Rivals (2010) (10 page)

THE LIMO TURNED THE
corner on Lake Street and Josh sped up. His breath was growing short by the time he reached Lake, so he was glad to see the limo make a left and turn into the marina. Visions of Jaden and Mickey Jr. going sailing together or taking a cruise in some antique boat with one of those comfy leather love seats in the back turned his stomach. By the time he rounded the corner and darted into the marina’s long parking lot, the limo had already come to a stop down by the water.

Josh scanned the docks, which extended a couple hundred feet out into the lake with boats nosed into them on either side. There wasn’t too much activity, and after a couple minutes his visions of a romantic boat ride were put to rest. Then his heart gave another
lurch as he thought of the two of them, alone, sitting in the back of the limousine with the air-conditioning blowing cool and the music down low. He approached the long black car, but the engine appeared to be off and the driver had a newspaper out on the wheel, reading the sports section. He looked up as Josh strolled past, and Josh waved, peering all the way in through to the backseat.

It was empty.

Josh looked around for where they’d gone. Of the two long buildings facing each other across the parking lot, one was a motel and the other was for boat storage and repair. Then Josh spotted the restaurant.

He opened the door and peeked inside. Even in the middle of the afternoon, the tables overlooking the big windows were crowded and noisy. Colorful wooden fish hung from the ceiling, along with lamps shaped like anchors. Josh stepped in and scanned the room, seeing no sign of Jaden. He scanned the room again and was just turning to go when a head of dark curly hair caught his eye. The half of the face he could see sitting across from the person with the curly hair poked at his memory. He studied the high red cheek, small dark eye, and long flat nose of the pinched face.

The umpire from the Comets game.

For a better view of the other man, Josh circled along the bright blue wall, beneath a yellow, blue, and green dolphin fish and, beneath that, a table of old men whose
straw hats shook with laughter. Then he saw the face of the curly-headed man.

Myron, the bodyguard in the black suit. He was grinning at the umpire and waving his hand in the air with a kingly expression. The two men exchanged a few words. Myron took a sip of coffee, then slipped the umpire a bulging manila envelope before he stood to go.

Staying a few paces back, Josh followed Myron toward the door. He had to worm his way through a handful of customers waiting to be seated to get to the glass. He peered through just in time to see Myron climb back inside his limousine and pull away.

When Josh turned around, he gasped and stumbled back against the door. The umpire stood there, staring at Josh with an angry scowl.

His hand reached out and Josh ducked.

“GET OUTTA MY WAY,
kid,” the umpire said, his hand snaking past Josh and pushing open the glass door. “No wonder you got hit in the face, standing around, blocking people’s ways.”

Josh touched the healing scar on his cheek, stepped aside, and followed the umpire with his eyes as he limped across the parking lot and climbed into a rusty red pickup truck. Josh headed for the road, his instincts telling him to follow the man as far as he could. When the red pickup reached the street, it went left. Josh took off after it, sprinting down the sidewalk as the truck slowly pulled away. At the end of the street, it turned right. Josh thought about giving up, knowing there was no way he could follow a truck on foot, but something told him to do his best.

He took off after the truck, and just as he reached the corner, his efforts were rewarded. He caught the flash of a yellow fender as the red truck disappeared into a driveway no more than two blocks up the street.

Josh trudged up River Street until he came to the spot where the truck had disappeared. Two small stone pillars marked the gravel drive that cut into the center of a woods. On one pillar, a black sign with fluorescent orange letters announced
NO TRESPASSING
. With a thumping heart, Josh crossed the street and dove into the underbrush, keeping the gravel drive in sight and staying parallel to its path in the web of tree trunks and dappled sunlight. He tried to walk quietly, but sticks and leaves snapped and rustled beneath his feet. He looked around. Other than the long gravel drive, he saw nothing except thick woods heavy with vines and brambles.

After a particularly nasty patch of thorns forced him deeper into the woods and out of sight of the gravel road, he found himself without a marker of any kind. He listened but heard only birds twittering and an airplane high overhead, which told him nothing. Hot frustration with a froth of fear bubbled up inside as he asked himself how he could get lost in a woods so close to the middle of a town. He turned and tried to retrace his steps to get back to the driveway, pushing through briars and thickets of close-knit saplings. Finally, the thick knot of vegetation opened into a cool wood of towering trees.
He crossed a gurgling stream and climbed its far bank. When he reached its lip, he saw something through the trees, rising up nearly above their tops.

As he drew closer, he began to use the trunks of massive trees for cover until he stood at the edge of an unkempt lawn, staring up at a weathered gray house with steep, pointy roofs, warped shutters, and gingerbread trim broken with rot. The back lawn of the old house sloped downward, and through the trees Josh saw the glint of sunlight on the river. The only sign of human life was the red pickup truck parked in front of a detached garage on the far side of the house.

Josh circled the house, darting from tree to tree. He passed beneath a porch that wrapped itself around the entire back of the house, then rounded the corner of the far side. He shivered when he saw a couple dozen crooked and crumbling gravestones poking their heads up from weedy beds in the side yard. When the back door swung open with a creak, Josh ducked for cover but peered out to see the umpire in a floppy pair of flowery swim trunks. On his face he wore dark sunglasses and a huge smile. Under his arm was a newspaper, a towel, and a bottle of suntan oil.

The umpire made his way down the hill toward an aging boathouse with a small dock jutting out into the water. When the umpire emerged from the boathouse carrying a gas can, Josh retreated to the front of the house, studying it for signs of life before taking off at
a fast walk down the gravel driveway, happy to be getting out of there without having to trek back through the woods.

The long gravel drive wound through the woods, and the stone pillars had just come into sight when he heard the crunch of gravel behind him. Before he could react, the red truck appeared like something out of a bad dream, moving fast. It blared its horn. Josh jumped, stumbled, and fell directly in front of its path. The truck slid toward him in a spray of gravel and a swirl of dust.

WHEN JOSH OPENED HIS
eyes, he saw the truck’s steaming nose just inches from his face. The umpire appeared over him, shaking a bony finger.

“Are you crazy? I almost wrecked my truck!” the man said, screeching like a ghoul with wide bloodshot eyes, pointing at the steaming truck. “Who are you? You see that sign? You’re trespassing!”

Josh scrambled to his feet. He froze for a moment, and the umpire reached to grab him. Josh turned and bolted.

The man hollered after him, but Josh never looked back. He hit the street and sprinted toward Main. When he got there, he glanced quickly over his shoulder, saw no one behind him, and ran straight for the Hall of Fame. He ran so hard that by the time he got there, he thought
he’d be sick. In the alcove between the different wings of the building, he braced his hand on a bench and fell to a knee, breathing deep through his nose.

“Dude, where’ve you been?” Benji asked, poking Josh’s shoulder. “I found the Babe. You gotta go back in with me. I swear, you can see a resemblance.”

Josh looked up and squinted at Benji in the sunlight. “Resemblance to what?”

“Me,” Benji said, holding up his cell phone. “Me and the Babe.”

Josh took a deep breath and shook his head.

“I’m telling you,” Benji said, holding forth the screen until Josh looked. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

“I just saw a payoff, that’s what,” Josh said, rising to his feet and glancing around at the steady stream of visitors washing past them.

“Payoff for what?” Benji asked.

“Not so loud,” Josh said, pressing a finger to his lips. He took Benji by the elbow and led him down the street, away from the crowd, and then told him what he’d seen—the meeting between the umpire and Myron, where the umpire had gone, the red truck, the gravestones in a small cemetery outside the house, and how Josh had almost been run over by the guy.

“What? The umpire
lives
here?” Benji asked, stopping at the corner in front of Carmen Esposito’s Italian Ice Cream.

“Maybe,” Josh said, moving aside for a family with
several small children who jingled a bell on the door as they stepped out onto the sidewalk from the ice-cream store, “but the truck had a Pennsylvania license plate. The ump acted like he owned the place, though, screaming about trespassing and all. It’s a pretty creepy place, whatever it is, and I swear the guy looks like he crawled out of one of those graves in the side lawn.”

“So the ump got paid to make those crappy calls?” Benji said, wrinkling his face in disgust. “That’s incredible. How the heck can you win against that? How much was it?”

“I don’t know,” Josh said, shaking his head. “The envelope was pretty thick, and you can’t compete with that. The calls that guy made today?”

“So,” Benji said, “no way we can win this thing. Should we tell your dad?”

Josh thought for a minute, then shook his head. “No, he can’t do anything.”

“We just let them do it?” Benji said.

“No,
we
find out what’s going on,” Josh said. “Maybe we can take a picture of them meeting or something, Myron giving him the cash.”

“You think they’ll keep paying him?” Benji asked.

“I don’t know,” Josh said, “but it looked to me like the ump fixed the game this morning, then they paid him off. Maybe they hold back the money until he comes through. If so, we’ve got to catch them in the act. We’ll
get a copy of the schedule and just see when the Comets play next.”

“But there are, like, eight games tomorrow, and that’s just counting the teams that are still alive,” Benji said, peering over Josh’s shoulder into the big bay window of the ice-cream shop. “You think it’ll be the same umpire?”

“I don’t know,” Josh said. “Maybe he’s got that fixed too.”

Benji wasn’t listening; he was bobbing his head around to get a good look into the window.

“I know, Benji,” Josh said with a sigh, “you need an ice cream.”

“That’s not what I’m looking at, dude,” Benji said, pointing.

THE BELL ON THE
door to the ice-cream shop jingled. Josh turned around and groaned when he saw who it was. Jaden had her arm hooked through Mickey Jr.’s arm, both of them eating ice-cream cones. She leaned over and licked Mickey Jr.’s mint chocolate chip cone and they laughed together. Her eyes went right past Josh.

Josh reached out and touched her arm as she walked by.

“Jaden,” he said. “Can I talk to you?”

“Oh, hi, Josh,” she said, acting as if she hadn’t seen him. “Sure. What’s up?”

“Alone?” Josh said, nodding at Mickey.

“I think that whatever you have to say, you can say in front of Mickey,” Jaden said.

“Dude, you are so lame,” Benji said to her. “After
everything we’ve done for you, this is how you act?”

“Let’s see,” Jaden said, glaring at Benji. “What have you done for me, Lido? You’ve teased me. You’ve insulted me. You’ve embarrassed me. Umm…”

“Josh needs to talk to you,” Benji said. “That should be enough.”

“You guys go ahead,” Mickey said, holding up his cell phone. “I need to make a call anyway. I’ll wait for you on that bench around the corner, Jaden.”

“Mickey,” Jaden said, “you don’t have to—”

“No, that’s okay,” Mickey said. He gave her hand a pat and unhooked his arm. They watched him round the corner, eating chocolate sprinkles off his mint chocolate chip.

“Josh, loan me a five, will you?” Benji said. “I need a double-decker before we hit Doubleday Field. You want something too? I might need ten.”

Josh fished ten dollars out of his pocket and handed it to Benji. He asked for three scoops of chocolate on a cone, the watched Benji disappear into the shop with a jingle of the bells.

“Can we walk?” Josh asked.

“Not far,” she said, nodding toward where Mickey had gone. “I don’t want to be rude.”

“Jaden,” Josh said. “I feel like all of a sudden we’re not friends anymore and I don’t even know exactly why.”

“But you know partially why, right?” she said, licking her cone as they took slow steps down the shady side of the street.

“You act like you’ve known Mickey for years,” Josh said. “You just met the guy. You have no idea what he’s about.”

“I have instincts,” she said.

“Well, instinct this,” Josh said, and he told her the story of what he’d seen, trying to read her face as she listened but coming up with nothing. Finally he finished.

“And you went in there even though it said ‘No trespassing’?” Jaden asked.

“I had to follow the guy,” Josh said.

“So you saw an old house and a guy who yelled at you after you almost made him crack up his truck? How does that equate to cheating?” she said, throwing her hands up and turning to go. “Hopefully for you, Josh, you won’t get in trouble for trespassing.”

“Jaden, hey, wait,” Josh said, hurrying to catch up and seeing Lido step out of the ice-cream store and head their way with two cones, licking them alternately. “You can’t tell me you didn’t see what I saw in that game?”

She spun on him, her face pinched and red. “Tell me a baseball game where the losing team doesn’t say the ump robbed them. You can’t. That’s right, it always happens. So you see Myron and the ump, so? That ump is Justin Seevers, the head umpire for the tournament. I met him before the game. Myron was probably coordinating the media for the next couple games and making sure the umpires who call the Comets games are okay with it. They’re talking about using footage
in some movie. He gave Seevers an envelope, right?”

“Yes,” Josh said.

“Full of money?”

“I think,” Josh said, “for the payoff.”

Before either of them could say another word, Benji popped up between them with two cones, handing the triple chocolate to Josh and putting his cone into Jaden’s face.

“I thought they said Moose
Craps
,” Benji said excitedly, “and I was like ‘Dude, I know this is supposed to be some special Italian ice cream, but who wants to eat something with a name like Moose Craps?’ and they’re like ‘No, dude, it’s Moose
Tracks
, and I taste it—even though it looks like craps—and, hey, Jaden, you’ve got to try this.”

Jaden pushed his hand away, but Benji held the cone up again, dabbing the end of her nose with it. Jaden growled and grabbed the ice-cream cone and smeared it right in his face before she stomped away.

Benji stood for a minute, wiping his face, licking his fingers, and staring sadly at the lump of ice cream melting on the sidewalk.

“Dude,” he said, looking sadly at Josh, “what was that all about?”

Josh shrugged. Benji turned and stared through the window of the ice-cream store and the crowd of people. “That line took me forever,” he said.

“You going back for more?” Josh asked. “I thought we were going to see the sights, the Babe, Doubleday Field.”

Benji sighed and said, “You know I got to.”

Benji’s shoulders slumped as he went back inside for a fresh cone. Josh sat on the ledge and finished his ice cream, staring at the brick corner where Jaden had disappeared, thinking about how wrong things had gone. He wasn’t sure exactly why, or what to do about it. He was startled when Myron suddenly rounded the corner with his face glazed in sweat.

“Hey,” he said like some long-lost friend, “you’re Josh, right?”

“Yes.”

Myron reached out with a long arm and snatched a handful of Josh’s T-shirt. He yanked him forward, close enough for Josh to smell the sickening sweetness of menthol cigarettes on Myron’s breath. Josh tried to pull away, dropping his ice-cream cone, but Myron’s grip only tightened and Josh could feel the collar of his T-shirt cutting into his skin. Myron’s eyes lurked beneath his heavy brows, darting back and forth like roaches scrambling in a spotlight.

“Come on,” he said, dragging Josh toward the black limo that cruised up next to the curb. “I just heard your little friend telling Mickey Junior a funny story. You and I need to talk.”