The Legend of Mickey Tussler (18 page)

Danvers hooted and slapped his knee. “Hot damn!” he screamed wildly. “Now it's a party.”

Jimmy Llamas was equally impressed. He began fixing his hair with a damp palm, all the while staring transfixed with eyes that twinkled like a Christmas tree. With visions of some erotic interlude dancing through his mind, he made his way over to the wanton woman.

“James Borelli, ma'am,” he said politely. “At your service.”

The woman yawned and tapped her cigarette case anxiously on the edge of the bar. “No thanks, honey,” she said pointedly. “I got my eye on this big boy, right here.” She licked her lips and, in the next moment, was sitting in Mickey's lap.

Danvers loved the action. This unexpected circumstance overwhelmed him; he could barely breathe, he was laughing so hard.

“Aw, eat shit, Woody,” Llamas said bitterly. “She ain't my type anyway.”

“Not your type?” Danvers roared. “Are you shitting me? What's wrong? Are you confused because she ain't walking around on all fours, chewing her cud?”

“Fuck off, Danvers, all right? It's not that funny.”

Danvers just couldn't stop laughing. “I told you, Llamas,” he cried, holding his sides. “I called it. Even Mickey gets more tail than you.”

The other guys, with the exception of Pee Wee, enjoyed the show as well. He loved riding Llamas too, but seeing Mickey in this sort of situation worried him.

“Hey, guys,” he said, “maybe this ain't such a good idea. I mean Mickey and all. Maybe we should step in.”

“Do it and I'll break your arm!” Boxcar said, joining the fracas. “Mickey deserves a little fun.”

“Come on, Box, I'm sort of in charge of—”

“Relax, Pee Wee,” Lefty said, handing him another drink. “Nothing's happening. This ain't Ava Gardner in
The Killers
for Christ sake. It's all cool.”

From a safe distance, they all watched as the woman, still seated squarely on Mickey's lap, whispered in the boy's ear, “My name is Laney Juris, tiger. What's yours?”

Mickey smiled nervously. To all their amazement, he was able to engage the woman in conversation.

“Michael's my name, but folks most always call me Mickey.” Laney and Mickey continued to exchange pleasantries at close range, pausing only now and again to consume the drinks that Lefty kept sending over. The others just sat with their drinks and watched.

“What the hell can they possibly be talking about?” Llamas lamented. His head fell helplessly into his open palms. “Shit, this has got to be the lowest point of my miserable fucking life.”

Nobody said a word. They were all too engrossed in the spectacle unfolding before them to give Llamas a second thought. This irked him even more.

“So that's it, huh?” he began to rant crazily. “A guy bears his soul, and nobody can even say a goddamned word? Not even you, Woody?”

Danvers didn't hear a word he said. His fingers drummed the edge of the bar while he stared incredulously at the blond woman making time with Mickey.

“Hey, I was only kidding around, Woody,” Llamas finally said. “You don't have to get all weird on me now. What's the hell's the matter?”

“Nothing. Nothing's wrong,” Woody answered. “I could swear I know her—that I've seen her before. The girl, with Mickey. I know I have. God, it's driving me nuts.”

Jimmy Llamas shrugged and Boxcar just drank his beer and watched as Mickey and the blond bombshell continued to enjoy each other.

Pee Wee petered out quickly. He had been in saloons before and imbibed and shared in the jocularity of such gatherings. But it always seemed to end the same way—with him sitting on a barstool staring catatonically at one image until it seemed to blur into kaleidoscopic splashes against a foreign canvas. The dart board on the wall; empty glasses piled precariously behind the bar; rings of cigar smoke hovering all around like demons; two men with beards, arm-wrestling for their day's wages; Laney's hand, soft on the side of Mickey's face. It was all there, a time-warped, twisted patchwork of desultory snapshots that left him weak and stupid.

Not Lefty. The entire night, he appeared to be strangely fulfilled, deriving some perverse, vicarious thrill from the improbable happenings. He made a feeble effort to look disinterested, absent of thought, but he could not, on several occasions, help smiling in brilliant approval. He was just settling back in his seat after a quick run to the bathroom when Danvers's inquisition into the girl's identity reached his ears.

“Hey, Lefty. That girl over there. The one with Mickey? Don't we know her?”

A long, dark, oblong shadow detached itself suddenly from the darkness inside the bar and fell across Lefty's eyes. “Well, I think I'm gonna call it a night, boys,” he announced suddenly. “I'm bushed.”

He settled his tab and was just about to the door when Danvers's voice forced him back. “Hey, Lefty,” he called to him. “Come on. I know we know her from somewhere. What is it?”

Lefty walked back into the room anxiously, his head tilting with some queer trepidation when Danvers's eyes suddenly lit up with a fleeting thought.

“Isn't that dame over there with Mickey the one you used to bone from time to time? I know you know who I mean. The one a few miles up the road, with the two sheepdogs?”

Lefty stiffened. He jerked upright, as if an electric current had been shot through his extremities. His brow furrowed and his lips parted, releasing words that were strained and delayed in coming.

“Her? Naw, that was another broad I was with. Looked nothing like this one.”

The two of them stood there momentarily, in awkward silence, as Danvers turned the woman's face over and over in his mind's eye.

“It's the darndest thing,” he kept repeating. “I guess I must have her mixed up with someone else.”

“Yeah, I'm sure that's it. Don't matter much. You know what they say anyway, Woody. Turn 'em upside down, they all look the same.”

Outside, the full moon shone in a black sky, its glow softened by the humidity lingering in the air. The night was advancing steadily toward the new day, and Pee Wee was feeling that he needed to collect his responsibility and head home. They were supposed to be at practice in less than five hours.

Pee Wee made his rounds, shaking hands and saying good-night to everyone. He was tired, enervated by an evening of drunken banter and sophomoric antics. But he felt good about the night. He couldn't remember the last time all of them had laughed as they did. It had been too long. But he was still having some trouble reconciling that it was Lefty, of all people, who had finally changed things.

His legs buckled and strained as he made his way to Mickey's end of the bar. Through the sea of inebriated faces, he struggled to catch a glimpse of him. It took some doing, but after some artful bobbing and weaving, he finally extricated himself from the crowd, only to discover that Mickey was gone.

Lefty was the first to feel his panic, arresting Pee Wee's frantic flight. “Relax, McGinty,” he consoled. “It's fine. Mickey's cool. He's just out back under the moonlight with his special friend.” He checked his watch again. “Yup, I'd say right about now, he's probably knocking at heaven's gate.”

“Oh, holy Christ, are you serious?” Pee Wee lamented. “What's with this girl? How the hell am I supposed to go back there now?”

“Afraid you really can't. That'd be really awkward. And Mickey deserves the full treatment. Boxcar said so.”

“Yeah, but I gotta get going. I just can't stay here any longer.” Pee Wee fidgeted and turned away exhausted. He felt as though he had been struggling for hours up a steep escarpment, and now, having reached the summit, his hold had given way.

“Hey, it's no problem. I'll drop him off at your place once he's done. Shouldn't be too much longer. Our boy's still a rookie— remember?”

Pee Wee struggled with the pull of impulses both strong and mottled. “Are you sure it's okay?” he asked, having already decided his immediate course.

He watched as Lefty broke into an interminable grin that flushed his cheeks with a curious vitality. A faint pang of uneasiness gripped Pee Wee momentarily, and he thought he might just wait it out. But then the notion yielded quietly to his utter fatigue.

“Don't worry about it, Pee Wee,” Lefty promised, “I got it covered.”

Across a desk littered with depth charts and scouting reports, Dennison's face burned with wrath. “What the hell do you mean he's missing!” he ranted. “How can he be missing?”

Murph's face was grim, his eyes both dark and red. “I don't know what to say, Warren,” he offered painfully. “Pee Wee was supposed to—”

“You don't know what to say!” Dennison roared, his voice clashing in Murph's ears like a collision of cymbals. “Are you kidding me, Murphy!”

With hand trembling, Murph dabbed the beads of sweat on his forehead. The light from Dennison's lamp magnified his growing consternation. “We better notify the sheriff.”

Dennison got up and stood motionless, galled by the staggering absurdity of the misfortune. He had been so patient with this team— and Murph. Three losing seasons, promises of “can't miss” prospects that became nothing more than flashes in the pan, a dwindling fan base that had eroded his finances, and countless missed opportunities to move on to bigger and more prestigious endeavors because of this exaggerated sense of commitment to the unfinished project. And now this, just when it was starting to look as if he was finally going to bring the elusive chalice to his lips and sip the sacred nectar of the baseball gods. It vexed him that his life should be going on in the old way when he had done so much of late to alter that familiar trend. He idled in silent agitation, gnashing his teeth before unleashing a maelstrom that scattered the entire contents of the desktop.

“How stupid are you, Murphy!” he cried, telephone in hand. “You let him go to a bar? I swear to God, it's like you just can't stand being successful for once. Aren't you tired of being a disappointment, Murph? Just another washed-out, insufferable loser?”

Murph winced, seized by an unutterable horror. Dennison was right. What had he done? He could scarcely imagine the previous life in which he had existed, tiresome, without this charmed excitement.

“I really don't know what else to say,” he mumbled. “I'm hoping he just wandered off—and that he'll turn up sometime this morning.” Murph struggled with the overwhelming pall of misfortune. The cost of success, he realized, was always this moment when kismet waned and that familiar state of steady decline returned.

“I don't give a rat's ass what happened, or even
how
it happened,” Dennison said, wringing his hands until the knuckles turned white. “Shit, I don't even care where he was all night. Just find him, you hear? Find him Murphy, or I swear, you'll be back in A ball, riding broken-down buses and eating your dinner from a foil plate.”

In the fresh cool of early morning, with the melodious call of waking osprey off in the distance, Murph held a team meeting, an impromptu gathering in lieu of the scheduled workout. He stood in front of his players, a shell of his former ebullient self, growing more and more uncomfortable as he stared out at a sea of blank faces that matched the meaninglessness of the wide, white sky.

The clubhouse seemed dim, tinged with a somber voicelessness that belied the swirling undertow of accusatory anger. Murph glanced anxiously at his watch—it was almost eight o'clock, and although a couple of the guys had yet to arrive, the chain of thoughts that rattled in his head could no longer be contained.

“Uh, I guess by now all of you have heard the unfortunate news about Mickey,” he began with great difficulty. “All of us need to pitch in today, before tomorrow's game, and help see if we can make this awful thing right again.”

Nobody said a word. At the locker next to Mickey's, Pee Wee sat wearing a look of exaggerated grief. He had fallen into an agonizing dwelling on all he had done wrong the previous night—the whiskey, that brazen slut Laney, and worst of all, getting duped by that bastard Lefty. How could he have been so stupid? He went over it all in his head, time and time again, only hearing fragments of what Murph was saying about the hours leading up to Mickey's disappearance.

“So, he was last seen outside The Bucket with a young lady who he had been drinking with.” Murph paused for a short interval, allowing the gravity of what he was saying to sink in. “Lefty, I am correct in saying that, right?”

The mention of his name startled Lefty, for he was busy concentrating on the blister that had formed on his left index finger. “Uh, yup, that's about right. And when I saw him, he looked to be having a grand old time too.”

Irritation rose up in Pee Wee, like sleepy eyes adjusting to the glare of dawn. He was thinking about that stupid grin that Lefty had slapped to his face as Pee Wee walked out of the bar.

“So you just left him there?” Pee Wee screamed. “He was having a good time, so you just left him—with that bimbo—after promising me that you'd bring him home?”

Lefty sharpened his focus. The fire that had been awakened in him was desperate and strong. “Fuck off, sissy boy!” he fired back. “If you weren't such a goddamned candy ass,
you
could have taken him yourself.”

“Are you shittin' me, Rogers? Who the hell do you think you're fooling here? Everyone knows how you feel about him. Mickey was in your way—a big, talented thorn in your side. You couldn't wait to get rid of him. So you turned your back the first chance you could.”

The others just watched in silent discomfort. Lefty was also still, Pee Wee's diatribe having touched a nerve someplace deep within the pitcher's iron heart.

“What about all the other horseshit?” Pee Wee continued. “You know, the invitation, the drinks, the Mr. Nice Guy routine? Huh? What about all that? Was that just part of your little fucked-up plan? Jesus Christ, Rogers—you're so transparent. You're just bent out of shape because a ‘retard' has been kicking your ass.”