it, looked up, and said: “What did you expect, after all those years you’ve been screwing around?”
A moment passed before he understood what she was talking about. “I couldn’t care less,” he said.
“Clearly.”
“About you and Wald, I mean. Do what you like. The point is he’s taken Sean.”
“Curly has?” She looked down at the note. “But we couldn’t have been more grateful,” she said. “We gave him a job.”
“It has nothing to do with that.”
“Then what?”
“I knew this was going to happen,” Bobby said. “I just knew it.”
“What have you done?” she said.
He reached out to touch her shoulder. She flinched away.
Bobby went into the bedroom and saw the phone, lying on the floor. He picked it up. “Jewel?”
“Let’s have it.”
“He’s taken Sean.”
“Goddamn it.”
“I knew something bad was going to happen to him,” Bobby said. “I’ve known since day one.”
“Grow up,” Jewel said, and then came a click and a dial tone. Bobby saw blue lights flashing through the trees. He hurried outside.
Hanging up on people left and right, thought Jewel as she threw on some clothes: wielding the phone like a goddamn club, in midseason form. She took the elevator down to the underground garage, got into her car, and started driving north. She came to the exit that would lead her to Bobby’s, and kept going.
The needle quivered at ninety, crept higher. Jewel sat on the edge of her seat and clutched the wheel, hanging on more than controlling the car, but she didn’t slow down. There was little traffic; she examined every car she passed. What model was she looking for? She didn’t know. She eased off the pedal to call Bobby for the information, and got a busy signal.
After that she tried Claymore. It took her some time to bully his home number out of the night man at his station. Claymore answered, not as quickly as Bobby had, but just as throatily. This time it did nothing for her.
“Jewel Stern,” she said. “Gil Renard’s on the loose. You’d better get out to that cemetery.”
“How do you know he’s going there?”
“That’s where he does his burying, isn’t it?”
He gave her directions.
It was still night when Jewel drove into the little town, found the cemetery, stopped the car. She stepped out, into what she thought at first was complete silence. Then she heard a breeze in the treetops, an animal scurring on dried leaves, a mosquito’s tiny whine. It bit her on the neck.
Jewel walked into the cemetery. Moonlight illuminated the names on the tombstones, all nonethnic, unless French counted as ethnic. She hadn’t been in a cemetery since her father’s funeral, a horrible convocation of nosy parkers, almost all of them answering to ethnic names at one time or other in their lives, almost all of them calling her Janie.
Tombstones: Pease, Laporte, Spofford, Cleary, Bouchard. Renard, R. G. A sudden light dazzled her eyes.
“That you?” said a voice. Claymore.
They sat behind the tombstone of Renard, R. G. Claymore shut off his torch. Jewel’s night vision, what was left of it, returned. A mosquito whined in her ear. She slapped at it.
“They’re not bad this year,” Claymore said. “Pollution’s maybe getting to them at last, thank God.”
Jewel glanced at her watch. “He should have been here by now.”
“Maybe he’s not coming,” Claymore said. “He could be anywhere. People get around these days. Two years ago we busted a guy from Djibouti. I’d never heard of it.”
“They don’t play ball in Djibouti.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.” She turned to him. He pushed his glasses higher on his nose. In his other hand, she noticed, he held a gun. “You played ball with him.”
“That’s right.”
She checked her watch again. “What kind of a player was he?”
“The star. I told you. Him and Boucicaut. They were the biggest kids in town back then, and they could both hit a ton. And Gil had a cannon for an arm.”
“And what position did you play, Sergeant Claymore?”
“Shortstop.”
“Batting first, right?” She could picture him, a speedy little red-haired kid with freckles.
“Ninth, actually,” said Claymore. “I could never hit much. Astigmatism in both eyes. And I was too slow to lead off anyway.”
“This was Little League?”
Claymore nodded.
“How far did he go?”
“Go?”
“In baseball.”
“That was it, to my knowledge. The high school had already dropped it a year or two before. This was after they closed the mill. We had baseball again for a while during the Reagan years, but now it’s gone.”
“But you still have Little League?”
“Haven’t had new uniforms in five years, but, yeah, we’ve still got Little League.”
They went silent. Jewel slapped at a few more mosquitos, checked her watch. “Something’s wrong.”
“It’s a big world,” Claymore said.
She was starting not to like him. If he mentioned Djibouti again, there was a danger she would let it show.
He cleared his throat. “Tell me,” he began, “how is it that you, you know, a woman, got so interested in base-”
Jewel held up her hand. “Where’s the field?”
“Field?”
“The Little League field.”
“Amvets.”
“Is that where they’ve always played?”
“Always?”
“You. Gil. Boucicaut. Is that where you played?”
“Yes,” he said. “No need to shout at me.”
She was already on her feet. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t-”
She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up.
“What are you doing?” Sean said.
“Digging for worms,” Gil replied, standing knee-deep in the hole he’d dug under home plate. “Need worms for fishing.”
“Found any yet?” asked the boy, kneeling by the hole and peering in.
“No.” Gil could have done it right then, lifted the spade and just done it, but the hole wasn’t deep enough, and he didn’t want to linger after it was over. Just because it was logical and right didn’t mean it would be easy. He went over the logic: how he’d sacrificed so much-his career, Richie, Primo-that the world was tilting crazily and the balance had to be restored. Plus, Bobby had to be taught a lesson about team play. And what had become of the hop on his fastball? All very clear. But that didn’t make it easy.
“The mosquitos are biting me,” Sean said.
Gil hit a soft layer, began tossing up rapid spadefuls. “Smack ’em,” he said.
Sean smacked his cheek. “Look at the blood, Curly.” He held out his hand. Gil, now up to his waist, looked. There was a streak of blood on the boy’s cheek too. Gil almost puked.
“Can’t you stop interrupting?” he said.
