The Spoiler (3 page)

“Lover girl's here again. She was asking for you a little while ago,” Tenace said, pointing a fat finger at Lofton.

“Who?”

“The Amanti whore, over there.” Tenace nodded in the direction of the first base stands, where Amanti and Brunner always sat, behind the dugout of the opposing club. “Yeah, she sent a kid over. Said she wanted to talk to the guy from the
Globe
. The one who did all the specials.” Tenace smiled.

The Springfield reporter laughed again, harder this time. Lofton paused at the broken door, propped full open with Tenace's cooler.

“What's the reliever's name?”

Tenace told him, and Lofton left. He headed toward the top of the stands. He was irritated with Tenace, or maybe with himself. Sometimes he did not like being laughed at. But the Springfield reporter, Rhiner, was still young, baby-faced. Maybe when he looked at Lofton, he knew he was looking at himself in fifteen years. Lofton lit a cigarette, drawing on it fiercely now, and smoked it all the way down.

Lofton sat high in the bleachers, in a place where he could study both the field and the Amanti woman. Though Tenace had said she was looking for him, Amanti hadn't approached him, at least not yet. She had walked up to the concession once, then stood around as if waiting, but Lofton had stayed in his seat. He was not quite sure he believed Tenace; the scorer liked to play games. Besides, if she really had something to tell him, it would be best to let her make the first move. Meanwhile, he made notes, questions he should ask Sparks, obvious stuff he did not even need to think about. The idea of a more wide-ranging story, something that would capture the flavor of the team and the town, intrigued him.

As he sat, he jotted down names. Brunner. Liuzza. Amanti. Tenace. He wrote the names as they came to him, trying to visualize the faces, marking down bits and scraps of their histories, whatever he knew. It was an old journalist's habit, partly, but it was something he had done as a child, too, writing down the names of his teachers, of girls in the neighborhood, of major league ballplayers, imagining their faces, their lives. The names, the people would come alive in his dreams, the faces changing, until by the time he woke up the faces no longer went with the names, and he didn't know whom he had been dreaming about. The same type of thing still happened to him sometimes. The street corner he stood on would suddenly look, except for some small, mysterious difference, like every other corner. He would not know where he was or whom he was going to see. A second later everything would occur to him at once, a tangle of names, of alleyways, in which he was immediately lost.

He added another name to his list. Dick Golden. Earlier that day he had talked to Golden, the Redwings' general manager. Golden had pitched with the California Blues for a season, then been drafted by the army. It had happened during the Vietnam War, and Golden had refused to go. Lofton remembered the
San Jose Star
carrying stories on the business. It wasn't a matter of principle, Golden had said. He didn't have an opinion on the war either way; he simply wanted to play ball. Lofton remembered a follow-up story, a few years later, about Golden's handicapped wife. Golden had aged since the time of the newspaper photos. The aging was surprising, distressing. Lofton remembered admiring Golden, rooting for him. Now, though the man was a few years younger than Lofton, he looked older. Though he still carried the same good looks, there was a hardness in his face, a hardness in his eyes—a gray look that was almost empty at times, as if he looked at you from someplace far away, or maybe did not even see you at all. Only occasionally, and then only for brief instants, could you catch a glimpse of the talented, innocent kid Golden had once been.

“I keep track of the paperwork, chase the kids off when they try to sneak in,” Golden had said as they stood together during practice, watching the Redwings shag balls under the afternoon sun.

“Any good prospects?”

Golden scanned the field, as if evaluating the players. “Some of the California kids look pretty good,” Golden said.

Lofton nodded. “Which ones?” Golden himself had gone straight from college ball to the majors. Lofton remembered his glamorous rookie year: how it had culminated, like a television movie, in Golden's marriage to a beautiful young woman who had admired him all summer from the third base bleachers. What he really wanted to ask, of course, was how Golden felt. Was he bitter? He held off asking, partly out of respect, but partly because of Golden's reputation for moodiness, his tendency to lose his temper suddenly and without warning.

“Tim Carpenter, if a place clears for him. Sparks, maybe. His arm looks good, sometimes,” Golden said.

Because the West Coast papers had made a fuss over his resisting the draft—one labeled him the “California Dodger”—Golden and his wife headed for Canada. But the papers soon forgot; Golden's name dropped from the headlines. So Golden did his stint in obscurity, pitching semipro for the Alberta Stars, working part-time as a sportswriter, copying scores from the wire services. By the time Jimmy Carter had granted amnesty to draft resisters, Golden's pitching arm was gone, his wife confined to a wheelchair—multiple sclerosis—and the rookie bonus spent. After Golden failed at a comeback, Cowboy told him about the Holyoke job. Now he counted the gate for Brunner and filed scouting reports to California.

“The players, they excited about being in the Blues' organization?” Lofton asked.

“Of course they're excited. They'd be foolish to be otherwise.” Golden bent over, picked up some trash, and pitched it into a can. He walked away from Lofton, into the clubhouse.

Though the score did not change, and the Redwings were not threatening, the fans let out a cheer. Batting now, with two outs in the sixth, was Randy Gutierrez, the Nicaraguan shortstop whose wife and kids were waiting back in Managua until Randy had something firm with the Blues' organization. Gutierrez was popular with the local fans, particularly the Puerto Ricans. Good field, no hit—that was the line on Gutierrez. Unless he started hitting soon, Gutierrez might find himself back in Managua.

Gutierrez made the sign of the cross before stepping into the batter's box. He took a called strike, then backed away from the plate.

Lofton had assumed until a few days ago that Gutierrez's slump was just a slump. Maybe there was too much pressure on him to make the big leagues; maybe he felt too much uncertainty about his family back in Managua. Tenace, however, had another explanation. Gutierrez had gotten carried away in Holyoke. He spent his spare time getting coked up with the ballpark honeys. His seven hundred dollars a month—a double leaguer's salary—disappeared, Tenace said, quicker than a sneeze in the air, so now Gutierrez was in debt, playing worse and worse, digging himself one deep hole.

Gutierrez took another strike, moving his bat this time but coming around too late, after the pitch had hit the catcher's leather. Lofton hoped there weren't any Blues scouts in the stands.

Gutierrez's decline was a story he thought he could sell if he played the angles right, maybe to the
Globe
or a sports magazine, for more money than the
Dispatch
paid. He would have to interview him, get some quotes about the slump, label him a hot Blues prospect—true, in a way—and rely on Tenace's insinuations to get drugs and women into the story. Then, at the end, a thin ray of hope, maybe the religious angle, the sign of the cross.

Gutierrez stepped up to the plate and watched a pitch float over the outside corner. Ball one. His partisans yelled encouragement, a smattering of Spanish and English. He stepped out of the box, surveyed the stands behind the first base side—where Amanti and Brunner sat—and then crossed himself again.

The Glens Falls pitcher, a bullish man with a huge chaw of tobacco in one cheek, stepped off the mound, stared down Gutierrez, then spat in the infield dirt.

The pitcher went to his delivery. Gutierrez took a wide-sweeping swing at a sucker pitch. Strike three. A small, fat man cursed in Spanish and kicked at the bleachers.

I could write him up, Lofton thought, and Randy Gutierrez, whose career is going nowhere, probably would never know. Speaks English, but with an accent thick as mangoes are sweet, and sure as hell can't read it. But focusing on Gutierrez would be too narrow; the story would be trashy. He wanted something better.

From where he sat, Lofton could see the sweep of the field, the iridescent blue and black of the evening sky beyond the low, shattered skyline of Holyoke. He looked from the Amanti woman away to the recreational fields beyond. Another game, between two local American Legion teams, was being played in a field nearby. Often they received better coverage in the Holyoke paper than the Redwings.

MacKenzie Field, where the Redwings played, was next to Holyoke High, part of the city's recreation department. A high school track ran through the outfield. The outfielders complained about it. They had to field skidding balls off the crushed cinder. Rather than dive to catch a low liner, the fielders often let it fall in for a hit.

He made a few notes, but there was no way he could get it down, no way he could separate the cars moping along the dirty streets from the men jabbering in Spanish in the stands behind him from the players who struggled on the sparse, shabbily tended turf. No way he could separate himself from Tenace, from the bitter hard-core fans.

He went back to studying Amanti. She had a shadowy presence and did not seem quite real. Tony Liuzza, the younger of the two owners, the lawyer, was not at the park today. He seldom was except on promotion nights. Amanti sat close to the other man, Jack Brunner, but not so close as to touch him. There was a small space on the gray bench between the two. Occasionally Brunner leaned forward, touching her on the knee and calling attention to something on the field. She would respond, nodding her head as if she did not quite hear him. She had the same preoccupied look while watching the action.

The crowd started to thin. The Glens Falls team, an aggressive Chicago franchise, hit the ball hard, stealing bases and making Holyoke look, if possible, worse than they were. Lofton watched Coach Barker. The man had lost his fatherly mood. He stormed onto the field, a showman's gesture, and waved the reliever off with his hand. He called over to the first baseman. To that player's surprise, Coach Barker handed him the ball, pointed to the mound, and went over to play first base himself. A good move, thought Lofton. The game was lost. Might as well entertain the fans.

During the break the Amanti woman suddenly left Brunner. She touched Brunner on the shoulder first. Brunner glanced back, nodded his thick head, and she left. She walked up the stands toward Lofton. Though he had been wondering when she would come, he was still surprised when she stopped in front of him and introduced herself. He glanced to the press box, but Tenace and the others could not see him from this angle.

She did not seem as good-looking up close as she had from a distance. A dark woman with dark hair, she had unsettling blue eyes and a splotchy birthmark on her left cheek. She stood in front of him awkwardly, but even in her awkwardness there seemed something feigned, something rehearsed. Her eyes did not settle on him but skirted the crowd. He asked her to sit down. She shook her head.

“I saw you in the press box. You're a reporter?” she asked, though her inflection suggested she already knew the answer.

“Sure,” Lofton said. “I'm a reporter.”

She smiled, nothing flirtatious, just a smile. She told him she had a story, something he might be interested in. He shrugged and motioned for her to sit down. She refused again; instead, she handed him a slip of paper. He unfolded it, glanced at her name and address written in harsh black strokes on white paper, then tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“When should I come?”

She did not seem to be listening. She glanced from the concession stand to Brunner, then to the press box. Brunner had not looked back during this interchange. Lofton did not know why, but he did not want Brunner to see them talking. He could think of nothing else to say to this woman; he almost wished she would go away. He watched the first baseman, who was warming up on the mound now, practicing his delivery to the catcher, pausing every once in a while to look over at Coach Barker, as if wondering how long before the ruse would be over and he could go back to his regular position. Amanti touched Lofton on the shoulder, arresting his attention.

“Tomorrow?” she asked, a note of anxiety in her voice. He nodded, and Amanti went back down the stands to Brunner.

Lofton felt nervous. He did not trust this woman. Though the stakes were small here, or seemed small to Lofton, people always tried to use the press in some way—to grind someone else's nose, to promote themselves. Still, he might wrestle something from her, some small scrap of color he could paste into the background of the story he wanted to write.

On the field, the first baseman had finished warming up in his new position. From the looks of him, he had probably pitched before. A lot of minor league talent had played pitcher at some point or the other, in high school or college. Aside from being good showmanship, Barker's move, transferring the first baseman to the mound, made a degree of sense. No point in dragging another good arm into a lost game.

The first baseman pitched surprisingly well. To the cheers of the crowd, half-drunk on ballpark beer, he struck out the opposing pitcher. The next batter hit the ball hard, but the Holyoke right fielder, caught up in the carnival atmosphere, made a daring dive and caught the ball before it hit the asphalt track.

When the inning was over, the first baseman walked off smiling, obviously pleased with himself. Lofton was amused, but he was not impressed. When you knew you were going to lose, when all the pressure was gone, then sometimes you outperformed yourself.

The rest of the game went quickly. Glens Falls scored once—a long, solo home run by the team's cleanup hitter—and Holyoke did not score at all. Afterward Lofton hurried down to the dugout. In contrast with the fans, who had enjoyed a good joke, the players were grim. They shuffled off the field slowly. Even Elvin Banks, the center fielder who liked to flirt with the teenage girls after the game, was subdued.