Suicide Squeeze

23

Conner waited until he was out of Folger’s canal, cranked the putt-putt motor, and returned to the Jenny.

With eager, shaking hands he flipped open the binder, looked for the DiMaggio card. Ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars. A mantra of desperate hope. Fleetingly, he entertained the thought of going around Becker, collecting the whole twenty thousand for himself, but he wouldn’t know how to go about it, and frankly Becker scared him stiff. No, Conner didn’t have the stomach for a double cross. He’d take his ten G’s and run.

He flipped every page, slowly reading the name of the ballplayer at the top or bottom of each card. Mickey Mantle, Joe Morgan, Catfish Hunter, Steve Garvey, Stan Musial, and on and on.

No DiMaggio.

He started over at the beginning, went through the binder again. Then he took out each card, turned it over in case one of the plastic pockets held an extra card or in case two cards were stuck together. He bent and twisted the binder itself in case there were secret pockets.

Then he hurled the binder across the cabin. “Goddammit!”

Conner sat, put his face in his hands. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. He’d already mentally spent the ten thousand. He knew a man in Fort Walton Beach who’d make him false registration papers for the Jenny. He’d slap a new name on her, stock her, head to Mexico. Find a dark-eyed señorita to make him forget about Tyranny.

It would have been nice.

He stripped off his tuxedo, put out the lights, opened the portholes in the master sleeping cabin, and flopped into bed. He lay awake a few minutes thinking about the baseball card. He wanted to find it, wanted the money. Even with the gentle breeze off the water it was hot as hell, but sleep came quickly enough, the waves rocking the boat.

Conner dreamed. He was playing left field for the Yankees, but somehow everything seemed weird, the color faded, bleached, like he was in a home movie. The other guys on the team were all famous. Willie Mays came up and started talking to him. The wind kicked up, and Willie folded in half, fluttered. He was two-dimensional. All the other guys on the team were baseball cards. The wind gusted, lifted them up and out of the stadium.

The wind scooped up Conner too, lifted him without effort, as if he were without weight, like there was nothing to Conner at all.

He awoke early the next morning, threw on the tuxedo again, and motored the dinghy to his illegally parked Plymouth along the river. He had the binder of baseball cards with him. A couple of little ideas rolled around in his head, trying to become bigger. He jumped into the Plymouth and drove to his apartment.

After a shower and a shave, Conner traded his tux for a pair of jeans and a Flounder’s Bar & Grill T-shirt. Nike sneakers. A Ping baseball cap. He felt almost human again.

Then he packed.

Conner was disappointed to find all the clothes he wanted to keep fit into one large tote bag. A baseball glove, the remaining Macanudo cigars, various personal items, and the Webley revolver filled another small backpack. While searching the dark depths of the closet, he found a box of.45 bullets and the metal rings that would allow them to fit into the ancient gun.

He stood in the middle of the apartment, spun a slow, full circle, taking in everything, the shabby furniture, dull walls, light fixtures filled with dead mosquitoes. How alarmingly easy to abandon this old life, leave everything in dust and ruin and the lingering stink of vomit. It was so easy, Conner wondered why he hadn’t done it before.

He picked the tuxedo off the floor, went through the pockets. He found Randy Frankowski’s Planet X business card, put it in his pocket, and dropped the tux back onto the floor. He went into the kitchen and fetched Joellen Becker’s business card from the kitchen table.

Then he turned on the cell phone Rocky Big had given him, dialed the number. “Hello, Rocky? I’m coming to see you. I’m ready to settle up.”