King of the Corner (27 page)

“You’ve got a friend?”

Battle leaned in through the doorway and set his mug on the drainboard. It was still almost full. “It’s my job,” he said. “If you’re looking for personal consideration I’m fresh out. Where we doing this?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Hey, we’re on the same side now.”

“You don’t always throw the pitch the catcher’s expecting. Some batters look to see where he moves his mitt”

“Life isn’t a baseball game, Lefty.”

“Sergeant?”

He lifted his brows.

“Fuck you.”

After a beat the sergeant decided to smile and stuck out his hand.

Doc shook his head. “Not just now.”

“Okay.”

When Battle left, Doc poured the contents of both mugs and the carafe into the sink, washed them, and went out to call Maynard Ance from a pay telephone on the corner. Twenty minutes later a cab let him off in front of the bail bondsman’s home.

Ance opened the door wearing a striped bathrobe and carpet slippers on his bare feet. His hair was still damp from the shower. Doc’s call had pulled him out of but as far as Doc could tell the black dye hadn’t run. “Where’s Cynthia?”

“Playing racquetball or some horse’s-ass sport like that down at the Detroit Athletic Club. It’s Ladies’ Night. What’s the scoop on Starkweather Hall?”

“What makes you think it’s about him?”

“We were together in the office three fucking hours ago. You didn’t call me to discuss the Pistons’ play-off chances. Let’s go downstairs. I had the place swept for bugs last week.”

“Find any?”

“One of those old C-72s the FBI used under Hoover. I bought the house at a tax auction. Before that a bookie owned it.” He was walking as he spoke. Doc noticed he had a bald spot the size of a coaster on the back of his head.

The basement smelled of cigarette smoke. A butt smoldered atop a heap of them in an ashtray on the arm of the big recliner. Ance lit a fresh L & M off the butt and sprawled in the chair. Doc selected a stool, sat down, got up, moved it to a spot where he wasn’t looking up the bail bondsman’s robe, and sat down again. There were flakes of ash on Ance’s chest, the same color as the sparse hairs sprouting from the soft pink flesh. “I thought you were trying to quit.”

“Shit. You ever see an eighty-year-old man didn’t look like he wished he was dead?” He inhaled. No smoke came back. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Doc lied. “I know where he’ll be tomorrow, if you go along.”

“Son of a bitch. I thought maybe you had some kind of lead, but shit. Where’d you get it, those pukes you play ball with?”

“Who else?”

“Yeah. You talk to him?”

“No reason. The deal’s with Charlie Battle. We’re using the Acropolis. For that you cut in for half the reward.”

“Who gets the rest, you?”

“No, that goes to Hall’s defense.”

“Oh, right. Heh-heh.”

Works every time,
Doc thought.
Give them the truth and they think you’re joking.
That’s what the town had come to. Just wanting to get out from under wasn’t enough, you had to turn a profit while you were at it. Anything less and people got suspicious.

“What time we doing this?” Ance asked.

“I haven’t heard back from Hall’s people to tell me it’s a go. I should know by morning. Should I call you here?”

“No, I’ll be in the office early.”

Doc fell silent. Ance smoked and appeared to be thinking. Watching him was like viewing film of a leaky steam pipe played backward, the vapor disappearing into the aperture and staying there. A few puffs and the cigarette had burned back almost to his lips. He punched it out. “I’m glad I canned Taber and kept you. He thought initiative was a picture with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. You could be a bail man, you know it? Why not? I can’t do this shit forever. Cindy’s been pestering me to take her around the world, I tell her great, who’s going to sit on the scroats and jumpers while we’re busy humping camels in Cairo? With you minding the store I wouldn’t have to sweat it. I bet I don’t even call you more than once a day.”

Doc gaped. “Are you offering me a partnership?”

“Well, junior. I’ve got to front for the license on account of you’ve got a record. We’ll call my half of the reward your buy-in. Wait. Don’t answer yet. Open that drawer. Not that one, shit, that’s full of nails. The one next to it. What do you see?”

The drawer under the edge of the workbench was filled with cans of Planters mixed nuts in rows. Doc reported this.

“Well, open one.”

“Which one?”

“Jesus Christ, go eeny, meeny, miney, mo. What’d I say about initiative?”

He chose one and peeled off the plastic lid. At first he thought it was full of rolled-up newspaper clippings. “Looks like a roll of fifty-dollar bills.”

“Take it. Now you’re paid up through next month. Your luck stinks today, kid. If you picked one of the ones stuffed with hundreds you wouldn’t have to come back to me for the rest of the year.”

He counted the bills and pocketed them. Now he had enough to furnish the apartment without renting or even buying on time. “Thanks, but what’s the idea?”

“I got more in the bank, but I don’t trust ’em since the savings and loan thing. Also banks report to the IRS. The idea is the bail business pays better than anything else legal. Our customers don’t haggle, the price is set by the courts. I charge ten percent and get collateral for the rest. That’s fair. I know bail men who demand a statement of worth and attach everything the client owns. That’s bloodsucking but the law says it’s okay. There’s nothing to regulate what we charge, like there is with finance companies. Ever buy a new car and pay cash? You don’t get highs like that from drugs. Best of all”—he swung the recliner upright and grasped Doc’s knee—“you can go on playing long after your arm’s shot.”

Doc extricated himself and got off the stool. “I’ll think about it. I’m not sure I want to tie myself down just yet with a business.”

“Makes a difference when you do it with a golden rope.” But Ance looked surprised and a little disappointed.

Doc told him again he’d call him in the morning and let himself out.

He slept that night at his brother’s. He was a long time drifting off, the events of the day skidding through his head on an adrenaline slick like the details of a tough game, and later he couldn’t pinpoint the spot where thinking ended and dreaming started.

Miller. Miller! Boy, you listening? Get your head out of your ass!

He looked at the long parchment features of Charlie Steiner: cap square over his large luminous eyes, a lump of tobacco jammed so far back in his right cheek it raised a knot under his ear, pale spotty skin hanging in pleats from his neck. His Louisville Lagoons uniform was too big around the waist as always, the trousers in tucks, belt snugged so tight the end swung loose like an extension of his manhood.

You ever ask yourself why them fellers in the Show are always standing around scratching their eggs on national tee-vee, boy? It’s ’cause they didn’t have time to do it on their way there. You don’t get to the Show on just two good pitches and a shitload of wish-I-wuzzes. It takes harder work than you ever done in your whole masturbating young life.

Doc said, Charlie, is it really you? I heard you died.

Not hardly, boy. Didn’t I say I’d be on your butt like a boil till you got where you’re going?

But I got there, Charlie. I got to the Show.

Like hell. You just dreamed it. Fellers in the Show don’t sleep in their nephews’ beds between sheets their brothers paid for. Pay attention, now. In my day the pitcher just closed his eyes and let fly and the batter just closed his eyes and swung and both of ’em hoped the other’s luck was worse than his. These days you need brains. Brains to read the signals. Brains to know when to go to first when there’s a runner on board. Brains to know whether that boy in the box jumps all over the first pitch or waits for the one that’s low and inside. And brains
—he leaned forward, close enough for Doc to detect the spoiled-fruit smell of tobacco on his breath—to
know when to just close your eyes and let fly. Brains like that take time to grow. I’ll be right here until they do.

Wait a minute, Doc said. You are too dead. I went to a memorial service. Your widow was there and your daughter and two grandsons. A utility infielder who knew you on the Toledo team read a poem about running it out He was in a wheelchair. Your picture was there in a wreath. They said you were found lying on the floor of the shower with the water running.

He was afraid then he’d insulted the old man, who straightened to his full height, hitched up his trousers in that way he had even though he kept them cinched tight enough to cut off circulation, turned, and left. Only he didn’t walk away, but just kind of faded into the pattern on the wallpaper in Sean’s room. That was when Doc realized he was awake, lying with his head propped on the pillow and his eyes open.

He was still thinking about it when the clock radio on the nightstand clicked on. It had been a gift from his sister-in-law after he’d overslept one morning and reported late for work at the John Deere dealership. He recognized the mock-cheerful voice of the morning man at Talk Radio 1270.

“… Okay, you’ve got the number and you know my name. Call me up with your thoughts on the death of cop-killing drug lord Starkweather Hall at three-ten this ayem in of-all-places Birmingham. Justifiable death, or did the police execute him? Talk to me, I’m all ears.”

By Leon “Bud” Arsenault

(continued)

There are those who would look at the naked statistics of Loyola MacGryff’s life and draw the conclusion that it has been tragic.

Her brother Paul was run over at age seven by a streetcar and lost both his legs. Later, while recovering at home, he developed a blood clot that went to his heart and killed him before the ambulance could get him to the hospital.

Her husband Horace was beaten to death by strikebreakers during the labor unrest of the 1930s. He was given a pauper’s burial because there wasn’t enough money in the Depression fund for a funeral.

She has been robbed twice at gunpoint. Burglars have struck her home three times, cleaning her out once.

A grandson, Horace MacGryff III, has been missing in action in Vietnam since 1972. His grandmother was paged at Tiger Stadium during the American League Eastern Division play-offs to receive the news. She returned to her seat to watch the final two innings.

A freak accident at Tigers spring training camp six years ago has resulted in thousands of dollars of reconstructive surgery to Mrs. MacGryff’s jaw, part of which was underwritten by the ball club, but requests for more money have brought no response from attorneys employed by Tigers owner Tom Monaghan.

Despite speech difficulties and an inability to chew on the right side of her mouth, Mrs. MacGryff has resisted family urgings to take her case to court. Says she, “I’d sooner sue King Jesus.”

A great-granddaughter, Coral Louise Scyznyck, overdosed on crack cocaine at a high school dance in 1989. In the police car on the way to the hospital, Mrs. MacGryff persuaded the officers to tune in to the bottom half of a twi-night doubleheader between Detroit and Kansas City. The girl remains in a coma today.

But even though this white-haired native Detroiter has spent almost as many hours in emergency rooms and cemeteries as she has in her preferred upper deck, she would not agree that her life has been hounded by ill fortune.

She met Hughie Jennings, overheard Mickey Cochrane chewing out Goose Goslin for trying to field a grounder to first without assistance, had her picture taken with Mayo Smith, egged on Billy Martin during an altercation with an umpire, and sent an expensive necktie to Sparky Anderson on the occasion of his 60th birthday. No Tigers manager in this century has remained unaware of Mrs. MacGryff for long.

Tomorrow, in recognition of eighty-four years of unwavering support, Loyola MacGryff—housewife, retiree, great-grandmother—has been invited by the Detroit Tigers to throw out the opening ball of the 1990 season at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull.

The diminutive senior pooh-poohs comments by friends and family that the front office hopes by this token to forestall a lawsuit for medical damages.

“This makes up for that rude ticket clerk who wouldn’t honor my raincheck in 1958.”

“I
’LL SPEAK TO HIM,
T
RUMAN.”
Doc hadn’t been surprised to encounter Beatrice Blackwood’s bodyguard at the door of Alcina Lilley’s house, nor to be denied entrance by him. Deaths, funerals, and releases from hospitals brought out that aging Twelfth Street crowd in protective herds. The elderly madam was wearing what looked like the same tailored suit she had worn to Wilson McCoy’s send-off. It was definitely the same flowered hat. She wasn’t wearing the eye patch and he could see the difference in the pupils. The one that had been operated on lacked the milky opacity of its mate, glittering like one of the jewels that had covered it.

She let him into the entryway, a shallow room furnished with carved wooden benches that hadn’t been sat on in this century and what might have been an original Rivera in a simple frame on the wall facing the door. Truman had withdrawn silently through a door at the back.

“Alcina isn’t seeing anyone,” Beatrice said. “You least of all.”

“I didn’t tell anyone he was here.”

“I know. You couldn’t have collected the reward if you did.”

“What happened?”

“Alcina went to run some errands after she left my place yesterday. She didn’t get home until late. Gordon wasn’t here.”

“Did he leave voluntarily?”

“There wasn’t any note, but he wasn’t the kind to write one. Nobody broke in and nothing was disturbed. The neighbors didn’t see anything. They’re quick to call the law here, not like in my neighborhood. He left his things, what there was of them. He was traveling light when he came.”

“They said on the news that two plainclothes detectives on their way somewhere else caught him breaking into a car parked in a driveway on Brownell. He pulled a gun and one of them shot him. That’s not far from here.”