Follow the Sharks (5 page)

And outwardly, at least, Eddie really did seem at peace with himself. He stopped drinking. He began to travel with Sam, “learning the business,” as Sam liked to say, although I believe that Sam just enjoyed Eddie’s company. Sam called him his “administrative assistant,” paid him a good salary, gave him a car.

I suggested to Eddie that I might be able to win him some money by claiming a work-related disability. As I tried to explain it to him, his problem seemed to me legally identical to a torn rotator cuff or broken leg. If he’d been forced out of baseball because of a physical injury, I could have invoked a clause in his contract which would have required the organization to pay him what would have amounted to a comfortable annuity.

Eddie flatly refused to let me try it. “I just can’t do it any more, that’s all,” he said. “They pay me to get batters out. I can’t get batters out. That ain’t their fault.”

“I’m sure I can make a case,” I said.

“I don’t want you to make any case. I want you to forget the whole thing. I don’t want anybody pokin’ into my head, talking to people about me, analyzing my problems. I can’t do the job. So I quit. That’s fair. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way I want it.”

“The only difference,” I argued, “would be that you’d have some guaranteed income. Better to have it than not to have it.”

“Why don’t they give it to me, then?”

“Because we have to go to court to make the case, first.”

“That means there’d be testimony, right? Guys who knew me, coaches. You’d bring your witnesses, and they’d bring theirs, and you lawmasters would examine them and cross-examine them and make them say things they didn’t mean. And their witnesses would say bad things about me, and yours would say good stuff. Right?”

“More or less. And we could have doctors, who could testify as to the nature of your problem.”

“And they’d have their doctors, too.”

“Yes.”

“No fuckin’ way. I want none of that. I don’t care about the money. I just want to forget the whole thing.”

“Okay. We’ll forget it.”

And with that, my professional relationship with Eddie Donagan ended. He no longer needed an agent. He had no need for an attorney. We remained friends. I took him fishing with me a few times, and occasionally he and Sam played golf against my friend Charlie McDevitt and me for beers. I continued under retainer for Sam.

A year or so after Eddie quit baseball, he and Jan had a baby. They named him Edward Joseph, after Eddie. They called him “E.J.” Shortly after that they moved out of Sam’s place in Winchester into a little hip-roofed colonial in Bedford. Eddie worked full-time for Sam Farina, while Jan stayed home to raise their son. Sam started mumbling about retiring, now that he had someone he could trust to take over the business. And before long Eddie Donagan had become the answer to a trivia question.

And that’s how things remained until one winter afternoon a little more than three years ago, when Sam Farina called me.

“That son of a bitch has walked out on her,” was how he put it.

“Which son of a bitch has walked out on whom?”

“Him. Donagan. Who else?” Sam sounded as if he were hyperventilating.

“If you don’t calm down I’m going to hang up.”

“Calm down, he says. My only daughter is here in my house bawling her eyes out, and my only grandson is here wondering what in the hell is going on and where his goddam daddy went to, and you want me to calm down. Let me tell you something. I want that bastard picked clean. Understand? When we get done with him I want him jay naked.”

“Sam, will you for Christ’s sake tell me what’s going on?”

I heard him take a deep breath. “I don’t
know
what’s going on. Jan doesn’t know what’s going on. All I know is he didn’t show up for a couple of days at work, but I, you know, didn’t think too much about it. The hell, we got a loose arrangement. I leave the kids alone. Eddie has his work to do, he generally does it. Then this morning my Jan calls me, says her Eddie’s gone. Packed a bag and walked out. He was away from the house a couple days and nights, but she wasn’t worried because he told her he was gonna be out of town. Okay. Then he shows up, packs, says he’s leaving and not to say anything or ask any questions, just that he’s leaving her and she should get a divorce and give the kid his love.”

“Was he drinking?”

“She says no. She says he was perfectly sober, rational, calm. The bastard hugged her and kissed her and said not to worry it was nothing she did, nothing to do with her. He’s gone.”

“And—?”

“And I want you to pick his bones, Counselor.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, I’m not going to represent Jan in any divorce proceeding. I’ll be happy to recommend a good attorney for her. I’ll do the same for Eddie, if he asks.”

“Wait just a goddam minute,” said Sam, his voice a growl. “You’re my attorney.”

“Don’t even think about threatening me, Sam. I’m Eddie’s attorney, too, in case you’ve forgotten. I make it a policy not to take sides in domestic disputes when I have a personal relationship, or a professional commitment, with both parties. Anyhow, you should be thinking in terms of reconciliation, not divorce. Every marriage has its ups and downs.”

“This kid is a bona fide wacko, Brady. When he was playing ball it was kinda colorful. But he’s supposed to be a grownup, now, with responsibilities. I’m in favor of a divorce.”

“It’s not your life, Sam.”

“Like hell it ain’t. Jan’s happiness is my happiness.”

“Then let them work it out. He’ll be back. I’d put money on it.”

I would have lost my money. Eddie and Jan Donagan didn’t work it out. Eddie disappeared for several months, just as he had when he quit baseball. And, like the previous time, he called me collect to assure us all that he was all right. When I mentioned reconciliation, he hung up on me. They were divorced a year later. Sam got Jan an attorney of his own choosing, and they did pick Eddie clean. Jan got the house, custody of E.J., and about everything else that wasn’t actually attached to Eddie’s body, though I think Sam had designs on certain functional portions of his anatomy, too. Eddie refused to contest it. Jan, for her part, decided not to demand child support or alimony, reasoning, logically, that Sam would take care of her and her son and that Eddie didn’t have much of anything left to share, anyway. Besides, she still loved him. Her reaction to the entire process was one more of bewilderment than of anger or even sadness.

Once the divorce was finalized, Sam helped Jan to sell the house in Bedford and set up a suite for herself and E.J. in his Winchester home. Meanwhile, Eddie turned up living in an apartment in Medford and working in a sporting goods store in Burlington. Eddie Donagan, who once had looked to me like the reincarnation of Bob Feller, was a sneaker salesman.

And he and I lost touch with each other. He had no business with me. Sneaker salesmen hardly ever need agents. Still, we had been friends. I called him a few times, suggesting we get together. He had excuses. I suppose he was embarrassed at the changes that had befallen him. Sam told me that Eddie mailed a couple of Christmas presents to E.J. the first year after the divorce. But he forgot his son’s birthday. Every few months, according to Sam, Eddie apparently had a bout with his conscience and called Jan and E.J. on the phone. He made vague promises to visit, to take E.J. to a ball game or fishing. E.J. would lie awake nights waiting for Eddie to appear. But he rarely did.

A few months before Jan called me to tell me E.J. was late from his paper route, I had called Eddie and he agreed to meet me for lunch. I hadn’t seen him since before his divorce. He was waiting near Faneuil Hall at the kiosk where they sell discount theater tickets. He was wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket over a faded flannel shirt. He had grown an ill-kempt beard. Lines had been carved into his forehead and at the corners of his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before, and it startled me until I realized that Eddie Donagan was thirty-four or thirty-five years old.

Shaking hands with him still reminded me of sticking my mitt between the rollers of an old-fashioned washing machine, and Eddie’s Huck Finn grin was broad and welcoming.

We walked inside the crowded market to Regina’s booth and I bought us big slabs of pizza. Peppers and mushrooms and extra cheese for me. It was late March and dense little mounds of gray snow huddled against the shady sides of the buildings. Eddie and I wandered around the brick-paved mall area. We appraised the ladies, peered into windows, and munched on our pizzas. We didn’t talk until we finished eating. Then we sat on a concrete bench in the sun. I tapped a cigarette out of my pack and offered one to Eddie. He shook his head.

“Naw, man,” he said. “One thing I still don’t do is smoke.”

“All the other sins, huh?”

“Most of ’em.”

“So how’s the job?”

“Oh, man, you can’t imagine. Bending over people’s feet all day. They come in, these fat, wheezy old beefs, they want to spend sixty or seventy bucks on a pair of sneakers, for God’s sake. Excuse me. Running shoes. We gotta call them running shoes. Not sneakers. And they want to be fitted just so, as if they were actually gonna run somewhere. Hell, they’d fall down dead if they ran six steps, most of ’em. No question. And the kids. Look around the playgrounds sometime. What do you see? Nikes. Pumas. New Balance. You think these kids shelled out fifty, sixty bucks for leather Nikes? You gotta watch ’em all the time.”

“Sounds like you love your work.”

Eddie’s laugh was dry and mirthless. “Quite a comedown, huh? Don’t know what the hell I expected. Shit. Guess I’m lucky to have a job.”

“They’re not lining up for your autograph, I guess.”

“Nope. They’re not. That’s a fact.”

“So what’re you going to do, Eddie?”

“Do?” He grinned. “Hell, lawmaster, I don’t think about what I do. I get up, I go to work, I come home, pound a coupla Buds, maybe get lucky with a broad, more likely I don’t, go to bed, get up again. Like that.”

I stamped out my cigarette. “Sounds like quite a career.”

His elaborate shrug was meant to convey indifference. It didn’t fool me. “I guess I already had my career,” he said. “I read somewhere everybody’s got their fifteen minutes of fame. I already had mine, that’s all.”

“Ever think about finishing school?”

“What I mainly think about, you want to know the truth, is going to Alaska. Build me a cabin way the hell up on one of them big rivers, shoot bears and caribou and catch salmon, chop wood all day.” He cocked his head at me and chuckled. “Get me a squaw. One of them Eskimos that chew blubber all day and can’t talk back because they don’t know English. Live offa walrus meat and seal oil. Rub bear grease in our hair. Build an igloo in the winter. Wear animal skins. Sleep with the dogs. Walk around on snowshoes, ride sleds. Maybe even pan for gold.”

“Sounds perfectly idyllic,” I said.

“Hey, I’m half serious. A man can start all over in Alaska. Beats the hell out of Medford, I can tell you that. Some day I’m just gonna do it. I’ll just be gone. Ta-ta.”

“What about the family?”

“Family? You mean E.J. Look. I’ve been a shitty father. I know that. Done the kid more harm than good. I don’t see him much, I guess you probably know that. It’s not easy, going there. Sam won’t even be there when I go, and all Jan does is glare at me out of the corner of her eyes like she’s gonna start crying. And being with E.J., that’s real weird. He’s always kinda crouching, all tense, like he’s ready to run away from me. It’s almost as if he thinks I’m gonna hit him or something. So, I admit, it takes more guts than I usually got to go see him. I keep meaning to. I think about it a lot. And I call him and tell him I’m gonna take him somewhere or come out and visit. But then—hell, I just chicken out. It’s like I was butting in. He seems like he’s putting up with me because somebody told him he had to, and I keep thinking he’s relieved when I don’t go.”

“I know,” I said. “I went through it myself with my two boys. I remember the feeling. But I don’t think that’s the way E.J. feels. It’s not the way I hear it.”

Eddie flapped his hands. “Yeah, I know. That’s Jan. Maybe she thinks I should see him more. Maybe she’s just makin’ the point that I’m a bad guy.”

“Are you really prepared to give him up?”

“Looks like I already have. Can’t very well take him to Alaska, can I?”

“Not very well.”

Eddie thrust out his arm and glanced at his wristwatch. Then he stood up. The old grin was back. “I gotta get to the shop,” he said. “Lots of sneakers to sell. Good to see you again, man. Thanks for the pizza.”

“I hear they have great pizza in Alaska,” I said.

He squinted at me for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m half serious,” he said.

I
PROMISED SYLVIE I WOULDN’T
be gone long and left her sitting on the balcony outside my apartment. She continued to study the maritime traffic through my binoculars, still clad only in my shirt. I extracted from her a promise not to try to tidy up the place while I was gone. I had everything just the way I wanted it—in complete and comfortable disarray.

In addition to Sam Farina’s Lincoln and Josie’s Porsche, a nondescript blue Ford sedan sat in the driveway when I got to Winchester. I parked behind it and went to the door.

Sam had built his house on five acres of prime land on a hilltop near the Lexington line back in the Fifties. It was constructed of glass and vertical cedar sheathing and surrounded by flowering fruit trees and bark mulch paths which wound among formal rose gardens and goldfish ponds and fountains. There was a kidney-shaped pool out back and a putting green on the side lawn. Sam built his place right after Jan was born, in anticipation of the big family he and Josie hoped to raise. It had seven bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. But Josie miscarried a couple of times and they never had any more kids after Jan.

Josie opened the door just as I was ringing the bell. She must have seen me drive up. Sam’s wife was a slim, stately woman who looked ten years younger than her age of close to sixty. Her silver-and-black hair was pulled back loosely in a pony tail, accentuating her high cheekbones and good jawline. She wore tailored white slacks and a pale blue sleeveless blouse that did full justice to her trim tennis figure.