Strike Three You're Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

ignored his agent’s advice against making risky real estate investments. Rudy and the Minnesota Twins had parted company the previous winter shortly after he announced to the press that the Twins were “the horniest team in baseball and the guys want to get laid so bad they don’t have time to think about fundamentals.”
    Harvey liked Rudy for the very traits that some of their teammates regarded as bush league. Even when Harvey was angry at him, it was with the affectionate disdain of an older brother. At the same time he knew, even if Rudy didn’t, that their friendship would never have existed outside of baseball.
    Harvey stopped into a neighborhood tavern on Hope called the Nip ‘n’ Tuck. At noon, the only other customer was a woman in a floral housedress conversing with herself and stubbing out menthol cigarettes almost as soon as she lit them with a trembling hand. Harvey drank a bottle of Narragansett, slid off the stool, and went to the phone booth by the men’s room.
    Harvey dialed his older brother’s number in Evanston, Illinois. “Hi, Norm,” he said when his brother answered.
    “What’s the good news, Harv?” Norm said. “You calling from a submarine?” The connection was bad, and Norm’s voice sounded metallic.
    “I’m calling from a bar in Providence.”
    “You guys get rained out today?”
    “No. Rudy Furth was murdered last night.”
    There was a slight pause on Norm’s end. “You called to tell me that? C’mon, Furth hasn’t been able to get anyone out all season.”
    “Someone killed him last night. Dead.”
    A longer pause this time. “Wait a second. You’re not kidding, are you?”
    Harvey supplied what he could of the details. “I had to call someone,” he said.
    “Christ, that’s really horrible.” Another pause. “Born Racine, Wisconsin,” Norm said suddenly. “Lifetime record of forty-four and fifty-nine, two years with the Reds, four with the Twins. Are there any suspects?”
    Norm was a compulsive student of baseball and its statistics; Harvey thought Norm got more pleasure out of his baseball career than he himself did. If Norm didn’t know exactly how to respond to the news of Rudy’s murder, it was because he saw ball players less as human beings than as lines of agate type in The Baseball Encyclopedia.
    “Harv? You there, Harv?”
    “I’m here.”
    “Look, I know how you must feel.”
    “Good, because I don’t. I shared a hotel room with the guy in every city in the league. I know what color his goddamn toothbrush is—” He broke off.
    “You going to be all right?” Norm said.
    “Yeah. I’ll call you soon. Say hi to Linda.”
    “Harv, if you want to talk about it—”
    “I’ll talk to you soon, Norm.”
    Harvey walked along College Hill, where the streets have reassuring names like Hope, Friendship, Beneficent, and Benevolent. He lived on Benefit, halfway up the hill, where most of the buildings were Federal or Victorian or Greek Revival. The beauty of the neighborhood seemed to be trying to atone for the dreariness of the rest of the city. He had a few immense rooms on the second floor of a rambling red brick Victorian mansion, owned originally by General Ambrose E. Burnside, who served as governor of Rhode Island after the Civil War. This fact interested Harvey, who had written his undergraduate thesis on the Army of the Potomac. He didn’t particularly like Burnside—neither had President Lincoln—but he was willing to forgive him his mistakes in return for an apartment with high ceilings, a bow window, and a reasonably flattering view of Providence.
    Once inside, he flipped on the air conditioner and stood in the middle of his living room looking at his two mismatched club chairs, his horsehair love seat, and the swaying stacks of paperbacks on the floor next to the windows. Two neglected scheffleras and a framed poster for a Philip Guston exhibition constituted his only attempts at interior decoration. It was no way for someone who