Left Field Page 5

  I said, “Fortunately I’m wearing my Chuck Taylors.”

  We alighted at the counter. Between bites we started talking. “Look, you’re familiar with crime,” Mercedes said.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “And the fact that you discovered…This is just so weird.”

  I told her how it went, my spotting the corpse from the Pomeroys’ roof. “Go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind,” I said. Being a slow eater by nature, I forced myself to chomp my sandwich and slug my coffee so as not to get behind the brisk pace Mercedes already was setting for her day. The café bustled around us, the brown coffee aroma swirling everywhere, the espresso machine hissing and gurgling like a baby hippo.

  She said, “Abby was on my ball team.”

  “Your current one?”

  “Yes.”

  Mercedes had been captain of the Wayne State women’s softball team when we were students. I saw her play a few times; she was powerful and quick at her position, first base, and she was a decent hitter. There were just a couple of other black girls on the squad back then. Now she worked in administration for the Detroit Recreation Department. On the side, for fun, she coached an amateur women’s softball team.

  I waited.

  Mercedes said, “I don’t know much, but…” She fell silent.

  I waited then said, “Look, I should tell you that I’m trying to put together some kind of story on this for the Motor City Journal. So anything you tell me could help me, but I’ll keep your confidentiality. Unless you’re about to tell me you did it.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Do you think you know who did it?”

  “Any number of people could have. The police are going to interview me at eleven. I don’t know what to tell them.”

  “Well, just answer their questions,” I told her. “They’re going to want to know when you last saw her and all that, and whether you can account for your whereabouts that night—or morning, I guess—and if you have any suspicions about anybody.”

  “Yes, well, that’s the thing. I don’t know. Something like this happens, everybody’s freaked out—and you start thinking about people, and you start to wonder.”

  “Don’t you think it could have been a random mugging?”

  Mercedes shook her head. “You know that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Can’t rule it out, though. Why don’t you tell me a little about Abby?”

  She seemed up to that. She smoothed her already smooth head—she’d gotten some terrific fine-line braid work done—and said, “Everybody knows a lot about everybody on a ball team. You get pretty tight, you know? It’s what I love about team sports. Us guys against their guys—then we all go out and get drunk.”

  I laughed.

  “Well, we do have designated drivers,” Mercedes continued after a swig of coffee. “But Abby was never one of them! Baby, she could drink. You could put a shot of anything in front of her, and she’d down it. Held her liquor pretty well too.”

  “What position did she play?”

  “Outfield. I put her in right, usually. She wasn’t all that fast—white girl and all—but when she did manage to catch a deep ball, she could make those throws to the plate that you really need.”

  “Was she well liked?”

  “No.” Mercedes stirred her coffee with a tiny piece of timber.

  “How come?”

  “She was…pushy. She was a social worker—I guess you know that—so you’d expect her to be warm and fuzzy, but man, she was a hard-ass.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She wouldn’t give a compliment to you if you paid her for it. She definitely would not cheer for you just for making an effort on the diamond—she was all about results. You know how I said she wasn’t fast? Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying. She always came early to practice and ran up and down the bleachers until we were ready to warm up.”

  “Wow.”

  “And she had these junky little shoes—like she’d worn them in high-school gym class. The soles were worn smooth. We’d say, ‘Abby, getcha some new shoes!’ And she’d say, ‘The shoes don’t make the player.’”

  “I like her.”

  “Yeah, I did too.”

  “But,” I submitted, “she was too much of a samurai for the others?”

  Mercedes laughed sadly.

  I asked, “Did she live with anybody or have a lover?”

  “Well, we’re getting into it now. There was sort of a triangle going on.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “She and my star pitcher—her name’s Jackie Quiller—liked each other. But my catcher developed this huge crush on Jackie. Her name is Carmen Acosta. I saw some friction between her and Abby. Everybody did.”

  “Do you think this Carmen could have done it?”

  “It’s too bizarre to even think, but…”

  “Where do those women live?”

  “Jackie lives in Royal Oak, and Carmen’s got a place in Warren. Actually, now I’m wondering if it could have been a hate crime.”

  “But Abby was white.”

  “No, dummy, because she was gay!”

  “Oh.” I stopped. That hadn’t occurred to me yet. Could certainly be an angle on the story. “Well, do you know whether she was ever hassled or anything? Something going on at work? A beef with a neighbor? Some creepy guy hanging out by the ball diamond?”

  She shook her head. We speculated on what Abby was doing at that house in Palmer Woods, and I told Mercedes about my business with the Pomeroys. “She could’ve been killed somewhere else and dumped of course,” I said, “and that backyard might have been just a randomly chosen spot.”

  But that didn’t scan, and I knew it. Why would anybody do a body dumping in the middle of a residential neighborhood? Murderers in this city either take the body for a ride down to the Detroit River, or they go out to the woods in Oakland County.

  Morning traffic flashed by on the street outside, shooting morning-sun rays into the restaurant off the cars’ chrome and windows. People dressed for work parked at the curb, strode in to order coffee and a cheese Danish or a veggie wrap, then hurried out again.

  I’ve always thought mornings, not nights, are the most dangerous time to drive in a city, what with people juggling their coffee cups, pastries, phones, mascara wands, battery shavers, and oh, yeah, the steering wheel.

  I said, “I don’t suppose you know who Abby was with that night?”

  “No. No. We’ve all been in touch by phone, but we haven’t had a practice since the news. We, ah, we’re having one tonight at six.”

  “Who else didn’t like Abby?”

  “Well, I heard she had a feud with her cousins over some family property.”

  “Really? What do you know about it?”

  “Not much,” Mercedes said. “I just remember her moaning about how her cousins plowed under some cornfield in Indiana. That’s all.”

  I considered that.

  “Are you guys all going to the funeral?” I asked. “It’s next Saturday.”

  “Yeah, then we’re all gonna head over to the Hop Inn.”

  “Oh, gosh, I remember that place.” The Hop Inn was a brewpub (get it?) down on Cass, before brewpubs were cool. “Mercedes, give me some more overview on the team. Like, is everybody gay or what? I know the cliché about softball teams being these incestuous hotbeds of lesbian romance.”

  “Well, they are.” We laughed, and she drained her coffee. “The caffeine has kicked in. Let’s go.”

  We set off from Nine Mile, north toward Huntington Woods, an old, handsome neighborhood with big-ass chestnut and oak trees. Mercedes set a blistering pace, her white shoes a blur, her arms pumping like pistons. The only reason I could keep up was because my legs were longer.

  She said, “I mean, yeah, there are a few straight women on the team, as in straight-straight, and then there’s that gray area.”

  “The tantalizing zone of the oughta-bes.”

  “Right. Plus we’re all supposed to b
e OK with bi’s. I mean, Jesus, all the nomenclature.”

  “Yeah, the categories.”

  “That shit really means a lot to some people, you know?”

  “Oh, yes.” I was starting to enjoy the fast walking. The air was magnificent: early-morning air is always the best, of course. It was still cool and not a bit muggy. I could smell the lawns and the trees and the occasional rose hedge. The sidewalk was just wide enough for the two of us, and it was just uneven enough—what with tree-root bumps and frost cracks—to be interesting to walk over.

  “But my God,” said my friend, “if you made a chart with everybody’s name on it and connected them by who’s gone to bed with whom, it’d look like a Spirograph.”

  “Are there any heavily closeted ones? I mean, is that an issue?”

  Mercedes looked over at me with her huge brown eyes. “Sister, any woman who wants to be closeted, the last place she’s gonna be is on a ball diamond.”

  On the surface, you wouldn’t necessarily peg Mercedes for a gay woman. She had the most particular way of dressing, wearing outfits of wild prints and zingy colors, but tailored razor-sharp. Today she had on a skirted suit that hugged her curves perfectly, in a retina-searing lemon-lime check.

  I complimented her on it then asked, “Where do you buy a suit like that?”

  “You don’t. Tammy makes my clothes.”

  “Man, she is an expert.”

  Mercedes smiled. “She is an expert in many ways.” I envied her her longtime partner, who ran a design business in Grosse Pointe.

  We kept going, block after block, zooming up and down curb cuts, swerving into the grass at times to give way to a mom with a souped-up baby coach.

  “So,” I said, “you’re not the only one the police are talking to, of course. I wouldn’t stress about it. And you can certainly consult a lawyer before you—”

  “Maybe I should. Police…scare me, you know?”

  “Mercedes, what? Is it just because you’re black? Most Detroit cops are black too.”

  “Well, actually…there’s sort of a warrant out for me.”

  I stopped dead. She kept going a couple of paces then stopped and stepped back. A huge green canopy shimmered high overhead: a gigantic spring maple, all black boughs and bright-green leaves. “What the hell for?” I asked.

  “Parking tickets.”

  My heart started again. “Why an arrest warrant for parking tickets?”

  “Fifty-seven of them.”

  “Oh, my God. Pay them! Get your butt to a lawyer and make a deal. Do it! How did you accumulate so many?”

  “We like to go to Eastern Market. There’s never any parking there. I get impatient.”

  I laughed. “And you don’t like to get up early on the weekends.”

  “Right.”

  Eastern Market is the great farmers’ market of Detroit. If you get there at six forty-five, just before they open, you’re gold, but otherwise it’s a battle to get a spot anywhere nearby. You take a chance parking too close to a fire hydrant, and you pay the price.

  I checked my watch. “Shouldn’t we head back? What time do you have to be at work?”

  “OK, but…” Mercedes stopped and put her hand out. “I…there’s something else I want to bring up.”

  An ominous feeling came over me.

  We started walking back, and she said, “Now, I know you’ve said no to me before—”

  “Aha! Stop right there. Everybody’s been trying to offload some rescued boa constrictor on me. Not only do I not want another pet, but I’ve already got one! Lou inflicted a baby raccoon on me last week, and I’m already regretting the whole—”

  “Damn you, shut up!”

  I did.

  Mercedes said, “Let me finish several sentences in a row.”

  “OK.”

  In an extra-deliberate voice, as one would address a real dim-bulb, she said, “I know you’ve refused me before, but here’s the thing. The Grinders won the league championship last year.”

  My stomach sank. That was the name of her ball team, the Detroit Grinders. Now I knew what was up.

  “We had a stellar roster last year,” she went on, “but my shortstop blew out her knee in a collision at second, and now Abby—of course—and I just really need you to play.”

  “Mercedes, I am at best a warm body.” All my friends know that when it comes to anything involving hand-eye coordination, I’m a total failure. “I mean, I close my eyes when I swing.”

  “I know. I hope it’ll be temporary, because I really need somebody with skills. But right now your scrawny ass is the best I can do. We’ve absolutely got to win the championship again this year. In honor of Abby.”

  “Oh, God. I don’t even have a glove. Or those horrible little pants.”

  She smacked me hard on the arm, causing me to step off the sidewalk into a large pile of dog shit. “I knew you’d do it! Be at Jayne Field at a quarter to six tonight.”

  “This is gonna be an ordeal.”

  “Think of all the women!”

  9

  On my way to the ballfield, one of those interesting little things in life happened. I pulled up at a light on McNichols, a long one with left-turn arrows and all, and it turned out to be an even longer wait because of a massive semi slowly backing out of an alley, with a guy on foot directing it.

  I was in the right lane, and I glanced over at the car on my left to see if it was going to try to gun it around the end of the truck once the light changed.

  It was a Cooper Mini convertible with the top down—cute green car—and the driver was an attractive woman, late thirties, I thought. Cool lemon-yellow wraparound sunglasses, a red billed cap with a stream of lustrous honey-gold hair emerging from the ponytail port in back. She glanced back at me, and I thought she looked preoccupied and a little sad. But she gave off such an aura of sun-washed health and energy that I smiled.

  She smiled back, and my stupid heart did a backflip. She had a terrific mouth for smiling, full-lipped, with bracket lines that stretched upward into her cheeks.

  There was nothing to do except smile more. She looked away. I wished I could see those eyes behind the shades. Bright, clear blue, I decided, about the color of the late-afternoon sky as it deepens above the treetops.

  The truck rumbled off; the light turned; and the moment ended. It crossed my mind to follow her for a while, just for the hell of it, but I was starving and I spotted a McDonald’s, so I turned in for a burger and coffee.

  I got to Jayne Field, on Detroit’s east side, at a quarter to six, wearing khaki shorts, my gray Wayne State T-shirt, and my Chuck Taylors. I wore my golf cap as well, an orange twill job with “Rackham Golf Course” on it. Rackham was the muni next to the zoo where you could still go around for the price of a cheap haircut.

  Jayne Field represented the most valiant efforts of the city’s rec department to foster a wholesome team sport in the middle of the goddamn ghetto, which more and more of Detroit was becoming. From the city’s days as an urban powerhouse, when downtown was practically as glamorous as Manhattan, through decades of auto-industry slump, racial strife, drug wars, municipal corruption, political idiocy, and well-intentioned boondoggles, Detroit was now the Beirut of America.

  Jayne Field was a big place. I counted six ball diamonds, though most of them were overgrown with knee-high weeds. There may have been more. You could sense the struggle between athletic idealism and urban darkness. Trash blew around, and the infields were horrifying, not even dirt but sharp gray gravel that would shred flesh in an instant, if that flesh were trying to slide into second.

  Having decided that I didn’t want to use whatever sweat-stained glove Mercedes might have dug out of her closet, I’d swung through Meijer’s and bought a spanking-new Wilson fielder’s glove. A far cry from the crummy brand-X glove I’d used in summer rec as a kid, this one felt well made and had a basket-weave pocket the size of Ohio. The leather smelled heavenly, and it looked so pristine and perfect: not a scratch, not e
ven a fingernail mark, no sweat stains, no hint of patina yet. I didn’t know whether you were supposed to break in modern gloves the same way we used to—baby oil, a ball tied into the pocket overnight—but I didn’t have any time, and the main thing was to not look like a greenhorn, so as soon as I got out of the Crown Vic, I kicked up some dirt and rubbed it into the glove. I also bashed it on the macadam a few times to scuff it. Then I jumped up and down on it.

  I knew I was going to suck as a player, but I felt that if I gave it everything I had, plus acted like I had no ego, I’d make a decent impression.

  Using the front push bumper of the Crown Vic as a barre, I stretched my hamstrings and back. My old Caprice had been evergreen; this car was state-trooper blue, which was lighter than navy and somehow flatter than royal. Like the Caprice, this one’s interior was black and had extra document pockets screwed into the doors, as well as shotgun brackets in the trunk. I was happy to have the heavily scarred black push bumper, which gave the car an aggro feel, helpful when cruising surface in Detroit.

  A few women were on hand already. One was lugging one of those huge water drums from her car, and I ran over to help.

  She was about my age, just about as skinny as me, and very bucktoothed. There appeared to be something wrong with her eyes, but I couldn’t tell what. She looked at me in unfocused surprise as I grabbed a handle on the drum and took half the weight.

  “Where to?” I said. She gestured to the first-base bench, and we deposited it there.

  “I have to get the cups and stuff,” she said, and scurried off before I could introduce myself.

  I watched a couple of women limber up, playing catch in the outfield. More women were showing up in ones and twos, and they all greeted one another somberly, probably talking about Abigail Rawson in sad and puzzled tones. I stood to the side, stretching, my glove lying on the grass. One woman stood out from the rest, long armed and graceful. No, I thought, it can’t be. But yes: red cap, shining hair, and there were the lemon-yellow sunglasses and that mouth. Oh, gosh.

  She had on a pair of ball pants and a Grinders T-shirt. Her cap was pushed back. She was fit, you could tell, but not in a Pilates-and-egg-whites way; she was built more like a distance swimmer: big legs, straight trunk and butt, long whiplike arms. The way she threw and caught was liquid and effortless. In spite of her vibrant physical presence, there was a distant look in her eyes. She didn’t smile, and I thought that if this was the pitcher Jackie Quiller, who’d been in a relationship with Abigail Rawson, she might still be in some degree of shock. It had been less than a week.