The New York (11 page)

So we watched Ted Koppel together that night and the next morning, she went out and got the papers, even the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
Imagine, they had stories, too. Well, maybe the
Times
you could understand, the team being in New York and all. But the
Journal
did this story about the economic impact on a breakthrough with Cuba, a lot of stuff I didn't understand and I suspect the writer didn't understand either.

As I said, I didn't look good in the
Houston Post

“Makes me look like a fool,” I said to Charlene.

“Honey, this is just starting.”

We turned on the TV and there was old George, still at it, on the “Today Show” with Bryant Gumbel. Son of a bitch might be old and Ml of gout, but he had legs. Made it on the red-eye all the way across the country and he looked as fresh as a morning meadow.

“… I think a lot of credit has to go to Ryan Shawn for volunteering to help our new team make the transition from being the best in Cuba to the best in the American League,” George was saying. “This is a great step toward world peace and it starts with baseball. Imagine that, Bryant.”

I spilled my coffee for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Charlene said “Wipe it up” absentmindedly, watching TV. I went in the kitchen and got a paper towel and wiped the rug until the dark stain was a dry dark stain.

“You'd better stay here. I can go over and get your clothes from the Longhorn Arms.”

“Why would you have to do that?”

“Ryan, this here is the tip of the iceberg. They're gonna be camping out on you over there, the media. You didn't seem to handle yourself too well yesterday, and I don't expect you took a Dale Carnegie course since then. So I just figure I could give you a little breathing room.”

“I don't need to hide behind no woman's skirt,” I said.

She giggled. “Not when you're wearing her pink fluffy robe.”

Damn. You can never get sympathy from a woman unless it's to her advantage to give it. Kindness, yes. Women deal in kindness as an everyday thing. But sympathy, no.

I marched off to the bathroom and took a long, soapy shower. 1 had brought my bag, the one I took to Los Angeles, and I shaved and changed underclothes and socks. Then I slipped into my jeans and a fresh polo shirt and went out to the front room of Charlene's place. She was sitting there on the couch watching “Good Morning America” where a guy named Orestes Montez was denouncing George Bremenhaven.

“The Cuban community of Miami has devoted itself to bringing true democracy back to our native land, and now this baseball owner, for selfish reasons, has stabbed us in the back,” is some of what Orestes was saying. I didn't want to hear any more. I kissed Charlene on the forehead. She looked up.

“You going to the Longhorn Arms?” she said.

“I ain't got no reason not to. I ain't done nothing wrong,” I said.

“That don't matter, what you did. I read this story in the
Post
and you come across as halfway a Communist and halfway Benedict Arnold in a cowboy hat.”

“That's just a newspaper, Charlene, it don't mean the end of the world.”

“Watch yourself the next time you go into a Billy Bob Bar, make sure someone don't crack your skull with a bottle of Bud.”

“You're exaggerating, Charlene. Anyway it's football season and folks in Texas don't get that riled up about baseball.”

“They get riled up about Mexicans coming up to take their jobs away from them,” she said.

“These are Cubans. For Christ's sake, Charlene, can't you even tell the difference? Ain't taking no shitkicker's job anyway, this is just about baseball players.”

“When you were washing your sins away in the bathroom, they had the head of the player's union on ‘Today.' He said you sold out your teammates and the entire American League.”

“He's as full of shit as a Christmas goose,” I said. “George was gonna get rid of his payroll one way or another, like that fella did down in San Diego not that many years ago.”

“You think ball players are overpaid?”

“‘Course I do, but I'm taking as long as they're giving. Man's worth what someone is willing to pay him.”

“You are going to have a lonely life next season. At home and on the road,” Charlene said.

“Well, I wasn't expecting any sympathy from you.”

“Good, ‘cause I ain't in the sympathy business. I might have been if you'd gone off back to New York at Thanksgiving and popped George Bremenhaven like you said you were gonna do, but you didn't, so you've made your bed and now you're stuck in it.”

“Charlene, you really think I should've turned down $625,000, which is enough money to set us up in the business of our choosing? This ain't gonna last two-three days.”

“Honey, sometimes I think you're about half-smart and sometimes you're dumber than a sack of oats. It's the sack of oats I'm thinking of now. This ain't gonna end, not a week, not a month from now. George Bremenhaven picked his chump right, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn't, Charlene,” I said. It was a pretty weak comeback but that's because I had started out looking for sympathy when there was none to be had. Men are always making that mistake.

“Fine, Ryan Patrick. You go on home now and get the shit beat out of you like I said it was gonna happen, because it will. You go on. I don't need your trouble when you don't have the brains to do any different. I see it now. Thank God we didn't have children — I'd keep wondering which one took after your stupid side.”

That did it.

I was out of there and stomping down the hall and taking the stairs to the parking lot without waiting for the elevator. Then I saw the Channel 7 van across the street with the antenna dish on top and something that looked like an automatic weapon sticking out of it. I didn't care. I got in my Buick Park Avenue and sent it into reverse so hard I took 10,000 miles off my 50,000-mile tires in two seconds. Then into forward and damned near plowed into the side of the van getting out of there.

The van started chasing me.

I was being chased by a goddamned television station van right there in the morning light of downtown Houston. Around us, the usual caravan of cars was trying to pass through various eyes of needles on their way to work, and me and this television van was doing Starsky and Hutch or something.

Why was I running anyway? I wasn't a criminal.

And then I thought of Jack Wade and the IRS man. Maybe George really had deep connections with Washington, D.C., and maybe he could get some revenue man to come down and put the fear on Jack Wade, the jelly doughnut son of a bitch.

You can see how upset I was. I was blaming everyone for what essentially was my trouble, brought on by my own greed and desire. I am normally much more rational and thoughtful, but I am putting this down exactly the way it was to show that I was no hero in what happened, that I had many, many moments of weakness,

I finally made it over to the Longhorn Arms and was in my room before the television van found me. The trouble was, there were two other television vans in the parking lot and a car with some guys from the
Chronicle
. They had staked me out but missed me when I drove up because they didn't know what kind of a car they were looking for. The Channel 7 driver told them, and I was surrounded.

Calmly, I packed my big bag and took two cans of MGD out of the icebox and put them in the bag as well. Then I pulled on my black cowboy hat and my long leather coat. I also made sure I had my checkbook and two or three other things I wouldn't normally carry for a short trip to Los Angeles. Ail the while, I was thinking about getting sympathy from someone, even if I had to pay for it. I decided I needed it that bad. So I made a call to my agent, Sid.

He was in. Himself.

“Well, cowboy,” he said, “you've screwed yourself up. In one way. You should have consulted me before you did what you did with George.”

“You weren't in the mood to be consulted,” I said. “You were tripping over the daisies with that queer quarterback in Hawaii, I recall.”

“On the other hand,” Sid said. “I can see a TV movie in this. I think a feature is too big. On the other hand, there might be a book if we could find a writer.”

“I can't do that stuff. I gotta get out of this thing, Sid “

“You signed a contract.”

“I can always retire.”

“Sure. You could have done that at first. Now it's harder, but you can do it. You can call a press conference and retire.”

“Except George is working somehow, you know, with the government in this thing “

“So?”

“Well, an IRS agent came by —”

“I don't want to know from IRS agents.”

“Jesus, Sid, what kind of an agent are you?”

“An ex-agent, as I recall. I recall you became your own agent when you signed that contract. So I became an ‘ex.' I don't recall you sending me ten percent.”

Sid always talked in a calm voice. It's an agent's voice. Agents don't yell or scream, not the good ones. Agents just sit there like a poker player, peeking at the cards, shoving out the cartwheels to the center of the green felt.

“I'll send you ten percent.”

“I don't want your ten percent. I didn't earn it.”

Sid Cohen is like this. He is putting me through a guilt trip. The trouble was, I was feeling guilty about everything on the theory that I must have been guilty of something.

“Sid, what should I do?”

“Hey, enjoy the ride. I wish I had been there to make it with you.”

“I can't go back on George, he might be able to use the government against me. But I can't stand this, day after day. There's three TV vans in the parking lot right now. I just packed my bag.”

“Packed your bag? Where you going?”

“Tahiti. I dunno. I gotta get out of here. My girl and I just had a fight and I don't know why and there ain't nothing but trouble for me right now in Houston.”

“Well, it would be better if you told your side of things.”

“What is my side, exactly?”

“I haven't figured it all out yet, but I will,” Sid said.

“Sid.” My voice was grateful.

“You want me to be your agent again?”

“Sid,” I said,

“I could earn that ten percent,” he said.

“Sid,” I said.

“On the other hand, I could have gotten you a better contract. George needed you more than you needed him.”

“Sid, that isn't true. George said he could have picked up a Spanish interpreter any place in New York for peanuts.”

“Oh, I see. Someone to be on the field, position players, make signals in Spanish, be in the locker room after the game. Sure. What did he have in mind? A courtroom interpreter? A Mexican grocer?”

“He sort of went along those lines.”

“Ryan, ball players play ball, agents think. I'm thinking right now and the meter is running. We have to come to an understanding,”

“I understand,” I said.

There was a knock at the door.

“They're here, for Christ's sake,” I said.

“The television guys. Good. You're pathetic on television, Ryan, did I tell you?”

“I saw me, you don't have to tell me.”

“What you have to do is issue a prepared statement shifting all this back in George's lap. And the State Department's lap, too.”

“Saying what?”

They were now banging on the door.

“Saying what?” I said again.

“I can't hear you, what is that racket?”

“I told you, it's the reporters.”

“Are they going to bang the door down?”

“I don't know, Sid, maybe they are. What should I do?”

“You have a gun?”

Sid Cohen is based in L.A. and they are very crazy about guns in that town. Everyone has a gun, and not a shotgun or rifle but a handgun, so they can shoot at each other. Never met anyone hunted with a pistol except my Uncle Dave, who never hit anything but a tree and this farmer once. But Sid is not a gun nut, and I thought he asked me because he has all these prejudices about you, depending on where you come from. I'm from Texas so I wear a gun. That's their mentality in L.A. when it really is L.A. we have to be scared of.

“No, Sid, I ain't got no gun. What d'you think I should do, shoot one of them reporters?”

“That would put a different spin on the story, all right,” he said in his thoughtful voice. “No. I jest wanted to be sure that if they broke the door down they wouldn't find anything incriminating like a gun. They already have you labeled as a Commie; you don't have to be a gun nut, too. Tell you what. I'm flying to Chicago this afternoon to talk with the Cubs, why don't you meet me there? You could hide out there for a couple of days and 1 could figure out a strategy for you.”

“I got my car,” I said.

“You ever hear of airplanes?”

“I still got my car,” I said.

“Leave the car at the airport, Ryan. They all have parking lots. Even in Texas. Get a plane for Chicago.”

“But then they'll know I'm in Chicago,” I said,

“The reporters? Simple. Book a flight through to New York with a stopover in Chicago. Slip off the plane in Chicago.”

“But what do I do with the rest of the ticket?” I said.

“Donate it to your favorite fucking charity!” Sid was shouting. “I'm not paid enough to think of everything!”

“Take it easy, Sid.”

“I'll be at the Drake Hotel tonight. I meet with the Cubs tomorrow all day. I can see you tonight and we can work out a statement. I'll draw up a draft on the light to O'Hare.”

“Can you get me out of this, Sid?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Silence. Sid was letting me twist.

“Sid.”