Curveball (9 page)

CM: Wow. Instead of rags to riches, it’s sticks to Sluggers, huh? So when did it become
clear you were going to go pro?

AP: The Soldiers signed me on my sixteenth birthday—the first day they were legally
allowed to—but before that I was playing in a local league, which is where my agent
found me. After signing with a talent agent, I quit school and worked on baseball
full time.

CM: What all did that entail?

AP: My agent runs his own training camp so I moved in with a bunch of other prospects
where we worked on our game from sun up to sun down.

CM: I can’t get over the fact that you were only sixteen years old. That’s so young!

AP: Not here. The sad truth is, if you aren’t signed by twenty, most teams assume
you’re a lost cause.

CM: What advice would you give to young boys who want to follow in your cleat-steps?

AP: ¡Querer es poder!

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Cat was still typing at her desk when Paige grabbed her right arm and steered her
toward the door.

“Nu-uh. You heard the man; we’re gonna do a little recon.”

Cat stopped in her tracks and wiggled her arm out of the grasp. “Paige, I’ve got to—”

“Blah, blah. Come on, isn’t this what you do? Investigate stuff?” She pointed to the
paperwork on Cat’s desk. “You can’t tell me you’d rather be comparing the stats of
a no-name versus a never-will-be than going out and busting some sleazy baseball pimp?”
Her shoulders bobbed around like she was dancing to unheard music.

Cat stared at the stat sheets and weighed Paige’s plea. The fluff pieces could be
written in her sleep, but a dead body on the beach? That was a journalist’s dream.

“Well …” At Paige’s hopeful smile, she relented. “You’ve got an hour.”

“Yay!” Paige pulled the car keys out of her purse.

Cat’s stomach hopped into her throat. She slapped her hand over Paige’s fist. “But
we’re taking a taxi.”

“Deal.” Paige threw the keys back in her purse and looped her arm through Cat’s again,
dragging her to the exit doors and hailing a cab with her free hand.

Paige waved at the driver as they piled into the torn backseat of the yellow compact.
“
Um, hola?
”

He was not much older than they. Upon seeing them, he put out his cigarette and sprayed
a aerosol can of Glade toward the roof of the car.

Cat coughed, waved her open palm through the air, then reached for the hand crank
on her door’s window. “Great, floral-scented lung cancer.”

Paige giggled and smacked her on the leg. She leaned forward and put her hands in
between the front seats.

“Hola. ¿A dónde vas, señora?”

He was asking where they wanted to go.

“Right,” Paige said, “Uh …”

Desperate brown eyes flashed for help but Cat pursed her lips and motioned locking
them with a key. It was her passive-aggressive, juvenile way of letting the unqualified
intern know she was on her own.

Paige scowled. “Thanks a lot.” Her brow furrowed. “
Um…¿Hab-la In-glés?
”

Cat cringed at the chopped syllables. Any citizen that claimed they appreciated a
tourist’s effort to speak the local language had never heard the Spanish language
sliced and diced like this.

“Where to?” The cab driver smiled kindly in the rearview mirror.

Cat slumped back in the seat. It just figured. Not only does Paige find an English
speaking taxi driver, he’s not even annoyed with her ignorance. She supposed he had
a fair share of boorish travelers but glowing smiles and ample cleavage beat sunburned
scowls and white tube socks with sandals.

Paige let out a huge sigh of relief and batted her heavily lined eyes at Cat. “Thank
God. We need to go to a sports agent’s office. Baseball.”

“Béisbol?”

“Yes, an agent.”

“Ah, a
Buscón
.”

“It’s uh, Worldwide Baseball Talent Management. Can you take us there?”

He flipped a switch on his meter and pulled out onto the road. “
Si señora. Uno momento
.”

She smiled and relaxed into the soft seat. “Gee, I’m so upset that I was out having
fun at parties and making friends instead of taking a bazillion years of Spanish like
you, McDee. Whatever will I do without that skill?”

Cat raised an eyebrow at her. “
No quiero oir mas quejas de ti
.”

The cab driver’s eyes twinkled in his rearview mirror.

Paige looked back and forth between the two. She glared at Cat, pointing an index
finger in her face. “I’ll find out what that means.”

It meant, “I don’t want to hear any more complaints out of you,” but Paige didn’t
need to know that.

A few minutes later, the driver pulled up to a dilapidated stucco storefront sandwiched
between a tobacco shop and a liquor store. He turned around and smiled at them.

“You are here.”

“This is it?”

He nodded, his friendly smile not leaving his face. He pointed to the meter. “Three
hundred,
por favor
.”

Paige took another look at the dingy building and swallowed, turning back to him with
fluttering eyelashes.

“Do you think you could wait here for us? We’ll just be a few minutes.”

The smile faded. He shook his head; his eyebrows met and formed a straight line. “Three
hundred.”

She sighed and pointed to herself and Cat. “We go in there.” Her voice was loud and
her words were halted. She pointed at the building. “You wait here?” She pointed at
him. “Leave meter running?” Her finger then moved to the taxi meter.

“Ah.” He smiled and pointed down. “
Espere aquí
.”

Paige returned the smile. “Okay. We’ll be right back.”

“
Nos Vuelvo enseguida
.” Despite her reluctance to help Paige’s pursuit of English as a universal language,
Cat translated. Having a little fun at Paige’s expense wasn’t worth the risk of being
stranded in this questionable neighborhood. She opened the door and scooted out onto
the sidewalk. A man and woman shouted at each other in the distance. Across the street,
a man slept outside a boarded-up home with only a sheet of newspaper to screen him
from the bright sun. A house down from him, two boys—aged ten or eleven, she guessed—played
a game of catch with a rock and a milk carton. Her heart sank. This neighborhood made
Gram’s trailer park look like Chicago’s ritzy Glen Ellyn.

Paige nudged Cat toward the building first. The foundation was cracked and uneven.
The stucco above it was a grimy shade of gray, far removed from the soft white she
was used to seeing in the Vegas suburbs. The windows were missing so many security
bars that even Joe could wiggle in between them. The flat roof sagged. The only landscaping
was a dead palm tree. Stepping carefully onto the cracked concrete walking stones
wedged in the small strip of scorched grass, she pulled the screen door toward them.
It wobbled open with the stale stench of tobacco. She stepped onto the uneven linoleum
and glanced around the small room.

An unmanned card table sat in the center of the room. There was a wooden door behind
it marked “
PROHIBIDA LA ENTRADA SOLO EMPLEADOS AUTORIZADOS.
”

“
Prohibida
?” Paige scoffed. “If it reeks as bad as this room,
no problemo
.”

Cat wondered what kind of employees were authorized to enter this hellhole. The sole
window was plugged with a box fan. It was missing a blade and whomped with each cycle.
Cat’s heels clung to the floor and ripped up with a Velcro scratch on each timid step.

“
¿Hola?
” Cat spotted a bell on the card table and reached out to ding it. “
¿Hay alguien ahí?
”

Paige plugged her nose. “Do you smell that?”

Cat covered her mouth with her hand in an attempt to block out what she suspected
was the stench of a broken sewer pipe. She nodded, longing for the carcinogen cab
outside.

Three folding chairs sat around the table. The walls were painted a blinding lime
that was peeling off in large flakes. The chips revealed the former wall shade, an
equally repellant turquoise. Unmarked file boxes were stacked in one corner and tucked
in the other was a triangular cardboard bug trap.

She swallowed and pointed it out to Paige. “Guess we’re not alone after all.”

Paige squeaked out a “Chance?”

Silence greeted them again.

She attempted a lighthearted smile at Cat. “I guess he’s out buying a desk?”

Cat picked up some of the papers on the card table and thumbed through the pile. “What
the …”

They were all the same.

“Same contract for every player. How’s that for uniformity?” She handed the stack
to Paige.

“Dollar, dollar bill y’all. I know the exchange rate is whacked but damn, that’s a
lot of digits.”

She sat the papers back on the card table, keeping one for herself. She folded it
in half and shoved it in her purse. “Let’s get out of here. This place smells worse
than that kid on the beach last night.”

“Yeah.” Cat agreed too much to take umbrage with the girl’s lack of tact.

They hurried across the sticky floor and let the door slam on their way out to the
cab.

Paige shook her hands out and shuddered. “Take us back, please.”

The cab driver nodded in the rearview mirror. “
Si, señoritas
.”

Paige swung the door open and charged toward the scout’s office. Her hair bounced
with each smack of her heel on the tile floor. Cat trailed behind, still trying to
decipher the agency’s contract.

“Joe, you are not going to believe this.” Paige saw he was on the phone and gasped.
She mouthed “sorry” and started to back out.

He smiled, shook his head and waved them in.

“Look, someone just came in my office so we’ll have to table this for another time.
Uh-huh. Goodbye.” Joe slammed the receiver and sighed. “You’ve got perfect timing,
you know that? There’s this jackass that’s been trying all week to get me to schlep
an hour and a half over to
Pedro San Macorís
to see his client, a kid who can only throw one pitch. He better be the next Mariano
Rivera if I’m gonna drive ninety kilometers.”

Paige ripped the paper out of Cat’s hands.

“Hey! I was reading that.”

Paige ignored her and thrust it toward Joe. “We did what you said and went over to
Chance’s office. It’s a total crap hole.”

He scanned the contract. “Define
crap hole
.” His eyes didn’t leave the paper.

“Um, Fillmore University’s rugby locker room meets the Buffalo Zoo’s monkey house.”

Despite having never been to either of those places, Cat concurred with a solid nod;
she would’ve summed it up as akin to a Porta-Potty on the last day of the fair.

“Yuck.” Joe scrunched his nose. “Who’d you speak with?”

“No one was there.” Paige pointed at the contract. “So I took that off the table and
left. McDee says it’s a contract.”

He handed it back to Cat. “Yeah, it’s an offer of representation. Looks pretty standard,
except for that last part.”

“The fee?”

“Converts to about a thousand U.S. dollars.” He met their eyes with a matter-of-fact
expression. “I’m sorry, girls. It looks like your friend might be bad news.”

Cat stepped back, shaking her head. “He’s not
my
friend.”

“So what do we do now?” Paige looked helplessly at Cat. She had a way of shapeshifting
from a cunning vixen to a pitiful puppy in a matter of seconds.

Joe crossed his fingers and rested his receding chin on his thumbs. “Well, here’s
the thing. Legally our hands are tied. Without complaints from the players, there’s
not much the courts here can or will do.”

“That isn’t fair. He’ll just keep going, signing kids and taking their money.”

Cat nodded. “And what about the kid who washed up on the beach? Chance said he didn’t
even recognize him but if this kid was as good as you say at one time, I don’t believe
him. His mom said it was Chance’s fault he was dead.”

Paige’s eyes softened behind the layers of makeup. “Maybe he killed himself because
he was screwed over.”

Joe nodded. “If he signed this, then the kid lost his money and his dreams. Ya might
throw yourself off the
Puente Juan Bosch
for less.”

“Well, we can’t just let this happen to some other kid.”

Paige wrung her hands and began to pace the short width of the office. “I say we find
Chance and give him—”

He put his hand up. “Let me finish. The league keeps a blackball list. We can put
his name and agency on there. By shutting them out, we are essentially cutting bad
agents off at the knees. Their credentials won’t be valid at any league-sponsored
events and any contacts they try to claim won’t be validated.

Paige stopped pacing. “McDee?”

Cat shrugged. “I guess that’ll have to do.”

“I know it’s not perfect but give yourselves a pat on the back. One less shark in
the tank.”

Paige smiled. “Cool.”

Cat issued both Paige and Joe a thin-lipped smile, but she didn’t share in their satisfaction.
This didn’t take the shark out of the tank. It put a cage around him. At best, they
were preventing a few fish from swimming in. But she knew how desperate these kids
were and that the sharks wouldn’t go hungry. Cat held out the paper. “Do you want
to keep this contract?”

“Why don’t you give it to Paige? I’ll email her the instructions on how to file the
grievance with the league.”

“Really?” She beamed triumphantly at Cat.

Joe shrugged. “Seems only fair you should get the credit since you discovered it.”

Cat handed it over. “Beats singing the ABCs to a file cabinet, huh?”

Paige steadied her right hand on top of her left palm and brushed a thin layer of
the scarlet polish on her nail.

Rrrrrring.

“Agh!” Paige started, causing her right hand to flinch and the brush to careen up
her cuticle. She saw the result and shrieked again. “Cat!” She didn’t have any polish
remover and her index finger looked like it had gone for a ride in the pencil sharpener.