Blue Screen (3 page)

E
RIN LIVED
with Buddy Bollen at SeaChase, and while she was there she was protected by Buddy’s security people. When she left I went with her, and some of her staff joined us. It took a considerable staff to help her be Erin Flint. She had a personal assistant, a personal trainer, a personal nutritionist, a chef, a publicist, a hairdresser, a makeup artist, a nurse/EMT…and me. Everyone but me occupied a wing of SeaChase, next to the gym. Every day she went to Taft University and worked in the indoor cage with a hitting instructor Buddy had requisitioned from the Connecticut Nutmegs.

Today, like most days, I sat in the stands near an indoor batting cage and watched Erin work with the hitting instructor. Erin’s personal assistant, Misty Tyler, was on one side of me. And her personal trainer, a woman named Robbie, sat on the other side of me. A kid who had pitched for Taft the previous season was pitching to her, and a lean, bald guy with big hands was standing outside the wire batting cage, watching. His name was Roy Linden.

“Don’t pull off the inside pitch,” he said.

Erin wore a tight-fitting black tank top and white short shorts and some sort of spiked baseball shoes. She had on gloves and a blue bandana folded and tied around her head as a sweatband.

“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” Erin said. “Tell him not to throw it inside, Roy.”

“Remember what I told you about clearing your hips,” Roy said.

“So how do I do that without bailing out?”

“Don’t clear with your feet,” he said. “Look.”

He stood outside the batting cage with a bat and showed her.

“If you can’t turn on it without bailing,” Roy said, “don’t swing at it.”

“You want me to strike out?”

“If you’re doing it right,” he said, “a ball you have to pull off of will either be a ball, or a pitch you can’t hit anyway.”

“Well, tell him to throw me something I can hit,” she said.

“Buzz,” Roy said to the college kid. “On the plate but keep coming inside.”

When the next pitch came, Erin took a big step and hit the ball very hard into the netting just to my left.

“There,” Erin said. “See?”

“’Bout forty feet foul,” Roy said.

Erin was gazing respectfully at the way the netting still trembled from the force of her hit. Roy looked out at the kid pitching and pointed to the outside of the plate. The kid nodded. He threw the ball again and Erin took another big step and another big swing and missed.

“That was outside,” she said to Roy.

He nodded.

“Waist-high,” he said.

“You told him to throw inside.”

“If you weren’t pulling off, you could have hit that thing out,” he said.

“You said it was going to be inside.”

Roy smiled faintly.

“Buzz,” he said to the kid pitching. “Groove one for her.”

The kid pitched and Erin hit the ball so hard I could hear it sort of hiss as it rocketed over the pitcher’s head and slammed into the netting.

“Nice,” Roy said. “Good one to end on. Call it a day, Erin.”

He looked at we three women in the stands.

“Ladies,” he said.

Then he turned and walked away down the length of the big indoor cage and pushed through the netting and disappeared toward the men’s locker room.

I walked with Erin and Misty and Robbie to the women’s locker room. There was a private section for the coaches, which was made available to Erin so she wouldn’t have to disrobe in front of mortals. Robbie and Misty sat with me on an empty bench in front of some gray metal lockers while Erin showered. I am in pretty good shape, and I’m sort of proud of my body, but Erin, naked, made me feel like a toad. She was so smooth and muscular and proportional, so graceful and centered and entirely gorgeous, and so proud of herself. No move was uncalculated, no position an accident. I checked her boobs immediately. No signs of alteration.

“Looking at her makes you feel like kind of a turd,” Robbie said. “Doesn’t it.”

“A short one,” I said.

Misty nodded sadly. Both of them were attractive in the same sort of routine way I maybe was. Not fat, not skinny, even features, in pretty good shape. Dressed okay. Misty even looked a little like Erin; she was nearly as tall and had the same coloration. But there was enough missing of whatever Erin had so that Misty remained routinely attractive and Erin was, well, Erin.

“She works very hard,” Misty said. “She works out every day with Robbie. But the truth is, I think she’d look that way even if she didn’t.”

Robbie nodded.

“I mean, she looked like that as soon as she passed puberty,” Misty said.

“Really?” I said.

“Yes,” Misty said. “She looked like that before she ever met a physical trainer. Right, Robbie?”

“She was gangbusters when I met her,” Robbie said.

“Which was?” I said.

“On her first picture,
Woman Warrior,
” Robbie said. “They hired me to buff her up. Though God knows she didn’t need much help.”

“How long have you been with her?” I said to Misty.

“Long time,” Misty said.

“Before
Woman Warrior
?”

Misty nodded.

“Before she was Erin Flint,” Misty said.

“That’s not her real name?” I said.

Misty shook her head. “No. I mean that’s her name,” she said. “I just knew her before she was famous. You know,
Erin Flint.
”

“And she always looked like this?” I said.

Misty grinned.

“From the time she got boobs,” Misty said.

When she was through showering, Erin strolled about naked so we could admire her. Then she put on her bra and slipped her sweater over her head so she wouldn’t get makeup on her clothes or muss her hair. I did the same thing. Except I usually got dressed all the way. She stood in front of the mirror over the two sinks, combing her hair and applying makeup. She was still naked from the waist down.

“That bastard,” Erin said as she bent over the sink to apply a bit of makeup to her already perfect face. “He played with the Chicago Cubs for eight years and hit .268, and he’s telling me how to hit.”

“That’s not good?” I said.

“Christ, no. You don’t follow baseball?”

“Not too much,” I said.

She shook her head carefully so that her hair moved just right.

“And Buddy hired you,” she said.

“It defies explanation,” I said. “Doesn’t it.”

“Where’s your dog?” Erin said.

She was still bent archly over the sink like a 1940s pinup girl.

“She’s with Richie,” I said.

“Richie who?”

“My ex-husband,” I said. “He gets her three days a week.”

“You share custody of the fucking dog?” Erin said.

“Rosie loves Richie.”

“Well, it’s more than I would do.”

“You’ve been married?” I said.

“Yes,” Erin said.

“Kids?”

“Oh, God no,” she said.

“How about you and Buddy?” I said.

“Buddy?”

“Yes, do you ever think about marriage?”

“And further contribute to the patriarchy that oppresses us? The hell with that.”

“But you are with him,” I said. “You’re intimate. Doesn’t that contribute to the patriarchy?”

“You use what you’ve got, honey,” Erin said.

She turned from her grooming and stood straight up in front of us, half naked, with her hands spread slightly.

“And I’ve got this,” she said.

“You use what you’ve got for what?” I said.

“Buddy’s my ticket to ride, honey. And I’m going to ride for all I’m worth.”

I smiled.

“And vice versa,” I said.

“He gets what he wants; I get what I want,” Erin said. “Where’s the harm.”

I smiled as if I agreed.

“Do you really plan to be a big-league baseball player?” I said.

“Absolutely,” Erin said.

She began to dress her bottom half.

“You think you can make it?” I said.

“Absolutely.”

“Have you ever played baseball?”

“Softball. I was a great softball player.”

“But that’s a little different, isn’t it?”

“I don’t appreciate negativity,” she said. “You better learn that quick if you want to stay around.”

“Just trying to learn,” I said.

Erin effortlessly insinuated herself into a pair of jeans that I would have thought undonnable.

“I can do anything a man can do, and do it better,” she said.

It sounded like something she’d said before. I smiled again in full accord. She put on some lizard-skin cowboy boots and stood and made sure that the jeans were neatly inside the boots. She checked herself in the mirror, liked what she saw, and started for the locker-room door. I went with her. Robbie got ahead to open the door. Misty collected Erin’s workout clothes and makeup, put them in a gym bag, and followed. As we walked through the gym and out across the Taft campus, there was no one we encountered, male or female, student or faculty, who didn’t stare at Erin Flint.

T
HAT
’
S BULLSHIT
,” Spike said.

Rosie and I were having Sunday brunch with Spike in his restaurant near the rejuvenated waterfront, in the sunny aftermath of the Big Dig.

“You don’t think a woman can do anything a man can do?”

“Of course not,” Spike said.

“Is that because you are a bigoted, woman-hating homosexual?” I said.

“Yes,” Spike said, “but my bigotry is selective. I like you, for instance.”

“Well, of course you do,” I said. “But you don’t think I’m your equal physically?”

“If we had a fistfight,” Spike said, “I’d win.”

“That’s true of most people,” I said. “Male or female.”

“True,” Spike said.

Spike was a bear in all senses. He was bearded, and massively shapeless, and strong and ferocious and very loving when he cared to be.

“The equality thing gets a little tricky,” I said. “We’re not all equally smart, or equally gifted, or equally attractive, or…”

I spread my hands.

“I try not to think about it,” Spike said.

He took a breadstick from the basket in the middle of the table and gave it to Rosie.

“She’s not supposed to eat between meals,” I said.

“Good thing,” Spike said. “Don’t want her getting fat.”

The breadstick was long and crunchy, and Rosie treated it like a bone. She ate it very effectively and carefully licked up the crumbs from the tabletop when she was done.

“It’s a little hard to see exactly how any of us is in fact equal,” I said.

“Inequality is easier to spot,” Spike said.

He gestured for the waitress to pour us more coffee. I knew he was bored with the subject. Spike didn’t spend much time in the sphere of abstraction.

“Whatever it is,” I said, “it’s probably best to base it on individual performance.”

“Probably is,” Spike said.

“Buddy is using her,” I said.

Two young men in expensive leisure wear came in and went to the bar. We both watched them. Then we looked at each other and grinned.

“And Erin’s using Buddy,” Spike said. “Synergy.”

“I wonder if he thinks she really can be a big-league player,” I said.

“If she can play, so much the better. Either way, he juices his investment in her movie and the ball club.”

“I wonder if she really thinks she can play.”

Spike grinned.

“If she can play, so much the better,” Spike said. “Either way, she juices her investment in her career.”

“Do you think there will be a lot of opposition to her being on the team?”

“Like when Jackie Robinson broke in?” Spike said.

I nodded. Spike thought about it and shook his head.

“People will know,” he said.

“Know what?”

“Know it’s a stunt,” he said. “They’re used to stuff like that.”

“What if she were actually good enough?” I said.

Spike gave Rosie another breadstick.

“That would be trouble,” he said.

I
HAD BEEN
out for a run late in the slow Sunday and was still in my sweats, feeding Rosie, when the phone rang. I put Rosie’s food down and answered the phone.

Buddy Bollen’s voice said, “Get out here now. Right now.”

Then he hung up. I stood holding the phone for a time, watching Rosie eat her supper. I looked across the living room at myself in the hall mirror. Not good enough. There were only a few people in the world—Spike, my ex-husband, my father—for whom
right now
meant going out looking like an unmade bed. For Buddy Bollen,
right now
would have to mean after I’d showered and changed.

When I looked like I ought to, I kissed Rosie on the nose, and turned on the TV for her, and left her on the bed. I got in my car and drove north through the Ted Williams Tunnel and was in Paradise about an hour after Buddy had called. There was a Paradise police car parked at the Stiles Island end of the causeway, and three more, plus a fire department rescue truck, parked helter-skelter on the oyster-shell tarmac in the big, circular driveway in front of SeaChase. A uniformed Paradise cop stood next to one of the blue-blazer security guys at the front door. He stopped me.

“She’s okay,” the security guy said. “Buddy called her. He wants her here. I’ll take her.”

The Paradise cop nodded me in. I followed the security guy down the big front hall. We turned left under the stairs and walked down a long glassed-in atrium passage to the guest complex next to the gym where Erin’s entourage was housed. The gym was full of activity. Erin was there, and Buddy, and Randy the black security guy, and most of Erin’s entourage, and several Paradise cops, including the chief, who was wearing a baseball jacket and jeans. A guy in a suit with a medical bag knelt beside someone lying on the floor. Erin rushed over to me when she saw me.

“Sunny,” she said. “They’ve killed Misty.”

The police chief glanced over.

He said, “Who would they be, Miss Flint?”

“How the fuck do I know,” she said. “It’s just a figure of speech.”

The chief walked over. He reminded me of Richie. Same strong, medium size, same exact integrated no-wasted-motion kinesis. Same capable-looking hands. Same interiority.

“And you are?” he said to me.

“Sunny Randall. I’m a private detective.”

The chief smiled.

“I’m Jesse Stone,” he said.

“How’d she die?” I said.

“Doc thinks someone broke her neck,” Jesse said.

“Medical examiner?” I said.

“We’re not big enough to have an ME,” the chief said. “Doc’s a pediatrician in town, but he, like, minored in forensics and helps us out until we can get the county ME out here.”

Erin stood, listening.

“I want you on this case,” she said.

She raised her voice.

“Buddy, I want Sunny on this fucking case.”

“Absolutely,” Buddy said. “Absolutely, babe.”

I looked at the chief. He nodded in a friendly way.

“Take a look?” he said.

“Thanks.”

“You’re on this,” Erin said. “I’m not letting a bunch of local yahoos stomp all over it. I want a woman on this.”

I noticed that one of the local yahoos was a great-looking young woman in a uniform who managed to look well-dressed even with her gun belt on. The chief saw me look.

“That’s Molly Crane,” he said. “And the large uniform with the rosy cheeks is Suitcase Simpson.”

“Suitcase Simpson?” I said. “Wasn’t there some kind of ballplayer?”

“Very good,” the chief said.

“My father is a fan,” I said. “I tried to like it.”

“My guy’s name is Luther,” the chief said. “He’s grateful for the nickname.”

The doctor had finished with Misty and was now standing and talking with Molly Crane. We stood and looked down at Misty. She was wearing an iridescent blue-and-yellow leotard outfit and seemed fine except that her head was turned oddly. I hadn’t seen all that many bodies. But the ones I’d seen always reminded me that dead didn’t look like asleep. It looked like dead.

“You don’t think it was an accident?” I said. “Working out, fell, broke her neck?”

The chief took a flashlight from his belt and shone it on Misty’s face. I wondered if this was a test. I squatted down beside the body and looked closely at her face. There was a hint of bruising on the cheeks, both sides.

“Someone took her head,” Jesse said, “both hands, and snapped her neck.”

“Person would have to know how to do that,” I said.

“Yes,” the chief said.

He called to the doctor talking with Molly Crane.

“Time of death, Doc?”

“Last few hours,” the doctor said. “ME’s autopsy will pin it down for you.”

The chief nodded.

“Do you have a theory of the crime?” I said.

“We don’t,” he said. “Miss Flint contends that ‘they’ were trying to kill her and made a mistake.”

“Miss Flint tends to experience everything as being about her,” I said. “May I come by tomorrow morning and talk with you?”

“I’ll make coffee,” the chief said.

“Okay,” I said. “Now I’ll see what I can learn from my client.”

“That would be good,” the chief said.