Mortal Stakes (17 page)

”Marty, you are the third person this morning who has offered to disassemble my body. You are also third in order of probable success. I can’t throw a baseball like you can, but the odds are very good that I could put you in the hospital before you ever got a hand on me.“ I was getting sick of people yelling at me.

”You think so.“

I was proud of myself. I didn’t say, ”I know so.“

Linda Rabb let go of his arm and came around in front of him and put both her arms around his waist. ”Stop it, Marty. Both of you, grow up. This isn’t a playground where you little boys can prove to each other how tough you are.

This is our home and our future and little Marty and our life.

You can’t handle every problem as if it were an arm-wrestling contest.“ Her voice was getting thicker and she pressed her face against Rabb’s chest. I knew she was crying, and I bet it wasn’t the first time today.

”But, Jesus Christ, Linda, a man’s gotta—“ She screamed at him, the voice muffled against his chest. ”Shut up. Just shut up about a man’s gotta.“

I wished I smoked. It would have given me something to do with my hands. Rabb put his arms around his wife and rubbed the top of her head with his chin.

”I don’t know,“ he said. ”I don’t know what in hell to do.“

”Me either,“ I said. ”But if you’d sit down, maybe we could figure something out.“

Linda Rabb said, ”Sit down, Marty,“ and pushed him away from her with both hands against his chest. He sat. She sat beside him, her head turned away, and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex.

”I don’t know,“ Rabb said again. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped together between his knees, staring at his thumbnails. Then he looked up at me.

”How much does Erskine know?“ he said.

”Nothing. He had heard just the hint that something might not be square. He hired me to prove it was square. He wants to believe it’s square and you’re square.“

”Yeah,“ Rabb said, ”I’m square okay. You got any good ideas?“

”Your wife’s told you what I said yesterday?“ He nodded. ”I’ve talked with Doerr and I’ve talked with Maynard.

Doerr won’t let go of Maynard and Maynard won’t let go of you. He’s too scared.“

”Maynard really is in debt to a loan shark?“

”Yes.“

”I can’t see anything else to do but keep on the way we have been,“ Rabb said.

”If you can stand it,“ I said.

”You can stand what you can’t change,“ Rabb said.

”You got a better idea?“

”You could blow the whistle.“

Linda Rabb had finished with her Kleenex and was looking at us again.

”Yes,“ she said.

”No,“ Rabb said.

”Marty,“ she said.

”No.“

”Marty,“ she said again, ”we can’t stand it. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the guilt and watching how you feel every time you lose a game so they can make money.“

”I don’t always have to lose,“ he said. ”Sometimes I give up a run or two for the inning pools.“

”Don’t quibble, Marty. You’re in a funk for a week after every letter. You have lived too long believing in do-or-die for dear old Siwash. It’s killing you and it’s killing me.“

”I’m not having your name blabbed all over the country. You want your kid to hear that kind of talk about his mother. Maybe we should show him the movie.“

”It will pass, Marty. He’s only three.“

”And it’ll make nice talk in the bullpen, you know. You want me to listen to those bastards laughing in the dugout when I go out to pitch? Or maybe that doesn’t matter either because if it gets out that I been dumping games I won’t be pitching anyway. You want that?“

”No, but I don’t want this either, Marty.“

”Yeah, well maybe you should have thought of that when you were spreading your legs in New York.“

I felt a jangle of shock in my solar plexus. Linda Rabb never flinched. She looked at her husband steadily. The silence hung between them. It was Rabb who broke it. ”Jesus, honey, I’m sorry,“ he said and put his arms around her. She didn’t pull away, but her body was as stiff and remote as a wire coat hanger and her eyes were focused on something far beyond the room as he held her.

”Jesus,“ he said again, ”Jesus Christ, what is going to happen to us? What are we going to do?“

WHAT WOULD YOU DO if you didn’t play ball? I said.

”Coach.“

”And if you didn’t coach?“

”Scout, maybe.“

”And if you couldn’t scout and couldn’t coach? If you were out of baseball altogether?“

Rabb was looking at his thumbnails again. ”I don’t know,“ he said.

”What did you major in in college?“

”Phys ed.“

”Well, what would you like to do?“

”Play ball and then coach.“

”I mean, if you couldn’t play ball.“ Rabb stared harder at his thumbnails. Linda Rabb looked at the coffee table. Neither one spoke.

”Mrs. Rabb?“

She shook her head.

”How sure are you that if this all comes out you’ll be suspended?“ I said to Rabb.

”Sure,“ he said. ”I threw some games. If the commissioner’s office finds out, I’m finished for life.“

”What if I confessed,“ Linda Rabb said. ”If I told everyone about my past and no one said anything about the gambling part. I could say Marty didn’t even know about me.“

”They could still blackmail me with the fact I dumped the games,“ Rabb said.

”Not necessarily,“ I said. ”If I could find a way to get Doerr out of it, we might be able to bargain with Maynard. If Maynard told about you, he’d have to tell about himself. He’d be out of work too. With Maynard you’d have a standoff.“

”Doesn’t matter,“ Rabb said. He looked up from his thumbnails. ”I won’t let her.“ Linda Rabb was looking at me too.

”Could you get Doerr out of it, Spenser?“

”I don’t know, Mrs. Rabb. If I can’t, we’re stuck. I guess I’ll have to.“

”She’s not saying anything about it. What the hell kind of a man do you think I am?“

”How can you?“ Linda Rabb said, and I realized we weren’t paying attention to Marty.

”I don’t know,“ I said.

”If you can, I’ll do it,“ she said.

”No,“ Rabb said.

”Marty, if he can arrange it, I’ll do it. It’s for me too. I can’t stand watching you pulled apart like this. You love two things, us and baseball, and you have to hurt one to help the other. I can’t stand knowing that it’s my fault, and I can’t stand the tension and the fear and the uncertainty. If Spenser can do something about the other man, I will confess and we’ll be free.“

Rabb looked at me. ”I’m warning you, Spenser.“

”Grow up, Marty,“ I said. ”The world’s not all that clean. You do what you can, not what you oughta. You’re involved in stuff that gets people dead. If you can get out of it with some snickers in the bullpen and some embarrassment for your wife, you call that good. You don’t call it perfect. You call it better than it was.“

Rabb was shaking his head. Linda Rabb was still looking at me. She nodded. I noticed that her body was still stiff and angular, but there was color in her face. Rabb said, ”I…“ and shook his head again.

I said, ”We don’t need to argue now. Let me see what I can do about Doerr. Maybe I can’t do anything about him.

Maybe he’ll do something about me. But I’ll take a look.“

”Don’t do anything without checking here,“ Rabb said.

I nodded. Linda Rabb got up and opened the door for me. I got up and walked out. No one said be careful, or win this one for the Gipper, or it counts not if you win or lose but how you play the game. In fact, no one said anything, and all I heard as I left was the door closing behind me.

Outside on Mass Ave I looked at my watch: 1:30. I went home.

In my kitchen I opened a can of beer. I was having trouble getting Amstel these days and was drinking domestic stuff. Didn’t make a hell of a lot of difference, though. The worst beer I ever had was wonderful. The apartment was very quiet. The hum of the air conditioner made it seem quieter. Doerr was the key. If I could take him out of this, I could reason with Maynard. All I had to do was figure out what to do about Doerr. I finished the beer. I didn’t know what to do about Doerr. I applied one of Spenser’s Rules: When in doubt, cook something and eat it. I took off my shirt, opened another can of beer, and studied the refrigerator.

Spareribs. Yeah. I doused them with Liquid Smoke and put them in the oven. Low. I had eaten once in a restaurant in Minneapolis, Charlie’s something-or-other, and had barbecued spareribs with Charlie’s own sauce. Since then I’d been trying to duplicate it. I didn’t have it right yet, but I’d been getting close. This time I tried starting with chili sauce instead of ketchup. What did Doerr like? I’d been through that: money. What was he afraid of? Pain? Maybe. He hadn’t liked me whacking his hand. I put a little less brown sugar in with the chili sauce this time. But maybe he hadn’t liked me standing up to him. He was a weird guy and his reaction might be more complicated than just crying because his hand hurt. Two cloves of garlic this time. But first another beer, helps neutralize the garlic fumes. Either way I had got to him today. So what? I squeezed a couple of lemons and added the juice to my sauce. The smell of the spareribs was beginning to fill the kitchen. Even with the air conditioner on, the oven made the kitchen warm and sweat trickled down my bare chest.

Getting to Doerr and getting him to do what I wanted were different things. I had a feeling that right now if I saw him, I’d have to kill him. I never met a guy before who actually foamed at the mouth. If I killed him, I’d have to kill the Hog. Maybe a little red wine. I hadn’t tried that before. I put in about half a cupful. Or would I? If Doerr were dead, the Hog might wither away like an uprooted weed. Best if I never found out. One dash of Tabasco? Why not? I opened another beer. If I were dead, I’d shrivel up like an uprooted weed. I put the sauce on to cook and began to consider what else to have. Maybe I could call Wally and Frank over and cook at them until they agreed to terms. Way to a man’s heart and all that.

There was zucchini squash in the vegetable drawer, and I sliced it up and shook it in flour and set it aside while I made a beer batter. It always hurt me to pour beer into a bowl of flour, but the results were good. That’s me. Mr. Results. Lemme see, what was I going to do about Frankie Doerr? The barbecue sauce began to bubble, and I turned the gas down to simmer. I put two dashes of Tabasco into the beer batter and stirred it and put it aside so the yeast in the beer would work on the flour.

I looked in the freezer. Last Sunday Susan Silverman and I had made bread all afternoon at her house while we watched the ball game and drank Rhine wine. She had mixed and I had kneaded and at the end of the day we had twelve loaves, baked and wrapped in foil. I’d brought home six that night and put them in the freezer. There were four left. I took one out and put it in the oven, still in the foil. Maybe old Suze would have an idea about what to do with Frankie Doerr, or how to get my barbecue sauce to taste like Charlie’s or whether I was drinking too much lately. I looked at my watch: 3:30. She’d be home from school. I called her and let it ring ten times and she didn’t answer, so I hung up. Brenda Loring? No. I wanted to talk about things I had trouble talking about. Brenda was for fun and wisecracks and she did a terrific picnic, but she wasn’t much better than I was at talking about hard things.

The spareribs were done and the bread was hot. I dipped my sliced zucchini in the beer batter and fried it in a little olive oil. I’d eaten alone before. Why didn’t I like it better this time?

I ATE AND DRANK and thought about my problem for the rest of the afternoon and went to bed early and woke up early. When I woke up, I knew what I was going to do. I didn’t know how yet, but I knew what.

It was drizzly rainy along the Charles. I ran along the esplanade with my mind on other things, and it took a lot longer to do my three miles. It always does if you don’t concentrate. I was on the curb by Arlington Street, looking to dash across Storrow Drive and head home, when a black Ford with a little antenna on the roof pulled alongside and Frank Belson stuck his head out the window on the passenger side and said, ”Get in.“

I got in the back seat and we pulled away. ”Drive around for a while, Billy,“ Belson said to the other cop, and we headed west toward Allston.

Belson was leaning forward, trying to light a cigar butt with the lighter from the dashboard. When he got it going, he shifted around, put his left arm on the back of the front seat, and looked at me.

”I got a snitch tells me that Frank Doerr’s going to blow you up.“

”Frank personally?“

”That’s what the snitch says. Says you roughed Frank up yesterday and he took it personally.“ Belson was thin, with tight skin and a dark beard shaved close. ”Marty thought you oughta know.“

We stayed left where the river curved and drove out Soldiers Field Road, past the ‘BZ radio tower.

”I thought Wally Hogg did that kind of work for Doerr.“

”He does,“ Belson said. ”But this one he’s gonna do himself.“

”If he can,“ I said.

”That ain’t to say he might not have Wally around to hold you still,“ Belson said.

Billy U-turned over the safety island and headed back in toward town. He was young and stylish with a thick blond mustache and a haircut that hid his ears. Belson’s sideburns were trimmed at the temple.

”Reliable snitch?“

Belson nodded. ”Always solid in the past.“

”How much you pay him for this stuff?“

”C-note,“ Belson said.

”I’m flattered,“ I said.

Belson shrugged. ”Company money,“ he said.

We were passing Harvard Stadium. ”You or Quirk got any thoughts about what I should do next?“

Belson shook his head.

”How about hiding?“ Billy said. ”Doerr will probably die in the next ten, twenty years.“

”You think he’s that tough?“

Billy shrugged. Belson said, ”It’s not tough so much.

It’s crazy. Doerr’s crazy. Things don’t work out, he wants to kill everybody. I hear he cut one guy up with a machete. I mean, cut him up. Dis-goddamn-membered him. Crazy.“