Curveball (27 page)

She didn’t move from the wall, instead surveying each item in the office. Though it
had nothing to do with her suspicions, she eyed the autographed bats, balls and cards
lingering around his office.

Wonder
if he’d notice if anything went missing?

Unlike her colleagues, Cat didn’t have much in the way of sports memorabilia, outside
of her Ron Santo card. As a child, she hadn’t been able to afford to go to many fan
conventions or buy autographed merchandise, and as an adult, she was afraid the players
wouldn’t take her seriously if she were to beg for their John Hancocks right after
grilling them about at-bats and defensive plays.

“What are we looking for, anyway?”

She brought her focus back to the mission. That was the same question he’d asked her
when she called him and told him she wanted to snoop through Chance’s office. She
still didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know. One of those little pink diaries with a lock on the side?”

She picked up the only file folder that sullied his bare desk and thumbed through
the papers inside. It was the forged player file she’d given him earlier.

“Hey! This is you.” She peeked up from the file and saw his alarmed face. She chuckled
to calm him down. “No, I mean, this is Leon Guerrero’s file.”

He relaxed and sighed. “Oh. So what? You gave it to him.”

“Sooo … why’d he keep this and make a nice little manila home for it if he finds me
so despicable?”

“Maybe he wants to rescue me from your evil clutches.” Junior moved over to the wall
and examined the framed degree. “Hmm. A degree from NYU School of Law.”

“Or maybe he’s going to try to report me.” She took a step over to examine the frame,
scoffing at it upon inspection. “Please. A piece of paper does not a degree make.
He could buy that on the Internet for two hundred bucks.” She went back over to the
desk.

“Boy, you really don’t trust this guy.”

She pulled out his top desk drawer and stopped. “Don’t tell me you’re a member of
the Chance Hayward Fan Club now?”

“No. Hell no.” He waved his hands in front of him to emphasize his distaste. “I only
meant that you are discrediting everything about him based on a hunch about a team
from the Netherlands.”

“It’s more than a hunch. He’s contracted with them. Contracted? You know as well as
I do that any agent should be out for the best deal for their player.”

“It just makes sense. They work on commission, the better the deal is for the player,
the more money they get.”

“And Chance likes money.”

“Everyone likes money.”

“Yeah, but Chance has a special relationship with money. Chance woos money. He takes
it on long weekends to Santa Barbara and makes it breakfast in bed.”

Junior smiled.

She went in. “Yet he wouldn’t even let Joe take a look at Cristian before he supposedly
signed with this team. There’s got to be money changing hands.”

“I don’t know. They would have to be giving him some serious kickbacks to cover the
commission he’d miss out on. I know the Soldiers’ signing bonuses average a high five
figures. Just to offset his earnings on that, he’d have to be getting greased with
at least five grand a player.”

“Maybe.” That’s exactly what Cat thought. There had to be a big gain for Chance to
put all his eggs in one basket. She tapped her fingernails on the drawer’s edge. “If
we could just get a list of his players and the teams they’d signed with, I could
investigate both the team and their relationship with Chance.”

She closed the desk drawer, Post-its and ink pens wouldn’t get her far. She scanned
the small office.

“No file cabinets.” Her eyes fell to the flat screen monitor on the corner of the
desk. “Everything must be on his computer.”

“Oh no.”

She shook her head. “No, this is good.”

She looked around for the CPU. The rectangle tower was in the right side cabinet.
She pressed the power button and the computer fired up with a dull hum. She leaned
back in the chair while it flickered and powered on. “Assuming he doesn’t take his
files home with him on a memory stick.”

“Can you do that?”

She chuckled and gauged his expression to see if he was joking. His face was as serious
as a home plate umpire’s. “You don’t know very much about computers, huh?”

“I know they can send letters and find naked ladies.”

“Don’t forget Solitaire.” A graphic popped up on the screen and her smile faded. “Balls.”

Junior moved behind her and bent forward over the back of the chair. “What is it?”

“His login is password protected.”

“
¡Coñazo!
” Junior hung his head, nestling into the top of hers.

She sat up, letting his head drop forward to the top of the chair while pretending
not to notice. “No, we can work with this.”

He brought it back up. “How? Don’t tell me you’re a hacker.”

She smiled. “This isn’t hacking, just Computer 101. It’s a heckuva lot easier to bypass
this password than it is to get into password-protected documents. I’m betting that
his login being locked means his documents are free and clear.”

“Or he’s super paranoid and puts a password on everything.”

She leaned on the desk. “No. The front door to the building was locked, but yet his
office door was wide open. Same principle. Besides, he doesn’t even have an alarm
system. How paranoid can he be?”

Junior’s bottom lip protruded as he nodded thoughtfully. “Good point. So what do you
do?”

She reached down to the CPU cabinet and held the power button down until it shut off.
She clicked it again and once again, the computer revved up. “First, we reboot.”

The computer flickered and powered on again, but this time she pounded the F8 key
over and over. Another screen appeared. “Now we arrow down to safe mode with command
prompt. It’s a limited state of the operating system.”

“And this will let you in?”

“Not quite.” The drivers continued to boot up for the next minute and presented a
welcome screen. “Now we log into the administrator account.” She scrolled over and
clicked the button.

A black screen appeared and a second later, a few white words flickered, the cursor
blinking for her instructions. “This is the command prompt. We just give it an order
…”

She typed in net user Administrator.

The command prompt responded with a new password request. She tapped her chin. “What
should we make his new password?”

“Anything we want?”

“Yup.”

“How about numbnuts?”

Cat typed it in, pressed enter and typed it again.

“Nothing’s showing up.”

“It’s there. Trust me.” Sure enough, the prompt announced that the password had been
successfully changed. “
Voilà
.”

She closed the command prompt box and pushed ctrl+alt+del. The task manager popped
up and she scrolled over to the shutdown options.

“Just one more restart and we’ll be in.”

Junior gaped at her. “Is this really going to work?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, I’m just wondering what other talents you’re hiding.”

“This is nothing, really. You seen how easy it was.” She averted his eyes from his
awestruck gaze. “Don’t be so impressed. Your bigger companies, schools, even newer
operating systems would have more protection. I doubt I’d be able to break into them.”

“How do you know all this?” he asked, not bothering to disguise his incredulous tone.

“Family secret.”

“Ah, your dad.” He started to nod knowingly and then stopped suddenly. “Oh—I just
mean, you know, there was gossip in college. He was like a Blackwater operative or
something, right?”

“Or
something
.” Cat rolled her eyes, though it wasn’t Junior’s fault. After all, she’d been the
one to plant the rumors at LSU in a preemptive strike against the campus yentas. “No,
not him.”

“So who’s the guru?”

“Let’s not go climbing the McDaniel family tree, okay?”

The computer chimed and Cat appreciated the interruption of the welcome screen. She
selected administrator again and this time, when the password box appeared, she typed
in
numbnuts
and held her breath.

The computer jingled and one by one, the desktop icons loaded onto his wallpaper,
the Worldwide Baseball Talent Management logo.

“It worked!” Junior jiggled the back of her chair.

She turned around and smiled over her shoulder. “Let’s see what he’s got to hide,
shall we?” She scrolled over to his documents folder.

Junior leaned over again, bracing himself against the armrests of the chair. His breath
tickled her ear with each warm breath. She wondered if he was intentionally driving
her crazy. Cat stiffened and sat up so that he wouldn’t notice his effect on her,
putting her head inches from the screen.

“
Players
. That’s gotta be something.” She double-clicked on the file and it opened into a
spreadsheet. “Are these all his clients?”

Junior left her ear and came around to the front of her chair. She wheeled the chair
sideways to give him room to see the computer screen. He shook his head. “No. I know
some of these guys and their agents.” He met her curious stare. “At least by name.”

She scrolled down at a slow enough pace for them to read each name. Junior pointed
on the screen at a name highlighted in a yellow bar. “Stop right there, Nisim Rojas.”

“Nisim? You know him?”

“He was on the Single-A team but he was released last spring.”

She continued scrolling. “There!” She pushed her finger against the screen.

“Fingerprints!” Junior reached across the desk for a tissue, wadding it up and wiping
down the smudged screen.

“I hate to break it to you, but we’ve dropped DNA all over this office. You’re going
to need a lot more Kleenex. And a torch.”

“So we’re screwed?”

“Only if they look and I’m not planning on leaving a calling card.”

Junior tossed the crumpled Kleenex in the trash and nudged her knees with the palms
of her hand. She obligingly scooted over in the roomy chair and he wiggled into the
end, his eyes focused on the spreadsheet as she scrolled through it.

Another highlighted name appeared. “Cristian Encarnación.” Their eyes met. “The highlights
must be his clients?”

“Or prospective clients?”

She scrolled to another yellow-grazed name. “Raul Paz?’

He pursed his lips together. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

She minimized the document. “What else does he have on here?”

Junior pointed at a folder marked
Agreements
. “What is that, his contracts?”

“Let’s see.” The folder opened to several files, the first of which was labeled Cristian
Encarnación. “Cristian again.” She clicked it open and scanned it vehemently.

It was a contract, all in Spanish.

Junior squinted at the small print:

Cristian Encarnación, hereinafter referred to as THE ATHLETE, declares him/herself
as being free of any obligations pertaining to the same subject and explicitly guarantees
the absence of any third party’s claim for damage against Chance Hayward, hereinafter
referred to as THE SPORTS AGENT, for the same subject. THE ATHLETE conveys the exclusivity
for the management of his/her career to THE SPORTS AGENT.

He looked at Cat and gave her a one-shoulder shrug. “Pretty standard.”

She nodded while scanning it herself. “What about the agent’s representation? Anything
about this team from the Netherlands? Or a fee?”

She scrolled down.

Junior continued:

THE SPORTS AGENT will negotiate, for and in accordance with the ATHLETE, contracts
concerning the ATHLETE’S career such as: sports contract, sponsorship contract, the
commercial use of images, advertising contract.

He shook his head. “The rest of this consists of guarantees on the part of the athlete
versus the agent, like the athlete maintaining his workouts and the agent informing
him of updates. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Cat didn’t acknowledge him; her eyes were locked on the computer screen. “Territory?
Look at this. The present agreement has no territorial restriction and consequently
all rights and obligations apply worldwide.”

Finally she tore herself away from the monitor and met Junior’s eyes.

“Nothing in the contract about agreeing to be Chance’s Dutch Boy. That’s interesting,
huh?”

Junior nodded. “Here’s his commission—four percent. That’s the industry standard.”

“Below that, look at the express cancellation clause.”

THE AGENT reserves the right to terminate the agreement at any time.

She scoffed. “That’s not an industry standard.”

“No. But it’s not a crime, either.”

She closed the file and sat back in her seat. “Damn.”

He gave her a curious look and she relented with a shrug.

“I don’t mean ‘damn, kids aren’t getting screwed.’ I just mean, ‘damn, this doesn’t
help us.’ ”

He stood up and stretched. “Any other ideas?”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “Let me just check his—wait. What the …” She moved the
cursor over to another file. “Gaspar Peralta.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“It was his body that washed up on the beach last Monday.” She shook her head. “Chance
specifically said he didn’t represent him.”

Junior reached on top of her hand and double-clicked on the folder. Gaspar’s contract
opened up on the screen. “Same contract as Cristian’s.”

“So a client winds up dead and Chance claims not to know him. Why?”

“Trying to hide something?”

“Maybe.” She narrowed her eyes, mad at herself for not pushing it more, especially
at the scene when the boy’s mom arrived. “I should’ve known.”

Junior gave her a soft pat on her arm. “There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

“No. I shouldn’t have let him leave the scene that night. I should’ve told the police
not to discount Ms. Peralta as a grieving mother. If I had, maybe they would’ve looked
into Chance’s relationship with him and Cristian wouldn’t be missing, too.”