“Girma, it might be good if—”
“Take me now!” shouted Girma, raising the gun and firing a round through the roof of the truck.
Chapter 25
A diehard baseball fan, Zen Stockard had adopted the Nationals as his favorite team partly because he loved underdogs, and partly by necessity — they were the only team in town. He had a pair of season tickets in a special handicapped box, and often used them to conduct business — though any baseball outing with Senator Stockard was generally more pleasure than business, as long as the home team won.
Tonight, with the Nationals down 5–1 to the Mets after three innings, pleasure was hard to come by.
“A little better pitching would go a long way,” said Dr. Peter Esrang, Zen’s companion for the night. Esrang was a psychiatrist — and not coincidentally, a doctor Zen had personally asked to take an interest in Mark Stoner’s case.
“Jones always has trouble in the first inning,” said Zen. “He gets a couple of guys on and the pressure mounts.”
“Psychological issue, obviously,” said Esrang.
“But after the first, he’s fine,” said Zen as Jones threw ball four to the Mets leadoff batter in the top of the fourth.
“I don’t know,” said Esrang, watching the runner take a large lead off first.
Jones threw a curve ball, which the Mets clean-up hitter promptly bounced toward second. A blink of an eye later the Nats had turned a double play.
“Now watch,” said Zen. “He’ll walk this guy on straight fastballs.”
There was a slider in the middle of the sequence, but Zen was right — the player never took his bat off shoulder.
“How would you fix this guy?” he asked Esrang. He pushed his wheelchair back and angled slightly to see his guest’s face.
“My specialty isn’t sports,” said Esrang. “But I wonder if it might be some sort of apprehension and overstimulation at first. Nervousness, in layman’s terms. His pitches seem a lot sharper than they were in the first inning.”
“Could be,” said Zen.
“A variation of performance anxiety.”
“So what do you do?”
“Have him pitch a lot of first innings,” said Esrang. He laughed. “Of course, that’s not going to work well for the team.”
“Maybe if he pitched
“That would be another approach.” Esrang sipped his beer. “Break through that barrier.”
“Change the scoreboard so it looks like it’s the second inning?” asked Zen. “Or hypnotize him.”
“I don’t trust hypnotism,” said Esrang. “But if you could change his environment, even slightly, it might work.”
A perfect segue, thought Zen. “I wonder if something like that would work with Mark.”
Esrang was silent for a moment.
“Do you think it would?” asked Zen.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I was wondering if perhaps he might go out for short visits,” said Zen. “Little trips.”
“Senator, your friend is a potentially dangerous individual. Not a big league pitcher.”
“Jones is pretty dangerous himself,” laughed Zen as a ball headed toward the right field bleachers.
Zen let the subject rest for a while, ordering two beers and sticking to baseball. The doctor surely felt sandbagged, but in the end that wasn’t going to matter one bit — eventually they were going to help Stoner. Somehow.
A pop fly to the catcher ended the Mets half of the inning. The Nationals manufactured a run in the bottom half with an error, a steal, and two long fly ball outs.
Jones struck out the side in the top of the second, his only ball missing the strike zone by perhaps a quarter of an inch.
A shadow swung over the sky near the edge of the stadium as the players ran to the dugout. Esrang’s head jerked up. Zen followed his gaze.
“What’s that airplane?” asked the doctor.
“That’s security,” said Zen. “The D.C. police are using UAVs to patrol some of the airspace over the past few weeks.”
“It’s a Predator?”
“No, civilian,” said Zen. “The plane is smaller. But the idea is basically the same. They have infrared and optical cameras. They’re just testing them for crowd control right now. A few weeks, though, and they’ll be using them to give out tickets.”
“Really?”
“That’s what they claim.”
“Hmmm.”
“Personally, I think the money would be better spent on foot patrols.” Zen was on the committee that oversaw D.C. funding, and had actually voted against the allocation, even though it was mostly funded by a private grant. “High tech has its limits. You need people on the ground, in the loop. Here you’re spending the equivalent of six police officers — I’d rather have the people.”
“I can’t disagree,” said the psychiatrist.
“Plus, I’ll probably be the one getting the ticket,” laughed Zen.
A roar rose from the crowd. Zen turned in time to see a ball head over the right field fence.
“Here we go,” he told Esrang. “Brand new ballgame.”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea,” said the psychiatrist. “But we have to be careful.”
“The UAVs won’t give out the tickets themselves.”
“I mean with Mark.”
“Oh, of course.”
“The drugs they used, we don’t have a good handle on the effects,” said Esrang. “We don’t know exactly if they’ve made him psychotic. He’s very focused; he’s very internal. I can’t completely predict what he’ll do.”
“He hasn’t harmed anyone since he’s been in custody. Or done anything aggressive.”
“I realize that. I know. But—”
The Nationals third baseman cracked a hard shot down the first baseline. Esrang jumped from his seat to watch as the player zipped past first, took a wide turn at second, and raced for third. He slid in under the tag.
“Not bad,” Esrang told Zen, sitting back. “But I would never have given him a green light on three balls and no strikes.”
“No.” Zen held his gaze for a moment. “Sometimes you take a chance, and it works out.”
“Hmmm,” said Esrang.
Chapter 26
Nuri gave Gerard a big wave as he walked through the large pavilion. The African was more animated today than he’d been the day before; he actually nodded back.
“I just dropped off the medicines you asked for at your clinic,” Nuri told him, setting down his rucksack and
