The New York (26 page)

Now she was making me pissed and I had a headache to boot. I got up and went to the icebox and took out a carton of Tropicana and poured some into a glass and drank it down. Orange juice makes me feel better every time I drink it. I poured another glass and then looked at Charlene. “You want some orange juice?”

“Stop stalling around,” she said.

“Charlene, you are making me crazy. I don't know who's sending you these letters, but I think we ought to go to the police about them.”

“And air our dirty linen in public?”

“We don't have no dirty linen, Charlene, because these letters are fake and the work of that madman I work for, George Bremenhaven.”

“So you said once.”

“And so I say again. You just sit there while I put on my duds. We're gonna go see George right now and have this out. You want me to quit, I'll quit. Today. On the spot. I told George to stop messing around with my personal life and this is going too far. I'm gonna pop him one.”

Charlene just sat there, her mouth hanging open.

I went to the closet and grabbed a handful of clothes. Normally, I'd dress right there but I was doing a modest turn, so I went into the bathroom and closed the door. Shaved first and then brushed my teeth again with another half-pound of Crest and then slipped on my clothes. When I came out, Charlene hadn't moved, even to closing her mouth, hanging open.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing my keys.

“Where we going?”

“George's office.”

“Where's that?”

“In the city. That big place across the river.”

“You mean, New York?”

“Only city I know of around here.”

We grabbed a Fort Lee cab with Lewis's help and the next thing, we were tooling across the GW Bridge. It was a nice morning and there was a warm breeze blowing up the Jersey coastline right into the middle of Manhattan. I was hot, hot at Charlene and hot at George for causing me problems when there were enough problems trying to learn managing in Spanish.

Traffic was heavy and it took us a half-hour to get to the big sandy-colored building on Park Avenue. I thought Charlene was a little intimidated by everything about the city and that pleased me. When she's in her own domain, which is Houston, she pretty well takes charge, but this was a different kettle of fish altogether.

We took the elevator up and the doors popped open and we were standing in front of the glass doors that said: B
REMENHAVEN PROPERTIES
, That described George's day job. We marched right through, with me holding the door for Charlene. We were in the presence of sweet Miss Viola Foster, whom I have described before.

“Oh, Mr. Shawn, how nice to see you,” Miss Foster said. She looked at Charlene so I made the introduction and asked if George was in.

“I'll see,” she said. This meant he was in, but since secretaries are told never to give anyone a straight answer I didn't blame her any for lying to me.

She went to George's door and opened it after a timid knock and went inside.

“Come on, Charlene,” I said to her and grabbed her by the arm. We went to the same door and I opened it.

George was at his desk and a man I didn't know was sitting in an armchair to the side of the desk. Everyone looked at us, startled.

“I gotta talk to you, George.”

“I'm busy, Ryan —”

“I don't give a shit because I'm quitting as of now.”

“You can't do that,” George said in his imitation of a reasonable voice. It makes him sound like Adolph Menjou. “Mr. Sills, I apologize —”

“Hey, no problem, Mr. Bremenhaven. I never did get a chance to meet a real ball player before. You must be Ryan Shawn, I've seen you pitch many times.” Sills got up to shake my hand and gaze admiringly at Charlene.

“Sorry to bust in on you but George has a habit of slipping out side doors when he don't wanna see someone and I know he doesn't wanna see me,” I said, milking Mr. Sills's pinkies. “George, I'll make this short and sweet. You have gone one trick over your limit and that's the last straw. I'm quitting as of now and you can get some other chump to babysit those kids.”

“Where would I get someone who speaks Spanish?” George said in that reasonable tone of his. He was just sitting there at the center of the room but everyone else was standing.

“There's plenty of people in baseball speak Spanish." I said.

“But you're an Anglo,” he said. “I trust you “

“You are a racist arrogant asshole,” I said. “I told you not to play your tricks on my girl but you just don't know when to say no, do you, George. You just keep nudging, don't you.”

“Miss Foster, you can leave the room. And take Mr. Sills with you. I'll call you this afternoon, Sills.”

Sills didn't seem to notice his reduction in rank from Mr. Sills to Sills the Hired Help. I figured he was a government man then. Like Baxter earlier. But he was looking at me funny, just standing there. “That's it, Sills,” George said.

“Mr. Shawn,” — Sills had changed from the fan to a government agent in that moment — “I hope you reconsider … everything. And I hope you don't quit.” Then he beamed at me, beamed at Charlene, and beamed his way out of the office. Miss Foster closed the door behind her.

“Now, what's on your tiny mind, Ryan? And who's the broad?”

“You keep a civil tongue, you son of a bitch. This is Miss Charlene Cleaver is who and you sent her another one of your nasty little letters allegedly from a Miss Roxanne Devon.”

George rose from behind his desk and came around and took Charlene's hand in his and gave a little bow to go with it. “I am charmed, Miss Cleaver, really charmed to meet the woman Ryan here has gone on and on about for more than a year.”

Charlene lowered her gray eyes at that and let George hold her pinkies a moment too long. She said “Thank you, Mr. Bremenhaven” the way Scarlett O'Hara would have.

“I don't think any description of you would have been adequate. That's a lovely outfit you're wearing, Miss Cleaver.”

What was he going to do next, sniff her? I got between them and said, “George, you snake, I got a good mind to punch your lights out —”

“Why, Ryan? Why? What have I done to deserve this?”

“You sent Charlene another poison letter from your alleged Roxanne Devon of Brunswick, New Jersey, who does not exist anyway.”

“I had an Aunt Roxanne once. She was my favorite aunt, favorite person in the family. She's gone now,” George said. He wasn't even talking to me, he was aiming all the charm at Charlene. Imagine a charming frog and you can vaguely imagine George. It was sickening.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Charlene said.

“Charlene, he's the son of a bitch who was behind sending you those letters so that you'd get jealous and give me up so I could go on playing baseball for this son of a bitch for peanuts.”

“We don't know that for certain, Ryan,” Charlene said.

“Ah, the benefit of a doubt. I am honored,” George said, oiling across the floor toward her.

“Well, I'm quitting, George. You get someone else for the game tonight. I'll be halfway to Texas before the ninth inning,” I said.

“And leave everything I've been trying to build?” George said. “Where's the gratitude, Ryan? Where's your sense of patriotism? Do you think Norman Schwarzkopf would have quit?”

“We ain't in war, George. It's baseball. You ripped off a bunch of green kids from a foreign country and you make it a noble cause. You're pathetic, you're so low.”

“I'm paying you over a million dollars. If I can't appeal to your sense of duty, let me appeal to your wallet.”

George usually had me there, but not this morning. I had a hangover, and Charlene showing up on my doorstep with that phony letter did not improve things. Imagine me saying a million dollars wasn't that important. I was on the verge of doing just that when Charlene spoke up.

“How do you know that Mr. Bremenhaven had that letter sent to me?”

“Because it's exactly the kind of rotten scheming trick George does all the time. You can't trust him, Charlene. Don't look him directly in the eye, either, or he'll try to steal your soul on you.”

“You took all the players on a tour of New York and you said I authorized it,” George said in his reasonable voice. “You think I'm going to pay for all that?”

“Yesterday I was working for you, but that was yesterday,” I said.

“Ryan, you took them to the Statue of Liberty, for Christ's sake. You trying to get them to defect to make me look bad?”

“I was trying to get them to be a little less homesick”

“What's the Statue of Liberty got to do with anything?”

“You might have been owed an explanation if I still worked for you.”

“I've got a contract.”

“It's not worth the paper it's printed on. I don't have to pet up with this shit, George. Charlene is starting to believe there really is a Roxanne Devon, which I know and you know there is not.”

“Probably just a fan. Lots of girls go to baseball games and want to sleep with the players. Groupies. I hate to say that so boldly, Miss Cleaver, but it's a sordid fact of the life in sports. What with this age of disease, with AIDS and all that, we try to tell the players to be careful, but you know, they're really like children.”

“I ain't no child, George, and I don't fool around with groupies.”

“I wouldn't either if I could have the company of a woman as beautiful and charming as Miss Charlene Cleaver. Why haven't I met her before this, Ryan?”

“Because I try to keep the sordid side of my life separate from her. Like knowing you, for instance.”

“You see what I put up with?” he said to Charlene.

I waved a hand between them to get their attention. “Yo, George. Me. Ryan. I quit”

“Don't let him quit on me, not at this crucial juncture, Miss Cleaver. This is more than about baseball. This is about trade and freeing the Cuban people from their yoke of tyranny. This is about America reaching out its hand in friendship to a poor, backward nation that yearns to breathe free —”

“You stole that from the Statue of Liberty,” I said.

“I didn't steal, it's in the public domain,” he snarled. Then he turned back to Charlene and gave her what he thought was a dazzling smile. The problem was that Charlene was getting herself dazzled despite my best intentions. I would have thought just being in the same room with that Gila would have sent her straight into a faint, but it was having the opposite effect.

I said, “Show him the letter, Charlene.”

She said, “Oh, I don't want to show him.”

“Show him the fucking letter that got you upset enough to come two thousand miles to bug me about it at nine in the morning,” I shouted.

“Don't shout,” Charlene said. “I won't be shouted at by any man.”

“Charlene, you want me to quit and I'm quitting —”

“Miss Cleaver, Miss Cleaver, is that what you want? You want Ryan to walk away from his duties as a player and as a manager of the most revolutionary concept in baseball since the new playoff system?”

“We had talked about it, Mr. Bremenhaven,” Charlene said.

George looked at her sadly. I know his sad look, although it is a very subtle shift away from his cold-blooded let's-screw-someone look. But I have studied the man for years up close.

“Then I surrender,” he said, lifting his hands. “No man ever stood in a woman's way. If you think it's the best thing for Ryan to turn his back on the game at the peak of his career when golden opportunities are waiting for him, then I can't argue with you. I would never argue with anyone who obviously has Ryan's best interest at heart.”

“Mr. Bremenhaven —”

“George. Please make it George.” 

“George. I just don't know what to think. Ryan came to Houston this past winter and he said you were poisoning things against him, first with Jack Wade who was gonna give him a job selling cars and then by sending me these notes from Miss Roxanne Devon of Brunswick, New Jersey. But now poor Jack has been arrested for income tax evasion and I was afraid that Ryan was involved in it, too, because he said you sent the IRS man in the first place to see Jack Wade and spook him about hiring Ryan.”

George, to his credit, took this all in as if it made perfect sense. He just nodded his head like one of those toy dogs that the Mexicans carry around in the rear windows of their cars.

“Miss Cleaver. I'm sorry that your distress made you travel two thousand miles on the spur of the moment but I am also pleased that it gave me the opportunity to meet you. If I were a younger man, I would be willing to fight Ryan Shawn right now for the sake of having a chance to try to win your hand. But” — he shrugged and sighed — “I'm an old man and I've had my day. I just hoped that, at the end of my day, I would be able to make some gesture, some little step forward for the game that has been so good to me and for the country that I love.”

“He means he fired his fifty-million-dollar payroll and picked up twenty-four homesick Cuban kids for next to nothing and then went out to sell the country that he was doing it for the good of baseball,” I said.

“My country has asked me to make a gesture of friendship to the Cuban people, to show that we can all live in the world in peace and harmony —”

“If George owned ‘Sesame Street' he'd put it on pay-per-view TV,” I explained to Charlene.

“I met the President and I spent the night in the White House. In Lincoln's bedroom. I saw Lincoln,” George said.

“Really?” Charlene said.

“He nodded to me as though he was saying I was doing the right thing,” George said.

“He just wanted you to free the slaves who work for you,” I said.

Charlene gave me that “shush” look and said, “You really saw Abraham Lincoln?”