The Cincinnati clubhouse is really plush, right down to the red wall-to-wall carpet. The elevator had already made its second run down from the press box so writers and broadcasters were lined up two deep in front of the winning pitcher’s cubicle. I made do with a few words of wisdom from a muscular outfielder who had hit one downtown and walked into Feisty Parker’s private office. The Cincy manager had a plate of chicken, another of sliced tomatoes, and a big glass of milk in front of him but he ignored them long enough to help me out with a few quick, pointed remarks about the trouble the Stars were having.
I rode back upstairs and called Ted Constable, my sports editor, and he got the managing editor, Ken Knight, on an extension. I explained the situation and Knight said the paper would pay the freight for Marchetti. Ted told me to get busy and send over a sidebar on Drake’s disappearance along with my game story.
When Brophy came back up, I wormed a couple of things out of him that McGann had said once he unlocked the door. I got my copy out in a hurry, sent it over on the teleprinter, and was back at the hotel by one o’clock and in the sack half an hour later.
Marchetti walked into the hotel dining room at seven-thirty in the morning. He wouldn’t say a word until he had gulped a cup of coffee, but he grinned when I told him he was working for the newspaper and not me personally. Brophy just about popped an eyeball when he came in and saw Marchetti with me and then shot a few daggers my direction when I shooed him away from the table. He sat down in a booth fifteen feet away. His right ear looked like the RCA Victor trumpet, but we made sure he couldn’t hear anything.
I filled Marchetti in on the little I knew. He thought about it a while and then told me his first move would be checking the car-rental outfits.
“He’s a troubled young man,” Marchetti said. “Five’ll get you ten he’s holed up in some small town to think over whatever it is that’s bugging him. He’d want to get away from the city to a place where he felt more comfortable. Any idea where he’d head?”
“Back toward Iowa, I’ll bet. But I doubt if he’d go very far.”
We walked up to the lobby and I bought a large road atlas at the newsstand. Marchetti crammed it in his flight bag in case we ran into Brophy again and we went on up to my room and looked it over.
“Indiana,” I said. “If your idea is right, he’d want to get away from metropolitan Cincinnati. I don’t think he’d go north or east, that’d keep him in Ohio, and I doubt if he’d head south into Kentucky. Indiana would seem more like home, so he’d drive west. And if he really started out for Iowa that would put him in Indiana too.”
Marchetti nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s look at Indiana.” I thumbed pages to the right map and then we studied it for a minute or two.
“Maybe he’d follow the river,” I said. “How about Lawrenceburg or Madison?”
Marchetti shook his head. “Naw, look at that road. It follows every bend in the Ohio. Not knowing the area, he’d take an interstate. Probably stop at the first place he came to with a motel or hotel that wasn’t too conspicuous.” He ran a finger along I-74 and said, “Batesville, Greensburg, or Shelbyville, I’ll bet.”
“That’s if he left town at all. He might be holed up right here in Cincy.”
“Not unless he’s got a friend who’d hide him out. Do you know of any?”
“No, and I doubt if Drake would have made any friends here. This would be — let’s see — only the sixth time he’s been in Cincinnati, and he isn’t the type to make friends in a hurry.”
We went back downstairs. Marchetti was going to check on car rentals while I went to the other hotel to see if Teresa and her friend were still there. They were. Marchetti didn’t come up with anything but he had rented a car and by nine-thirty we were cruising along the interstate toward Indiana.
We reached Batesville, our first stop, in an hour. We had seen several signs along the highway touting an old inn downtown so we headed for it, figuring Drake might have done the same thing. Sure enough, when I showed the woman at the desk a photo of Drake in street clothes, she said he was in Room 22.
Talk about luck. I guess Marchetti would have called it headwork.
We climbed the stairs. I knocked on the door and when Drake asked, “Who’s there?” Marchetti said, “Maintenance man.”
Drake’s jaw dropped when he opened the door and saw me standing there. He tried to slam it shut again but Marchetti was in the way. Drake shrugged his shoulders and said, “O.K., come on in.”
It wasn’t a situation where you’d start off talking about the weather so I said, “What’s the trouble, Tony?”
He slumped down in a chair, lowered his head, and shook it without saying anything.
“Something to do with that woman, right?”
He looked up at me, surprised. I guess farm kids aren’t as suspicious by nature as people like me. Of course newspapermen get paid for being nosy. “How’d you know?” he said.
I introduced Marchetti and said, “He checked up on her. She’s a con artist, Tony, and so is the guy with her.”
He shook his head again and said, “No, you’ve got her wrong. The man too. He’s her lawyer — Mr. Mendelbaum.”
Marchetti and I laughed. Schnell had given Tony a name that at least sounded like a lawyer’s.
“He’s no lawyer, buddy,” Marchetti said and went on to explain who Schnell really was and then told Tony about Teresa.
Tony sat there slack-jawed, moving his head from side to side. He had never encountered people like that before.
“They’re shaking you down, aren’t they, Tony?” I said. “What about?”
Tony looked guilty as sin. “It’s not the way you think. She’s pregnant. She’s a nice lady, but she says she has no choice but to file a paternity suit unless I can give her fifty thousand so she can get away someplace and have the baby. Mr. Mendelbaum has the papers all drawn up.”
Marchetti whistled and asked, “Could she be?”
Drake’s face was crimson. He nodded his head and stammered, “The first time we were in Chicago. You’ve got her wrong though. She’s real nice, but if Myra hears about this—”
Myra was the girl back in Iowa. He was right about what she’d think — not to mention Mom and Dad and everybody else in that little burg. Teresa had picked her man with care.
“Tony,” I said, “you don’t even make fifty grand a year, do you?”
He was staring at the floor. “Forty-seven,” he mumbled.
That was the one point where Teresa had gone wrong. She and Schnell must have heard about some of those inflated salaries the big names get and figured it applied to everybody. It doesn’t, not by a long sight. Another good season or two and Drake might be in the six-figure bracket, but if he slipped even a little more he never would be.
As for the paternity suit, it’s the big rage. A woman gets pregnant, claims a ball player or a movie star or a politician is responsible, and there’s a fair chance he’ll lay a settlement on her just to keep it out of the papers. Ball players are sitting ducks even more than the others because anybody who can read the sports pages can find out exactly where they are on any given day for seven or eight months out of the year. A wet-behind-the-ears kid like Drake would be especially vulnerable to the threat. If he’d had the money, you can bet he would have handed it over in a hurry.
I said, “Tony, she’s no more pregnant than I am. These aren’t a couple of people off the street, they’re convicted shakedown artists and the only way to deal with them is to call their bluff and put them back behind bars.”
His head came up, his face agonized. “But it’ll be in the papers!” he said. “Everybody’ll know about it!”