“They started at a hundred, Bobby.”
Bobby sat up. The girl didn’t stop what she was doing. “Who’s behind it-him or them?”
“Very astute, Bobby. I thought of that-whether they were shaking you down, all on their own-so I spoke to Primo himself. It’s him.”
“Why?”
“He says it’s his lucky number. He speaks good English, incidentally.”
“It’s my lucky number too.”
“Then it’s going to cost.”
Bobby couldn’t think. He pushed the girl away with his foot.
“Bobby?”
“Yeah?”
“You thinking?”
“Yeah.” He thought fifty grand and that asshole Primo, but didn’t get further than that.
“Thirty-three and forty-one are still available,” Wald said. “So’s fifty-one, according to Stook. That’s got a one in it too.”
“You told Stook about this?”
“The money? Nobody knows about the money, except Primo, his people, you and me.”
“But word’ll get out, won’t it, especially if I pay? And I’ll look dumb.”
“Could be, Bobby. Astute of you-again. You should be doing my job.”
Bobby had never considered doing anyone else’s job. The idea appalled him. “Do I have to decide now?”
“Soon,” Wald said. “Game’s at two-oh-five.”
The girl came up from under the covers, looking hurt. Bobby patted her on the leg. “I’ve decided,” he told Wald.
“Yeah?”
“The hell with it.” Allowing himself to get jerked around by a Jheri-curled punk like Primo was no way to start off with a new team. The number on his back didn’t matter; all that mattered was to keep swinging the bat the way he had yesterday, to keep seeing the ball with coffee-table book clarity.
Bobby hung up. The girl said, “What’s wrong?”
Bobby reached for her. “Just business.”
“Business?” the girl replied, as though struck by the possibility she’d made a horrid mistake. “Aren’t you a ballplayer?”
Bobby left in a taxi for Soxtown. Halfway there he spotted a car dealer’s. “Pull in,” he said. He was tired of the driver’s glances in the rearview mirror, didn’t want to take taxis for the next three weeks, getting glanced at. Besides, he was going to need a car on the East Coast, probably two, maybe three. Bobby went inside.
“I don’t want anything flashy,” he said. “Just a solid, family vehicle.”
He chose a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited. V8, ABS, 4WD, AM-FM CD, $35,991, with the gold hubcaps. Bobby wrote a check. An insurance agent arrived, called Bobby’s insurance company in California, collected another check. Someone else took the papers to the registry, returned with the license plate: 983 KRZ. Bobby didn’t want a K on his plate. They went back and got him another one. It all took about an hour. Bobby signed a few autographs and drove off.
Nice car. He had nicer ones, but Bobby liked riding up high, liked the sound system, liked the power and heft. He drove along happily for a while, testing the features. Then, just before the turnoff to Soxtown, Bobby realized he was bored with it. He’d give it to Val, get something else for himself after she came. He parked in his reserved place by the palm tree. The odometer read 000018.
Stook met him in the clubhouse. “What’s it gonna be?” he said. The three shirts-thirty-three, forty-one, fifty- one-were hanging in his stall. Thirty-three was out-wasn’t that Jesus’s age when he died? Bobby tested the divisibility of the remaining numbers. Three went into fifty-one, but nothing went into forty-one. He saw Primo watching from across the room.
“Hey, Primo,” he called. “You’d know this.”
“Know what?”
“If forty-one’s a prime number.”
Primo frowned. “I don’t get it.”
Bobby laughed. He took forty-one.
Bobby dressed: sleeves, jock, sanitaries, stirrups, pants, cleats, shirt. He had fried chicken and iced tea from the buffet, then went outside for BP. The pitching coach was throwing, harder than Burrows and with more stuff, but the ball was still out of a coffee-table book, even bigger, slower, clearer then yesterday. Bobby banged it around the yard, then shagged flies until the Tigers came on.
He returned to the clubhouse, drank more iced tea, checked his mail. The usual: requests for autographed pictures, most from preteen boys and slightly older girls; phone numbers from girls a little older than that, some accompanied by bathing-suit pictures of the writers; a letter from a man who wanted to know why Bobby never bunted; and a four-leaf clover in a plastic locket on a chain, sent by a granny in Texas. Bobby hung the locket around his neck.
Burrows came in, lit a cigarette, and took out the lineup card. Bobby, who had hit third since freshman year in high school, bent down and retied his shoelaces; casual.
“Primo at short, bats one,” read Burrows. “Lanz in left, bats two. Rayburn in center, bats three. Washington at first, bats-” Bobby slipped on his headphones, pressed PLAY.
A few minutes later, they took the field. Boyle started. He struck out the first two batters, walked the next. The runner stole second; Odell’s throw was perfect, but Primo dropped the ball.
“Tut-tut,” Bobby said, quietly, all by himself in center field.
Twenty or thirty feet behind him a voice spoke: “You said it.”
Bobby glanced around and saw a sunburned old man sitting in a wheelchair just beyond the chain-link fence, binoculars hanging on his white-haired chest.
“He’s such a fucking showboat,” the old man said. “They’re all like that, the spics.”
Bobby turned back to the field, saying nothing.
Boyle walked another batter. When the next one came up, Burrows motioned Bobby toward right. Bobby changed his position. Then Odell flashed the sign: curve. Bobby was astonished: he’d never been able to read the catcher’s sign from center field, not even as a kid.
“Jesus,” he said. I’m going to fucking hit. 400 this year.
“Tell me about it,” said the old man with binoculars, as Boyle went into his motion and threw. “Burrows. Shit. Moves you over and then calls for the deuce. They shoulda fired him years-”
The batter swung, connected. A screamer, into the gap in left between Bobby and Lanz. Bobby took off. He might have had a play if Burrows hadn’t shifted him. That thought was obliterated by the realization that he just might have a play anyway. Bobby dove, weightless for a long moment, fully stretched out in the air. First the ball was a hissing white blur; then it disappeared and went silent, leaving its sting on the palm of his glove hand. Bobby fell hard on his chest, rolled over, stayed down.
Lanz was kneeling beside him. “You okay?”
Bobby struggled for breath. “Ball in my glove?”
“Hell of a catch,” Lanz said. “But let’s not get crazy in spring training.”
Bobby heard a boat whistle, far away; smelled the grass; felt a tiny insect walking across the back of his neck. “Three outs?”
“Yeah.”
Bobby rose just as the trainer jogged up, breathing hard.
“You okay?”
Lightheaded, then fine. “Yeah.”
“Rib cage?”
“No problem.”
Bobby ran off. Cheers from the little crowd. He sat down in the dugout, drank water. Something tickled his chest. Had he landed on an ant hill? Bobby peered down his shirt. No ants. He’d smashed the plastic locket. The four-leaf clover was gone.
