The Spoiler (18 page)

“Señor Lofton.”

Lofton turned. Mendoza stepped out from behind a statue. Lofton thought he saw movement to the side, maybe just a shadow, a statue flickering in the candlelight.

Mendoza walked slowly, one hand held behind him. He came to within a few feet of Lofton, then slid into a pew.

“Join me,” Mendoza said. Lofton slid into the same pew, always keeping his hands in front of his body. After a while Mendoza put both hands on the pew in front of him. Lofton relaxed a little.

“I know this is a funny way to meet, but I can't take the chance for anyone to see us. It isn't safe for me on the streets.” As Mendoza talked, he slipped down onto his knees.

“Excuse me,” Mendoza said. “It's a habit in church.”

“What do you want to tell me?”

Mendoza slid closer. He gave Lofton a funny, unreal smile. “You're the one who wrote about the baseball player, the shortstop?”

“Yes,” said Lofton.

“Then you know.”

“Know what?”

“You know how people can die,” Mendoza said. Despite Mendoza's apparent seriousness, the remark seemed humorous; Mendoza, for a moment, seemed aware of the effect, and to enjoy it. “The first time I saw you, I didn't tell you everything,” Mendoza said, “or maybe you didn't understand. We're at war here, my people and the Latinos.”

Mendoza had gone through this routine during their last conversation, telling him how his gang, the Wanderers, had supposedly taken off their colors, as the mayor had asked, and gone legitimate. He said the same thing with more fervor now.

“My people, we work hard. We feed each other; we take care of our own. We don't want attention, or to be called hoodlums. But the Latinos keep up the war, hunting us out when we walk alone, or when we sit eating in our houses. They kill us one by one, like some dogs, and the police—though they talk one thing in the newspapers—they let us die. They watch and smile. That's why I'm hiding now; the Latinos are after me.… They're going to search and hunt until they kill me.”

Once again the fact that he was the object of the Latinos' search seemed to please Mendoza. “What do you want me to do?” Lofton asked.

“I want you to tell people what the Latinos are doing. Tell them in the papers. Like you told them about the dead ballplayer. I want to be safe in the streets.”

Mendoza's story didn't quite jibe with the one Lofton had gathered from Einstein's newspaper work. The Latinos had lost their leader, Angelo, and they felt the Wanderers were responsible. Now Mendoza wanted Lofton to write it up from a new angle, favoring the Wanderers.

Mendoza looked toward the crucifix; his tongue darted over his lips.

“I need more proof,” Lofton said. “I can't go on just what you say.”

“What proof do you need? A dead body?”

Mendoza's eyes glimmered in the darkness. The words sounded—almost, Lofton could not be sure—like a threat. Mendoza bowed his head, muttering as if in prayer, “I don't want to die, but if I die, it will be brave. I do it for my people.” His eyes closed, head still bowed, Mendoza seemed self-conscious, an exaggeration of some role he was trying to play. He wants me to write him up, to make him into a hero, Lofton realized, to dramatize their street war so that, when he dies, at least someone will be watching. Though in some ways the whole business was sheer melodrama, the war between the two gangs was real enough, Lofton knew.

“The fires …” Lofton said, starting to ask Mendoza, but at the mention of the word Mendoza grabbed his arm. The man was lean and tense beside him, his face shiny in the candlelight, his eyes fierce, unnatural. Then it hit Lofton, and he wondered why it had not hit him before. Drugs. Coke, maybe speed. Mendoza was cranked up, acting the way Gutierrez had been that night with Amanti, frightened one minute, boastful the next, veering back and forth. Only Mendoza was a more violent man, more dangerous. Lofton imagined he could smell the drugs, the white powder, the rush of electricity mixed with Mendoza's sweat in the steamy air of the church.

“Maybe you will help us. Or maybe, if you can't help, you'll just mind your business. That other reporter, he wasn't as smart as you.”

“No,” said Lofton.

“No?” Mendoza laughed, a little crazily, as if deciding what to do next. Finally he let go of Lofton's arm. He laughed again and eased away, farther down the pew. He said nothing more. He walked down the center aisle, turned at the last moment back toward the altar, genuflected, and disappeared into the statues.

Almost the first thing the next morning, as Lofton left his hotel, he saw several of the Latinos standing on the corner across the street. As soon as they spotted him, they came in his direction. What he had feared would happen seemed to be taking place: By contacting Mendoza, he had stepped into the middle of the warring gangs. All he could do was watch the Latinos approach, slouching lazily, lithely as cats, young, muscular, only partially domesticated. One of the young men, whom Lofton sized up as the most dangerous of the three, stood a few steps behind the others. He wore a jeans vest over his bare chest, a bandanna around his black hair, and stood, not really looking at Lofton, one hand buried in a pocket that probably held a switchblade, or some iron knuckles, or maybe just one of those key chains with a spike at the end.

“Mendoza. Where is he?” asked the tallest of the three Latinos, the leader apparently. At least he was the one who did the talking.

“You're asking the wrong man,” Lofton said. Up close he thought he recognized these three now; they were the same ones who had greeted him out in front of Mendoza's apartment building. They hadn't done anything to him then, and they probably wouldn't do anything now. Still, the dangerous-seeming one moved imperceptibly closer, and Lofton caught a look at his face. Despite the early hour, the kid was already high, not with flashy, expensive stuff like Mendoza had been on last night, but with something slower, heavier, cheaper—some combination of alcohol and barbiturates, Lofton guessed.

“We know you were with Mendoza last night. Where is he?”

“I don't know. What makes you think I've seen him?”

“The Wanderers aren't all with Mendoza, not anymore. A lot of people don't like what he's doing, so they talk to us. We didn't miss him by much last night; if you don't want to get killed, you should keep to yourself.”

“Killing him won't get you anywhere. It won't change a thing.”

“That's what the other reporter said, too. Angelo listened to him, to the Jew. ‘Build a movement,' the Jew said, ‘get the attention of the people, of the community. Drive out the pushers. That's the way to get Mendoza.' The Jew was bullshit. So Angelo is dead from his bullshit. Now we want Mendoza.”

“Good luck.” Lofton turned, but the Latino grabbed him by the arm.

“What are you going to write in the paper?”

“Don't flatter yourself,” Lofton said. “You people can kill each other all you want. I've got more important things to write about.”

He was risking it, he knew. He could see the drugged one peering at him.

“Do you know why Angelo's dead?” the leader asked. “Do you know why they killed him?”

“Tell me.”

“Angelo knew the Wanderers were behind the fires. Not all of the Wanderers, just some of them. Mendoza most of all. He got paid for setting the fires, and that's why he had the Wanderers kill Angelo: to protect his business.”

“Who pays Mendoza to set the fires?”

The Latino said nothing. He didn't seem to know the answer. “Okay,” Lofton said, “but if Angelo knew this, why didn't he tell the police, or the Jew, or someone who could do something? What proof did he have?”

The three Latinos looked at each other, and it was clear to Lofton that there was no proof. Or if there was any proof, it was some incident buried in the feud between the two gangs, a scene witnessed late at night, when some Latino caught the smell of kerosene, then turned to see a quick flare of light, perhaps even glimpsing the retreating backside of some kid he'd grown up with, a rival now, a member of the Wanderers. That was the closest thing to any kind of proof the Latinos might have, nothing that would stand up in court. The tallest of the three, seeming to sense Lofton's skepticism, spoke loudly. “Angelo listened to the Jew say just what you're saying now. He wanted proof, too. We aren't going to make that mistake.”

“If Mendoza's burning the buildings, he's not doing it for himself, and he's not doing it for free. He's on a lot more expensive drugs than your friend back here.” The drugged, dangerous-seeming one looked up, sensing he'd been insulted, but Lofton kept talking. “You kill Mendoza, they'll just find someone else to take his place. I want the big joker—the one behind the scenes.”

The leader of the small group was quiet for a moment, contemplating not what Lofton had said so much as his face, his expression, the way he stood. He let go of Lofton's arm. The other two, though, were getting restless, bored with all the talk. The one who had been quiet this whole time, who seemed neither drugged nor dangerous, stepped forward. He took his hand from his pocket and pointed a short finger at Lofton. “If you know where Mendoza is, you better tell us.”

“I don't know any more about where that bastard is than you do,” Lofton said, and turned back to the leader. “Do me a favor, when you find him, don't kill him right away. I'd like to ask him a few more questions. If I'm not at my hotel, I'm at the ballpark—every time there's a game. You can find me there.”

This time Lofton did not brave a backward glance until he was more than a block away. By then the corner was empty, the Latinos nowhere to be seen. His heart was beating faster than he would have liked, but he had to admit that the Latinos, if he could believe them, had helped color in another piece of the picture. Mendoza was the torch, the punk in the street with the crazy glare in his eye and a fondness for drugs, strong ones that knocked you higher and sweeter than you'd ever get with Mad Dog and marijuana. Golden was the go-between, the contact man who made sure Mendoza got his instructions and his money. And Brunner was the dog on top. Though it all made sense, and would look beautiful on the blue-and-white pages of his notebook, Lofton still knew he could not prove a word, at least not yet.

5

A half dozen or so Redwings were lining up at the batting cage. Others took positions in the field, then hurried down to catch their own practice when the line got thin.

They donned the blue, visored helmets, their batting gloves, and picked out their bats, hefting them over their shoulders, stretching and yawning while waiting their turns. Some nodded to Lofton, knowing, he suspected, that he wanted to talk about Randy Gutierrez.

Often this past month he had sat on the sidelines and listened to the players during practice. They talked to one another while selecting their bats, talked of players on the other teams, of each other, of old teammates now up in Triple A or others who had gone down the other way and were working some job back home. They talked of their fathers' businesses, of their degrees in accounting or in physical education, or worst of all, like Lynch, the first baseman, they worried over what jobs they might get in the off-season or what they would do when the Blues cut them for good. They joked over how drunk Lumpy had been the night before, or about Singleton's getting slapped by a dyke in a Northampton bar, or about the tight-jeaned girls who hung around after the games and went away with Elvin Banks, the center fielder. They talked about things like this, or about nothing at all, instead standing silently under the hot summer sun, listening to the whipcrack of the bat, the thrum of the traffic, and the slow drumming of their thoughts until somebody said, “Hey, did you see that piece in the paper?” and they would look sidelong at Lofton, and the talking would begin again, somebody griping about the California organization, about the miserable way Cowboy used his farm leagues, and wondering why the man even bothered, if it wasn't just meanness and some weird spite. And all the while, spinning in the secret wheels of their imaginations—Lofton guessed—the players dreamed of how they would escape this city, this singed town of Puerto Rican music and dirty bars, and hit the glitter world, real fans, real teams, real reporters. Real fame and real money, a town where the fans thrilled and screamed while the ball wasped through the air of a real city: a major league city.

Lofton stood by the dugout, watching the players wait their turn. They exchanged dry looks, spat out the dark tobacco juice, and walked up to the cage. He wondered if Dick Golden, who had spent most of his life around baseball fields—and who had fought the U.S. government when it had tried to take him off the mound and into the army—could really be helping Brunner with his arson schemes. Lofton held off approaching Golden, partly because it might be dangerous to reveal his suspicions, but more because he wanted to believe Golden was innocent. A lot of people had not liked it when Golden had resisted the draft, but at least he'd been honest about it, saying he did it for his own reasons and for no one else's, and admitting his own reasons were as selfish as the next man's. Lofton did not like to think that Golden had been forced to buckle under, to play someone else's game.

As the players finished batting practice, he ventured closer, talking to them, getting what he could for the hack story Kirpatzke wanted, all the while hoping some other information might come up to help him close in on Brunner. He asked the players how Randy Gutierrez's death had affected their play on the field.

“I guess it's brought us around. I been playing good, but it's hard to remember that he's dead. You start to forget, so many guys come and go,” said Lumpy, the catcher, his big hands hanging awkwardly at his side.

“When Randy died, it left a hole in our team. Like part of us died. I feel like that sometimes, like it was me that died,” said Lynch, the first baseman. “I keep thinking he's still here, sitting at the back of the bus. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I see him.”