Forced Out (30 page)

If they found out Clemant was really that good, how could MJ possibly expect him to keep it a secret? Not to at least try to get the Kid in front of people for a tryout? Then it hit him. "That's why the Kid doesn't do great all the time," he said, watching MJ pull something out of his pocket. "That's why Clemant doesn't have games like he had last night.
Jesus!
" he shouted. "That's why he'd copy Mantle's last season! It was terrible. By Mantle's standards, anyway. A season no one would care about, especially in Single-A."

"Yeah," MJ agreed, handing Jack what he'd pulled from his pocket. "You're right."

"What's this?" Jack unfolded the crinkled piece of paper and read what was scrawled on it, his heart suddenly thumping hard. Home run, single, home run, double, single. And at the bottom of the paper in large letters: GO FOR IT. "My God," he uttered. "Where'd you get this?"

"Out of a trash can outside the locker room last night after Mikey Clemant tossed it in there. He had it with him the whole game last night. Had it in his pocket and checked it before each at-bat," MJ explained, opening the car door and climbing out. "I watched him do it each time," he said, leaning back down into the car. "He caught me staring once while he was looking at it. I thought maybe that was what he wanted to talk about in the training room." MJ's face lighted up for a moment. "I guess, in a way, that is what he was talking about. Anyway, after the game I saw him toss it in the trash can, and I pulled it back out when he was gone. Made a lot of sense to me when I went on Retrosheet before you came over today. By the way," he said, nodding at the paper, "you ever think about what else Mikey Clemant spells?"

Jack shrugged. "I don't know what you mean by--"

"Mickey Mantle. The same letters that spell Mikey Clemant spell Mickey Mantle." MJ

made a pistol out of his right hand and pretended to fire it, then brought the tip of his index finger--the tip of the barrel--up in front of his mouth and blew, like he was blowing smoke. "Gotcha, Ahab."

As Jack watched MJ head toward the Tarpon clubhouse door, he couldn't decide whether to pump his fist in excitement--or cry. He was so close--yet still so far away.

* * *

MJ never put his cleats on until just before he went out on the field. They had long metal spikes and they were dangerous to walk around on in here. The locker room was carpeted, but the big bathroom area had a tile floor, and it was easy to slip on spikes in there, especially if the floor was wet. So he walked around in his team-issued flip-flops until he was ready to go out on the field. Like most of the players did. Usually he was the first one to the diamond, making sure bats were arranged perfectly by the cage for the players before they started batting practice. But he was late today because Jack and his mother had been carrying on for so long in front of the house. He'd already taken a boatload of crap from the Tarpon's crusty old manager, Lefty Hodges, and from a couple of the players. But it had been mostly good-natured. This was the first time he'd been late and, besides, everyone seemed to like him, especially the owner. MJ

knew why the owner liked him--because he was black and the community could clearly see that the team had no problems hiring minorities. Being a poster boy for race relations had bugged him at first, but it didn't anymore. He realized it was just good business. Just the owner taking the right steps. A step he might have to take someday as the owner of a baseball team. In reverse. Besides, it ensured MJ's spot in the team hierarchy because when the owner liked you, everyone else
had
to like you.

MJ was zipping up his red Tarpon uniform pants as he padded quickly out of the bathroom when he came around the corner leading to the locker room. He happened to look up just in the nick of time. Zack Whitney, the team's top relief pitcher, was standing thirty feet away in front of a locker staring down at a small piece of paper. A moment later Whitney stuffed the paper in his right front pocket, then quickly opened the lock and the locker door and plucked a wallet from a pair of jeans hanging on a hook inside. MJ melted back into the hall leading to the showers and pressed himself to the wall, then leaned around the corner and peered into the locker room again. The problem was that Whitney was taking the wallet out of Reggie McDaniel's locker. Whitney was stealing the wallet.

Whitney stuffed the wallet in the back pocket of his uniform, quietly shut the locker door, then secured the combination lock with a quick upward motion. As he turned to go, MJ pulled back out of sight and pressed himself to the wall again, praying the guy wouldn't head to the bathroom to take a leak. He didn't. A few moments later the locker room door squeaked open and MJ heard Whitney's heavy footsteps heading down the long tunnel toward the Tarpon bullpen. Not out the short tunnel to the field, which was the way all the players who weren't pitchers went. When he was sure Whitney was gone, MJ let out a long breath. Now what?

34

T
HE GAME OF hide-and-seek was about to take a hairpin turn. The hunter was about to become the hunted.

Johnny had identified the tail. Recognized the sudden lane changes, swerves, and quick stops in his rearview mirror, and he couldn't stand it. Like a fighter pilot unable to shake enemy radar lock or an antelope sensing a pride closing in, the inevitability of it all was driving him insane. His stress was undoubtedly heightened by his situation with Karen, he knew, but that realization didn't help. In fact, it only intensified his mounting sense of grinding panic. Made him conjure up all kinds of crazy scenarios about who the stalker could be and why he was back there. Made his imagination run wild with thoughts of psychopathic mental switches, severed heads, codes of honor, rats, how gorgeous Karen was, and a boss who wanted death without judgment.

Johnny had tried desperately--without seeming desperate--to recognize the person behind the wheel of the trailing car. But that had been impossible. The chase car never came close enough--nor went away. It was like a specter that paced him maddeningly as he fled down an eerie, candlelit hallway. It seemed that his only option was decisive action. A scorched-earth response. Survival above all else.

So he parked the Seville in front of a large, nine-story apartment building near LaGuardia Airport in Queens and headed inside, literally whistling as he went, seemingly oblivious to the drama. He'd been with a call girl who lived here, so he knew the layout of the lobby. It was perfect for what he needed. There was another door opposite the main entrance and, by slipping out that door and going around back of the building, he could quickly return to the street where he'd parked without being observed. The tail was down the street, parked ten cars behind the Seville, but still in front of the building. Which couldn't have worked out better. When Johnny came around the side of the building from the back, he was right behind whoever was tailing him. The guy hadn't gotten out--Johnny had made sure of that after moving through the front door of the apartment building--apparently content to wait for Johnny to reappear. Content to maintain the cat-and-mouse game when Johnny was on his way again.

The building lay directly in the path of planes taking off from LaGuardia and they were still very low as they went over, so each one made a horrendous racket. As Johnny crept along the passenger side of a pickup truck--which was parked directly behind the old Impala that had been tailing him--he tried to coordinate his move with the jet he assumed had just taken off. He'd spent the past few minutes timing interims between planes on his stolen Rolex, and each was almost exactly forty-five seconds. Hopefully the noise of the jet would drown out the gunshots and he'd get away clean. At forty seconds he stopped and smoothly withdrew the pistol from his belt, feeling so much better with the weapon in his hand as he began to crawl forward again. His heart rate calmed noticeably and the crazy images disappeared now that his fingers were wrapped around the familiar grip. He was thinking clearly once more. He ought to be hearing the whine of a jet engine any second. Come on, baby, come on. Sure enough, just as he reached the Impala's passenger door, a jet roared overhead, shattering the quiet of the street. He stood and without hesitation fired two shots through the passenger side window, hitting the unsuspecting victim in the right cheek and tricep. The first bullet ripped through the guy's mouth, blowing out the left side of his chin, and the second hit a rib, deflecting just enough to miss any vital organs, embedding in the driver's side door.

The guy frantically pushed open his door and tumbled to the street as Johnny fired two more times. But both shots missed.

Johnny jumped on the Impala's roof and scrambled across to the driver's side, aware that the guy had grabbed something from beneath the seat as he tumbled out. Assumed it was a gun. Johnny held the pistol over the side of the car and blindly popped off four more rounds at the spot on the street where he figured the guy was lying, then inched forward and peered down.

The first bullet from below tore through the roof and missed Johnny, but the second caught him in the left shoulder. He screamed and half-slid, half-rolled down the windshield onto the car's hood as more bullets exploded through the roof. For a split second he saw the guy's bloodied face through the window of the open driver's side door. Despite the searing pain in his shoulder, Johnny raised the gun smoothly, aimed, and fired, blowing a hole through the guy's left lung.

He jumped down to the street, groaning in agony as the impact of hitting the pavement ripped through his body. He hustled around the open door as best he could, gritting his teeth, aware of blood dripping down his chest inside his shirt.

Ricky Strazza lay sprawled on his back in front of Johnny, arms above his head, pistol a few inches from his twitching fingers, a pool of blood spreading out quickly beneath him. His eyes were open, and Johnny thought he saw him take a shallow breath.

"Strazza!" Johnny hissed. He recognized the guy from a meeting in Manhattan a few months ago. "You fucking bastard."

Strazza's eyes fluttered shut, but then he groaned and suddenly reached for the pistol lying on the pavement.

Johnny kicked it away quickly, stomped on Strazza's fingers, breaking two of them, then knelt beside the dying man, making certain to avoid the spreading pool of blood.

"Who?" he demanded.
"Who?"

Strazza gazed up at Johnny with glassy, melancholy eyes but said nothing.

"Tell me or I'll make your last few seconds worse than you could even imagine," Johnny threatened, pulling a pen from his pocket and pressing the sharp tip against one of Strazza's open eyes. "I'll push this thing down into your brain so slow, Strazza. Now tell me who."

"Marconi," Strazza gasped. "Marconi. Now kill me. Please." Marconi. Angelo Marconi.
Holy shit.

Johnny stood, aimed carefully, and fired one bullet, this time directly into Strazza's heart. There could be no chance of him surviving long enough to whisper his assassin's name into some Good Samaritan's ear while he or she was kneeling next to him, keeping him company during his last few moments.

Certain Strazza was dead, Johnny stumbled toward the Seville, holding his left forearm in his right hand, his shoulder on fire. He'd been shot before, in the lower leg a few years ago, but this was different. It was a more intense and frightening pain. This was a bullet, not buckshot.

He couldn't go to a hospital because all emergency room cases involving gunshot wounds had to be reported to the police. He just hoped he could stay conscious long enough to get home. When he reached the Seville, he fell inside behind the steering wheel and took several deep breaths, then finally managed to get the key in the ignition and go, driving one-handed the whole way. Almost losing consciousness several times. When he got back to his apartment, Johnny applied a dressing to the wound, stumbled to the couch, and fainted.

A few hours later he awoke and managed to make it back to the bathroom, crawling across the floor until he reached the sink, somehow pulling himself to his feet after a few tries. He stood before the sink, wavering unsteadily, gazing at his blurry image in the mirror. Then he gingerly started to remove the dressing he'd applied when he first got home. It was time to change it. Fortunately the bullet had gone straight through, missing bones. But it had done a hell of a job on the soft tissue. He couldn't move his arm at all. At least it was his left arm.

He pulled the tape back from the sides of the square white dressing, groaning loudly and gritting his teeth so hard he thought they might crack when his chest hairs snagged. Then he pulled the tape from the top of the gauze, and the dressing slowly folded down--still held to his body by the tape at the bottom--revealing a dark red stain on the inside of the gauze and a perfectly round red hole a quarter of an inch in diameter in his shoulder. The wound was oozing now that he was on his feet again.

He closed his eyes and grabbed the sink, dizziness and nausea overtaking him, then slowly sank to his knees. For a full five minutes he knelt on the tiny black-and-white tiles of the bathroom floor, hugging the porcelain, sweating profusely, trying not to puke. He desperately wanted to crawl back on the couch and stay there until the pain eased--

or he died.

But he had no choice. He had to get out of here. If he wanted to maintain that code of honor. And get the girl.

35

B
AD VIBES WERE coming from every corner of the Tarpon locker room as MJ

hustled through the door. They'd just lost a 4-3 heartbreaker thanks to Mikey Clemant dropping a routine fly ball to center with the bases loaded and two out in the top of the ninth. The error had allowed the other team to score twice, and the Tarpons had done nothing in the bottom of the ninth--three up three down--and that was that. Game over. End of story.

But it wasn't. Not for some of the players, anyway.

MJ heard the grumbling as soon as he pushed through the locker room door; he'd been cleaning up the dugout after the loss and was the last one in. The insults grew louder as he spun his combination lock right-left-right and yanked. As he opened the locker, he glanced over at Clemant, who was sitting in front of his. He'd already showered, had a plain white towel wrapped around his waist. Clemant was closer to his hecklers so he had to be hearing the insults: loser, quitter, steel hands, asshole, moron. But the Kid didn't seem to care. He was leaning back in his chair, enjoying a Milky Way bar, smiling serenely after each bite.