The Fan

26

4:15 A.M., but Bobby Rayburn didn’t feel at all tired as he opened the door to his room at the Palacio. He felt light and quick and cheerful. It didn’t last. A man was sitting at the desk, wearing a dark suit and a dark tie, a half-eaten Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in one hairy hand.

“Mr. Rayburn?” he said. “I’m Detective”-Bobby missed the name-“of the LAPD. Mind telling me where you’ve been?”

Bobby tried to remember if the Sox had a curfew. Had Wald mentioned something about that? He couldn’t recall. But sending a cop to enforce it was way out of line.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “I do mind. And what gives you the right to come in here without my permission?”

With his free hand, the detective removed an envelope from his jacket pocket. “This warrant, signed by an honest-to-goodness judge.” He held it out, but Bobby made no move to take it. The detective popped the rest of the Reese’s Cup into his mouth, licked his fingers, and rose. He was short and round, with a day-old beard and purple bruises under his eyes. “I’ll give you a lift to the station,” he said.

“The station?”

“We can talk better there.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Bobby said.

The detective blinked. “Why not?”

“Are you stupid or something? The whole point of curfew is to make sure the players get a good night’s sleep, right? So here I am, ready to go to bed. And now you want me to go someplace else. Why don’t you just clear out of here, tell Burrows I’ve been a bad boy, and let them fine me whatever the hell they want to fine me?”

The detective sat back down. He was silent for a few moments. “Mr. Rayburn?”

“What is it?”

“Did you take a steam bath tonight, by any chance?”

Bobby was getting angry. “What now? No steam baths after the game? Are you going to ask me if I said my prayers too?”

The detective blinked again. “Let’s start over.”

“Fine.”

“When was the last time you saw Primo?”

“That asshole? Who the hell knows?” Then Bobby remembered he did know: in the clubhouse, after the game. And he also remembered Stook telling Primo to take a steam bath for his shoulder or something. He changed his tone a little. “In the clubhouse, I guess,” he said. “Why?”

“The why of it brings us back to my first question, Mr. Rayburn.”

“What was that?”

“First question: where have you been?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Bobby. “And it’s still none of your business.”

The detective rose again. “Let’s get going,” he said. “Where?”

“To the station, like I said before.”

“Why? Has something happened?”

“Something’s happened,” said the detective, “if you think Primo getting himself knifed counts as something happening.”

“Oh, my God,” said Bobby. “Is he going to be all right?”

The detective shook his head.

“What does that mean?” Bobby said.

“Means he’s dead, Mr. Rayburn.”

Bobby sat down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Any of it. Why you’re asking me.”

“Why I’m asking you what?” said the detective.

“Where I’ve been.”

“Simple,” said the detective. “We heard there was some bad blood between the two of you. That you got into a fight in a bar back East, for example.”

“Who told you that?”

The detective smiled, revealing a double row of misshapen teeth. “I think we’ll be able to answer all your questions much better at the station.”

Bobby didn’t like that smile at all. “I went out for a few drinks,” he said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know the name of the place. Somewhere up the coast.”

“Anyone who can corroborate that?”

Bobby nodded.

“And who would that be?”

“I was with a reporter.”

“Name of?”

Bobby told him.

The detective brightened. “I saw her on ESPN the other day,” he said. “She’s very good.” He gave Bobby a look. “Any idea where I could reach her?”

“Now?”

“Oh, yes. Now.”

“She’s staying at a hotel.”

“This one?”

Bobby shook his head. “At the airport.” He named it.

“Mind if I use your phone?” the detective asked.

Bobby didn’t reply. The detective used it anyway. He dialed, said hello, asked a few questions, mostly listened. After, he turned to Bobby. “Checks out,” he said. “For now. Hope I didn’t disturb you.” He moved to the door, then stopped. “Say, Bobby, think you’d have time to give me an autograph? My kid’s a big fan.”

Bobby signed his name on the search-warrant envelope.

“Gee,” said the detective, showing his horrible teeth. “Thanks a million.”

The team met that afternoon in a conference room at the hotel. Everyone was there-the players, the coaches, Burrows, Thorpe the GM, Mr. Hakimora the owner, lawyers for the team, lawyers from the league.

The GM spoke. “In the face of this… terrible situation, the league has given us permission to postpone tonight’s game. We can make it up as part of a double-header when we ’re back in September. Or we can go ahead and play. The only stipulation is that we notify them by three-thirty. That gives us”-he checked his watch-“just over half an hour.” He looked around the room. “No pressure, boys. It’s up to you.”

“I no play,” Zamora said.

“That’s fine, Pablo,” Thorpe said. “You don’t have to. But we’re discussing whether the game itself should be played or not.”

Thorpe looked around the room again. The lawyers, the owner, the coaches, were all sitting up straight. The players slouched, heavy and silent. “Anybody got an opinion?” Thorpe said.

No one did. There were several phones in the room, all lights blinking. Outside the floor-to-ceiling window, a seagull glided by, then rose out of sight. Bobby put up his hand.

“Yes, Bobby.”

Everyone looked at him. “I think we should play,” he said.

Zamora made an unpleasant sound, deep in his throat.

“Why is that, Bobby?” asked Thorpe.

Bobby thought. He knew he had a reason, but he had spoken before really knowing what it was. He turned to Zamora. Zamora’s eyes were red and angry. Bobby held up his hand. “Not because Primo would have wanted us to, or anything like that,” he said. “I hate that kind of bullshit. It’s what’s wrong with… everything.” Washington grunted. “But the thing is,” Bobby went on, “it’s what we do. You know? Play ball. So as long as it’s what we do, we should do it. And there’s nothing to stop us from, like, playing the rest of this season with him in mind if we want, maybe turning things around a little bit.”

Then came another silence. Bobby looked down at his shoes. He shouldn’t have said a word-he was new to the team, he hadn’t contributed, and he’d punched Primo in the face. He was trying to think of some way to apologize when Odell rose.

Odell was the player rep. “Anybody else?” he said, with a slight catch in his throat. There was no one else. “Then let’s vote,” he said. “Players only.”

Lawyers, owner, GM, manager, coaches, left the room. Lanz closed the door behind them. “All in favor of playing tonight?” Odell asked.

They all raised their hands, except the Latins. Zamora’s eyes were redder now, but not as angry. “We play for him?” he said.

Odell nodded.

Zamora raised his hand. The other Latins raised theirs.

“One minute,” said Washington, rising. He was the biggest man on the team, and a minister at his church in a one-stoplight town down South.

They all stood up, held hands in a circle, bowed their heads. Bobby had Simkins’s hand on one side, Zamora’s on the other. He didn’t know any prayers. He just thought: I hated you, Primo, but I never wanted this. He thought it over and over, until Washington said, “Amen.”

Odell turned to Lanz. “Okay,” he said. “Let in the suits.”

They all started laughing. They were still laughing when the suits came in, surprise on their faces.

There were a lot of cops at the ballpark-mounted ones in the parking lot, shotgun-carrying ones outside the clubhouse door, rental ones at the foot of every section in the stands. But, warming up, Bobby didn’t really notice. What he noticed was how light the ball felt as he played long toss with Lanz. With no effort at all, he was throwing ropes, two hundred feet, two-fifty, more. And that wasn’t all: the field itself seemed to have shrunk, down to Little League size. When he took BP, the ball kept rocketing into the seats, jumping off his bat time after time, as though made of some new material. None of that object-is-a-baseball shit, with its perfect red stitches, or relaxing to the nucleus of every cell, or staring at a glowing fire in some painting, or whatever the hell that was, or fog, a shadow, a blanking-out whenever he swung: the ball came in and he banged it out. Simple.

But it was only BP.

When Bobby went into the dugout it was unoccupied, except for Burrows, taping the lineup card to the wall. Bobby didn’t need to go any closer than the top step to see that he wasn’t starting. His heart sank. There was nothing to say, of course. That was part of the game.

But Bobby spoke anyway. Just one word; he couldn’t stop himself: “Coach.”

Burrows turned, looked at him. Bobby looked back. Then Burrows peeled the lineup card off the wall and walked down the runway to the clubhouse. When he returned, Bobby was batting third.

Their shirts arrived just before game time. A small number eleven, circled in black, had been sewn on the right sleeve of every one. Bobby stared at his five or ten seconds before putting it on.

Zamora led off, striking out on three pitches without taking the bat off his shoulder. Lanz tapped out to the first baseman. Bobby stepped in, unaware of who was pitching, unaware of how they were playing him, unaware of whether it was day or night.

The first pitch. Coffee table. It was going to be a ball, a couple inches outside. But Bobby swung anyway: he couldn’t bear to wait. He didn’t feel the contact at all, just saw the ball zoom off into the sky, hang there, like that seagull outside the conference-room window at the hotel, and arc slowly down into the right-field stands.

And as Bobby circled the bases, he knew that what had happened, what was happening, had nothing to do with lost shamrocks, or Chemo Sean, or even number eleven. It was all about what he had learned last night: there was a world beyond baseball, probably many of them, in fact. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need the game. He was free. The third-base coach swatted his butt as he rounded the bag.

In the fourth, Bobby hit another dinger, also solo, this one to left. In the fifth, he saved two runs with a diving catch, landing right on his ribs and feeling nothing. He struck out in the seventh, frozen on a three-and-two change-up, then drove in Zamora with the winning run in the ninth, doubling up the gap in left center. In the dugout, Zamora high-fived him with both hands, hard.

After, Bobby stayed in the shower for a long time, letting water pound his back, hot as he could stand. When he got out, reporters, players, coaches, were all gone. There was no one left but Stook.

“Nice game, big guy.”

“Thanks.”

“How’s that rib cage?”

“Good as yours, Stook.”

“Good as mine? Then you’re in trouble, boy.”

Bobby walked out into the corridor. A girl was waiting. No, a woman: Jewel. He went to her. She took a step back. There wasn’t the slightest sign on her face that last night had happened at all. He realized he had a lot to learn about her.

“Hi,” he said.

“Just give me a straight answer,” she told him. “I’m looking right at you and I’ll know the truth anyway. Did you have anything to do with it?”

“Sure,” he said. Her look, already hard, hardened some more. “I didn’t see anything wrong with it. But we all voted, so don’t blame me totally.”

Jewel’s eyes grew puzzled.

“Maybe it looks bad to outsiders, but it’s what we do.” Bobby sighed. “That probably doesn’t make much sense to you, and I really can’t ex-”

Jewel moved forward, put a finger over his lips. She was smiling now. He didn’t understand her at all.

“I’m thirsty again,” she said.

“Thirsty?”

“Parched.”

Didn’t understand, but at least there was a glimmer. “I’ve got my ID,” he said.