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- Herausgeber: No Exit Press
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Ryan Rossetti and Jake Thomas were the two Major League-bound rivals on their high school baseball team. Until Ryan hurt his pitching arm and landed a $10 dollar an hour life as a house painter. Lucky Jake made it all the way, and he and his $10 million signing bonus are heading back for a publicity-motivated homecoming weekend. But he's got a nasty surprise in store: Ryan is involved in an intense, addictive relationship with Jake's fiancé Christina, who now faces a choice between love in a Brooklyn tenement or a heartless marriage on Easy Street. None of the three have any idea what's about to play out in the streets they once all called home. Lights out is vintage Jason Starr, a razor sharp crime novel that brilliantly combines biting social satire, explosive suspense, and honest, revealing human drama.
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For Chynna
Contents
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
PART TWO
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
PART THREE
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
About the Author
Copyright
PART ONE
1
The day JakeThomas came home to Brooklyn, Jake’s parents, who still lived three houses down from Ryan Rossetti and his parents in Canarsie, hung out a huge banner connected to trees on either side of the street, which read:
welcome home jake, our hero.
Ryan had to drive right under the banner on his way to work, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal if ‘JT fever’ hadn’t been sweeping through the neighborhood all week. It seemed like everyone was wearing THOMAS 24 jerseys and Pirates hats, and hundreds of cars proudly displayedbrooklyn loves jakebumper stickers, a giveaway from a Ralph Avenue dealership. Some stores had posted eight-by-ten glossies of Jake in their windows, and Pete’s Barber shop on Avenue N was giving free shaves to anyone who showed a Jake Thomas baseball card. Pizzerias, restaurants, bars, delis, and even a nail salon had their own Jake Thomas specials, and theCanarsie Courierwas running a cover story about Jake called ‘Brooklyn’s Son Returns,’ so Ryan had to see an annoying picture of Jake – smiling widely with his fake choppers –in newspaper dispensers everywhere.
Ryan cranked the volume on his Impala’s CD player, shouting out lyrics of Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre.’ A few minutes later he double-parked in front of a deli on Flatlands and went inside for his usual ham-and-egg on a roll and black coffee with four sugars. At the register, Andre, the high school kid who worked there, said, ‘Jake Thomas home yet?’
‘Dunno,’Ryan said, shaking his head as he dug into his pocket for money, although he’d already put a five on the counter.
‘Yo, you hear? There’s gonna be a block party for him later.’
‘Really?’ Ryan said, playing dumb. Jake’s mother had been planning the surprise party for weeks, and Ryan’s mother had been up late last night cooking five trays of her famous lasagna.
‘Yeah. Eighty-first Street’s gonna be closed off. Gonna be free food, music, dancing, all that shit.’
‘Oh, right,’ Ryan said. ‘I think I did hear something about that.’
‘I’m goin’, man,’Andre said. ‘Gonna meet JT up close, shake his hand, get my picture taken with the NL batting champ. Yo, you think if I bring him a bat he’d sign it for me?’
‘Why not?’ Ryan took his change and returned to his car. Several minutes laterhe pulled into the driveway of a house on Whitman Drive in Mill Basin. Leaving the CD player on, he ate his breakfast, but when he was finished eating he didn’t get out of his car. He always told himself that if he turned off the CD player or radio in the middle of a song it would mean bad luck. So he waited for the last lyric of the Mobb Deep joint and then, timing it perfectly, shut the ignition.
Carlos and Franky were already setting up the drop cloths downstairs when Ryan entered the house. In the bathroom, Ryan changed out of his street clothes – a sleeveless T-Mac jersey over a plain black hooded sweatshirt, baggy Pepe jeans, a San Antonio Spurs baseball-style cap worn sideways over a black do-rag, and not new but very clean Nike Zoom LeBron IIs – into his white painting clothes and old paint-covered sneakers, and then returned to the living area and started helping Carlos and Franky with the wall repair.
It was the second day on this job and it was going to be a tough one. The house was average-size – three bed, two bath – but the old owners must not have painted in years,because there was peeling paint everywhere, and lots of bubbles needed to be sanded down. Ryan and the other guys had spent all day yesterday scraping and spackling and they’d gotten through only half of the downstairs. The upstairs wasn’t in as bad shape so there was a shot they could start laying on the primer by the end of the day.
Ryan got to work, spackling, when Carlos said to him, ‘Jake Thomas come home yet?’
Carlos was Ryan’s age – twenty-four – with a thin mustache and tuft of hair on his chin. He’d been asking Ryan about Jake all week, and Ryan had been trying not to pay too much attention.
‘Dunno,’ Ryan said without looking at Carlos.
‘But he’s coming today, right?’
‘Guess so.’
‘What?’
‘I think so,’ Ryan said, louder.
‘Hey,’ Carlos said. ‘If I bring you a ball in tomorrow, you think you can getJT to sign it for me?’
‘Don’t bust chops,’ Franky said. He was a big guy, a few years older than Carlos and Ryan.
‘It ain’t for me, man,’ Carlos said. ‘It’s for my little cousin – he loves baseball. I told him I work with Jake Thomas’s homeboy; he was like, ‘Hook me up, yo.’’
‘There’s gonna be a party for him later on my block,’ Ryan said. ‘Why don’t you stop by if you want an autograph?’
‘I don’t know the guy, man,’ Carlos said. ‘I don’t wanna go up to him and be like, ‘Gimme your autograph.’ Come on, man, do me this one favor. It ain’t for me – it’s for my cousin. He’s, like, eight years old and shit.’
‘He can’t get everybody autographs,’ Franky said. ‘He probably’s gotta get autographs for a thousand guys already, right, Ry?’
‘It’s all right,’ Ryan said, working the scraper hard against the wall. ‘Bring the ball in tomorrow and I’ll ask Jake to sign it.’
‘Thanks, man,’ Carlos said. Then he said to Franky, ‘See? It ain’t no big deal.’
They worked for a while without talking. Carlos’s box in the corner was playing top forty – Avril Lavigne’s new song.
Then Franky said, ‘So where’s he coming in from?’
Ryan knew Franky was talking about Jake, but he pretended to be lost.
‘Who?’ Ryan asked.
‘Jake Thomas,’ Franky said.
‘Oh,’ Ryan said. ‘Pittsburgh, I guess.’
‘He got an apartment there or something?’
‘I think he rents a house,’ Ryan mumbled.
‘What?’
‘He rents a house,’ Ryan said louder.
‘Probably a friggin’ mansion,’ Franky said. ‘The guy’s gotta be making, what, a couple mil a year now, and wait till he’s a free agent – he’ll break the fuckin’bank. The Pirates sucked this year, but Jake was freakin’ spectacular. What’d he end up at, three fifty-three?’
‘Three fifty-one,’ Carlos said.
‘Three fifty-one,’ Franky said. ‘Jesus, that’s like a DiMaggio number. And he had, like, twenty-five homers, hundred ribbies.’
‘He got twenty-two jacks,’ Carlos said.
‘Twenty-two home runs,’ Franky said.‘And what’d he get last year, twenty?’
‘Seventeen,’ Carlos said.
‘That’s all right,’ Franky said. ‘At least the numbers are goin’up. And the guy steals bases and’s got that rifle arm. You see that one they showed on ESPN last week, when he threw out the guy trying to go first to third on that ball in the gap?’
‘Yeah, ’gainst the Cubs,’ Carlos said.
‘The guy’s got a fuckin’ gun,’Franky said. ‘I swear that ball was, like, five feet off the ground the whole way. I bet he could’ve been a pitcher if he wanted.’ He turned to Ryan and said, ‘Hey, JT ever pitch in high school?’
‘Little bit,’ Ryan said.
‘Who was better, you or him?’ Carlos asked.
‘Me,’ Ryan said confidently.
‘You ever pitch to him in a game?’
‘Little League, intra-squad – shit like that.’
‘You struck him out?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘But he got some rips off you too, right?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Hey, you think JTis gonna make the Hall someday?’ Franky asked.
‘Keeps playin’ the way he is he’s gonna,’ Carlos said.
‘Look at the numbers he’s puttin’up,’ Franky said. ‘You gotta admit those’re Hall of Fame numbers. Guy hits what, three fifty-one last year? Jesus.’
Carlos and Franky continued talking about how great Jake was and Ryan tried to block out the noise, thinking about Christina. Shelooked so beautiful last night in the backseat of his car, with the lamppost light in her eyes. But then, before he dropped her off, she started crying. He really should throw her a call to make sure she was okay.
Then he snapped out of his thoughts when Franky said, ‘Hey, Ry, you think JT is gonna come play in New York someday?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ Ryan said, wishing they’d shut up already.
‘I don’t know,’ Franky said, ‘I thought maybe he said something about it to you or something.’
‘We don’t talk a lot these days,’ Ryan said.
‘Still,’ Franky said,‘the guy musta saidsomething. I mean, any guy grows up in Brooklyn, his dream’s gotta be to play for the Yankees or the Mets. And after next year he’s gonna be a free agent.’
‘Pass the spackle, will ya?’ Ryan said.
Ryan tossed his finished container of spackle aside, then took the new one from Franky. Carlos started telling Franky about how he went to get his car fixed yesterday and the guy tried to charge him three hundred bucks for an oil change and a new muffler,and Ryan thought,Good, no more talking about goddamn Jake. Then, after Carlos said he was thinking about selling his car anyway, putting an ad inBuy-Lines, Franky said, ‘That’d be something, having a guy from the neighborhood playing for a New York team. I bet he’d be the best player in the history of Brooklyn.’
‘What about Sammy Koufax?’ Carlos said.
‘SandyKoufax, you fuckin’ moron,’ Franky said, ‘and he was a pitcher. I’m talkin’ about a hitter. What hitter in the history of Brooklyn is better than Jake Thomas?’
‘Nobody,’Carlos said.
‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about,’ Franky said.
Ryan couldn’t take it anymore. He left the scraper and the spackle on the floor and headed toward the front door.
‘Where you goin’? Franky said.
‘Taking a break,’ Ryan said.
‘But you just got here.’
Ryan left the house. He went to his car and took out a pack of Camels from the glove compartment. He lit up, leaning against the side of the car, when he saw Tim’s pickup coming down the block.
Tim O’Hara, the owner of Pay-Less Painting, was only thirty-five, but he was doing pretty good for himself. He had four crews of three guys doing painting jobs around Brooklyn, and he’d recently bought a nice house– three bedrooms, a garage – near Marine Park. He used to help out painting, but now he was a pure contractor, going out and bidding on jobs, and getting guys to work for him for ten bucks an hour. Tim was a good guy, and he and Ryan always got along, but Ryan still planned to start his own business someday. He figured he could put ads in papers and bid on jobs as easily as Tim could, and he could be just as successful. All he needed was a chunk of change to start out with. He’d already put away two thousand bucks, but he felt he needed at least five as a cushion and for start-up costs. He was also saving to move out of his parents’ house and, eventually, buy a ring for Christina, so he expected to work for Tim for at least a couple more years.
Tim double-parked the pickup, then got out and approached Ryan. Tim was about Ryan’s height – five-ten– and his reddish brown hair was receding on the sides.
‘Gotta quit that shit,’ Tim said.
‘You only live once,’ Ryan said.
‘So you wanna live to forty?’
Ryan took a long drag on the cigarette and let the smoke out very slowly through his nostrils.
‘So how’s it going?’ Tim asked.
‘Good.’ Then Ryan realized Tim meant the painting job. ‘Coming along.’
‘You think you guys can finish up in three days?’ Tim asked.
‘That’s pushing it,’ Ryan said. ‘There’s a lot of wall repair to do in there – ’specially downstairs.’
‘’Cause I got another job for you to do – three-story house, Midwood – big job. Might be a four- or five-dayer. How about four days?’
‘Dunno,’ Ryan said. ‘Talk to the guys.’
Tim went into the house and Ryan stayed outside, finishing the cigarette. It was a nice fall day– sunny, in the sixties.
A few minutes later, when Ryan went inside, Tim was in the living room saying, ‘… but it looks like you guys’re doing a really great job in here. Seriously, you’re putting my other crews to shame. I was just at this other job in Sheepshead Bay, and Jimmy, Rob, and that new kid I hired, Benny– they’re goin’ on a week and they’re just putting on the second coat today. And it’s not a big job neither – two bedrooms, one bath. Benny – I swear to God on my grandmother’s grave – he painted himself into a closet yesterday.’
‘You’re shittin’ me,’ Franky said.
‘Cross my heart, hope to die,’ Tim said. ‘Jimmy told me all about it. He comes back from his lunch break and hears the kid screaming, ‘Lemme outta here, lemme outta here!’’
Franky and Carlos started laughing. Ryan thought it was funny too, but he wasn’t in the mood to laugh. He got busy spackling.
‘They had to use the scraper to get him outta there,’ Tim said.
‘What a fuckin’ idiot,’ Franky said
‘Nah, Benny’s a good kid,’ Tim said. ‘He just doesn’t have all the seeds in his apple, if you know what I mean.’
‘But come on, to paint yourself into a closet,’ Franky said, ‘you gotta be a fuckin’ retard.’
‘He’s lucky they found him in there,’ Carlos said. ‘It was five o’clock, his ass coulda been stuck there all night.’
‘Imagine that shit,’ Franky said. ‘They show up the next day and find the stupid kid there, still screaming to get out. That woulda been a fuckin’riot.’
Franky started laughing. He had a loud, infectious laugh, and Carlos and Tim joined in. Even Ryan smiled a little.
‘But seriously,’ Tim said, ‘what I was saying before – you guys are the best crew I have. I really mean that. You always do quality work, and I know when I assign you a job you’ll finish it on time.’
‘So you gonna give us a bonus, boss?’ Carlos asked.
‘Yeah, how ’bout a not-painting-ourselves-into-a-closet bonus?’ Franky said.
Franky and Carlos laughed again.
‘Tell you what I’ll do,’ Tim said. ‘You guys finish this job in four days so you can get started on that new one in Midwood, I’ll give you an extra fifty bucks apiece.’
‘Aw right!’ Carlos shouted.
‘A Hawaii five-O sounds cool to me,’ Franky said.
‘But don’t rush it,’ Tim said. ‘Remember, it’s quality over quantity. I’d rather do ten jobs well than twelve jobs not so well, you know what I mean?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Carlos said. ‘We’ll do a good jobandwe’ll get it done in four days.’
‘What about you, Ry?’ Tim asked.
Busy smoothing out spackle, Ryan said,‘What?’
‘You think four days is doable?’ Tim said.
‘Yeah,’ Ryan said. ‘Why not?’
‘Way to go, guys,’Tim said. He started toward the door; then he stopped and said, ‘Jesus, I almost forgot. Hey, Ry – your buddy Jake Thomas come home yet?’
Ryan waited a few seconds, grinding his back teeth, then said calmly, ‘I really don’t know, Tim.’
‘I think he’s gettin’ sick of that question,’ Franky said.
‘What’re you talking about?’ Ryan snapped. ‘I’m not sick of anything. I just don’t know if he’s home yet, that’s all. Who’m I, his mother?’
‘Testy, ain’t we?’ Franky said. ‘You sound like my friggin’ girlfriend. What’s it, that time of the month again, Justine?’
Carlos laughed.
Tim said to Ryan, ‘I don’t wanna impose on the guy or anything, but you think if I give you a baseball card tomorrow you can get it signed for me?’
‘Sure,’ Ryan said. ‘I mean, I’ll ask him to.’
‘Damn,’ Carlos said. ‘My man Ryan’s gonna have a lotta shit to get signed!’
‘Hey, if it’s too much trouble…’ Tim said.
‘It’s no big deal,’ Ryan said. ‘Bring in the card tomorrow; I’ll give it to Jake.’
‘Cool,’ Tim said.‘And great work here again, guys.’
Tim left, then Carlos said, ‘Come on, man, let’s get our asses to work – I want that fifty bucks.’
‘Don’t worry,’Franky said. ‘All we gotta do is finish the wall repair by lunchtime and we could have the whole house primed by tonight. We do the first coat tomorrow, the second coat the next day, and we still got a whole day left over.’
‘I’m not rushing the job,’ Ryan said.
‘Who said we gonna rush it?’ Carlos said.‘We just gonna work fast, that’s all.’
‘What’s the matter,’ Franky said to Ryan, ‘you don’t wanna get the bonus?’
‘It’s fifty bucks,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s nothing to get a boner over.’
‘So if I gave you a fifty-dollar bill you’d rip it up right now?’ Franky asked.
‘That’s not what I’m talking about,’ Ryan said. ‘You heard what Tim said – quality over quantity. I’m not gonna slap on the paint for fifty fuckin’ bucks.’
‘What’s wrong with you anyway?’Franky said. ‘All day – no, all week, you been acting like you got a big fat dick up your ass.’
Ryan dropped the scraper and took a step toward Franky. He wasn’t really going to go after him; he just wanted to make a point.
‘Come on, chill, y’all, chill,’ Carlos said. ‘Yo, maybe Ry’s right. We’ll take it easy, yo – do up all the wall repair today and get on the primer. If we just don’t fuck around and bullshit, we’ll get this house down in four days, no problem. So just everybody let’s just chill and get to workin’, what y’all say?’
For several seconds Ryan and Franky remained facing each other, and then they started working again. Usher was singing‘Yeah,’ and Ryan climbed to the top of the stepladder to work on a big crack near the ceiling when his beeper went off. He glanced at the readout –chrissy work– and got down off the ladder and headed toward the front door.
‘Another fuckin’ break?’Franky said.
Ryan went outside, took out his cell, and called Christina.
‘I was so glad it was you,’ Ryan said. ‘I was thinking about you before.’
‘Where are you?’ Christina asked. She sounded like she’d been crying again.
‘Work, where do you think? You okay?’
‘Is Jake home yet?’
‘You know how many times I got asked that question today?’
‘Is he?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘Don’t be. You’re gonna do great tonight – I guarantee it. And just remember – I love you.’
‘Shit, I gotta go. Dr Hoffman needs me for a root canal.’
‘Hey, I just said I love you.’
‘I love you too.’Christina waited a few moments, then said, ‘I don’t think I can do it.’
Ryan rolled his eyes. ‘You gotta do it, Chrissy – it’s the perfect time.’
‘Why? I mean, why can’t you just come over tonight and we’ll stay locked in my house till he leaves? I’ll leave a message at his parents’ house, say I’m sick – I have the flu.’
‘We’re not doing that.’
‘Why not? I’ll take off from work tomorrow and we can stay in my room all day and –’
‘We gotta take care of this thing tonight, get on with our lives.’
‘I know, I know, but –’
‘You’re not gonna chicken out on me, are you?’
The line was silent for a while,and then Christina said, ‘Come by my house after work – I have to see you first.’
‘You wanna do this or not?’
‘Of course I wanna do it.’
‘Then just go to Jake’s tonight and –’
‘Let’s go together.’
‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘I need you there with me. Just show up with me, then you can leave.’
‘Why can’t you –’
‘Please,’ she said. ‘If you’re there… I don’t know… I’ll feel more comfortable. You don’t even have to come in. You can just wait outside. He won’t even see you.’
Ryan shook his head, knowing he’d give in, but waited a while anyway before he said, ‘Fine, but then you’re gonna do this tonight, just like we planned it. No backing out.’
‘Coming,’ Christina said to someone. Then she said to Ryan, ‘I’ll see you later… I love you so much.’
‘I love you too,’ Ryan said, but Christina had hung up.
Ryan remained on the stoop, lighting another cigarette. After taking a couple of long drags he stomped out the butt and went back into the house.
2
Exiting the gateand heading into the United terminal at LaGuardia, Jake Thomas didn’t want to be recognized. Usually he didn’t mind getting stopped – he wasn’t one of those asshole celebrities who punched cameramen or started fights with reporters – but today, with all the shit that had been happening in his life lately, he just wanted to be left alone.
He flipped down his Gucci shades and no one seemed to notice him, not even a good-looking blonde sitting off to the right. She must have been foreign or something because she definitely didn’t seem to know who he was. She was just staring at him in a way that said,Ouch, he’s hot, and why shouldn’t she? Jake knew he was styling in a beige Helmut Lang suit and a black Armani shirt. The suit jacket was open and the top few buttons of the shirt were undone, showing his custom made gold-and-diamond JT nameplate necklace from Jacob the Jeweler. He had a Louis Vuitton carry-on bag over one shoulder and was wearing black Ferragamo loafers, a Charriol watch, Neil Lane rings, and a Tiffany two-carat princess-cut diamond stud in his left ear.
Continuing through the terminal, passing a gift shop, Jake saw a kid up ahead pointing at him. At the ballpark he was always friendly with kids, flipping them balls in batting practice, signing as many autographs as he could before and after games, and even outside the ballpark or in the hotel lobby. Jake loved making kids’ days, but he did it mostly for PR. At the ballpark, he never knew who might be watching. Reporters could see him blow off a kid and it would make the papers the next day. Or the kid could be the GM’s son or nephew or whoever, and if word got out that Jake Thomas was blowing off little kids, the ad guys at Nike and Pizza Hut and wherever would start freaking and it could turn into a big-time headache. By always being Mr Nice Guy, smiling widely, asking kids their names and chatting with their parents, Jake had developed a rep as being one of the most accessible pro athletes in the country, which boosted his profile with the ad agencies. He already had the perfect look for the marketing world. His father was black, and his mother was half-Italian, half-Irish, so he had that whole light-skinned, melting-pot, Derek Jeter/Tiger Woods thing happening. He also had a perfect smile – recently porcelain-veneered sparkling white choppers, contrasting perfectly with his complexion. All of this contributed to his ninth-place position onForbes’slist of the top fifty most marketable athletes in the world – and that was as a member of the PittsburghPirates.He knew he’d make the top five easily, maybe even beat out Tiger for number one, once he started playing for a big-market team.The kid, probably ten years old, was tugging on his father’s sleeve and Jake could read his lips: ‘It’s Jake Thomas! It’s Jake Thomas!’
When they reached Jake the kid asked, ‘Hey, are you Jake Thomas?’
‘Nope,’Jake said, and kept walking.
He bypassed the baggage claim area – he’d had his luggage overnighted to his parents’ house in Brooklyn – and approached a squat, bearded guy who was holding up a card withRyan Rossettiwritten on it. Since he’d made it to the majors, Jake had been using Ryan’s name with limo drivers and at hotels, airports, and restaurants, so he wouldn’t get harassed.
‘Mr Rossetti?’ the driver asked Jake. He had a Russian-or-something accent.
‘Yeah,’ Jake said. Then the driver led Jake over to a Lincoln Town Car and opened the back door for him, and Jake said, ‘Whoa, what’s this?’
‘What do you mean?’ the driver said. ‘I bring car to drive you to Brooklyn.’
‘I didn’t order a Town Car,’ Jake said. ‘I ordered an SUV limo.’
‘Yes. But this is car I bring. Come, get in car. It’s okay.’
Jake was going to insist on an SUV. Then he saw a few kids noticing him,and he knew that if he stood around waiting for the SUV he’d get swarmed.
‘Whatever,’ Jake said, and got in.
As the car curved around toward the terminal’s exit, Jake took out his cell and called his agent in LA.
‘So you don’t return my calls anymore,huh?’ Jake said.
‘I called you twice,’ Stu Fox said.
Jake didn’t know if this was true or not because he hadn’tchecked his messages.
‘Where are you?’ Stu asked.
‘Backseat of a Town Car.’
‘Moving down in the world, huh?’
Jake laughed, although he didn’t think it was funny, then said,‘So did Ken get back to you yet?’
‘Yeah, he won’t give. He says if they let your PT into the clubhouse next year it’ll damage team morale.’
‘What morale? We finished thirty out.’
‘I’m just telling you what he told me.’
‘Did you tell him that if I don’t get my own trainer,inthe clubhouse, I’m not showing up to spring training?’
‘Come on, Jake, nobody gets a PT in theclubhouse after all that Giambi shit.’
‘He says no, ask him who else but Jake Thomas is gonna get asses into the seats next year. Ask him whose face he’s gonna put on the yearbook cover. Ask him what player on his team’s gonna be starting in the All-Star Game, and what player will probably finish in the top five in the MVP voting this year, if I don’t win the damn thing. Without me, I bet the team gets contracted, has to move to San Juan or Monterey, and you think Ken doesn’t know that?’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’Stu said, ‘but it may not make sense to get confrontational right now. I mean, the season just ended two weeks ago, and –’
‘Jesus,’ Jake said. He tried to flex his legs, his feet hitting the back of the front seat. ‘You should see me right now – I’m curled up like a goddamn pretzel. Which reminds me – I want my own SUV limo on the road next year…’
‘I think that’s out of the question.’
‘… with fish tanks.’
‘What?’
‘I want fish tanks in the limo, and DirecTV and a fully stocked bar. Oh, yeah, and I want room upgrades on the road – suiteswithJacuzzis.’ He heard his call waiting beep, then said, ‘Call me,’ and took the other call. ‘JT’
‘Jake – Robby.’
‘We get theGQcover?’ Jake asked.
‘Not quite,’ Robert Henderson, Jake’s publicist, said. ‘But some other great things came down the pike this morning. Dave Shaw fromTSNwants to do a sit-down with you next week.’
‘Next.’
‘He said he’ll come to your –’
‘Next.’
‘Mike Winter fromSIwants to ask you a few questions for an article he’s doing.’
‘Is the article about me?’
‘Well, no, not really. I mean, it’ll include quotes from –’
‘Who’s the article about?’
‘Albert Pujols.’
‘Next.’
‘We’re talking aboutSports Illustratedhere, Jake. Can’t you just talk to the guy for five minutes? He’ll do it on the phone, or e-mail you the –’
‘Next.’
‘ESPN talked about doing a segment about you in a couple weeks, but it’s not solid yet.’
‘What’s the deal atGQ?’
‘They’re still featuring you in next month’s issue, but they haven’t made a decision about the cover yet.’
‘Who’m I up against?’
‘Ben Affleck.’
‘What?’ Jake said. ‘You’re telling me that I’m gonna get bumped for Ben Fucking Affleck?’
‘TheGQcover’s a tough nut to crack.’
‘Come on, man. After the year I had I should be on the cover ofSI,TSN,Details,andGQin the same month. My on-base percentage was four-seventy, I stole thirty-four bases, plus I hit three fifty-one, knocked in a hundred six. You know what my average was with runners in scoring position?’
‘Three ninety?’
‘Four-oh-two. But you knowhow manySIcovers I’ve got in my career?’
‘One.’
‘Bingo – when I was a fucking rookie! It’s a disgrace is what it is. If I was a mutt like Randy Johnson, okay– but Jake Thomas should be fending off the covers.’
‘I got you on the cover ofDetails.’
‘FuckDetails. I wantGQ, baby. Make it happen.’ As the Town Car exited the airport and was zipping along the Grand Central Parkway, bouncing over potholes and grooves in the tar, Jake played his voice mail. He skipped through messages from his lawyer and his accountant, but listened to the entire message from Natalie – a European model, maybe from France or Italy, but who lived in LA – whom he sometimes saw when he was on the coast. Natalie sounded sexyon the phone, with her European accent, talking about how much she missed him and wanting to know when he was going to be in LA again. He skipped through messages from his personal shopper, his stylist, then listened to one from Max Manikowsky, the Pirates’ PR guy, who wanted to know if Jake was interested in appearing at a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation this December. Jake loved doing medical benefits and visiting sick kids in hospitals – shit like that was great for his image. He called Manicocksky back and left a message on his voice mail to definitely count him in. He listened to a couple more messages, including one from Cheryl, a cocktail waitress from Phoenix, and then clicked off.
‘Tell me,’ the driver said. ‘Your name – it’s not really Ryan Rossetti, is it?’
Jake looked up and saw the Russian’s big dark eyes in the rear-view mirror.
‘I know who you are,’ the driver went on. ‘I hear you on phone and I see you on TV. You’re that baseball player on Pittsburgh Pirates – the one from Brooklyn. You’re Jake Thomas.’
‘My name’s Ryan Rossetti.’
‘Come on,’ the driver said, smiling. ‘I hear you say your name’s Jake Thomas. You’re famous baseball player, right?’
‘Just drive the car, Vladimir.’
‘My name is not Vladimir.’
‘Whatever,’Jake said.
As the car continued along the Van Wyck Expressway, Jake relaxed, zoning out, thinking about Patti, the stewardess on his flight from Pittsburgh. She was thin with long, straight blond hair and looked kind of like a low-budg Cameron Diaz. When the plane was going into its descent, she leaned over Jake’s seat and brought her face up to maybe an inch in front of his and told him that she was going to be at her place on the Upper East Side for a few days and that he should give her a call. Then she slipped a United business card into his hand with her name and number written on it, a little heart instead of the dot on theiin Patti.
Jake remembered Patti mentioning that she lived with ‘a few other girls,’ and he wondered if ‘a few’ meant three, four, or even five. If it meant more than four and the other girls were anything like Patti, that meant there would be a significant possibility of getting into a six-way. Jake had never been in a six-way. His personal record was four girls at once, and the record had an asterisk next to it because two of the girls had been in pornos and one was a stripper slash prostitute.
Jake flipped open his cell phone, ready to leave a message for Patti. He’d tell her,I’d love to get together tomorrow night, and maybe your friends would like to meet me too? He’d leave it vague and polite-like, but still make it obvious what he had in mind. He took out the business card and started to punch in the digits when he realized, sadly, that arranging to meet Patti – especially over the next few days – was out of the question, since the main reason he was coming home to Brooklyn this weekend was to finally set a wedding date with Christina, his high school sweetheart.
Although Jake had been engaged to Christina for six years,nowadays they barely spoke. It was weird, because when he started going out with her during the summer before sophomore year he didn’t think he’d ever even want to date another girl. She was beautiful, without a doubt the best-looking girl in Canarsie, maybe in all of Brooklyn, and he was positive he was going to marry her someday. As high school went on and things started getting crazy, what with the big-league scouts chasing after him and all of the national media attention, he became even more convinced that Christina was the one for him. He knew she was his rock, that she loved him before he made it big,and that she’d love him forever no matter what. Yeah, he fooled around a little bit on the side, but how could he resist? Girls were throwing themselves at him left and right, and he was only a teenager. He figured he’d sow his oats for a few years and then marry Christina and live happily ever after.
After high school, he used part of his signing bonus to buy her a fifty-thousand-dollar, two-carat emerald-cut diamond ring from Harry Winston, and then he proposed to her on the Canarsie Pier, but they didn’t set a wedding date. They both agreed it would be best to get married in a couple of years, when they were older and things were more settled. His first year in the minors he saw Christina as much as he could. Then, when he got called up to Pittsburgh, he still talked to her on the phone a lot, but they rarely saw each other. There were more girls too – a lot more girls. They’d line up for him after games, or just show up at his hotel rooms. He was the new golden boy of baseball, he was just starting to make it big, and he was having the time of his life. He still had it in his head that he’d marry Christina someday, but he thought about her less and less. Although he kind of liked the idea that she was waiting for him, after a couplemore years went by he decided it wasn’t right to keep leading her on this way. He was planning to break up with her last summer, and probably would’ve if it weren’t for a fourteen-year-old Mexican girl named Marianna Fernandez.When Jake met Marianna in June at that club in downtown San Diego he had no idea she was in junior high school. Yeah, her braces and kind of young-looking face should’ve been dead giveaways, but a lot of adults wore braces these days, and she definitely didn’t look like jailbait. She had a curvyLatina body and was wearing something low-cut with her cleavage all pushed up and a skirt that must’ve shown ninety per cent of her ass. Jake figured she had to be at least eighteen.
And it wasn’t like he didn’t try to figure out her age. In his hotel room, before they started going at it, he said, ‘So how old are you?’ and she said, ‘Twenty.’ Not even eighteen or nineteen,so Jake figured he had a couple of years to play with even if she was lying.
A few weeks later Marianna’s father called Jake’s agent, Stu Fox, accusing Jake of statutory rape. When Stu broke the news to Jake, Jake said, ‘Who the hell is Marianna Fernandez?’
Stu explained and then Jake said, ‘Oh, her. What do they want?’
‘Fifty grand,’ Stu said.
‘They go to the cops yet?’
‘Nope, but he said they will if you don’t pay.’
Jake started to realize how serious this situation was. A conviction for statutory rape meant jail time, but even getting accused would scare the hell out of the ad nerds and cost him millions. He considered giving the Fernandezes the money. People had probably seenhim and the girl sucking face on the dance floor, and guests at the hotel had definitely seen them together, and they might’ve even been caught on security cameras. On the other hand, making a payment would make him look guilty as hell, so he decided to gamble and ignore the whole thing and hope the guy backed off. The strategy seemed to work until a month later – this was August now – Stu got another call from Mr Fernandez, asking for a hundred Gs. Now Jake knew there was no way he could pay. How did he know Fernandez would stop at a hundred? He could ask for another hundred, or a million. Next year Jake would become a free agent and was planning to sign a blockbuster two-hundred-million-dollar deal. He couldn’t get caught up in paying off a greedy blackmailer when he was on the verge of making that kind of dough.
So Jake told Stu to ignore Fernandez again and see what happened, but that Mexican bastard didn’t give up. He made more calls, demanding the hundred grand, continuing to threaten to take the story to the cops and the newspapers. Then, during the last week of the season, Jake tried to make a deal. He had his lawyer draw up papers, agreeing to give the Fernandezes the money in exchange for signing a document swearing that Jake and Marianna had never had sex. Jake didn’t know if they’d go along with it, but if they balked he had a plan B anyway – marry Christina. The good PR of setting a wedding date with his high school sweetheart would have to offset the bad PR of getting accused of rape. If setting the wedding date wasn’t enough, Jake had a plan C. Two days ago, in Pittsburgh, he had hired a PI to dig up some dirt on Marianna Fernandez. Maybe she had a drug problem, or a sex addiction, or her father had tried to blackmail other people. If they found something on the family, Jake would hire a PR guy to do a major smear campaign, totally discrediting them, and the problem would be solved.
Jake was confident that everything would work out for him somehow. He’d marry Christina next December, and they’d move to Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, or some other hills where the houses went for at least ten mil a pop, and he’d become the new right fielder for the LA Dodgers. Jake’s goal was to pull a Shaq – go play for an LA team for a few years,then branch out of sports into movies. He’d already acted in commercials, and the next step was to break into real acting. Buthe didn’t want to be a joke, like OJ and Jordan. No, none of thatNaked Gun,Space Jamcrap for Jake Thomas. He didn’t want to be in movies; he wanted to be infilms.
Jake was jolted from his thoughts by the stench of raw sewage drifting across the highway. He pulled up his suit jacket to cover his mouth and nose, then said, ‘Vladimir, can you close the fucking window up there? Jesus.’
The driver shut his window, but the odor lingered, and it reminded Jake that he was on his way to Brooklyn. Sometimes he couldn’t believe he was actuallyfromBrooklyn, that he’d spent eighteen years of his life living in such a hopeless dung heap. His neighborhood, Canarsie, had been built on landfill, and that was exactly what the neighborhood was to him– a big pile of garbage and dirt. Every time he visited, it seemed to get worse – infested with gangs and drugs – and he thought his parents were out of their minds for still living there.
All of a sudden Jake felt claustrophobic and not nearly as pumped as he had before. Maybe it was the idea of going back home, or maybe it was because he was trapped in the backseat of this coffin on wheels. Or maybe it was his parents – the factthat they’d been married for thirty-one years and they seemed more boring each time he saw them. What if the same thing happened to him and Christina? While Jake liked the idea of settling down and having kids – being known as a family man would be great for his image and would probably bring him more lucrative endorsement deals – the idea of being committed to one woman scared the hellout of him. It had nothing to do with Christina herself, because he knew he couldn’t do better for a wife. She was caring and loving and beautiful, and he knew she’d pump out some great-looking babies. The only problem with Christina was that she was one person. If he could split her up into, say, twenty Christinas and spread them out over the country, maybe he could handle being married –maybe. Otherwise, he didn’t know how he’d stay faithful.
Vladimir Pain-in-the-ass-ovich exited the Belt Parkway at Pennsylvania Avenue and drove through the Spring Creek Towers housing complex. Brooklyn always looked bad, but it looked worse after being away for a long time. Tall, cramped-together, project-style buildings prevented the sunlight from reaching the street, and kids in do-rags stood huddled on corners, protecting their turf. When the car turned down Flatlands things didn’t get much better. There were more projects, burned-out buildings, and empty lots overrun with garbage. The avenue itself looked narrower, more run-downthan Jake had remembered. An angry mother was pulling her sloppily dressed kids along the sidewalk, a homeless guy was sleeping in a refrigerator box, and burnouts sat on stoops and garbage cans, staring at nothing. Awnings, brick walls, and bus shelters were filthy and covered with graffiti. When Jake was growing up, the neighborhood had been a working-class mix of blacks and whites; now it was almost all black, and it didn’t look as working class either. Maybe it wasn’t the worst neighborhood in the city, but give it a couple of years and it would be another East New York.
Jake decided it was time to get his parents the hell out of Brooklyn. He’d buy them a fucking condo in the city and send them the key. Or maybe move them out to LA, get them digs on the beach on Santa Monica or somewhere out there. Meanwhile, he’d keep it mellow this weekend – stay inside most of the time, set the wedding date with Christina, then split. Hopefully after this weekend he’d never have to visit his old neighborhood again.
As the car turned onto East Eighty-first Street, Jake was getting that closed-in feeling again, probably because the street was lined with butt ugly attached brick houses with tall stoops and no front lawns. He couldn’t wait to get out of the car, to stretch, and then he saw the crowd ahead. There were maybe two hundred people on the street, and tables set up with food and drinks, and a big banner hung over the street that read,welcome home jake, our hero. The car double-parked, and a swarm of kids, most wearing THOMAS 24 jerseys and Pirates caps, surrounded it, cheering as if it were bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two out, game seven of the World Series.
Thinking that he was going to kill his parents for this, Jake got out of the car, giving the crowd his best Hollywood smile.
3
The paint jobwas going much faster than Ryan had expected, probably because he and the guys didn’t screw around all day the way they usually did. Actually, they didn’t talk much at all, and, without talking, there was nothing to do but work. By five o’clock they had finished all the wall repair and laid on the primer in the entire house, and Carlos had even put on a first coat in the dining room. Ryan was cleaning his brushes in the kitchen sink when Franky came in.
‘Hey, just wanted to say sorry for before,’ Ryan said.
‘Sorry for what?’
‘All that bullshit I pulled. It’s got nothing to do with you. I just have a lot on my mind– personal shit, you know?’
‘Eh, forget about it,’ Franky said, smiling.
Driving home, Ryan listened to rap on a college station at the end of the dial. An ad came on for a Ja Rule concert at the Garden next month, and Ryan decided he’d go online later and buy two tickets. Christina hated rap – unless it was Will Smith or, after she saw8 Mile, Eminem. She’d definitely bitch about going to the concert, but Ryan knew he could convince her. Maybe they’d make a weekend of it – rent a hotel room in the city, like they sometimes did. But in the past Christina had had to tell her dad she was going to spend the weekend at her friend Nancy’s in the Village, and Ryan would make up some story for his parents, and then they’d meet in a hotel room in Midtown. This time they wouldn’t have to make up any lies or worry about being seen together. Finally they could be a real couple, able to hold hands and kiss in public, do whatever the hell they wanted. Ryan would pick her up at her house; then they’d drive into the city and spend most of the weekend in bed, making love, except on Saturday night, when they’d go catch Ja.
Ryan couldn’t imagine a better two days.
At Flatlands Avenue, Ryan turned right, passing South Shore High School. As usual, he tried not to look to his left as he drove by the athletic field; sometimes he drove home a different way, looping around on Glenwood Road and back to Flatlands on Seventy-ninth Street, just to avoid it. He managed not to turn his head for most of the way, but then he stopped in traffic and he noticed the back of the car in front of him and thebrooklyn loves jakebumper sticker.
‘Shit,’ he said. Then, looking away from the car in disgust, he turned toward the field and saw himself on the mound, on that raw April day, pitching against Wingate.
When the game started there’d been a small crowd, maybe twenty people, watching. Later, when word got around the school and the neighborhood that Ryan Rossetti had a perfect game going, more people showed, and by the last two innings there must’ve been a hundred fans there. Jake had hit two monstrous solo homers, giving Ryan all of the run support he needed. He had awesome command of his pitches, striking out practically every batter he faced. In the last inningthere were two outs, and Ryan was pitching to Wingate’s cleanup hitter. It was a three-two count, and Ryan didn’t want to walk him and ruin the perfect game, bringing the tying run to the plate. He also knew the guy was expecting a fastball, so he threw him a sharp breaking curve, which sliced the outside corner for the final out.
Ryan remembered how great it had felt being mobbed by his teammates, getting carried off the field on Jake’s and the catcher’s shoulders. A short article intheDaily Newsthe next day said it was probably one of the best games ever pitched in Brooklyn high school history. Ryan had struck out seventeen of the twenty-one batters he had faced, and the other four outs had been on weak ground balls.
At the time Ryan had thought that the perfect game would be the beginning of a perfect career. Although he’d always been shorter and skinnier than other kids his age, he’d worked his ass off to get where he was. Most kidsplayed baseball only in the spring and summer, then turned their attention to other sports, but Ryan was different. Ryan played some basketball and roller hockey to stay in shape, but he focused on baseball year round. If he couldn’t get into a game or find somebody to have a catch with, he’d go to Canarsie Park and self-hit a bucket of balls, or he’d go to a schoolyard with a rubber baseball and pitch to a spray-painted box against the side of the wall. In the dead of winter, while other kids were playing in the snow or sitting home watching football or basketball on TV, he’d shovel out a big area in a parking lot or a schoolyard or a dead end and pitch to a backstop. Instead of blowing his allowance on video games and comic books, he used his money for baseball equipment and sessions in the Gateway batting range on Flatbush.
When he wasn’t playing baseball, Ryan was usually thinking about it. Sometimes he lay awake at night, or stared out the window in school in a daze, imagining pitching in the World Series at Yankee Stadium. He had a perfect game going, and when he blew away the last hitter – usually Mark McGwire – with a blazing fastball, his teammates mobbed him and carried him off the field on their shoulders. He took baseball cards of Ryan Klesko, and the old ones of Nolan Ryan, and whited out the Kleskos and Nolans, and wrote inRossetti. Then he pasted the cards onto the wall next to his bed and stared at them every night before he went to sleep.
Ryan was the superstar of his team in the Joe Torre Little League. He was a good hitter, but his pitching stood out. When he was eleven years old he had better poise on the mound than most high school kids, and he had great movement and outstanding control. But Ryan knew that if he wanted to pitch in the big leagues, his height would be a major obstacle. Most big-league pitchers were at least six feet, and most successful ones were taller than that. The tallest person in Ryan’s family, his uncle Stan, was five-ten, and Ryan’s father was only five-eight. Ryan’s Little League coach told him that if he was serious about making it as a baseball player he should focus on playing second base, where height wouldn’t be as much of a factor. Ryan was thinking about it, but then, when he was fourteen, he saw an Olympic gymnast interviewed on TV. The gymnast had some childhood disease that she’d overcome to make her dream come true, and she said she’d made it because she didn’t quit; she knew in her heartwhat she was meant to do, and she wouldn’t let anything stop her. Ryan felt the same way, and decided either he’d make it as a pitcher or he wouldn’t make it at all.
During junior high and all through high school, Ryan did yoga stretches and hung upside down on gravity boots, and took vitamins and minerals and drank protein drinks with brewer’s yeast, bee pollen, and soya lecithin, trying desperately to increase his height. But when he was seventeen, he stood at only five-nine and three-quarters. His lack of size didn’t seem to have much of an effect on his pitching, though, because he was still the most dominating high school pitcher inNew York, and maybe the whole East Coast. Although he didn’t throw particularly hard – his fastball peaked in the low to mid-eighties – he still had great movement on his pitches and uncanny control. Most games he walked at most one or two hitters – remarkable for a teenager. He also threw a great hook. You weren’t supposed to throw curves until you were finished growing, because it could tear up your elbow, but Ryan’s curveball broke so sharply, and he had such great control of it, that he couldn’t resist tossing at least a few of them every time he pitched. He’d wait for the key spots in the games, when he was ahead in the count and really needed a strikeout, and then he’d let one fly. The batter would usually duck out of the batter’s box, thinking the ball was heading right toward his head; then a stunned look would appear on his face as the pitch nailed the inside or outside corner and the ump called him out.
During the spring of his senior year of high school, scouts became seriously interested in Ryan. They watched every game he pitched, and there was talk that the Dodgers, Cubs, Indians, and Astros wanted to sign him. But while the scouts were very impressed with Ryan and viewed him as one of the top prospects in the country, Ryan was always ‘the other guy’scouts came to see on the South Shore team. The guy they were really drooling over was Ryan’s South Shore teammate, Jake Thomas.
Unlike Ryan, who’d worked his butt off to get where he was, baseball came easy to Jake. His father, Antowain Thomas, had been a star running back in high school and college, and Jake had inherited a perfect athlete’s body. He never had to work out or do anything extra to improve his game. While Ryan was living and breathing baseball as a kid, Jake played other sports, and after school and on weekends he spent his time doing things that other kids did, like playing video games and going to movies and chasing girls. Jake played in Ryan’s Little League, and, although Jake never showed up for practice and didn’t seem to care very much about the games, the coach always put him in the cleanup spot in the order, and every time he came to the plate he seemed to hit monstrous home runs or screaming line drives.
During their sophomore year of high school, theCanarsie Courierdid an article about Jake and Ryan, calling them ‘The Dynamic Duo,’ and the nickname stuck throughout their high school careers. Additional articles in theCourierand other local papers made a big deal about how Jake and Ryan had grown up on the same block, had played Little League baseball together, and were a sure thing to make the majors. EvenSports Illustrateddid a small article about them, calling the two Brooklyn kids ‘hugely talented,’ and‘can’t-miss prospects.’
Although the press made out as though Jake and Ryan had been best friends all their lives and that making it to the big leagues together would be a dream come true for both of them, this was far from the truth. Ryan and Jake had never been friends. When they were kids they played together all the time because their mothers were best friends and they lived three houses away from each other, but they’d never gotten along. There had always been a rivalry between them, a competitiveness about everything they did. It didn’t matter if they were playing Wiffle ball or stickball or having a footrace on the street on the way home from school– they always tried their hardest to beat each other. Jake and Ryan dominated in high school, breaking most of the Public Schools Athletic League’s hitting and pitching records. Jake was pegged as the surefire number one pick in the nation. While the scouts were impressed with Ryan’s control, toughness, and competitive spirit, they were concerned about his size. Ryan tried to convince them that he was still growing, that he’d have a growth spurt while he was in the minors, but the scouts had researched the height of people in Ryan’s family and knew the chances that Ryan would ever be taller than five-ten were slim.
It helped Ryan’s cause that he was pitching so lights out. In his senior year, his record was eleven and oh, he averaged thirteen strikeouts and less than two walks per seven innings, and he tossed five shutouts and the perfect game. Despite his lack of size, Ryangot drafted, in the fourth round, by the Cleveland Indians. At best he had hoped to be drafted in the sixth or seventh round, so he was thrilled. Meanwhile, Jake got drafted as the first overall pick in the nation. The night of the draft Ryan and Jake and most of their teammates stayed out all night partying. It seemed like the fairy-tale story of the two kids from Brooklyn was going to have a fairy-tale ending.
But things didn’t work out so well – or at least they didn’t work out so well for Ryan.
