“You could have had them overnight them to you.” I picked up the mail off my foyer floor.
“I’m over my limit.”
“What?” I almost dropped the mail.
“My card was declined. It’s the end of the month, Banford.”
“It’s the eighteenth. How have you spent your budget?”
“Come on, Banford, don’t be such a stickley. We can afford whatever I want. Please, let’s not fight about money.”
“It’s stickler, not stickley.” Deep breath. “We set the budget so we wouldn’t fight about money. You’ve blown through twenty grand in eighteen days. Do you realize most families in Chicago live on a quarter of that a month? I meant what I said; I won’t marry you if you can’t be financially responsible.”
“It’s the off-season.” She huffed. “Why can’t you just relax, pick up my shoes, and send them to me instead of being such a trollop about money? Or is it a toll?”
Does Goldilocks know most people consider her a trollop?
“It’s being droll, not a trollop, and a toll is a fee you pay on the highway.” I closed my eyes. She was a sweet girl, but sometimes, God, she was challenged. “I have better things to do than to shop for you.” I finally said.
“Oh really? What’s so important?” She let the silence linger. “Working out three times a day?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t going to mention Cass. “The clown for my Halloween fundraiser didn’t pass his background checks.”
“That’s real save the world stuff, you know?”
“I have decisions to make.”
Life or death decisions
. “Forgive me if I don’t return your calls, or give a flying fig about your Ferragamos.” When she started to whimper, I ended the call. No matter how many labels Ferragamo, Valentino, or Franco Sarto stitched in soles, I didn’t have time for them or her.
The realization hit me like a stiletto to the head: she was never going to grow up. I couldn’t face a forever of this kind of nonsense... not with the seriousness of my current situation. I couldn’t coddle her like those canine cockroaches.
In the kitchen I dug around in the Sub-Zero, constructed a sandwich, and grabbed a beer. Before I was able to get a bite out of my sandwich, the doorbell rang. Fletch was a crumbled mess on my doorstep. I’d never seen him without a suit coat on and his tie knotted in a perfect Windsor, but the former was draped over his shoulder and the latter’s knot dangled in the center of his chest. “You look like hell,” I said.
“Yeah well, your eye looks like shit.” He followed me into my study. “I could use one of those.” Fletch pointed toward the beer as he threw his sport coat and then himself into a chair.
“Dick Doyle wants you to testify to the Senate subcommittee about steroid use in professional sports.”
Who is named Dick anymore?
“Am I being subpoenaed?”
“Of course not. He read the
People
magazine article. He wants someone to testify about clean-living in baseball. The hearings aren’t until the new January session, so I booked it.”
“I’m not interested.”
By then, kid, the whole world will know you cut deeper than any Band-Aid could cover.
“You need all the positive PR you can get,” Fletch said.
“You didn’t come here for that. What’s the bad news?”
“I tried to get Mrs. Landscale to settle. She’s moving forward with the lawsuit.”
“Crap.”
“Crap is right. I pushed up your contract signing on Friday with the front office to noon. We should have it signed, sealed, and delivered before it hits the news.”
“I want to settle. How much does she want?”
He looked resigned. “Five million.”
“What? Is she crazy?” I had met Mrs. Landscale at her husband’s wake, she was distraught but sane.
“She says you intentionally risked their lives.”
“She has no idea what was said between us, and I was the only one left alive.”
“That’s what she’s most displeased about: that you’re still alive. She insists her husband would have returned to base camp, when the weather turned.”
A chill ran through me.
Fletch regarded me. “It’s true? One more of your adventures taking you to death’s door? I’ve never seen a guy with more to live for, who’s willing to throw it all away.”
“I would not throw my life away.”
“No, you just take it to the edge as often as you can. Someone else got hurt because you went too far. Two kids don’t have a father now.” He threw me a dirty look. “This is going to be the worst public relations nightmare.”
“Pay her.” I pulled a long drag from my beer.
“Are you crazy? That guy wouldn’t have even made two million in his entire life. There’s no way I’m paying five.”
“Pay her. Certified funds. Tomorrow.”
“I am not paying her more than a quarter-million.”
“Pay her Fletch.” I rested my head against the headrest resigned. “I have bigger fish to fry.”
“There’s more to this change of heart.” He spoke through the doorway as I retrieved his beer. “This morning, you were convinced you’d never give her more than the quarter million. I know you feel bad, but regardless of your adrenaline-junky highs, it was a white-out, and even you can’t order those.”
I gave him a look of blank resolve as I handed him a beer. He was worth every penny I’d ever paid. “Sometimes I wish we could talk as friends, without you trying to position things,” I said reclining in my office chair.
He smiled wryly. “What happened between you and Tucker?”
I shook my head no, and stared resolutely at my computer.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll pay her office a call.”
“You gave her my number and no heads up she’s a big time criminal defense attorney.”
“I only know two types of broads: those I’ve fucked, and female lawyers I should’ve done before I got married. She falls into the latter category. She’s one hot number, but I asked around, and no one I know ever got to first base with her.”
I reached across my desk and grabbed him by the loosened tie and pulled his face up until our eyeballs locked. “She’s not just another notch in a belt.”
“What’s she to you?” He laughed in my face. “The one who got away?”
With my other hand, I slid the knot of his tie back toward his wide pipe. “I’ve asked you nicely.”
“Okay, okay.” He was struggling and choking. “All right she was more than a piece of a—”
I glared and he stopped himself.
“It’s obviously a sore subject. What does she want?”
His blood, guts, and tears on a silver platter.
“It’s a private matter.”
“You gave up your right to privacy when you became a professional athlete and a client of mine.”
“Yes, but Libby didn’t.”
“Libby, is it?” He arched a brow in accusation. “You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on sooner or later, so you’d better cough it up. I can’t take any more shitty surprises.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and sat back farther in my chair. “Her son is dying of Leukemia. She needs my help.”
“Don’t you have to be related to be a donor?”
It was the kind of silence that came before an avalanche.
Fletch’s face became so red I thought he might ignite. “You have a kid, and you never told me? You asshole! You haven’t been paying child support.” His Irish Catholic rage-o-meter blazed up his neck through the tips of his ears. I thought it might spew a river of red rage out his eye sockets. “She’s going to clean your clock! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I knew she was pregnant, but it was right before I’d been called up to triple A. When I told her I wanted her to have an abortion, she disappeared, and about a year later I received Dissolution of Parental Rights papers. I signed them and sent them back. I assumed that meant she was giving the kid up.”
“You aren’t supposed to assume a damn thing! You pay me to make sure your conjectures are correct. Why the fuck didn’t you show me the papers?”
“I didn’t want anyone to know.” I met his eye. “I didn’t want to be pressured into doing the right thing.”
“Do the right thing?” He ground out in agitation.
“Coerce me to into being a father. I wasn’t ready.”
“If you didn’t want to be a father you should’ve keep your bat and balls in your pants.” Fletch was silent for a minute solid. “And for the record, what the fuck would the right thing have been?”
“I don’t know. Marry her and give the kid a name.”
“From one friend to another.” He looked up from his hands. “If you thought she was giving the kid up for adoption, then why the fuck would you think I would tell you to marry her?”
“I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to concentrate on my baseball career. So I signed the papers, thinking she’d give the baby away, and I would forget all about it. I wanted it to go away, and it did.”
“You thought you’d force her hand. If you weren’t going to help her, she’d have no other choice than to give it up.”
“Believe what you want, but that’s bullshit, Fletch.”
“You didn’t count on her being as tough as nails.” His eyes narrowed. “She worked her ass off to get through law school. She probably had debt up to her eyeballs, and she was carrying your dead weight. You are one lucky fuck. She could have ruined you.”
I never asked myself why, because then I’d have to admit she was the better person. She let me walk clean and clear and never held it over my head.
“I’m curious. What did it take to forget?” He got to his feet and paced up and down in front of my desk. “Did hang-gliding in the Amazon make you forget? Did parachuting in the Grand Canyon? Did trying to climb an impossible mountain in the middle of a blizzard make you forget?”
I shook my head. “It’s been eating away at me forever.”
“And rightly so.” Fletch whittled words together in silence before the sharpened barbs would fly, you’d be impaled before you realized the icicles had pierced you skin. I wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of his rancor.
“You’re an idiot! You had the chance to have a woman like Elizabeth Tucker, and instead you found a shallow immature bimbo to marry. Do you know what happens to your gene pool, when you marry someone that ignorant?”
“For the record, I couldn’t have her. Libby, that is.”
“Obviously you did at least once.” He shook his head. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do now?”
“I had the blood test run, and I saw the kid’s doc.” I took in a deep breath. “I’m going to do whatever I can to help him.”
Silence stretched out between us, filling the chasm the storm left. “I’m speaking as your friend, here. You clear your calendar, and make yourself available twenty-four/seven.”
“Done.” It was the least I owed Libby and my son.
“I knew you were too much of a choir boy—no booze, no drugs—of course not, that would have hindered your perfection on the field. Sheez, I should have realized why women weren’t your vice—because you couldn’t have the one you wanted!”
“Shut up, Fletch.”
“This gives me a whole new perspective on your out-of- control cravings for the adrenaline rush. If you fill your senses with the rush, you can avoid feeling anything real.”
“Don’t start that psychobabble stuff with me. The next thing I know, you’ll be watching Oprah with your wife.”
“I happen to like Oprah. And leave
my
wife out of this.”
“And I enjoy extreme sports.”
“This isn’t about your hobbies. I’m talking about financial responsibility. Pay her all the child support she’s due. Twenty percent of every dime you’ve ever made. You might have signed dissolution of parental rights papers, but this is one gig you’re going to live up to.”
“I have no problem with that.”
“Now, speaking as your attorney, this will give us the bargaining chip we need in the wrongful death case.” He ran his hand across the stubble on his jaw and walked the length of the room a few more times. “No jury is going to award Mrs. Landscale five million dollars, when your kid is dying of Leukemia.”
“What?”
The third ball right against the breastplate, folks.
“When this story gets out, you’re not going to pay Mrs. Landscale much of anything. It was a tragic accident, after all, and you understand all about tragedies, yourself. You’ve missed the first… how old is the kid?”
“Six.”
“You’ve missed the first six years of your kid’s life, and now he’s dying.” He smirked.
“What kind of crazy spin are you going to put on this?”
“Just enough spin to keep your money in your bank account.”
“So much for high moral standards.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about morals, when your shit got us into this, and it’s going to get us out.” He narrowed his gaze. “You’re going to help Elizabeth and the kid any way you can. You’re going to pay all his medical bills. You’re going to negotiate a reasonable settlement in the Landscale wrongful death suit, which, once her lawyers learn your son is dying of cancer, they’ll gladly accept. And then you’re going to graciously take your child support money back, when Elizabeth Tucker throws it in your face. The home run of the whole thing is that you’re going to look like a fucking hero, when all is said and done. Whether the kid lives or dies, you come out looking better than you have in years.”
“This is a kid we’re talking about! Whether he lives or dies is important to Libby.”
“You abandoned your kid to play in the majors, when you already had more money than God.” Fletch turned on his heel. “All I’m doing is picking up the pieces as best I can.”
This is the kind of things agents have done for the game. Heartless bastards.
I took the ump’s cue. “You’re heartless.”
“Heart is when you put others first in the line, and that’s where my family is. My heart came from nothing, now it beats on greenbacks. I wasn’t born with the luxury of a golden glove up my ass.” He picked up his suit jacket before parlaying his final jab. “You’re ashamed of me for getting us out of this any way I can? Well I’m ashamed you’re here in the first place. You’ve always been cocky, but I never once pegged you a coward.”
I picked up the first thing I could lay my hands on, it rocketed across the room. A spilt second later it met with my flat screen television and both shattered into thirty-three-point-seven-million little pieces.