Off Topic
Travelblog of Thom S. Hunter
Editor’s Note: Dammit. Far as I can tell this idiot idea of a beat reporter is going to stick. Guess he’s got low friends in high places. Or at least high friends. And I like to eat, and I got a wife and three kids (that I know of) who need clothes and sneakers. So I got nothing to do but to let the guy write whatever he writes. Good luck reading it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
I’ve gotta say that Descates seemed to have chilled in his old age. He mostly just sat back in his hushed wayback passenger seat, picked at his teeth, and made phone calls in which his voice didn’t rise much more than a half-notch. He’d always had a tendency toward being smooth, but that had been refined now. He wore that sensation like he did that suit of his. Like a shield. Screw with me and you’re in trouble, the demeanor said. I didn’t figure I wanted any more trouble, so mostly I sat there in my sweat-stained shirt and my dirt-stained pants, wondering where Foghorn might be, wondering it L-Pain’s incinerated body was going to show up somewhere, and wondering if maybe I’d seen my last baseball game.
It was the last that sucked the most, I realized.
Foghorn was gonna Fog. L-Pain was a lost cause from the moment he was conceived. And, for me? Well? Life is damned short, and full of crappy turns and people with too-sharp memories. But Westy’s gig had saved me again, and I figured now that as long as there’s a game on the horizon I’d been good to go. I hoped I’d see another. I suddenly wanted to live long enough to know if Fernando Bushey would ever wear a Bikini uniform.
My mind flashed on the Goon, who I’d sent on ahead of me to file reports. God, I’d love to see the many splendored way he was going to mess those up. As a baseball guy, the Goon made a good insurance man.
So to speak.
Anyway, Descartes and I rode around Long Beach proper in that dude-ed out car of his for a lot longer than was comfortable, which, given the conversation coming from Surfer Talk Radio grew to the high-side of excruciating in only a few minutes. The Sons of Beachies are rumbling now. It’s going to get ugly before it gets better, I think. The Surfers just throw money at problems and hope they go away. Good gigs if you got it, I suppose.
Anway, we rode along and Descartes made a call here and a call there (to places in Cali, Portland, Madison and Yellow Springs, among others), picking again and again at his teeth in between, and still putting two and two together to get whatever answer he wanted to get. He knew L-Pain had been playing all the ends of a losing bluff. There was no problem with the Long Beach water, but it has been a solid pump in L-Pain’s bank account for high-monied BBA brokers to think so.
“Yeah,” Descartes said while on a call I know was coming from Hawaii and looking at me like he might be a tiger and I might be steak. “I got the proof sitting right here. So I figure that if you don’t want to look like a laughing stock to your big honchos over there in Tropic land, you’ll pony up the cash just like I said.”
When he hung up, his gaze softened. “congrats, little Thommy Hunter. For the first time you’re actually worth something alive now.”
That’s when the pieces came together.
Descartes was playing the old Double-Blind game. He was in on L-Pain’s scam, but rather than simply exposing it for the sham it was Descartes was playing “follow the marks” to find fresh pots of cash. Given his position in the ecosystem, he had all the prime wheelers and dealers on his big rolodex in the sky. You’ve got to have been pretty desperate to get sucked in by a guy like L-Pain, but in the high-strung world of the BBA, you can find lots of pretty desperate people trying to work their way in. None of the idiots who had been suckered would want their exposure … well ... exposed. So Descartes was sweeping along behind the wreckage, and cleaning up the area.
I’d already heard it a bunch of times. “Drop me enough cash and this all goes away,” he’d say. Then he'd smile at me with his carnivorous fangs exposed as he hung up.
Business was apparently booming.
“So,” he finally said, clicking off the Surfer talk, leaning forward, and putting his hands together. “What are we going to do about you?”
“I got a couple ideas,” I replied.
“I suppose you do.”
I sat silently, figuring if he wanted one of my gem’s he’d ask for one.
“We could cut you up and make you chum.”
“That seems like a waste of time to me,” I said. “Ain’t no shark that would care about my blood.”
Descartes laughed a donkey’s bray then. “Well played, little Thommy Hunter. Well played. I always did like you even if you always were dumb as a bag of rocks.”
“Makes it harder to bash my skull in?”
“Here’s the thing,” Descartes said, suddenly leaning forward so that his face covered my whole field of view. The temperature in the cab seemed to drop to the Arctic Circle. “You owed me for the whole Crusader thing back when you and me were just kids, right? You set me up. Got me locked in a room with nothing but Cali fans for days. And I hated you for that. Really, I did.” The vein in his forehead rose a notch. His eyes grew wild. Then he sat back, and straightened his lapel. “But I’m over that now.” He gestured with his hand. “This whole thing you’ve helped expose here is going to funnel thousands of dollars into the Long Beach effort, Thom. Thanks to you, we’re going to be able to afford another pitcher this off-season.”
I furrowed my brow. Was this going where I thought it was going? Was Descartes admitting that he was running a soft-money scheme for O’Shea Jackson and the whole Long Beach baseball syndicate? Yes, I thought. He most definitely was.
“So I have to admit I got a soft place in my heart for you right about now.”
“You’ve always been a great man, Descartes. A great man with a great heart.”
He laughed again, no doubt egged on by my sincerity.
The car rolled to a gentle stop. The corner of one lip curled up, and the sound of the door opening beside me came along with a breath of fresh air. A sidewalk lay before me. I glanced at Descartes. Eyebrow raised.
“We’re even now,” he said. “So get outta here before you do something else dumb like start squawking to someone else about L-Pain’s little game, right?”
His gaze carried his point.
“Right,” I said, not wasting any more time getting out.
My legs ached from a couple hours of inaction, but they stretched just fine as I walked away into the night, and as the door closed behind me and Descartes’ hover car drove off. I breathed the open air, and despite the fact that I was lost someplace in the godforsaken bowels of Log Beach (as if there’s anything but), I realized that moment of joy that comes from being alive.
Onward, I thought. Onward and forward and all the things that are good in the world.
It was time to hook back up with the Goon.
I had some kind of report to file, and the scouting wasn’t getting done without me.
I’ve gotta say that Descates seemed to have chilled in his old age. He mostly just sat back in his hushed wayback passenger seat, picked at his teeth, and made phone calls in which his voice didn’t rise much more than a half-notch. He’d always had a tendency toward being smooth, but that had been refined now. He wore that sensation like he did that suit of his. Like a shield. Screw with me and you’re in trouble, the demeanor said. I didn’t figure I wanted any more trouble, so mostly I sat there in my sweat-stained shirt and my dirt-stained pants, wondering where Foghorn might be, wondering it L-Pain’s incinerated body was going to show up somewhere, and wondering if maybe I’d seen my last baseball game.
It was the last that sucked the most, I realized.
Foghorn was gonna Fog. L-Pain was a lost cause from the moment he was conceived. And, for me? Well? Life is damned short, and full of crappy turns and people with too-sharp memories. But Westy’s gig had saved me again, and I figured now that as long as there’s a game on the horizon I’d been good to go. I hoped I’d see another. I suddenly wanted to live long enough to know if Fernando Bushey would ever wear a Bikini uniform.
My mind flashed on the Goon, who I’d sent on ahead of me to file reports. God, I’d love to see the many splendored way he was going to mess those up. As a baseball guy, the Goon made a good insurance man.
So to speak.
Anyway, Descartes and I rode around Long Beach proper in that dude-ed out car of his for a lot longer than was comfortable, which, given the conversation coming from Surfer Talk Radio grew to the high-side of excruciating in only a few minutes. The Sons of Beachies are rumbling now. It’s going to get ugly before it gets better, I think. The Surfers just throw money at problems and hope they go away. Good gigs if you got it, I suppose.
Anway, we rode along and Descartes made a call here and a call there (to places in Cali, Portland, Madison and Yellow Springs, among others), picking again and again at his teeth in between, and still putting two and two together to get whatever answer he wanted to get. He knew L-Pain had been playing all the ends of a losing bluff. There was no problem with the Long Beach water, but it has been a solid pump in L-Pain’s bank account for high-monied BBA brokers to think so.
“Yeah,” Descartes said while on a call I know was coming from Hawaii and looking at me like he might be a tiger and I might be steak. “I got the proof sitting right here. So I figure that if you don’t want to look like a laughing stock to your big honchos over there in Tropic land, you’ll pony up the cash just like I said.”
When he hung up, his gaze softened. “congrats, little Thommy Hunter. For the first time you’re actually worth something alive now.”
That’s when the pieces came together.
Descartes was playing the old Double-Blind game. He was in on L-Pain’s scam, but rather than simply exposing it for the sham it was Descartes was playing “follow the marks” to find fresh pots of cash. Given his position in the ecosystem, he had all the prime wheelers and dealers on his big rolodex in the sky. You’ve got to have been pretty desperate to get sucked in by a guy like L-Pain, but in the high-strung world of the BBA, you can find lots of pretty desperate people trying to work their way in. None of the idiots who had been suckered would want their exposure … well ... exposed. So Descartes was sweeping along behind the wreckage, and cleaning up the area.
I’d already heard it a bunch of times. “Drop me enough cash and this all goes away,” he’d say. Then he'd smile at me with his carnivorous fangs exposed as he hung up.
Business was apparently booming.
“So,” he finally said, clicking off the Surfer talk, leaning forward, and putting his hands together. “What are we going to do about you?”
“I got a couple ideas,” I replied.
“I suppose you do.”
I sat silently, figuring if he wanted one of my gem’s he’d ask for one.
“We could cut you up and make you chum.”
“That seems like a waste of time to me,” I said. “Ain’t no shark that would care about my blood.”
Descartes laughed a donkey’s bray then. “Well played, little Thommy Hunter. Well played. I always did like you even if you always were dumb as a bag of rocks.”
“Makes it harder to bash my skull in?”
“Here’s the thing,” Descartes said, suddenly leaning forward so that his face covered my whole field of view. The temperature in the cab seemed to drop to the Arctic Circle. “You owed me for the whole Crusader thing back when you and me were just kids, right? You set me up. Got me locked in a room with nothing but Cali fans for days. And I hated you for that. Really, I did.” The vein in his forehead rose a notch. His eyes grew wild. Then he sat back, and straightened his lapel. “But I’m over that now.” He gestured with his hand. “This whole thing you’ve helped expose here is going to funnel thousands of dollars into the Long Beach effort, Thom. Thanks to you, we’re going to be able to afford another pitcher this off-season.”
I furrowed my brow. Was this going where I thought it was going? Was Descartes admitting that he was running a soft-money scheme for O’Shea Jackson and the whole Long Beach baseball syndicate? Yes, I thought. He most definitely was.
“So I have to admit I got a soft place in my heart for you right about now.”
“You’ve always been a great man, Descartes. A great man with a great heart.”
He laughed again, no doubt egged on by my sincerity.
The car rolled to a gentle stop. The corner of one lip curled up, and the sound of the door opening beside me came along with a breath of fresh air. A sidewalk lay before me. I glanced at Descartes. Eyebrow raised.
“We’re even now,” he said. “So get outta here before you do something else dumb like start squawking to someone else about L-Pain’s little game, right?”
His gaze carried his point.
“Right,” I said, not wasting any more time getting out.
My legs ached from a couple hours of inaction, but they stretched just fine as I walked away into the night, and as the door closed behind me and Descartes’ hover car drove off. I breathed the open air, and despite the fact that I was lost someplace in the godforsaken bowels of Log Beach (as if there’s anything but), I realized that moment of joy that comes from being alive.
Onward, I thought. Onward and forward and all the things that are good in the world.
It was time to hook back up with the Goon.
I had some kind of report to file, and the scouting wasn’t getting done without me.