The Spoiler (36 page)

He went to a secondhand store in the basement of the Iglesia del Cristo, an old church in the canal district. He always enjoyed such places, rummaging through the clothes bins, immersed in the texture and smell of other people's clothing, other people's lives.
Arthur Stewart, age 62, died Tuesday after a long illness.…

He found a green jersey, the number 13 stenciled on the front, the name Bonzie on the back. Digging through a sack of discarded hats, he came across a plastic batting helmet, the type Little Leaguers sometimes wore, with bright orange flaps hanging over the ears. He tore out the styrofoam padding and placed the helmet on his head. The thing fit.

After rummaging a little longer, he salvaged some white, baggy pants, grease-stained at the knees, and a pair of old tennis shoes. He looked at himself in the mirror of the tiny, unlit changing room. The pants hung low, but the effect was right. He looked like an overgrown kid on his way to play sandlot ball, wearing a uniform fashioned from hand-me-overs and backyard trash. He smiled, pleased. He would look ridiculous on the street, but at the ballpark he woud be just another idiot fan, someone dressed for the occasion, goofy and dead serious at the same time.

“A costume party,” he told the lady at the register. She did not smile. Behind him a young man carried an overstuffed bra and a very short velvet skirt.

At the park Lofton sat in the bleachers, away from the press box. It was a big crowd: families from the Longmeadow suburbs; the Holyoke regulars; all kinds of local clubs; even a group—sitting not far away—from the state mental institution in Belchertown. A man pounded over and over on an upturned can. Children shouted. The ballpark kid Lofton had seen all over town, who ran messages back and forth for the team, stood not far away, looking about distractedly, his Redwings' cap twisted, as always, backward on his head. The boy sat down near him, his chin cradled between his dirty, mottled fists. He did not look happy, though; his eyes were glazed, teary, and his mouth was open.

Lofton scanned the crowd. Amanti, Brunner, Liuzza, Sarafis, Kelley, the whole entourage, even the security agents from the mall—all sat behind the first base dugout. Sparks did not seem to be with them; he was not on the field either.

The Hollywood Chicken did not emerge from his trailer until the end of the second inning, when the Redwings were already down, 2–0. Two bodyguards escorted the Chicken. One man cleared the way, the other walked behind, and children streamed all around, trying to touch the Chicken's plumes. The Chicken ran through the gate into the midst of the Holyoke players as they retook the field. After looking at the scoreboard, the bright yellow bird somersaulted clumsily down the third base line and attacked the umpire.

Lofton had seen the Chicken do the same routine before, at Bees Stadium in San Jose, but the stunt did not have much punch tonight. Even so, the kids enjoyed it, screaming louder, making more noise than they had at any time earlier in the game.

“Some Chicken,” said the kid with the baseball cap. He had moved lower in the stands, closer to Lofton, and spoke quietly, nervously, as if attempting to exchange secrets. The two, Lofton and the kid, exchanged a long glance, and Lofton realized the boy saw through his disguise; in fact, he did not even notice it. Lofton remembered what Amanti had told him about the boy: how sometimes the kid mixed up faces and times, forgot where he was, and how other times he noticed things most people did not see.

Below him the game was looking bad. Holyoke needed to win tonight, and the next night, too, if it wanted to stay in the pennant race, but Hammer, the young fastballer, was beginning to lose control. He walked the first batter, then threw a fastball to the next—a sweet white flash. Too sweet. The West Haven batter socked it away, a hard liner that arced and twisted, skipping past Porter into the right field corner.

The batter now stood on third, pleased, clapping his hands, and the Chicken went into a fit. He grabbed his heart and fell backward onto the ground. The crowd hooted and screamed. Later in the inning, when the opposing player scored, the crowd got excited again. It gave them another chance to see the Chicken's antics: a flip and a handstand on the third base sidelines. A man near Lofton hoisted his little boy into the air, trying to give him a better vantage point. But the Chicken's gymnastics were poor, and the man's wife complained. “Is that the big deal? They do better on TV.”

“What do you expect? It's just minor league ball. They got a minor league Chicken.”

“No, it's the Hollywood Chicken,” their son protested.

“I don't understand,” said the mother, shaking her head.

Lofton did not understand either. He had met the Chicken once. The Chicken played parks all over the country, and Lofton had interviewed him in San Jose. The Chicken, a sandy-haired young man, had described how he started out at Los Angeles football games, coming to the gate in his homemade suit, buying a ticket like everyone else, then racing through the aisles, leading the crowd in cheers. “One day the game was close, and I wanted to lead the crowd, everyone. I raced out onto the ledge in front of the Scoreboard.” Stadium management was angry. It evicted him and told him not to come back. But the fans objected, the papers made a storm, and the team reneged. They put the Chicken on salary. Now he had a national career, so many engagements he could barely keep up with them all. “That first night, when I came back to work and the fans applauded, thousands of people in that big stadium, all applauding for me, it was the experience of my life. I cried inside my chicken suit.”

Though it was a ridiculous story, Lofton had believed the man's emotion. He'd seen the Chicken perform again, years later, in Denver. That time, also, the performance had been far better than tonight. Maybe the man had lost enthusiasm, lost heart. Something had happened. This was not the same Chicken.

The Chicken retired to his trailer, the crowd seemed to lose track of the game, the Redwings fell farther behind, and the PA man announced the presence of Richard Sarafis. Sarafis stood, and a crush of gray-suited agents hurried to form a circle around him; they looked as if they had not expected the announcement.

“They shoulda run Sparks for governor,” said the kid. Lofton had forgotten all about him. The kid seemed unnaturally excited and looked at him, eyes wide, as if he wanted to talk but did not know how to begin. “You seen Sparks?” he asked.

“No,” Lofton said. He noticed the irritation in his voice, the anger, and immediately was sorry. The kid flinched but went on talking, scrutinizing Lofton as if ready to jump, to run.

“Well, yeah, he's probably back in the clubhouse, soaking his arm, always back there these days,” the kid said in his stumbling nasal voice. Lofton turned back to the field. Holyoke batted—down one, two, three—then retook the field. The team showed no real enthusiasm. The deadly grace of their winning streak had vanished. The kid elbowed Lofton.

“You friends with the girl?” The kid smiled oddly. He touched his cheek in the place where Amanti's cheek was scarred. “The pretty girl?” he said. Lofton looked around, checking the gates, the crowd. “Did they beat you, too?” the kid asked.

“Did who beat me?”

The kid couldn't answer the question. After struggling with it for a second, he looked up at Lofton as if all sense had left his head. The kid was shaking. A bad case, this kid, Lofton thought, and wondered what had happened to the kid when he was younger, what the kid's parents—or the people who took care of him now—had done to make him this way.

“Pay attention to the game,” Lofton said, and touched the kid on the shoulder.

“You sound like Barker. He wouldn't talk to me either, he just shouted me away. And he tells me everything before the games.”

Lofton had seen the kid hanging around during practices, leaning over the fence, asking the players, and sometimes Barker, questions that they sometimes answered and sometimes didn't, tossing off flip cracks instead and laughing among themselves.

The kid made an overhand motion with his arm, like a pitcher throwing a baseball. “Yes, Spark 'em right by 'em, strike 'em out. Then we'd win.” The kid had suddenly calmed. He seemed normal, like any kid anywhere. Too normal, Lofton thought.

Lofton fell silent, staring out at the field. The kid fell silent, too, imitating him, staring seriously. Then, as the West Haven shortstop lined a single to right, the kid elbowed him again. He wished the kid would go. He longed for the spiteful silence of the press box.

“See,” the kid said, “they got that guy standing out front the clubhouse door so anybody just can't go in.”

He ignored the kid, and the kid repeated himself.

“I tried to go in, down in West Haven, just wanted to say hello to old Rickey, but they wouldn't let me. The guard made a goon face and pushed me away. But then Golden came along and yelled at the guard. He let me in special. Golden let me talk to Rickey.”

The kid elbowed Lofton again. Lofton, irritated despite himself, elbowed him back; the kid smiled shyly, frightened, but he moved closer. Lofton remembered Golden's brusque manner with the kid, how the kid dogged him everywhere anyway. Down below, West Haven's runners stood at first and second, the cleanup batter at the plate. The Sox hitter smacked a double off the center field wall.

“Bastard,” Lofton said.

The kid stood up and screamed at the field, “Give us Sparks, bastards!” Then he sat down, turning to Lofton. “Yup, I'm his best fan, and I saw him in Waterbury, too.”

“That right?”

“I went down there every night, and it was the same thing, except for the night he pitched. ‘Rickey's in the clubhouse, soaking his arm,' that's what he told me. That same one down there. He doesn't like letting me in.”

Lofton arched around toward the clubhouse. A ballpark cop stood by the door, pacing first one way, then another.

“But it didn't matter. Golden let me in down in Waterbury, too.”

“You go to the Waterbury games?”

“Sometimes the counselors take us down there.” The kid's face had changed strangely. “But you know something, I don't think Golden will let me in anymore.”

“Why not?”

“He's dead,” the kid said, without smiling, his eyes black and glassy. Lofton winced.

“No, that's not true. I saw him just the other night. I talked to him in the clubhouse.”

The kid was not listening.

“Dead, like Gutierrez, all dead and bloody.” The kid let out a squirrellike cry; tears welled in his eyes. Lofton grabbed the kid's hands, trying to calm him; then, looking down, he noticed again the kid's scars—burn marks, perhaps from the abuse he'd suffered as a child—which covered his arms and forearms.

“Dead. Dead. Dead,” the kid cried out, louder now. “I saw the Latinos kill him.”

“The Latinos?” Lofton asked. The kid nodded, frightened. Lofton was not sure what the nod meant. The kid wandered all over town, almost everyone knew him and teased him and used him for errands, and maybe he'd run into the Latinos.

“Yes, yes! The Latinos!” the kid yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Shh,” Lofton said. “Shh. Shh.” Grabbing the kid by the arms again, he tried to calm him. The kid babbled on, not so loud as before, but shaking furiously, as if on the verge of some sort of fit. “I followed Golden on the street and down to the tunnel, to the tracks, and the Latinos waited in the tunnel and talked, and I couldn't understand. Golden came up in the tunnel, and they wrestled him. I saw his face full of blood. Then they saw me and started to run to get me, to chase me to the ballfield. And I ran, and they jumped on Golden. They took money from his pockets and threw it into the air. They killed him!”

The kid was yelling again. His cap had fallen off, and his lower lip shook visibly. Lofton watched the boy, waiting until he quieted.

“What tunnel, where? Was it Golden that you saw, are you sure?” Lofton asked, but the kid said nothing. Lofton waited, then asked again, and again. The kid wouldn't talk. His features were twisted, his eyes were glazed, and Lofton could see it was hopeless.

The seventh-inning stretch was starting. A new set of sirens wailed in the distance, and Lofton set out into the stands. Somebody should stay with the kid, he thought; somebody should help him. But Lofton went off alone to find Amanti.

He spotted her at the concession, near the top of the stands on the first base side. She was standing behind Kelley. Lofton pushed through the crowd. It became denser the closer he got to the top, not so much because of the concession but because of the sirens. People wanted to see the fire.

Finally he reached her. He took her by the elbow, gently, and waited for her to turn and recognize him.

“It's me. Lofton.”

Her lips parted. She glanced nervously back at Kelley—the man still had not turned—and she gestured toward the rear of the concession, indicating she would meet him there.

Lofton backed away. The sirens rushed by again on the streets outside MacKenzie; a group of teenagers, bored with the game, with the Chicken, with waiting in line, bolted away.

“It's a fire, a big one,” said a girl nearby.

“So?” said her friend, but they went off together, toward the top of the bleachers, for a better look.

When Amanti came, Lofton grabbed her hand, pulling her closer, deeper into the bleachers. They stood inches apart. Her skin seemed dark now, wonderfully dark, set off by her soft white blouse and her glistening jewelry. She smelled of perfume.

“Your kid, the one who runs errands around here, he just told me he saw the Latinos kill Golden.”

Amanti looked confused. “The boy's hysterical. You know how the kid is. He mixes everything up; he tells stories.”

“I have to find out what's going on, and I might not get back in time to meet when we planned. I'll have to meet you later.”

Amanti did not respond. They stood quietly together; the crowd pressed toward the fire. He touched her waist. She was an odd woman: putting him on to the arsons, trying to clamp the lid on Kelley and Brunner, but never leaving, not completely, the circles of power in which she was enmeshed and which she wanted to destroy.