Briessen shook his head. “I’m trying to be like Tom. I’m still holding out hope that everything will work out.”
DeMarco’s smile felt forced and crudely drawn. But he held it until he was down on the street.
Twenty-Seven
From behind a thicket of thorny bushes on the edge of a field, Huston studied the collection of small, white buildings two hundred yards to the northeast. One, two, three…seven wooden buildings in all if he did not count the dugouts at the two ball fields. Each of the buildings was painted white, each with a red metal roof. He knew he had seen them before but he could not remember when. Two equipment sheds, both centered between the Little League field and what was probably the girls’ softball field, one building maybe thirty feet long, twice as long as the other. Two restrooms, actually one building with two entrances back to back. Then a small building behind the batting cage, and beside it a building of identical size—a pump house and a shed for the power boxes and meters? And the largest building, the long narrow one between the two ball fields, recessed equidistant some twenty yards behind the backstops and boarded up tightly, the concession stand. Both ball fields had lights and electronic scoreboards. Both had expensive fencing and an array of stadium bleachers. The entire complex seemed more suitable for a small college than for a tiny village twenty miles from nowhere.
Then he remembered. The Little League All-Star playoffs two summers ago. “This is Bradley,” he said aloud. “The name of the town is Bradley.” The town itself was tiny, no more than four hundred residents. But the birthplace of a woman who was now a famous actress. Bradley Community Park had been her gift to the town.
“We call it Blow Job Community Park,” a woman had told Claire that breathless July day. Tommy was at second base, playing defense, still early in the game. On offense, he would go three for three that day, a double and two singles. Two stolen bases, three RBIs. The All-Stars’ coaching staff comprised the head coaches from four different teams, so Huston was in the stands that day, was trying to watch the game but couldn’t help listening in as the woman explained to Claire the origins of the park. She looked to be in her late thirties, maybe a few years younger than Claire, and spoke with a deep-throated coarseness that he knew his wife found offensive but would never comment on, not even to him.
“I went to school with her,” the woman said. “Trust me, I know. She screwed and blew her way through high school. Rumor was she had two abortions her senior year. Day after graduation, she hopped on a plane out of here. Next day she started sucking and fucking her way through Hollywood. They say she gives the best blow jobs in Beverly Hills. Personally I wouldn’t know, but my ex says he can believe it. So anyway, she came back here, must’ve been five, six years ago, told the town council she’d build the kids a park if we’d rename Main Street after her. So why not, what’d we care? Street’s hardly fifty yards long end to end anyway. She probably thinks she bought herself some kind of big eraser, you know? I laugh about it every time I come here.”
Huston had wanted to concentrate on the game, but she was a great character, the way she sat there in the bleachers in her tight jeans with her knees spread wide, her blue flip-flops perched on the bench in front of her. He had meant to make some notes about her when he got home, the pretty but hard-edged face, the mass of black hair that gleamed in the sun like a crow’s feathers, the smoky, lusty growl in her voice. But Tommy’s team had lost the game by one run, was knocked out of the playoffs, so the family took him to Chuck E. Cheese in Erie to cheer him up, made a long night of it, and by the time they returned home, the woman had fled from Huston’s memory. But here she was back now. All of it was back.
It hit Huston like a blow to the chest—the day, the sunshine, the grin on Tommy’s face every time he had stood safely on base and looked into the stands. The pain pierced his chest like a spear, mushroomed into a toxic cloud of pain, filled him from top to toe. He dropped to his knees behind the thorny bush, fell forward onto his hands. “It can’t be gone,” he said aloud. “I can smell the hot dogs. I can hear the game.” His arms quivered, his body shook. The thorns jabbed at his skull.
Twenty-Eight
Both Huston’s house and his office had been searched thoroughly. So where, DeMarco asked himself, could the manuscript of D be hiding? And why would Huston hide it? If DeMarco could answer the second question, maybe he could hazard an intelligent guess to answer the first.