Strike Three You're Dead (19 page)

“How much of the team do you think she owns?” Harvey had begun to gobble cashews.

“That I simply couldn’t say. The firm was sold for nearly a million and a half, and then, of course, there’s the family money. Her father made a mint in scrap metal or some dreary thing like that. Frances is
very
restless, you know, can’t stay put, and she’s always looking for the opening, always looking.”

Harvey fiddled with the table lamp. “You’re sure she invested in the team?”

“Like I say, I can’t be
absolutely
sure, but I do remember early last fall when she said to me, she said, ‘Sharon, I don’t know what owning part of a major league baseball team is like, but I’ve never failed at anything in my life.’”

Harvey’s ankle had begun reminding him that it was sprained. He winced, more noticeably than he might have had he not been stricken with the need to take leave of Sharon Meadows. “Excuse me,” he said, “but as you probably saw, I did something to my ankle tonight, and it’s acting up.”

“Oh, my goodness,” she gasped, as if he had just revealed a terminal condition. “Oh, it must be
so
painful, and here I am, going on and on about Frances and probably boring you to tears. Does it hurt badly? Let me buy you another drink, and we’ll talk about something else. We’ll talk about baseball. I’d
love
to know what it’s really like.”

Harvey made a particularly good wince. “I think all this ankle needs is a little ice and a little rest.”

Sharon’s face fell, then rose hopefully. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. But thanks.” He reached for his wallet.

She put her hand on his arm. “I’ll get this one. But look, I’m in the book. I mean, that is, if you’re in New York again and—Well, look, anyway, it’s been
awfully
nice, and just between you and me, you will let the Yankees win one or two from you guys, won’t you?”

There were two things he liked about her. The first was that she had given him information that sounded extremely useful. The second was that he had not even had to ask for it. In his room, lying on his back on the floral bedspread, he dialed Mickey’s number in Providence. After Sharon Meadows’s torrent of words, Mickey’s voice was soothing.

“How’s the ankle?”

“Word travels fast,” he said.

“So does the electronic transmission of light waves into radio waves and then into light rays. We had the game on television in the newsroom tonight. Nice win. And you looked safe to me, by the way. Your sprain also came over the sports wire. It must be nice to twist your ankle and have the whole world know about it within minutes. So how is it?”

“I wish you were here to kiss it.”

“I don’t do ankles.”

“How are you?”

“A little depressed. They’ve been on my case at the station. I don’t think they like the fact that I’m talking with ABC, so they’ve got me doing a lot of soft features as punishment. They had me fill in for Gail today and do a story on the biggest cauliflower at a farmer’s market in Rehoboth.”

“I always thought the station’s coverage of the cabbage family was pretty weak.”

“Yuk, yuk,” she said. “And Providence depresses me.”

“How could you say such a thing? It’s the heartbeat of the nation.”

“Sorry, Bliss. I’m too tired to laugh tonight.” She demonstrated by yawning into the mouthpiece. “I mean, where
is
Providence? I have this fantasy that I’m going to look at a map of New England one day and it’s not going to be there. And no one will miss it. How come you’re in such a good mood?”

“Hardly. I saw Linderman at Yankee Stadium before the game, and there’re still no leads except for Ronnie Mateo. It’s unbelievable.”

“Did you hear that the baseball commissioner’s announced a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction?”

“Certainly can’t hurt. But what I really wanted to tell you, Mick, is that someone stuffed a death threat in my glove tonight. I found it when I went out to center in the bottom of the first.”

“No.”

“Yes. Wait a second, here it is: ‘Play ball, not private eye, or you may be the next to die.’”

“My God, what’s going on? Bliss, maybe it’s time to let Linderman take over.”

“No one’s stopping him.”

“If you got killed, it would put a real damper on our relationship. Sounds like someone on the team’s getting pretty nervous.”

“Mick, after the game I had drinks with a woman who used to work for Frances at her PR firm in New York.”

“Harvey!” She hadn’t used his first name since they’d met.

“Mick, according to Sharon Meadows, Frances is baseball’s answer to Muammar el-Qaddafi. Guess what?”

“What?”

“This woman is almost certain Frances owns part of the team.”

“Can you be sure?”

“I can find out for sure.”

“And if she does, where does that fit in?”

“Damned if I know,” Harvey said.

After a pause, Mickey said, “I don’t know if nice Jewish boys should be getting mixed up in things like this.” Another pause. “What else did this woman say?”

“Now you’re interested, aren’t you?” Harvey told her more about Sharon Meadows.

“So much for sisterhood,” she said when he was through. “Frances sounds perfectly charming. But do me a favor, Bliss, and just lie low, okay? Don’t stick your neck out. Someone out there is getting pretty serious about you. Frances probably isn’t even involved in this thing.”

“That would be nice.”

“Nice?”

“The less I have to do with that woman, the better. But if she
is
involved….” Harvey ran out of words.

“Can’t you leave it alone?”

Harvey said nothing.

“You feel guilty about Rudy, don’t you?”

Harvey said more nothing.

“Are you there?” she said.

“There’re some pieces missing, Mick,” he said.

“I’ll say.” She blended a sigh and a groan. “I’m coming down to New York on Monday to see ABC. I’ll miss you.”

“We’ll be in Baltimore,” Harvey said.

“So I guess I’ll see you in Providence, then. In a week.”

“Yeah. Be good, Mick,” he said and hung up, visualizing himself and Mickey as two little dots moving randomly across a map.

He went to the desk in his room and found some creamy Warwick Hotel stationery and made three lists.

RUDY

slept with Frances

presents for Mick and me

typewriters

$3,000

Wisconsin real estate seemed

depressed on night of murder

FRANCES

gets her own way

slept with Rudy

owns stock in team?

helps Felix in dugout: how?

wants to sleep with me

HARVEY

doesn’t want to sleep with her

rat

death threat

nice guy

now batting .302

would really like some Japanese food

Harvey looked it over a few times, but the only item that caught his attention was the last one under his name. He threw on a sports jacket, hobbled down to the street, and took a cab to a place on Columbus Avenue that served sushi all night.

“I
HURT ABOUT YOUR
hankle,” Mr. Molikoff said in a crusty Eastern European accent, sitting in the wingback chair in Harvey’s hotel room on Friday morning. He was a gaunt man with a small, mottled face and a blizzard of white hair that formed a high drift on one side of his head. He was wearing a brown suit that probably was not the best one he owned, and there was room for another neck in his yellowing shirt collar. Mr. Molikoff had phoned an hour earlier from the offices of a Yiddish daily newspaper in New York to ask for an interview. Now he held an incongruous reporter’s notebook in his large hands, ribbed with veins. “I hope it’s not in too bat shape,” he said.

Harvey was reclining on the bed with a hotel heating pad wrapped around his ankle. “With heat on it,” he answered, “I should be back in the lineup in a day or two.”

“That’s goot,” Molikoff said, finding an empty pipe and sucking airily on it. “I thought I might ask you about the relationship between baseball and a Jew.”

Harvey had other things on his mind, but he had agreed to the interview, and he forced himself to pay attention. At least it did not promise to be an ordinary clubhouse give-and-take. “I guess I don’t think about it much,” he said, stuffing another pillow behind him. “You know, there’re only three of us in the majors now, and I don’t think anybody notices anymore, except a reporter now and then. It’s not the most obvious career for a Jew, but”—he unclasped his hands behind his head and held them out—“here I am.”

“There is no, let us say, anti-Semitism?” Molikoff was writing with birdlike movements as he talked.

“I remember when I was with Boston, once one of my black teammates said to me in the clubhouse, ‘Your people are the ones who own all the slums in the ghetto, aren’t they?’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, that’s right. And your people are the ones who’re shiftless and eat watermelons all the time.’ After that, we became fast friends.”

Molikoff removed his pipe in order to smile appreciatively. “Let me tell you, bink a Jew in baseball used to be sometink,” he said, suddenly shaking a fist proudly at Harvey. “I’ve studied this. In nineteen forty-one, the New York Giants opened the season with four Jews. Let us see, Harry Feldman was pitchink, Harry Dannink was catchink, and in the outfield, you hat Sid Gordon and Morrie Arnovich. Hah! You remember Wally Moses? When the managers found out he
wasn’t
Jewish, they kept him out of the majors for many years!” He tilted his head back and regarded Harvey professorially. “Now I will tell you sometink else you don’t know. There was a player named Moses Solomon. He only played a few games for the Giants in nineteen twenty-tree. For his whole career, he was only tree hits in eight at-bats, and he did not hit any home runs. No home runs, but you know what they called him? They called him the Rabbi of Swat! The goyim hat their Sultan of Swat, and we hat our Rabbi!”

Harvey was smiling at this unlikely fount of baseball lore. “You were here during those years?”

“No. After the war. The second one. But I like baseball. A peaceful game. Maybe not so peaceful now. That was certainly terrible what happened to that pitcher on your team.” He shook his fragile head. “How does this happen?”

“I wish I knew,” Harvey said. “He was my roommate, you know.”

“No one knows? It is somebody’s responsibility to know what happened.”

“They’ll find out who killed him. Eventually.”

“They? Who’s they?” Molikoff was on the edge of his chair, pointing at Harvey. “Let me tell you an old Hasidic story. Do you mind? There was going to be a big weddink celebration in a small village, and all the guests were to brink a bottle of vodka to pour into a big barrel for everyone to drink. So there was one man who had the thought—with all this vodka, who will know if I put water in my bottle? So the weddink came, and hundreds of people came and poured their bottles into the barrel, and then the first man drew a glass. He brought it to his lips and he drank it. It was water. The whole barrel was water.”

Harvey found himself nodding. “I know,” he said. “Somebody has to bring the vodka. Speaking of which, can I order up something to drink for you?”

Molikoff clucked his tongue. “No, no, I am fine.” He took off his suit jacket and turned over a new page in his notebook. “So,” he said, “what about your family? They are baseball fans?”

Molikoff was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and Harvey saw the pale blue numbers tattooed on his forearm.

“This?” Molikoff said, raising his forearm.

“You know,” Harvey said, “when I look at that, it makes me feel slightly ridiculous being a baseball player.”

Molikoff regarded his tattoo impassively. “Not to worry. My bat luck. But you see”—it was his turn to spread his hands and shrug—“my luck was not so bat. Here I am.”

On Friday night, the Yankees beat the Jewels and Bobby Wagner 7-2, dropping his record to 8 and 17. On Saturday, Harvey’s ankle was strong enough for Felix to insert him in the lineup as the designated hitter while Dan Van Auken scattered nine New York singles for a 5-3 victory, the Jewels’ second in their last nine games. On Sunday, Andy Potter-Lawn was cruising along with a four-hitter for six innings before three Providence errors in the seventh cost him his composure and the lead. New York won 6-4. Harvey went 4-for-9 in the four-game series and was batting .304.

Baltimore was next, and the Orioles were as hot as the wilting weather. On Tuesday night, Baltimore’s Henry Ludell held the Jewels to two runs and four hits, but twenty-two-year-old Eddie Storella, after vomiting twice in the clubhouse before the game, proved better, and Providence won 2-1. Stan Crop took the loss on Wednesday, 8-2, and Bobby Wagner could barely get anyone out in the first inning on Thursday on the Jewels’ way to a 5-1 defeat. The Toronto Blue Jays had somehow managed to win five of six in the past week, and Providence was only two games out of the Eastern Division cellar, with a record of 66 wins and 78 losses. They were 3-11 since the night Rudy was murdered; the team batting average had dropped from .256 to .246. Harvey kept his average afloat at .306. It was September 13, and there were seventeen days left in the season.