The Accidental Detective

start.”
    “You love Bandit Gonzales so much you poisoned him?”
    “It’s August and I’m in first place by only three points. There’s five thousand dollars at stake. But also a principle.”
    In fact, five thousand dollars was what Visualize Liberation charged for one of its higher-end surgeries, a procedure that took almost fifteen minutes to perform.
    “First place?”
    “In roto. Rotisserie baseball. I’ve been in the No Lives League for almost fifteen years and never won. Never even finished in the money. Bandit Gonzales was going to help me change that. I picked him up cheap, in the draft. It was genius on my part, genius. But if he goes to the Mets …” He was getting visibly agitated, shaking and sweating, swinging his arms.
    “But it’s a fantasy league. You’d still have him, right?”
    “We’re an American League–only roto. When our players go to the National League, they might as well have died or quit baseball.” He jumped up, began pacing around his desk. “You see? If they traded him to the Mariners, I’d be fine. But they were talking about the Mets, the Mets, the fuckin’ Mets. I’ve hated the Mets since 1969 and they’re still finding ways to screw me.”
    He was now hopping around the room, Rumpelstiltskin in his final rage, and Tess wondered if he would fly apart. But all he did was bang his knee on his desk, which made him curse more.
    “How much did you pay Armando Rivera to let you deliver the food?”
    “Two thousand dollars.”
    “So if you win roto, you’ll only be up three thousand.”
    “It’s not about the money,” he said. “I’ve never won. This was supposed to be my year.”
    “And if you’re arrested for a felony—and what you did to Bandit constitutes felonious assault—would you be disqualified?”
    Russell looked thoughtful. “I dunno. I think it’s all just part of being a good negotiator. That trade I was about to make, when you came in? I was lying my ass off. I do know the team doctor and he told me Delino is headed for the DL. But I had to make the trade by three, so you screwed me out of that.”
    A WEEK LATER , T ESS WENT back to the baseball diamond in Patterson Park, where the same group of men were playing their nightly game. The weather wasn’t any cooler, but it held a promise of fall and the men seemed to have extra energy.
    Between innings, she waved to the center fielder she remembered from the last time. He loped over warily.
    “What’s the score?”
    “
Quatro-tres,
” he said. “Four-three. But I plan to make a home run in my next bat. Maybe I will call it, like Babe Ruth.”
    “I’m looking for a man named Armando Rivera—to tell him some good news, news he’ll want to hear. You know him?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Well, if you see him, tell him that Herb Marquez is cool with him, now that the guy has been forced to confess. The thing is, Marquez doesn’t know that Rivera got paid to let the other man make the delivery. He thinks it was an honest mistake, that Rivera just wanted to go home early that night. And the guy who did it, he decided that any discussion of money would just make it look even more deliberate. He was keen to make a plea, put this behind him. Plus, despite having twenty-twenty vision, he doesn’t really see other people so well. He couldn’t pick Armando Rivera out of a lineup.”
    “It’s an interesting story,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean anything to me.”
    He walked to the on-deck circle, picked up a bat, and began swinging it.
    “By the way,” Tess said, “what did you do with the two thousand dollars?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am a mechanic.”
    “Okay, you’re a mechanic. But remember, it’s only a game.”
    “At least I play the game,” he said. “I don’t move men around on paper and call that baseball.”
    He jogged to home plate with a springy, athletic stride that Tess envied. The days were getting shorter, losing a few minutes of light every day. They would be lucky to get nine innings in tonight.

THE SHOESHINE MAN’S REGRETS
    B runo Magli?”
    “Uh-uh. Bally.”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “Some kids get flash cards of farm animals when they’re little. I think my mom showed me pictures of footwear cut from magazines. After all, she couldn’t have her only daughter bringing home someone who wore white patent loafers, even in the official season between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Speaking of which—there’s a full