Strike Three You're Dead (22 page)

But extramarital affairs were as common as 6-4-3 double plays, and why would Rudy threaten to talk? Anyway, Frances was the sort of woman who would tell Felix, if she had to, that it just wasn’t true about her and Rudy, and Felix would believe her. And if by some chance Felix didn’t believe her, what would he do about it? The guy barely had the energy anymore to leave the dugout and beef to an ump about a bad call. Still, Harvey thought as he tied his spikes and folded the tongues back over the bows, he hadn’t really spoken to Felix at any length since the day after Rudy’s murder. He didn’t really have any bright ideas, but when he passed Felix’s office and saw him sitting alone at his desk playing with a pile of the wooden tongue depressors that the players used to scrape the mud from their spikes on rainy days, he walked in.

Felix had cleared a space on a desk cluttered with sports pages, lineup cards, mementos, and the vinyl-covered loose-leaf notebook containing the team statistics. He was gluing the tongue depressors into what looked like picket fences.

“What’s doing, Felix?”

“Why aren’t you out on the field?” He made a brief attempt to conceal his construction project.

“I’m a little late getting started today.”

“Listen, Professor, I’m batting you third tonight. I like the way Stiles has been getting on base lately, and I want to bat him second so you’ll have somebody to chase home. Okay?”

“Fine, Felix, fine. Don’t worry, we’ll get you some runs tonight. Nice guys shouldn’t have to finish last.”

Felix looked up at him with sad eyes. His nose had a red, rubbery look.

“Felix, I’m not going to tell you you look like the picture of health these days.”

“Good. I hate liars.” He put the cap back on the Elmer’s glue. “Why do I have to have an unsolved murder on my ball club? Isn’t it enough we’ve lost fourteen of our last eighteen? Why couldn’t it have been the Yankees? They’re always fighting among themselves anyway. Why couldn’t it have happened to whoever’s managing them these days?” He chuckled morosely at his own joke.

“He’s got Morrissey to deal with. You don’t.”

Felix grimaced at the mention of the Yankee’s principal owner. “At least Morrissey’s got the money to buy himself a winner. This organization’s not in a healthy financial posture. I’ll probably lose half the team to free agency in the next two years. Assuming I’m still here.” He braced his temples with his palms. “Harvey, are you sleeping with my wife?”

“Excuse me?” Harvey said.

“I’ve got a right to know, I think.”

“No, of course not. For God’s sake, Felix, why would it even occur to you to ask?”

“Don’t you think I know when my wife’s off on one of her romantic expeditions? Just tell me and I won’t ask any more questions.”

“Felix, I swear I’m not. I mean, not even close.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s more than I could say for someone else, may he rest in peace.”

“Rudy?” Harvey felt he was shaking his head in disbelief too obviously.

“It may come as a surprise to you, although God knows why it should. Perhaps you’ve noticed she takes a fancy to younger men. Sometimes I don’t know why she even married me.”

“You put up with it?” he said, when he couldn’t think of anything else.

“The marriage?”

“The younger men.”

“What can I do? I just about owe this job to her.”

Harvey pretended to be occupied by something on the floor. “Yeah, I know she owns part of this ball club.”

“It’s not a matter of public record, Professor, but my wife owns twenty percent. Her own money. That gives her just enough leverage to get her husband the manager’s job. Who else was going to touch me, with my record?”

“Felix,” Harvey implored, but Felix was on a confessional binge.

“Sometimes I don’t even feel like the job’s mine. Levy drools all over Frances, and between the two of them they run most of the show.”

“Can’t you talk to Levy about it? You’re a baseball man, Felix; you’re a good manager. You’ve just had lousy teams.”

Felix ignored Harvey’s effort at praise. “I’ve gone to Levy. He says, ‘Well, certainly, Felix, you’re the manager, but it’s good for the team to have Frances around, and it’s good for Frances.’ The guy’s telling me what’s good for my wife! Truth is he gets a hard-on just looking at her, and she owns a piece of the property. Money talks. Felix just sits here and spills his guts to his goddamn center fielder.”

“Does Linderman know about Frances and Rudy?” Harvey asked.

“If he does, I sure as hell wasn’t the one to tell him. What’s the point, anyway? What’s there to know? If Linderman knew, it’d be all over the place. What’s it got to do with Rudy’s murder?”

Felix had phrased it as a question, as if he too felt the matter was still open. “You know about the money in Rudy’s sports jacket,” Harvey said.

“Sure, Linderman told me about it.”

“And you know he feels there’s no way that money was a gambling bribe? There was no unusual betting action on Jewels games.”

“And no gambler’d be dumb enough to work through a relief pitcher. Starting pitchers and big hitters throw games, not relievers.”

“And you know the typewriters are out, right?”

“Yeah, Linderman just told me about that, too,” Felix said. “Now how in hell am I supposed to hate a man who’s slept with me wife when he’s buying typewriters for a goddamn orphanage and then gets murdered in my goddamn clubhouse?”

“You got any ideas, Felix?”

“No, and Linderman doesn’t seem to have any, either. Between you and me, Professor, Linderman never seemed too sharp to me.”

Harvey let the comment pass. “Whoever killed Rudy was extremely smart or extremely lucky, or both.” He stood up. “I know this is crazy, Felix, but you don’t think—”

“Forget it. And if she
was
the murdering sort, love’s the last thing she’d kill for, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Sorry, Felix. I must be getting pretty desperate.” Harvey started to leave, then stopped. “What’d they talk about, Frances and Rudy?”

“Beats me. Only time I overheard them, they were talking about real estate. I gather Rudy was investing in some.”

Harvey stood in front of Felix. The Jewels’ schedule was taped to the tiles on the wall behind Felix’s chair. Providence had these four against the Tigers, three over the weekend with second-place Boston, a quick road trip to Chicago for four, and back to close out the season with three against first-place New York.

“Why don’t you go out there and put your mind on the game,” Felix finally said. “At least you can try to salvage a three hundred season for yourself.”

Harvey waved a hand at him. “I’d just like to see the team finish up on a winning note.”

“You can save the bullshit for the press. Just go out there and get a few hits tonight.”

After the 6-3 loss to the Tigers, Harvey went back to his apartment and took out the paper bag that Dunc had given him four days ago in New York and spread the contents on his kitchen table. He threw the half-finished pack of cigarettes, the sunglasses, and the sanitary hose back in the bag and began leafing through the book about real estate investment. He was searching his memory for anything Rudy had ever said to him about real estate when an envelope with a cellophane window fell out from between the pages.

In it was a July checking account statement in Rudy’s name from the Industrial National Bank. It couldn’t have been his regular account because the balance was only a bit over four hundred dollars. Rudy had made a few relatively modest withdrawals on the account in July and only one deposit—on July 19, for the sum of three thousand dollars.

O
N TUESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER
18, Harvey picked up his phone and started dialing. Through his living room window, he glanced at the Industrial National Bank building downtown in sunlight so hard and bright it looked as if it would chip. It was a stout art deco building rising in ever-smaller rectangles that were quilted with windows. On the top was a huge yellow beacon framed by a quartet of stone eagles standing guard over the city. In 1928, it had been considered the greatest thing before sliced bread, but now its elegance was oppressive. With its Stalinist sobriety, the building could have been something in downtown Moscow.

Somewhere in the bank someone was about to answer his phone call. When a woman did, Harvey asked for Central Records and devoutly hoped that whoever picked up the phone next was not a fan of the Providence Jewels or of baseball in general. If a male voice answered, he would play it safe and hang up.

“Records,” a young female voice said. “Miss Galizio.”

Harvey took a breath. “I wonder if you could help me. I’ve managed to lose a few of my monthly statements for my checking account at the bank and my accountant is hounding me for them. Any chance you could have the computer spit them out again? Would that be a lot of trouble?”

“No, just a modest amount,” she said sweetly. “Why don’t you give me your name and account number?”

“The name is Furth. Rudolph Furth. F-u-r-t-h.”

“Yes, Mr. Furth,” she said without hesitation. “And your account number?”

Harvey read it to her from Rudy’s July statement.

“One second, please.” There was silence for ten. “Here we go. Oh, I see you only opened your account with us in June. Would you like all the statements?”

“Yes, that would be fine.”

“Would you like them sent to this address, on South Main?”

“No,” Harvey said quickly. “I’ll come pick them up.”

“All right, then. They’ll be ready for you here tomorrow morning. How’s that?”

“That’s great. Thank you.”

“And thank you, sir.”

Harvey strolled down Planet Street to South Main and had cappuccino and two croissants at a new place with pyramids of Menucci pasta boxes and hanging prosciuttos in the window. As he sipped, he peered across the street at Rudy’s town house. It didn’t look as if it had yet been rented. In front of the town house next to it, a woman in furry slippers was trimming the hedge in her minuscule front yard. Rudy wouldn’t have known her very well; she was not his type. But then, Harvey never would have guessed that Frances was his type, either. He was pursuing the murderer of a man he seemed to know less and less about. Rudy had made a mistake, and he had paid for it, and it was none of Harvey’s business. What did he owe Rudy? What was he trying to prove, and who was watching him prove it? Now that he had decided Rudy was guilty, he should simply look the other way and forget it. But Harvey felt his purpose sharpened; he was like a spurned lover who was now willing to risk everything to find out exactly how he’d been wronged. He brushed the last flakes of croissant from his mouth, paid up, and went home.

Once again, Bobby Wagner didn’t have it that night. By the fifth inning, he was taking an early shower. By the sixth, with Detroit ahead 7-2, so were the fans. The clouds that had been pulling into position over the park during the game finally broke and shed a warm autumn rain. The grounds crew swarmed onto the field in their green and black windbreakers to drag the tarpaulin over the infield. The box seat customers joined the drier fans under the grandstand roof to watch Mel Allen narrate last week’s baseball highlights on the screen of the electronic scoreboard. The rain outlasted Mel Allen, and Rankle Park’s organist burst into a show tune medley. When the umps called the game after a seventy-minute delay, the Jewels were in the clubhouse and only too glad to be able to undress. Another team might have been sorry not to have the chance to come back and win the game. Harvey showered, dressed, and drove downtown to Leo’s, a roomy bar beneath the I-95 overpass.

Over the bar at Leo’s were windows cut into the wall so you could look out and watch the cars up on the overpass. For a long time, Harvey sat there looking at them wetly slide by, their headlights fanning out and then disappearing. He was on his second ale when he lowered his eyes from the expressway and saw Mickey on the screen of the television set suspended above the tiers of liquor bottles. She was saying that Toronto had beaten Cleveland and that the Jewels were once again tied for last place. She looked smooth, elegant, and untouchable in her emerald blouse and tweed jacket. Sitting in a row of solitary drinkers at the bar, Harvey felt as if he couldn’t possibly know the woman.

“Best looking cunt on television,” the man on the stool next to him said. He was in his thirties, heavy-set, with the doughy face of a former college football lineman. Three empty Narragansett bottles were lined up in front of him, and he was drinking from a fourth. Mickey gazed down at them as she editorialized about Brown University’s chances in the approaching Ivy League football season. “I’ll bet you anything she loves to ball,” he said.

Harvey tapped his glass lightly against the mahogany bar.

“Yes, sir, I’d like to have those legs wrapped around my neck one of these nights,” the man said. “Wouldn’t you, pal? Hey, pal, I’m talking to you.”

“How’d you like to have your own legs wrapped around your neck?” Harvey said.

“What’s that, pal?” He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt with a down vest over it. “What’s that?”

“Just have a little respect for the woman,” Harvey said, not meeting the man’s eyes. “I’m sure if she likes to ball, you’re the last person she’d want to do it with.”