Final Fling

Chapter 1

On the day Bonabell's husband died, Carole's 33rd District Court softball team played its league championship game at Hazen Pingree Field, a small civic ballpark not far from the Light Guard Armory on Detroit's north side.

That is, they started to play. Didn't get past the top of the fourth.

But that was the last thing Raeanne and I were expecting when we arrived at the park that fine Monday afternoon. Innocently enough we fully expected at least nine innings of see-saw, smash-mouth softball. Carole's team, the Pepto Abysmals, were 15-3 on the season. Their opponents, Reese's Pieces -- named, in a blatant suck-up move, for the sponsoring court's chief judge -- was 17-1. And highly favored. They had home field advantage and, so rumor had it, better quality ringers. Besides, I could see as we wandered toward the visitors' dugout, the Pieces were fielding a full squad and then some. They must have had 20 players of all genders decked out in yellow, taking BP and doing fielding drills as players, officials, and a smattering of fans drifted in.

The Pepto Abysmals, on the other hand, were hurtin for certain. I knew that two players were still on vacation trips, and one was out sick. Plus, our best pitcher -- Carole Somers: 33rd district court judge and mother of my only child -- was on the DL with a sore knee.

"She coming?" Rich Page, the Abysmals' coach, asked me as Raeanne and I reached the visitor dugout.

"Due to," I replied, "if only to cheer the team on."

Rich, the 33rd's chief probation officer, was a fit chiseled and sailboat-tanned forty-something with bright eyes that missed nothing. Studying his clipboard with half his attention, and his players' fielding practice with the other, he asked, "Mind coaching third for me, Ben?"

"Charmed."

"Thanks. Rip's at first."

"Ooh."

Rich glanced at me quickly. "Yeah, I know. But I'm short-handed."

Unwillingly I looked across the diamond. Sure enough, there stood Rip Brownlee behind the first base bag already -- a good half-hour before play ball. He gave me his pumped, fellow-jock wave, and I tossed him a quick salute. Quietly I said, "Maybe put me at first, and – "

"Nah, coaching third, Rip'd hurt us worse, waving runners home on busted-bat singles and like that."

"Good point. But, coaching first, Rip sends everyone stealing, even the lame and the halt."

"I'll speak with him. Which reminds me." Rich glanced at me from under his ball cap. "Just a head's up, okay? These officials working this game? They've expressed little interest in your assessment of the quality of their calls."

"That so?" I grinned.

"In fact, it's fair to say they would probably take serious exception to any, uh, observations you may feel compelled to make."

"No problem, Coach."

"Raise your right hand and repeat after me: ‘the umpire is not a mother fucker.'"

"Got it."

"Thanks, Ben." Looking toward first, Rich whistled and beckoned at Rip, who jogged self-importantly across the diamond. I drifted back to Raeanne, who was snapping open our folding chairs behind the chain link fence, between the visitor dugout and the spindly grandstand. "Coaching third again," I told her. "Silently this time."

"Silently, huh? As requested by Rich?" she asked with a quiet smile.

"Control freak, is what he is."

"So you don't almost get our team disqualified?" she asked, bemused. "Rich has a concern about that?"

"My expertise goes unappreciated among the officiating community, is the whole problem."

"Expertise earned at, don't tell me. Redford High School. In the year of Our Lord nineteen . . .when-again?"

"Be still, you." We smiled at each other as Raeanne slipped lithely onto a lawn chair. She wore sandals, white shorts, and a white halter top knotted demurely below her breasts. Lightly tanned, she was even more willowy than usual, being involved those days in a lot of TV and conscious of the camera's tendency to add pounds. Her black hair was wavy now, flowing to her shoulders around an oval delicate face most notable for, besides her quiet beauty, an aura of placid calm. No sign whatever of the fierce concentration and the intensity with which she went about her work.

"So," I added, "I'll only be sitting with you half the time."

"I understand," she mock-sighed. "Just a softball widow over here."

Sitting beside her, I took her hand. She interlocked our fingers, her slender ones delicate and trusting in my larger rougher mitt. In companionable silence we waited. With my free hand I lighted a short cork-tipped cigar with a kitchen match struck on my thumbnail and idly observed our dugout, where players drifted in and out and Rich Page intently counseled the taller Rip Brownlee. Paying only token attention to the coach, Rip was, I could see, eyeing the female players, checking out moms and daughters among the fans who trooped by, his avid eye interested in any female at all between eighteen and eighty, leaving no bust unstudied, no limb unconsidered, no ass unappraised. Rip's wife, our right fielder, received an especial big welcome from Rip: big wave, cheery call, toothy grin. Selecting her bat and stepping up the baseline to stretch and swing and chat with her girlfriends, Bonabell totally ignored him.

"Whoa," Raeanne breathed.

"Yeah," I said idly, "things still not good, I reckon."

"Can't blame her."

"Shit no."

The warm summer breeze wafted my cigar smoke into nothingness over the ball diamond, fully occupied now by yellow Pieces and blue Abysmals engaged in stretching and practice drills. As I smoked, I thought about how rough things were for Bonabell and Rip, and how good things were for me. What a great summer this was turning out to be. Everybody around me was healthy and reasonably happy. My official job – maintenance/security supervision at Norwegian Wood – was droning along in dull, predictable routine. Our annual rumor about the place being sold had already been circulated, savored, and duly discredited. My sideline private detective work, centered of late on employee background checks, building security, debt collection, and internal theft investigations, was routine and consistent and adequately funding beer, cigars, CDs, DVDs, fuel, and all my play-purty. I'd flown my ultralight to St. Marys and back; on impulse ridden my chopped Sportster entirely around the state of Michigan one weekend. And on this middle August night we were reaching the end of what had been a hell of a good softball season. Rachel was great and Raeanne was even better. Things were so good, it was hard to believe it had been a year and change since I butted heads with a real live bad guy –

"What's wrong, Ben?" Raeanne asked quietly.

"Not a thing, sweetheart."

The spindly steel-and-wood grandstand steadily filled with spectators, raising the noise level to a din of cheerful anticipation. Past the wood fence that bordered the diamond, a gravel parking area stretched around the property, flanked by big trees. Beyond those was Eight Mile Road, from which vans and SUVs and cars steadily turned into the parking lot. One of these was a dark blue Thumper wagon: Carole & Company, here at last. Setting my cigar on the grass to go cold, I started around the diamond to meet them, glad as always for something physical to do. Halfway there I was intercepted by, wouldn't you know it, Rip Brownlee. "Hi Ben!" he boomed, giving my shoulder his usual athlete-to-athlete buddy punch. "Glad we're gonna be working together again!"

"Hi, Rip. Yeah, should be a good one."

I wanted to move on, but Rip, born salesman, wouldn't let me without being rude. He was one of those guys, those social velcro types who instinctively know how to cling to you with a thousand tiny hooks. He was in his late thirties, sleek and greyhound-like and baked brown. A handsome man in a Ken-doll-like way, he sported this year's obligatory goatee and a tattoo of a gothic cross on his hairy shoulder. He wore a trim purple tank top and canvas shorts and sandals, and positively reeked of cologne. So naturally he had to step closer to me, a half foot closer than was comfortable. Surprisingly – because as a rule I like most people, at least them what don't piss me off – I found Rip to be less than likeable. But even knowing his history, it was hard to actually detest old Rip. Out here on the athletic field, where I'm pretty sure he'd never accomplished much, Rip had an innocent enthusiasm about him, a bouncy boyishness that brought out tolerance you did not know you had. And he honestly tried to be nice, but not so hard that you hated his guts or anything. "I'm videotaping the game," he said, holding up his Sony camcorder importantly. "I think I could make a few shekels selling copies, don't you?"

"Might could." I looked toward the parking lot. Carole was unloading Rachel from her car seat; Will, Carole's 12-year-old, carried the diaper bag. "Listen, Carole's here, I'd better –"

"Oh sure! Fine! No problem!" he blustered, and headed back across the diamond, camcorder dangling.

Carole met me at the halfway point and handed Rachel to me with obvious relief. I hefted my daughter in my arms and landed a smooch that she endured with regal acceptance. Walking the group back toward our seats, I asked her mom, "How's the knee?"

"Well, I can walk and drive," Her Honor answered. "And I really wanted to play tonight. I tried some wind-ups at home this morning, and it's just too much. I couldn't go an inning, let alone the distance."

Rachel -- nine months old now and mobile -- squirmed in my arms. Her prattle was na-na-na, which I pretended not to understand; I wasn't about to let her run loose, not yet. "Rich was wondering if you were coming," I said as we reached Raeanne and the chairs.

"Toddlers," Carole said, which explained it all. Leaning down, she hugged Raeanne briefly and settled with relief into the chair I'd been occupying. Will Somers, Carole's stocky 12-year-old, ambled over to the dugout to hang with the players. I cuddled the squirmy Rachel and watched the two other women of my life as they idly chit-chatted, with those impossible-to-decode gestures that are, I've discerned, so central to female communication. The hugging notwithstanding, they were not friends or even chums. They were proper, and cordial enough, but for all their individual warmth, they were both hard-headed realists.

In other ways they were a study in contrast. At 37 Carole was older by seven years, quite a bit taller, with blond hair that swept just to her shoulders. She had dark eyes and a snub nose and, most of the time, a probing, serious demeanor -- suitable for a district court judge, but one that could, and did, transition in an instant to a warm smiling glow at the sight of her daughter, or her son, or -- once upon a time, at least -- me. She wore tan slacks and flat sandals with the thongs that wound around her ankles, and a loose fitting short sleeved cream shirt. Even out here, at a sporting event on a late Monday afternoon in mid-August, she felt compelled to dress up a tad, conscious of the presence of her colleagues.

Rachel, having finally had enough, slithered to the sandy ground, and darted to the chain link fence to watch the practicing players under the watchful eyes of me and her mom. She was a chunk: thirty-plus pounds, with her mother's blond hair and longish limbs, and her dad's dark blue eyes and (or so the rumor went) attitude. Beyond her, standing alone at the mouth of the dugout, Rip Brownlee stared out at the infield where his wife was playing catch with Maria Martinez. From his shorts pocket blared chimes, and he answered his cell phone: a brief call, and nothing to remark on, at least not then. Rachel, in one of her trademark bursts of speed, picked just then to lunge toward our dugout. I collared her just barely in time. Rich Page trotted back from home plate, having exchanged lineup cards and done the other pre-game festivities. "Batta up," he said. Bonabell Brownlee, bat under arm, strode toward the plate, eyes intent under the bill of her ball cap. "Fouts on deck," Rich added. "Pepple in the hole."

Parking the displeased Rachel with her mom, I trotted out to the box behind third, swivelled my ball cap backward, and bent forward, hands on knees. Anyone studying the field would have noticed that I was a bit older than the average player. I was more tanned than the average player – lots of outdoors work. And I was probably in better shape than most of the players, who were pretty much desk-bound office types. As usual I was dressed in my bang-around best – dark jeans, running shoes, and a loose comfortable Detroit Tigers teeshirt. I felt loose and easy out there, excited about the game, grateful, in my own small way, to be part of it.

The crowd of two hundred plus calmed down to a low murmur as the pitcher set, wound, and hurled his last warmup pitch. He was tall and lean and had a practiced, arm-snapping release that sent the softball blurring in to leather-smack the catcher's mitt with a puff of dust. I suspected he was one of the ringers. For one thing, the tatts. He may have been playing for a district court team, but he looked more like a defendant.

Bonabell Bovee Brownlee was a sweet woman, an earnest worker (according to Carole), and a hardworking player, but not, by a long shot, our greatest hitter. Still, her sharp eyes, patience, and a pronounced (and perhaps masochistic) tendency to get hit by pitches gave her a knack for getting on base, so she always led off for us. Rich had spent all season trying to teach her not to swing at the very first pitch, so, naturally, that's exactly what she did tonight. And, wouldn't you know it, this time she connected perfectly: thonk. The ball leapt in a white blur straight out center field, rising, rising, rising as if to go into orbit. It cleared the fence by 20 feet, just missed one of the big trees, and started down only as it neared Eight Mile Road. As cheers rose from the stands, Bonabell, dazed, stood at the plate admiring it, then – with ladylike precision that always cracked me up – set her bat down on the dirt and began her very first-ever home run trot. Her husband, taping her all the way, gave her a hearty swat on her ample rump as she tagged first. The 33rd District Court fans, a distinct minority tonight, continued to whoop and holler from the dugout and the stands as she touched second. I high-fived the beaming newly minted slugger as she rounded third. Back in the dugout, Bonabell took the hugs and handshakes and head-butts of her teammates, face alight and joyous.

That smile, that beam of pure, not-a-worry-in-the-world pleasure -- who could have known that was that last of those we'd ever see?