Trial and Error

A dozen kids in Bashers uniforms sidled up to the fence alongside Moss. Most seemed bigger than Rich Shactman. The ones who weren’t had the long, lean look of sprinters or Dominican outfielders.

“Git a move on, Kreindler!” Shug Moss shouted. “You can’t hog the field. It ain’t kosher.”

The Bashers laughed at their coach’s southern-fried wit. Kreindler offered a feeble wave of his hand.

Moss had been a three-sport star athlete at Homestead High thirty years earlier. Having failed to show up for any classes his senior year, he forfeited a variety of college scholarship offers and signed a minor league baseball contract. A ferocious fastball hitter, his line drives splintered outfield fences in Dunedin, Lakeland, and other bush league towns. In four years, he got a shot with the Baltimore Orioles. He had one hit in thirty-four at-bats before being sent back to Double A ball. Just as he had failed basic grammar in high school, he never learned to hit a breaking pitch in the minors.

These days, when tanked on gin, he still talked about making it to The Show. His favorite story was to recall a blast into the upper deck at Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately, it was batting practice, and the ball was foul by fifty feet.

Now, Moss sold disability insurance, but his prime objective in life was to win the championship in the Kendall Sunday School Baseball League. He’d succeeded the last four seasons with a team composed not only of members of the First Baptist Church but also of undocumented Haitians who looked old enough to vote and a couple of players who had honed their skills in the Miami-Dade Youth Corrections Facility. Truth was, Moss would play an Al Qaeda suicide bomber if he could lay down a decent bunt.

On the mound, Bobby looked nervously toward the hulking Bashers, itching to get on the field for practice.

“Gib zich a traisel, Robert,” Kreindler urged him. “Let’s get this over with.”

Bobby started his motion, feeling like his arms and legs belonged to someone else. He let the pitch go too soon, and the ball sailed over the backstop.

Whoops and hollers from the Bashers along the fence.

“Ball one,” Kreindler announced.

Bobby tried again. This time, the pitch sailed ten feet behind Shactman.

“Ball two.”

“This your new pitcher?” Shug Moss taunted. “Stevie Wonder has better control.”

Bobby wiped the sweat off his glasses, then threw another fastball, this one skittering across the plate.

“Ball three,” Kreindler called out.

Shug Moss smirked. His players laughed and high-fived.

Shactman stepped out of the batter’s box. “This is embarrassing, Coach. The Bashers think we’re all weenies.”

He’s embarrassed, Bobby thought, hating all those eyes on him.

“Robert, just relax,” Coach Kreindler shouted. “Lay one right down the pipe.”

Shactman stepped back into the batter’s box.

Bobby took a smaller windup and floated a pitch chest high across the middle of the plate.

Shactman jumped on the pitch with a ferocious swing. A cannon shot, the crack of metal hitting leather. A rising rocket, the ball soared toward left field, gaining height and speed, never seeming to hit its apogee. The ball was still rising as it cleared the wooden fence and bounced high into a strand of live oak trees.

Holy shit!

Once at Pro Player Stadium, at a Giants-Marlins game, Bobby had seen Barry Bonds launch a home run that left the yard so fast, it seemed to be over the fence before Bonds had finished his swing. Outside of that, he had never seen a ball hit so hard.

Shactman still stood in the batter’s box, like a golfer admiring a tee shot.

Kreindler rose up from his umpire’s position and looked skyward. “Got in himmel!”

Shug Moss beamed toward Shactman. “Nice hitting, kid. Too bad you’re on the wrong team.” Then he turned to Bobby, who slumped toward the dugout. “And you! Four eyes. You ever think of taking up chess?”

Twenty-nine

Never Trust The Suits

“I’m sorry I was late, kiddo,” Steve said.

“Wouldn’t have made any difference,” Bobby sulked.

“Steve could have given you some tips,” Victoria said.

“I’d still suck.”

Victoria ran a hand through the boy’s squashed hair, which bore the imprint of his ball cap. “Steve says you have potential. Something about your arm.”

“A live arm.” Steve made a throwing motion. “All you need is some confidence and a little practice.”

Bobby picked up his root beer and sucked at the straw. He was deep into self-pity mode. They were sitting at an outdoor table at the Red Fish Grill in Matheson Hammock Park. The night was warm, but a breeze from the Bay cooled them. Across the water, they could see the lights of Key Biscayne. Some of those lights lined the dock at Cetacean Park, but from this distance, you couldn’t really make out the place.

Bobby looked toward the darkness of the bay. “I don’t wanna talk about baseball, okay?”

“How about the case, then?” Steve asked. “You really helped me today, kiddo.”

“You’re patronizing me, Uncle Steve.”

“I mean it. You helped me prove that Hardcastle kidnapped Spunky and Misty.”

“Prove it?” Victoria tried not to sound skeptical as she sipped at her Pinot Noir.

“Think about it,” Steve said. “Hardcastle needed the world’s smartest dolphins for its Marine Mammal program. That was the motive for the raid.”

“I don’t want to diss your case,” she said, “but Hardcastle’s a New York Stock Exchange company. A four- billion-dollar company. A company in the public eye.”

“You ever hear of Enron? Never trust the suits, Vic.”

“You’re a suit.”

“I wear a suit. There’s a difference.”

“Still not buying it,” she said. “All you’ve got is a theory, not proof.”

“Really? Bobby, how long does it take to train dolphins?”

“Four or five years to get to Spunky and Misty’s level.” Bobby dipped a piece of his broiled mahimahi into a spicy tartar sauce.

“Don’t you see, Vic? Hardcastle wins a contract to provide trained dolphins to the military to guard the ports. But they don’t have five years to do it. The clock’s ticking. Fort Lauderdale. Long Beach. New York. Every port authority wants to be protected yesterday. They also want the sexiest, newest item in the defense arsenal, dolphins with cameras and transmitters, and for all we know, dart guns and iPods.”

Victoria sipped at her wine, shook her head. “I still can’t see a giant company taking a risk like that.”

“Forget that Hardcastle’s a billion-dollar conglomerate. It’s made of divisions and departments. Somewhere there’s a guy running the dolphin program, and he reports to a numbers cruncher who reports to a hard-ass who reports to the guy who runs all their defense subsidiaries. If the dolphin guy can’t produce, there’s no year-end bonus. There’s bad publicity. If it’s bad enough, 60 Minutes comes knocking on your door. There are congressional investigations. Cries of boondoggles and pork-barrel politics. Taxpayer money down the drain. Hardcastle loses bigger contracts just because they couldn’t supply dolphins who can do the job.”

Victoria thought it over a moment. In the nearby saltwater pond, a pair of yellow-crowned herons poked their beaks in the shallows for crabs. “Let’s say you’re right and Hardcastle doesn’t have time to train its own dolphins. Why not just buy them?”

“Mr. Grisby loves Spunky and Misty,” Bobby said. “He’d never sell them.”

“Even if Grisby wanted to, he couldn’t do it,” Steve said. “Think of the uproar. One day, Spunky and Misty are