Be The One

AN EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL.

PROLOGUE:

NOVEMBER, 1994

     She was that close to busting the record for the most consecutive bull's eyes made under the greatest influence of alcohol, when the bar phone rang.
     It was three o'clock in the morning in a local dive in Laguna Beach called Papa's. By then she had been throwing darts almost four hours, ever since the challenge by the French kick-boxer. The guy had looked like a cokehead, like he'd been put through a pencil sharpener, stringy tendons and collapsed cheeks. She had seen him staring at her and known what he was thinking: Here's one of those tall, all-American babes with the blonde braid and great body who lives for beach volleyball. Not too friendly, not too cool, but for him -- one piece of cake. 
     He hadn't counted on fire and desire. 
     Her first toss drilled straight through the center of a red cork circle the size of a quarter. 
     He took his beat-up aviator jacket and split, and she kept it going until the place emptied out -- except for the other two icons of Papa's, Mary Jo Martin, a TV news writer who came in around midnight to work on a screenplay about a TV news writer, and Big Tyson behind the bar, in his all-season leather vest and wool beanie. 
     The sound system was tuned to a jazz station and Cassidy Sanderson was working with the same smooth despair as Miles Davis's Kind of Cool , hitting the sweet spot seventeen times in a row. She had come straight from the stadium; khakis limp, the armpits of the white cotton button-down shirt translucent with sweat, but she had no idea. She had reached that state of detachment it takes Zen masters a lifetime to achieve: The point seeks the innermost circle, it is inevitable.
     She walked seven steps back to a worn yellow line on the splintered floor. Another dewy glass of lager was waiting on a stool, illuminated, it seemed, by a spotlight of gold. It was an obscure microbrew from her home state of Oregon that she claimed made her feel "evergreen." She fingered the grooved shaft of the dart; warm brass, like a bullet.
     "Cassidy!" 
     "Don't talk to me."
     "Phone call." 
     "It can't be for me. My life is pathetic."
     She had been thinking about stopping by her trainer Marshall Dempsey's place, waking him up, and getting laid. It wouldn't be the first time. 
     Mary Jo looked up from a laptop. "Who is it?" 
     Big Tyson shrugged. "Some kind of weird connection."
     Reluctantly Cassidy came to the bar. Her bangs were damp and the look in her eyes was smeared. 
     "Damn it, my streak."
     "What can I say?" 
     Tyson held out the cordless. Cassidy hesitated, seeming to be fixated by a large turquoise rock in his ring. Mary Jo put a comforting arm around her buddy's shoulder which was like embracing a piece of granite. The pressure on Cassidy at work these days was intense enough to liquefy stone. 
     But Cassidy said hello and broke into a puzzled smile. 
     "It's Uncle Pedro," she told them. "Calling from the Dominican."
     Mary Jo and Big Tyson exchanged a relieved look. Who the fuck knew who Uncle Pedro was but at least Cassidy wasn't breaking furniture.
     Obviously they didn't read the sports page. Pedro Pedrillo was the most successful bird-dog scout in the Dominican Republic, which meant he drove a hacking old Datsun seven days a week across cattle country and fields of sugar cane, looking for boys to fill the farm teams in the United States, but hoping to find the phenom -- talent so pure it would light up the game like a fireball that doesn't burn. Cassidy Sanderson, a baseball scout as well, the only female scout in the major leagues, put a hundred thousand miles a year on her Explorer, driving the freeways of Southern California, looking for the same light in 

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a different forest. 
     "Where are you?" Pedro was asking.
     "At my pub."
     "But I dialed your home number."
     "We have call-forwarding. New technology. I can send my calls anywhere I want."
     "To a bar? That doesn't sound good."
     "It's fine."
     Cassidy stared at the collection of weirdness behind the walnut bar. A kind of pressed aquarium in a mother-of-pearl frame with dried up sea-horses and guppies. An old straw hat. Shark jaws gripping a rubber human hand. 
     "I have found a ball player," Pedro was saying.
     "What kind of ball player?"
     "A pure hitter."
     "Yeah?" 
     "Cassie . . . I like this kid."
     "You like this kid."
     "Yes, I do."
     "Well, great. I'm very happy for you."
     "I want you to see him. Fly down tomorrow."
     For a moment she was lost, listening to the static. 
     "Are you there?"
     "Yes, Uncle Pedro. Hold on."
     She walked outside into the cold. Somebody's bare feet were sticking out the window of a Suzuki, "We will, we will, rock you!" blaring from the radio.
     Cassidy pivoted in the opposite direction, past a sunglasses gallery and some beachy boutique, Candles 'n Crap, pacing with the phone to get a clear channel. 
     "You found a hitter. What's his name?" 
     "Alberto Cruz. You don't trust me?"
     Pedro had played ball with her dad in the fifties. He was her godfather.
     "How can I begin to answer that?" she said. 
     " -- You know how I look at a ballplayer."
     "The intangibles."
     "-- I got a list of fifteen things we can see with our eyes and another fifteen we cannot see with our eyes --"
     Cassidy smiled, loving it -- the list, the lecture, the oral history of 
baseball -- hearing it evolve, full of pomp and fantasy, soothing as a bedtime story.
     "I'm talking of the heart, the guts, the aptitude --" Pedro was going on, "And this kid's got it all. Exceptional talent. A center fielder with a fast bat, really drives the ball. Soft hands, good glove."
     "The good face?"
     "The good face," he echoed solemnly. "It's the dead season, the mills are closed, but they play in the sugar leagues maybe one time a week. Get here tomorrow and you can see Alberto Cruz in a game on Friday. They said on the news there's a big storm coming but you can beat it." 

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     "Hello, Edith."
     "What?"
     "Talking to my dog."
     A small white terrier had padded out of the bar looking for Cassidy, shaking her hide and yawning. Edith, rescued from the pound, still had abandonment issues. 
     Impatient: "Got a problem?" 
     "Not a biggie. It's just three thousand miles out of my territory. They'Il annihilate me, Pedro, they're just looking for a reason." 
     "This kid won't last. The other organizations are gonna be all over him."
     Cassidy knelt to touch the soft reassuring curls of fur and gazed across South Coast Highway at the Laguna Life Guard Station, a landmark built like a miniature lighthouse. There might be dolphins crossing the bay.
     "You said this kid is playing --?"
     "Day after tomorrow."
     Cassidy looked at her watch. The numbers were meaningless.
     "I'd have to call my supervisor. Travis. Raymond. Someone. I can't just get on a plane."
     "Okay," he said, "Forget it."
     "But Alberto Cruz . . ."
     "One thing I learned after thirty years: There's always another ballplayer."
     In Pedro's silence she heard a resounding affirmation and a shot of adrenaline pierced the boozy high. A batter has a quarter of a second to commit to the swing.
     "I'll be there."

     Pedro's wife, Rhonda, came back into the room of their apartment in the Gazcue district of Santo Domingo. He had finished talking on the telephone and was seated on the edge of the bed smoking a cigarette, staring into nowhere with that heavy-lidded look. She knew it was not the time to be too strong, so she sat beside him and stroked his white hair. They had three sons living in the United States. When she thought of her new grandchildren her heart would break.
     "Pedro," she said softly, "When are we going back to Miami? We can do it now. We can move." 
     He didn't answer.
     "When are you going to give up this dream?" 
     "I just gave it up," he told her. "I just gave it away."

     When Cassidy finally passed through customs in Las Américas International Airport, Pedro was not there to meet her, nor was he at the baggage claim. She took off a black silk Planet Hollywood jacket and tied it around her waist. The listless air smelled like lukewarm vegetable soup. As the crowd of passengers thinned, she alone continued to pace the terminal, scanning a sea of black faces.
     American airports are dead at night, this one was like a block party -- laughter, and boom boxes playing Latin music. Too much was being transacted for an outsider to begin to understand. The place was teeming with men and boys -- hordes of boys under the age of twelve swarming the arrivals for spare change, and men lined up along the walls, watching. 

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    Cassidy was used to being looked at, a big blonde girl with broad hands and hard wrists. She pretended to ignore them, but in sidelong looks at the lean bodies and sinewy long limbs there was an irrepressible thrill: the classic Dominican baseball physique, the template on which great players have been built. The men stared and chattered as she passed, Afro-European-Caribbean faces glazed with heat, and she realized her high school Spanish, sturdy enough in Los Angeles, would be as viable here as a child's red wagon on a freeway.
     Her mouth was dry. She was coming down fast. The flight to Santo Domingo had been delayed in Miami so she sat in the Admirals Club and drank with a guy she met, good-looking, older, a business type. He was buying, it was raining, she went way past her quota. Past four extra-strength Tylenol and a liter of Evian water. And now, reality. Her feet were walking, all by themselves, it seemed, on foreign soil. She had no Dominican money. She had not called her supervisor. The cost of the ticket had maxed out her credit card. 
     Suddenly a wiry little hustler slipped the duffel right off her shoulder. Not more than ten years old, with bony arms and no shoes, he said in authoritative English, "Come with me," and she went, following the boy outside to a line of ramshackle vehicles, some of which had the word TAXI decaled on or simply scratched into the paint. 
     "What is your hotel?" he asked. 
     "I'm waiting for someone."
     Beyond the overhang of the terminal roof there were no electric lights. The parking lot did not have lights, neither did the road. God knew where the city was or even the next house. Behind the last taxi was nothing but darkness. 
     "No, gracias," she told the boy, and tried to take her bag from him.
     But he would not let go.
     "This is mine." Her heart kicked up hard. 
     "Lady, tell me your hotel. I want to help you. I want to make you happy in my country," he said and continued with a loopy laugh.
     "I am very happy."
     She searched his eyes, strangely dark and shining.
     "I need my bag."
     Okay, he was ten years old but in her country ten year-olds carry guns. And there could be others. Yes, two more coming toward them. Her boots were tipped with steel. Another instant and she would blow out his knee.
     In one quick move she gripped the strap and yanked forcefully. There was no struggle. No attitude, no Saturday night special pulled from the waistband of the tattered shorts. The boy had no weapons other than a sullen disappointment. 
     She started up the ramp. Someone was calling her name but she kept walking at top speed until she looked over and glimpsed a familiar white head keeping pace.
     "Uncle Pedro!"
     She ducked beneath a railing and they embraced -- his broad chest and scent of cigars, her strong sure arms -- as the boys continued to wheedle and beg. Pedro made a subtle hand gesture, a slow-motion flick of the fingers, and they trotted away.
     Crossing the unlit parking lot he hardly looked at Cassidy, delivering a lecture instead about what a sad indication these street children are of the way things have become. 

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     "They buy glue from the shoe repair and use it to get high. A few pesos for a bottle. It's worse than cocaine."
     Cassidy recalled the darkness in the boy's eyes; looking into them had been like watching through peepholes as his brain turned into tar.
     "And the shoemaker sells it to them?"
     "The shoemaker has to make a living." Pedro gave a wry shrug. "This is a poor country. We know what we got in the Dominican Republic, we are not proud to the poverty." 
     "But you've got ball players."
     "No doubt about it, the Lord blessed these kids with the ability to play the game." He unlocked the door of the battered Datsun. "Some people say it is His only blessing."
     Inside he pointed the key toward the ignition with a disturbing shakiness Cassidy hadn't noticed the last time they were together. 
     "Thanks for coming to get me," she said, vigorously upbeat. "The flight was canceled because of the storm. Looks like you missed it here."
     "I don't think we gonna miss nothing. Another hurricane is now in Cuba. We get what they get." 
     The air conditioning was an unexpected relief. Cassidy hadn't realized her face and neck were slick. The road from the airport was absolute black, the view through the windshield blurred by streaks of dried mud. As they rounded a bend the headlights flared over a group of soldiers in camouflage gathered in the bush, machine guns over their shoulders, tracking the Datsun with their eyes, young indifferent faces receding into darkness.
     "What's the matter, Uncle Pedro?"
     "I don't like your drinking."
     "My drinking?" 
     "Your phone calls come to a bar!"
     "It's my pub. My home away from home."
     "Cassie -- If you are in trouble, you have emotional problems, you talk to someone, talk to me. You're my kid."
     His big meaty hand clamped down on her knee. He was paying her the highest compliment: treating her like one of his prospects, one of his sons.
     "Just leave the drinking alone."
     "You saved my life," Cassidy said finally. "Getting me back to the game."
     "Well your dad," he jerked a thumb skyward, "He got an eye on me."
     "Is that why you called? Because of my dad?"
     Pedro gave the finger wave as if he wished the question would disappear like the boys. Finally he sighed. 
     "Your dad was not only a talented pitcher but one of the best human beings it was my honor to know. Your dad was a baseball man and your brother was a baseball man, and you are also a fine baseball man. I don't say 'baseball woman' because it don't make no sense --"
     Cassidy let loose a wild laugh of relief.
     " -- You got the stuff. You're as sharp as any of the men scouts I got working for me. If the organizations in the United States couldn't see that without someone pointing it out to them, it is because they were only looking with their eyes."

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     Suddenly Cassidy never felt happier.
     A faint line of palm trees became visible to the east. They passed beach stands lit by neon signs that looked as if they hadn't changed in forty years -- Tropicale, Noche Azul -- open air cement bunkers painted funky screaming turquoise with walls of glistening bottles, a three-man band. Mostly they were empty but the bands played anyway and the neon crackled and sputtered in the dark.
     They had reached the Ozama River. At a stoplight on the Puente Duarte a boy threw water at the mud-stained windshield, polishing quickly with a piece of newsprint. Pedro gave him a few centavos. Through the shining glass they could finally see the city of Santo Domingo with burnished clarity: a shoreline docked with mammoth barges, a cluster of high-rise hotels, an enormous billboard for Winston cigarettes, a sixteenth-century Spanish fortress. 
     On the other side of the bridge, cars and bicycles, públicos and pedestrians, swarmed around a traffic circle in the center of which stood a military monument, a floodlit obelisk of large gray stones. 
     As always, the beam of the lighthouse Faro a Colón, monolith to dictators, sliced above Santo Domingo like a white hot saber. 
     A phrase came back to Cassidy, something they used to say about old-time baseball scouts. "Ivory hunters," they called them. Driving slowly through the congested streets of this exotic city, observing the shadowy crowds under strings of weak colored lights along a shorefront drive called the Malecón, Cassidy felt what the hunter feels, crossing the border at midnight, ahead of the others, senses primed. 
     The hunter may have never been to this particular place but she has the gift, the locus, so that if she came down anywhere she would begin to hunt, and she would be right, and in the end there would be a death, even if it were only the death of a mother's dream about her son, the dream that he would never leave.
     Her heartbeat quickened with a jolt of euphoria.
     "Tell me about Alberto Cruz," she said.

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