Nobody Bats a Thousand (20 page)

“I’m done talking, Henry. Give up what you found in the clock, or, since I’m in no mood for a strip search, I’m just about to give you a poor man’s lobo
tomy so we can cut to the chase.” H
e pressed the gun harder against his temple.

“There wasn’t
nothing
. I swear it! I swear it!”

“This is getting old. Oh well, you had your chance.” Bill kept the gun against Henry as he pulled his head towards him.  “Well, here goes, I’ve never really tried this before it might be interesting.”

“No! Don’t you think I’d give it up if I had something?”

“That’s going to be a moot question in about three seconds. One…Two…”

“Stop.
Let him go. He doesn’t have it,
” Mary Jean
had parked the car and
was now beside them, lightly sorting through the ashes from the barrel with her foot.

“How do you know for sure?”

“What I was looking for was in the wooden base, and he wouldn’t have wanted it even if he had broken it apart to find it.”

Bill released his grip on the Weasel who at first staggered, then took off running like a rabbit being chased. 

“That base was what, a quarter of an inch thick? What could you hid
e in there?
A stock certificate?
A
safety deposit key?
He’d know they were valuable. He wouldn’t know what to do with them, but he wouldn’t throw them away. Get in
the car, we can catch him again.
” Bill looked at the fleeing Weasel, now two blocks away.

“Nope, it
’s gone.
” MJ kicked again at the melting embers hopelessly holding out for a miracle reprieve. “Damn it! We were so close.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“I held up my end of the bargain. We didn’t find it in the condition you wanted, but we found it. Now pay up. Tell me. What have we been looking for?”

“An autographed picture.”

“An autographed picture?
It better
have
been of the Pope or the President or Elvis Presley for all the trouble we’ve been through.” 

Mary Jean stood staring at the ashes and moping until Bill prodded her again.  “Come
on,
give it up, an autographed picture of whom?”

“Raymond Burr.”

“Raymond Burr?  Perry Mason?  You’re shitting me.”

“I don’t expect you to understand. I told you what we were looking for was very valuable to me but not to anyone else. He was my all-time favorite actor, and the photo was autographed to me personally the one time I briefly got to meet him.”

“So we‘ve been chasing all over the county looking for a p
icture of some dead fairy actor?
How
about that?”

“He wasn’t gay. I met him personally, and he was quite a gentleman.”

“Sorry to clue you in,
Queenie
, but I knew people
in the business
who partied with him and knew him well, and they told me he was a swisher from the word go. He was more of a
prancer
than Santa’s damn reindeer…
Hey,
I’m just stating facts not putting him down. It just proves what a great actor he
really
was.”

“I still don’t believe,” said Mary Jean, still looking down filled with desperation.  Finally, af
ter a quarter minute of silence she continued,
“My whole life is just a series of strange, pitiful, meaningless coincidences.”

“Welcome to the club, doll.
”
Bill started towards his car, then stopped and turned after several steps. “You
coming?”

“Where?”

“To celebrate, to celebrate the closing of the case.
Come on, I’ll buy you several drinks.”

They had drinks at an upscale restaurant across the street from the Pyramid Theater.
Sitting at a small table against the big windows, looking out at the pedestrians and the cars, and the large dark silhouette of the pyramid, hovering like a piece of history too weary to be remarkable, but too worthy to be forgotten.

After his third beer, Bill began to let his hair down, metaphorically of course.

“This is the first time I’ve ever violated my pledge to drink only on Fridays, first time in eighteen years. I think you might be a bad influence.”

“Especially on myself.”

A beer and a half later he really loosened up. “I don’t know how you guessed, but you were right about the smack. It’s been a quarter of a century ago, but I started running with the wrong people up in the City, and this lead to that, and before I knew it I was there where I never thought I’d be. I had a habit. It got so bad I was going through my monthly trust fund check in less than a week, which forced me to do a lot of
things I shouldn’t have done. Anyway, something
lead
me here to Ashland to look up Maggie, an old friend I hadn’t really thought of in years. She took one look at me and locked me in her basement for three or four days. Three or four days of unbelievable agony, and once I
detoxed
, I haven’t gone back since. So I guess you could say she did save my life, her and Carl.”

“Carl?”

“Her late husband, a very large man, a dead ringer for Hoss Cartwright on
Bonanza
.
I suppose he was doing it for me or maybe just to keep Maggie off his back, but if Carl decided you
were
to stay put
there wasn’t much you could do.” A
fter a sip of beer, Bill looked MJ firmly in the eyes. “So I’ve told you a secret, now you tell me one. Tell me about your picture.”

Mary Jean was too comfortable, too at ease, and probably too drunk to hold back. She told Bill how whenever she was in Healdsburg visiting her maiden Aunt Pearl, she would drive past Raymond Burr’s estate endlessly, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous actor, hoping she could get him to sign the glossy picture of him she kept carefully stored in a manila envelope in her car’s glove compartment. That was the last thing she remembered telling Bill before she blacked out. She didn’t know if she told him she was also probably subconsciously hoping Raymond would invite her inside to start the love affair of her life, or that when she did get the picture signed she was too drunk to know if the picture was actually signed by the actor, if she had really talked to him, or if the autograph had been done by the gardener or some other stranger who obliged just to get this crazy blonde in a convertible MG to move on.

Those were the first thoughts that rumbled through her brain just after she opened her eyes, and, after a few seconds realized she was home in her bed in the small apartment above Maggie’s garage. She was still drunk from the night before and had no idea how she had gotten home. Possibly she was still in a blackout. She didn’t know for sure. What she did know was she hurt so bad it was painful to blink her eyes.

With her quest for her wayward timepiece now over, she knew there were
once again life decisions to be
made
. She would have to sort through her options. Maybe a massive ya
rd sale and a one-way ticket to
Alaska
would
be the answer to everything. Maybe it was time to go back to school to get her teaching degree. The only thing she knew for certain was that this was certainly no time to decide for now she needed aspirins for the pain and an Ativan to help her sleep through the hangover. She staggered into the kitchen for water to wash down the pills, and then staggered back to the comfort of
her bed.
Within minutes she was warm, asleep and headed for dreamland, and that was a good place to be.

The End

HOME
ON
THE
RANGE

Under a huge breezy blue sky, a ’62 Chevy pickup—original green pai
nt, faded and beset with forty
years of scrapes and dents—moved along Highway 40 just beyond the first big curve, the point the two thin lanes pulled away from town.

Jimmy, alone in the truck, was wary of his destination. He had passed
Charlie’s
a couple of hundred times, but since he was underage he had never thought of going inside. He U-turned twice, and was about to make his third pass of the long whitewashed building when he finally forced himself to pull into the big, dirt, parking lot, stopping next to a large yellow rental-truck backed up near the building.

Jimmy killed the engine and sat, gripping the wheel, lightly biting his lower lip; barely moving for several slow minutes until he was surprised by someone coming out of the building, a heavy-set male,
his
hair shaved two inches above each ear, wearing a tiny ponytail and a rainbow tie-dyed shirt.

As the stranger with the strange hair walked up to the rental truck, and pulled down the rear door, sliding it closed with a loud slam, Jimmy affected a lame pretense, trying to look busy by staring straight ahead at the weathered white wall.  But soon from the side of his vision he could tell he was being scrutinized by the stranger as he leaned against a hydraulic lever, bringing up a lift until it was flat against the truck.

“Hey, the bar’s open,” he said to Jimmy a few seconds after the hydraulic noise had ceased. “We were just hauling in some stuff for the show tonight.”

Jimmy turned to his left, and made eye contact. “Do you…uh, do you know who Del Craven is?”

“Know him? Hell, I’m
three-quarters of his road crew.” H
e smiled, showing small white teeth and friendly eyes.  “Del’s cool. He’s right inside shooting pool. Go say hi to him. He’s always cool with his fans.” The roadie walked back into the building.

After a pause and two deep breaths, Jimmy stepped down out of the truck and pushed the heavy door shut. Slowly approaching the building, a hesitation between each stride, he finally crept a few steps from the sunshine into the dark room before stopping to focus and look around at this new world, panning quickly left to right then slowly right to left; a burly bartender with a white shirt and white apron around his waist was behind the bar far to Jimmy’s right; a dimly lit stage sat at the far end of the room, and, just a dozen feet off to the left, Del Craven was lining up a shot under the light hanging over the pool table.  Without question, below the thick brown hair combed straight back was the same face Jimmy had seen in pictures and on TV, the face paler than he had remembered but with the same hard lines, blunt features, and small exact black eyes.

Jimmy watched the game for a short while then, thinking he had caught the bartender’s notice, moved to the jukebox, feigning a study of its selections while trying to keep track of Del Craven shooting and moving around the table.   

Craven sank a ball and straightened to chalk his stick. His powder-white arms conflicted with his dark-blue T-shirt tucked into his jeans. “Go again?”

“I’m done.
” H
is opponent racked his stick and walked away toward the stage.

“Hey, Del, could y
ou sign this for my old lady?” A
very tall bearded fellow held a pen and cocktail napkin out to Craven.

“Sure thing, what’s her name?”

“Mavis.”

Craven firmly held the napkin down on a table to concentrate on the signing then handed the pen and paper to the stranger with the long arms. “Hope it’s spelled like it sounds. 
You coming
to the show tonight?”

“Thanks. Hey, I wouldn’t miss it. I seen you years ago down in Texas in El Paso when I was going to school. I still tell people about it. It was a great, great show.”

“So you got your money’s worth, huh? That’s what it’s all about.”

“Hey, you wan
t a beer or something? Try
this.” H
e held out a full pint of dark brown beer. “They make it here in town. It’s an all-barley beer.”

“Thanks, but it’s a little early for me, my friend. Plus, I think it’s the barley in beer that gives me hemorrhoids. One sip of that stuff, and we’d probably have
to cancel the rest of the tour.
” Del, then the tall fan laughed. “You shoot pool? Want to play a game?”

“Ah, sorry, it’s not my thing. I doubt I could give you much of a game.”

“I’ll play,” Jimmy, still next to the jukebox, interrupted.

“Rack ‘em up, kid,” Del Craven directed his large voice across the table to Jimmy who stepped forward and began to look down and around for the coin slot.

“
What’s it take
?
Fifty cents?”

“I believe that’s what it takes,” Craven slowly rumbled out each syllable.