Marvin didn’t pick up his head when Tom entered his office. The lawyer remained hunched over his conference table, where he appeared to be reading from a baseball almanac. A coffee mug and a hefty law journal kept the thick tome pried open. Stacks of papers set upon the floor created a mini obstacle course for Tom to navigate.
“Have I inspired you into a new career as a private investigator?” Tom asked in a voice loud enough to get Marvin’s attention. “Hope you do better than the guys you hired to watch Jill.”
Marvin looked up and impatiently waved Tom over. “I was going to call back and see if you’re even allowed to drive with your head all banged up,” Marvin said, “but I figured a guy who leaves the hospital against medical advice isn’t going to follow any prescribed driving restrictions, either.”
“I’m fine to drive. My head hurts pretty much all the time, so it’s become sort of normal now.”
“Well, that’s one way to cure a headache. Make it the norm. Okay, I’m going to tell you a story.”
“Oh, good,” Tom said. “For a second there I thought you had something really important and useful to show me.”
“Patience, my good man. Patience.”
Tom worked his way over to the conference table. Marvin flipped his dangling tie over his shoulder so that Tom had a clear view of the page in the almanac he’d been reading.
“What do you know about the nineteen eighty-eight Los Angeles Dodgers?” asked Marvin.
“They played baseball,” Tom said. “And got paid a lot of money to do it.”
“Kirk Gibson signed a three-year four-point-five-million-dollar free agent contract to play for the team,” Marvin said. “You couldn’t afford a utility player for that kind of cash today.”
“I wouldn’t sneeze at it,” Tom said.
“Before Gibson signed with the team, the Dodgers typically finished around the middle of their division. Fred Claire, the team GM at the time, brought in Gibson because he knew the guy was a game changer. Real workhorse-type player.”
“So Kirk Gibson framed me?” Tom said.
“Cute. No. He didn’t. But he did impart the fear of failure to his teammates and got them into first place at the end of May.”
“Go, Kirk,” Tom said.
“Well, nobody picked them to win at the start of the season. And nobody thought they were going to beat the Mets, but that’s just what they did to win the NLCS. Next up, the World Series against the Oakland A’s—Canseco, McGwire, and Henderson, the big bad three. Don Baylor went and made the egregious mistake of expressing his disappointment that the A’s wouldn’t be facing the best team in the National League. The Dodgers, huge underdogs, were more than a little fired up. Gibson was pretty much tapped out, though. He’d strained his knee and torn a hamstring in the NLCS.”
Tom had been training to become a SEAL that year, but even he saw the most memorable moment from that Series.
“Gibson smacked a home run, then hobbled around the bases,” Tom said.
“Game one, bottom of the ninth, the crowd went crazy when Gibson took the field. Eckersley was on the mound. Three-two count. Gibson’s swing looked to be one-handed, but he made enough contact to win the game with a home run to right. Dodgers went on to win the series in five games.”
Tom gave Marvin his best “I’m still waiting for the punch line” look.
“A lot of people say that home run was the greatest in World Series history. I’m one of them.”
“Marvin, this is all very interesting, but what does any of this have to do with my case?” Tom tried to keep his frustration from showing.
“Take a look at this.”
Tom followed Marvin over to his computer, where he had a Web page open with a picture of the Los Angeles Dodgers 1988 World Series championship ring on display. Marvin held up his cell phone to show Tom the image he’d taken of the injury to his cheek. Tom didn’t need long to see a matching pattern.
“I knew I’d seen that shape before,” Marvin said. “It’s a baseball diamond, of course. But when I first saw your injury, I thought, if it is a World Series ring, those other markings could be the bottom part of the letters
“Outliers,” Tom said.
“But I didn’t want to say anything until I checked it out. So I put on my investigator’s hat and cross- referenced the employees of the restaurant where somebody slipped you a Mickey with people on the Dodger team payroll.”
Tom looked dubious.
“I was assaulted by a former major league baseball player?” he asked.
“Players aren’t the only ones to get rings,” Marvin said. “Anybody on the Dodgers’ payroll that year would have gotten a ring—personal trainers, batting practice pitchers, and such.”
Tom’s face lit up. “Marvin, you are a beautiful, beautiful man,” Tom said. “What did you find?”
Marvin couldn’t keep from smiling. “A ring from eighty-eight could have been pawned or sold on eBay. It was a long shot I knew, but I got a hit.”
“Who?”
“A former equipment manager named Frank T. Delacroix. Know him?”
Tom tried to link the name but shook his head. “Should I?”
“He lives in southern New Hampshire and was in heavy rotation on the local news a while back. That’s why I’m asking,” Marvin said. Reaching for the floor, Marvin hauled up a stack of papers with a glossy black-and-white photograph on top. He handed the photograph to Tom.
Tom examined the picture and nodded as soon as he connected the dots. “Wait, I do know this guy,” Tom said. “He was at the country club shindig Boyd invited me to.”
Marvin returned a puzzled look. “Forgive the judgment pass, but you just don’t strike me as the country club type,” Marvin said.
“I’m not. Believe me, Boyd won’t be inviting me back anytime soon. He’s convinced I’m sleeping with his wife. But before all that, he introduced me to this guy as Frank Dee, not Delacroix.”
Tom flashed on a memory of Frank Dee from the club that night. He remembered wondering whether Dee had recently divorced. Apparently, it wasn’t a wedding ring he typically wore on that hand.
“Frank Dee is his new name,” Marvin said. “He changed it after he was released from prison.”
“Prison? What for?”
“Guess.”
“Betting on baseball?”
“Guess again.”
“Okay. Scopolamine smuggling.”
“Close,” Marvin said, smiling. “Try crystal meth. Seems like this guy was a master cooker. But as you now know, that’s not all he can cook. Mr. My-Name-Once-Was-Delacroix got into the restaurant business after he got out of the meth cooking business. He’s now the franchise owner for a bunch of restaurants throughout the state, including that Johnny Rockets on one-forty.”
“But why wasn’t this guy in jail? Isn’t crystal meth a pretty serious offense?”
“Case never went to trial,” Marvin said. “A few weeks before the trial a wee little procedural no-no came up. A technicality with the search warrant, which renders all the crucial evidence against Delacroix inadmissible in court.”
“D.A. dropped the charges after that, I suppose,” Tom said.
Marvin pantomimed the ringing of an imaginary bell. “And guess who Mr. Delacroix-Dee is related to? First cousin related.”
“Kip Lange,” Tom said.
Again, Marvin pantomimed that ringing bell.
“So Lange must have brought Dee into the deal,” Tom said. “Probably promised him a cut. But how does a guy like Dee run a family business? With the Web being what it is, you’d think somebody would have picked up on his past and made a big stink about it.”
