Julia London (4 page)

At the top of
the second hour, Kelly announced she had a very special guest. As she said it, a small,
young man opened the door of the room and beckoned Parker to follow him.

“Remember to
show her what you’re working with,” Frank said with a wink. Parker rolled his eyes and
walked out.

He stepped into the tiny studio booth. Kelly was standing behind a stool,
her arms folded. Guido, her sidekick, was seated, lounging back in his chair, feet up,
tossing a Nerf ball in the air over and over.

“I wouldn’t kid you, Guido,” Kelly
said and winked at Parker as
he tried to fit headphones on his head.
“This is the best guest we’ve ever had on this show.” She gestured for Parker to sit on a
stool in front of a mike. “This one is going to blow everyone’s socks off.”

“So who is it?”
Guido asked. “Shaquille O’Neal?”

Kelly snorted. “Not
that
good.”

“You’re killing
me here!” Guido exclaimed. “Who is it?”

“I’ll tell you . . . right after
these messages,” she said and punched a button and leaned back in her chair. “Parker, this
is Guido D’Angelo.”

Parker nodded across the control panel.

“Man, you got
some
cojones
,” Guido said with a grin as Kelly walked around the control panel to
adjust his headphones, standing so close that her breasts were staring him in the
eye.

“Oh now, Guido, don’t tease him,” she said, leaning back to look at him.
“You don’t want to scare him out of here.”

Parker snorted. “He can’t scare me
out of here.”

“Oh, that’s good. I thought maybe you were . . . you know . . . a little
sensitive.”

Somewhere, deep down in the center of him, Commonsense Parker kicked Ego
Parker and woke him up. Kelly smiled—she really did have a gorgeous smile—and Ego Parker
squashed Commonsense Parker like a bug under his boot. “Nah,” he said, smiling back. “I’m
not sensitive at all. It’s the nature of the game. I understand that.”

“Great!” Kelly
said, her eyes glittering. “I’ll remind you of that later,” she added with a
laugh.

“Okay, kids, back in five,” the producer said somewhere in radio
space.

A moment later, Kelly said, “Welcome back to
Sports Day with Kelly
O’Shay.
I’m Kelly, and this”—she waited for the foghorn sound—“is Guido D’Angelo. How
you doing, Guido?”

“I couldn’t be better, Kelly. The sun is shining, the birds are
singing, and it’s a great day here at the studio,” Guido said and grinned
wolfishly.

“Guido, I was telling you we had a very special guest this
morning, and I am
very
pleased to introduce Parker Price of the New York Mets.
Hello and welcome to our show, Parker!”

“Thanks, Kelly. It’s great to be
here.”

“So, Parker, you have had an
amazing
career in baseball over the last
several years. You played ball at the University of Texas, were named MVP two years in a
row and then you went on to play for the Houston Astros as a short stop.”

“Yep. I played
there for ten years.”

“Right. And you were named to the All Stars four years in a
row—”

“Well,” he said with a chuckle, “it was actually five.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.
Five
.” She smiled at him. “Very impressive. And then last year, the New York Mets
brought you to town for an unprecedented one hundred and ten million dollars.” She looked
up. The glitter in her eyes was almost blinding. “Plus bonuses.”

“Right,” he
said, feeling a little uncomfortable. He didn’t like to talk about what the Mets were
paying him, yet he’d never met anyone in the sports business who could go a minute without
mentioning it.

“The Mets were lucky to get you,” Kelly added.

“Thank
you.”

“I saw you play during the Florida Marlin series early in the season, and
dude, your bat was
hot.
So was your glove for that matter. Remember that great
double play you made at the top of the sixth inning?”

Like he could forget it—even he’d
been impressed. “Yeah, that was definitely a great play for us. I really enjoy playing for
the Mets. They are a great ball club, and I’m lucky to be a part of it.”

“Yeah,” Kelly
said.

Was that a bit of a tone he detected?

“I was reading the back page of the
Daily News
yesterday,” she said sweetly, pulling out a paper from beneath the table
and
spreading it before her. “Essentially, the article says you’ve been
having a
real
good time in New York.”

Damn. Frank had told him about the
article, but he hadn’t read it. Something to do with his social life ruining him on the
field. Shit. He
really
should have read that article.

“Apparently, the
city has a
lot
to offer you,” Kelly said with a bit of a smirk, and Guido laughed.
“I mean, a ballplayer. The ladies love a ballplayer.”

He shrugged, smiled a little. “I
haven’t read the article, but you can’t believe much of anything you read these
days.”

“So you’re not involved with anyone?”

He blinked, trying to figure out her
angle. Guido laughed. “He thinks you want to date him, Kelly.”

“I guess he
would, since according to the
Daily News
, every single woman who can still draw
breath wants to date him.”

“I, ah . . . that sort of rumor goes around all the time. In
Houston, in New York—it doesn’t seem to matter. They always say the same
thing.”

“Really? I thought maybe your nighttime habits are a contributing
factor.”

“A contributing factor?”

“You know, to why your batting
average has sunk from a high of .349 just two seasons ago to a low of .277 this
year.”

Guido howled, punched a button, and the sound of a big sucking
whoosh
filled the booth.

“I don’t think my social life has anything to do with it,” Parker said
evenly.

“Then to what would you attribute your slide? Because you were a much better
batter in Houston than you are here.” And Kelly smiled a warm, sweet little
smile.

Guido laughed.

Parker’s blood was beginning to boil. “That’s an interesting
theory,” he said, forcing himself to sound as pleasant as possible. “But my trainer seems
to think it’s more to do with the shoulder
injury I suffered when I
caught the game-winning drive up the middle against the Phillies. I landed on the second
base bag and tore my rotator cuff.”

“Right, I saw it,” she said, nodding eagerly. “But
before
that, you had eight errors coming into a midseason series, compared with a
total of twelve errors across your entire last season with the Astros. And we haven’t even
hit the All-Star Break yet. At this rate, you’ll hit a record of . . . what did we figure
out, Guido?”

“Twenty-two errors,” Guido responded helpfully.

“I had
twenty-four errors one season in Houston, and I was MVP. You can’t really compare the
number of errors from year to year, because it depends on what team you are playing, who
is pitching, what the conditions are, that sort of thing. And, you know, you have to
factor in shoulder injuries that are slow to recover.”

“So, Parker, what do you like to do
in your spare time?” she asked, all sweetness and light as she changed the
subject.

“I have a charity for underprivileged kids,” he said, and gave some of the
particulars about that, for which Guido actually sounded a standing O.

“Anything
else?”

“I lay pretty low,” he said, not wanting to give her anything.

“Do you like to
read?”

Okay, now she was
really
beginning to piss him off. His eyes
narrowed. So did hers. “Yeah, I like to read. I just read the
History of Sports in
America.
”

“Oh really? How long did that take you?”

Suddenly, in the hallway behind
Kelly, which Parker could see because the wall was made of glass, Frank appeared and
started making frantic slashing motions across his throat.

“I don’t know—I
savored it.”

“Do you ever think about hitting a batting cage?” she asked, cheerfully
changing the subject again.

“I practice batting thirty minutes every day.”

“Oh,
that
long, huh? And how long do you practice fielding?”

Parker didn’t
answer.

“I’m only asking because a couple of your more spectacular errors were on
your glove. That huge overthrow to first in the second game with the Phillies, then that
line drive you just completely muffed in the series against the Angels that allowed two
runs to score—”

“I remember,” he said, his jaw tight and his gaze narrowed on her smiling
assassin face. “I’ve had a slump, there’s no doubt about it. I am working with the coaches
and a trainer to get back to the shape I was in when I came to New York, and I have every
confidence that I will. But a shoulder injury like I suffered can really take a toll. I
haven’t been able to resume full upper body workouts since the Atlanta game.”

“Uh-huh. Well,
let me ask another question, Parker.” She looked up from her notes, planted her arms on
the table, and leaned toward him, her eyes narrowed into little slits of green. “Don’t you
think that if a team pays a professional ballplayer—and not just any professional
ballplayer, but an MVP and a multi-year All-Star short stop—oh, who are we kidding? Let’s
just say we’re talking about
you
—if a team pays
you
one hundred and ten
million dollars plus bonuses, don’t you think
you
ought to be accountable for your
level of play?”

“Of course I do.” Behind Kelly’s head, Frank started jumping up and
down—quite a feat, given the man’s girth—gesturing angrily for him to come out of the
booth.

“So then don’t you think
you
ought to be accountable for your
declining level of play? Wouldn’t it stand to reason that there is some sort of financial
penalty levied if this big-time, expensive player does not deliver the results the ball
club was looking for when they made that ginormous investment in you?”

“I do,” he said,
clearly surprising her. “But I don’t think you can levy a penalty based on just a few
games. I think you have to look at the season as a whole.”

“So are you
saying that at the end of the season, if you haven’t helped the club achieve the sort of
results the Mets were hoping for
in their gazillion-trillion-dollar
investment of you—which, incidentally, forced them to trade one of the best pitchers in
the National League just to free up enough cash to
get
you—that you will give back
some of that scratch?”

“I damn sure will,” Parker said, and noticed, out of the corner
of his eye, Frank falling up against the wall like he’d been shot and sliding down until
he disappeared from sight.

Kelly reared back, blinking in surprise, and suddenly laughed.
“Guido, look at the phone lines! They’re on fire. Let’s go to the phones!”

It went downhill
from there, and by the time his hour was up, Parker had the distinct impression that Guido
was feeling a little sorry for him. “I had no idea New York was that
mad
,” an
awestruck Guido said as they wrapped the show.

“Our thanks to Parker Price, who has
been an exceptional sport by showing up here today to talk about his abysmal record. I
know we’d all love to keep talking to Parker, but unfortunately, we’re out of time. That’s
it for us at
Sports Day with Kelly O’Shay
. Tune in tomorrow when we chat about
another abysmal record—the New York Knicks.”

The show rolled over to commercials,
and both Kelly and Guido got up, gathering their stuff to make room for the next guy.
Parker followed them out into the hall—no sign of Frank, he noticed—and stepped in front
of Kelly as Guido congratulated her on a great show.

She tilted her blond head back and
smiled up at Parker. “I can’t thank you enough for coming on this show,” she said,
practically bubbling with excitement. “That was just spectacular. Okay! So thanks
so
much,” she said, and jostling her papers and binders, she stuck out a
hand.

He expected an apology, something that indicated she knew she’d just put him
through complete hell. But all he got was impatient, wiggling fingers on that extended
hand. “You didn’t listen to a word I said, did you?” he asked.

“I heard
every word.”

“But you were determined to make a putz of me, regardless of the
facts.”

She laughed and withdrew her hand in favor of holding all her crap. “No, I
think you’ve done that all on your own. Listen, I’d love to chat, but I’ve got loads to
do. So thanks again and good luck.” And with that, she turned and marched off in the
opposite direction.

Kelly marched right into her office,
shut the door, put down her things, and threw her arms in the air and did a Snoopy happy
dance in the tiny bit of space around her desk. That had been a killer show. They had more
callers than they had the day Jose Canseco’s tell-all book about doping in baseball was
released.