King of the Corner (18 page)

“She’s your snitch?”

“That’s TV talk. Street skinny is merchandise just like everything else. There’s no shame in selling it. A good intelligence broker gets more respect than a surgeon.”

“Is that what you’re grooming me for?”

The question went unacknowledged. “I can’t do the digging myself. It’s got to look good. This is a sports town. A professional jock like you carries his own bona fides. It’d be better if you were black, but maybe not; that’s kind of obvious. They don’t mind being pumped so much if it doesn’t look like you think you’re putting one over on them. It’s complicated when you try to put words to it.”

“Who’s
they?”

“The brokers. The boys and girls with the poopy. The big-eared hookers and the grifters and the smart fellers in the stick joints that know it all except how to hold a job that doesn’t pay in old bills. They know how much what they’ve got is worth, and they like it when you ask them with respect. That’s where you figure in. You treat everybody like people, you know it? Must be that southern upbringing. With Taber it’s asshole this and scroat that. Me too, but we’ve seen more of the world than you. Anyway, if you and Beatrice got on okay today I was going to suggest hiring you out to her, but this thing with the undercover cop fucks up my timetable. What’d you hear?”

“Nothing about Hall. If you’d told me all this before, I could have asked.”

“That’s just what I didn’t want. Jesus. How’d you survive seven years in Jackson?”

“I’m too big to bugger.” He’d had that one ready. “Why are you interested? You said those rewards are never paid.”

“Those community pool jobs never are. He’s a cop killer now, though. That changes everything. The cop union, the D.P.O.A., will match them or better, and they have a reputation for making good on their offers. The sons of bitches think when one of their own goes down it’s a bigger deal than when it’s just a citizen. That’s bad for democracy but good for me. An extra hundred grand would keep me in lightbulbs and envelopes for the next six months.”

“You didn’t know he was going to be a cop-killer when you lent me out.”

“Let’s say I was speculating in Hall futures. He’s got a hot head and every blue bag in town smelled promotion all over him.” Ance pinched out his cigarette half-smoked and laid it on the bench. “This undercover, this Melvin, was moling his way into the M-and-M’s. His last message out said he had a line on Hall. Two days later some kid looking for a connection or an open window stumbles over Melvin’s body, and Hall’s the biggest catch in town since Jack Dance.”

“I’m nobody’s idea of a mole. Everything shows on my face.”

“That’s why people trust you. Even Charlie Battle. He’s got you spying on me.”

Doc knew better than to hesitate. “If that were true he’d be wasting his money. I told you I had nothing to tell him.”

“Don’t get sore. I said there’s nothing wrong with selling what you know. Who was at the party?”

“You’ve got a bad habit of accusing people of things, then backing off,” Doc said. “I told Battle I’d keep my eyes and ears open. If I didn’t he could screw my parole down so tight I’d be happy to go back to prison. I think I just quit.”

“A speech like that is usually made standing up.”

Doc stood up.

“Sit down. Everybody knows how tall you are. I believe you.”

Doc sat down.

“Better. Trouble with ballplayers is they all think they got to live up to the numbers on the back of their card.”

“I never had a card.”

“Who gives a shit? Some kid winds up trading eighteen Doc Millers for one Boog Powell and there you are with a price sticker on your ass.”

“Boog Powell? Give me a break.”

“I don’t see you doing beer commercials. Anyway, fuck mat. What counts is what you’re worth to me. You’re there when I call. I’d dump Taber, but he knows too much about the way I do business. Who was at the party?”

“I didn’t get most of the names. Truman at the door. A woman with a scar on her cheek.”

“Bonnibelle Rudge. The Sicilians gave her that scratch when they knocked over Joe Petite’s place in ’66.”

“Someone mentioned Sebastian Bright.”

“Dead for years. Come on. Anybody who can memorize all those fancy signs ought to be good at names.”

“Theron Something Gidrey. Gidgy, Beatrice called him.”

“Old guy? Weak eyes?”

“More than weak. Blind. She said he used to own the Morocco Motor Hotel.”

“Owned a hell of a lot more than that before the riots. Jesus, I was sure he died. Who else?”

That time he hesitated. “Alcina Lilley.”

“No shit, you talk to her?”

“I took her home.”

“Yeah?” It had a leer in it. “No wonder you’re zonked.”

Doc was in the middle of a bitter yawn. His headache was better but his bones felt heavy. “She’s a little old for me. I was nine when her husband got killed.”

“A man can learn a lot from an older woman. I’m kidding. What did you talk about?”

Now, watching Charlie Junior showing Sean how to cock his arm with the ball in his hand, then straighten it out with a snap, following through after the ball was in flight as if directing it with an invisible rod, Doc wasn’t sure why he had said nothing to Ance or anyone else about seeing Starkweather Hall at Alcina Lilley’s house in Birmingham. If it was Hall. He had seen the man only briefly and with the light behind him, and as often as Doc had talked himself into accepting that Sergeant Melvin’s suspected killer was staying with Mahomet’s widow, he had talked himself out of it just as often. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the reason he had kept silent. He didn’t know if he would have done the same before Jackson. The Kevin Miller who had never been to prison had nothing to discuss with the Doc Miller who watched life on the outside as if it were still framed by the nineteen-inch screen in the TV room. Paralyzed by the terms of his parole, he was no more a participant in the world than Sean was in front of his everlasting video games. Even his sex was brought to him and applied literally at arm’s length for a fee.

“Heads up, Doc!”

Junior’s warning penetrated as a wild throw from Sean sent the ball spinning at Doc’s head. He pivoted, caught it in front of his face, then followed through in a full turn, knifing it at Junior with everything he had. It struck the boy’s glove with a sharp crack. He held on to the ball a fraction of a second, then dropped it, flung away the glove, and doubled over, hugging his hand between his thighs. “Ow. Shit. Jesus God. Ouch.”

Doc ran up to him in a chill of remorse. “I’m sorry. You okay? I’m really sorry.”

Junior straightened, shaking the hand and blowing on the fingers. “Who’d you think you was pitching to, Reggie Jackson? Jesus.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I uncorked the heat. Let’s go to the house and put it in ice. You want to go to the emergency room?”

“I don’t think nothing’s broken.” He flexed his fingers. He had a red patch on his palm. “Man, you’re wasting your time here. You ought to be back with the Tigers.”

Sean’s eyes were as big as bases. “You were a Tiger?”

Before Doc could answer, a gray stretch Lincoln as long as a throw to center field drifted into the curb behind home plate. Its horn flatted.

“Watch it!” said Junior when Doc started walking that way. He sounded like his father the cop.

“If it’s a drive-by, the gangs are coming up in the world.” But Doc slowed his pace. The driver was a large black man in a blue serge suit. Another black man was seated on the passenger’s side. The windows in back were smoked. As Doc drew near, the dark window on his side glissed down.

“Who’s winning?”

Alcina Lilley had on a dark blue dress with a yellow-and-red scarf knotted at the side cowboy fashion and because it looked like rain a belted car coat of a shade of white that Doc guessed was called eggshell. A yellow silk carnation was pinned to her hair two inches to the right of the part. It made him think of a picture he had once seen of Billie Holliday. By daylight he could see tiny lines around her eyes.

“Nobody’s winning or losing,” he said. “We’re just fooling around.”

“I stopped at your house. Your sister-in-law told me you were here.” She looked apologetic. “Are you committed? I’d like to borrow you for the day. Part of it, anyway.”

He glanced at the two men in the front seat. “I don’t play golf.”

She made introductions. The pair nodded their beachball-size heads infinitesimally. Their names slid out of Doc’s grasp like glycerine. “I want to take you to lunch,” she said.

“Am I dressed for it?” He looked down at his flannel shirt and corduroys.

“The dress code is whatever turns you on. Are you free?”

“I’ll find out.”

Junior, still working his stricken hand, goggled at the woman in the car. “That who I think it is?”

“How would I know that?” Doc said. “Okay if I leave you guys? Sean needs practice hitting the low ones.”

“He needs practice hitting the ground with a bat. He’ll be Cecil Fielder when I get through with him. If it don’t rain first.”

Doc turned toward the car. Junior called his name. He looked back.

“Use a condom.”

Doc threw him his glove.

The backseat, upholstered in heavy-duty tweed with leather reinforcing, was like a divan, wrapping itself around Doc’s hips and shoulders as the car ghosted out into the street Alcina Lilley touched his knee briefly. The gesture was warm and natural and over too quickly to be sexual; but suddenly he was very far away from the ballfield.

“I got the feeling I was abrupt with you the other night,” she said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting a visit from my nephew. It threw me off.”

He murmured something about not having noticed. He felt a sudden strange sadness. He had just about talked himself out of believing that it was Starkweather Hall he had seen. Her bringing up the other night said different.

“Is that younger boy your son?” she asked.

“My brother’s. I’m not married.”

“Notice how subtle I was about asking.”

She was looking out her window as she spoke and probably didn’t notice the glance that passed between the two men in the front seat. Darkened by the tinted glass, the sky looked more threatening than it did through the clear windshield, but there was a dark fringe beyond the downtown skyscrapers in the distance that looked like the brown curling edge of a diseased leaf. Doc hoped Sean would have the courtesy to invite Charlie Junior home before the rain started.

“Where are we eating?” he asked Mrs. Lilley.

“The National Guard Armory.”

He was glad he hadn’t dressed.

By Leon “Bud” Arsenault

(continued)

The parlor of the house on Trumbull that has seen Mrs. MacGryff from infancy to old age contains enough Detroit Tigers memorabilia to fill a wing at Cooperstown.

Here is a pair of scuffed and curling high-topped athletic shoes said to have been worn by Ty Cobb, which if a good forensic pathologist were to put them to the test would probably yield up the blood and tissue of a hundred third basemen from the cleats; here, on a stand, a ball scribbled all over with the faded signatures of the Detroit 1940 World Series team, including Greenburg and Gehringer; up there on the wall, cancer-spotted with mildew and gnawed by moths, a pennant found in a junk shop, advertising a forgotten team known as the Detroits.

Dregs, sighs Mrs. MacGryff.

The bulk of her collection was never recovered after the 1968 burglary.

“I had a complete set of Rudy York cards from 1934 to 1945,” she laments, “and a scorecard signed by Schoolboy Rowe. It was hard to read because it was the year he hurt his shoulder. Anybody who didn’t know what it was might have just thrown it out. So many things. But I still have my memories.”

Seized with a sudden inspiration, the rotund matron bounces out of her padded rocker and stands on tiptoe to take down a wooden bat from atop a bookcase crammed with Tiger Yearbooks. It is smeared with pine tar and bears the famed Louisville trademark.

“It was presented to me personally by Lou Whitaker in 1984. It wasn’t his favorite; he asked for that one back after he hit me in the mouth with it.”

The occasion was spring training for the Tigers’ remarkable championship season. Mrs. MacGryff’s children and grandchildren pooled their resources to send her to the Florida camp as an early Mother’s Day present.

Swinging at a Dan Petry fastball, Sweet Lou missed and lost his grip on the bat, which spun end over end into the stands and smashed into Mrs. MacGryff’s jaw.

While recovering from emergency oral surgery at Lakeland Memorial Hospital she received a visitor.

“Lou brought me flowers and this bat. I was groggy from the anesthetic and my jaw was wired. I don’t know now if I thanked him properly at the time.

“Whenever I look at the bat, or take out my upper and lower plates, I think of that wonderful spring. I’m just sorry I was too busy going in and out of hospitals that season to watch most of the games. I missed the play-offs entirely.”

Lou still sends her a Christmas card every year. (to be continued)

T
HE
D
ETROIT
N
ATIONAL
G
UARD
Armory was a great Gothic limestone pile that took up a city block downtown and served as its own gargoyle. A triumphantly ugly building, it was cratered on the outside with moldy arches like suppurating sores and on the inside looked as desolate as a scorched foundation in an empty field. The big dank ceilingless rooms echoed with the sense-memory of a thousand swap meets, book-and-author luncheons, and desperate circuses with their elderly elephants and sinister clowns. Entering through a side door next to Alcina Lilley with the two bodyguards stationed fore and aft, Doc kicked something that rattled across the concrete floor; a bone, perhaps, from the skeleton of some forgotten delegate to an old political convention. The air, never entirely still in buildings of that size and vacancy, rustled like cast-off cocoons in a ruin.

Beneath the rustling, or perhaps over it, Doc heard a hum of voices. It grew louder as they approached the main room, and when they were inside, looking around at what must have been several hundred people seated at long tables draped in white cloth, the voices retained a disembodied quality, washing around among the rafters twenty feet above while the speakers’ mouths moved silently in a kind of mass ventriloquism. Most of those present were black, and every one of them was dressed better than Doc. There was a general shifting of seats when Mrs. Lilley entered. When she paused to allow Doc to help her off with her coat, their attention went to him, and he was living an old dream in which he found himself standing stark naked on the pitcher’s mound before a capacity crowd. Certainly his presence here was just as inexplicable.