IT’S SAID THAT A HITTER’S strength is an inch away from his weakness. That the fastball he likes to swat out of the park with some regularity will prove unhittable if you throw it an inch farther inside.
It was inconceivable that a man like Moss Cooley would actually kill Snoot Coffman, and in that way, so it helped to think that his pride and patience had been pushed an inch too far, transforming him into a different person.
And in the days following Coffman’s death, Harvey kept thinking that the broadcaster’s fate had been an inch away from his redemption. Had Coffman done nothing in the wake of Chirmside’s report that his photo looked familiar to Moss and Cherry Ann Smoler, he might still be announcing Jewels games. But the suggestion that he had been recognized in an old photo of Isaac Pettibone’s lynching had pushed him a fatal inch into panic.
Had Coffman not left Moss a headless lawn jockey, there would have been no former baseball players to ask questions and pursue the case to its bitter end. Had Coffman sat tight, which he had been doing for three decades, chances are Cherry Ann Smoler would have forgotten the old photo. Moss Cooley already had. And as long as Snoot Coffman continued to find his second-rate sexual pleasures at a place other than Teasers on a night Cherry Ann was working, the threat to his freedom would have blown over.
Information that was no longer needed trickled in, like fight fans arriving after the knockout. The computer age-imaging group that Jerry Bellaggio had recommended sent Harvey a printout of Coffman’s projected appearance at fifty, based on the photo at GURCC. It was close enough. Charlie Fathon of GURCC reported that Connie Felker’s car and two houses were both in her name, suggesting a standard of living well beyond the income reported on her tax returns.
More productively, GURCC investigators sifted through Chirmside’s garbage, finding records of several phone calls to Coffman’s office extension at Pro-Gem Palace. Armed with affidavits from Harvey, Cherry Ann, and Moss Cooley—who had heard it from Cubberly’s landing—that Coffman had admitted Clay Chirmside’s role in Pettibone’s lynching, a contingent of investigators from GURCC, the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, and the FBI showed up at Chirmside’s house in early August. By the following day, he had confessed to his role in the lynching and was being held without bail pending formal charges.
After a preliminary investigation into the circumstances of Snoot Coffman’s death, the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office declined to pursue any charges against Moss Cooley. It never went to a grand jury. Harvey assured the investigators that Coffman had turned around when Moss entered the bedroom, giving him ample reason to believe his life was in immediate danger. But the press coverage had already done its usual damage, and Moss went home to his mother in Alabama for a week of home cooking. He rejoined the team in Cleveland and promptly homered in his first at-bat against Rick Rusansky, the same man who had ended his hitting streak.
He and Cherry Ann Smoler continued to see each other. She took an indefinite leave of absence from Teasers, but continued her studies at Johnson and Wales. She moved into a campus dormitory, where she felt safer.
Andy Cubberly, who was cleared of any wrongdoing, nonetheless asked Felix Shalhoub to trade him. In the middle of August the team shipped him off to the Astros for another journeyman outfielder.
Harvey kept his promise, giving Bob Lassiter a long interview.
Scott Sipple, who had preceded Coffman as Jewels play-by-play man for WRIX, worked out a deal with his employer, ESPN, to come back to the broadcast booth as Jewels play-by-play man for WRIX.
In turn, ESPN asked Mickey Slavin to fill in for Scott Sipple, which necessitated her living in the Hartford area until at least the end of baseball season.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” she told Harvey in mid-August, walking into the living room where he was eating Doritos, guzzling Gatorade, and watching the Bears-Giants 1963 NFL Championship game on ESPN Classic Sports.
“In other words,” Harvey said without looking up, “let’s not think of it as a new assignment for you, but a trial separation for us.”
“Something like that.”
“I suppose things have gotten too lousy to last.”
She waited for Harvey to look at her. “Let’s just see what happens, okay?”
“You got someone else?”
“No. You?”
“Nope.” He swallowed some Gatorade straight from the bottle. “Relationships wear out, don’t they?” he said. “Like careers and tires.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so attached to a set of tires.”
“I feel like giving you a hug.”
“Well, get off your ass and give me one.”
He rose, and they held each other for thirty seconds in the middle of the floor, swaying like two pummeled prizefighters in a clinch, too tired to throw punches.
A week later, alone in the house, he received a phone call from Snoot Coffman’s widow, Cindy. What could he say to her? Sorry your husband was decapitated? Just about everything in his life seemed better left unsaid. He waited for her to state her business.
“Sorry to bother you, but you’re the only private detective I know.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“My daughter Tara,” she began.
Harvey pictured the two teenagers in halter tops on the field in Providence, waiting for Moss Cooley to get out of the batting cage.
“The older one,” Cindy Coffman said.
“Go on. I’m here.”
“I think she’s run off with her black boyfriend. She’s been incredibly upset, as you can imagine. She’s been in counseling and on sedatives. She left me a note saying, ‘Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll call you in a few days. I need some time alone with Bryan.’ That was three days ago.”
The dominoes were beginning to fall. “And you’ve talked to Bryan’s parents?”
“They haven’t heard from him, either.”
“Have you reported them missing to the police?”
“Not yet.”
“Your other daughter?”
“Tiffany’s here with me.”
“Is there any reason to suppose she’s in danger or has no intention of getting in touch with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m just so worried. So are Bryan’s parents. I certainly don’t want to make the mistake of not acting.”
“Understood.”
“How would you feel about coming down to Providence tonight and sitting down with me and Bryan’s parents? Just to help us organize our thinking. You could decide then if you wanted to do more. Wanted to help us find them.”
“If that would make you feel more comfortable.”
“It would.”
“Under the circumstances, you know, I can’t take any money from you.”
“Of course we’d want to pay you.”
The fact was that Harvey didn’t want anything at all to do with Cindy Coffman and her daughter’s disappearance, yet he felt a twinge of obligation. He felt like someone at the end of an unsuccessful blind date: a good-night kiss seemed preferable, even if it falsely implied further interest, to not kissing her at all and hurting her feelings on the spot.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll meet with you and the boy’s parents. Beyond that, I can’t make any promises. Perhaps I can refer you to someone else.”
Later that afternoon, Harvey was getting in his Honda in his garage when a shudder went through him. He spun, feeling that he was being watched. But it was only the lawn jockey’s head, on the shelf where he had put it three weeks ago next to a bunch of paint cans. The head lay on its side, smiling insincerely at him.
He turned the head around so that it faced the wall. Then he got settled behind the wheel of his car, backed out of the garage, and started yet another journey to Providence, the city that, as if by some obscure law of the universe that applied only to him, drew Harvey back again and again.