“Focus on the catcher’s mitt,” I said. “And bring your shoulder in so it’s pointing at him.” He smiled and nodded his head.
“You got it now,” he said. “I’m just getting warmed up.” Wade went through his windup a second time: the same scarecrow pose, the high knee, the crazy sound I thought I heard again. The ball hit the curtain right on the catcher’s mitt, and this time the screen said seventy.
“Yes!” Ruby said. The fat man on the stool raised his eyebrows and folded his arms across his chest again. He looked over at the two boys like he expected them to say something, but they didn’t. Wade turned back and stared down the cage at the catcher like he was thinking about his next pitch.
“Bring the heat,” I said. “Come on, Dad.” He didn’t look at me, but he smiled when he heard me call him that, and then he wiped the sweat off his forehead. I looked over at the two boys and saw that neither one of them was smiling anymore. Evan had his hands in his pockets, and the short boy had his arms folded across his chest, and his hips were rocking from side to side like he had to go to the bathroom.
Wade bent down and picked up another ball and went into his windup again, but this time it looked different, smoother, more like the pitchers you see on TV in the major leagues or on posters and baseball cards. It was the first time I could remember thinking of Wade as a baseball player instead of someone who just talked about playing baseball.
And I was right to think that, and I was right to think that pitch would be his best. I don’t know if it was a strike or a ball because I was staring at the screen, but I heard the pitch snap against the rubber curtain, and then I watched the screen light up and say seventy-eight.
Ruby saw it too, and she jumped into the air and ran toward Wade, but he stepped right around her on his way to the two boys. He reached out with both hands and snatched the teddy bear away from the girl, and he turned and handed it to Ruby so hard it almost knocked her over. He faced the two boys. “Y’all have a good night,” he said. “Don’t get in no trouble.”
Me and Ruby and Wade were already laughing by the time the taxi pulled away from the Pavilion. It felt like a movie, like we were leaving the scene of a crime after robbing a bank or holding up a gas station, and we didn’t care one bit if anybody’d seen us because we knew we were going to get away with it.
My chin rested on the teddy bear’s head, and I closed my eyes and buried my face in its fur. I could smell the perfume of the girl who’d been carrying it, and I could smell something else too-something sugary and sour-and I knew it was the lemonade that boy had been spitting into my hair. I prayed that those kids wouldn’t call the police or tell their parents about what Wade had done to them. And then I remembered that I’d gone and done that very same thing by calling Marcus. I closed my eyes even tighter and squeezed that bear as hard as I could. I wasn’t as ready to go home as I thought I was, but that didn’t make no difference. We were already on television by the time we got back to our room.
Brady Weller
CHAPTER 13
On Wednesday, I met Sandy at a new place called Pepé Frijoles for lunch. While I waited for him I stood in the heat out in the parking lot, leaning against the hood of my car and staring up at the restaurant’s sign on Garrison Boulevard. A cartoon Mexican wearing a poncho and sombrero smiled down at me like an idiot.
Sandy pulled up beside me in the old Ford Taurus. When he got out I saw that he’d already loosened his tie and left his blazer draped across the passenger seat. His shirt was dark with sweat.
“The a/c out again?” I asked.
“Again? When’s the damn thing ever worked?”
He had a manila envelope in his hand. I nodded toward it. “Is that for me?”
“Depends,” he said. “You buying lunch?”
We found a booth in the back away from other people in the restaurant. Through the window, a couple of guys shot basketball across the street at Lineberger Park, wavy lines of heat coming up from the asphalt. Our waitress brought two waters and a basket of nacho chips and a little bowl of salsa. Sandy ordered a sweet tea. I opened my menu and looked up at him. “So, what’s in the envelope?”
“A present for you,” he said.
He opened it and pulled out a card made of construction paper; it looked like something a kid might’ve drawn in school. “You shouldn’t have,” I said.
“I didn’t,” he said. “Easter did.”
I dipped a chip in the salsa and popped it into my mouth, and then I took the card from his hands.
“Jesus,” he said. “Would you at least act like it’s evidence?” He gave me a rubber glove. I used it to hold the card between my thumb and finger.
“Is that Sosa?” I asked.
“It looks like him,” he said.
I opened the card and read it out loud. “ ‘Dear Marcus: I’m sorry. Can we talk tonight? Love, Easter, your girlfriend (I hope!).’ ” I looked up at Sandy. “So what?” I said. “It’s a love letter.”
“Look on the back,” he said. I turned the card over and saw a phone number written in pencil. “Easter’s boyfriend wrote that.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yeah, ‘boyfriend,’ ” he said. “Your Easter’s all grown up. The kid said the number was on the back of the perp’s shirt when he left with the girls.”
“How’d he see it?”
“He said he was walking by the house.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“He wouldn’t cop to it, but he was sneaking over there; his prints were all over the window.” I opened the card again and saw where Easter had written Can we talk tonight? It looked like she’d invited him.
“How’d you find this kid?” I asked.
“That’s the interesting part,” he said. “We didn’t. His dad called us. Turns out Easter called Marcus last night from Myrtle Beach.”
“Did she say who she’s with?”
“Wade Chesterfield,” Sandy said. “And this morning Marcus was able to identify him as the one who took the girls.”
“Just like we thought.”
“Just like we thought,” he said. “Looks to me like he wants his girls back and didn’t know what else to do.”
“Looks to me like he’s breaking the law.”
Sandy shrugged his shoulders. “It’s nothing we haven’t seen before.”
“Did y’all send anybody down to Myrtle last night?”
“No,” he said. “Sergeant’s not pulling anybody off this missing money. We called the Myrtle Beach PD. They put out an alert last night and got it on TV. They’re looking into it.”
“Yeah,” I said, almost laughing. “I’m sure they are.” I looked at the number on the back of the card. “You call this yet?”
“Of course I did,” he said. “I called it this morning. It’s a cell phone that belongs to a contractor named Lane Kelly.”
I held up the card. “Can I hang on to this for a little while?”
“Hell no, Brady,” Sandy said, snatching the card out of my hand. “It’s a valuable piece of evidence in a police investigation.” He dropped the card and the glove into the envelope and sealed it. “Besides,” he said, “Marcus wants it back.”