Free Hanging Curve by Dani Amore

Hanging Curve
     
    Looking back, it really all began and ended with a photograph.
    As I stood and looked down at the black and white image of my brother, I sensed the irony immediately. You see, even though I was two years younger, we had looked almost exactly alike. Our build. The way we spoke. Our mannerisms.
    In fact, when we were growing up, people constantly got us mixed up with each other. Our friends and our teachers would call us by the other’s name. It was like we were twins. But there was one thing that was different between us, and it was dramatically different.
    It was the way we thought.
    People sometimes joked that the way to tell us apart was that I was the one with the brain. Now, looking at the crime scene photograph of my brother, the memory seemed to echo.
    Because someone had blown my brother’s head off.
    •
    “I really appreciate this, Mike,” I said.
    “Least I can do,” he said, and flopped my brother’s flimsy case file onto his battered metal desk. Detroit was down to nothing in terms of money for cops, and Mike Haverley’s corner of the world was a prime example. He looked at his shabby black desk chair, then back up at me.
    “I’m thirsty,” he said.
    We walked down to a cop bar a few blocks from the station house.
    “To Joe,” he said and held his bottle of Heineken up toward mine. We clinked, and he drank half of his in one long pull. Mike and my brother had been good friends growing up, often partners in crime until Joe had left to play ball. Mike had stayed.
    I looked up at the television toward the other end of the bar. The Tigers were playing the Brewers. Mike followed my gaze.
    “He was something else, wasn’t he?” he said. Mike smiled at the memory, and I took in the lines in his face, how was one of his teeth was cracked.
    “Effortless,” I said. Because I knew, without asking, that Mike was talking about my brother’s ability on the baseball field. Joe had been a star for East Detroit High School, had gotten a full-ride scholarship to a college in Ohio where he’d promptly been booted out a year later and wound up on the Tigers’ farm team. A year after that, he was playing in the pros.
    Mike slid a document out from the inside of his tan and coffee-stained JCPenney sportcoat.
    “Don’t read this now,” he said. “An ongoing investigation, a lot of press because of your brother’s…” He paused, looking for the right word.
    “I understand,” I said. Even though a bar is a great place to have a discreet conversation, it’s not foolproof.
    He drained the rest of his beer and I signaled the bartender for another, which she placed in front of Mike. My beer’s level was still visible above the label.
    “Can I ask you a question Tommy?” he said.
    I nodded, already knowing what was coming. The same question I’d been asked a million times as a kid, and later, after Joe was playing ball for the Tigers.
    “It ever bother you?” Mike said. “How good he was?”
    “No,” I said. “I loved to watch him play.” And it was the truth. Joe Locker was the single most natural athlete I’d ever seen in my life.
    “Besides,” I said. “All of our coaches told me the same thing.”
    “What’s that,” Mike said. He looked at me, a little surprised at my honesty.
    “I think too much.”
    •
    A day later, Mike called and told me the investigation was over. They had the guy. About a year before my brother Joe’s murder, a homeless guy had been found in an abandoned lot south of the city with his head blown off. And according to the report, that wasn’t just an expression. Literally, the head was almost completely gone.
    Just like Joe’s.
    The coroner was able to dig double-aught buckshot out of the neck stump and guessed the shotgun was probably a 10 gauge, maybe even an antique 8 gauge, judging by the size of the shot.
    After the first homeless guy was found, every month or two another one was found around the city, usually in the poor sections.