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Where was I, he thought, panicky, this afternoon? He’d picked up Fetter’s books at two-thirty and then stopped by Dunphy’s for his check, and then? He’d gotten home around five — but what about the two hours between Dunphy’s and then? He frowned, his mind gone blank for a moment, a chill working up his back. Ah! the stationer’s! He’d stopped by the stationer’s to order a supply of number ten ledger sheets — or was that yesterday? He felt sweat pop on his brow and saw with his mind’s eye, in kleig-lit detail this time, the great mound of her lying there, the doughlike face where once the frightened, pretty girl had lived.

“I myself never married,” the guy next to him said, and Phil, as though conducting a dialogue half in silence, thought: Nor should I have. He remembered sharply the mousy little hand in his that night, nearly crushed to mush. And so little touching since then: none, in fact. She’d been afraid; and he — what? — too fastidious, too tidy.

“Otherwise,” the guy said, chuckling, “I don’t suppose I’d mind if some hophead busted in one day and wiped her out. Most married guys I know—” He rambled on again.

Of course! Phil thought. That’s what happened — some junkie broke in — the open door — strangled her, and then ran. Just before he got home. The thought relaxed him for a moment. But having wished her death all these years, he argued with himself, would it be just that someone else obliged him? His orderly mind rejected random chance. You do not balance books that way. But had he done it — with these hands — or, having killed her a thousand times, had random chance been his ally on the thousand and first? It needed sorting out, the facts columniated in tidier groups. He pushed money across the bar and ordered another drink.

It was coming clearer, the outline of a decision hovering into view. He would stop by the precinct station and make a statement. He liked that — a statement; like a financial statement, with all the figures neatly tabulated and a balance struck. There must be a balance, he thought, always a balance, between debit and credit. Between good and bad. His bookkeeper’s heart relaxed. He put more money on the bar. “Buy everybody a drink,” he told Sully, “and yourself too.”

He would get good and drunk — a final catharsis — and then get on with the books. No balance had ever eluded him yet.

Road Trip

by Dick Stodghill

Tony Drakes batting average had plummeted...

* * *

We flew out of O’Hare on a six o clock charter and nobody was sorry to say goodbye to Chi after dropping three in a row to the Cubs.

Bill Brophy had buttonholed me before we boarded the bus at Wrigley Field and said, “Let’s wait till we get to Cincy to eat, have a late dinner at the Maisonette.” It was O.K. with me. They’d serve a meal on the plane, but unless I’ve got both feet on the ground the only nourishment I want comes out of a bottle.

After we were settled in at the Netherland Hilton I met him in the lobby and we walked the few blocks to the restaurant. We had just started on our salads when Tony Drake, the Stars’ third baseman, walked in alone. He nodded but kept going when Brophy waved to him to join us. I wasn’t surprised — Drake was a loner.

A few minutes later a silvery blonde with curves in all the right places slinked by our table and I gave her a double take because I had seen her at the Hyatt Regency back in Chicago and again at Wrigley Field. You run across a lot of good-looking women around the league but she wasn’t one you’d mistake for somebody else. I rubbernecked and, sure enough, she sat down at Drake’s table.

Brophy grinned. “Looks like Tony’s been busy since he hit town,” he said. I just stared at him because I knew it wasn’t that way. There isn’t much that surprises me but this did. A woman like that and Tony Drake didn’t add up any way you looked at it.

The next morning I was having a late breakfast at the hotel when Drake came in and joined me. He seemed uneasy, preoccupied, but you expect that from someone who hasn’t had a hit in more than a week. That starts any ball player, except maybe a few of the really big names, wondering if he might be in line for a ticket to Pawtucket or Columbus, Georgia.

Drake was halfway through his third season in the majors but only his second as a regular. He was a better-than-average gloveman and a steady .275 hitter until recently. Kind of a shy kid out of a small town in Iowa. A pro ball player for six of his twenty-four years but still a little in awe of the big cities, a little naive.

Something was on his mind or he wouldn’t have sat down without so much as a nod from me first. Some of the Stars would pull up a chair if you were in conference with the Commissioner himself, but not Drake. I cleaned up my steak and eggs. As he ordered breakfast I pulled my coffee cup closer and lit a cigarette. “Gonna be a warm day,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Humid.”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that little gal back in Iowa?” He was engaged to a pink-cheeked, corn-fed hometown girl. She and her parents had taken in a series at St. Louis earlier in the year and Drake had showed her off like a prize heifer.

“She’s O.K.,” he said, and his face turned two shades redder than the Stars’ caps. “You saw me with that woman last night, didn’t you?”

I nodded and watched him over the rim of my cup. He wanted to say more but didn’t know how to go about it. He picked at his food when it came and when any ball player does that you know something’s wrong. After a while he pushed the plate aside with half his breakfast still on it and we got up and went our own ways.

It was an off-day — Thursday usually is in Cincinnati — but Pat McGann, the Stars’ manager, had called an afternoon batting practice. Drake wasn’t the only one not hitting and the team average had dipped to a paltry .252, not good for a division contender. Scoring only two runs in three games at Wrigley Field, a hitters’ paradise, was even more disturbing. Those three straight losses while the Phillies were winning two out of three had dropped the Stars five games behind. In late July that gets you worrying.

Before the session got started I interviewed McGann and then walked out and stood around the batting cage with the rest of the writers who traveled with the team and one from a Cincinnati paper. I jotted down a few comments I could use. Nothing much, just the usual trite stuff, but a couple were a little funny — the dry kind that some ball players must lie awake nights thinking up.

When it was over I went back to the hotel, wrote a story — off day or not, they expect one — and then banged out about two-thirds of a column for Sunday. That left me with nothing to do until the game the next night. After dinner with Brophy and a couple of the players at Grammer’s, a good German restaurant a mile or so north of the hotel, I settled in the lobby with The Sporting News.

About nine o’clock Drake got off the elevator, brushed past a couple of Baseball Annies who rushed over when they spotted him, and went down the stairs and out the door. On a hunch I got up and tagged along behind. He walked a couple of blocks and went into a small tavern. I didn’t want him to know I was nosing around so I loitered in front of a store across the street.

After maybe fifteen minutes he came out and headed back toward the hotel. I dodged traffic and entered the tavern. Just as I’d expected, there was the blonde at a table, and sitting beside her was a slick-looking character, the kind that makes you check to be sure your wallet’s still in your pocket.