Don't Mess With Him

From the fruitful - but troubled - computer of HoraceClarke66

I found him in one of the little dive bars down by the Harlem River. Nothing too dangerous, nothing too fancy. Just where you’d expect him to be.

 

When I first walked in I thought maybe I’d made a mistake. Before my eyes adjusted to the mid-afternoon bar light I thought he looked too innocuous to be who they said he was. Just a citizen taking a long, liquid lunch, wearing a grey, button-down shirt and an absent expression.

 

It was only when I got closer that I saw the innate power there, the coiled rage just waiting to do damage.  Only then did I notice the muscles in his forearms, the mad gleam in his eye.

 

“Mr. In-between?” I asked. “Mind if I sit down?”

 

In an instant, the vacant look was gone. He appraised me with one long, slow glance, then nodded.

 

“I’ll be upfront with you,” I told him, sliding the photograph across the table to him. “I’m a private dick, with one client. He would like to know if these men came by to see you.”

 

He took his time looking over the photo, then handed it back to me and took a sip from his beer.

 

“Yeah, they been here,” he said finally, derision curling his voice. “They’re here every year about this time. Hal and The Brain. But they don’t look like that now.”

 

“I know.  I saw the after picture,” I said, trying to keep from wincing at the memory. “Mind if I ask what they wanted?”

 

“The same thing they want every year. To mess with me.”

 

“Mess with you?”

 

“Yeah. Come in here pretending they want advice. ‘Hey, Mr. I-B,’ they said, ‘Whattaya think?  Can we win with the team we have?’ And I tell ’em straight out, ‘No, you cannot.’ ”

 

“What did they say to that?”

 

“Oh, they argued about it for awhile. I finally told ’em, ‘Look, your catcher is a wreck, you dropped three of your starters for nothin’, your shortstop of the future can’t play shortstop, an’ nobody in your outfield can stay on the field.’ ”

 

“I see.”

 

“So then they start whinin’ about how they got all these arms, and besides somebody named Pecota thinks they’ll win the most games, and how it is widely acknowledged around the press box that The Brain is a genius.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“So then I tell them, ‘Look, I don’t care if Dakota Fanning herself said you was a lock.  You don’t got any pitching.  You just got a junkpile somebody drove up and dumped out by the bullpen for you to sort out. Hell, you don’t even have any lefties!  Nobody at the plate, not enough on the mound.’  It’s the most unbalanced team I ever saw.”

 

“And?”

 

“An’ that’s when they told me that they didn’t need no lefties. That in today’s game, everybody can hit everybody, and vice versa. And that’s when I lost it.”

 

“I’ll say you did.”

 

“What did they expect? Come in here to give me the same line every year. ‘Hey, Mr. I-B, how can we do this on the cheap?  How can we get by with no pitching?’  I tell them to get out there, spend some money, latch on to the affirmative! But they never listen.”

 

He teased a cigarette out of its pack and stared at the grey winter river. The bartender gave him a look when he lit up, but he didn’t say anything. 

 

“This used to be a great town,” he said, without looking at me. “Nobody came to this city without knowing they had to go all out, give it everything they had. I had a very peaceful existence. Now…”

 

I nodded, unsure of what to say to him.

 

“In-between… that’s not a name you hear everyday.”

 

“It’s Dutch.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” 

 

“From down near Leyden, originally.”  

 

Then his eyes fixed on me, the irises spinning like pinwheels.

 

“Say, are you messin’ with me?”