The Spoiler (15 page)

“I think there's a story there,” said McCullough, and slid him a piece of paper. “This is where you're supposed to meet.”

“A church,” said Lofton. “You're kidding?”

“Check it out,” McCullough said, his face widening into a sudden smile. “You're doing a good job.”

Outside, Lofton shook his head. McCullough was like a lot of small-town editors: unreasonable one minute, your best friend the next—so long as you were doing what he wanted and not asking for much money. Lofton headed across the parking lot to a phone booth on the street. He still wanted to get in touch with Amanti. Before he could reach the phone, however, he heard someone behind him. Kirpatzke. The editor hurried to catch up.

“He sending you on that Mendoza stuff?”

“Sure.”

“I'd stay away from it if I were you. Mendoza's hooked up with those street gangs, you know, knives and chains.”

“I had that figured out. But why tell me now? You've known all along. You published Einstein's stories; you've seen his notes.”

“Just making sure you know what you're getting into. It's your choice. McCullough won't care if you don't do that story. A lot of our regulars won't deal with those people.”

“Einstein did, didn't he?”

“That's something you might want to think about,” said Kirpatzke. “And this, too: Einstein never picked up his last paycheck.”

“So?”

“Maybe Einstein loved truth and justice, but he didn't love the
Dispatch
. That check isn't the kind of thing he'd leave behind.… Anyway, I've got another story I want you to do on that dead shortstop.”

Kirpatzke outlined the new feature he wanted on Randy Gutierrez, more interviews with the team, the atmosphere of grief.

“Why didn't you give me this in front of Mac?”

“I thought I'd do us both a favor and save some arguing.”

When Kirpatzke was gone, Lofton tried the phone booth. Still no Amanti. He tried all morning, then got in his car and drove to her apartment to see if he could find her. As his car mounted the Notch, he thought things over, trying to keep everything straight. He knew Brunner and other businessmen owned property downtown, buildings that would cost a lot to renovate, particularly if the federal money didn't come through. A lot of people in town said even the most honest landlords hoped their buildings burned now, before the renovation funding was canceled and while insurance paybacks were still high.

Angelo, the Latinos' leader, had said he knew who was behind Holyoke's fires. Then, a few days later, Angelo had died. According to Amanti, Randy Gutierrez had known something linking Brunner to the arsons. Now Gutierrez was dead, too. Einstein was missing. Amanti didn't answer her phone. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Lofton wondered again who had been looking for him that first day at the library, when he had begun researching the fires. The road behind him was empty. He was tracing two story lines, one starting with the dead shortstop, the other with the warring street gangs. As he accelerated his old station wagon into the curve, he had the hunch that the two lines were going to intersect sooner or later, as almost always happened.

Approaching Amanti's house, Lofton heard light jazz coming through the open window. She did not come to the door right away, and he grew frightened. He did not want to walk in and find Amanti as he had found Gutierrez. He knocked again, the music lowered, and a little while later Amanti came to the door.

“I've been calling you since last night,” he said.

Amanti let out an uneasy sigh, touched his arm, and led him to the living room. He sat on the sofa, and she sat in one of the low-slung modern chairs. He bent over, nervous despite himself, clasping his hands together between his knees.

“Would you like a drink?” Amanti asked. She picked up her own glass, half-empty on the table beside her, and made drinks for them both. He had to hold himself from taking his down too quickly, from losing himself in the coolness of the ice.

“Why haven't you been answering the phone?”

“I was afraid,” she said.

“Afraid of who?”

Amanti did not answer. Lofton listened to the pause, to the sound of the insects in the grass. “Who was that man who answered the phone yesterday?”

“No one,” she said. “A friend.”

Amanti ran her finger around the rim of her glass. She wore a thin cotton blouse and summer slacks. Gutierrez, Brunner, the Redwings, the dust and ash of Holyoke—all seemed remote, a distant setting. Lofton felt himself slip into the moment. The banter. The starts and stammers. The averted eyes. The cigarettes. The tonic spiked with gin.

“Did you know what was going to happen to Randy Gutierrez?” he asked.

“No, of course not.” She said it briskly, offended. She held her finger still on the cool lip of the glass.

Lofton rubbed his hand through his hair. The alcohol had gone to his head in the heat. “Why did you bring me into this?”

“I thought somebody should know.”

“Right, so now Gutierrez is dead, and I'm the one who had to find the body. I don't like looking at dead people.” His vehemence surprised him. Lofton glanced at the bad paintings and swirled the ice in his glass. He imagined Gutierrez again. He saw the cramped kitchen, the body on the floor. He smelled the blood on the linoleum.

Amanti would not look him in the eyes. She lit a cigarette, and the smoke curled back around her head. She hid herself in the smoke. He reached over and took a cigarette from her pack.

“You have to tell me what Gutierrez told you. There's no other way for me to know.” Lofton's voice was calm now; he could hear the calmness as he had felt it the night he found the body. Glancing down the hallway, he saw the door to Amanti's bedroom stood open. He heard his words as if he stood in that bedroom listening to himself, as if he were in a movie and the camera were focused on somebody listening in the other room. Suddenly he became afraid that there really was somebody in that other room.

“Sparks, does he know about the fires?” It was a guess, wild as the wind from left field, based only on the fact that he'd seen Amanti and the pitcher talking together out in the parking lot. Amanti shifted in her seat, enough so that Lofton thought his guess had been right. He walked down the hall and glanced into the bedroom, then came back. There was no one there, not unless he was crouched somewhere Lofton couldn't see. He chided his imagination.

“What are you doing?” asked Amanti.

“Nothing,” he said, embarrassed. “Tell me what Gutierrez told you. And tell me about Sparks. Start from the beginning.”

She was not sure how much she wanted to tell Lofton, if she should tell him anything at all. Kelley had told her to avoid the reporter. She had done so, she told herself. Despite her charade with Lofton that day on the telephone, she hadn't answered the phone since. But when she'd seen him coming up the walk, she'd let him in. He had heard the music in her apartment, she guessed, and not to let him in, to pretend that there was nothing at all that she knew would be worse than to walk the line between saying just enough and too much. Besides, she wasn't worried about Sparks; the pitcher was interested in only one thing, and that was the movement on his fastball. It was all he ever talked about.

“Sparks used to search Brunner out after he pitched,” she said. “Brunner takes an interest in the players, and I guess Rickey thought he might get some help when it comes down to whether the Blues decide to pull him up at the end of the season. The times he talked to me, it was always about his career. He's worried about it. It worries him to death.”

“I thought Golden filled out the scouting reports. Why should Sparks bother with you and Brunner?”

“I guess he's just playing every angle he can think of. He's obsessive. But underneath it all, he loves playing baseball, I guess. At least that's what he says.”

Amanti did not know much more about Sparks than she was saying. Her only close contact with him had been several weeks back. That particular night Brunner had left the game early, and Amanti had remained alone in the stands. Earlier in the season she probably would not have stayed. She had started coming to the games because Brunner had asked; it was better than staying at home. Brunner watched the game ferociously. He would tighten his fist when the team fell behind, whispering heatedly to himself, a running commentary on the game, and he would stand up to cheer and swear, but only for an instant, when something good happened on the field. (Her cousin Tony Liuzza watched the games with far more detachment. He seemed bored, like a child with a toy he'd never really wanted.) Though baseball itself did not interest her, and she could have made excuses to Brunner, she had continued to come to the games. There was something about sitting in the sparse crowd that she enjoyed, the quality of light as it struck the field, the movements of the young players, their determination, and how that determination could be frustrated, or rewarded, simply by the angle at which the ball hit the turf. She paid little attention to the score; she often left the game without knowing who had won, though she knew it was true that Holyoke usually lost.

This particular game, however, Holyoke had won. She left the field alone, and by coincidence, it seemed, she ran into Rickey Sparks.

“Where's Jack?” he said. Though he often sought Brunner out after he had pitched, he did not seem to enjoy the conversations themselves. Sparks had a look of perpetual scorn. “Did he see the movement on my fastball?”

“Brunner's gone, but I'll tell him. I'll make sure he knows.”

Sparks nodded. He seemed amused. Then he asked her, with as much challenge in his voice as anything, if she would like to come over to a small party at the apartment he shared with Tim Carpenter. “The team's got tomorrow off, and I have trouble sleeping after I pitch anyway.” His voice was strong with innuendo, enough so that she knew that the challenge was a bluff; he did not expect her to come over.

“Sure,” she said.

Once there, she felt a little awkward—and Tim Carpenter had felt that way, too, she thought—because Sparks and Randy Gutierrez had brought along a couple of the ballpark girls, obviously their dates, and that made it appear that she and Carpenter were a pair, an idea neither of them was too comfortable with. Carpenter stuck it out for a while, until one of the girls took out her mirror and laid it out on the table. Then Randy Gutierrez took out a plastic Ziploc and drew some lines on the glass. Carpenter excused himself and went back into his room. He had roomed for a while with Gutierrez, she knew, but apparently he didn't want anything to do with coke. Sparks gave her a look, as if to see how she would react; it was plain he was worried what she would say to Brunner, but it was also plain that there was another side to Sparks: Part of him did not care what anyone thought. He would do as he pleased.

“How about you? Did you do the coke?” Lofton asked.

“Maybe I did,” Amanti said. “I don't see what difference that makes.… But Gutierrez, he got himself wired, talking half Spanish, half English. He started going on about buildings burning and people, sometimes, getting trapped inside. At first I thought he was talking about Managua, where his wife lives, he was so upset.”

While Amanti spoke, Lofton imagined the scene in the ballplayers' apartment: the vinyl couch where the girls sat flirting with the players; the white Formica tabletop; the stereo against the wall; the spackled ceilings; and Gutierrez leaning over, moving his hands as he talked. Lofton saw the echo of those movements in Amanti's gestures. Amanti, seeing the way Lofton studied her, moved her hand to her collar.

“How did Sparks react to this?”

“He didn't seem to like Gutierrez talking so much. It was a little crazy. I think maybe he was worried that the whole scene would get back to Coach Barker. Or to Brunner. But he was pretty high himself, having a good time. To tell you the truth, he didn't hear most of what Gutierrez told me. He went off with the girls to a package store, to get something to drink, some beer, and that's when Randy told me he knew who was burning the buildings in Holyoke.”

“Who?”

Amanti hesitated again. Her blue eyes seemed dark, the light inside them once again remote, receding, the last light on the last car of a train deep in a mountain tunnel.

“Did he mention Brunner's name?”

“No.”

“Then why do you insist that it's Brunner?”

“He mentioned Golden …” Amanti said. “Gutierrez liked to hang out on street corners, Puerto Rican bars, places like that, and he heard things. At least that's what he told me, and he said that he knew that Golden was delivering money to the torch, to
un hombre del fuego
. I remember the phrase because he kept saying it over and over.
Un hombre del fuego.”

A man of fire. It was a dramatic term, almost silly, thought Lofton, except he could imagine Gutierrez speaking the words, dead serious, pausing for effect. “Gutierrez was really raving,” she went on. “One minute he seemed proud of everything he knew, of the information about Golden; he would act completely confident. The next minute he was afraid. He said they were going to kill him.”

“Who was going to kill him?”

“I don't know. If you want to know the truth, though, I got the idea that he was in trouble with the dealers, that maybe they had fronted drugs to him, and now he couldn't pay back.”

Lofton wasn't sure what the story proved. Gutierrez's ravings could have been sheer nonsense, events scrambled in his mind by drugs and paranoia. Maybe, as Amanti said, he owed some street pushers some money. Maybe the pushers had threatened him. At the same time Gutierrez had to be worried about his status with the Redwings. Golden was a symbol of authority on the team. It could be that Gutierrez had taken all the things he was worried about and scrambled them together and come up, the way drug freaks often did, with this new explanation for his problems.