Left Field Read online

  Were the Briggses out there? How long did they plan to leave me? Why had we returned to the ballfield? Well, it was deserted here now; that was convenient. How much gas was left in that little motorcycle tank? Briggs had burned a bunch of it chasing me. All I could hope was that the engine would starve off before my oxygen ran out. I listened, fancying I heard it sputter, but no, it kept on at its steady, cheerful idle.

  I tried to wrest my other leg free, but the mask slipped dangerously. At the moment I had to hold my precarious position just as it was.

  I don’t know how much time passed. Ten minutes? Thirty? Forty? I tried to keep a positive attitude, thinking ahead, figuring how I’d escape if I had the chance. It was a tough figure. All I knew was if I could get away again, I’d run and run until I got to some form of civilization.

  The bike’s motor, to whose puttering rhythm I’d almost grown accustomed, coughed once, as if surprised by something, then quit.

  I kept sniffing the cool stream of oxygen. The van seemed pretty tight, so certainly the air would stay poisonous for some time. But I had a feeling I wouldn’t be alone for long. I was right.

  The latch rattled, and I took a deep breath and held it. Just as the double doors cracked open, I flung the oxygen hose away with my foot and closed my eyes.

  “Oh, she’s dead all right.” Briggs’s voice sounded weary as the doors groaned open. “Her color’s right. Look how she struggled.” The muggy night air poured in, but I didn’t breathe it yet.

  “Well, check, will you?” Viv wasn’t totally buying it.

  “I’ll do it,” said a third voice, and now I knew who had been driving the van.

  I slit open one eye and saw Christy climb up. Viv must have picked her up, possibly even before she’d left the parking lot. Christy, knowing nothing of what was going on, must have gotten the impression that her mother needed help. When they came upon my desperate flight, Christy gladly slid into the driver’s seat so Viv could tend to me.

  In the few seconds it took Christy to climb in and step to the cot, my brain worked as fast as if I’d been in there ingesting their stash of amphetamines, if they had any. As she bent over me, I opened my eyes and saw that hers were wide with fear. I gave her a look that I hoped conveyed everything. I let out my held oxygen and filled my lungs with the warm night air.

  Christy froze for a few seconds as our eyes communicated. She bent close, as if to check whether I was breathing, then whispered, “I prayed you’d be alive.”

  The light just beyond her head made it look like she had a halo. She unbuckled the chest strap, and I was free.

  I whispered, “Drive.”

  “I called them,” she whispered back.

  “Called who?”

  “Your—”

  “Never mind, just drive!”

  She moved quickly toward the cab as I scrambled to my feet and prepared to prevent Dr. Briggs or Viv from climbing in.

  As the engine caught and I rose from the dead, you should have seen Roland and Viv Briggs’s faces. Horrified, stunned disbelief—I supposed the mirror image of my face when I realized they had intended to kill me by asphyxiation. They looked like two donkeys that had just gotten pushed out of a plane. But Briggs reacted quickly. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get the outward-opening doors shut without him grabbing me, so I scuttled back in the van, got hold of the Kawasaki’s handlebars, and shoved the bike out as hard as I could. He was reaching for one of the door handles but had to jump away to avoid getting rammed. All this happened in a second or two.

  Christy put the van in gear and jabbed the accelerator. I barely grabbed the edge of the cot to avoid getting thrown out. Thank God it was locked down.

  Briggs, however, had seized a door handle; he hung on with berserk strength as the van picked up speed.

  “You better let go now!” I shouted. But he was like any crazy who can’t give up his insane plan until he’s crashed and burned. His eyes told me that.

  The van increased pace, zooming down McNichols along the same route I’d taken, and I hoped Christy was aiming for I-75, as I had. Wind rushed through the cabin, and Briggs hung on, and I hung on as the blocks sped by. A car honked behind, doubtless trying to signal the driver. “Hey, you got a guy hanging on the back of your van, dude.”

  I hoped the on-ramp to 75 would make it too hard for Briggs to keep his grip. However, just as we started up the ramp, he thrust his legs inside, and his hand wrapped around the grab bar over the door.

  Motherfuck, motherfuck.

  Like a monkey, he was inside, sweat soaking his shirt. He’d shed his leather jacket while waiting for me to die. We were on the expressway now, and Christy pushed up the throttle accordingly. Car horns blared as bits and pieces of medical stuff got sucked out of the back into the night. I guessed we were going at least seventy.

  Briggs lunged for me, but I dodged. Then he reached into a recess and came up with a scalpel. Yeah, some kind of surgical knife on a stick. Curved blade. Operating-room sharp, no doubt.

  Oh, fuck.

  Calico Jones never would have gotten herself into this position. No, wait. Actually she’d found herself in many a similar situation—which was the point of the stories, right?—and she always managed to get out of them with élan. I know it’s just a character in a book, but thinking about Calico’s confidence gave me confidence. I will say that Calico, while being pursued by the biker, would have drawn her honking .45 semiautomatic, which is always tucked in a cross-draw underarm holster or at the small of her back in a more concealable waistband type of arrangement. And with it she’d probably have picked Dr. Briggs out of the saddle—that or blasted a hole in the cycle’s engine, causing a fiery crash. Either way—toast.

  I had no such Amazonian way to resolve this, but life had taught me one thing: if you keep fighting as hard as you can until you’re dead, the situation might turn, even if you can’t gain complete control. I wanted to bash him with the oxygen tank, but it was strapped tight, and I would have had to fiddle with the clasp to get at it. Holding on to the cot with one hand, I managed to reach the hard plastic bandage case Viv had gotten out and threw it at his head. Though Briggs’s strength was great bull-like, his reflexes were slower now, because the thing hit him right in the forehead. It didn’t hurt him much, but it knocked him a step back and made him drop the knife, and suddenly he was hanging out of the van again, holding on to the door like a stuntman as it swung to and fro. If he let go, he’d get flattened by the semi that hung behind us, not to mention the rest of the traffic pouring through the expressway at high speed.

  But he was scared now. “Lillian!” he shouted. “Help me! Give me a hand!” The pavement sped beneath his feet like a grinding belt.

  “Oh, Doctor,” I hollered back, “I suppose you might want some mercy now!”

  “Yes!” he shouted. “I need medication!” Spittle flew from his lips and away into the night. If I helped him in, he’d kill me and probably Christy too. If Christy pulled over, he’d be on me before I had a chance.

  Christy had headed downtown, with that tight, twisting bottleneck where 375 comes in. We’d have to slow down there.

  I screamed at my pediatrician, whose gentle hands had tapped my little naked chest, poked my aching stomach, and smoothed bandages over my stitches, “You son of a bitch, just drop off, will you?”

  “Help me!”

  “Why did you kill Shirlene Cord?”

  He grunted with the effort of holding on. His legs thrashed, trying to get a purchase on the step, but he was tiring.

  “Blackmailing me!” he shouted. Was he starting to cry?

  “Because of the drugs?”

  “Yes!” He was crying now, blubbering with frustration. The hot night air and traffic noise buffeted us like soft fists.

  “Ugh!” he grunted, and with a final, psychotic effort, he swung himself forward.

  But the van slowed suddenly. It nearly ripped him loose, but still he clung on. I shouted over my shoulder, “Go, Christy!”


  “I can’t! There’s a car in front, and I can’t get around it! It’s going slower!”

  Something was forcing us to a stop. I saw that we’d entered the single-lane bottleneck, with concrete canyon walls on both sides. Somebody’s always on your ass here, trying to make you go faster around the curve, and tonight was no exception: that eighteen-wheeler was on us, horn screaming, like some mechanical Jurassic devil. I looked for a way out, saw none, and realized I had to act against Briggs now or never. The van was going about thirty miles an hour. I grabbed the doctor’s black, bowling-ball-style helmet and smacked it into his face with all my strength.

  As he fell away, his hands grasped for me, to at least take me with him.

  But he missed and went down, cartwheeling along the pavement bleeding heavily from the face. I realized Christy had aimed for the narrow breakdown lane, and we were pretty much in it, which is why the axles of the eighteen-wheeler had failed to crush the doctor. In one of those slow-motion moments I’d already had so many of that night, I watched him tumble ass over teakettle and thought that in a weird way it looked like fun. Then you get to be dead.

  The van stopped, and I hopped out. Briggs lay about a hundred feet upstream, as it were. In the hyper-bright lights of the downtown interchange, he stirred. Impossibly, he got to his feet and staggered toward me, one arm hanging at the wrong angle.

  Car doors slammed amid the traffic din. From behind me a figure raced into view.

  Lou, who never went anywhere without her animal control officer’s catch pole, charged toward Briggs, followed, incredibly, by Flora, who wielded some kind of club.

  So that’s who Christy had called—or texted—while I was locked up with the motorcycle. How did she get her number? Then I remembered: Lou had given Christy her card after overhearing me say something to Christy about “rats.” I thanked God for Lou’s overactive helpfulness.

  Traffic honked and roared like angry boulders pounding down a creek.

  Lou easily noosed the battered doctor/addict/assassin around the neck, and Flora stood by holding her club with both hands, threateningly. Which I perceived to be an aluminum softball bat. Of course. There was more to Flora than ever had met my eye.

  Over the traffic thunder, Lou shouted, “Everything’s OK!” Exertion and triumph flushed her face.

  Christy came up and stood cautiously at my side. “I can’t believe it,” she said.

  “Neither can I. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “Yeah.” I turned to her, and she averted her eyes, then glanced at me. “Christy, you saved my life. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Keeping her eyes on Briggs, Lou yelled over her shoulder, “We got the call just after we ordered our pizza! Christy here said you were in trouble in the Happy Van. We got to the park just as you guys were flying outta there, so I had to drive like mad to catch up! Lucky I got in front and stopped you, or you’d be in Toledo by now! Ha!”

  “Why the hell did you stop us?” I shouted back. “I’d almost gotten him loose!”

  “He’d a’ died!”

  “Yeah, no shit!”

  She turned and looked me in the eye, and I felt like I always do when somebody is being wiser than me, at least for the moment. “Lillian, you don’t want that on you.”

  The murderous doctor, on his knees, struggled and tried to grab the pole, and in payment for that, Lou jerked him flat to the ground.

  “Just stay there, sir, for your own safety.”

  I wanted to kick him in the head. Christy stared at her father as if she’d never seen him before.

  Lou was right, of course. The killing trip is a heavy one; I’d already experienced that. But somewhere in my honest heart, there was a dark place that craved the opportunity to kill the man who had tried to kill me. I knew that now, in cool blood, I would never do it. But still.

  At last a police cruiser stopped, and the long explanatory process began. I produced Lieutenant Sorrel’s card and asked them to get hold of him. My wallet had stayed in my pocket, but God knew where my phone was. The badges called for medics, though it was kind of funny that this van full of medical stuff was right there.

  27

  The EMTs hauled off Briggs pretty quick, since it seemed he might be bleeding internally. Though I’m sure I looked terrible, I was amazingly OK. When the medic sat me on a cot and asked where I hurt, besides my swollen nose, I said, “The side of my head, here.” I felt the left side of my scalp. “It’s like there’s a little rock in there or something.”

  The medic, a ripped Latino dude with a floppy forelock, probed with gentle, latex-gloved fingers and called over his shoulder, “Looks like she’s got a few pellets in her head. Shallow.”

  I heard Sorrel’s voice say, “Damn, no kidding. So there was a gun involved.”

  Pellets? The bastard had shot me after all. I was lucky to have escaped the first, close-range blast. I must have caught those pellets when I was on foot and farthest from Briggs’s muzzle, or my head would have been pulp. Lucky for me too, that Briggs had chosen a lighter, birdshot-type load for this job. I found out later that birdshot’s as lethal as buck in the right conditions. Given birdshot’s bigger pattern, he must have felt his chances to stop me were better, plus he’d be likelier to stay on his bike.

  The ER doc at Receiving fixed me up in no time. She was a raven-haired ball of energy, snapping her gloves and slinging instruments around like a Benihana chef. Five number-four pellets went into an evidence bag, and a few dabs of ointment went on my head, and that was that. The doc, when palpating the rest of me—do they always do that?—discovered that I’d cracked a few ribs along the way as well. The adrenaline had dulled the pain. She told me to ice when I got home. They always tell you to ice when you get home, even if you’ve got frostbite, I bet.

  “What if I get cold?” I said. “Maybe I’ll need somebody to warm me up.”

  “Get out of here.”

  The Crown Vic got impounded for evidence, but Sorrel said I’d get it back pretty soon since “this one” wasn’t a murder, only an attempted. He told me he’d sent out a call for the arrest of Vivian Briggs. God knew how—or if—she’d gotten herself out of the inner city on foot.

  ----

  By the time I got home that night, Lou and Flora and I had gotten it pretty much figured out—so simple and so stupid. Like all complex webs of lies, this one went down in a shitstorm of simplicity. The hardworking Dr. Briggs had probably started popping an upper or two now and then to keep going during a long stressful stretch of work. Then, like rock stars and jet pilots the world over, he needed a little something to bring him down and help him sleep. Once alcohol had lost its effectiveness, he probably tried sedatives and pain-killers, and like so many addicts, he found pain-killers exceptionally rewarding—that warm, comfortable glow of the opioid family.

  It takes a while to get hooked, but when ya are, ya are. Why didn’t he get help and get clean? Maybe he tried. But guys like him figure they can handle it. When Shirlene saw evidence that he was overprescribing painkillers to his patients, she caught on quick enough. Her love of plain old money prompted her to squeeze Briggs to write up more and more phony bills for care he didn’t provide, under the threat that one phone call from her could get his license suspended. Not knowing about Shirlene’s private payroll scam, he was helpless to retaliate.

  The police detectives found Abby’s notebook in my car and figured out that not only Shirlene Cord and Dr. Briggs were scamming taxpayer money out of every branch of government they could, but about half of DeMedHo’s other providers also were doing it.

  I learned from Sorrel that Viv Briggs had been in on everything, but Christy was totally ignorant of her parents’ criminal activities. Viv had intercepted her in the parking lot at Jayne Field just as she was leaving and asked her to join her in the Happy Van on a short errand.

  When her parents had locked me in with the idling motorcycle, Christy simply figured
I’d find a way to turn the situation around, like Calico Jones: her faith in me was that strong, and her world view that naïve. She was in a heap of denial about what her parents had become.

  ----

  Given my painful ribs, I wasn’t going to be at my best for the championship game against the Stubby’s Joint Wildcats (gotta love that name); in fact, I couldn’t swing a bat without gasping. I called Mercedes, and she’d heard all about it through Christy. “We’ve got your back,” she said.

  “You found another player?”

  “Come to the game and cheer us on.”

  “I’ll need a ride.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  I wore my Grinders shirt in support. Mercedes insisted I join the team on the bench. The game was on Belle Isle. Christy showed up, having been questioned by the police and let go. Both of her parents were in custody. I couldn’t imagine how that must have felt. (Viv had been apprehended at the Windsor tunnel, evidently thinking she’d disappear into Canada.)

  I couldn’t help Christy carry the water vat as usual; Risenda came over to do it. But I helped with the cups and equipment. As we carried stuff from Christy’s car to the bench, I wanted to say something comforting to her and finally settled on, “You know, if you ever need any help with anything, call me, all right?”

  She nodded silently.

  Lou rolled up in her virile black Mustang, and from the passenger seat sprang Flora, wearing a Grinders shirt, high white socks, a determined expression, and carrying a new fielder’s mitt under her arm. I could have given her pointers on making the whole thing look more credible.

  “Flora!” I said. “What position will you be playing?”

  “Left field.”

  I slapped her on the back. “Awright!”

  “We went to a practice!” Lou said with her characteristic high-volume enthusiasm. “This lady can really play ball!”

  “You played when you were younger, didn’t you?” I asked.