Green Monster (15 page)

Kenny nodded to his bouncers. Sam held the gun on them while Daly, Heather, and Miranda walked down the stairs. Then Sam started to follow, but he turned back to address Kenny.

“The name's Sam Skarda, Kenny. Like you said, anytime, anywhere.”

Kenny was disinclined to make a smart comeback with the muzzle of a Glock pointed at his balls.

Sam found Heather, Miranda, and Daly on the sidewalk outside the club. Miranda was patting Heather and stroking the back of her head.

“Thanks, Alberto,” Sam said. “I'm glad you came back.”

“No problem, man,” Miranda said. He had his arm around Heather's waist. “That fuckin' Kenny's a weasel.”

“Here's my card.” Sam took one out of his billfold and handed it to Miranda. “If you want to talk…”

“Nothing to talk about, man. Like I told you, I played my best in the Series. I got nothing more to say.”

But Miranda took the card and put it in his coat pocket. He asked Heather one more time if she was all right, and she smiled at him and said she'd be fine. He gave her a long squeeze, and their eyes lingered on each other for another moment. Then Miranda walked over to the valet stand and asked to have his car brought around. He pulled out his phone and made a call while he was waiting. By the time the valet brought his car—a Jaguar—Miranda had been joined by the two women who'd been sitting with him in the cabana. They both slid into the Jag with him, and he drove off—checking to make sure that Heather was looking at them as they passed by.

“What's he got that I haven't got, except looks, money, and a great body?” Daly said as Miranda's tail lights receded.

“I don't know what to make of him,” Heather said. “First he comes off as a spoiled, piggish jock, and then he turns around and…”

“Becomes your knight in shining armor,” Sam finished.

“Yeah. Strange guy…”

“I'd go with your first impression,” Daly said.

“So you think he's involved in this?” Sam asked Daly.

“I still don't know if anything happened. But he's got something up his ass.”

Sam agreed, but he was at a loss to know how to prove it. Another night had slipped by, and he was no closer to figuring out what, if anything, was going on, or who was behind the extortion note. Now there were just three days left before the money had to be wired to Babe Ruth's offshore bank account. Three days to find the Babe; after that, Kenwood was out $50,000,000, or baseball had its worst scandal in a century.

There was only one other man in town who might have some answers.

Sid Mink.

Chapter Sixteen

If Sam had been working the case as a cop, he could go to the L.A. police and talk to their organized crime unit about Mink. They could fill him in on chapter and verse of Mink's illegal activities, his known associates, his usual hangouts, and his most dangerous habits. But as a private investigator, he might not get much cooperation from cops he didn't know. And he'd probably have to give more answers than he'd get. Kenwood hadn't been willing to get the Boston cops mixed up in this, so the same caution had to apply in L.A. The story couldn't get out. Cops were pretty good at keeping their mouths shut when it came to cases they were working on, or protecting the safety of one of their own. But they could also spread a juicy rumor faster than a Hollywood gossip columnist.

There had to be another way to get in touch with Sid Mink—and fast. All he could think of was talking to another bookie—an L.A. bookie. If Mink was running the kind of enterprise everybody said he was running, the bookies would know how to reach him.

It was almost midnight when Sam and Heather got back to their hotel. He told her he was going to call Jimmy the Rabbit before turning in. She said she was going back to her room to call Lou and tell him they'd talked to Miranda. Sam was not surprised that Heather didn't suggest spending the night together. She'd had a tough night, and if there was anybody she wanted to curl up with, it would be Miranda. Since he wasn't around, she went to bed alone. That was all right with Sam—now that he knew about Heather and Kenwood, his ethics were telling him to keep his hands to himself.

Sam got an answer on Jimmy the Rabbit's cell phone.

“Jimmy?”

“Bad timing, whoever this is. I gotta get back to the table.”

“Sam Skarda. You at the card room?”

“That's right. I'm down three hundred, Sammy. I gotta get healthy.”

It was just after two a.m. Minneapolis time. Jimmy would be playing poker all night in the card room at the Canterbury Park racetrack. He could afford to take a few minutes off.

“Jimmy, I need to talk to an L.A. bookie. A guy like Bucca in Boston.”

“You in L.A. now?”

“Yeah. Santa Monica.”

“Right on the beach, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Must be nice.”

“Got a name and a number?”

“Sammy, what do I get outta this?”

“Nothing. But if I'm ever in a position to do you a favor with the Minneapolis cops…”

“Which you won't be.”

“Don't be so sure.”

“Phil Minervino.”

“How's that?”

“L.A. bookie—Phil Minervino.”

Jimmy gave Sam the number, and told him it was the same deal—wait an hour until Jimmy could call him up and vouch for Sam. Then he hung up.

Sam waited until almost one a.m. and called Minervino. He explained who he was, and said he needed to get in touch with Sid Mink. It was urgent.

“It's always urgent,” Minervino said, in a bored tone.

“You know how I can talk to him?”

“You like the ballgames?”

“Sure.”

“You can usually find Sid at Dodger Stadium. He's got a field box down the third base line. There's a game tomorrow night.”

“Got a seat number?”

“Section 25, Row 15, seats one through four.”

Sam wrote the seat numbers down, thanked Minervino and hung up. He hadn't thought it would be that easy. Apparently the mob scene was a little more laid back in L.A. than it was back east.

***

Sam was awakened by a knock on his hotel room door at ten a.m. He glanced out the window—the sun was already starting to burn through the coastline haze, and the shadow of the ten-story hotel stretched across the sand to the edge of the ocean. He had no reason to get up, and the fact was, after finishing off a couple of Scotches from the mini-bar and listening to Sade on his iPod before going to bed the night before, he didn't much feel like getting up. But he got up.

Heather was standing in the hall, wearing the white terrycloth robe, when he opened the door.

“Too early for a swim,” Sam said, turning back toward the king-sized bed, intending to crawl back in till the cobwebs cleared.

“I don't want to swim.”

He turned around to look at her again. She walked into his room, closed the door, untied the cloth belt that held the robe together, and pulled it open. This time, no string bikini.

“I feel so pale,” she said. “See? My tan lines are gone.”

She was right. Her splendid body had only the slightest trace of an old swimsuit line—one that must have been daring even for her, as the suggestion of darker skin ended just a millimeter or so above her pinkish-brown nipples. Suddenly, Sam wasn't feeling so groggy.

“Did you talk to Lou last night?” he asked.

“He'd gone to bed.”

“Did the Sox win?” He was staring at her breasts, and didn't care whether the Sox won, but he wanted to slow things down.

“They beat the Jays 3-0. Let's celebrate.”

She walked over to him, lifted the shoulders of her robe and pulled them aside, letting it drop to the floor. Then she tried to back Sam toward the bed, but he held his ground. Now that he knew Heather was going to marry Kenwood, he had made up his mind to end the sex between them.

Heather noticed the bullet wounds left by the gunshot he'd taken almost three years ago. In the sunlight coming through the balcony door, the scar tissue over the entry and exit wounds had a light purple hue. It wasn't nearly so ugly as it used to be. His knee swelled up sometimes when he'd been walking for several hours, losing most of its definition; by morning it usually resumed its normal size. Heather bent down, put her hand on one of the scars, and ran her index finger along its length. Sam sat on the edge of the bed.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

“No. When it hurts, it's inside. It wakes me up sometimes.”

“Is it ever going to be—you know, normal?”

“Not until I get a replacement. I lost too much cartilage.”

“Who shot you?”

“Bad guy. He's dead now.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No. Somebody else did.”

Heather's phone rang in the pocket of her robe, which was still lying on the floor. She reached down to get it, looked at the incoming number, and said, “It's Lou.”

Sam lay back against the headboard while Heather sat with her naked back to him and went over recent developments: They'd made contact with Alberto Miranda through Russ Daly, the Times columnist; she thought Daly could be trusted, though she didn't much like him. As for Miranda, he denied everything, but both she and Sam thought he was hiding something. There'd been a little incident at the night club where they met him last night, and he'd turned out to be a pretty good guy. She might be able to get him to talk.

“You want to talk to Sam? He's right here,” Heather said. She handed Sam the phone.

“Time's running out, Sam,” Lou said. “I'm supposed to wire the money in three days.”

Heather had crawled between Sam's legs and begun to slide up and down against him.

“I know, Lou. We're going as fast as we can here.”

Heather smiled and increased her tempo.

“You think Miranda's the key to this thing?” Kenwood asked.

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure.” Heather was slowly advancing northward, her breasts grazing his chest.

“I don't like you talking to Daly,” Kenwood said. “He's nationally syndicated. He's on ESPN all the time. This could be all over the country by tomorrow.”

Heather was now breathing in his ear, and she'd taken his free hand and placed it on her right breast.

“I trust Daly completely, Lou,” Sam said. He was fighting for control. “He could have screwed me over in Augusta, but he kept his word. He was the only way we could get to Miranda.”

Heather had her full weight on Sam now, and put her mouth on his while Kenwood said: “Everything going okay between you and Heather?”

“Fine,” Sam managed to say after pulling his lips from hers.

“I know having her around might make it more difficult for you to do your job, but I feel a lot more connected and informed if she's right there with you.”

“Connected—right,” Sam said. He clenched his teeth. “Heather's right here. She wants to talk to you again.”

He handed the phone to Heather, who pushed her hair out of her face and covered her mouth with her hand while she laughed quietly. Then she lay back on the bed and said, “We're working very well together, Lou. I don't think Sam has any complaints.”

She told Kenwood she'd call him later that day, and closed the phone.

“That was a very disrespectful way to treat your fiancé,” Sam said.

“Oh, come on.” Heather still sounded playful. “He gets what he needs from me.”

“But you don't get what you need from him?”

“No, he's great—really. But I don't think he expects me to be totally satisfied by a man who's fifty years older than I am.”

“I'll bet he does.”

“Well, then he's…unrealistic.”

Sam got up off the bed and put his pants on.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Sorry, but I've got work to do. Besides, I'm sure I'm no Alberto Miranda.”

Heather ignored the remark.

“You know, there's a piano in the lobby bar,” she said. “Why don't you play me a song the next time we're down there?”

“If there's time,” Sam said.

In fact, he had no intention of playing a song for Heather. He knew what happened whenever he played piano or guitar for a woman. There was something almost unfair about it, as though he somehow magically became Billy Joel, or Bruce Springsteen, or Harry Connick, Jr., or whoever their favorite singer was. Sam had no qualms about using that effect to his advantage, but only when he wanted the relationship to go somewhere. He realized he had been betraying his client, and that led to thoughts about how Caroline would react if she knew. Heather saw no moral dilemma, but that didn't absolve Sam—or make it any easier to break it off with her, either. If he gave up the sex, he wasn't all that sure he would like what was left between them.

“I've got some calls to make,” Sam said. “Then we're going to Dodger Stadium tonight to meet Sid Mink.”

“Oh? Is he expecting us?”

“My guess is yes.”

Heather went down to the pool while Sam called Doug Stensrud at the Minneapolis Police Department. His old chief of detectives was at his desk when Sam's call went through.

“Hey, I haven't heard from you since your retirement bash,” Stensrud said. “What's new?”

Stensrud had been Sam's first partner when he joined the force, but after Doug got promoted, he and Sam had developed a more formal relationship. Stensrud had taken it personally when Sam decided not to return to his job in the detective bureau.

“Not much,” Sam said. “How's my replacement working out?”

“Fantastic,” Stensrud said. “He's cleared four unsolved cases in two months. A real go-getter.”

“You're lying,” Sam said. “If I couldn't solve them, they stay unsolved.”

“What do you want me to do, beg you to come back?” Stensrud said. “We're doing fine without you. Hope you're not getting any bedroom windows slammed on your fingers.”

“Not yet,” Sam said. “I could use a favor, though.”

“I was waiting for this,” Stensrud said.

“Could you just run a couple of names through the NCIC computer for me?”

“All you ex-cops think you can use our resources any time you want. Remember, Sam, the national computer system is supported by public dollars. You have your clients, and I have mine—the taxpayers.”

“By the book these days, huh, Doug?” Sam asked.

“Yep—ever since you took all that training we gave you and walked out the door with it,” Stensrud said. “And don't try to get around me by going to one of your buddies. We don't have time to do fishing expeditions for you.”

“Well, gee, thanks for your time, Doug.”

“Hey, stop by and see me some time. We'll go have a beer. Relive old times.”

“Like this one?”

Sam hung up. Then he called Marcus Hargrove.

Hargrove's answering machine said he was away from his desk, which was usually the case. Marcus didn't spend much time in the office. Sam left a message asking Marcus to call him. He'd tried the front door, but Doug Stensrud was being a prick. Sam knew he could count on his fellow band member to help get background information on Paul O'Brien, whether Stensrud approved of it or not.

With several hours to kill, Sam decided to find out more about the black sheep of the Kenwood family. Sam called the concierge and asked where he could find the nearest public library. Told that the main branch of the Santa Monica library was just five blocks from the hotel, he walked there and spent several hours going through the L.A. Times index, looking for references to Bruce Kenwood. He found two stories: a four-year-old brief about a fire at a warehouse, owned by a Bruce Kenwood, and a story a year later about a Bruce Kenwood who was lost and presumed drowned in a sailing accident off Catalina Island. It wasn't clear if it was the same Bruce Kenwood in both stories, and neither story tied him to the Kenwood family in Boston. Sam ran a computer search for “Bruce Kenwood and Los Angeles,” but found no matches. He returned to the hotel, told Heather about his fruitless efforts, and they had an early dinner before leaving for the Dodger game.

They took the Santa Monica Freeway downtown, then joined up with the Pasadena Freeway, which took them northward toward the mountains. Within minutes they were part of the crawling backup of traffic trying to get to Dodger Stadium.

The stadium was built on the former site of a Chicano hillside neightborhood called Chavez Ravine, a few miles north of downtown. The ballpark opened for business in 1962, four seasons after the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. It took that long for the city to work out the political difficulties of commandeering the land and converting it from a condemned neighborhood to a baseball showplace. With its 56,000 seats over six spectator levels, muted pastel décor, a 300-acre footprint with 21 terraced parking lots and 3,400 trees, the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and the skyscrapers of Los Angeles to the south, Dodger Stadium was almost the anti-Fenway—even though it was now one of the oldest ballparks in baseball. Generations of baseball fans could immediately identify the chevron-shaped roofing that shaded the top seats of the outfield bleachers, with solitary palm trees waving beyond the fence.