“Jesus Christ,” said the catcher. “I really can smell the fuckin’ piss. This is gross.”
A fog? A shadow? A blanking out? Yes, but only when he swung. If he just watched it and didn’t swing he saw it perfectly. Bobby, hands on his knees in center field, remembered Coach Cole: Can’t be seein’ it, that’s all. You might think you are, but you’re not. So either you need your eyes checked or there’s something on your mind. Blockin’ you, if you get what I mean.
Blocked. But only if he swung. Could it be true? In the bleachers a man screamed, “Rayburn, you fuckin’ thief!” Bobby couldn’t wait to bat again.
He came up in the seventh. Tie game, two out, no one on. New pitcher: a rookie Bobby had never seen. A rookie with heat. He threw Bobby four blazing pitches, none of them close. Bobby watched them all the way: coffee table. But that didn’t prove anything, he thought, taking his lead off first. He stole second on the next pitch. Washington flied out, and Bobby walked back into the dugout, thinking: blocked, but only if I swing? Could it be true?
He batted in the ninth, down by a run, with Primo on second, Zamora on first, nobody out. They gave him the bunt sign. Bobby was a number-three hitter. He hadn’t seen a bunt sign in years. He stepped out, looked down to third, got the bunt sign again. Bobby stared down at the third-base coach, watched him go through it one more time. Were they paying him whatever the hell number of millions it was to bunt?
“Why don’t you be more obvious about it?” said the catcher. The third baseman moved in toward the edge of the grass.
Bobby stepped back in. Never got the bunt sign, but he’d always been a good bunter. He could handle the bat.
The pitch. Fastball, high and tight, hardest pitch to bunt. Bobby pivoted with the bat head up, saw the ball coffee-table clear not halfway to the plate but all the way, and laid down a beauty, deadening it just right. The ball bumped and rolled lazily down the third-base line. There was nothing the third baseman could do but watch it roll foul, which it did, by an inch. The third baseman picked it up, and everyone went back a base, Primo to second, Zamora to first, Bobby to the plate.
They gave him the bunt sign again. In came another fastball high and tight, but this time a little too high, a little too tight. Bobby laid off.
“Steee,” said the ump.
Bobby gave him a look. The ump looked right back; that’s the way they were now, bitter assholes, every one.
Two strikes. They took off the bunt sign. The next pitch was a split-finger inside. Bobby watched it. Coffee table. Ball one. Then two more balls, both curves in the dirt, both coffee table. Full count.
Bobby had no idea what the next pitch would be. Nobody out: could be anything. Pitcher in the stretch. The pitch. Fastball, but with a little something funky on it. In the zone. Coffee table. Bobby went for it, and as he did the fog, the shadow, came from nowhere, or rather from right behind his eyes, and he missed the ball completely.
“Steee-ryyyy.”
Blocked, except for bunting. It was like cutting off his balls.
Washington walked. Sanchez flied out, not advancing the runners. Lanz K’d. Game over.
After, in the locker room, a little guy with glasses came up to Bobby. “Bobby?”
“Who the fuck-” And then Bobby recognized him-the community-relations guy. “What is it?”
“Call for you.”
“Did you screen it?”
“It’s Mr. Wald,” said the DCR, handing him a phone.
“Bobby?”
“Yeah?”
“Tough game.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s no go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Primo.”
“I know that. What do you mean?”
“No go. At any price.”
“There’s no such fucking thing. You told me yourself.”
“I’m just the messenger.”
Bobby clicked off. He showered and dressed. Blocked: and he knew why.
Primo was still in front of his stall, wrapped in a towel, beer can on the rug beside him, playing Nintendo. Bobby walked over. Primo kept his eyes on the screen.
“I think we should talk,” Bobby said. “No agents. No bullshit.”
“Talk,” said Primo, not looking up.
“Not here.”
Primo avoided a falling anvil and shot the head off an attacker who looked half man, half tulip. “You know Cleats?” he said.
“No.”
Primo told him how to get there.
Bobby went out to the players’ lot. The blonde whose name Lanz couldn’t remember spoke through the fence.
“Hi, Bobby,” she said.
“Gotta run,” he said. But he gave her a smile.
Bobby arrived at Cleats before Primo. There was a lineup. He was recognized right away and shown to the only empty table, in an alcove under the crossed bats of Aaron and Mays. There was one other table in the alcove. Two men sat at it, drinking beer and shots of some pale gold liquid that might have been tequila. They were both big, one in good shape, wearing a suit, the other fat and black-bearded, wearing a black-and-red-checked lumberman’s jacket. The cleanshaven one glanced at Bobby. His eyes glazed over; Bobby couldn’t tell if the man recognized him or not.
“What can I do for you, Bobby?” said the waitress.
Primo walked in, his Jheri-curled hair silvered in the rays of the big-screen TV.
16
“ Here’s a riddle,” Boucicaut said, walking into the trailer.
“I don’t like riddles,” Gil told him.
“You’ll like this one,” Boucicaut replied. “What’s the best thing about living in ski country?”
Gil thought.
“Give up?”
Gil nodded.
“No one thinks twice if you’re wearing a ski mask,” Boucicaut said, holding up two of them. “Get it?”
Gil didn’t answer-his mouth had suddenly gone dry. He got it, all right.
Boucicaut smiled. “Red or black?”
Gil shrugged, not wanting to commit himself out loud. Boucicaut tossed him the red one, tried on the black himself. “How do I look?” he asked.
Not safe.
Boucicaut was still smiling. With his face obscured, those misshapen teeth could have belonged to some other species.
It was all implicit after that. They left the 325i parked behind the trailer, took Boucicaut’s pickup instead, never discussing the reason why, but both knowing it. Both thinking silently together-like a longtime battery, like the
