The Ninth Inning Read online

  “So you’re saying you want me to look into the blackmail because Ricky doesn’t want his wife to know about an affair from fifteen years ago?”

  “Look, if you remember Amber at all, you know she’s a real ball buster. If she finds out, she might take him to the cleaners, and he can’t afford that.”

  “I’m sorry, didn’t we just cover the territory where you got him a one-hundred-million-dollar contract for the Yankees back in the day?”

  “Big money has big expenses,” said Cashman. “I’ve guided his finances as well as I could, but some people think the gravy train will roll on forever. This is his last year in the bigs, and he needs this payday. Trust me, Amber is very focused on it. I know you remember the guy, Miami. You know he’s not the brightest bulb.”

  “I’ve had better conversations with a bag of oysters.”

  “Right, so his post-baseball prospects are not super. We can’t afford for there to be any controversy. The A’s have an option on him, to be exercised or not by the end of spring training. If they get wind of bad press, then they might redline him. And like you say, he’s no spring chicken.”

  I didn’t remember saying anything about spring chickens, but I did find it an interesting connotation when we were watching spring training. I asked Cashman what exactly he wanted me to do about it.

  “The thing you do. Check it out, get the lowdown. See if there’s anything to it, and preferably prove that there’s not.”

  “I’m not going to fake evidence for you, John.”

  “I’m not asking that, Miami. I’m just saying if there isn’t anything there, then show us that there isn’t. And if there is, let me know. I need to understand how seriously to take this guy.”

  “Why take it seriously at all?”

  “You know why. Ricky has history, and this guy has very specific information.”

  “Specific information about what?”

  “About a certain night in a certain club in Modesto. The night you called me, the night you dragged him out of said club and saved his bacon before his career had even begun.”

  I nodded and sipped my beer. My mind was a blur of long-forgotten memories. I remembered the call to Cashman, and I remembered the night I had dragged Ricky Spence out of an illegal club in Modesto. Cashman had told me then that he owed me one, and years later he had been good on his word.

  “Okay, John, I’ll take a look.”

  Cashman pulled out his wallet and thumbed out a thousand dollars in hundreds. He fanned the money out like a magician and offered it to me.

  “I bill my clients, John. But what I will need is this blackmailer’s name and phone number.”

  Chapter Four

  I got back to the hotel at cocktail hour. The room that had been used to serve breakfast that morning had been transformed into a sort of self-service bar area. Guests were helping themselves to beers in tiny plastic cups, poured from a tap coming in through the wall. It was like being at the baseball stadium without the actual game. There was a wine selection, red and white, and a variety of juices served in very classy glass carafes. Despite the name of the hour, there were no cocktails, but that didn’t bother me. I wasn’t really a cocktail kind of guy. I liked cocktails fine enough, but they didn’t like me. We’d had reason to battle on occasion before, and to paraphrase Sonny Curtis, I fought the cocktail and the cocktail won.

  I found Danielle and Jane sitting at a small table under an umbrella in a courtyard area that overlooked the pool. Despite the mild day and the bright sunshine, I got the sense that the pool wasn’t heated and was rather frigid, because the only people in it were children.

  Kids tend to have antifreeze running through their veins. I know this from experience, having grown up in New England. Even in the summertime, the local lakes where we used to go swimming would be the kind of temperature that would send the captain of the Titanic into a blind panic. On a hundred-degree day it might have been called refreshing, but on a seventy-five-degree day it could turn a human body blue within five minutes. We didn’t care one bit. My friends and I used to swim at our local hole until deep into the fall, as the trees surrounding the lake turned their autumn colors. The kids in the hotel pool looked like they were built of the same stern stuff. They were floating around on blowup rings and foam noodles and having a whale of a time doing it.

  Danielle and Jane were watching them in silence. I wondered if perhaps the conversation had been drained from them. I imagined whatever they had been talking about had been pretty heavy stuff. I took my no-name beer out into the courtyard and pulled up a chair.

  “Hey, you,” said Danielle.

  “Back at you,” I said. “How are you guys doing?”

  I glanced at Jane, and she offered me a half smile and a shrug. It seemed to say it all.

  “We decided to go and visit Dad again. He was better this afternoon,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” said Danielle. “And fairly happy to see us, I thought.” She glanced at her sister, and Jane nodded in return. On previous visits, Danielle had reported that her father had not been overly receptive to seeing people. She had the distinct impression that he had become embarrassed about his condition, his failing body. At that time he had still been fully lucid, his mind as sharp as it ever was, and the time lying alone in his bed was time too much for reflection on what was happening to him.

  “I think he understands that he is fading in and out,” said Danielle. “Would you say?” she asked Jane.

  “I would,” said Jane. “He’s not able to comprehend what has happened in the times that he forgets, but he knows those times exist, and I do think he understands that they’re becoming more the norm. Perhaps he’s treasuring the time when he’s lucid more than he did before.”

  I nodded and sipped my beer. I thought again about that which we believe is permanent and the illusory nature of it all.

  “I’m sorry I missed it,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Jane. “Too many visitors can tire him out.”

  We sipped our drinks and watched the children play, and then Danielle put her wine down and turned to me. “What about you? What have you been up to?”

  “I’ve had quite the adventure, actually.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Well, as you know, I went for a walk.”

  “That’s your idea of an adventure?” asked Jane. “I thought you were some kind of action-private-investigator guy?” I could see the glint in her eye as she said it.

  “It wasn’t the walk that was interesting, it was where it led me. I ended up at the baseball stadium.”

  Jane frowned and Danielle shook her head. “Of course you did,” she said.

  “It’s spring training, you know.”

  “I thought that was in Florida?” said Danielle.

  “It is,” I said. “There are two spring training leagues. The Grapefruit League, which is what they play in Florida, and there’s the Cactus League, which they play around Phoenix. It just so happens that the Oakland Athletics are based at a stadium down the road from here.”

  “Did you know that before you came?” asked Danielle.

  “In a general kind of way, I suppose I did. But I didn’t know where the stadium was, and I hadn’t put two and two together and come up with five yet. I was just walking, and there it was.”

  Danielle leaned slightly toward her sister and in a mock whisper said, “He has an innate radar system for baseball games.”

  Jane nodded knowingly.

  “So who won?” asked Jane.

  “To be honest, I don’t know.”

  “How many beers did you have?”

  “Just the one. But I was otherwise occupied.”

  “You were at the baseball game,” said Danielle, “and you were otherwise occupied? This really doesn’t feel like you. What happened?”

  “I got a job.” I smiled my best cheesy matinee-idol smile, which I suspected was more has-been surfer than movie heartthrob.


  “A job?” Danielle frowned.

  “Indeed. A guy I know from back in my playing days, John Cashman. He called me about some work he needs doing. Turned out he was at the stadium, too, looking after one of his charges.”

  “And what is the nature of this work?”

  “A client of his is getting blackmailed.”

  “Didn’t you just have a case like that?”

  “I did.”

  “And is this the same agent who assisted you with that case?”

  “It is.”

  “Is blackmailing sports stars a lot more common than I thought it was?”

  “I can’t speak to that, but it does seem to be turning into a thing.”

  “So you’re saying that the job is here in Phoenix?” asked Jane.

  “It looks that way.”

  “Well, I guess it’s better to be busy than not,” she said.

  I wondered about that. I suspected it was true. The best way to get through hard times is to get working. That had been my experience. Generally that work had involved throwing myself into sports—baseball or football—anything to divert the mind from the melancholy it was tending toward. I wondered about Danielle and Jane, about how busy they were keeping and how the downtime was probably wearing on them.

  Danielle was a law enforcement officer, used to long and strange hours. Law enforcement rarely knew such a thing as downtime. I knew that she enjoyed our evenings spent together relaxing on our balcony in Miami, or in the past on our patio overlooking the Intracoastal on Singer Island. But I also knew that such times had a limit. They were like daily decompressions for both of us, but not one she could sustain for very long. We had once gone on vacation to a resort in Jamaica and she had barely lasted two days before her mind nearly exploded with the boredom of repetitively lying on the beach, drinking rum cocktails, and then lying on the beach again. We had gotten into all kinds of mischief as a result, but that was her way. Then I realized that the notion wasn’t entirely accurate. It wasn’t her way. It had become our way.

  We tossed around the idea of going out for dinner, but the impromptu happy hour inside was serving nacho chips and salsa and little ground-beef tacos, with a side of Caesar salad, which I found an interesting, if eclectic, combination. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but like the business travelers and hospice visitors around us, going out felt an effort too much.

  I refilled everyone’s drinks and got some plates of chips and tacos and salad, and we ate by the pool as the last light drifted behind the hills in the distance.

  I thought about John Cashman, and Ricky Spence, and his wife, Amber. I thought about whoever it was that was blackmailing Ricky, and I put my hand on the phone in my pocket. I needed to give the guy a call and arrange a little chat, but I figured it could wait. I had no intention of leaving the hotel that night, and I didn’t want to give the guy any advance notice, so I left the phone where it was.

  As darkness fell, the children abandoned the pool, but the tables in the courtyard filled with groups of people in quiet reflection, reliving the moments they had shared with loved ones that day, moments that they, like us, knew to be fleeting and final.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning was so bright and sparkly that I had my shades on before I left the hotel room. Danielle decided that we should go for a run to shake out the cobwebs, so I dragged my carcass out of bed and followed her down to the lobby, where we met Jane. I didn’t get the sense that Jane was as natural a runner as Danielle. She was built a touch wider, more powerful in the legs, where Danielle was leaner and built to run and run and run. I could see Jane being a sprinter to Danielle’s marathon runner.

  I wasn’t either of those things. I took my usual position and dropped in behind the two women as they ran down the street toward a park. The air was neither cool nor warm, but I felt the dryness in my lungs. The air in Phoenix was altogether different from that in South Florida—the lack of humidity gave it a chalky sensation, whereas breathing in the South Florida air was like smelling warm bread.

  We jogged for about half an hour before Danielle came to a stop and did some stretches on a park bench. Jane seemed to keep up okay, although the conversation was light. I just stretched my back and watched two squirrels play.

  We ran back to the hotel single file. Danielle leading, Jane in behind, me bringing up the rear. When we got back to the hotel, we took showers and met again for breakfast. It was the same menu all over again, with the exception of the eggs, which had changed from scrambled into little preformed omelettes with no filling inside that would have looked at home in a McDonald’s container.

  I could still feel the dryness in my lungs as we walked over to the hospice. Once inside, Nurse Gabriela gave us an update, telling us that Ryan had slept peacefully, had been awake early, but was dozing on and off now. She said we were most welcome to wait, but Danielle mentioned their need to meet with the doctor and the hospice administrator about some paperwork. Nurse Gabriela directed Danielle to the reception desk, where a young man with a Beatles haircut called the doctor out.

  Dr. Maxwell appeared with his easy smile and his awkward manner and shook each of our hands, then invited us back to his office to discuss Ryan’s care.

  I didn’t feel like I had a lot to offer that conversation, so I told Danielle I would let her and Jane take care of it and I would wait in the lobby for them to return.

  I didn’t last long in the lobby. The parade of quiet, morose people in and out set me on edge, so I moved outside and sat on a bench in the sunshine. It looked like the bench had been placed just so to catch the morning sun, and I wondered for a moment how many weeks it would be before the spot became unbearably hot at any time of day. I took my phone out and looked at the blank screen, thinking about calling my blackmailer, but I didn’t get the chance.

  Nurse Gabriela appeared before me. I noticed that her nursing scrubs had little flamingos on them, and the image made me think of home.

  “Would you like to come visit?” she asked.

  “Visit?”

  She smiled a look of understanding, like she had to deal with a lot of people who weren’t completely clear in their thoughts, as if it were a very easy question to answer but perfectly fine that the answer evaded me.

  “Dr. Castle,” she said. “He’s awake, and he’d enjoy a visit.”

  I made no attempt to get up. I wasn’t sure that I should. I didn’t really see the point of spending time with a man I didn’t know and who wouldn’t remember me afterward. It seemed a heartless and mercenary thought, and I shuddered involuntarily as I processed it.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “It’s okay. He’s awake and he’s aware. I think he’ll know you.”

  “I don’t think he will.”

  “Give him a chance,” she said. “He might surprise you.”

  “No, you don’t understand. He won’t know me because we’ve never met.”

  She seemed to consider this for a moment and then said, “You’ve never met Dr. Castle?”

  “No,” I said. “I live in Florida, and yes, his daughter is my fiancée, but I’ve never had the opportunity to meet him.”

  “All the more reason to do it now.” She gave me the easy smile again. “The opportunities are getting fewer and farther between.”

  I nodded. I hadn’t met Danielle’s father before, and if I thought about it, I hadn’t really come to meet him now. I had come to Arizona to support Danielle. That thought made me stand up.

  “We should get Danielle and Jane,” I said.

  The nurse nodded and gestured for me to walk into the lobby. “Let me take you to Dr. Castle first,” she said. She gestured that I should take the lead, despite the fact that I didn’t know my way around. It wasn’t that complicated, though. I walked through the lobby and in through double doors that led to the more antiseptic part of the facility. I slowed as I moved down the corridor where I knew Ryan Castle’s room to be, not completely sure which door was his.
/>
  Nurse Gabriela took the cue and stepped in front and led me to an open door. Then she moved inside, and I followed.

  “Look who’s come to visit,” she said joyfully, like she was talking to a six-year-old and I was Santa.

  Ryan Castle didn’t look good, but he did look better. People often talk about the light in a person’s eyes going out when they die. Like somehow there’s this magic bulb inside that provides the clarity and brightness that we see when we look into someone’s pupils. During my previous visit, I had the sense that Ryan’s tired eyes were glassy and milky. Now they looked anything but. They were brown and piercing. Analytical, in a way that I knew well.

  They were Danielle’s eyes.

  The bed had been adjusted so that Ryan Castle was sitting up and able to look around the room. He didn’t move his head much, and I assumed the muscles in charge of that operation didn’t function as well as they used to. But his eyes moved fine. I stepped toward the bed and sat in the chair nearest to him. I gave him a nod and a smile and then looked with a sense of unease at Nurse Gabriela.

  I must have looked like a T-ball kid taking his first at bat. Not sure how to hold the aluminum slugger, not even sure how to swing at the tee. But like a coach, Nurse Gabriela gave me a nod and a wink, as if to say You got this.

  “Dr. Castle,” I said.