Free The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery by Steve Hamilton

“You tried to straighten them out.”
    “I just asked them when was the last time somebody threw a baseball ninety-five miles an hour at them. That’s all I said. Then I just paid for our drinks.”
    “I meant to tell you,” I said. “Detroit’s not the best place to be flashing a big roll of bills.”
    “They asked me about the tattoo on my arm. I told them my cell mate gave it to me, the last time I was in prison. He also taught me how to kill a man using just my index finger.” He pointed to the ceiling with the finger in question, on his left hand, of course, and then brought it down on the table like he meant to break it in two. Somehow, the table stayed intact.
    “That’s quite a story,” I said. “I bet that put them in their place.”
    “I think it was the slinky that really got them going,” he said, shaking his hand. Then he took a hit off a tall glass. Whatever he was drinking, it was brown and foamy.
    “You told them about your old pitch?” I said.
    “No, it’s a drink I invented,” he said. “I can’t throw them anymore, so I have to drink them now.”
    “I’m probably going to regret asking this, but what’s in it?”
    “It’s pretty simple,” he said. “One part vodka and one part root beer. You wanna try it?”
    “I’m gonna say no to that.”
    “Go ahead,” he said. “You’ll be surprised.”
    “No, Randy, nothing would surprise me now. I’ll probably never be surprised again in my entire life.”
    “You know what this drink is good for?” he said.
    “Killing rats?”
    “You see a really nice-looking woman at the bar, you go up and stand next to her and order a slinky. It never fails.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “The bartender doesn’t know what it is, so I have to tell him how to make it. The best vodka you got, preferably Charodei, which isn’t filtered through charcoal like other vodkas. And she’s standing there listening to this. Vodka and root beer? What kind of a man drinks vodka and root beer? She turns around to take a look at me, and I just give her this smile. Like I’m drinking the best vodka in the house because I’m sophisticated and successful, and I’m drinking root beer because I’m still a little boy at heart. And when she asks me why it’s called a slinky, I tell her I was once a major-league pitcher and that was my money pitch. It works every time.”
    “Uh-huh. Are you gonna try the same game when you find Maria? Order up a slinky?”
    “Come on, Alex, I’m just joking around. I drink it because I like the way it tastes. Here, try it.”
    “I told you, I’m not drinking that,” I said. “Vodka and root beer, for God’s sake. What next, Randy? Are you crazy
all the time
? Do you ever take a day off?”
    “You would have backed me up, right? If those guys tried something? Just like the good old days. Remember that brawl we were in that one game? Where was that, Evansville?”
    “It was Savannah,” I said. It all came back to me. There was another side to Randy Wilkins. You didn’t see it very often. It took a lot to get him to lose control of himself. But when he did, he lost it completely. “You hit two straight batters in the head. What did you expect?”
    He took a long drink and then put the glass down. “I think I know what your problem is,” he said. His voice had changed.
    “What?” I said. “What’s my problem?”
    “The problem is that I got a shot and you didn’t. And it doesn’t help that I got to play right here in Tiger Stadium. How many times did you go and see games there when you were a kid? How many times did you dream about playing on that field someday?”
    “Randy, do you really think that I’m upset because you got to play in Tiger Stadium and I didn’t?”
    “It’s got to bother you,” he said.
“Something’s
bothering you.”
    “Let’s go,” I said, standing up.
    “Where are we going?”
    “You wanna see the sights?” I said. “You wanna see where I grew up and where everything