Follow the Sharks Page 11

  Farley Vaughn looked like a guy who worked hard at his conditioning, one of those compulsive joggers with stringy forearms and a leathery face and pale narrow eyes. About one-percent body fat. He was some kind of vice president for the Red Sox, responsible for the various operations that make professional baseball indistinguishable from any other big business.

  The Red Sox, at the time, were playing lousy baseball again, much to the glee of the local sportswriters, and their perennial front-office feuds had superseded news of the games as lead stories on the sports pages. So I intended a touch of irony when I asked Farley how business was.

  “Oh, good, good,” he said, his eyes twinkling to let me know he caught my sarcasm. “Turnstiles are well oiled. God bless the Boston fans. They’d just as soon come out to boo as to cheer.”

  “Nothing a good reliever wouldn’t cure, anyway,” I said. “Sorry I’m late,” I added, taking my seat across from him. “Couple of appointments got backed up. Time. The enemy of us all.”

  “Time is our ally, Brady,” said Vaughn earnestly. “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.”

  “Well, time is what made me late,” I smiled. “What are you drinking?”

  “Cranberry juice. Good for the kidneys. Hardly any calories. Have some?”

  He crooked a finger and a waitress appeared. “Cocktail, sir?” she said to me.

  “Bourbon old-fashioned,” I said. “No soda. Extra hunk of orange. My kidneys are in great shape.”

  She frowned, then shrugged and went away to fetch my drink.

  “So what’s up?” said Vaughn. “You said you wanted to pick my brain. Such as it is, pick away.”

  “You have the reputation of knowing more about the players than just about anybody in the game. I’ve got some names I’d like to try out on you.”

  He sipped his cranberry juice and nodded. “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Pete Bello.”

  Vaughn steepled his fingers. “He’s doing a nice job for Pittsburgh, I hear. Managing in A ball. We signed him out of Holy Cross in seventy, I think it was. He was a shortstop then. Nice, soft hands, good arm, contact type of hitter. Limited range, though, and no power and only average speed. We brought him up for a few games in September in seventy-three or four, then traded him to the Pirates. He hung on a few years with them. Smart. College kid. He saw the handwriting, and was happy to take a job in the bushes for them. Pete Bello is a pretty nice guy, and they’re high on him. Why’re you asking about Pete Bello?”

  I spread my palms. “It’s a long story, Farley.”

  “Something to do with Eddie? I heard about his boy. Is that… ?”

  “He’s still missing.”

  Vaughn shook his head. “What a shame.”

  I nodded.

  “And you think Pete Bello is connected to that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I really don’t want to go into it.”

  “Because I seriously doubt it. Not Pete Bello.”

  “Like I said, I can’t speculate.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. That’s okay.”

  The waitress slid my drink in front of me. I took a long sip and stared out the window at the grids of the city streets for a moment. From the fifty-second floor it looked like a big contour map laid out below us.

  I looked back at Farley Vaughn. “Anything, ah, funny about him? Anything unusual?”

  “Bello?” He frowned. “Well, he had this hitch in his swing. We never could do anything with it. Had the damnedest time pulling the ball. Dead opposite field hitter. That’s probably not what you’re after, huh?”

  “No. I mean as a person, not ballplayer. Anything in his personal life?”

  He stared at me out of those washed-out blue eyes. “He was divorced. But I guess that’s not unusual.”

  “No, it’s not. When did it happen?”

  “Before he got to the big league. I recall, they had a couple of little kids. He was married when he was in college. One of those baseball things, you know? Bouncing around the bushes, never home, playing winter ball in Puerto Rico. She just wasn’t a baseball wife.”

  “Who is?” I said. “Like with Eddie.”

  “Yeah. Like with Eddie. It happens. How is Eddie, anyway? How’s he doing?”

  “I haven’t seen him in a while,” I said. “He wasn’t doing that great last time I saw him.”

  “Understandable.” Vaughn shook his head. “Too bad. And he was one of the best prospects I ever saw, too.”

  “How about Gus Geralchik?” I said. “What do you know about him?”

  “Poor Gus. He died a couple of years ago, you know. Stomach cancer. He deserved better. One tough son of a bitch, Gus. Hung around the big leagues quite a while. Back—oh, in the mid-fifties, it was. Always a second-stringer, but the kind of guy you just wanted to have around.”

  “He was with the Cubs.”

  “Right. We signed him originally, though. Right out of high school. Chicopee, it was, out there by Springfield. We let him go after a couple of years in the low minors, and Chicago picked him up. I was glad to see him make it. Work his ass off, Gus would. I bet in all the years he hung on with them he didn’t get to bat five hundred times. Doubt if he minded. He liked being around the game.”

  “I didn’t realize he was originally Red Sox property.”

  “Yup. You stay close to your own guys, even when they move on. I was real sorry when he died.”

  “What did he do after baseball?”

  Vaughn stroked his chin. “Seems to me he bought into a filling station. Something like that. Maybe it was a car dealership. Outside of Chicago. And, no, I can’t think of anything unusual about him. Absolutely straight shooter. Married his high school sweetheart, stayed married to her. Just your average guy.”

  “That’s not so average,” I said.

  A waitress approached us, pencil and pad poised. “Are you gentlemen ready to order?”

  Neither Vaughn nor I had glanced at the menus that had been laid before us earlier. I picked mine up. Vaughn didn’t refer to his. “Spinach salad,” he said. “No dressing. Just bring a wedge of lemon.” He looked up at me. “Have the lobster, if you want, Brady. The Red Sox are paying for this.”

  I was tempted to tell him that I could well afford the lobster myself, but I checked myself. He wasn’t trying to patronize me. “The open-faced steak sandwich. Medium rare. French fries. Bottle of Molson’s. I don’t want any salad.”

  She bobbed her head, retrieved our menus, and whirled away.

  Vaughn propped his chin atop his fist. “Anybody else you want to talk about?”

  “Bobo Halley.”

  He squinted at me. “What do you know about him?”

  I shrugged. “That he pitched for the Tigers for a couple of years. That he was killed in an automobile accident a few years ago.”

  “That’s it?”

  I nodded. “It’s in the Baseball Encyclopedia.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, this wasn’t in the Baseball Encyclopedia, Brady, or the newspapers, either. I’m going to tell you about it because I know you won’t abuse the information, and because you’re trying to help out Eddie. At least, that’s what I assume you’re doing.”

  He looked expectantly at me. I shrugged.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “what happened to Bobo isn’t a big secret. Just that there’s no sense of messing up the reputation of a dead guy.”

  He hesitated again, and I nodded.

  “When Bobo retired from baseball he was a young man. Thirty-one or -two. He’d had a few decent years with the Detroit club. They said it was arm trouble. They gave it a name—fancy medical jargon. Got a doctor to verify it. But—”

  “But it wasn’t arm trouble.”

  “No,” he said. “There was nothing wrong with Bobo Halley’s arm when he retired from baseball.” He stared out the window, then turned to peer at me. “Brady, what the hell has this got to do with Eddie Donagan’s kid?”

  I shook my head. �
�I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Look. I have no intention of besmirching the memory of Bobo Halley or anybody else, believe me. Hell, I don’t know if any of this means anything. I’ve got no hypothesis. I’m just poking around. Don’t worry. You can trust me.”

  He sipped his cranberry juice and gazed off at a point beyond my right shoulder. “I know,” he said. “Sorry. Anyway, Bobo Halley retired under duress, you might say. He was asked to retire. He was forced to retire, to be perfectly accurate. They made a deal with him. It was one of those deals where everybody is better off, you know? Bobo, the Tigers, organized baseball, the fans. It was like a plea bargain.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He bet on games.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “I imagine lots of ballplayers gamble.”

  “Bobo bet a lot of money. He used bookies. Illegal bookies. He bet on baseball games.” Vaughn stared at me with those icy eyes. “He bet on games he played in. Sometimes he bet on his team to lose.”

  “Yeah, I see,” I said. I leaned back and drained my old-fashioned. “Say it ain’t so, Bobo.”

  Our lunches arrived. Vaughn squeezed the lemon over his spinach leaves. I poured A-1 Sauce onto my steak and a big glob of catsup all over my French fries. Vaughn watched me. He puffed out his cheeks as if he had a mouthful of vomit. I grinned at him and ceremoniously picked up a French fry in my fingers and lowered it into my mouth.

  Vaughn wielded a knife and fork to chop his spinach into delicate little bite-sized pieces. He speared a couple and jammed them into his mouth. He was a firm believer in thorough mastication.

  “So the league office thought it would be better if Bobo just retired,” he said.

  “Bad PR for the grand old game, eh?”

  “Yes,” he said solemnly. “It could’ve been disastrous. Like the Black Sox scandal. The lesser of evils was to hush it up. At least that was the thinking.”

  “Amazing they were able to get away with it.”

  “It was in everybody’s interest.”

  “Except the media’s. And maybe the public’s.”

  He shrugged.

  “They thought he was throwing games,” I said. “Was that it?”

  He shrugged. “There was no actual evidence of that. But, yes, of course, that was the real issue. There was plenty of motivation for it.”

  “There’s a lot of betting on baseball,” I said.

  “Sure. Big money out of Vegas. Not to mention Chicago and New York and Atlantic City.”

  “And Boston.”

  “Yes. Boston, too. They bet on margins, of course. Hell, you can read gambling odds in the papers. Little service the sports departments provide for their readers, right alongside the columns that crucify any athlete who wagers a couple of bucks on a game. Who will win and by how many runs. But there isn’t much they don’t bet on. Total runs, runs per inning, how many innings a pitcher will last, number of hits, almost anything that can be quantified, people will bet on. And where there’s people to bet on something, there’s bookies to pick up their bets.”

  “Tempting for a player. Inside information, thinks he knows more than the oddsmakers.”

  “Which, of course, he really doesn’t,” said Vaughn. “What there are, of course, are plenty of crooks around to try to arrange things to work out the way they bet on them.”

  “Yes. And players weak or greedy enough to go along.”

  “The thing is,” he said, “they don’t see the harm in it, as long as they can still play to win. They think they haven’t done anybody any harm if they boot a grounder, or strike out with a couple of runners in scoring position, or groove a fastball to a good hitter, as long as they end up winning the game. And if they happen to win a little money because of it, so much the better. It happens in all sports, of course. A heavily favored boxer will carry a weak opponent for seven rounds, when the odds said he’d put him down in six, for example. Split ends drop passes when their team’s ahead. Basketball players—well, you remember B.C. a few years back. Athletes aren’t always the brightest or most ethically well-grounded citizens. Their ethic is simple. Win. Win at all costs. You rarely find athletes in any sport betting against themselves, or against their team.”

  “Bobo Halley did.”

  He nodded. “Yes. Bobo did. Most of them don’t. The point is, they figure, as long as they bet on themselves they’re living by the ethic. Win. Nothing else matters. They hear that in Little League. They hear it in the big leagues. It’s easy to rationalize gambling. Hard to blame them, really.”

  “Professional athletes should know the law,” I said.

  “Yes. They should.”

  “But there was no evidence that Bobo actually shaved points or threw games?” I made it a question.

  “Well, no. No evidence. He bet a lot of money. Evidently he lost a lot. And that’s another problem, of course.”

  “Being in debt to bookies can be a problem.”

  “Can make one vulnerable,” said Vaughn.

  “What about Bobo’s death? How was that connected?”

  “It wasn’t, as far as we know. He just died in a car crash. Thousands of people die in car crashes. Hell, thousands of people die in car crashes on the Southeast Expressway, seems like. He was on his way home to Lynn when it happened. Drove into the guardrail, car flipped, and Bobo’s skull was fractured, along with all the rest of him.”

  “Nothing suspicious about it?”

  He shrugged. “Guess Bobo’d had a couple of pops on his way home. Is that suspicious?”

  “I suppose not. He lived in Lynn? I didn’t remember that.”

  “Sure. His home town. We signed him out of Lynn English. He was a helluva athlete over there.”

  “So he was Red Sox property originally, too?”

  “Oh, sure. I thought you were asking me about guys who started out with the Sox.”

  “I guess I was. The other two I was going to ask you about, Arnie Bloom and Johnny Warrick. They were originally with Boston, too, I know.”

  “Yup. We signed Bloom out of UConn. Warrick went to a parochial school in Manchester, New Hampshire. But those two weren’t involved in anything like you’re looking for, as far as I know.”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I said quickly.

  He grinned at me. “Right. Anyhow, Warrick had a nice little career with the Sox, as I’m sure you remember, and Bloom was a good player for the Twins.”

  “And Warrick owns a hog farm and Bloom sells life insurance.”

  “Right. They’re both good kids.”

  “As far as you know.”

  He nodded. “As far as I know.”

  I thought for a minute. “Who signed them?”

  “I did.”

  “I mean, who scouted them? Who recommended them?”

  “Oh, that was Stump Kelly. He had the region for about twenty years. You remember Stump.”

  “Sure. He signed Eddie. I met him a few times.” I hesitated. “Was there ever any talk of Eddie being involved—you know, like Bobo Halley?”

  Vaughn shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “None. Eddie wasn’t that kind of a kid.”

  “Was Bobo?”

  Vaughn cocked his head and stared at me. “Well, now, I guess he was, wasn’t he?”

  We finished eating. I watched Farley Vaughn chew methodically on his spinach leaves and sip his cranberry juice, while I finished my steak and swigged my Molson’s.

  “I don’t know how you can eat that damn rabbit food,” I said to him.

  “Makes for a healthy colon,” he answered. “Roughage, you know. Keeps your stools nice and soft.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “You ever think about cholesterol?” he said.

  “Never. I don’t think about smallpox or runaway Budliners or guys who go to McDonald’s with machine guns, either.”

  “I see your point,” said Vaughn.

  He paid the bill with a credit card and we plummeted down through the middle of the Prudential Building on the
express elevator. I left my stomach, crammed with steak and French fries and Molson’s Ale, on the fifty-second floor.

  12

  JULIE’S TYPEWRITER WAS CLATTERING when I got back to the office. When she saw me come in, she stopped, raised her arms into the air, arched her back, and stretched grandly, pushing her breasts taut against her blouse.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Any calls?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle. I left your messages on your desk. Only one seemed urgent.”

  “What was that?”

  “Doctor Adams called. He said the bluefish off the mouth of the Merrimack in Newburyport were biting like snakes. He said it was very important you get back to him.”

  “Like snakes? Did Doc say, ‘Like snakes?’”

  “Those were his exact words,” said Julie. “You don’t think I’d say that, do you?”

  “My mother was right,” I said. “I should have been a dentist like Doc Adams. Then I could go fishing whenever I wanted to. Nothing else?”

  “Like I said. All the rest of the calls were just from your clients, all boring stuff concerning your law practice. Which I took care of for you. I figured you had to talk with Doctor Adams yourself. I wouldn’t want to fool around with important things like bluefishing expeditions.”

  I patted the top of her head in the condescending way I knew irritated the hell out of her. “You’re a good kid,” I said.

  She stuck out her tongue at me and returned to her typing. I went into my office. I glanced at the pile of little slips she had left there. She had made several appointments for me. There were a couple of calls I had to return. They could wait. I buzzed Julie.

  “I know,” she said into the phone. “Cancel all appointments for tomorrow. You’re going fishing with Doctor Adams.”

  “Aha!” I said. “You’re wrong, for once. No. See if you can get Farley Vaughn on the phone for me.”

  “You just had lunch with him.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, okay.”

  A moment later she buzzed me. “I have Mr. Vaughn for you.”