Santos lay there, his eyes closed. “Am I ever gonna walk?”
“Not according to your doctor,” said Michaels.
“Fuck Portillo,” said Santos. “Fuck him up bad.”
“We’ll do our best,” promised Michaels. “So what have you got?”
“His sister’s kid,” said Santos. “He’s in Little League. He’s a pitcher. Portillo was always bragging on how great his nephew is. He was talking about going to see him pitch on Saturday. There’s a playoff game. He wouldn’t miss it if every SWAT team in the world was after him.”
“When? Where? What’s the sister’s name?”
“I don’t know,” said Santos.
“What’s the nephew’s name?” asked Carter.
“Portillo just called him Junior.”
“And that’s all you got? There are a thousand Little League fields in this city. How we gonna find the right one?”
Santos thought for a second. “Jews,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“He came back from this one game, I think it was last Tuesday night, and he was laughing about seeing all these Jews lining up for a bunch of school buses. He thought it was the funniest thing he ever seen.”
“Jews in New York,” muttered Michaels. “Well, that should narrow it down.”
“You got him yet?” asked Birnbaum when they entered his office.
“We know where he’s gonna be, sort of,” said Michaels. He summed up their information.
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, so far,” said Michaels. “Doesn’t really help. There are a lot of baseball fields and even more Jews to track down. Not sure how to narrow this one down in time.”
“Maybe by asking the only Jew in the room, who has risen to his position of authority over you shmucks by means of superior intelligence,” said Birnbaum.
“Enlighten us, captain,” said Carter.
“When you or I say Jew, we’re talking about a whole range of things,” said Birnbaum. “But if a guy named Portillo is laughing about seeing Jews on a bus, he’s means old-school Jews. I’m talking Hasids here.”
“Those guys in the black coats and hats with the beards and the curly things on the sides,” said Michaels.
“That sensitivity training really paid off for you,” sighed Birnbaum. “Yes, those guys. Lubavitchers, Satmars, whichever sect, that’s probably who he was talking about.”
“So we’re looking at Williamsburg or Crown Heights?” guessed Carter.
“Not necessarily,” said Birnbaum. “They’ve branched out into a lot of neighborhoods. But if they’re getting on school buses, it probably means either a synagogue or a seminary. Start calling precinct captains — those guys should be able to tell you if there are Hasid places near Little League fields.”
“We’re on it,” said Michaels.
A few hours later, Carter hung up his phone and sighed. “Damn, when Cap’s on, he’s on. Got a likely from the 112.”
“Forest Hills?” said Michaels.
“Forest Hills, Rego Park,” answered Carter. “Proud home of the Forest Hills Youth Athletic Association, which is in Rego Park. They have their own fields on Fleet Street, and first round of playoffs is this Saturday.”
“And?”
“Around the corner on Thornton, there’s a Hasidic seminary. School buses line up to take the students back to wherever they live. The Captain at the 112 says they sometimes got complaints about the street getting blocked.”
“Let’s go take a look,” said Michaels.
They drove to Fleet Street. There was a high mesh fence bordering the sidewalk, a concrete bunker of a clubhouse on the right. It was Friday, around noon, and the field was being mowed by a guy on a large riding mower. There was an old railroad bridge, overgrown with bushes and trees, and abandoned tracks ran along a path off the street, parallel to the left field line. Signs from local sponsors decorated the outfield fence.
“Looks doable,” said Carter.
“Harder than it looks,” countered Michaels. “There’s another field there.”
They strolled through the gate and up a hill. Sure enough, a second baseball diamond was set up above the first, and they could see two more past that one. A path stretched between Fields 3 and 4, running to residential neighborhoods in both directions.
“What’s past that field?” asked Carter.
“Let’s take a look.”
There were woods, and a clearing. The tracks continued in that direction, heading toward a tunnel by the Long Island Rail Road tracks. A commuter train roared by as they watched.
“Someone’s been having a party,” observed Michaels, pointing to some empty beer bottles and crack vials scattered around a fallen tree.
“Our boy, or just the locals?” wondered Carter.
“Who knows? This could be a nightmare. We got three street entrances, the whole woodland frontier at the back, four fields going simultaneously for however many games, one very dangerous and armed cop-shooter, and civilians everywhere. Child civilians at that.”
“Portillo spooks, there could be some bad headlines on Sunday,” said Carter. “Shoot-out at a Little League game. Won’t do anyone any good.”
“We’re gonna need a big team. Let’s talk to the captain.”
Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m., Michaels handed out satellite photos of the field that he had downloaded. “First games are at 8:30. Four fields going, and a new game every two hours until sunset. Every field will have two dozen kids, and three times as many family members watching. We’re looking for a phenom, a Latino pitcher called Junior, and when we find him, we narrow down on that location and look for his uncle. We got twenty-five cops here. I want a car at the two side entrances at Thornton and Alderton, four guys up in the woods near the old railroad tunnel, two cars at the main entrance, and the rest of us wandering the location. If you see him, just phone it in. We’ll grab him once he leaves. We don’t want him to start anything when there’s kids everywhere. Everyone got their cell phones charged up? We’ll be keeping them on walkie-talkie mode.”
“Won’t that look kind of obvious?” asked a cop.
“Every parent on that field is gonna be giving play-by-play to Grandma,” said Michaels. “We’ll fit right in.”
Sleepy six-year-olds wearing primary-colored jerseys and black pants over cups they wouldn’t need for several years waddled up the hill to the T-ball field. Older children warmed up on the larger fields while their parents unfolded a wide variety of collapsible chairs. The caretaker trundled the chalk spreader from field to field, leaving foul lines in his wake. The tiny green snack shed’s shutters opened, and the smell of coffee and hot dogs began to permeate the atmosphere. Michaels bought his first cup of coffee and promised to pace himself. There were going to be no bathroom breaks today.
International League. Pan-Continental League. Major League. Grandiose titles for small players, wearing their sponsors’ names with pride. T-Bone Diner. Hancock Law. Fast Break — that was the best name for a team, Michaels thought. A basketball team, but still. He wandered around, listening in on coaches’ instructions, looking for Junior.
“It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame,” came Carter’s voice over his cell phone. “Let’s play sixteen.”
A burst of Spanish chatter caught his attention. A family had settled in to cheer their daughter on. A young woman, a young man, an older woman. The man had a beard. In the brief glimpse he’d had of Portillo, he hadn’t seen a beard. He had a vague impression of height.
“Girls generally don’t get named Junior, do they?” he asked into his cell phone.