Green Monster (7 page)

“I can't wear this back to the office,” she said. “And it would take me too long to go back to my apartment. I'll change in your room.”

“Into what?”

“There's a nice shop on Newbury Street, right around the corner from the hotel. I'll pick something up there.”

They walked back toward the hotel through the Common, Heather's high heels making a clip-clip sound on the pavement. A few leaves had already fallen, though the trees were mostly still green. A bell from a nearby church steeple was tolling noon.

“Thanks for getting that ape off me,” Heather said. “It looked like you knew what you were doing back there.”

“Police training. I could have just shot him, but that would have attracted a crowd.”

“We're no closer to finding Babe Ruth, are we?”

“You never know.”

“So what's next?”

“We talk to guys who played in that Series. Can you get me into the Sox clubhouse before or after the game tonight?”

“That might not be the best way to do it. The locker room is kind of a zoo. There's always a dozen reporters and columnists wandering around in there. You don't want the beat guys from the Globe and Herald asking who you are. I'll see what I can do.”

Sam wasn't sure what he expected to find out by talking to the players—and he had to be just as careful with a player as he'd been with Bucca. If one of them figured out what he was asking about, his discreet investigation would be blown open. There were no secrets in baseball—except, perhaps, for the biggest one in the game's history.

Chapter Seven

Caracas, Venezuela—

Elena awoke to the now-familiar sights, sounds, and smells: a sliver of sunlight peeking through a crack in the cardboard-covered window above the torn, soiled mattress on the floor; the voices of screaming babies and hungry children in adjoining shanties; and the smell of rotting garbage and human waste permeating her filthy room.

She'd been imprisoned for several weeks—or was it a month now? She couldn't tell anymore. The days dragged by with a numbing, soul-sapping sameness. Any of three men would be there when she awoke—the skinny, droopy-eyed young man with the moustache, whom the others called Paquito; the mean, foul-smelling, stubbly-faced one named Hector, who sometimes kicked, pushed, and slapped her for his own amusement; and the copper-skinned, muscular leader that the other two always referred to as Jefe. He was the one who had stopped her cab in the tunnel, wearing a police officer's uniform. At first she thought he must have been impersonating a policeman in order to abduct her that night, but he often arrived and left wearing the uniform.

Elena knew approximately where she was, but for all the good that did her, she might as well have been a thousand miles into the rainforest. When she was allowed to stand, she could put her face to the crack between the cardboard and the edge of the window and see out over the endless tin roofs. There were no streets here, just a maze of narrow, muddy walkways and alleys, filled with the poor, the sick, and the young who lived in this hideous place by necessity, by inertia, or by birth.

It could have been Patare, or Libertador, Antimano, San Juan, Carapita…Elena did not know the names of all the shantytowns that hugged the hillsides overlooking Caracas. They all looked depressingly alike Some had electricity, water, and telephone service; the one she was in did not. She had not been able to clean herself in weeks. She was in the same clothes she'd worn on her flight into Venezuela. Her toilet was a bucket in the corner, emptied whenever one of her guards could no longer stand the smell.

At first they had left the room when she used it.

One afternoon she tried to yell through the crack in the cardboard to the people passing by on the narrow alley below her window, but if any of them heard her, they did not look up. There was no law in this part of Caracas, and it could cost people their lives to get mixed up in someone else's business. Within seconds of Elena's desperate cries, the brute named Hector rushed into the room, dragged her away from the window, and knocked her to the floor with a hard forearm to her temple.

“You think anyone will come to help you?” he said, laughing harshly. “
Nadie vendrán
! No one will help. No one cares here. If you want to eat—if you want to live—you keep quiet and do as we say.”

Elena was not strong to begin with, not like her husband, not like her boy—and she grew much weaker eating the small, sporadic meals she was provided. The corn flour bread and cheese were usually moldy, and the occasional
platano
was always soft and bruised. Eventually she lost her appetite.

She sometimes asked why they were holding her, and when she could leave.

“It is not for you to know,” the one called Jefe would say. “If all goes well, you will be returned to your family. If not…”

Jefe shrugged.

He was the kindest, but the one she feared the most, because the other two feared him. One night he came to take his turn guarding Elena, and found Paquito asleep in his chair. Elena had not even noticed, because she had been asleep, too. But she awoke to the sound of Jefe beating Paquito mercilessly. He held Paquito up against the rough cinderblock wall with his powerful left arm and punched him repeatedly in the stomach with his right fist as Paquito screamed and begged for forgiveness.

“All I demand of you is that you remain awake!” Jefe said, delivering another sickening blow to Paquito's midsection. “Is that so much to ask for what I'm paying you?
Digame
!”

“No, Jefe, no…” Paquito moaned. Jefe loosened his grip and allowed the thin, young man to slide to the floor. “It will not happen again.”

But it did.

Paquito's ribs were badly bruised from the beating he received from Jefe, and Elena saw him swallow a number of pills in the next few days. Whatever he was taking for the pain seemed to make him drowsier than usual. He would bring a thermos of coffee with him for his guard shift, but once the coffee was gone, it was all Paquito could do to keep himself awake. He would try to walk around the cramped shanty, humming to himself or singing along to a portable radio, but when the pain from his midsection became too great he would have to sit down again.

“Why do you stay here?” Elena asked him a few nights after the beating. “You are treated badly. You are a prisoner, too—no better than me. You should go to a clinic and see one of those Cuban doctors, and not come back.”

“
Cierre su boca
!” Paquito said. “
Necesito el dinero
.”

“You could not need the money this much,” Elena insisted. “What are they paying you? My family will pay you more if you help me leave.”

Paquito shook his head slowly but emphatically.

“Jefe would find me, and kill me.”

Elena had no answer for that, because she believed Paquito. From what she knew about Jefe, he would indeed kill Paquito, with no hesitation or remorse.

Jefe would sometimes talk to her about sports—he loved
futbol
, baseball not so much; religion—he believed the Catholic Church was a hypocritical sham, enriching itself while keeping the people poor and ignorant; and politics—Elena thought that Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, was a communist who would ultimately turn Venezuela into another failed dictatorship like Cuba, while Jefe thought he was the country's only hope to assume its rightful place as a South American power. But despite Jefe's willingness to talk to Elena, she found his eyes cold and unsympathetic, like a snake's. He was the kindest one only because he was the strongest and smartest; he knew she was under his total control and would not try to get away as long as he was around.

Hector was often drunk, always mean and simply looked for excuses to inflict pain on Elena. He must have been ordered not to molest her, because Elena could tell from the way Hector looked at her that he thought about violating her all the time. When he pushed her around, his hands were always on her chest. Several times he pulled the neck of her sweater open and looked down at her breasts. He even stared at her when she used the bucket, despite her pleas for him to avert his eyes. Elena was convinced Hector would have raped her every night if he weren't afraid of what Jefe would do to him.

Paquito was barely more than a boy. He did not have Hector's mean streak or Jefe's commanding presence. He was in this for the money, nothing more, and now that he was in so much pain, he was having trouble focusing on his responsibilities. The night Elena spoke to him about going to a doctor, she saw him swallow several more pills. He turned the radio up loud to a
llanera
station and walked haltingly around the small room, trying to sing along to the melodies. Elena knew he could not stay on his feet for very long, and once he sat down, she expected him to fall asleep. Hector was not due at the shanty until dawn.

Elena pretended to sleep, but listened to hear the sound of Paquito's breathing over the music on the radio. His breathing was labored when he first sat down, but then it became increasingly steady. For ten minutes she listened while he appeared to fall asleep. She forced herself to wait another ten minutes, then slowly raised herself from her mattress, feeling weak and frightened, but determined to slip past Paquito and out of the shanty.

She had no sooner risen to her feet than Paquito awoke with a start.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I must use the bucket,” she said. “
Excúseme, por favor
. I don't want to soil myself.”

“Go ahead, then.”

Elena said nothing. None of her captors had left her alone to use the bucket, since Hector had caught her calling down to the alley. At first it had been difficult, but she had become used to this further degradation.

She went to the corner, took down her underwear and urinated into the bucket. She returned to her mattress and curled up as if to sleep. Paquito once again stood up and tried to walk and sing, but his voice quickly became strained at the effort to force air out of his lungs. He sat down again, and within a half-hour he was asleep once again. This time his breathing was deeper and more rhythmic.

I must go now, Elena told herself. He will not hear me this time.

She rose again, quietly, and took slow, small steps past Paquito's chair to the tin door that led to the alleyway outside the shanty. The hinges were not expertly installed, but they were not rusty; Elena sometimes did not hear the door open when one of her captors came or went. The door was bolted from the inside with a metal L-latch that had to be lifted, turned and slid to the right. She could not see it in the dark, but found it with her hand and slowly slid the latch open. The door began to open to the inside by itself, making a louder creak than Elena had expected—loud enough, perhaps, to be heard over the music from the radio, but Paquito did not stir.

She held the door with both hands and gently eased it toward her until the opening was wide enough to slip through. She knew the door would not stay in the closed position if she tried to pull it shut behind her, so she left it open and began running down the dirt path beside the shanty to the alley below. It would take only a few moments to lose herself in the labyrinth of paths and alleys that crisscrossed Caracas' shantytowns. Eventually she would find her way down the hill and into the city, where surely someone could help her reach her husband…

Elena guessed it was sometime after midnight. She was disoriented, with no landmarks to guide her but the darkened outlines of endless, featureless, box-like hovels stacked atop one another. There were scattered lights in some of the windows, but the alley was deserted. She didn't dare knock on a door or ask anyone for help, for it was well known these neighborhoods were honeycombed with violent, desperate criminals—any one of whom might have been in league with her captors. She had to get down the hill, through the shanties, to the civilized part of the city.

She tried to run, but her legs would not work properly. She tripped over an unseen tire lying in the alley, fell to her knees and scraped her skin open, and tried to rise again in the dark.

Suddenly she felt herself being lifted from the ground by a pair of firm hands around her arms, and she heard a rough voice in her ear.

“A donde vas?”

She could not see the face, but the man was wearing a police uniform.

Chapter Eight

Sam looked forward to being back at Fenway Park among the throngs wearing their B caps and Red Sox sweatshirts; to once again smell the Fenway Franks and gaze at the soothing green of the outfield grass and the famous left-field wall. They'd added seats atop the Green Monster since the last time Sam had been to Fenway. He hoped to go up there and see what the game looked like from the Monster Seats.

And yet, as he rode with Heather down Commonwealth Avenue in the back seat of Lou Kenwood's Lincoln, with the ever-deferential Paul in the driver's seat, he kept wondering, What if some of the games were a sham? What if a few ballplayers got so disillusioned with their contracts or their owners that they conspired with gamblers to throw a game now and then? It had happened before, and just because Sal Bucca said it couldn't happen again didn't make it so.

Paul had the car radio tuned to WEEI. The afternoon drive show was in its final hour before the Red Sox pre-game show, and the callers were venting their frustrations.

“Mike from Scituate—what's your take?”

“How long is Mahaffey gonna stay with Hurtado in right? The guy has obviously checked out for the year. I mean, I appreciate what Ivan has done for the Sox, but if he's gonna mail it in the rest of this year, let's sit him down and look at Burrows.”

“I hear ya, Mike,” the host said. “You might get your wish tonight.”

“'Bout frickin' time.”

“Eddie from Saugus, you're next.”

“I agree with that last guy. Get Hurtado outta here, man. For fifteen mil, you'd think he could catch a stinkin' fly ball, for God's sake.”

“So you wouldn't bring him back next year?”

“Hell, no. What's he want, four years at 22 per? We could get Naslund from Oakland plus a decent back-up catcher for less than that. Besides, I like the Burrows kid.”

“I like him, too,” the host said. “We'll be back in a minute, with Curt on a car phone, next up.”

They approached Kenmore Square, the busy crossroads where Commonwealth, Beacon Street, and Brookline Avenue converged near Fenway. It was a few minutes after five, and already the fans, vendors, scalpers, and hang-out artists were pouring out of the T station entrances and choking the sidewalks. The fans on the streets were no doubt talking about the same things the callers to WEEI were talking about: whether they should re-sign Hurtado, the money it would take to get that reliever from Oakland, the Sox pitching rotation, that new right fielder from Pawtucket…

It all meant so much to the fans—and yet, if they found out the games weren't honest, it might suddenly mean nothing to them. If a World Series had been fixed, the damage would not only cripple baseball, but reverberate throughout pro sports.

Which raised the question that Sam kept coming back to: Did Kenwood really want to know that the Cardinals threw the Series to the Red Sox? If he found proof that there was a plot, what would Kenwood do then? Would he go to the commissioner, and then watch baseball attempt to endure its worst crisis in a century, while Red Sox Nation sank back into cynicism? Or would he pay off Babe Ruth and hope no one found out?

The Lincoln eased down Brookline and stopped in front of the Red Sox offices at Yawkey Way, which was closed off to vehicle traffic on game days. Eight red pennants with blue-and-white numerals hung from the brick exterior of Fenway Park, commemorating the years that the Red Sox had been World Champions: 1903, 1904, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, and 2007.

The conspicuous gap was the reason Kenwood didn't dare call Babe Ruth's bluff. The Sox were now out of that abyss, and never wanted to look back.

Paul dropped them off, and Sam followed Heather through the entrance to the team offices. She was wearing the black skirt and jacket she'd bought that afternoon, over a pink crew-neck top. The skirt showed off her legs without being too obvious about it, and her short hair bobbed gently back and forth like prairie grass in the breeze as she walked. The club employees they encountered all said hello to her, and Heather returned their greetings like the popular girl in high school being dutifully cheerful to the lesser beings.

They took an elevator up to the third level and found Lou Kenwood in the owner's glassed-in luxury suite, watching the Sox take batting practice. There was a bar and a poker table at the back of the suite, plush leather armchairs and sofas facing the field, and a wide-screen television monitor mounted in the wall. Classical music was being piped into the enclosed suite. Kenwood sat in one of the armchairs, a bottle of bourbon on the end table next to him and a glass of the brown liquid in his hand. He was the picture of a satisfied rich man enjoying his most expensive toy—except that the expression on his face was not one of satisfaction.

“Is Hurtado playing tonight?” Heather asked Kenwood when she and Sam walked in.

“No,” Kenwood said. “Gil wants to look at Burrows for a couple of games.”

Jason Burrows was the rookie right fielder just up from Pawtucket that everyone was buzzing about. Hurtado's injuries, occasionally indifferent play, and contract demands had eroded his standing with the Sox. It was widely assumed that he would not be re-signed in the off-season. But he was also the Sox player in the best position to know whether the Cardinals had thrown the series.

“I'd like to get a few minutes with Hurtado sometime tonight,” Sam said.

“Sure,” Kenwood said. “Why?”

“See what he remembers about the World Series.”

“Don't push him too hard,” Kenwood said. “He's not the brightest guy in the world, but he could figure out what this is about if you're not careful.”

“I'll watch myself.”

Kenwood was silent for a moment, then took a sip of his drink and turned to look at Heather and Sam.

“He called,” Kenwood said.

“Who?” Heather said.

“Babe Ruth.”

“When?”

“About twenty minutes ago. He called me here in the suite.”

“How did he get this number?” Sam asked.

“How the hell should I know? That's something you ought to be figuring out.”

“What did he say?” Heather asked.

“He said I had five days to come up with the money, or he'd call the Commissioner and the newspapers.”

“What did you tell him?”

Kenwood got up from his chair and walked to the floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas window overlooking the field. None of the players fielding grounders and shagging flies noticed their owner wearily rest his forehead against the glass.

“I told him I didn't know how I could make a lump payment like that without causing suspicion.” He turned back to face Sam and Heather. “He said I'd have to think of a way, or the story was going to blow wide open.”

“Did you ask your staff if they could track where the call came from?”

“No,” Kenwood said. He now sounded every minute of his 78 years. “I didn't want anyone to know…about this…”

Kenwood was petrified of losing his most beloved possession, and his fear was getting in Sam's way.

Sam questioned Kenwood as though he were a witness to a crime. What did the voice sound like? Smooth, calm, unhurried, Kenwood said. How old? Maybe 35…40. Any accent? Probably not from Boston, but hard to tell. Any background noise? Kenwood had to think for a minute. No, nothing. He hadn't really been paying attention to that. Any odd turns of phrase or unusual words used? No. How long did the call last? Not much more than a minute.

“How does he want to be paid?”

“I'm supposed to wire the money to an offshore bank account.”

“Won't the government find out about it?”

“Probably not,” Heather said. “Private financial transfers like that are still confidential.”

“Don't drug cartels and terrorist groups use those kinds of transactions?”

“Sure,” Heather said. “The Feds want offshore transactions made public, like they are in Europe, but U.S. businesses are fighting it.”

“Why?”

“I don't want my competitors to know how much I'm spending, or why,” Kenwood said.

“Kind of biting you in the ass now, isn't it?” Sam said.

Kenwood didn't respond.

“Did he say anything else?”

“He said, ‘Get rid of the private eye. You're being watched.'”

That meant the plot wasn't necessarily a one-man operation. Babe Ruth could be anywhere, but he definitely had somebody in Boston.

“Are you going to get rid of me?” Sam said.

“I thought about it,” Kenwood said. “But you're my only chance to get out from under this thing.”

“All right, we've got five days,” Sam said. “It looks like I'm going to have to talk to Alberto Miranda. Anybody know where the Dodgers are this week?”

“I'll check,” Heather said. “Ellie can book our flight and our hotel.”

“Are you sure Lou doesn't need you here?”

“No,” Lou said. “Heather goes with you.”

Kenwood poured himself another drink and sat back down in his chair, hardly seeming to notice that Sam and Heather were still there. The Red Sox players were leaving the field while a few of the Toronto Blue Jays were emerging from the third base dugout to limber up for their turns in the batting cage. Sam asked Heather for a quick tour of the ballpark—mostly to get away from Kenwood's despondency.

Heather took Sam past the upstairs offices of club president Michael Donovan, but they didn't stop in.

“He doesn't know we hired you,” Heather said. “It would be better if he doesn't find out.”

“Who am I, if anyone asks?”

“My boyfriend.”

“And why am I getting the VIP treatment?”

“Because you're my boyfriend.”

They took the elevator downstairs to the basement offices of general manager Joe Pagliaro and his staff. The walls were covered with dry-erase boards bearing the names of every player in every major league organization. An oversized bottle of champagne with the label WORLD CHAMPIONS 2004 sat on a filing cabinet. Pagliaro was on his phone, alternately waving his free hand in the air and tapping his index finger on his desk to emphasize a point he was making. Heather gave Pagliaro a wave, and he returned it with a harried half-smile—polite, but with some effort, Sam concluded. Pagliaro probably didn't like the authority Heather wielded in the organization, but it was at best a minor annoyance in a job filled with daily headaches.

“He's kind of a wreck these days,” Heather said. “We were the beloved underdogs a few years ago. Now everybody expects us to do it every year. It's getting to him.”

“Do he and Lou get along?”

“Well, they used to. But after 2004, there were…credit issues.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know—who got most of the credit for bringing the championship back to Boston. Joe has his supporters in the media, and Lou has his. Lou hired Joe, so naturally it bothers him when a columnist writes that the Sox couldn't have climbed to the top without Joe Pagliaro calling the shots. There are egos involved. Both of them like to think they're the main reason we broke the Curse.”

“And if somebody takes that 2004 Series win away…”

“It could get very ugly around here.”

They went back up to the concourse level and walked outside to Yawkey Way. The second floor of the souvenir shop across from the ballpark had a row of six-foot windows displaying color posters of each player in that night's batting order. A five-piece jazz band played “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” while fans sat at umbrella tables in the middle of the street, eating food from concessions stands that had been upgraded significantly since Sam had been there last. Instead of standing in a half-inch of water in the murky bowels of the ballpark, customers now lined up on clean pavement at food stands that sold pizza, barbecue sandwiches, Philly cheese steaks, and even Luis Tiant's own Cuban cuisine, in addition to hot dogs and beer. Success had turned a charming old dump of a ballpark into a merchandising gold mine.

They took the elevator back up to the suites level, walking past a gallery of Sports Illustrated covers featuring Red Sox ballplayers as far back as Jackie Jensen and as recent as Ivan Hurtado. At the far end of the concourse they emerged onto a metal walkway that led to the Monster seats atop the left-field wall. Sam had to get used to the idea that there was no longer a 23-foot net above the Green Monster to snag home runs that were headed for the windows across Lansdowne Street. Instead, there were now four rows of Monster Seats extending back from the edge of the wall. Heather picked out two unoccupied seats under the giant Coke bottles that were attached to the light standard near the left-field foul pole. Sam couldn't see the left-fielder beneath them, but it didn't seem to matter. The sun was setting over the seats along the right-field line, bathing the bleachers and center-field Jumbotron scoreboard in a soft, golden glow.

Everything about Fenway seemed perfect from these perches: the pale green of the interior walls, the emerald green of the outfield grass, the red-brown dirt of the infield and warning track, and the red seats that stretched from foul pole to foul pole. The glassed-in luxury suites and press box behind home plate gave the park a more modern feel, but the asymmetrical layout of the playing field and outfield seating areas was unmistakable evidence that you were in a ballpark that dated back to baggy flannels and pancake-flat fielder's gloves.

“Why didn't somebody think of this years ago?” Sam asked.

“When Lou bought the club, everybody thought they were already wringing as much money as they could out of the place,” Heather said. “They were wrong.”

Sam leaned over the wall to get a look at the most obvious nod to the past: the hand-operated scoreboard inside the Green Monster, directly below them.

“I've always wanted to see inside the scoreboard,” Sam said.

“Not much to see, really. But we can go out there after the game, if you want.”