A Face in the Crowd Read online

  He hadn’t opened with Fuck you, Lennie. First he tried the reasonable approach, using the latest spreadsheets to lay out his case. Their market share in New England was due to their ability to rent one-way and at hourly rates the big boys couldn’t match. Because the area they covered was so compact, they could rebalance their entire inventory within three hours, where the big boys couldn’t and had to charge a premium. On September 1, move-in day for the students, Speedy owned Boston. Spread the fleet thin trying to cover the Lower 48 and they’d have the same headaches as U-Haul and Penske—the same lumbering business model they purposely avoided and undersold. Why would they want to be like the other guys when they were killing the other guys? If Wheeler hadn’t noticed, Penske was in Chapter 11, Thrifty too.

  “Precisely,” Wheeler said. “With the big boys on the sidelines, this is the perfect time. We don’t try to be like them, Dean. We chop the country into regions and do what we already do.”

  “How does that work in the Northwest?” Evers asked. “Or the Southwest? Or even the Midwest? The country’s too big.”

  “It may not be as profitable at first, but it won’t take long. You’ve seen our competition. Eighteen months—two years tops—and we’ll be absolutely killing them.”

  “We’re already overextended, and now you want us to take on more debt.”

  As they went back and forth, Evers honestly believed in his argument. Even for a publicly owned company, the problems of capitalization and cash flow were insurmountable—a judgment that would prove devastatingly true two decades later, when the downturn hit. But Lennie Wheeler was used to having his way, and nothing Evers said would dissuade him. Wheeler had already talked with several venture capital concerns and printed up a sleek-looking brochure. He planned to take his proposal directly to the shareholders, over Evers’s protests, if necessary.

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” Evers said.

  “And why’s that, Dean?”

  He’d tried, really tried, to do this ethically, honorably. And he knew he was right; time would prove it. In business everything was a means to one end—survival. Evers felt it urgently then and still thought it true today: He had to save the company. Hence, the nuclear option.

  “I don’t think you want to do that because I don’t think you’d like what I’d take to the shareholders’ meeting. Or should I say, whom.”

  Wheeler laughed, a sick little chuckle. He stared at Evers as if he’d pulled a gun. “Whom?”

  “We both know whom,” Evers said.

  Wheeler slowly rubbed a hand up the side of his face. “I was wondering why you walked in here like you’d already won something.”

  “We’re not winning anything. We’re avoiding a mistake that would lose us everything. I’m sorry it came to this. If you’d have just listened to me—”

  “Fuck you, Dean,” Wheeler said. “Don’t try to apologize for blackmail. It’s bad manners. And since it’s just the two of us, why don’t you roll those spreadsheets tight—that’s the only way you’ll get them up that narrow ass of yours—and admit the truth: you’re a coward. Always were.”

  Within a year, Evers bought him out. The split was expensive, and, in retrospect, a better deal than Wheeler deserved. Lennie left New England, then his wife, and finally, in an ER in Palm Springs, this earthly vale of tears. Out of respect, Evers flew west for the funeral, at which, not surprisingly, there were no lifeguard types, and, of the family, only the daughter, who dryly thanked Evers for coming. He didn’t say the first thought that had come into his mind: Sarcasm doesn’t become fat girls, dear. A few years later, after a thorough vetting of the numbers and fueled by Bain Capital, Speedy actually did go national, using a streamlined version of their old regional plan. That Evers had been right—that it ended with Speedy’s lawyers filing the same Chapter 11 briefs as their vanquished rivals—was little vindication. He came out of it with a goodly sum, however, and that was.

  The funny thing was that with a minimum of digging—an offhand question or three to Martha, a keen read of her blinking—Wheeler could have bought himself an ironclad insurance policy. When Evers realized this, he gently dropped her, which, because they both had a conscience, was actually a relief. Their fling had run its more than pleasant course, and rather than fire her, he kept her closer, making her his executive assistant at double the salary, working beside her day in, day out until, eventually, she accepted a lavish early retirement package. At her farewell party, he made a speech and gave her a Honda Gold Wing and a peck on the cheek, to raised glasses and warm applause. The affair ended with a slide show featuring Martha on her old Harley Tri-Glide, while George Thorogood sang “Ride On Josephine.”

  It was a rare moment for Evers, a happy parting. Beyond the silly intrigue, he’d always liked Martha, her brash laugh and the way she hummed to herself as she typed, a pencil tucked behind one ear. What he said in his speech—that she wasn’t merely an assistant but a dear and trusted friend—was true. Though he hadn’t spoken to her in ages, of all the people he’d worked with, she was the only one he missed. Drowsing now as the Ambien kicked in, he wondered hazily if she was still alive, or if, tomorrow, he’d turn on the game and find her behind home, wearing the sleeveless yellow sundress with the daisies he liked.

  He rose at eight—a full hour past his usual time—and stooped to pick the paper from the mat. He checked the sports page and discovered the Rays had the night off. That was all right; there was always CSI. Evers showered, ate a healthy breakfast in which wheat germ played a major role, then sat down to track Young Doctor Young on the computer. When that marvel of the twenty-first century failed (or maybe he just wasn’t doing it right; Ellie had always been the computer whiz), he picked up the telephone. According to the morgue desk at the Shrewsbury Herald-Crier, the dental bogeyman of Evers’s childhood had died in 1978. Amazingly, he’d been only fifty-nine, nearly a decade younger than Evers was now. Evers pondered the unknowable: was his life cut short by the war, Luckies, dentistry, or all three?

  There was nothing remarkable in his obituary, just the usual survived by and funeral home info. Evers had had absolutely nothing to do with the drunk old butcher’s demise, just the bad luck to be his victim. Exonerated, that night he raised an extra glass or four to Dr. Young. He ordered in, but it took forever, arriving after he was well in the bag. CSI turned out to be one he’d seen before, and all the sitcoms were stupid. Where was Bob Newhart when you needed him? Evers brushed his teeth, took two of Ellie’s Ambiens, then stood swaying in front of the bathroom mirror, his eyes bleeding. “Give me a liver long enough,” he said, “and I’ll move the fucking world.”

  He slept late again, recovering with instant coffee and oatmeal, and was pleased to see in the paper that the Sox were coming in for a big weekend series. He celebrated the opener with steak, setting the DVR to capture whatever malevolent spirit his past might vomit up. If it happened, this time he’d be ready.

  It did, in the seventh inning of a tie game, on a key play at the plate. He would have missed it if he’d gone off to do the dishes, but by then he was poised on the edge of the sofa, totally into the contest and concentrating on every pitch. Longoria doubled to the gap in left center, and Upton tried to score from first. The throw beat him but was wide, up the first baseline. As Sox catcher Kelly Shoppach lunged toward home with a sweep tag, directly behind the screen a scrawny, freckle-faced boy not more than nine rose from his seat.

  His haircut was what used to be called a Dutch boy, or, if you were taunting this particular fellow at school, a soup bowl. “Hey, Soup!” they used to hound him in gym, pummeling him, turning every game into Smear the Queer. “Hey, Soupy, Soup, Soupy!”

  His name was Lester Embree, and here in the shadowy Trop he wore the same threadbare red-and-blue striped shirt and bleached, patched-at-the-knees Tuffskins he always seemed to have on that spring of 1954. He was white but he lived in the black part of town behind the fairgrounds. He had no father, and the kindest rumor about his
mother said she worked in the laundry at St. Joe’s hospital. In the middle of the school year he’d come to Shrewsbury from some hick town in Tennessee, a move that seemed foolish, a dunderheaded affront to Evers and his cadre of buddies. They delighted in imitating his soft drawl, drawing out the halting answers he gave in class into Foghorn Leghorn monologues. “I say, I say, Miss Pritchett, ma’am, I do declayuh I have done done dooty in these heah britches.”

  On-screen, Upton leapt to his feet, looking back at the sprawled catcher and signaling safe just as the umpire punched the air with a clenched fist. A different camera zoomed out to show Joe Maddon charging from the dugout in high dudgeon. The sellout crowd was going wild.

  In the replay—even before Evers paused and ran it back with the clicker—Lester Embree and his doofy bowl cut were visible above the FOX 13 ad recessed into the wall’s blue padding, and then, as Upton clearly evaded the tag with a nifty hook slide, the quiet boy Evers and his friends had witnessed being pulled wrinkled and fingerless from Marsden’s Pond rose and pointed one fish-nibbled stub not at the play developing right in front of him, but, as if he could see into the air-conditioned, dimly lit condo, directly at Evers. His lips were moving, and it didn’t look like he was saying Kill the ump.

  “Come on,” Evers scoffed, as if at the bad call. “Jesus, I was a kid.”

  The TV returned to live action—very lively, in fact. Joe Maddon and the home plate ump stood toe to toe and nose to nose. Both were jawing away, and you didn’t have to be a fortune-teller to know that Maddon would soon be following the game from the clubhouse. Evers had no interest in watching the Rays’ manager get the hook. He used his remote to run the picture back to where Lester Embree had come into view.

  Maybe he won’t be there, Evers thought. Maybe you can’t DVR ghosts any more than you can see vampires in a mirror.

  Only Lester Embree was right there in the stands—in the expensive seats, no less—and Evers suddenly remembered the day at Fairlawn Grammar when old Soupy had been waiting at Evers’s locker. Just seeing him there had made Evers want to haul off and paste him one. The little fucker was trespassing, after all. They’ll stop if you tell ’em to, Soupy had said in that crackerbarrel drawl of his. Even Kaz will stop.

  He’d been talking about Chuckie Kazmierski, only no one called him Chuckie, not even now. Evers could attest to that, because Kaz was the only friend from his childhood who was still a friend. He lived in Punta Gorda, and sometimes they got together for a round of golf. Just two happy retirees, one divorced, one a widower. They reminisced a lot—really, what else were old men good for?—but it had been years since they talked about Soupy Embree. Evers had to wonder now just why that was. Shame? Guilt? Maybe on his part, but probably not on Kaz’s. As the youngest of six brothers and the runt of their scruffy pack, Kaz had had to fight for every inch of respect. He’d earned his spot as top dog the hard way, with knuckles and blood, and he took Lester Embree’s helplessness as a personal insult. No one had ever given him a break, and now this whingeing hillbilly was asking for a free pass? “Nothing’s free,” Kaz used to say, shaking his head as if it was a sad truth. “Somehow, some way, somebody got to pay.”

  Probably Kaz doesn’t even remember, Evers thought. Neither did I, till tonight. Tonight he was having total recall. Mostly what he remembered was the kid’s pleading eyes that day by his locker. Big and blue and soft. And that wheedling, cornpone voice, begging him, like it was really in his power to do it.

  You’re the one Kaz and the rest of them listen to. Gimme a break, won’t you? Ah’ll give you money. Two bucks a week, that’s mah whole allowance. All Ah want’s to get along.

  Little as he liked to, Evers could remember his answer, delivered in a jeering mockery of the boy’s accent: If’n all you want’s to git along, you git along raht out of heah, Soupy. Ah don’t want yoah money, hit’s prob’ly crawlin wit’ fag germs.

  A loyal lieutenant (not the general, as Lester Embree had assumed), Evers immediately brought the matter to Kaz, embellishing the scene further, laughing at his own drawl. Later, in the shadow of the flagpole, he egged Kaz on from the nervous circle surrounding the fight. Technically, it wasn’t a fight at all, because Soupy never defended himself. He folded at Kaz’s first blow, curling into a ball on the ground while Kaz slugged and kicked him at will. And then, as if he’d tired, Kaz straddled him, grabbed his wrists, and pinned his arms back above his head. Soupy was weeping, his split lip blowing bloody bubbles. In the tussle, his red-and-blue striped shirt had ripped, the fishbelly skin of his chest showing through a fist-size hole. He didn’t resist as Kaz let go of his wrists, took hold of the tear in his shirt with both hands, and ripped it apart. The collar wouldn’t give, and Kaz tugged it off over Soupy’s ears in three hard jerks, then stood and twirled the shreds over his head like a lasso before flinging it down on Soupy and walking away. What astonished Evers, besides the inner wildness Kaz had tapped and the style with which he’d destroyed his opponent, was how fast it all happened. In total, it had taken maybe two minutes. The teachers still hadn’t even made it outside.

  When the kid disappeared a week later, Evers and his pals thought he must have run away. Soupy’s mother thought differently. He liked to go on wildlife walks, she said. He was a dreamy boy, he might have gotten lost. There was a massive search of the nearby woods, including baying teams of bloodhounds brought from Boston. As Boy Scouts, Evers and his friends were in on it. They heard the commotion at the dam end of Marsden’s Pond and came running. Later, when they saw the eyeless thing that rose dripping from the spillway, they would all wish they hadn’t.

  And now, thanks to God only knew what agency, here was Lester Embree at Tropicana Field, standing with the other fans watching the play at the plate. His fingers were mostly gone, but he still seemed to have his thumbs. His eyes and nose, too. Well, most of his nose. Lester was looking through the television screen at Dean Evers, just like Miss Nancy looking through her magic mirror on the old Romper Room show. “Romper, stomper, bomper, boo,” Miss Nancy liked to chant in the way-back-when. “My magic mirror can see you.”

  Lester’s pointing finger-stub. Lester’s moving mouth. Saying what? Evers only had to watch it twice to be sure: You murdered me.

  “Not true!” he yelled at the boy in the red-and-blue striped shirt. “Not true! You fell in Marsden’s! You fell in the pond! You fell in the pond and it was your own goddamned fault!”

  He turned off the TV and went to bed. He lay there awhile thrumming like a wire, then got up and took two Ambiens, washing them down with a healthy knock of scotch. The pill-and-booze combo killed the thrumming, at least, but he still lay wakeful, staring into the dark with eyes that felt as large and smooth as brass doorknobs. At three he turned the clock-radio around to face the wall. At five, as the first traces of dawn backlit the drapes, a comforting thought came to him. He wished he could share this comforting thought with Soupy Embree, but since he couldn’t, he did the next best thing and spoke it aloud.

  “If it were possible to go back in a time machine and change the stupid things some of us did in grammar school and junior high, Soups old buddy, that gadget would be booked up right into the twenty-third century.”

  Exactamundo. You couldn’t blame kids. Grown-ups knew better, but kids were stupid by nature. Sometimes malevolent by nature too. He seemed to remember something about a girl in New Zealand who’d bludgeoned her best friend’s mother to death with a brick. She’d hit the poor woman fifty times or more with that old brick, and when the girl was found guilty she went to jail for… what? Seven years? Five? Less? When she got out, she went to England and became an airline stewardess. Later she became a very popular mystery novelist. Who’d told him that story? Ellie, of course. El had been a great reader of mysteries, always trying—and often succeeding—in guessing whodunit.

  “Soupy,” he told his lightening bedroom, “you can’t blame me. I plead diminished capacity.” That actually made him smile.

  As if it had jus
t been waiting for this conclusion, another comforting thought arose. I don’t need to watch the game tonight. Nothing’s forcing me to.

  That was finally enough to send him off. He woke shortly after noon, the first time he’d slept so late since college. In the kitchen he briefly considered the oatmeal, then fried himself three eggs in butter. He would have tossed in some bacon, if he’d had any. He did the next-best thing, adding it to the grocery list stuck to the fridge with a cucumber magnet.

  “No game tonight for me,” he told the empty condo. “Ah b’leeve Ah maht…”

  He heard what his voice was doing and stopped, bewildered. It came to him that he might not be suffering from dementia or early-onset Alzheimer’s; he might be having your ordinary everyday garden-variety nervous breakdown. That seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation for recent events, but knowledge was power. If you saw what was happening, you could stop it, right?

  “I believe I might go out to a movie,” he said in his own voice. Quietly. Reasonably. “That’s all I meant to say.”

  In the end, he decided against a film. Although there were twenty screens in the immediate area, he could find nothing he wanted to watch on a single one of them. He went to the Publix instead, where he picked up a basketful of goodies (including a pound of the good thick-sliced pepper bacon Ellie loved). He started for the ten-items-or-less checkout lane, saw the girl at the register was wearing a Rays shirt with Matt Joyce’s number 20 on the back, and diverted to one of the other lanes instead. That took longer, but he told himself he didn’t mind. He also told himself he wasn’t thinking about how someone would be singing the national anthem at the Trop right now. He’d picked up the new Harlan Coben in paperback, a little literary bacon to go with the literal variety. He’d read it tonight. Baseball couldn’t match up to Coben’s patented terror-in-the-burbs, not even when it was Jon Lester matched up against Matt Moore. How had he ever become interested in such a slow, boring sport to begin with?