Free Strike Three You're Dead by R. D. Rosen Page A

Every time I see you, it makes me want to jump up and dance, which is really saying something. As it is, I just sit and daydream about the future we’ll never have. It’s not that I want everything, it’s just that I wish I could have you. Oh, well….
    Love,
    Valerie (Carty)
    Even if her prose left something to be desired, Harvey admired her taste in lingerie. He folded the letter and put it in his pocket with his baseball card. Wanda meowed angrily at him from the floor. “Yeah, I know how it is,” he said, and fed her a can of Friskies Buffet Mixed Grill from the kitchen before taking her back to his own apartment.

H ARVEY HADN’T FALLEN ASLEEP until three in the morning. At five he had been jolted awake by a nightmare in which he had pulled a corpse out of a whirlpool, to discover that it was Mickey. She had opened her eyes and said, “I’m only kidding.” He sat up in bed. Rudy was gone, Mickey might be going, and he didn’t know how much longer he wanted to play the game of baseball.
    He did not remember the point at which anxiety deferred to sleep, but at ten Friday morning the phone rang inside his brain. Wanda, who had been sleeping on his head, leaped to the windowsill. Harvey’s hand sampled several objects on the nightstand before finding the pertinent one.
    “It’s Linderman,” the voice barked.
    “’Scuse me?” Harvey mumbled.
    “Wake up. I’m down at the ball park, but I’ll be through soon and I thought you might meet me for a drink in half an hour.”
    Harvey located his tongue. “At ten in the morning?”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. So have a cup of coffee with me. Plan to be there.”
    “I was planning to spend the morning trying to figure out who killed Rudy.”
    “Good. That’s exactly how I plan to spend mine.”
    Harvey suggested Mandy’s, a bar on the Brown University campus with plastic Tiffany lamps.
    “Nice place,” Linderman said. “We pinched a couple hookers there last month. Imagine that, taking advantage of young college boys.”
    “Imagine,” Harvey said.
    Harvey had been at Mandy’s for twenty minutes, seeing how many sips there were in a Bloody Mary, before Linderman lowered himself into the booth, beer in hand. The butt of a police Magnum rode up under his armpit, beneath a red and green plaid sports jacket. An archipelago of grease stains ran down the front of his white polo shirt.
    “Something keep you at the park?” Harvey asked.
    “I was over there,” Linderman said, indicating a booth in the far corner of the lounge. “Watching you.”
    “That’s just great.”
    “It’s interesting what you can tell about a guy, watching him like that.”
    “So what’d you learn?”
    “That you don’t like Bloody Marys very much and that the service in this place is lousy. Your waitress never came over to see how you were doing.”
    “What’d you really want to know?”
    “Some guys get nervous,” Linderman said.
    “About?”
    “About knowing something about who killed Rudy Furth and not saying.”
    “You’ve been watching too many old movies, Linderman.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you seem a little nervous now, Harvey.”
    “Some guys get nervous about being told they know something about who killed Rudy Furth and are not saying. I expected you to have all the goods at this point.”
    “I’ve got some.” Linderman pulled daintily at his beer.
    Harvey waited, then said, “Maybe you’ll tell me someday.”
    “It’s your move, Harvey.”
    “I don’t know anything.”
    “I was hoping something might’ve come to mind since we talked the last time.”
    Harvey spread his hands.
    “All right,” Linderman said, bringing both palms down on the table. “Maybe this’ll jog your memory. The preliminary report from the coroner says that Rudy was killed by a combination of asphyxiation by drowning and Cleavon Battle’s bat.”
    Harvey’s head jerked at the name of the Providence Jewels’ first baseman. “Cleavon Battle?”
    “Cleavon Battle’s