Ghosts of Bergen County (14 page)

Ferko had played baseball as a kid in Edgefield, some intramural softball in college. Now, prostrate in his hurdle stretch, he delayed the inevitable—seeing what was left of his candy arm. His teammates had started their warm-ups close enough to each other, but then had moved back some distance. Then they'd moved back again, and now the softballs were zipping across great expanses, glove to glove, with machinelike accuracy and efficiency. Prauer was throwing with Pete Johnston, who, according to Cosler, had played beyond high school and college—professionally, up to AA in the Phillies' farm system. They were hucking it pretty good. And Cosler, paired up with Alan Friedman, a partner at Forten Banneker, Prauer's house firm. Then there were the interns—four on the field now—Prauer hired each summer based, it seemed, on the athleticism demonstrated on their resumes.

Ferko's legs were stretched. His throwing arm—not so much. It was too late now, given the intimidating distances his teammates were throwing. Plus, he was the ninth man, with no one to pair up with.

He stood, relieved to find a familiar face on the opposing team, firing bullets from shortstop to first base. Long hair. Tan face and arms. Greg Fletcher. Ferko jogged out to say hello.

“
Gaylor
d
?” Greg fired the ball to the first baseman.

“You still got it,” Ferko said, meaning Greg's arm.

Greg caught the return throw and, in one smooth motion, flipped the ball with his glove to Ferko, who caught it in his bare hands. (He'd left his glove—Cosler's backup glove, actually—on the grass flattened by the hurdle stretches.) Now Ferko wrapped his fingers around a softball, weighing its heft, noting its size, for the first time in, perhaps, fifteen years.

Greg pointed at first base, an invitation for Ferko to show Greg what he had. It wasn't a long throw, as softball throws go, but Ferko wasn't going to try it now. The Large Caps had brought it in, had collected around the bench beyond the third-base line. They were watching Ferko with Greg Fletcher—Cosler and Prauer and Lisa Becker, too, who'd shown up in her jogging clothes, carrying a water bottle, which she now dragged across her forehead before twisting the cap and tipping the contents into her mouth. Ferko flipped the ball to Greg, who caught it in his throwing hand and, in one smooth motion, launched it back to first.

“I didn't peg you for fast-pitch,” Greg said, and it took Ferko a moment to register what he meant. Sure enough, the pitcher for Greg's team had taken the mound for warm-ups and was windmilling darts from the rubber over the plate, where the catcher squatted in full gear. Ferko had known on some deeper level what a game with the Large Caps would entail. Now it became apparent. This wasn't intramural softball, where the pitches were lobbed like horseshoes, or even fourth-grade baseball in the Bergen County rec league, where half the kids played because their fathers wanted them to. This wasn't for fun. The speed of the pitches would dictate the speed the runners ran the bases and the speed of the game. The catcher would back up first base, the center fielder second base, the left fielder third base. Et cetera. Runners would take leads and steal bases. There were cutoff men to hit, situational defenses. He'd suspected, of course, that his recruitment by Cosler had been for derision. Now he was sure of it. He was the ninth man. He'd been picked last. It was Edgefield Elementary all over again. But he'd learned how to survive, to blend in, to limit his mistakes to those that wouldn't cost Prauer the game. At least, Ferko hoped that was the case. Now the Caps donned batting helmets, swung bats. So he jogged back to the bench, where Prauer was waiting.

“Who's that?” he asked.

“Greg Fletcher. EastWest Partners. We met him at the Grove meeting.”

“Ahhh, Grove,” Prauer said wistfully, though it was unclear whether he was thinking about poor dead Roy or the retail assets Prauer had once hoped to acquire. It was long ago, the meeting with Grove. Prauer had moved on, while the rest of New York, it seemed, had not. It made no sense, but the news of Grove's death had produced a pall and an interminable heat wave that spread up the coast from the Deep South, where Grove's stores languished. And, as the heat crept in, a somnolent indecisiveness descended. Deals got stalled. The malaise was bigger than Grove's absence, bigger than the July heat, bigger than the snorting of dope with Jen Yoder in various downtown hovels, which was occurring now at regular intervals, if not, yet, with increased frequency. Daimler had announced it was selling Chrysler to private equity. The deal had been struck. Financing was committed. But now there were rumors that the lenders wouldn't lend, that the parties couldn't close, that Chrysler as a stand-alone was unfinanceable at any price. There were rungs on the ladder. No one climbed now. Everyone held fast and hoped not to fall. Ferko had been running a long time. Now there was no place to run to, except around a softball diamond. Prauer pointed at Greg. “Guy's got a hell of an arm.”

“You're batting last,” Cosler said.

“Cool,” Ferko said, hoping to sound like a good sport, a team player, someone who'd contribute as best he could.

“Batter up!” the umpire called.

Alan Friedman stood five foot seven and was built like a bowling ball. He took two high pitches before lining a single over the second baseman's head. Ferko stood with Lisa, between the bench and the backstop, and clapped. She sat in the dry grass and Ferko sat next to her.

“Shouldn't you be with the team?” she asked.

“I'm batting ninth.”

“So I hear!”

One of the interns, a guy from Dartmouth, hit a hard-liner up the middle, above and to the left of Greg, who jumped, higher than seemed humanly possible, and snared it, then threw to first, beating Alan Friedman back to the base for a double play.

“Whoa!” Lisa said. Her presence as spectator heightened Ferko's suspicion that his role here was jester.

“Greg was all-state in three sports.”

“They have that in junior high?”

“High school. I Googled him.” He stood and dusted off his jeans.

“You got this, Ferko.”

He grimaced.

“The winning streak means more to Prauer than his money,” she said. “George isn't going to risk something like that.”

If she'd meant to reassure Ferko, she'd failed. The third batter, Pete Johnston, the former minor leaguer, hit a long ball to left-center, which the center fielder tracked down for out three.

“You got this,” she repeated, and Ferko gave her a thumbs-up, proving, once again, who was a good sport. He went to find his glove—Cosler's backup glove—and his defensive position.

Right field.

Alan Friedman, the Caps' pitcher, was still in his twenties. Here was the reason he'd made partner at his firm: he could windmill the ball over the plate in the blink of an eye. Cosler said that Friedman had been clocked at eighty miles an hour, and now, watching him pitch, Ferko had no reason to doubt Cosler's claim. Cosler played third and Prauer played first. Ferko, in right, stood behind Prauer, who waved Ferko toward the gap, and Ferko obliged a few steps, before Prauer waved him over more. The first two batters struck out on six pitches. Prauer called time, and jogged out to right and physically escorted Ferko to the spot where he should stand. Then the third batter chopped an easy hopper to Friedman, who tossed to Prauer. One, two, three, and Ferko never actually had to move.

It was still zero-zero a half inning later, when Greg Fletcher led off the bottom of the second. He adjusted the strap on each batting glove, rested the bat on his shoulder, and surveyed the field. Then he stepped to the plate, took the bat off his shoulder, and waggled it high in the air. Alan windmilled a high hard one, outside—what would have been ball one—that Greg went after anyway. He stepped across the plate and tomahawked the pitch, deliberately, the way one directs a tennis ball with a racket, over Prauer's glove and in front of Ferko. Then Greg ran, a hard sprint that seemed unnecessary until he reached first base, ignored the coach, and went to second. The Caps yelled to Ferko to throw the ball, and he did, into the outfield grass, where it bounced and then rolled into the infield, while Greg rounded second and made it to third with a stand-up triple. He clapped his hands and yelled across the diamond to his team on the first-base line. “Right field's got no arm!”

They moved Ferko off the line, toward the gap, where Prauer had placed him in the first inning. But everyone on Greg's team was hitting to Ferko now. Some struck out. Some hit it to the intern from the University of Virginia, who played second base. But some hit it through the infield or over the infield to Ferko and took advantage with an extra base or two. There was nothing he could do—no matter how well he prepared himself mentally with each pitch—to field the ball cleanly and get it into the infield. One speedster made it all the way home when he directed a soft-liner that bounced through Ferko's legs. They moved Ferko back toward the foul line, and slid Pete Johnston from center into the right-center gap.

By the sixth inning the Large Caps were losing eight to six, the win streak in jeopardy, when Ferko's final turn at bat came with two outs and a runner on second. Through all the defensive miscues he still hadn't made contact—oh-for-three, all strikeouts. He hadn't spoken with Lisa since the first inning, but between innings they'd made eye contact: he'd grimaced at her and she'd grimaced back. Prauer was the only one who'd actually talked to Ferko. In the early innings he'd barked things that, in a certain light, could have been construed as encouraging, like, “Let's get it done.” But by the middle innings Prauer's entreaties hadn't been positive in any light: “Where's your head at?” By the later innings, he'd slapped his mitt against his thigh and muttered something Ferko didn't wish to decipher.

Now Ferko stood at the end of the bench with Prauer and Cosler (who maybe felt responsible for recruiting Ferko and putting the win streak at risk), while Prauer explained that Ferko wasn't, in fact, going to bat, that he needed to leave the game, that an emergency had come up, that his wife wasn't well. Ferko wondered what Prauer knew about Mary Beth and her chronic condition, before he realized that it was all a lie, a story designed to skip Ferko's sure out in favor of the top of the order and Alan Friedman, who hadn't yet made an out, who already had his helmet and batting gloves on and was making his way toward home plate.

“Take your helmet off and skedaddle. I'll see you in the office tomorrow.” Prauer stepped close. He smelled of sweat and desperation, a stew that produced, within Ferko, a wave of nausea and unease. He felt embarrassed for Prauer. But only for a moment. Because Cosler was at Prauer's elbow, the interns were on the bench with various Riverfront advisers and associates, and Lisa Becker was somewhere in the grass behind him, and Ferko realized that the embarrassment actually flowed the other way. He gave Prauer a curt nod and shed his helmet and placed it on the bench, while Prauer called time and went to the ump, who removed his mask. They talked the way managers and umpires have talked since the dawn of baseball, with gestures and shrugs, with smiles and scowls, an unknown language of fact and fiction and spin, of secret deals, perhaps, of bribes. Ferko had watched such discussions all his life, from the stands at Yankee Stadium and on TV.

Cosler had edged closer. So had the bench. Lisa, too, behind the backstop. And, despite Prauer's demand that he skedaddle, Ferko followed. They'd all seen Prauer negotiate. They'd seen him cajole and persuade. His success came partly from his belief that he was smarter than his counterpart. It didn't matter if he was or wasn't. What mattered was his belief, conveyed through a winning combination of deference and arrogance, of accolades and insults. Ultimately, attitude amounted to little without leverage, and Prauer's came from his money, his ability to pick up his ball and go home. Here the ump had the rule book, and Prauer had, what? Ferko had to find out.

Alan Friedman was taking practice cuts outside the batter's box. Prauer gestured with his hand toward the Caps' bench. “He can't stay.”

“Do you have a pinch hitter?”

Prauer half turned and Lisa sidled with him, so that she remained out of sight. Prauer placed his hands on his hips, then turned back to the ump. “No.”

“Then he hits.”

“He can't.”

“Have more faith.”

“Ha! I told you he needs to leave.”

Now Greg Fletcher was jogging in from shortstop, and his teammates followed, tentatively, with half steps. And the Caps, too, moved en masse toward home plate. They carried bats and mitts and balls. Only Ferko remained behind, near the bench.

And Prauer, desperate and near defeat in his own game of embarrassment, asked, “What if he got a call from his wife and it was an emergency? You'd make him stay and finish the game?”

“Hey,” Greg called, “you can't just
skip
him for your leadoff hitter.”

“What if—” Prauer said.

“He'd be out,” the ump said. “You'd lose.”

“We can play with eight.”

“You can.”

“Great!” Prauer said.

“But the game's over. Your ninth hitter didn't bat. He's the last out.”

“He's got to go.” Prauer pointed at Ferko, still standing beside the bench.

“The game is just him,” the ump said. “A few pitches and we're done. Batter up!”

And with that Greg Fletcher took two steps toward the Caps' bench and pointed at Ferko. “Come on, Gaylord.” Greg punched his fist into his glove. “Let's end this.”

And Ferko did. On three pitches.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She was using more, even after deciding to use less. It was Thursday, 5:00
PM
, and she sat with Ferko in her favorite booth (the second one, so she could see who came in the door, straight or high) in Café Ivy. Ferko was still buttoned down from work, though it was a hundred degrees outside. Ivy's fans spun from the painted ceiling at an impressive clip, conducting cool air from the two vents in the high duct to the bar, booths, and tables below. They'd met outside, where Jen chained her new bike (forty bucks from a med student who'd gotten a residency in, of all places, Oklahoma) to a lamppost. The bike had gears—twenty-four speeds—and she was sure it would be stolen. She'd written it off, in fact, like dropping forty bucks on the sidewalk, which she'd probably done anyway on more than one occasion.