Forced Out (29 page)

"What do you mean?"

"Not if you keep thinking Mikey Clemant is so good."

Jack wanted like hell to tell MJ about everything he'd dug up on the Retrosheet website last night, but he didn't want to seem like a little kid who couldn't keep a secret, either. In fact, he'd found himself respecting MJ's demeanor more and more. It seemed like the young man was in control of himself and the situation all the time. Jack rolled his eyes but made sure MJ couldn't see him do it. Jesus, a sixty-three-year-old man wanting to be like a sixteen-year-old boy. How embarrassing was that? "So then why
did
she let you come today if she hates sports so much?" he asked, putting off the bring-the-house-down story about Mikey Clemant a little while longer. Prouder of himself every second he was able to hold off shouting the incredible news.

"Because she likes you."

That came as a shock. "Really?"

"She doesn't like many people, either," MJ continued, "but she definitely took a shine to you, Ahab. For the life of me, I can't figure out why."

"What's that supposed to mean? Why not?"

"There isn't much to like about you."

Jack caught a gleam in MJ's eyes. "There sure is. I'm cute. Damn cute."

"You're an old grouch."

"Maybe. But people can like old grouches. Especially ones like me." MJ pointed at the Publix store where they'd worked as they passed it. "Ned Anderson sure doesn't."

"Ned Anderson isn't human," Jack retorted, thinking about how much he hated the store manager. "When I said everyone likes me, I meant everyone human. Ned turned into an alien when they made him a store manager."

MJ snickered. "You might be right. I thought I noticed a couple of bumps on his head one time. Maybe they were his antennae."

They shared a long, loud laugh.

Jack shook his head as the laughter subsided. "Your mom's a tough love. A couple of times I thought she was gonna pull a shotgun out from underneath that skirt and blow some buckshot in my ass while I was hightailing it for my car. The way she was carrying on and waving her finger at me about getting you fired and then convincing you to be a batboy." MJ was howling with laughter again. "Especially after I told her I wasn't sure when I'd be able to pay you." Laughing harder than Jack had ever seen him laugh. Out of control for the first time. "What is it? What's so funny?"

"She did that to Daddy once," MJ explained, wiping moisture from the corners of his eyes. "She chased him out of the house and nailed him in the butt from the front porch. Shot off half a cheek. Almost got his, well, you know. Which was what I think she was really aiming at. The doc in the emergency room said it was a heck of a shot. Daddy had to sleep on his stomach for a month."

"She go to jail?"

"Nah. The cops thought it was hilarious. They told her she'd shown a lot of restraint not shooting him somewhere else more important. They wrote up their report like it was self-defense. Like he'd been hitting her. They didn't like him much. Daddy didn't fight it, either."

"How come?"

"I don't know," MJ answered evasively. "He just didn't."

"Why'd she shoot him?" Right away Jack was sorry he'd asked. A dark cloud covered the kid's face, and his chin dropped. "My bad," he said apologetically. "It's none of my business. I shouldn't have asked, son." It was the first time he'd ever called MJ, son. But it felt right. "Hey, I got something I gotta tell you about--"

"It's okay," MJ interrupted. "She shot him 'cause she caught him in bed with another woman. With a friend of hers from down the lane."

Jack winced. "That sucks."

"She caught him doing it again a few months later with another woman, after his ass had healed. Caught him in their bed. He thought she wasn't gonna be back for a while, thought she was gonna be at a church picnic until sunset. But she came home early because Vanessa got stung by a bee. He got out of the house diving through the bedroom window, straight through the glass and all. But Momma trapped the woman in the bathroom until the cops got there. After they convinced her to let the woman out, they told Momma that Daddy was alley-catting around all over the place. She would have shot him for sure if he'd shown up at the house again." MJ hesitated. "But he never did. That was a year ago. I haven't seen him since." He shrugged. "I don't even know if he's alive."

Jack reached over and patted MJ's shoulder. He'd heard the depth of emotion in the young man's voice. It was as close as he'd ever heard MJ come to absolute honesty, to complete vulnerability. Most sixteen-year-olds didn't know what either of those were.

"It's all right."

MJ gazed straight ahead through the windshield for a while. "Sometimes," he finally said, "when I'm out on my bike running errands for Momma, I think maybe I'll turn around and Daddy'll be standing there. We don't talk for long, just a few minutes. But he tells me he's okay. That he's got a job and a place to live. He gives me his phone number so I can call to check up on him. We end up hanging out together once in a while because we happened to run into each other that day. It ends up being a good thing." MJ

cleared his throat. "Daddy used to take me fishing every Saturday at this little bridge near the house. We'd catch bluegill and bass. We'd be alone for a few hours because nobody else ever came there to fish. It was like our secret spot, and he used to tell me things those days, used to tell me how to look at life. What to watch out for, how to size people up, how to tell whether you could trust someone. Things I remember all the time, things I use all the time." His voice was barely a whisper. "You know, he wasn't much of a father, but he was a good dad." MJ turned toward Jack. "Does that make sense to you?"

This kid was something else. "Yeah, it does."

"I'd like to see him just one more time. Maybe go fishing with him again at that little bridge. I got some things I'd like to say to him. Nothing bitter, just things. Know what I mean?"

Jack nodded. He'd picked up the phone a thousand times over the past thirty-five years but never made that one call he wanted to make. He'd always put the phone back down before dialing that last digit because when he really thought about it, it seemed like it was better left a fantasy. Seemed like at that critical moment it was better not to know. Now that he was sixty-three, he wished he had made the call, wished he'd had the courage to follow through. But now it was too late. Now it had to stay a fantasy, had to remain an unknown. He nodded ever so subtly. Oh, yeah, he knew
exactly
what MJ

meant.

They drove in silence for a long time.

When Tarpon Stadium appeared over the palm trees, MJ spoke up. "So, did you find it?" Jack glanced over. "Find what?"

MJ was grinning from ear to ear. "The website. The one with all the box scores. Retrosheet."

Elation rushed through Jack's entire body. All the way to his fingertips and toes. "You found it, too?" he asked excitedly.

"Yup. Right after I talked to you on the phone."

But how? Jack asked himself. From the looks of the house, Yolanda Billups didn't have two nickels to rub together. "You got a computer at the house? And Internet?"

"I know, I know. You think we're too poor to have a computer. And we probably are," MJ admitted. "We probably shouldn't have spent five hundred bucks on it and we probably shouldn't be spending fifteen bucks a month on Web access, either. But Momma wants us all to be smart. She figures we need Internet to be smart these days. She figures it's the best way for kids to learn these days."

"Your momma's no fool."

"She's the best mom in the world," MJ said proudly. "So, did you look at it?"

"I had to call the Elias Sports Bureau first to find it, but
yeah, I looked at it.
" Jack whooped suddenly like he'd just struck out the last batter in game seven of the World Series. He couldn't keep it bottled up anymore. He wasn't like MJ. He had to show how ecstatic he was, had to let his joy run wild. "Could you believe it?" MJ raised both eyebrows like it surprised him, too. "Which part?" Jack caught the look. It was the first time he'd seen that expression on MJ's face. An expression of total disbelief. "The part about the Kid having the same game as Mickey Mantle on the
same
day. Same hits in the same order. Home run, single--"

"Home run, single, home run, double, single," MJ cut in, shaking his head. "I know. It's incredible. It's an incredible
coincidence
."

"Coincidence?"
Jack's jaw almost hit the steering wheel. "Coinci--"

"Look out!" MJ shouted, pointing over the dashboard.

Jack slammed on the brakes, and the Citation came to a grinding halt just inches behind a BMW stopped at a red light. He let out a relieved breath. He didn't have car insurance, either.

"Yeah, coincidence," MJ repeated firmly. "That's all it was. Don't get your hopes up, Ahab. I know what you're thinking."

"What's that?" Jack demanded, his heart still thumping from the near collision. "What do you
think
I'm thinking?"

"You're thinking this Kid is copying Mickey Mantle's 1968 season," MJ answered bluntly. "You think he's hitting exactly what Mickey Mantle hit in each game. Like anyone could really do that."

Jack nodded. Exactly. That
was
what he was thinking. "Yeah, okay. Look, I know it's crazy," he admitted, watching the BMW driver flick a cigarette butt out the window. God, he wanted to hop out, snatch up the burning cigarette, and toss it back into the BMW. He'd always wanted to do that once. "I know it's wild to think anyone could be that good at any level of baseball. I don't care if it's you or me playing T-ball against a bunch of six-year-olds." The light turned green, and Jack followed the BMW through the intersection. They were almost to the stadium turnoff. "I know how insane it sounds. But still. He had that game yesterday, and it's the same game Mantle had forty years ago on the exact same date." He flipped on the blinker. "All we have to do is get the Tarpons'

play-by-play box scores from this season and match them up. I looked at the game Mantle had before the May 30 game," Jack went on, "and he was one-for-four on May 26 of 1968. The Kid had the same game four days ago, on the twenty-sixth. I couldn't tell if it was as exactly the same like it was last night because all I had was the newspaper box score. I couldn't tell if they had the same hit in the same inning or not because I didn't have the play-by-play, but we should be able to get our hands on all that stuff, right?"

"Yeah," MJ agreed, "we should."

Jack pulled into the stadium, then steered to the employee parking lot near the executive offices. "It'd be great if we could get the Kid to admit he's doing this," Jack suggested, putting the car in park and cutting the engine. "I know that's gonna be tough, but you can do it, MJ. Get close to him, drop a hint about what you know, convince him you're a good guy and you just want to help him." Jack puffed out his cheeks like he knew what a long shot it was. "I'm worried he might take off if he finds out I'm on to what he did last night. He didn't like the fact that I was with the Yankees when I talked to him at the Dugout. That seemed to scare him. But you're not gonna scare him." Jack's eyes narrowed. MJ was off in another world, apparently not listening. Jack tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"You hear what I said?"

"I heard, but it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter?
What in the hell's your problem?"

"I don't have a problem. I just don't want to get caught up in a crazy fantasy."

"How can you say it's a fantasy? Facts are facts. I'm no statistics guru, but the odds are probably a billion to one that Clemant would have exactly the same game as Mantle on exactly the same day of the year. Hell, the odds are probably even higher than that. It's worth at least checking out, don't you think?"

MJ pursed his lips. "I took awhile coming out of the clubhouse last night. I didn't come out right after the game was over."

"I know. It pissed me off, too. So what?"

"I took awhile because Clemant pulled me aside, said he wanted to talk to me. He had me meet him in a training room down the hall from the locker room. We went there separately because he was worried about somebody seeing us walking together. I was kind of worried about the whole thing, worried maybe he was gonna smack me for something he thought I said about him behind his back. Or something he thought I did. But I went anyway because I'm supposed to be getting you information. Anyway, all he wanted to do was thank me for bringing his stuff out to him for the top of the ninth when no one else would. You know, his cap and glove."

"That's great," Jack exclaimed, remembering how MJ had met the Kid in front of the pitcher's mound. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"He asked me if maybe I wanted to grab lunch sometime and talk. Not about anything serious, just about baseball and regular stuff. He said he wasn't the bad guy everybody thought he was." MJ's voice was low. "Said he wanted a friend, someone to talk to. Said he couldn't open up to many people because of something in his past." Jack could barely believe his ears, barely control his excitement. "That's
great
. You're in. I mean, we're as good as--"

"Then he asked me not to tell anybody. Asked me if I could do that for him. Asked me if he could trust me. Said people he cared about could get in trouble if I told anyone what he was telling me."

"Aw, that's a crock of--"

"I've already broken my promise," MJ interrupted, "by telling you all this. I think he was serious about people he cared about getting in trouble. I don't think it was a crock. He seemed real serious, seemed like he was getting emotional. Nervous, too. I feel bad." They stared at each other for several moments, then Jack finally nodded. "Okay, fine. I respect your--"

"I'll only do it for you on one condition," MJ broke in.

"What's that?"

"Promise not to tell anyone. That it doesn't go any farther than the two of us." MJ

drummed his fingers on his thigh nervously. "I promised to get you information. I don't want to let you down."