I am smart, fast, but big. Size is not always an advantage—if Bernie had figured out this route ahead of me, her lithe little body would have floated up like a gymnast’s.
I grabbed the ledge, swung my legs up and fell again. My shoulders and hamstrings were already feeling the strain. Turned around, palms on the ledge behind me, pushed down and jumped at the same time, got my butt inserted into the deeper space left by the window, swung my legs over.
Four inches of ledge supported eight inches of thigh, unstable. I moved fast. Balance beam, yes, we used to jump on a beam no wider than this in high school. I straddled the ledge, pushed myself standing. You can still do this, girl, even if it’s been thirty years.
Light from the streetlamps on Clark provided a dim glow, enough that I didn’t need the flashlight to see where I was going. I started a heel-to-toe walk along the narrow ridge, heading for the brick wall underneath the bleachers.
Headlights appeared, reflected in the glass of the building across the street. A squad car making its rounds. I froze, my shape a dark silhouette. If they looked up—they shone their spot on Gate L, some ten feet in front of me, decided it was secure, moved on. The shirt under my warm-up jacket was wet with sweat. The cold wind began turning it into an ice pack against my back. Get in motion, warm those muscles up again.
Someone was coming up Waveland toward me, but I couldn’t stop now. I walked up the wall until my knees were at squat angle, got a hand up, grabbed the clay tiles at the top of the wall. One last hoist, come on, Warshawski, you fast smart detective, do it.
“What you doing up there?”
I was lying on top of the clay tiles, a beached whale. The drunk I’d passed earlier, or maybe a different drunk, was standing underneath me.
“Practicing for the Olympics,” I said. “The wall-climbing event.”
“Seems kind of a funny place to practice.”
“Yeah, I can’t afford a gym.”
I got to my hands and knees. My muscles were wobbly, not good, since I had a lot more stadium to cover. Right hand forward on the sloping clay tile, left knee, left hand, right knee.
“You fall, you gonna crack your head open, no Olympics, no medals,” my companion said. “They got those places on the Internet where people give you money, you say you need to join a gym, they pay your membership.”
I grunted. Crowd-sourcing, what a great idea. Way better to be in a gym than creeping along the clay tiles of Wrigley Field in the dark.
“You ain’t the first to be up here practicing, case you interested,” my friend said, as if the memory had just pinged a neuron. “Other person didn’t say nothing about no Olympics. Maybe they stealing a march on you, or maybe you ain’t no Olympic athlete yourself.”
I sat up, banging a knee into the edge of one of the tiles. “When was this?” I tried to keep my voice casual.
“Oh, tonight. Don’t have me no watch, can’t tell you exactly when, but when I called out, he moved fast, way faster than you, missy. If he’s your rival, you better get your faster moves worked out.”
“He? It was a man?”
“Didn’t ask for an ID. Small kid, might have been twelve or thirteen. Wore one of those big sweatshirts, got caught on the tiles. He moved like a crab through the sand with a kingfisher after him and if you’d a asked me, I’d a said he was breaking in, not training for no Olympics. What about you?”
“I think he was breaking in, too.” Bernie, Boom-Boom’s jersey hiding her breasts, small, agile, looking like a twelve-year-old boy in the dim light.
“Meaning, maybe you breaking in, too. Like the older guys coming after the boy.”
My heart skipped a beat. Two beats. “They climb up after him?”
“They not as spry as you and the boy. They saw him go over the wall. One stood on the other’s shoulders, but he fell over, they both swore a blue streak, then they tried using a crowbar on Gate L here, only then the po-lice drove by, they took off.”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” I said. “I’m not in the Olympics. That’s my kid, running away from home, and I’ve got to find him before he hurts himself. Thanks for the tip.”
The drunk sat on his haunches, watching me. “Yeah, I didn’t figure you for no Olympic athlete,” he said under his breath.
Ignore the grinding pain in the knees where the tiles cut through my jeans. Force the numb fingers to cling to the tiles. Inch by inch, until I felt the metal of the staircase next to me, a sharper shape in the shapeless night. I swung the right leg out and over the stairwell fence bar, slipped, fell backward onto the bleacher stairs.
“Hey! You in the ballpark now!” my cheering squad shouted. “You don’t belong in there, they gonna arrest you, give you fines.”
I didn’t bother responding.
“Hey, you still alive?” the drunk shouted. “You find any beer, you drop it over the wall, you hear?”
I sat up, rubbed my tailbone. Everything in one piece. I’d done the easy part.
RUNDOWN
I skirted the bleachers and clambered into the right-field stands.
“Bernie!” I shouted. “Bernie!”