The silence, as they say, was deafening. Yellow Springs GM Ron Collins was at his desk, submerged in the cloud of thought that came with trying to understand why so many of the bats on his team were sitting on such sub-par numbers. It was early, sure. Still April. But there are slumps and there are slumps.
“You wanted to see me?”
Startled, Collins’ knee smashes against the underside of his deask and he’s pretty sure he’s pulled a muscle in his back. He looped across the desk to see Heidi Hickman sitting in one of his guest chairs, black jacket tight around her shoulders and seeming to flow down her athletic torso. The cowl of the jacket was up and covering much of her face.
“Heidi. Jesus.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“No. That’s fine. I just didn’t see you come in.”
“That’s all right. People have been missing me all my life. It’s like I’ve got my personal cone of invisibility.”
Collins cleared his throat, then chuckled.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Ah. Um.” Scrabbling for a device in one of his desk drawers. “Yes. I did. I received your message about Benny Vitale.” Closing the drawer, he put the device—a display tablet the size of his palm—on the desk, opened it up, and hit the power button. “I agree that she’s dangerous. And I wanted to see what you thought about this.” Turning it to face Heidi, he pressed play. On the screen a young man is at the front of a classroom, pontificating. Even now, though, it’s obvious she knows who it is.
“That’s Jürgen Kocherschmeltz, isn’t it?”
“You’re quick,” Collins replied.
“I’ve been studying,” she says, peering back at the screen. It’s from a long time ago, maybe even the day he defended his dissertation. He’s standing in front of a projection with the term The Psychology of the Gullible stenciled on the wall. It is, she knows, the title of his dissertation.
”What about him?”
Collins turns the volume up. “Watch.”
Kocherschmeltz is talking about the finer points of human association of desires with truth when he makes a joke about his presentation—which suddenly had vivid green patches beside vivid purple. It’s enough to make her stomach react. One of the advisors makes a comment, and Kocherschmeltz turns and say “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m totally color blind.” Then he cracks a joke about how he’s going to kill his proof-reader for playing such a big joke on him and the room laughs. “You know what they say, though,” Kocherschmeltz then added, “you can sell people anything if you give it a color-code.
Collins stopped the video.
“You get it?” Collins said.
Suddenly it strikes. Vivid blue. Brilliant green.
“Holy crap,” Heidi replied. “The good doctor is full of it.”
“Maybe,” Collins said. “Or maybe not. What the good doctor’s sporting analytics group is saying about coaches might well be true, but if you think about this the right way, that doesn’t matter, now, does it?”
He sat back with a smile. A moment later, Heidi, too, smiled.
“You want me to take this to Vinnie, don’t you?”
“As a concerned fellow GM, I think he’d want to see it.”
“You’re a scholar and a gentleman.”
Collins shrugged.
“But I think you’re right," she added. "If there’s anyone who’s simpleminded vanity is strong enough to react to this, it’s Vinnie the Asshole. When he hears the good doctor say “you can sell anything if you color code it, he’ll blow a gasket.”
“And,” Collins added, “it might be noted that the Black Sox have fallen on the schnozzes since the new GM came in touting those color-codes. Vinnie’s also vain enough to know the club is just a bunch of losers losing at full speed ahead right now.”
“All lights brilliant green, right, boss?”
He smiled. “Do you think you can deliver them to Vinnie good and proper?”
Heidi palmed the display and slid it into her jacket. “Consider it done.”
Then she stood. Collins glanced at his scree for what he thought was just a moment, then turned to her “Thanks,” he said.
But the woman was gone.
Jesus, he thought. How does she do that?
# # #
The auto-pod ride to Chicago took five hours. Five hours she used to set up some meetings for later. She hadn’t been in town in a while, and she wanted to touch base with TripleAxe to thank him for connecting her to a few other good doctors of the P, H, and D type. When she was done, she pulled the dark jacket around her shoulders and adjusted the hood. It was an amazing device when properly powered, taking photons that hit it and transferring them thorough the fabric to emit on the other side. The effect was nearly perfect. Invisibility to anything but the most sophisticated of sensors—and even those could only discern a gentle disturbance, a shimmering that was more heat wave than outline.
She checked the battery. Full.
When she was done dropping messages, she sat back and relaxed.
It was good to be going back to the Sox front office. She’d not left in the best of terms, nor had she been given the time she needed to clear her personal stuff. It was time. Finally. There was something she had to leave behind. Something she wanted. The idea of getting it back gave her a sudden feeling of steeled resolve.
# # #
Late night. Something past two AM.
Hellscape entered the building where the Southside Towing Company made its offices. She slipped past the sleepy-eyed guard behind the counter, and just rolled her eyes at the second guard who was walking the floor and flexing his muscles in the reflection of the glass walls. What an idiot. Why was she not surprised when the guy suddenly stopped, then pretended to whip out his gun and shoot?
She had other things to do, though.
She knew the layout well, of course. Slipped into the stairwell, then made it to the right floor. A moment later she was in Vinnie Vitale’s office, which technically was probably Breaking and Entering, though she hadn’t broken anything. Removing the display with her gloved hands, she wiped it down one more time. Then she powered the device, and slipped it into the pocket of the ratty old sweater Vinnie always wore. The device would run for days. The video was set on loop. Even an idiot like Vinnie the Asshole couldn’t miss it.
She wished she could be there to see the look on Vinnie’s face.
If he fired Benny, Hellscape was pretty sure she could convince Yellow Springs to take her on—assuming Benedetta Vitale had the vindictive streak in her that she seemed to have, it might actually work. Then again, certain pipe dreams are just that.
Straightening, Hellscape left the office.
She passed through the cramped little office space and to the corner desk where she used to toil away so diligently. The sight of it—worn and dilapidated despite Vinnie’s pompous build-up—made her sad to realize exactly how horrible her time here had been. It also made her remember how excited her dad had been when she told him she was working in baseball.
He’d been a player. Not good enough, but a guy who played through high school and college, and who followed the teams diligently. To know his little girl was “in the game,” had made him so happy. Seeing the desk made her miss him even more.
Herat clenched, she slowly pulled the lower left drawer out, and reached to the back.
Yes.
It was there.
The bobblehead. Vintage. Bo Jordan in his old Yellow Springs Uniform. Her father’s favorite player.
She hadn’t been able to put it proudly on her desk there in Black Sox land, because, well, because Vinnie. But now she wrapped her hand around the statue and then slipped it into the fold of her jacket next to her heart and it felt like she was putting her father back into the place he belonged. He’d been a nine fan back when they were nothing but a set of loveable losers. Now she would find him a proper place.
Blinking away a sudden blur of tears, Heidi Hickman made her way back down the stairs, past the guards, and out into the crisp Chicago nighttime. She walked down the street, jacket still powered despite the cloak of darkness. She had another meeting to go to, but for just a moment she wanted to covered in this cloak of invisibility, this space that only she knew existed, this place where a bobblehead doll pressed against her body, and where—for just a few moments--she could be alone with her dad once again.
