Big Leagues (8 page)

The eager group sized her up and down. Cat
folded her arms across her chest again.

“All right, everyone,” Erich said. “We shall
let you return to your work. Please make Catriona feel welcome and
give her any assistance she needs in this transition.”

He pointed to the open area of desks in the
center of the room. “Now, Catriona, most offices would call this
area the bullpen. We do not, however.”

She noticed that his lips had curved slightly
upward. “I am afraid things would be a bit confusing, then. I would
ask, ‘Where is Catriona?’ They would answer, ‘She is in the
bullpen, sir.’ Then I’d go down to the field, look around, ask the
pitchers, but no Catriona. You see?”

Cat returned his sneaky smile. “Very confusing.
Probably best to only have one bullpen.”

“So maybe we should call this the pigpen,
ja
?”

A snort escaped from Cat, followed by a genuine
laugh that soothed her knotted nerves. Erich beamed from ear to
ear. Over at the copier, Dustin Carlyle ripped out his original and
slammed the lid down. He put his hand on his hip and glowered in
their direction as the two exited the room. Cat gave him a quick
goodbye wave as she and Erich chuckled out the door.

* * *

The field clock’s hands had neared noon by the
time Erich’s tour concluded. They had breezed through every
department, and she had encountered job titles she hadn’t known
existed.

What the hell is a Special Assistant to the
National Crosschecker?

Cat couldn’t get over the respect Erich’s
presence commanded. They simply stepped into a room and awe poured
in their direction. Every time he introduced her, an employee would
slam his laptop, hang up her phone or otherwise drop whatever work
was being done to accommodate their visit. They hadn’t even left
the fourth floor when Cat began contemplating the lengths the staff
would go to in order to impress their boss.

I bet if he told them to speak like pirates for
the rest of the day, they would shout “aye, aye, matey,” slap on an
eye patch and go rent a parrot.

After the fourth floor tour, they headed
upstairs to meet the head honchos—the scouts and advisors—some of
whom were former players whose presence in any other venue would
have had Cat begging for an autograph. Erich walked her to his
office suite, which was tiny in comparison to the small mansion
where her interview had been held at Hohenschwangau
Palace.

“I have an open door policy here, unless, of
course, the door is closed.”

He chuckled, but judging from the three
deadbolts that secured the thick wooden doors, there was no humor
in his statement. The twosome took Erich’s private elevator down to
the third floor, where she was introduced to the team’s brain
trust—the accounting, IP and legal departments. She had never
thought the business of baseball could be dull until she stepped
off the elevator. With all the talk of computer equipment and
contracts, Cat had a tough time feigning interest.

“So you monitor the disposable utensils
inventory? For the entire park? That must be …
fascinating.”

Fascinating that you haven’t impaled yourself
on a plastic fork yet.

The second floor, Event Operations, offered a
bit more excitement. Cat tried to peek at their upcoming calendar.
Maybe a Hollywood celebrity was scheduled to throw out the first
pitch in one of the upcoming games.

Ryan? Omar? What’s a girl gotta do to see the
infamous baseball fan duo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on her
field?

“Come along, Catriona. We shall let these fine
employees return to their hard work.”

The first floor housed the ticketing department
and security office, with an exit out to the ballpark concourse.
Ticket sales were a lot different in Vegas compared to Porterville.
Tamela and three assistants managed every aspect of ticketing for
the Bulldogs, and even with those duties, they had a lot of down
time.

Hence the birth of the Porterville Finger
Football League, where folded paper triangles were flicked back and
forth for hours. Tams currently held the record for longest field
goal when her tiny triangle made it all the way across the room to
Cat's desk … and into her coffee mug.

As soon as Cat and Erich stepped into the
Chips’ ticketing office, their visit was trumped by ringing phones
and the chatter of headset-wearing operators. The other half of the
room stayed glued to their computers, monitoring online sales. The
back of the office served as paper cut central, where unlucky
interns processed the paper tickets for snail mail.

Cat’s ears finally stopped buzzing when Erich
shut the door behind them and they moved across the hall. The
security department was nearly the size of a metropolitan police
substation. Cat scanned the empty room. “Sure is quiet in
here.”

“Ah, yes. Well, the security staff schedule
coincides with game times. They are not due to arrive for another
oh, two hours or so.”

“Hey, Boss.”

Cat turned around to see a hulking guard come
out from a back hallway of the lobby.

“Otis, hello. I would like to introduce you to
Catriona McDaniel, our newest employee. Catriona, this is Otis
Snow, head of security.”

The sight of the burly man took Cat aback. He
towered over her by nearly a foot, and his shoulders were as wide
as a Louisville Slugger. A bright smile peered out from his
devilish stubble, making him almost attractive, if not for his
intimidating presence. Cat extended her hand. The guard wiped his
fingers on his uniform pants and thrust his clammy palm into hers,
his large hand eclipsing hers with a vigorous shake.

“Nice to meet ya. The reporter,
right?”

“That’s me.”

“I was just showing Catriona around the
stadium,” Erich said.

“Well, welcome to the security
department.”

“So what exactly do you do here, Mr.
Snow?”

“Oh, you know, bust the scalpers and control
the drunks. Break up a brawl or two. Every now and then we get a
streaker that goes tearing across the field butt ass
nak—”

“Danke
, Otis. I think that will be all.”
Erich said.

Otis gave her a polite nod, which Cat returned
with an amused smile. As the hulking guard departed, Erich smiled.
“I found Otis through an outreach program.”

“Outreach? Was he homeless or something?” She
felt bad thinking it, but Otis looked like the type that would
choose to live under a bridge and eat billy goats.

“Prison. The outreach program helps offenders
re-enter the workforce and become productive members of society. I
believe that everyone deserves a second chance. Don’t
you?”

Cat was softened by his genuine kindness and in
turn offered him an equally authentic smile. “I really
do.”

Erich led her out the department’s glass
doors.

“Are you too famished for one last
stop?”

It had been nearly three hours of meeting the
Chips’ employees and Cat still had not visited the one area of the
stadium—and the one set of employees—she wanted to see most. Lunch
could wait.

“Not at all.”

Erich smiled and punched his key code into a
door marked “Chips Clubhouse: Employees Only.”

She oohed at the thirty thousand square feet of
clubhouse space and awed at the state-of-the-art weight room. By
the time they walked through the sauna, the batting cages, the
therapy room, the players’ lounge and all the other places most
Chips’ fans would auction their firstborn children to see, Cat was
out of oohs and could spare no more awes. The facilities left her
speechless. That is, until she and Erich entered the players’
dressing area.

“Whoa.”

A eucalyptus air freshener floated through the
room, but Cat didn’t need the menthol to draw her attention between
the mirrored walls. In the center of the waxed hardwood floor was
an inlayed medallion almost as large as the field tarp. Carved in
the exotic wood was the Chips’ emblem, complete with the signature
poker chip dotting the “i.” Leather sofas were arranged artfully
throughout the spacious room. Mahogany benches bordered the
matching lockers and fifty flat-panel televisions lined the top of
the walls. Though no one was in the clubhouse, several of the
televisions were blaring ESPN. The room confirmed the one universal
theme she’d noticed throughout her tour of Hohenschwangau
Stadium.

Want a lot, waste a lot.

Energy conservation was obviously not a top
priority of the Las Vegas Chips.

“I’d hate to see your power bills every month,”
she blurted, and instantly bit her lip, wishing she’d kept the
thought to herself.

Erich threw up his hands and shrugged. “Well,
when you have the Hoover Dam at your disposal, you might as well
put it to use.”

Cat wondered if the endangered fish in the
Colorado River agreed. She decided this was not the time to take
moral umbrage and instead gave her new employer a fleeting,
thin-lipped smile.

The expression of a sellout.

Cat shook off her shame and tore her eyes away
from the televisions. Her stare fell upon the new uniform hanging
in front of each player’s locker. “New” only in the sense that they
now presented with a small patch on the sleeve. The patch was in
the shape of an ink pen and adorned the initials “B.D.” Erich
followed her gaze.

“To commemorate Brad Derhoff, of
course.”

She nodded. Such a gesture was a standard
practice in the league. When a member of the organization passed,
the team uniforms took a trip to the tailors and came back
decorated with a memory of the deceased for the rest of the
season.

She followed Erich as he led them out of the
large clubhouse, down the hallway and into an open
office.

“This,” he said with gusto, “is the finest
doctor our side of the Rio Grande. Catriona McDaniel, meet Dr.
Kevin Goodall.”

She shook the extended hand of the short,
stocky physician. He was dressed not in a white coat and
stethoscope like her own doctor but in Dockers and a solid oxford,
which fit the unwritten dress code of the front office. His space
had the clean, medicinal smell one would expect in a hospital, but
not from an office that shared its walls with a men’s locker room.
She looked around the room and pointed at the wall.

“Wow. Harvard Medical. That’s
impressive.”

He turned to the diploma and nodded. “Oh yes.
Many, many moons ago. My mother is oh-so proud. What about you?
Don’t tell me we’ve got another Yale brat on our hands?” His eyes
danced.

Cat looked down at the scuff on her Mary Janes.
“Oh no. State school all the way. I’m afraid I’ve given my mother
nothing to be proud of.”

Of course, I can say the same about
her.

Cat’s mom had realized three years too late she
wasn’t cut out for motherhood so she left her toddler in the arms
of an irresponsible father, headed to New York to become an actress
and never looked back. Cat had yet to see her mother on daytime or
primetime TV but figured Tina McDaniel was probably as good an
actress as she was a parent. Maybe she’d gone into the adult film
industry. Anyway, as far as the family was concerned, she was
dead.

“Oh, miss, somehow I doubt that.”

Erich stuck his hands in his pockets. “Contrary
to the rumor mill, Catriona, the remarkable well-being of our
roster is actually due to the talents of Dr. Goodall.”

Dr. Goodall winked at her. “I can’t take all
the credit. It’s easy to keep these bodies up and running when you
have every piece of therapeutic equipment manufactured from here to
the Rhine-Ruhr.”

Cat pointed behind her, gesturing toward the
hallway. “So I noticed. I dig that underwater treadmill thingy.
Don’t suppose we’ve got one of those on the fourth floor,
too?”

The men chuckled. Dr. Goodall took his glasses
off the top of his bald head and placed them back on his nose.
“Well, they don’t pay me to laugh. I have a sore hamstring on an
outfielder to attend to. Nice meeting you, Ms., uh—”

“McDaniel. Cat. You can call me
Cat.”

“Cat. That’s easy to remember; I’m allergic to
them.”

She patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry,
Doctor, I’m sure you’ll find me as irritating as a real cat when
I’m harassing you endlessly about MRI results and estimated stints
on the DL.”

Erich chimed in. “Disabled List? We don’t have
such a thing here at Hohenschwangau.”

She flapped her hand for a quick goodbye to the
doctor before Erich escorted her back to the elevator. His cell
phone chirped from his suit pocket.

“Excuse me, Catriona. Yes? She is? Very well. I
will be right up.” He frowned as he returned the phone to his
jacket. “Catriona, I am afraid there is an urgent matter upstairs I
must attend to immediately. I shall let you familiarize yourself
with the press box before this afternoon’s game. How does that
sound?”

Cat’s eyes lit up and she swallowed the squeal
fighting its way out of her throat. “Awes-uh, how do you say …
wundervoll
?”