Strike Three You're Dead (11 page)

“Of course,” Elias said, “of course. I didn’t mean to imply….”

When they were finished and walking to the dugout, Harvey turned to Bobby. “You’re in a good mood today.”

“For five bills and a year’s car insurance, I don’t need it,” Bobby said.

“Wags, what do you know about Rudy?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought he might’ve told you something, you know, trouble he was in. You pitchers hang together.”

“Rudy hung alone.”

“Did you know a girlfriend of his named Valerie Carty?”

“No. What is this, Professor? You some kind of cop now?”

“No, Wags, I just—there’s—I don’t know.”

“Look, the guy probably had something going on the side, and he got burned.”

“Yeah,” Harvey said. “Maybe that’s it.”

Bobby got his warm-up jacket off the bench and put it on, mumbling, “A year’s car insurance. Christ almighty.”

Harvey picked up a leaded bat and was swinging it over his head in an arc when Cleavon Battle, the Jewels’ mountainous first baseman, came up and said, “Let me ask you something.”

Cleavon was the only player on the team about whom it was generally felt that you spoke to him only when spoken to—and Cleavon rarely spoke to you. After ten years in the majors with a healthy .289 career batting average, he was playing out the string in Providence.

“Ask,” Harvey said.

Cleavon reached out and grabbed the end of Harvey’s leaded bat. His fingers were the size of egg rolls. “You know it was my stick killed Rudy,” he said.

“Yeah.” Their hands were holding different ends of the bat. “I know about that.”

“You know I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“I know that, too,” Harvey said. Cleavon went six-three, about 220 pounds, and Harvey wasn’t going to stand there and tell him he didn’t like the way he wore his batting glove, much less accuse him of murder.

“I believe you when you say that.”

“That’s good, Cleavon.”

The first baseman pursed his lips and nodded slowly, like a man dozing off. “Because I’ve got one bad-ass reputation around here.”

“I don’t know who killed Rudy,” Harvey said, “but I know it had nothing to do with you.”

“That’s right,” Cleavon said and let go of the leaded bat.

Harvey waited until he was out of earshot before releasing a sigh.

Andy Potter-Lawn, a young left-hander and the only major leaguer born in England, pitched for the Jewels that afternoon, but not with any great distinction. Behind Sammy Arguelles, Milwaukee coasted to a 7-1 win. Harvey was blow-drying his hair when Bob Lassiter came up to his locker after the game with a fried chicken wing in one hand and a reporter’s notebook in the other. He waited for Harvey to snap off his Conair Pro 1000.

“Bob, you know I don’t like to talk with wet hair.”

“Just talk with your mouth, then.” Lassiter laughed until he saw that Harvey wasn’t going to join him. “Now look, don’t chew my head again. I’ve just got one question, and I’ll make it quick. You guys have played two miserable games in a row.” He looked at Harvey.

“I think that charge would stand up in court, Bob,” Harvey said.

“Do you think it has anything to do with Rudy’s death?”

“Now, how did I know that question was coming?”

Lassiter tossed his chicken wing into a wastebasket behind him. “What I mean is,” he said, poised to write, “it’s got to affect your play in some way.”

“No, I don’t see why a team that’s hiding a murderer shouldn’t go out there every day and give it everything it’s got.”

Lassiter looked at him for a moment. “Wait. What you’re saying is that—is that you think the guy who killed Rudy is on the team?”

Harvey realized immediately it was one of the dumbest things he’d ever said. The players who always talked to the press rarely said anything more provocative than “I really think the team’s jelling now.” It was the players who rarely talked who said too much when they did.

“That was a stupid thing to say,” Harvey said. “Forget I said it.” He pointed his hair dryer at Lassiter’s face. “Keep that one out of the papers, all right? Look, I have no idea who killed Rudy. For all I know, it was the mob.”

H
ARVEY DROVE DOWN HOPE
Street toward Pawtucket early that evening. Each block was like the one before, only slightly worse: an endless march of clapboard three-deckers with peeling bays and little half-balconies and chipped stoops. Neighborhood groceries called Tony’s Spa and Marie’s Spa sulked behind grated windows. It was hard to believe that Pawtucket had once been a hub of the textile industry, the source of the first machine-spun cotton yarn. Now it looked like the world capital of abandoned Impalas and busted screen doors.

He looked at the address on Valerie Carty’s stationery on the seat beside him. Was any woman crazy enough to kill Rudy for love? In the clubhouse? Not even Rudy was that captivating. Was any woman’s husband crazy enough to do it? Harvey hadn’t thought of husbands until now. He hadn’t thought of much, except that any woman who wore a teddy around Rudy’s town house probably knew something he didn’t.

At a red light, he rolled down his window and asked a man in a soiled Boston Red Sox cap for directions to Armbrister Road. He followed several more streets bordered by buckled buildings to a faded pink three-decker next to a lot filled with bakery trucks. A dumpster in the lot had spilled some of its contents onto the sidewalk. Harvey parked in front of the building, waded through the trash, climbed three steps to the porch, and found Valerie Carty’s name on a black metal mailbox next to the door of the first-floor apartment. Above her name was the name Albert Carty.

The front of the building was covered with pitted pink aluminum siding, and the windows of the first-floor bay were shielded by thick yellow canvas shades the color of calluses. Harvey swung open the screen door, rapped on one of the small beveled glass panes, and waited with his back to the door. The orange sun had fallen behind the buildings across the street, silhouetting a serrated row of rooftops. Two boys raced minibikes with oversized wheels down the sidewalk and disappeared, whooping, into the lot. The air had grown chilly, and he pushed his hands into his pants pockets. Someone leaned on a car horn down the block. Harvey hawked over the porch railing. Pawtucket was having a bad effect on him.

“Yes?”

The man in the doorway wore an unbuttoned short-sleeved shirt that hung outside his pants, and at his side he held a bottle of Narragansett by the neck. He had thin sandy hair combed back in greasy streaks over his scalp, and wild sandy eyebrows. Other than that, he had the kind of sullen, unemployed face you could see ten times and still not remember.

Harvey had not expected the husband. “Oh, I should’ve called first,” he stammered.

“About what?”

“I’m, uh, looking for your wife.”

“I don’t have a wife anymore,” Albert Carty said. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Harvey Blissberg.” The man’s eyebrows moved, but he showed no sign of recognition. “I’m wondering if—I’m looking for Valerie Carty.”

“Then you’re looking for my daughter.”

“I guess that’s right, then.”

“My daughter doesn’t get many visitors. What do you want to see her about?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Try to find a way. It’s nippy out here.”

“Okay. I’m a baseball player, the Providence Jewels.” Harvey raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“I’ve heard of them. I don’t follow the game.”

“I wanted to speak to Valerie about one of the other players. Someone she knew.”

“She doesn’t know any baseball players,” Carty said.

A woman’s voice called out from deep inside the apartment: “Who is it, Dad?”

“I’m trying to find out, honey,” he called. He turned back to Harvey and repeated, “She doesn’t know any baseball players.”

“I’m pretty sure she knew this one.”

“And I’m saying she doesn’t. She’s a baseball fan, but she doesn’t know any baseball players.”

“Okay, look. I’m sorry to bother you, but if you could just tell her that Harvey Blissberg of the Providence Jewels would like to talk to her for just a minute—about Rudy Furth.”

Carty lifted his beer bottle, checked the contents, dropped it to his side again. “You wait here.”

A minute later, Carty came back to open the door and say, “Well, she certainly knows who you are.” Harvey followed him into a bleak hallway and living room with a low, veneered coffee table whose surface was ringed with glass stains, a mahogany highboy with polyurethane blisters all over it, and an assortment of easy chairs. Three small still lifes in dime-store frames dressed up the side wall between two windows with cracked sashes, and a tarnished light fixture in the shape of four tulips cast the room in a bad light.

Albert Carty went to one of the easy chairs, picked up a folded
Journal-Bulletin
off the rug, and sat down. “She’s in her room,” he said. “Second door down the hall, on the right.”

Harvey walked slowly to the door and knocked. A voice said tentatively, as if asking a question, “Come in?”

The room was square and stuffy. The curtains and bedspread were of the same ruffled blue-checked gingham. The large chest of drawers was painted white and scattered with bottles of perfume and stuffed animals. Above the bed were collages of pictures from sports and women’s magazines and a Providence Jewels felt pennant tacked up at an angle. On a stamped-tin TV dinner table to the left of the door was a portable television set tuned to
The Love Boat.

In the middle of the room, facing the television and also Harvey, sat Valerie Carty. Crinkly red hair, parted in the middle, fell on either side of a sweet face now set in a timid smile. She had a low forehead, wide brown eyes, and a fresh coat of pink lipstick that ran off her lower lip a bit. She wore a cotton T-shirt, and her legs were covered with a red blanket that fell in folds around the bottom of her wheelchair.

Harvey returned her smile.

“So it really
is
you!” she said. “I don’t believe it!” She brought both hands up to her face and took them away, like a child playing peekaboo. “It—it’s like a dream or something!” She was quite pretty, but Harvey couldn’t tell if she was closer to fifteen or twenty-five. She breathed deeply and said, “I don’t believe this! I just saw you on TV this afternoon. I can’t believe Dad didn’t know who you were! He doesn’t know anything. Go on, go sit on the bed. I wish I had a chair, but”—she giggled—“I don’t have much use for one. I mean, we could sit in the living room or something, but I think my room is the nicest one in the house. The rest of the place is sort of crummy. Oh, I don’t believe this!”

Harvey sat uncomfortably on the bed, and Valerie pulled her wheelchair forty-five degrees around to face him. “You know, you look a little smaller in person. I don’t know why I say that; I don’t mean you look small or anything, but—but smaller.” She covered her face again. “What, am I dreaming?
What
are you doing here? Look!” She pointed to the wall over Harvey’s head. “I’ve even got your picture there, right next to Rudy’s. Oh, this is ridiculous! I’m so excited!”

“This is a very nice room,” Harvey said.

“Well,” she laughed, “it’s not exactly Bloomingdale’s.” Harvey figured her closer to twenty-five.

“Well, look,” he said, “I guess I should explain why I’m here, but, well, Rudy—”

“Rudy,” she pronounced. The giggle went away, and she lowered her eyes to the blanket on her lap. “I’ve been so depressed about it. I’m usually pretty cheerful; I guess you noticed. Even Dad started to worry about me.” Her eyes brimmed. “Rudy was fantastic.”

“He talked about you.”

“No, he didn’t!” She blushed even more now.

“Sure.” Harvey slapped his hands on his thighs. “Why do you think I came here? He talked about you a lot. He told me there was a girl named Valerie Carty who wrote to him, and it was such a good letter that he said he was going to visit you someday.” Harvey remembered a line from her letter—“Every time I see you, it makes me want to jump up and dance”—as he looked around at the little television set. “You know,” he told her, “baseball players don’t get as many letters as you would think. So I guess yours meant something special to him. So I figured the least I could do for him was to look you up and tell you that it meant a lot to him and that he was going to visit you sometime. And so here I am.”

She was crying now, without making a sound. Harvey didn’t know whether she really believed him; but what else could she believe? She pulled up a corner of the blanket and wiped her cheeks, revealing two slippered feet, lying thin and dead on the footplates of the wheelchair.

“And here I am,” Harvey said. “He was quite a guy, Rudy. You know, we were roommates, and we used to do a lot of things together.” He wanted to get her a tissue, but didn’t see any in the room. “They don’t make too many like Rudy.”

Valerie sniffed back her tears. “He always looked like he was having fun out there. Why did he always tug his ear before he pitched? Was that a sign?”

“Just a nervous habit,” Harvey said.

“They don’t know who did it, do they?”

“No, they don’t.” Harvey got up and kneeled next to her and put a hand on hers. She put her other hand on top of his.