Forced Out (34 page)

"From the city?"

"No, Queens."

"Oh. Well, we lived on Long Island before we moved here a few years ago."

"Yeah, I know. You're dad told me on the way over."

Cheryl saw him looking toward the door. "Daddy had to go out," she explained. "One of his friends is sick and wanted to see him." God. She'd known him only a few minutes and she was already lying to him. Great. Thanks, Daddy. "He shouldn't be long."

"No problem."

But she sensed that Jack had been right. If she hadn't stayed, he probably would have been out the door. "I'll make you something to eat in a few minutes," she offered, pulling the little girl's pink blanket up over her chest. "Once the baby's really asleep. Okay?"

"I am kinda hungry, ma'am," the Kid admitted, smiling at her. A sexy half smile she wanted more of right away. "How about a ham sandwich and some chips?"

"Maybe for an appetizer," he said with an easy laugh. "How about a big, thick steak and some mashed potatoes instead?"

"Well, I--"

"I'm kidding," he said good-naturedly. "A ham sandwich would be great. I'd really appreciate it." He patted his flat stomach. "It's just that I eat a little more than most people."

"I bet you do," she agreed, her eyes doing another quick scan. She liked the Kid, she couldn't deny it. He was young and maybe a little rough around the edges. But he had a disarming confidence about him. And then there was that body.

She'd convinced herself she was attracted to Bobby even though Bobby's inner self had turned out to be harder to find than a Manhattan taxi in a summer thunderstorm. Maybe she'd gotten past that empty spot in his personality because he was willing to say he loved her--a lot. And consistently be the first one to say it during their conversations. Unlike
any
of her previous boyfriends. And maybe she'd gotten past all Bobby's faults because he was by far the best-looking guy who'd ever paid attention to her. Which didn't make her feel great about herself, but at least she was finally admitting it. Well, the Kid had already had a positive influence on her.

She was suddenly aware that she was staring at him--and he was staring back. She glanced down at Rosario and caressed her soft hair.

Kyle was handsome in a rugged way. Even more so if she imagined him without that beard. He had gorgeous gray eyes flecked with burnt yellow; a strong jaw; and, when he smiled, two very deep dimples. She liked the rock star long hair, too. It was wild and provocative. The beard had to go, but the long hair could stay. And up close, her father was right. Kyle was even bigger than he looked on the field. He was going to drive the women in New York City crazy if Daddy got him to the Yankees.

"Let me make one thing clear," she said firmly.

Kyle looked up apprehensively. "What?"

"I don't want you calling me 'ma'am' anymore."

"Why not?"

"It's aggravating."

"Huh?"

"It makes me feel old."

He looked at her like she was crazy. "
Old
? What are you, like twenty-five?" So he was charming, too. "Now you're doing better," she said with a smile she couldn't control, gently pulling the pink blanket up around the baby's neck. Sometimes she switched the blanket out after Rosario fell asleep and slept with it herself, she loved the baby's scent so much. "Tell me about this game you had last night." Daddy had recounted the story at the door before leaving to meet with whoever Biff was. "When you copied Mickey Mantle. When you had the same hits he did on May 30, 1968. In the same order." She watched his reaction. "Are you really that good?"

"Maybe I just got lucky."

She'd heard a defensiveness creep into his tone. "Is that what you were trying to do?

Were you trying to copy Mantle's game in 1968?"

"Yeah, I was," he admitted.

She liked his voice, too. It was deep, gravelly. "Then why are you playing on a bottomof-the-barrel Single-A independent team in Sarasota, Florida? My dad says you're one of the greatest baseball talents he's ever seen. And believe me, he knows what he's talking about. If you can hit exactly what you want in five straight at-bats, I have to agree with him."

The Kid was quiet for a few moments. "Was your dad really a scout for the Yankees?" Cheryl nodded. She could tell he was searching for proof, could tell he wanted to make sure they were who they claimed to be. Apparently, as Daddy had guessed, there was something lurking beneath the surface, and before he spilled his guts, he was going to make damn sure who he was talking to. Which was smart. Well, if it was proof Kyle McLean wanted, it was proof he'd get. "Want to see the scrapbooks?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay." She rose off the couch, placed two pillows between the baby and the floor, then waved for Kyle to follow. "Come on."

He stopped at her bedroom doorway. "Okay if I come in?"

Now, that was a breath of fresh air, she thought. A guy who actually asked. "It's fine." She gestured for him to sit on the bed, then moved to the closet and pulled down a threeinch-thick scrapbook from the shelf above a line of wire hangers. For twenty minutes they sat side by side, looking at picture after picture of Jack standing with Yankee greats in baseball stadiums all over the country. In Central America and Japan, too. Mantle, Maris, Munson, Catfish Hunter, Reggie, Bucky Dent, Goose Gossage, Guidry, Mattingly, Bernie Williams, Jeter. Three and a half decades of Yankee history. Of American history.

"Jesus," Kyle whispered as Cheryl closed the back cover. "That's amazing." He shook his head. "I wish I could be one those guys."

"Daddy says you could be. He says he could get you a--"

"Why'd your father quit?" the Kid asked. "I mean, he had a pretty cool job, and he doesn't look that old. The Yankees have done pretty well the past few years, so I doubt there's been any major shake-ups."

Cheryl replaced the scrapbook on the closet shelf. She wanted to tell Kyle the story, but she couldn't. It was up to Daddy to decide to do that. "He got burned out," she said simply, sitting back down on the bed. "You know how much travel there is. It finally got to him."

He stared at her for a few moments.

Like he didn't really believe her. She looked away so he wouldn't see the truth. Those eyes of his were something.
Really
something. They searched you like a CSI team. Carefully and methodically. While they drew you in. "Let me ask you a question," she spoke up, trying to turn things around. "Daddy's tracked your games this season on the Tarpon website, and he's compared them to Mickey Mantle's 1968 season. He says a lot of them match up exactly to Mantle's but that some of them--"

"I can't always do it," Kyle cut in. "Sometimes the other team's pitcher walks me intentionally, or pitches me so far outside I'd have to reach London to get the pitch. Or sometimes he hits me. I can't control those things."

Cheryl felt a wild thrill rush through her. The Kid was admitting to what Daddy had suspected--that he could hit whatever he wanted to whenever he wanted to unless the pitch was in another time zone. At least, he could in Single-A. "But Daddy said today's game wasn't anything like the game Mantle had on May 31st in 1968. He said you popped up four times. Mantle didn't have a single pop-up in his game in 1968. And he said the guy was giving you pitches you could have hit."

The Kid smiled. "You sound like you know your baseball."

"You have to when your father is Jack Barrett." She'd heard the bitterness in her voice, wished she hadn't. But she couldn't help it, especially after this morning. "He's a wonderful man, and I love--"

"Do you have brothers and sisters?"

His voice was melodic, too. Not singsong, but comforting, even with his words washing over gravel. "A brother."

"Baseball player?"

"What do you think?"

"Pretty good high school player, right? But not good enough to make the pros. Probably good enough for college somewhere, but that would have been it." Cheryl nodded, remembering the conversation at dinner that night when David had told Daddy he wasn't going to college. That he was going straight to the fire department because he knew he wasn't good enough to play in the big leagues. That if he wasn't playing baseball, there was no reason to go to college. "How'd you know?"

"Your expression," he answered. "I've seen it before so many times. I saw so many fathers at my high school games hoping like hell their sons could make it to the Show. Fathers who believed they could, believed their sons could be like me. Then they finally figured out it wasn't going to happen. But they held on to the dream even after their sons had already given it up."

Cheryl stared at the Kid intently. "Exactly," she said, her voice hushed. "That was how it was with Daddy and my brother, David."

"Then after the dads have that come-to-Jesus walk in the woods with themselves and they admit to themselves that the dream's drying up and blowing away like last fall's leaves, they try to make it up to their other kids by giving them more attention. But it's too late by then. So they go back to the son. Then the whole thing turns into a nightmare."

She didn't want to linger here. Kyle was getting too close to the heart of the matter, and she didn't know him well enough to go so deep so fast. "You're good at turning conversations around."

"I have to be."

"Because you have a gift."

The Kid nodded. "Yeah. If you wanna call it that."

She saw that in turn he appreciated her understanding of his dilemma. The way he'd innately understood hers. "But today. Why today? Why so different than Mantle?"

"I got worried," he answered, his voice growing tense for the first time. "The local TV

station kept showing replays of last night's game over and over. They were still doing it this morning. The sports guys in town kept talking about the game. I heard the highlights even made it to ESPN." He looked down and shook his head. "I figured some people might hear about it. People who...well, people."

She took his hand in both of hers. "What people?"

His gaze turned defiant. "Bad people," he said quietly, his voice cracking. "Real bad people."

* * *

Jack watched from the shadows as Biff and Harry wheeled the stretcher down the path from the front door, emergency lights bouncing crazily off the lawn and the big house. The county cop had left a minute ago, and soon the house would be empty. They lifted the elderly woman into the back of the ambulance, then Harry hauled himself into the truck with her and pulled the doors shut while Biff retraced his steps to the front door. He was there just a few moments, then he jogged down the path again, jumped into the front of the ambulance, and the vehicle roared off.

It was the perfect setup, Biff had claimed excitedly on the phone. The mother lode. The one they'd been waiting for. A rich old widow who lived alone in a big house in a neighborhood that wasn't gated. Easy access and easy escape. He was going to leave the front door open so Jack could get in. There were jewels everywhere in the master bedroom suite. Dripping off the old woman's dressing table, nightstand, and the bathroom counter. Tens of thousands of dollars' worth, maybe more. They'd split it fiftyfifty tomorrow. Jack took a deep breath and sighed, then moved out of the bushes toward the front door, head down. How the hell had it come to this?

38

W
HAT'S THE MATTER, Deuce?" the old man asked gruffly. "Why'd you have to see me right away? Why the panic attack?"

"Whadaya mean? Nobody's panicking."

"Yeah?"

"I'm fine, Angelo."

Marconi hesitated. "You sure you're all right, Deuce?"

"Of course."

Johnny was teetering on the edge of terrified as he watched the old man gorge on the last few bites of a thick, nearly raw rib eye. He was doing all he could to make it seem like everything was normal--despite the bullet hole and the dread--but it was tough. Nicky had claimed Marconi was fine with a quick meeting when they spoke earlier on the phone as Johnny was driving like a bat out of hell back up the Jersey Turnpike from Edison, fighting his body's urge to pass out. Nicky said Marconi was going to eat a late supper, then had one more meeting, at midnight. So coming by the row house at about nine-thirty wouldn't be a problem. When Johnny knocked on the front door a few minutes ago, Nicky opened it as usual, and was his usual respectful self. After Johnny had given the first password, it was smooth sailing up the steps to the second floor. Everything seemed fine.

Then things changed. There was a new guy standing outside Marconi's bedroom door. An even bigger and seedier-looking guy than Goliath. The guy asked for the second password twice and took a long time frisking him. Now Marconi seemed wary. When the old man was relaxed, his dark eyebrows were spread far apart. But when he got suspicious, they came together until they looked like one long caterpillar. The caterpillar was definitely coming to life.

"And whadaya mean, 'you sure you're all right?'"

"You seem jumpy. And you're sweatin' like a turkey outside a kitchen door on Thanksgiving. It ain't
that
warm in here." The old man pointed at Johnny's shoulder.

"You got a problem?"

"Nah. Why?"

"You keep moving it. Like something's wrong with it."

Christ, Marconi never missed a trick. "I'm fine. It's an old injury from high school. From when I was in this motorcycle accident. It gets stiff when it rains, you know? I'm gettin'

older. Sucks. You can understand."

"Yeah, sure." Marconi's expression turned grave and his eyebrows pinched even closer together. "So what's going on?"

It was a risk coming here. A
big
risk. Maybe all the normal stuff with Nicky had just been a well-choreographed plan to get him here so they could kill him. Marconi knew Strazza was dead at this point, and Johnny assumed the old man would staple the guilt for the hit directly on him. It only made sense. He'd been the mark, so he must be the killer. That might be enough right there to get the death sentence. Yeah, that feeling of terror he was trying desperately to fight was absolutely justified. But offsetting the primal fear was one thing Johnny figured at least gave him a fighting chance, at least gave him an opportunity to bargain. Marconi's biggest objective in all of this was still to kill Kyle McLean, to get revenge for his grandson's death. Johnny was betting that McLean's murder still took precedence over everything else in Marconi's life right now. Even family business. Mostly because the old man sensed that after all this time he was finally close, about to get that long-awaited payback. So it made sense for Marconi to let him come here. Why the hell not let Johnny in the den? Why not see what he was offering, understand why he'd begged for the meeting?