But there was no answer. He counted fifty rings and hung up.
Boucicaut came back, made the rear end sag again, snapped the trunk shut, got in the car. “Vamoose,” he said.
“Where?”
Boucicaut had the bottle in his hand. “Back down, for Christ’s sake.”
“The joke’s over?”
“What joke?”
“The practical joke.”
Boucicaut smiled, his remaining teeth green in the panel light. “Yeah, it’s over.”
Gil drove down the mountain, back into the rain, lights out most of the way. Boucicaut emptied the bottle, chucked it out the window. “Bang and Olufsen any good?” he said, as they came to the stop sign at the access road.
“Top of the line.”
“Hey,” said Boucicaut, “we make a good team.” He got out and took off the chains.
Gil thought: Yes. I know that. He ran his tongue along the edge of his chipped tooth.
At the bottom of the mountain, Boucicaut pointed west, away from town. Gil followed almost-forgotten back roads for ten or fifteen minutes, turned down a long, unpaved lane, parked in front of an old farmhouse. Boucicaut went in without knocking. He came back with a man even fatter than he was, shirtless despite the cold. They emptied the trunk, carrying everything inside.
Boucicaut came back alone. “Nice work,” he said, shoving something into Gil’s shirt pocket.
“What’s this?”
“Your share,” said Boucicaut. “Not too rich to turn down a hundred bucks, are you?”
Gil wasn’t.
“And something else,” said Boucicaut when they were back on the road. “I thought of you as soon as I saw it, old buddy.” He reached into his jacket, flicked on the interior light, held something up for Gil to see: a baseball, in a clear crystal box. A yellowed, autographed baseball, but Gil couldn’t take his eyes off the road long enough to read the name.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“The Babe,” said Boucicaut. “Who else?”
“That must be worth a lot of money.”
“It’s yours.”
Gil wanted to say something like, “I couldn’t do that,” but he was too choked up. Boucicaut set the ball down on the edge of Gil’s seat. It rolled against his thigh and rested there.
Miles went by, with rain pelting down, Boucicaut leaning back, eyes closed, Gil feeling the ball against his leg, thinking, we’re a team. They were almost in town when Boucicaut opened his eyes and said: “Ever see American Blade magazine?”
“Sure.”
“Came across a copy today. Some of your dad’s knives were listed in the back.”
“I know.”
“Guy was asking four grand for one of them.”
“They’re collector’s items.”
“That’s where they all went-to collectors?”
“Most of them.”
“How many’ve you got?”
“You’ve seen it.”
“Just the one? How did that happen?”
“It happened.”
Gil drove back through town, into the woods, up the lane that led to Boucicaut’s trailer. The wind died down; all at once the windshield wipers were squeaking on dry glass.
They parked, got out of the car, Gil taking the ball. “Wait a sec,” Boucicaut said. He went into the trailer alone. The outside lights flashed on, illuminating the yard. When Boucicaut came back he had the baseball gloves in his hand. “Feelin’ loose?” he said.
For a moment, Gil couldn’t speak. A thrill went through him, shooting down his spine, along his arms and legs, up the back of his neck, into his face.
“Thought we’d play a little catch,” said Boucicaut. “How’s the old arm?”
“Best it’s ever been.”
Boucicaut laughed, donned the mitt, motioned for the ball.
“We’re going to use this?”
“What it’s for, ain’t it?” replied Boucicaut. Gil handed him the ball. Boucicaut put it in the fielder’s glove and handed it back. Then he walked to the edge of the yard, turned, got down in his crouch. His legs must have been very strong, Gil thought, because he did it quite easily, despite all that weight.
“Let’s see what you got,” Boucicaut said, pounding his mitt.
The thrill washed through Gil again. He rubbed the ball in his hands, felt the softness of the old, oiled cowhide, saw the signature in the yellow glow of the outside light: Babe Ruth. He slid his left hand into the glove, gripped the ball across the seams with his right.
“Give me a sign,” he said.
Boucicaut smiled a thin smile and held his index finger along the inside of his thigh. Gil toed an imaginary rubber, went into his windup. It all came back, the slow and easy pivot, left leg coming up, arm sweeping back, nice and loose. He even remembered to point the ball for an instant straight at center field; it felt tiny, his hand huge. He himself felt huge, light, full of possibility. And then he was bringing it all up and forward, bending his back, bearing down, closing his shoulder, snapping his wrist like a whip: perfection. He let go and followed through, left leg whipping around, knuckles almost in the mud. The ball flew in high and blazing.
But too high? And blazing perhaps only for Boucicaut, who got his mitt up oh so slowly, barely managing to tip it. The ball sailed up out of the yellow dome of light and into the woods, crashing softly out of sight.
“Ball one,” said Boucicaut, laughing. Gil didn’t join in. Ball one, maybe, but catchable. He kept the thought to himself.
They got flashlights from the trailer, poked beams of light between the tree trunks.
“Know any of these collectors?” asked Boucicaut, kicking at a soggy mound of leaves.
“What collectors?”
“Knife collectors.”
“A few.”
“How many knives have they got, guys like that?”
“Of my old man’s? I know one who’s got twenty at least. And hundreds of knives all together-Randalls, Scagels, Morseths.”
“Hundreds? At four grand apiece?”
“They’re not all worth that.”
“But some?”
“Some.”
“They must keep them at the bank or something, right?”
“Not the ones I know,” said Gil, thinking of Mr. Hale, with his velvet-lined drawers; and his safe, behind the photograph of Mrs. Hale and her fencing team.
They searched the woods for twenty minutes or so. No ball.
Boucicaut whistled. The black mongrel bounded out of the shadows. “Find the ball, Nig,” said Boucicaut.
But Nig couldn’t find it either.
“Goddamn it,” said Gil. Nig stiffened.
“It was probably a fake,” Boucicaut said. “Let’s get something to drink.”
A good idea. Gil’s elbow was starting to hurt. “We’ll find it in the morning,” he said.
“Sure, Gilly.”
