Mortal Stakes s-3 Read online

A voice from behind the lockers said, “Were you looking for her in Detroit last week when you dropped that foul?”

  “Ah come on, Ray, Bill Dickey used to drop them once in a while. I seen you drop one once when I was a little kid and you was my idol.”

  A tall, lean man came around the lockers with his hands in his back pockets. He was maybe forty-five, with black hair cut short and parted on the left. There were no sideburns, and you knew he went to a barber who did most of his work with the electric clippers. His face was dark-tanned, and a sprinkle of gray showed in his hair. He wore no sweat shirt under his uniform blouse, and the veins were prominent in his arms. Erskine gestured him toward us. “Ray,” he said, “I want you to meet Mr. Spenser. Spenser, Ray Farrell, the manager.” We shook hands. “Spenser’s a writer, doing a book on baseball, and I’ve arranged for him to be around the club for a while, interview some players, that sort of thing.”

  Farrell nodded. “What’s the name of the book, Spenser?” he said.

  “The Summer Season,” I said. Erskine looked relieved.

  “That’s nice.” Farrell turned toward the locker room.

  “Okay, listen up. This guy’s name is Spenser. He’s writing a book and he’ll be around talking with you and probably taking some notes. I want everyone to cooperate.” He turned back toward me. “Nice meeting you, Spenser. You want me to have someone introduce you around?”

  “No, that’s okay, I’ll introduce myself as we go,” I said.

  “Okay, nice meeting you. Anything I can do, feel free.”

  He walked away.

  Erskine said, “Well, you’re on your own now. Keep in touch,” and left me.

  The black man on the training table yelled over to the redhead, “Hey, Billy, you better start watching your mouth about beaver. This guy’ll be writing you up in a book, and Sally will have your ass when she reads it.” His voice was high and squeaky.

  “Naw, she wouldn’t believe it anyway.” The redhead came over and put out his hand. “Billy Carter,” he said. “I catch when Fats has got a hangover.” He nodded at the black man who had climbed off the table and started toward us. He was short and very wide and the smooth tan coating of fat over his body didn’t conceal the thick elastic muscles underneath.

  I shook hands with Carter. “Collect all your bubblegum cards,” I said. I turned toward the black man. “You’re West, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “You seen me play?” he said.

  “No,” I said, “I remember you from a Brut commercial.”

  He laughed, a high giggle. “Never without, man, put it on between innings.” He did a small Flip Wilson impression and snapped his fingers.

  From down the line of lockers a voice said, “Hey, Holly, everybody in the league says you smell like a fairy.”

  “Not to my face,” West squeaked.

  Most of the players were dressed and heading out to the field. A short, thin man in a pale blue seersucker suit and dark horn-rimmed glasses came into the locker room. He spotted me and came over. “Spenser?” he said. I nodded.

  “Jack Little,” he said. “I do PR for the Sox. Hal Erskine told me I’d find you here.”

  I said, “Glad to meet you.”

  He said, “Anything I can do to help, I’d be delighted.

  That’s my job.”

  “Do you have biog sheets on the players?” I said.

  “You bet. I’ve got a press book on every player. Stop by my office and I’ll have my gal give you the whole packet.”

  “How old is your gal?” I said.

  “Millie? Oh, Christ, I don’t know. She’s been with the club a long time. I don’t ask a lady her age, Spenser. Get in trouble that way. Am I right?”

  “Right,” I said. “You’re right.”

  “C’mon,” he said, “I’ll take you out to the dugout, point out some of the players, get you what you might call acclimated, okay?”.

  I nodded. “Acclimated,” I said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I SAT IN THE DUGOUT and watched the players take batting practice. Little sat beside me and chain-smoked Chesterfield Kings.

  “That’s Montoya,” he said. “Alex Montoya was the player of the year at Pawtucket in ‘sixty-eight. Hit two ninety-three last year, twenty-five homers.”

  I nodded. Marty Rabb was shagging in the outfield.

  Catching fly balls vest-pocket style like Willie Mays and lobbing the ball back to the infield underhanded.

  “That’s Johnny Tabor. He switch-hits. Look at the size of him, huh? Doesn’t look like he could get the bat around. Am I right or wrong?”

  “Thin,” I said. “Doesn’t look like he could get the bat around.”

  “Well, you know. We pay him for his glove. Strong up the middle, that’s what Ray’s always said. And Tabor’s got the leather. Right?”

  “Right.”

  The crowd was beginning to fill the stands and the noise level rose. The Yankees came out and took infield in their gray road uniforms. Most of them were kids. Long hair under the caps, bubble gum. Much younger than I was. Whatever happened to Johnny Lindell?

  Rabb came into the dugout, wearing his warm-up jacket.

  “That’s Marty Rabb, with the clipboard,” Little said.

  “He pitched yesterday, so today he charts the pitches.”

  I nodded. “He’s a great one,” Little said. “Nicest kid you ever want to see. No temperament, you know, no ego.

  Loves the game. I mean a lot of these kids nowadays are in it for the big buck, you know, but not Marty. Nicest kid you ever want to meet. Loves the game.”

  A man with several chins came out of the alleyway to the clubhouse and stood on the top step of the dugout, looking over the diamond. His fading blond hair was long and very contemporary. It showed the touch of a ten-dollar barber. He was fat, with a sharp, beaked nose jutting from the red dumpling face. A red-checked shirt, the top two buttons open, hung over the mass of his stomach like the flag of his appetite. His slacks were textured navy blue with a wide flare, and he had on shiny white shoes with brass buckles on them.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Little.

  “Don’t you know him? Hell, that’s Bucky Maynard.

  Only the best play by play in the business, that’s all. Don’t let him know you didn’t recognize him. Man, he’ll crucify you.”

  “I gather he doesn’t work out a lot with the team,” I said. Maynard took out a pale green cigar and lit it carefully, turning it as he puffed to get it burning evenly.

  “Jesus, don’t comment on his weight either,” Little said. “He’ll eat you alive.”

  “Is it okay if I clear my throat while he’s in the park?”

  “You can kid around, but if Bucky Maynard doesn’t like you, you got a lot of trouble. I mean, he can destroy you on the air. And he will.”

  “I thought he worked for the club,” I said.

  “He does. But he’s so popular that we couldn’t get rid of him if we wanted. God knows there have been times.” Little stopped. His eyes shifted up and down the dugout. I wondered if he was worried about a bug. “Don’t get me wrong, now.

  Buck’s a great guy; he’s just got a lot of pride, and it don’t help to get on the wrong side of him. Course it don’t pay to get on the wrong side of anybody. Am I right or wrong?”

  “Right as rain,” I said. Little liked the phrase. I bet he’d use it within the day. I’m really into language.

  Maynard came toward us, and Little stood up. “Hey, Buck, how’s it going?”

  Maynard looked at Little without speaking. Little swallowed and said, “Like to have you say hello to Mr. Spenser here, doing a book about the Sox.”

  Maynard nodded at me. “Spenser,” he said. His southern accent stretched out the last syllable and dropped the r.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. I hoped he wasn’t offended.

  “He’ll be wanting to talk to you, Buck, I know. No book about the Sox would be worth much if Old Buck wasn’t in it.

  A
m I right, Spenser, or am I right?”

  “Right,” I said. Little lit a new Chesterfield King from the butt of the old one.

  Maynard said, “Why don’t y’all come on up the booth later on and watch some of the game? Get a chance to see how a broadcast team works.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “I’d like to.”

  “Just remember you’re not going to get any predigested Pablum up there. In mah booth by God we call the game the way it is played. No press release bullshit; if a guy’s doggin’ it, by God we say he’s doggin‘ it. You follow?”

  “I can follow that okay.”

  Maynard’s eyes narrowed as he looked at me. They were pale and small and flat, like two Necco wafers. “You better believe it ’cause anyone who knows me knows it’s true.

  Isn’t that right, Jack?”

  Little answered before Maynard finished asking. “Absolutely, Buck, anybody knows that. Bucky tells it like it is, Spenser. That’s why the fans love him.”

  “C’mon up, Spenser, anytime. Jack’ll show you the way.” Maynard rolled the green cigar about in the center of his mouth, winked, and moved out onto the field toward the Yankee dugout.

  Billy Carter from the end of the dugout yelled, “Whale, ho,” and then stared out toward the right-field stands as Maynard whirled and looked into the dugout. Ray Farrell had come out of the dressing room and was posting the lineup at the far end of the dugout. He ignored Carter and Maynard.

  Maynard looked for maybe a minute into the dugout while Carter observed the right-field foul line from under the brim of his cap, his feet cocked up against one of the dugout supports. He was whistling “Turkey in the Straw.” Maynard turned and continued toward the Yankee dugout.

  Little blew out his breath. “That goddamned Carter is going to get in real trouble someday. Always the wisecracks.

  Always the goddamned hot dog. He ain’t that good. I mean, he catches maybe thirty games a year. You’d think he’d be a little humble, but always the big mouth.” Little spilled some ashes onto his shirtfront and brushed them off vigorously.

  “I was thinking about some Moby Dick humor myself when Maynard was standing there blotting out the sun.”

  “You screw around with Bucky and you’ll never get your book written, I’ll tell you that straight out, Spenser.

  That’s no shit.” Little looked as if he was in pain, his smallfeatured face contorted with sincerity. Farrell went up the steps of the dugout and out toward home plate with his lineup card. The Yankee manager came out toward home plate from the other side, and, for the first time, I saw the umpires.

  Older than the players, and bulkier.

  “I think I’ll go up in the broadcast booth,” I said. “If Maynard turns on me and truths me to death, I want you to write my mom.”

  Little didn’t even want to talk about it. He brought me up to the press entry, along the catwalk, under the roof toward Maynardville.

  The broadcast booth was a warren of cable lash-up, television monitors, microphone cords, and one big color TV camera set up to point at a blank wall to the rear of the booth.

  For live commercials, I assumed. Give Bucky Maynard a chance to tell it like it is about somebody’s bottled beer. There were two men in the booth already. One I recognized. Doc Wilson, who used to play first base for the Minnesota Twins and now did color commentary for the Sox games. He was a tall, angular man, with rimless glasses and short, wavy brown hair. He was sitting at the broadcast table, running through the stat book and drinking black coffee from a paper cup. The other man was young, maybe twenty-two, middle height and willowy with Dutch boy blond hair and an Oakland A’s mustache. He had on a white safari hat with a wide leopard-skin band, pilot’s sunglasses, a white silk shirt open to the waist, like Herb Jeffries, and white jeans tucked into the top of rust-colored Frye boots. There was a brass-studded rust-colored woven leather belt around his waist and a copper bracelet on his right wrist. He was slouched in a red canvas director’s chair with his feet up on the broadcast counter, reading a copy of the National Star and chewing gum.

  Wilson looked up as we came in. “Hey, Jack, howsa kid?”

  “Doc, say hello to Spenser, here. He’s a writer, doing a book on the Sox, and Bucky invited him up to the booth for a look-see.”

  Wilson reached around, and we shook hands. “Good deal,” he said. “If Buck says go, it’s go. Anything I can help with, just give a holler.” The kid in the safari hat never looked up. He licked his thumb, turned a page of the Star, his jaws working smoothly, the muscles at the hinge swelling regularly as he chewed.

  Little said, “This here’s Lester Floyd. Lester, this is Mr. Spenser.”

  Lester gave a single upward jerk of his head, raised one finger without releasing the magazine, and kept reading.

  I said, “What’s he do, sing ‘Flamingo’ at the station breaks?”

  The kid looked up then. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the amber lenses of his aviator shades. He blew a large pink bubble, popped it with his teeth, and slowly chewed it back into his mouth.

  Little said, “Lester is Bucky’s driver, Spenser. Spenser’s going to be doing a book on the Sox and on Bucky, Lester.”

  Lester blew another big bubble and chewed it back in.

  “He’s gonna be looking up his own asshole if he gets smart with me,” he said. There was a red flush on his cheekbones.

  “Guess he doesn’t sing ‘Flamingo,”’ I said to Wilson.

  “Aw now, Lester, Mr. Spenser’s just kidding around.”

  Little did a small nervous shuffle step. Wilson was staring out at the diamond. Lester was working harder on the gum.

  “And I’m telling him not to,” Lester said.

  “Never mind, Lester.” The voice came from behind me.

  It was Maynard. “Ah invited Mr. Spenser up here to listen to mah broadcast. He’s mah guest.”

  “He said something smart about me singing, Bucky. I don’t like that sorta talk.”

  “Ah know, Lester, ah don’t blame you. Mr. Spenser, Ah’d appreciate it if you was to apologize to Lester here. He’s a good boy, but he’s very emotional. He’s also got a black belt in tae kwon do. And ah wouldn’t want to get your writing hand all messed up before you even start.”

  Waltzing with Lester in the broadcast booth wasn’t going to tell me anything about Marty Rabb. If he was any good, it might tell me something about me, but that wasn’t what I was getting paid for. Besides, I knew about me. And if I was a writer, I wasn’t supposed to be roughing it up with black belts. Maybe box with Jose Torres on a talk show, but brawling at a ball game… ? “I’m sorry, Lester,” I said. “Sometimes I try too hard to be funny.”

  Lester popped his gum at me again and went back to the National Star. Maynard smiled with his mouth only and moved to a big upholstered swivel chair at the broadcast table. He sat down, put on big padded earphones, and spoke into the mike. The small monitor built into the table to his right had flickered into life and displayed a picture of the batter’s box below. There was a long mimeographed list in front of him on a clipboard, and he checked off the first two items as he spoke.

  “Burt, ah want to open on Stabile warming up. Doc and me will do some business about the knuckler and how it flutters. Right?… Yup, soon’s you run the opening cartridge.”

  Wilson looked over and said to me, “He’s talking to the people outside in the truck.” I nodded. Lester licked his thumb again and turned another page.

  Little leaned over and whispered to me. “Gotta run, anything you need just let me know.” I nodded again, and Little tiptoed out like a man leaving church early.

  Maynard said to the people in the truck, “Ah got nothing to do live up here, right?… well, ah don’t see nothing on the sheet… no, goddamn it, ah taped that yesterday afternoon… okay, well get it straight, boy.”

  A cartoon picture of a slightly loutish-looking baseball player in a Red Sox uniform appeared on the monitor. Maynard said, “Twenty seconds,” to Wilson. Below an
d to our right along the first-base line a portly right-handed pitcher named Rick Stabile was warming up. He threw without effort, lobbing the ball toward the catcher.

  Wilson said into his mike, “Good afternoon, everyone, from Fenway Park in Boston, where today the Red Sox go against the Yankees in the rubber game of a three-game series. This is Doc Wilson along with Bucky Maynard standing by to bring you all the action.”

  A beer commercial appeared on the monitor screen, and Wilson leaned back. “You gonna pick it up on Stabile, Buck?”

  Maynard said, “Check.” Wilson handed him the stat sheet and leaned forward as the beer company logo filled the monitor screen. Lester was finished with the tabloid and settled down into his chair and apparently went to sleep. He looked like a peaceful serpent. Tae kwon do? Never tried somebody that did that. I gave him a hard look. He was motionless; the breath from his nostrils ruffled his mustache gently. He was probably paralyzed with fear. Maynard said, “Howdy, all you Red Soxers, this is the old Buckaroo and you’re looking at Rick Stabile’s butterfly…”

  By the sixth inning the game was gone for Boston.

  Stabile’s knuckler had apparently deked when it should have dived, and the Yankees led 11 to 1. I made two trips, one for beer and hot dogs and one for peanuts. Lester slept, and Maynard and Wilson tried to talk some excitement into a laugher.

  “Stabile’s got to get some of the lard off from around his middle, Doc.”

  “Well, he’s a fine boy, Bucky, but he’s been playing a little heavy this year.”

  “Tell it like it is, Doc. He came into spring training hog fat and he hasn’t lost it. He’s got the tools, but he’s gotta learn to back off from the table or he’ll eat himself right out of the league.” Maynard checked off an item on his log sheet.

  “Here’s Graig Nettles, two for two today, including the downtowner in the first with Gotham on all the corners.”

  I got up and headed out of the booth. Wilson winked at me as I left.

  I stopped by at Little’s office to pick up the press kit on Marty Rabb and four others. Little’s gal had dentures.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  STEAM FROM THE SHOWERS drifted into the locker room and made the air moist. The final score was 14 to 3 and no one was pouring champagne on anyone. I sat down beside Marty Rabb. He was bent over, unlacing his spikes. When he straightened, I said, “My name’s Spenser, I’m writing a book about the Sox, and I guess I oughta start with you.”