The New York (30 page)

“George, no one is here.”

“You lying son of a bitch! Put him on!”

“It's for you,” I said to Charlene. I gave her the phone.

“Hello,” she said,

“Who the fuck is this!” George screamed.

“Don't you shout at me, ain't no man ever going to shout at me and get away with it!” she shouted.

“I mean, is this you, Charlene?” I was standing next to Charlene and heard him yelling.

“Yes, it's me, who'd you think it was?”

“He told me he sent the Roxanne Devon letters to you just to stir up trouble,” I said from my side of the bed.

“Is that right, George? Did you send those letters to me?”

“Who gives a shit about letters, you bitch! Put loverboy back on the phone,” George said.

She blanched and put her hand over the receiver. “He called me a name I can't repeat.”

“George is like that,” I said, I was glad she was seeing the snake for what he really was.

“Aren't you going to do something?”

I took back the phone. “George, did you call Charlene a bad name?”

“Fuck you, fuck both of you. Ryan, Raul has disappeared off the face of the earth. He was supposed to be in Cleveland for the All-Star game. No show. I call the East Side Hotel. Nobody's seen him. I send over my friends from the Twenty-third Precinct and they roust the place. They find two wanted armed robbers and a welfare queen the state has a warrant for, but they don't find Raul Guevara. Fucking cops are worthless. I send them to that Tapas place and the bag who runs it said she hasn't seen him for days. She's lying, that fucking whore! I'm going crazy, Ryan.”

“I know, it sounds like it,” I said. I couldn't keep the pleased tone out of my voice.

“Ryan! You gotta find him, you're his best buddy!”

“You just said I was queer for him.”

“A figure of speech, Ryan. Ryan … Ryan, you gotta find him “

“I don't know where to look for him. You hit the only two places I know he ever went, the hotel room and the Tapas.”

“What do you mean, he ever went? It's a big city, the greatest city on Earth, he must have had dozens of places — Girls, where did he go for girls, Ryan?”

“He didn't go for girls,” I said.

“Boys, then. Where'd he hang out to pick up boys? You can tell me. I won't tell anyone. Down on Christopher Street —”

“George, you'd inform on your mother if there was any woman willing to admit she was your mother, which I doubt.”

“Tell me he's with you.”

“He's with me and Charlene right now. We're doing a double reverse in a few minutes, also called a Charlene Sandwich.”

“A fucking orgy! I knew it!” George shouted. “You really are best buddies, but you aren't fags! Great! Just put him on the line a sec. I want to hear that spic's beautiful Spanish voice one time.”

“I'm sorry, George. We've got him bound and gagged. That was from our last assignment together.”

“Ball players are sick, sick people. But hey, live and let live is all right by me. Ryan, tell me that he's all right.”

“He's all right”

“Are you telling me that because it's true or because you're just telling me that?”

“Guess.”

“You son of a bitch, you're fired! Fired! Get your shit out of the locker room by this afternoon.”

“I don't keep no shit in the locker room. Baseball players are thieves.”

“Then don't let me see you again, you cocksucker! I am going to file suit against you and don't think I'm going to pay you, not for what you've done to me. The FBI is going to be on this case. On your case. Kidnapping is a federal crime.”

“You're a walking federal crime, George,” I said. I said it very calmly because that upsets George even more.

“Where the fuck is he, Ryan?”

“You fired me. So I won't tell you. Good night, George.”

I replaced the receiver and just sat there. Charlene was leaning on one naked elbow close enough to let me smell her. She smelled sweet, which is her natural odor.

“What happened?”

“Raul took a walk.”

“George doesn't know where.”

“No.”

“You know.”

“Yep.”

“He told you.”

“Not in so many words.”

She worried her lower lip with her upper teeth a moment and just looked at me before she said anything.

“He went home.”

That's what I like about Charlene. Under her mere beauty, she is smart. I'm about the only mistake in judgment in her life and that can be explained.

“Yep.”

“Back to Cuba.”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Boy's in love. Wants it to stay that way. So he figures that he'd better hitch up with his girlfriend while the hitching is good. Hitting way over .400, he can go home even if Castro don't want him to go home and he can be a national hero and get married. The boy thinks. He doesn't have this love stuff down, but he works at thinking.”

“What love stuff?”

“Maria Velasquez is a beauty and he thinks she won't wait for him.”

“He got any reason to think that?”

“Not that I know of. Just insecure. I tried to talk to him but it wasn't any good.”

“Tell him what?”

“That shell wait for him.”

“Why would she?”

“Why wouldn't she?”

“You think all a woman's got to do is sit around and wait?”

“No. But waiting is a sign of maturity.”

“I'm mature enough, thank you. I got mature in crow's feet on my eyes. I don't enjoy waiting. Certainly don't enjoy waiting on a man who keeps you waiting just because he thinks he can get away with it. Ever notice that a man won't wait on a woman, but lots of women wait on a man? Says he'll meet you at one and he comes in late and you're supposed to la-de-da all that, but you keep a man waiting, they practically accuse you of something.”

“I don't recall keeping you waiting, Charlene.”

“You really don't, do you?”

See, this was turning ugly the way it can and I knew it, but it was like putting the brakes on a ship just about to plow into the dock in the Houston Ship Canal.

I was saved by the phone.

I picked it up again and said, “Hello.”

“Ryan, I unfire you.” The calm George. “I want you to find Raul.”

“I think he went home, George,”

“Why would he do that?”

“He's in love, I told you all that.”

“He went home because he's in love?”

“Home is where his girlfriend lives.”

“Then he's coming back here?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“Get him, Ryan. Get him for the love of God and baseball. We are talking about maybe the greatest hitter in the history of baseball and he's going back to Cuba? How did he get out of this country in the first place?”

“I don't know. He's got relatives in Miami.”

“I want their names. I'm turning them over to the FBI This is subverting the foreign policy of the United States government.”

“Aw, George. Don't do everything ass backward. Tell the people you know in the government what's going on and what happened and let them sort it out. If Raul don't wanna play baseball in the U.S., we can't make him.”

“Why wouldn't he want to? This is the greatest country in the world, isn't it?”

“In parts,” I said.

“Castro wouldn't go back on his contract, would he?”

“In a New York minute.”

“He can't do that to me.”

“I don't think this involved Fidel Castro, I think this was a Raul Guevara production. He's hitting .452 and he can go back to Cuba as a national hero, and what's Fidel gonna do about it? Put him in jail for not wanting to play ball in New York?”

“But we're the New York Yankees.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes people don't get choked up the way you do about it.”

“You gotta go to Havana, Ryan. You gotta go get my boy back.”

“He ain't your boy, George —”

“I paid for the son of a bitch, he belongs to me!”

I held the phone a little away from my ear because George was starting to give me a headache.

“You gotta do it, Ry. We start up again in two days, we need that boy in the lineup. He's gonna be the batting champ, the man who hit over .400 first time since Ted Williams. He is a New York Yankee.”

I liked George's appeals to patriotism because it meant I had him over a barrel. I was learning Sid Cohen's lesson.

“George, if I go down to Havana and talk to him, you gotta do something for me.”

“I do everything for you now.”

“No, no, George. You know what you gotta do.”

“What do I have to do?”

“You have to tell Charlene.”

“Tell her what?”

“Tell her what you just told me.”

“Why?”

“It would make me happy,” I said.

“You mean about Roxanne Devon?”

“Yep.”

“All right.” Just like that. George doesn't even have loyalty to himself.

“And one other thing.”

“What, for Christ's sake?”

“About that steak “

“What steak?”

“The steak in the Century Plaza Hotel.”

“For Christ's sake, Ryan, this is childish.”

“You're the childish one, George. You keep giving people a hot foot because you never grew up.”

“All right, all right. I'll tell her”

“Tell her everything,” I said.

“All right already.”

I handed the phone to Charlene.

She was the ice princess in tone as she said, “Yes?” Like Catherine of Russia, except in English.

Charlene listened. And listened.

“That was a rotten thing to do to me. And to Ryan. You ought to be horse-whipped,” Charlene said. “And you even lied to me about eating meat? Well, you're going to be the one that ends up with prostate problems, not me.” She handed the phone back to me.

“Okay, George. You got to clear me through so I can fly legal to Havana.”

“Oh, I can do that.”

“And Charlene. We are interrupting our vacation for you, so the least you can do is fly Charlene to Havana with me.”

“Does she have a passport?”

“You got a passport, honey?”

“No,” Charlene said.

“She don't have one, George. Get her one, willya?”

“Ryan! I —”

But I was in the process of hanging up again and Charlene was in the process of settling herself on her side in that big king-size bed under the sheets and, hell, as long as we were awake, why waste it?

Señor Martinez, who had been my guide before when I first went to Cuba, was at the Havana airport when we landed. And so was Catfish Williams.

“Hey,” Deke said to me as I came down the steps to the tarmac. Charlene was behind me because I think she was a little intimidated by everything. The only foreign country she had ever been in was Tijuana, once, and that isn't really foreign when you can practically take a streetcar there from San Diego. In less than twenty-four hours, she had been passported by Mr. Baxter of the State Department and certified for travel to a foreign country with which we had no relationship. It would take that much to intimidate Charlene about anything.

“Hey,” I said to Deke. And “hey” to Señor Martinez, who was looking less than comfortable.

“Señor Shawn, who is this lady?”

“This is Charlene Cleaver. She and I had our vacation interrupted to come down here, so I thought it was best to bring her along. Besides, she's never seen Cuba before.”

“Charmed, Señora Cleaver,” Martinez said. The “señora” was out of respect because she was not a young girl anymore. I don't know if that would have pleased Charlene or not so I didn't bring it up.

“But what's he doing here?”

“Señor Williams is an American businessman,” Señor Martinez said.

“We used to play baseball together,” I said.

“I know this,” Señor Martinez said. The knowledge did not seem to make him any happier.

There were the usual security people hanging around, but things had changed some. First, this was high summer in Cuba and it was hotter than a two-dollar pistol. It had been warm and humid in February, but this was a joke. I was soaking wet and only thirty seconds off the plane. Charlene wore slacks and a blouse and that blouse was into serious clinging already and her hair was wet. Texas is hot in summer, but Texas is also air conditioned from one end to the other.

“Saw your star outfielder came home and I thought you'd be chasing after him,” Deke said, slapping my arm and smiling. He was also keeping his eye on Charlene even while he was greeting me.

“It's common knowledge, is it?”

“Everyone knows everything in Cuba, just one big happy family down here —”

“What are you doing here, Deke?”

“Like the señor says, I'm an American businessman,”

“I thought we didn't have business in Cuba.”

“Hell, it's opening up right and left. Opportunities are knocking and Deke is opening the doors. After I saw you in Chicago I figured that if this thing was good enough for the New York Yankees, it was good enough for Catfish Williams.”

“What was good enough?”

“Whole country is gonna open up sooner rather than later and I want to put in my bid.”

“On what?”

“Fish, man. I sell fish, you remember. Lots of fish. I could become my own supplier of fresh fish, not just for myself but for other franchises. These people been living in a vacuum the last thirty years.”

“Is any of this legal?”

“Hell, yes. Got my certifieds from the State Department even. Even met with the Minister of Fisheries last night, we had a good old chat.”

“Charlene, this is Catfish Williams. I told you about. From Chicago.”