening you again?”
“It happen because of Carlos Guevera,” spitting the words.
Cassidy writes the name on the back of a receipt from Sizzler which she had found in her purse.
“Who is Carlos Guevera?”
“He come every night to the disco.”
“Do we know this guy? Does he have a job?”
“Yeah, picking up girls. He try with one girl, name Lucy. He put his hand down her dress.”
She writes that, too. “Is Lucy your girlfriend?”
“She a girl.”
“Okay. He hit on Lucy and—?”
“I hit him with a chair.”
Cassidy takes a long moment to deliberately hook a strand of hair behind one ear.
“Let me get this dialed in. A guy says something dumb about a girl and you try to kill him with a chair.”
“He lie.”
Alberto is becoming even more tightly wound, fingers digging into biceps, legs twisting like rope on a winch.
“He lie about the things he say.”
“Like what?”
“He call her ‘Baseball Annie,’ say she love Latino players, all she want is to have babies with the big-league guys. He say, ‘Do you know where she go on dates? The men’s room at the Union 76. The gas station outside the stadium. They meet her after the game.’ ”
“Sure, they fill up the tank before they go home.”
Alberto kicks at the wall, almost kicking himself out of the chair.
“He jealous. He lie.”
“It doesn’t matter if he lies.”
And now Cassidy springs up and slams the Plexiglas with an open palm, as if to cuff his soft young head.
“You’re going to let this lowlife bring you down? You’re a professional ballplayer at the beginning of your career! Do you want to blow it completely? Do you want to get sent home?”
She remains standing, long-legged, one spaghetti strap fallen off her shoulder. Her hair, unclipped, has turned stringy and lank, and those dark circles that seem to afflict everyone in the division have crept inevitably under her eyes.
While the goodness in Alberto’s face seems to have collapsed beneath a heavy mask—a hurt indignity—new for him, and sad to see.
“You no have to talk to me like that, like mad—”
“—Get used to it,” Cassidy is rolling on. “The hard stuff has just begun. The girls, the drug dealers, the hangers-on—they all want a piece of your smile. I guess you have to see it for yourself, maybe, I don’t know, you have to fall into some shit. Okay. You fell. You let some jerk-off get your pride, you weren’t thinking.”
“What the coaches gonna say?”
“They’ll say”—she spreads her arms, exasperated—“ ‘Don’t do it again!’ They know your talent, they’re on your side. Look, it isn’t the first time in history a player gets into a fight. You have a great future, but if you can’t fit in, if you don’t have the right attitude, you won’t go anywhere. When it comes to choosing between two guys, who do we want? We want the guy who will make the club click, and not the troublemaker—so next time don’t get involved, call the police, do you understand?”
“I know this is bad for me,” says Alberto. “And my family, too.”
Cassidy sinks into the single metal chair, a weight of dread on her shoulders like a pair of spectral hands. It’s held her down before, this sadness, sometimes so deep she’s wanted just to give up to that death wish and drown. Alberto’s staring at an empty corner, rivulets of sweat gleaming at his temple. She aches to reach him, pull him to safety, but he is on the other side; completely separate from her.
The door to the interrogation room creaks open. A draft of air and Joe Galinis edges into the smarmy yellow light.
Cassidy sees his reflection and stands.
“How did you get in here?”
“Some guy threw up in the lobby. Everyone was going ballistic so I just walked on through.”
“This isn’t funny, Joe.”
“A homeless man spitting blood? Not funny, no.”
He is behind her, close. She holds his look in the Plexiglas.
“A real cowboy, aren’t you?”
“I’ve learned not to wait until someone opens the door.”
His fingers trace the skin where her strap has fallen loose and lift it gently into place. He puts his lips against her ear and whispers, “Fuck the police.”
“Remember Mr. Galinis?” she manages.
“Here’s the man!” says Joe, buoyant, loud. “How are you, buddy?”
Alberto looks blank. “I don’t know you.”
“Yes you do,” says Cassidy. “I was with Mr. Galinis when we ran into you after the ball game in San Pedro de Macorís. We gave you a ride—”
“Oh, yes. Sí.”
Alberto breaks into the radiant smile: you see it, you remember the universe is good.
“We have fun!”
“We really did.”
“The last time we were all together was in the Dominican. Now we’re in California …” Cassidy shrugs like an awkward host.
“The modern world,” comments Joe.
“Well, it was pretty strange how you and I got together down there,” she reminds him. “It was the day after I signed Alberto.” She turns to the rookie. “It was Saturday, right? I’m driving back to Santo Domingo with that crazy guy, the jeep breaks down, and all of a sudden, here comes Mr. Galinis, completely out of nowhere, moseying down the road.”
Joe: “There was only one road.”
The road tunneled straight through miles of cane ten feet high. They could have been in Iowa under a big blue sky except for thick swirls of white and yellow butterflies that crisscrossed the jeep with mad intensity.
The cane was planted right down to the edge. There was no shoulder and pedestrians walked complacently alongside vehicles zooming by. Monroe, the runty little driver, almost took out three barefoot girls in braids and cotton smocks carrying five-gallon containers of water on their heads.
“Slow down. You almost hit those girls.”
“Fuck ’em. I hate rush-hour traffic.”
Monroe’s uncle, an older gentleman they called the General, owned a car rental company in the city. Monroe’s claim to fame was that he had driven a cab in New York and picked up a punchy, aggressive Bed-Stuy accent to match.
“How does a person like you get to be a baseball scout?” he wanted to know.
“It’s a long story.”
He was peeling down the wrapper of a granola bar.
“I mean, how many you fuck?”
“Ballplayers?”
“Whoever. Whatever it takes.”
“Uh-huh. Let me ask you something. Would you talk that way to your sister?”
“Yeah.” Monroe pushed the bar into his mouth. “She’s a prostitute.”
They sped past mongrel island ponies clipping at grass. Inbreeding and starvation had left them emaciated and dazed. One had a plastic bag tied to its back as a saddle.
Cassidy slouched with arms crossed and legs stuck out. She would have liked to jam her boots right through the rattletrap floorboards. She was being driven seventy miles an hour down a one-lane road in a grotty subtropical country by a putz.
Or maybe this would qualify as baseball legend—alongside, say, Hugh Alexander who worked for the Indians, White Sox, Dodgers and Phillies and scouted Darryl Strawberry. The story goes that as a young man Hugh got his hand mashed in the gears of an oil rig. He wrapped it in a pillowcase and drove fifteen miles alone in a pickup truck to a Native American doctor who gave him a couple of shots of whiskey and cut the hand off with a saw. After that, he said, nothing in life could scare him.
Like spending ninety minutes in a car with Monroe. When Alberto Cruz became an All-Star, Cassidy vowed, she was going to call that sportswriter and contribute her own colorful bit of scouting fucking lore.
The road dipped to the east and they glimpsed the ocean, slate blue with low serrated swells. The far horizon was ruffled with a ridge of flamingo-pink cloud.
“Where’s Hurricane Gordon?”
“Don’t worry. He’s out there.”
The jeep died. It was quick. Sputtering, slowing, a mass of steam.
They pulled over, half into the cane, and opened the hood. Black hoses were spitting hot water like snakes.
“Fucking piece of shit. This happens to me all the time.”
“Great, then you can fix it.”
Monroe stepped away from the jeep. Cassidy waited with hands on hips, a warm gust from a passing truck pulling at the hem of her long skirt.
“I can fix it, no problem,” said Monroe, scuffing around in the dirt until he found a piece of rusted iron rebar. Then he gripped it, hauled it back, and smashed the front headlight. Glass popped all over the road.
On the second backswing, about to smash the other light, Cassidy grabbed his wrist and pressed so hard with both hands Monroe’s fingers turned crimson and he was forced to release the bar.
She kicked it away, panting, sweat running freely down her ribs.
“Your uncle would not be pleased.”
“Fuck my fucking uncle. He’s not standing here with this fucking piece of shit!”
Monroe was hopping around and rubbing his wrist, glaring with a scattered machismo Cassidy had seen before in kids too hyped and disconnected to make it through nine innings.
“Don’t mess!” he warned, staggering back, trying to weather the waterspout in his brain.
They were nowhere, surrounded by three hundred sixty degrees of fields, a blanket of flatness that had contrast and depth only because of the shadows cast by clouds, deep pools of jade in the wavering acres. Despite a roaring blue sky the unbroken landscape was stark; without the texture of the moving clouds it would have been pitiless. Far from the turmoil of life in the capital, they were suspended in a rural isolation reduced
to two elements: sun and sugarcane. Here there were no shantytowns. Not even a melon for sale on a chair by the road.
A black Range Rover passed, stopped, and then backed up to where Cassidy stood. The window lowered and a white American face leaned out and grinned with smug pleasure.
It was the man she had met at the airport.
“Hi,” said Joe. “Can I buy you a drink?”
In the interrogation room in the Glendale police station, the three of them have been trading stories, more amused now, more relaxed, about what happened later that night, after Cassidy had left with Joe for an afternoon by the pool at the Gran Caribe, after they had gone to the ball game and met up with Alberto as it started to rain and they all hustled into the Rover.
“I said, ‘What’s the plan?’ ” recalls Joe, “and you said, ‘Why do you need a plan?’ ”
They laugh.
Cassidy: “Good question.”
“You let me drive your car!” says Alberto. “We laughing because I cannot decide which I going to buy when I get to the majors, a Range Rover like that one or a BMW Z-3 like James Bond.”
Cassidy: “I say the BMW.”
“I never drive such a rich car. It was great.”
“Except for when we clipped that horse,” says Cassidy.
“Pobrecito,” echoes Alberto, shaking his head. “Poor horse!”
“He was okay,” says Joe. “Your nose took it a lot worse.”
“Woke me up,” says Cassidy, “flying off the backseat.”
“You give to me such a good time. I feel so great. I just sign with the Dodgers … Everybody think I big guy … Man”—looking around—“everything different.”
But in a way not so different. The substance of Joe’s body behind Cassidy’s, the heated smells of sandalwood and bay leaf and new wool and lilac and sweat, fill their tiny half of the room to abundance, the way the inside of the Rover had been ripe with the astringent scent of Mama Juana and the spice of limeberries crushed beneath their muddy shoes. They had driven those lightless roads for hours, drunk and happy, celebrating the future of a promising young man, his fortune wheeling just as wildly as it has tonight, the charge inside the Rover as combustible, all of them jammed together, inexplicably, airtight.
They hear sirens, paramedics coming for the homeless man. Suddenly the party’s really over.
