The Heart Of The Game (20 page)

Cody checked the address on the crumpled paper in his hand. The small clapboard house appeared well-kept but austere. There were no pots of flowers on the front porch, just a single chair with a squat table beside it. His heart pounded as he walked up the steps. He should’ve called first. But he was pretty sure that if he had, he’d have decided not to come.

He raised his hand to knock on the screen door. Before his knuckles hit the wood, the inner door opened.

“I saw the car pull up,” his dad said.

A mockingbird sang nearby, but its song did nothing to ease the awkward silence that hung in the air. His dad stepped back.

“Want to come in?”

Did he? Did he really? Part of him wanted to turn on his heel and head back to San Francisco. Another part of him still wanted to plant a fist in his dad’s face.

“Sure.”

He followed his dad into the sparsely furnished house. A few unopened boxes sat under a window, framed in the sunlight pouring in from the west. In a corner, three computer monitors sat on a large wooden desk surrounded by electronic equipment. The desk was the only new piece of furniture in the room. His dad motioned to a recliner that appeared ready for a dump run.

“Have a seat?”

The only other seat in the room was a wooden folding chair leaning against the windowsill. As Cody sat in the recliner, his dad unfolded the chair and sat at a distance. The space between them couldn’t have been more than ten feet, but it felt like an abyss.

“Ten-second ride,” his dad said.

“You were at the show?”

When Cody was younger, when it mattered, his dad was never at the shows.

“Security guard shot video for me. You had good form.”

With his wiles and connections, his dad could probably get footage of the president taking a pee.

His dad folded and unfolded his hands in his lap. Then he abruptly jumped up.

“How about some iced tea? I make a mean glass of iced tea.”

Cody nodded, wishing he had command of the words he’d intended to say. But now that he saw his dad—had it really been over six years?—all his scripted words crumbled in his mind like so much dust.

The rattle of ice and shuffling sounded from the kitchen. His dad returned with a folding table clamped under his arm and balanced two glasses in one hand and a pitcher filled to the brim in the other. Cody instinctively jumped up.

“I’ve got it,” his dad said, waving him back to the recliner. He set the pitcher and glasses on the desk, unfolded the table in front of Cody, retrieved the glasses and pitcher, and poured the tea. The crackle of the ice as the tea hit the cubes and the sound of their breathing echoed in the bare room.

His dad handed him a glass and then lifted his own, tilting it in a salute.

“I assume your mother is behind this surprise visit?”

Was she?

Cody had wrestled with his gnawing feelings for a couple of days. Trying to untangle the dark knot of anger, curiosity and—he had to admit it—residual love, had kept him awake most of the night. His mother’s words had only added to his need to sort out the mess from his past.

When he’d parked in front of his dad’s rented house, he thought he knew what he had to say. He’d been wrong. Now that he sat facing his dad, his mother’s words raced through his mind. Zoe’s words as well.

She’d talked a lot about family at Kaz’s wedding.
Family
, she’d said,
family is a blessing we can only hope to be worthy of
. Her words hadn’t fit the facts of his family, but somehow they had sneaked in and carved out a place in his heart.

“Seemed time,” Cody said. He tilted the glass and the cool sip of tea cleared out the hot, cottony taste in his mouth.

His dad took a long draw from his glass, closed his eyes as he swallowed and then opened them to hold Cody in a level gaze.

“Yeah. Well, I think this one’s on me.” His dad shrugged, an odd gesture for a formerly proud man. “I’ve had some practice telling my story, and I think it’s time to tell you.” He looked down at his glass, rotating it in his hand. “We tell a lot of stories in AA. Good thing it’s a family talent.”

“Grandpa always said it’s the Irish in us.”

His dad smiled. And for the first time Cody saw the man he’d admired. Loved. And the man who’d betrayed his trust and love.

“Let’s hope you only got the storytelling gene and not...” He frowned. “Hell. I’ll just start where I can. And I know I don’t have to tell you that much of what I’m about to relate is classified—information that stays in the family.”

His dad recounted the story of the massacre in the village. But his version was more detailed and grimmer than the version his mother had shared.

“I let my rage turn into a blinding despair. Like a block of petrified wood, I looked the same but nothing flowed through me, nothing was alive. I was dead through and through.

“After your mother kicked me out, those were some nasty years. I did watch the box scores, kept up with you. Didn’t trust myself to communicate, though—afraid I’d use you to sharpen my anger, pound out my grief.”

His dad put his glass down and spread his hands on his knees. It pained Cody to see him fighting for words, struggle to admit his wrongs. In that moment Cody realized he knew the father, but not the man.

“A drinking buddy dragged me to AA. Ironic, huh? The guy I’d sat next to at Tallie’s Bar until they kicked us out every night was the guy who dragged me to get help. I was so high and mighty going into that first meeting. These losers, I thought, men and women who couldn’t pull it together. But I listened to the stories. And I saw that just like all of them, I was using alcohol to keep my rage and pain at arm’s length.

“One day I just stopped, both drinking and obsessing. I got quiet and felt the torture of my feelings. And discovered that the pit in my stomach didn’t get worse. I was no worse off facing what had happened in Bolivia, facing what had happened to our family—what I’d caused to happen—than I had been when running from my emotions. So I let myself feel and began to get better. I saw how my work with the agency was a crusade, how I threw myself into each mission while I ignored the real issues that a man has to face in order to be whole. I hired a therapist and, eventually, found the courage to make amends with your mother. She’s wary. She should be. I’m not sure what I can do, probably nothing, to make it up to you kids and to her.” His knuckles were white from gripping his knees. “I wish I could have those years back, do it over. But each day I remind myself that I’ll do my best
today
.”

Cody pulled in a breath. He should say something, shouldn’t he?

His dad held up a hand. “No, son. Don’t. Just because I’m starting to make sense of this doesn’t mean you can or will. Doesn’t mean you should forgive me. I was an asshole. No way around it.”

The anger Cody had held for so many years started to shift and dissolve, like slowly flowing lava trickling a hot path of understanding into his long-guarded heart.

“About a week after I first called your mother, I started tracking the Villaba cartel again, the men who’d massacred the people of La Higuera. I followed their money. I hired some of my best hacks to do some cyber sniffing—off the record, of course. We hit pay dirt. One of Villaba’s men, a man who’d been marked for elimination, contacted my team. His information was all we needed to get inside their operation. I convinced headquarters to reopen the case. A SWAT team went in and got them—all six of the leaders and a cache of weapons big enough to arm half the region. They’ll be in prison for life. Unless the government goes down or there’s a revolt.”

His dad crossed his arms over his chest. Here was the man Cody remembered—strong, confident, purposeful. The shaky comfort of understanding and empathy snaked into Cody. He hadn’t realized how unsettling being at war with his father had been. How disquieted he’d been under the surface, hating his father but not wanting to. Being confused but knowing of nowhere to turn to relieve that confusion. Knowing that he himself wasn’t whole—how could he be with what he and his dad had done to one another?—and yet assuming he just had to suck it up, that he’d eventually be whole again.

He now understood that he wouldn’t be whole without some kind of reconciliation between the two of them.

“Taking those men down won’t bring the people of La Higuera back,” his dad added. “But it will stop the violence, at least for a time. At least in that one area. And maybe it will even force the regional government to cooperate with the agency. If they’d done that in the first place, the horrid tragedy might’ve been avoided.”

“You going back into the agency?”

“No,” he said quickly. Then he added, “Well, maybe. You have to have unwavering confidence to do the work. I’m still working on getting mine back.”

Confidence was a wily beast. Cody couldn’t imagine living without its bolstering power.

His dad reached for the pitcher on the table and topped off their glasses. Cody averted his eyes from the tremble in his dad’s hands when he lifted his glass to his lips.

“How’s your game, son?”

“The box scores pretty much cover it.” He didn’t feel like crowing. Not in the face of his dad’s struggle to crawl out of the barrel. Besides, his future was in no way secure. He’d shown his stuff at the end of the season, but spring training would be the real proving ground.

“Box scores reveal performance,” his father said over the rim of his glass. “But not what’s behind it.”

Baseball was always safe territory.

“I have to train up or I won’t stay in the show. If Aderro comes back in the spring and Thornton is in top form, I might not make the cut.” He sipped at the iced tea, watched a drop of condensation trek its way down the side of the glass. “I’ve got a couple of teammates who’ve offered to help me this offseason. One of them’s the team captain.”

“Alex Tavonesi?”

Cody nodded.

“The guy has integrity; I can see it even from a distance. Damn fine first baseman.” His dad’s eyes narrowed. “I saw the photo of you and
Zoe
Tavonesi at a polo match.”

“You’ve been tracking me.”

“Just surfing the web,” he said with a half smile. “You were hard to miss. Didn’t know you played polo.”

Cody laughed, releasing some of the tension of the morning. “Damn near kicked my ass.”

“Your mother told me that Kat said you might be sweet on her.”

Was it any wonder his dad had been a good agent? The man culled info from every source. Cody said, “Thought you never put much stock in hearsay.”

“The women of this family have a radar for the truth.”

Not taking the bait, Cody shrugged. He wasn’t ready to discuss his love life with his dad. With anyone, for that matter. And love life? Since when did a couple of picnics and kisses constitute a love life?

Since those kisses had shaken up his world, that was when. Since he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her for more than ten minutes at a time.

Whatever it was called, he had
something
going with Zoe Tavonesi. At least his mind said he did.

“The agency had dealings with Santino Tavonesi some years back. The brass still keeps tabs on him.”

That
was a surprise. What kind of dealings would the CIA have with Zoe’s dad? To gather his thoughts, he said, “So you
are
keeping your hand in the business.”

“You don’t retire from intelligence work. The bug that gets men in never lets them out. Looking behind the scenes—analyzing—becomes a habit. No, more than a habit—more like breathing. You forget you’re doing it.”

Cody’s internal sensors were on high alert. “What do you know about her family?”

“Rich. Involved in finance and wine. Some art dealings.”

His dad looked away and clinked the ice in his glass. And Cody knew he wasn’t telling the whole story. Hearing half-truths and unfinished stories was the price paid by families with a member in the business. The spy business. You could give it a fancy name, surround it with bureaucracy and protocol, but in the end, it was spying. And right then, he wanted facts. And felt ridiculous for wanting them, like an eighth grader wanting to know what a girl’s favorite color was or where she hid the key to her heart.

“Why was the agency interested in Zoe’s father?” He shouldn’t ask, but he had to know.

“I’ll see if I can check into it.” His dad nailed him with a knowing look and shook his head. “Apparently, you’re right and your mother and Kat have it wrong. You’re way beyond the ‘sweet on her’ stage.”

He was considering a reply when his dad jumped up.

“Damn, I have a meeting in ten minutes. Dylan’s going with me—want to join us?”

Cody shook his head.

“Yeah... you and Kat got lucky; the alchie gene apparently skipped both of you. I’m grateful for that, at least.” He ran a hand over his face. “I suppose you already know that life can be a bear sometimes.”

He walked Cody to his car. “Next time you’re in town, give me some warning. I’ll pull the grill out.” He put out his hand.