CHARLIE BATTLE, LOOKING MORE casual than Doc had ever seen him on a weekday, in clean canary yellow sweats, Nikes, and a blue Windbreaker, walked into the bare room without knocking and kicked an empty carton out of his way. Most of the color in the room came from the orange wall-to-wall carpet. The walls were dead white and the slipping sunlight made sharp trapezoids on the floor in front of windows without curtains.
“Nice big room,” he said, looking around. “That’s one butt ugly rug.”
Doc plugged in the coffee maker in the little kitchenette and came out to shake the sergeant’s hand. “I can’t afford a new one just yet. I’m looking for a color to paint the walls that will distract attention. What do you think?”
“Make ’em purple. What’s upstairs?”
“Bedroom and bath. There’s a bed with a night-stand and a dresser. I’m getting everything else from Rent-A-Center until I can swing the down payment on a living room set.”
“Who’s this?” Battle pulled a framed picture out of a carton full of Doc’s goods. It showed two rows of young men in baggy cotton baseball uniforms with an empty grandstand behind them. A little off to the right stood a white-haired man with a long sour farmer’s face and ears that stuck out like wind wings.
“The Louisville Lagoons. I pitched for them the summer I graduated high school. That’s me kneeling second from the left.”
“Semi-pro?”
“Very semi. Sometimes we played for chicken dinners.”
“Who’s the codger?”
“Charlie Steiner, the manager. He was the only southpaw on the Toledo Mudhens pitching staff in 1916. He’d’ve been with the Ty Cobb Tigers except they bounced him for drunkenness a week before they were going to call him up.”
“That why you picked Detroit?”
“My father picked Detroit. He had a job waiting.”
Battle returned the picture to the carton. “My wife and I almost separated two years ago. We saw a counselor. I promised to pay more attention to my family and less to the job. We’re on standby for another flight to Denver day after tomorrow. If I’m not there she and Junior are leaving without me. What’s so hot you couldn’t discuss it on the phone?”
“I think I can deliver Starkweather Hall.”
He showed no reaction. “Ance?”
“He’s not involved. Yet.”
“How many guesses do I get?”
“I’d rather not go into the how just yet. My information is he’s ready to turn himself in, but only with me present and only to you. If you don’t come alone it’s off.”
“That’s all? Why not a first-round draft choice and an outfielder to be named later?”
“Excuse me, Sergeant. I wasn’t aware you were just about to arrest him on your own.”
“Let’s just say when a cop-killer starts dictating terms I don’t pop for champagne.”
“My information is Sergeant Melvin wasn’t much of a cop. He was a dealer and a killer besides.”
“I heard that.”
Doc assimilated. “You did?”
“If you like money and it’s a choice between being pensioned off in twenty years—if you don’t get whacked first and the mayor’s bridge partners don’t empty out the fund—and using what you learn about the junk trade when you’re undercover to turn a profit, there’s just no contest. Narcotics officers are pricks to start with or they wouldn’t put in for a shitty detail like that. It’s no trick to turn a prick, excuse the poetry. So Internal Affairs keeps a separate jacket on everyone in the squad. When you’re as big a prick as Ernest Melvin it slops over onto a lot of desks. That doesn’t mean we’re paying a bounty to the man who offed him.”
“The way I heard it he threatened Hall’s life.”
“I’m dying to hear all about it. From Hall.”
The coffee was percolating. “Coffee, Sergeant?”
“Got any beer?”
“Refrigerator’s not plugged in. Sorry.”
“Coffee then.”
Battle followed him to the kitchenette and leaned in the doorway watching him fill two mugs. “What’s your end?”
“That reward still good?”
“I guess.”
“Sugar? I don’t have any cream.”
“Black’s fine.” The sergeant accepted a mug. “You surprise me. I didn’t think you were a money kind of a guy.”
Doc stirred sugar into his mug and unplugged the coffee maker. “I don’t know anybody like that. The best third baseman I ever knew, maybe the best of all time, told me he never picked up his glove without thinking about how much he’d make next season if he threw just two guys out in that game.”
“That must be why they call it the hot corner.”
“Well, this one’s mine, except I only have to throw one guy out.”
“Anything else?”
He leaned back against a cupboard. “My parole officer’s every bit the asshole you said he was and with interest. He’s busting my balls over my attitude, says he’s considering filing an unsatisfactory conduct report with the board. That would revoke my parole.”
“Sure. The board’s just a rubber stamp. Nobody ever checks up on P.O.’s and they got more power than the governor. A grand jury was getting set to indict one of them a couple of years back on charges he had three of his cases pulling heists for him when he went into the hospital for a triple bypass. He never got off the table. Took fifteen years to compile enough complaints against him to put him in the dock. Looking for a recommendation?”
“You offered to help out with Kubitski if I turned something on Starkweather Hall. I wanted to make sure the offer hadn’t expired.”
“Theoretically it shouldn’t matter, or the reward either. Harboring a fugitive in a homicide could dump you back in Jackson until you’re too old to bend over and pick up a baseball. Much less throw one.”
“But then you wouldn’t get Hall.”
“Oh, we’ll get Hall.”
A TV murmured on the other side of the duplex.
“I’ll put in a good word,” Battle said then, “for what it’s worth. Assuming everything’s everything.”
“Actually I was counting on a little more than that. I want you to call off the dogs.”
Battle’s hand paused briefly in the act of raising his mug to his lips. He raised it the rest of the way and swallowed, the muscles of his throat making two distinct movements. “What dogs.” It wasn’t quite a question.
“Even assholes do things for reasons.” Doc hadn’t touched his coffee, just held the mug in both hands as if to warm them. The indoor-outdoor thermometer mounted on the wall of the kitchenette read sixty both places. “It takes more than a couple of cocky interviews and a legitimate job your parole officer doesn’t happen to approve of to get him to go for your throat, unless someone puts him up to it. What made you think I knew enough to make it worth applying pressure?”
“Nothing. But I ran out of leads. How’d I tip my hand?”
“Going on vacation just when I needed you most as a character reference was overdoing it a little. You already had the screws to me. You didn’t need the extra twist.”
“It isn’t an exact science,” Battle said. “I’ll call Kubitski as soon as Hall’s in custody. When will that be?”
“I’ve got one more arrangement to make. Tomorrow maybe. I’ll call you. You want to make your flight the next day.”
“Oh, that. I’m not going anywhere. Can’t get the personal time while this investigation’s on. I was just seeing a friend off at Metro when I called you tonight. I didn’t think the special effects would hurt.”
“You’ve got a friend?”
Battle leaned in through the doorway and set his mug on the drainboard. It was still almost full. “It’s my job,” he said. “If you’re looking for personal consideration I’m fresh out. Where we doing this?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Hey, we’re on the same side now.”
“You don’t always throw the pitch the catcher’s expecting. Some batters look to see where he moves his mitt”
“Life isn’t a baseball game, Lefty.”
“Sergeant?”
He lifted his brows.
“Fuck you.”
After a beat the sergeant decided to smile and stuck out his hand.
Doc shook his head. “Not just now.”
“Okay.”
When Battle left, Doc poured the contents of both mugs and the carafe into the sink, washed them, and went out to call Maynard Ance from a pay telephone on the corner. Twenty minutes later a cab let him off in front of the bail bondsman’s home.
Ance opened the door wearing a striped bathrobe and carpet slippers on his bare feet. His hair was still damp from the shower. Doc’s call had pulled him out of but as far as Doc could tell the black dye hadn’t run. “Where’s Cynthia?”
“Playing racquetball or some horse’s-ass sport like that down at the Detroit Athletic Club. It’s Ladies’ Night. What’s the scoop on Starkweather Hall?”
“What makes you think it’s about him?”
“We were together in the office three fucking hours ago. You didn’t call me to discuss the Pistons’ play-off chances. Let’s go downstairs. I had the place swept for bugs last week.”
“Find any?”
“One of those old C-72s the FBI used under Hoover. I bought the house at a tax auction. Before that a bookie owned it.” He was walking as he spoke. Doc noticed he had a bald spot the size of a coaster on the back of his head.
The basement smelled of cigarette smoke. A butt smoldered atop a heap of them in an ashtray on the arm of the big recliner. Ance lit a fresh L & M off the butt and sprawled in the chair. Doc selected a stool, sat down, got up, moved it to a spot where he wasn’t looking up the bail bondsman’s robe, and sat down again. There were flakes of ash on Ance’s chest, the same color as the sparse hairs sprouting from the soft pink flesh. “I thought you were trying to quit.”
“Shit. You ever see an eighty-year-old man didn’t look like he wished he was dead?” He inhaled. No smoke came back. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Doc lied. “I know where he’ll be tomorrow, if you go along.”
“Son of a bitch. I thought maybe you had some kind of lead, but shit. Where’d you get it, those pukes you play ball with?”
“Who else?”
“Yeah. You talk to him?”
“No reason. The deal’s with Charlie Battle. We’re using the Acropolis. For that you cut in for half the reward.”
“Who gets the rest, you?”
“No, that goes to Hall’s defense.”
“Oh, right. Heh-heh.”
Works every time, Doc thought. Give them the truth and they think you’re joking. That’s what the town had come to. Just wanting to get out from under wasn’t enough, you had to turn a profit while you were at it. Anything less and people got suspicious.
“What time we doing this?” Ance asked.
“I haven’t heard back from Hall’s people to tell me it’s a go. I should know by morning. Should I call you here?”
“No, I’ll be in the office early.”
Doc fell silent. Ance smoked and appeared to be thinking. Watching him was like viewing film of a leaky steam pipe played backward, the vapor disappearing into the aperture and staying there. A few puffs and the cigarette had burned back almost to his lips. He punched it out. “I’m glad I canned Taber and kept you. He thought initiative was a picture with Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. You could be a bail man, you know it? Why not? I can’t do this shit forever. Cindy’s been pestering me to take her around the world, I tell her great, who’s going to sit on the scroats and jumpers while we’re busy humping camels in Cairo? With you minding the store I wouldn’t have to sweat it. I bet I don’t even call you more than once a day.”
Doc gaped. “Are you offering me a partnership?”
“Well, junior. I’ve got to front for the license on account of you’ve got a record. We’ll call my half of the reward your buy-in. Wait. Don’t answer yet. Open that drawer. Not that one, shit, that’s full of nails. The one next to it. What do you see?”
The drawer under the edge of the workbench was filled with cans of Planters mixed nuts in rows. Doc reported this.
“Well, open one.”
“Which one?”
“Jesus Christ, go eeny, meeny, miney, mo. What’d I say about initiative?”
He chose one and peeled off the plastic lid. At first he thought it was full of rolled-up newspaper clippings. “Looks like a roll of fifty-dollar bills.”
“Take it. Now you’re paid up through next month. Your luck stinks today, kid. If you picked one of the ones stuffed with hundreds you wouldn’t have to come back to me for the rest of the year.”
He counted the bills and pocketed them. Now he had enough to furnish the apartment without renting or even buying on time. “Thanks, but what’s the idea?”
“I got more in the bank, but I don’t trust ’em since the savings and loan thing. Also banks report to the IRS. The idea is the bail business pays better than anything else legal. Our customers don’t haggle, the price is set by the courts. I charge ten percent and get collateral for the rest. That’s fair. I know bail men who demand a statement of worth and attach everything the client owns. That’s bloodsucking but the law says it’s okay. There’s nothing to regulate what we charge, like there is with finance companies. Ever buy a new car and pay cash? You don’t get highs like that from drugs. Best of all”—he swung the recliner upright and grasped Doc’s knee—“you can go on playing long after your arm’s shot.”
Doc extricated himself and got off the stool. “I’ll think about it. I’m not sure I want to tie myself down just yet with a business.”
“Makes a difference when you do it with a golden rope.” But Ance looked surprised and a little disappointed.
Doc told him again he’d call him in the morning and let himself out.
He slept that night at his brother’s. He was a long time drifting off, the events of the day skidding through his head on an adrenaline slick like the details of a tough game, and later he couldn’t pinpoint the spot where thinking ended and dreaming started.
Miller. Miller! Boy, you listening? Get your head out of your ass!
He looked at the long parchment features of Charlie Steiner: cap square over his large luminous eyes, a lump of tobacco jammed so far back in his right cheek it raised a knot under his ear, pale spotty skin hanging in pleats from his neck. His Louisville Lagoons uniform was too big around the waist as always, the trousers in tucks, belt snugged so tight the end swung loose like an extension of his manhood.
You ever ask yourself why them fellers in the Show are always standing around scratching their eggs on national tee-vee, boy? It’s ’cause they didn’t have time to do it on their way there. You don’t get to the Show on just two good pitches and a shitload of wish-I-wuzzes. It takes harder work than you ever done in your whole masturbating young life.
Doc said, Charlie, is it really you? I heard you died.
Not hardly, boy. Didn’t I say I’d be on your butt like a boil till you got where you’re going?
But I got there, Charlie. I got to the Show.
Like hell. You just dreamed it. Fellers in the Show don’t sleep in their nephews’ beds between sheets their brothers paid for. Pay attention, now. In my day the pitcher just closed his eyes and let fly and the batter just closed his eyes and swung and both of ’em hoped the other’s luck was worse than his. These days you need brains. Brains to read the signals. Brains to know when to go to first when there’s a runner on board. Brains to know whether that boy in the box jumps all over the first pitch or waits for the one that’s low and inside. And brains—he leaned forward, close enough for Doc to detect the spoiled-fruit smell of tobacco on his breath—to know when to just close your eyes and let fly. Brains like that take time to grow. I’ll be right here until they do.
Wait a minute, Doc said. You are too dead. I went to a memorial service. Your widow was there and your daughter and two grandsons. A utility infielder who knew you on the Toledo team read a poem about running it out He was in a wheelchair. Your picture was there in a wreath. They said you were found lying on the floor of the shower with the water running.
He was afraid then he’d insulted the old man, who straightened to his full height, hitched up his trousers in that way he had even though he kept them cinched tight enough to cut off circulation, turned, and left. Only he didn’t walk away, but just kind of faded into the pattern on the wallpaper in Sean’s room. That was when Doc realized he was awake, lying with his head propped on the pillow and his eyes open.
He was still thinking about it when the clock radio on the nightstand clicked on. It had been a gift from his sister-in-law after he’d overslept one morning and reported late for work at the John Deere dealership. He recognized the mock-cheerful voice of the morning man at Talk Radio 1270.
“… Okay, you’ve got the number and you know my name. Call me up with your thoughts on the death of cop-killing drug lord Starkweather Hall at three-ten this ayem in of-all-places Birmingham. Justifiable death, or did the police execute him? Talk to me, I’m all ears.”