Free The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody Page A

there was also a second issue of the cards in which McClintock was shot from the right side of the plate (he was a switch-hitter), and the titanium arm, with its ferocious mechanization, its industrial sinews and assembly-line microchip controls, was clearly visible protruding from a short-sleeved jersey.
There were counterfeit cards in those days, sure, back when home color printing was first taking off. There were entire cartels devoted to the issuance of counterfeit cards. And, eventually, because this is how people are, some portion of the collecting world became equally taken with the fakes. With the result that the Topps Company began issuing cards with watermarks and testimonial stamps. A McClintock rookie card, class B, would thus have the titanium arm and the Topps watermark, which was in the shape of a standard-issue baseball bat.
“How do you know about that?” I asked, as we were seated. And I said it with a fair amount of shock.
“How do I know about what?” said D.
“McClintock, class B cards.”
“You told me about it.”
“I don’t think I did.”
“You did.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
You know, there are any number of powerful additives in the water supply these days, additives that are meant to redress the follies of human character, diseases of the age, such as repeated reorganizing of household objects, hearty laughter at neutral remarks , the ever-popular fear of photosynthesis and photosynthesizers . And chief among these, I well know, is the almost total inability to remember anything that has happened, also known as elective pseudo-dementia . The almost total inability to remember events that seemed earth-shattering less than a year ago, the complete obliteration of trends inside of weeks, the reversal of strongly held opinions, and so forth—I wasn’t the only person who had disabilities like these. Therefore, I wasn’t likely to remember if I had or had not discussed Dave “Three-in-One” McClintock with D. Tyrannosaurus. And yet I believed I had not. I believed that Dave “Three-in-One” McClintock, class B series, and all facts pursuant to this matter were secured in a register of discretion that I did not trot out for just anyone, especially not a frequenter of ladies of the night. And perhaps the incompleteness of my trust was evident on my face, because the man known as Tyrannosaurus immediately began to attempt a flanking maneuver.
“Forget about it, man.” The waiter brought around a plate of unidentifiable smoked meats.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Everybody knows about McClintock and the class B cards.”
“No, everybody does not ,” I said.
Again, I began combing through my half-remembered and somewhat fuzzy recollections of events at which D. Tyrannosaurus had been present, over the weeks. I began trying to decide if his sudden appearance was nothing but an attempt to locate one of the nation’s preeminent dealers in baseball cards, in order to blandish him out of valuable assets and transfer them to who knows where , Macao, or Mauritania, or Madagascar.
“Montese,” D. offered, “this seems sudden, so I’m just going to tell you the truth. You know it in your heart anyway. What my particular interest is, these days, well, my particular interest is in collecting things that are in danger of being lost . That’s why, for example”—gesturing around the chronically empty interior of the restaurant of smoked meats—“I wanted to come to this… grill. There are more people standing around waiting to serve the food than there are people in here to eat. The only people left who can really afford restaurants bring security.
“Let’s say I knew you had some baseball cards, okay? Let’s say I even came down to this furnace of a place because you have some baseball cards. Does that mean that I think any less of you? Does that mean that I hung around for however many weeks just to get some damn baseball cards? I know how this sounds, and I’m sure it’s hard