And if the Yankees walked Turnbull, the Tarpon manager would lift him for a pinch runner.
“I was hoping we’d see history made,” the man said, “but it looks like we’ll have to wait a night or two... Well, what do you know? Torre’s letting Rivera pitch to him.”
But the Yankee closer only had to throw one pitch. The instant Turnbull swung, you knew the ball was gone. So did Bernie Williams, who just turned and watched the ball sail past him into the upper deck, and Turnbull, who watched from the batter’s box, then jumped into the air, pumping both fists in triumph, before setting out on his circuit of the bases. The whole stadium knew, and the stands erupted with cheers.
Four hundred homers, three thousand hits — and the game was over, and the Tarps had won.
“Storybook finish,” Keller’s friend said, and Keller couldn’t have put it better.
“Try that tea,” Dot said. “See if it’s all right.”
Keller took a sip of iced tea and sat back in the slat-backed rocking chair. “It’s fine,” he said.
“I was beginning to wonder,” she said, “if I was ever going to see you again. The last time I heard from you there was another hitter on the case, or at least that’s what you thought. I started thinking maybe you were the one he was after, and maybe he took you out.”
“It was the other way around,” Keller said.
“Oh?”
“I didn’t want him getting in the way,” he explained, “and I figured the woman who hired him was a loose cannon. So she slipped and fell and broke her neck in a strip mall parking lot in Cleveland, and the guy she hired—”
“Got his head caught in a vise?”
“That was before I met him. He got all tangled up in some picture wire in Baltimore.”
“And Floyd Turnbull died of natural causes,” Dot said. “Had the biggest night of his life, and it turned out to be the last night of his life.”
“Ironic,” Keller said.
“That’s the word Peter Jennings used. Celebrated, drank too much, went to bed, and choked to death on his own vomit. They had a medical expert on who explained how that happens more often than you’d think. You pass out, and you get nauseated and vomit without recovering consciousness, and if you’re sleeping on your back, you aspirate the stuff and choke on it.”
“And never know what hit you.”
“Of course not,” Dot said, “or you’d do something about it. But I never believe in natural causes, Keller, when you’re in the picture. Except to the extent that you’re a natural cause of death all by yourself.”
“Well,” he said.
“How’d you do it?”
“I just helped nature a little,” he said. “I didn’t have to get him drunk, he did that by himself. I followed him home, and he was all over the road. I was afraid he was going to have an accident.”
“So?”
“Well, suppose he just gets banged around a little? And winds up in the hospital? Anyway, he made it home all right. I gave him time to go to sleep, and he didn’t make it all the way to bed, just passed out on the couch.” He shrugged. “I held a rag over his mouth, and I induced vomiting, and—”
“How? You made him drink warm soapy water?”
“Put a knee in his stomach. It worked, and the vomit didn’t have anywhere to go, because his mouth was covered. Are you sure you want to hear all this?”
“Not as sure as I was a minute ago, but don’t worry about it. He breathed it in and choked on it, end of story. And then?”
“And then I got out of there. What do you mean, ‘and then’?”
“That was a few days ago.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, I went to see a few stamp dealers. Memphis is a good city for stamps. And I wanted to see the rest of the series with the Yankees. The Tarpons all wore black armbands for Turnbull, but it didn’t do them any good. The Yankees won the last two games.”
“Hurray for our side,” she said. “You want to tell me about it, Keller?”
“Tell you about it? I just told you about it.”
“You were gone a month,” she said, “doing what you could have done in two days, and I thought you might want to explain it to me.”
“The other hitter,” he began, but she was shaking her head.
“Don’t give me ‘the other hitter.’ You could have closed the sale before the other hitter ever turned up.”
“You’re right,” he admitted. “Dot, it was the numbers.”
“The numbers?”
“Four hundred home runs,” he said. “Three thousand hits. I wanted him to do it.”
“Cooperstown,” she said.
“I don’t even know if the numbers’ll get him into the Hall of Fame,” he said, “and I don’t really care about that part of it. I wanted him to get in the record books, four hundred homers and three thousand hits, and I wanted to be able to say I’d been there to see him do it.”
“And to put him away.”
“Well,” he said, “I don’t have to think about that part of it.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. Then she asked him if he wanted more iced tea, and he said he was fine, and she asked him if he’d bought some nice stamps for his collection.
“I got quite a few from Turkey,” he said. “That was a weak spot in my collection, and now it’s a good deal stronger.”
“I guess that’s important.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It gets harder and harder to say what’s important and what isn’t. Dot, I spent a month watching baseball. There are worse ways to spend your time.”
“I’m sure there are, Keller,” she said. “And sooner or later I’m sure you’ll find them.”
Keller By a Nose
(e-book extra story)
“So who do you like in the third?”
Keller had to hear the question a second time before he realized it was meant for him. He turned, and a little guy in a Mets warm-up jacket was standing there, a querulous expression on his lumpy face.
Who did he like in the third? He hadn’t been paying any attention, and was stuck for a response. This didn’t seem to bother the guy, who answered the question himself.
“The Two horse is odds-on, so you can’t make any money betting on him. And the Five horse might have an outside chance, but he never finished well on turf. The Three, he’s okay at five furlongs, but at this distance? So I got to say I agree with you.”
Keller hadn’t said a word. What was there to agree with?
“You’re like me,” the fellow went on. “Not like one of these degenerates, has to bet every race, can’t go five minutes without some action. Me, sometimes I’ll come here, spend the whole day, not put two dollars down the whole time. I just like to breathe some fresh air and watch those babies run.”
Keller, who hadn’t intended to say anything, couldn’t help himself. He said, “Fresh air?”
“Since they gave the smokers a room of their own,” the little man said, “it’s not so bad in here. Excuse me, I see somebody I oughta say hello to.”
He walked off, and the next time Keller noticed him the guy was at the ticket window, placing a bet. Fresh air, Keller thought. Watch those babies run. It sounded good, until you took note of the fact that those babies were out at Belmont, running around a track in the open air, while Keller and the little man and sixty or eighty other people were jammed into a midtown storefront, watching the whole thing on television.
Keller, holding a copy of the Racing Form, looked warily around the OTB parlor. It was on Lexington at Forty-fifth Street, just up from Grand Central, and not much more than a five-minute walk from his First Avenue apartment, but this was his first visit. In fact, as far as he could tell, it was the first time he had ever noticed the place. He must have walked past it hundreds if not thousands of times over the years, but he’d somehow never registered it, which showed the extent of his interest in off-track betting.