Chapter 14

Funny, how baffling other folks’ predilections can feel. Me? I’ve never understood the allure of baseball.

Wrigley Field is one of the oldest parks in the country, and it feels like it. Not in a worn and tattered way, like Still Goods, but a historic way, with statuary and plaques and a hundred years of spilled beer. I took it all in: The winter-killed ivy. The hand-turned scoreboard. The lighting that almost didn’t happen. 

When I was a kid, they made a big stink about finally installing electric lights. How they managed to survive as long as they had without night games is a testament to Chicago’s stubbornness. Hopefully Andy Parsons came from that same pigheaded Chicago stock.

Jacob had arranged for a custodian to meet me at the gate and show me around. The rotund guy was white-haired and ruddy with cold. I flashed my new ID card. It felt flimsy compared to the weight of my detective badge, but it did the job. 

My guide was obviously curious as to why a federal agent was poking around the seats. If anything, it would be an interesting story to tell his cronies when he clocked out and joined them for a brewski. “Off-season, tours come through at noon and three,” he said, “but there’s no reason for ’em to come up here in the stands.”

“Uh huh.”

“So, is this a ticket scalping thing? I didn’t know the feds cared about stuff like that.”

“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” Civilians love hearing stuff like that. Makes them feel like they’re on a TV crime drama. The custodian nodded sagely. 

He was slightly more winded than I was from climbing the stairs, which excused us both from making small talk. He led me to Andy’s seat. It looked just like the seats all around it. I made a show of assessing it anyway, even got down on one knee and shone my penlight all around. Nothing. Not even a crumpled napkin or an old wad of gum.

I’m not sure exactly what I thought I’d find. It wasn’t as if someone had lured the guy here, offed him, then dragged him halfway across the city to feed him through some heavy equipment. But the heart wants what it wants, and it wasn’t all that crazy to see if Andy’s extracurricular activities had mattered more to him than his ordinary life as the most obvious FPMP babysitter. If he’d been sitting in this seat when the Cubs finally ended the longest championship drought in sports history, it could very well be the spot in which his ghost dropped anchor.

I opened myself to the white light and tried to pull it down, but frankly, my head hurt from a shitty night’s sleep. Maybe it was too early in the day for ghosts. Maybe I was too tired to perform. Or maybe my big idea was just an overly-optimistic dead end.

I straightened up and knuckled my eyes.

When it was obvious even to a casual observer I hadn’t found what I was looking for, my guide took it upon himself to make the trip worth my while. “You hear about that guy who fell out of the bleachers?” He made the sign of the cross, then pointed to the infield. “Down there, that’s where he landed. Right on his head.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked. Even through the frosty daylight, when I really focused, I saw a flicker that might have been a trick of the light, but probably wasn’t. I watched the spot, counted slowly to thirty, and saw it again. Clearer now. The shape of a man, partially. Just a fragment. Head and shoulders. But at least that was enough to let me know I was “on.”

I headed back to my office and found Darla scrutinizing a very complicated graphic on the giant screen. She glanced at her watch when I came in. I ignored the implied criticism and said, “Lemme run something by you. A violent death might cause a repeater…an echo. But it also might leave behind a full-fledged ghost. What makes the difference?”

“Interesting.” She turned toward me and crossed her arms. “That’s the first intelligent question you’ve ever asked me.”

“I’ll take that to mean you don’t know, either.” I looked at the chart she’d been studying, a tangle of colored lines and points that was as hard to read as my gas bill. “What about this?”

“I’ve asked your lab guy to analyze it in case there’s something I’m missing, but it looks pretty damn random to me. Plus, I think we’d need to walk a lot more people through the course to generate any useful statistics.”

Just what Laura wanted to hear. “We need to do something.”

Darla replied with such a look of utter disdain, my brain hurtled right back to Camp Hell. Not a full-on panic attack flashback, just a memory. But the memory was so intense, it might as well have been.

Camp Hell cafeteria. The early days, before security was tight. Stefan leaning in to whisper in my ear in a tantalizing whiff of Aqua Net and cigarettes. “While I was getting dressed after my physical today, that annoying little doctor left the room to take a call.” He hiked up the hem of his black turtleneck and flashed the top of his stretchy draw-string skull pants. A pilfered KY tube protruded from his waistband. I gawked, and my mouth went dry. “After dessert, let’s go share a soda.”

I couldn’t tell you what was on the dinner menu that fateful night, only that I could barely choke it down over the lump in my throat. Anal was new and uncharted territory for me. Not because I was a late bloomer—I’d been swapping hummers and hand-jobs since I was fourteen—but because I’d never had the privacy. 

Or maybe because, up until that point, I’d simply been unwilling to fumble through something so potentially fraught with embarrassment with anybody else. But Stefan? Back then, I would have trusted him with my life.

I was literally shaking by the time he met me in that nasty, rank stairwell. I tried to hide it from him, but obviously he knew how nervous I was. He took my face in his hands and kissed me, and murmured, “It’s okay, I promise,” as he stroked my mohawk stubble. “How about this: you do me.”

It seemed like the less potentially painful option of the two. I agreed, and the two of us set to work attempting to embark on this new and strange frontier. Strange for me, at least. Stefan was nearly eight months older, and judging by how unruffled he was about the whole undertaking, I presume I wasn’t his first. Either that, or he’d had more online access and a better opportunity to figure out what went where.

We sank to our knees, awkwardly, still kissing. But when he realized we were covered in cigarette ashes, he stood back up and brushed them off in disgust…even though he was probably the one who’d left them there. “We should probably stand.”

“Okay.” I unhitched my belt. “So, like, from the back, or…?”

“Why not?” He handed me the KY and said, “Some on you, some on me,” then dropped his ashy skull pants to his knees and turned to grasp the railing. It was industrial, metal, a series of pipes and joints. Thick layers of flaking paint, black on top, green underneath, and below that, rust. I’ll never forget the sight of his hands in cheap silvertone skull rings clutching the chipped rails.

Despite my abject terror over the likelihood that I’d mess everything up, my body was raring to go. It had more to do with hormones than the actual situation. I lubed my own dick—it was like jerking off with hand lotion, an activity where I was already proficient—and then pushed a slippery finger inside him. And that was new. Because any time I’d done that with someone before, it was nothing more than spit and some teasing. But this time, I meant business.

I attempted to prod myself in. It was a no-go. “More KY,” he told me. I picked up the tube and dropped it again. Twice. Somehow, he managed not to sigh. And somehow I kept it up. Eventually I pushed in. Floundered. Slipped out.

“The farther apart you set your feet,” I said, “the more I have to bend my knees.”

“If I don’t get a good stance, you’ll be scraping me off the bottom of the stairwell.” He kicked out of his pants, naked now from the waist down, planted himself more firmly, and said, “Okay, do it.”

There were ashy flecks in the lube. I tried not to think about it. Because I was a badass, and it took more than a little dirt to bother me. Besides, had I really expected to de-virginate myself in a cushy waterbed strewn with rose petals? The filthy, reeking stairwell was definitely more my speed. I got my bearings and shoved in, and he made a sound that was a lot like pain, and somehow between the two of us, we managed to force a rhythm. Once we found that groove…things suddenly got really good.

“God,” I huffed into the back of his neck. “Fuck. I’m gonna….”

“Not yet.”

“So tight.”

“Not yet. Think about something gross.”

I hammered into him harder. “So fucking tight.”

“Pretend you’re banging that fat chick who’s in love with you.”

 I snorted out a laugh—and even that wasn’t enough to give me some staying power. Before I knew it, I’d sown my wild oats. Two minutes, tops, and Stefan was barely even hard. Without comment, he scavenged the ash-covered KY from the floor, squeezed the rest of the tube into his hand, and finished himself off. While he put his pants back on, I stood there like an idiot, looking around for something to wipe myself off with. I was grossly unprepared—the story of my life. Everything was grease and ashes. I tucked myself away, squishy and wet, and wiped my hands on my jeans. 

“So, uh, that was pretty good. Right? I mean, uh, mostly.”

Stefan replied with a wicked raised eyebrow—one that hinted at the possibility of a repeat performance, though next time, I’d damn well better step up my game—and strode out of the stairwell. 

I tagged along behind him. “Next time, I’ll last longer,” I claimed, with a cockiness I absolutely didn’t feel. “It’s been a while since I fucked someone.” 

The time was ripe for the comment, A while, as in never? But the dig went undug. Because as we rounded the corner, we found ourselves face to face with none other than…the fat chick. The part about her being in love with me…that was just an expression. Right? I swallowed nervously and said, “Hey, Darla.”

What initially tipped her off, I’ll never know, not without asking, and even I wasn’t dumb enough to tear open that old wound. Darla had looked at me. Looked at Stefan. And then looked down. I remembered the precise moment when her expression shifted and her eyes went hard. It was when she said, “Your pants are inside out,” and her voice was colder than the coils on the pop machine.

Funnily enough, the memory of her voice wasn’t actually the one that chilled me the most. It was the sparkle of triumph in Stefan’s eye.