The bush leaguer turned to hide his tears, back bowed, heart crushed.  The news had staggered him, and he clutched the drawn shades of the 3rd deck camera shack, dropping the stack of photos which were now seared into his brain.  I felt his anguish, but this was my office.

"All right, Kiger, enough’s enough.  You can’t eat the curtains; I just had new tarps hung on Wednesday.  Here, have a drink."  I poured three fingers of pruno, and left the cap off the bottle.  

"She’s just no good," he sputtered through the fumes.  I reassured him:  "What can I tell you, kid, when you’re right, you’re right, and you’re right.  After so many road trips, blog readers weren’t the only ones who ‘got’ Bedhead Barbie."

Mark Kiger stumbled off promising to pay me with his next postseason share.  At the same time, my associate Brad Halsey rang from the reception desk in the stairwell by the "ND" tarp.  He was ushering up another client.  After Billy’d disappeared Halsey back in April I found him in the maintenance shed, using spare metal halide stadium lights to give himself an MRI.  Results were inconclusive.  Since then Halsey’d worked for me.

You don’t see dames like her on the Coliseum concrete.  Black chenille dress, tapered silver heels with a matching clutch purse, tasteful jewelry, medium length blond hair coiffed stylishly, clear blue eyes which knew you...and didn’t care.  She owned the camera shack and everything in it.  

"Can’t we discuss this alone, Mr. Stomper?"  She’d pegged Halsey somewhere between barker and pinhead in my concrete circus.  

"I’m sorry, ma’am, but Mr. Halsey is my operative, and at some point he’s going to assist me.  I can’t do everything myself, Miss....?"

"I’m sorry.  Slusser.  Susan Slusser."

"What can I do for you, Ms. Slusser?"  She took a long cigarette from a silver case; I extended my gold Zippo, stealthily shielding the engraved B.B.

"My husband, I believe, is seeing another woman.  Not husband, exactly...my...partner...lover...you understand."  I always did.  "I need you to follow him and prove it to me."

I gave her my standard reply.  "Do you love him, Ms. Slusser?"  She nodded.  "Then go home and forget about it.  I’m sure he loves you too.  You’re better off not knowing."

"But I must know!"  For a moment, for the first time, anxiety crossed her face.  

"Alright, Ms. Slusser.  What’s your boyfriend’s name?"

"Clay Wood."

Finding Clay Wood was easy; picturing him cheating on the woman he was cheating on his wife with was impossible.  Clay Wood had the imagination of infield dirt, and less color.  He arrived at 9:00 AM to cut the grass and massage the batter’s boxes into shape, the first of a hundred scripted steps he’d been taking every game day for 13 years.  Which is why I was stunned to see him head for the parking lot an hour later.  I shook down Bobby the ballboy for his keys...standard mascot privilege, I lied...and slid behind the wheel of a salvaged Escort just in time to catch Wood’s Toyota Yaris gliding onto 880 Southbound.  One hour, 23 miles, and eight inexplicable dead-stop traffic jams later, I had followed Wood into the Council chambers of the Fremont City Hall.

The mayor was droning on about the desert.  Without breaking stride, Clay Wood went straight to the speaker’s podium.  "Mayor Wasserman asked me to speak in support of yet another new turf farm in south Fremont, 112 feet high with a 12,000 acre grass surface.  Well, it won’t hold.  I won’t build it, it’s that simple.  I’m not going to make the same mistake twice."

The gathered crowd of politicos and yokels erupted in anger.  A goatherd drove his flock up the aisle and screamed "You steal water from the valley.  Ruin the grazing.  Starve the manure farmers.  Who’s paying you to do that, Mr. Wood?  That’s what I want to know!"

Without looking back Wood parted the mob, walked to his Yaris, and got back on 880, heading south.  A few minutes later he took the Mission Blvd. exit and turned left, heading for the sun browned fields by Rancho Higuera.  Traffic was scarce and I lagged back, as inconspicuous as an elephant in an Escort can be.  Wood parked by an abandoned field, dry brown topsoil overgrown with wild mustard and Jimson weed.  I harvested...it goes great with paint fumes...then followed at a distance as Wood approached a large cistern, perhaps 20 feet across, built low to the ground.  I could hear the sound of a steady trickle of water.  Wood sat on the cistern’s edge and stared off at nothing I could figure, toward Milpitas, and an unseen San Jose beyond.  I furtively took a few snapshots and retreated to the ballboy’s wretched Escort to head home, leaving a cheap windup Dr. Gil Heredia watch under Wood’s car tire.

With a few hours until first pitch I stopped in at the Saddle Rack in Fremont, where the regulars would sometimes buy me drinks if I’d be the mechanical elephant.  I couldn’t throw any Fremont cowboys, but the chance to gouge me with spurs was worth a PBR to some of ‘em.  Back home I had a message from Halsey, written on beer cup, thrown into the SFZ from the outer concourse, as close as Brad could get and still be within the letter of Billy’s restraining order.  The note read "ganndalas at Lake Merit, 3:00."  I turned a scheduled 90 minute party gig a kid’s dad had paid for into a 30 second waddle down a very disappointed high five line, and I was northbound in the Escort before Bobby the ballboy was any the wiser.  Towards the core of Oaklandtown.

I met Halsey at the Fairyland gate.  He eyed me warily until I produced his usual reward:  the dough scrapings from the grease trap on the churro deep fryer.  He was glad to get them.  Duly paid for his tip, he pointed to the lake and handed me a pair of bird watcher’s binoculars, about which I did not inquire.  Following his gesture, I trained my gaze on a gondola 100 feet offshore.  

I recognized the white shorts, light sweatshirt and rake-honed pole work of Clay Wood instantly.  He probably hadn’t missed a home game in 10 years, but here he was pushing a gondola across Lake Merritt.  An old man sat in the bow, with tousled white hair and a face contorted in rage, red-faced screaming loco rage, arguing viciously.  It was several long moments before I realized it was the usually cherubic mug of Lew Wolff.  I snapped some pictures of the startling scene and turned to head home, where I’d dodge the resentful father and harried A’s staff and have Halsey send Slusser what she paid for.  Her boyfriend didn’t have a chippie; he was just wandering in fields, skipping work, and enraging his boss.

I could get used to having paying clients.  I awoke the next morning and tossed two quarters to Halsey to get me the morning East Bay Tribune.  Feeling flush, I told him he could keep the change, which I regretted when he returned with a paper cobbled from sections he’d scavenged from BART riders.  But I only needed the front page...the lurid banner headline read:  WOOD ON BOAT RIDE, BALLFIELD ON ROCKS.  The pics I’d taken were splashed across the page, with a Mychael Urban story citing unnamed team sources complaining about Clay Wood’s tired act, hinting about decaying field conditions while the groundskeeper sailed blissfully along.  Lew Wolff had been cropped out of all shots.

As I struggled to understand what had happened Halsey buzzed in from the reception desk.  "There’s another dame here to see you, and she’s mad."  By the time I’d reached the camera shack door she was halfway up the steps:  Blue jeans with a black tee and tennis shoes, dressed for climbing stairs not society ladders, her pretty face framed by luxurious auburn hair and brown eyes sparkling with intellect and, at the moment, controlled rage.

"Mr. Stomper, do you know me?"
"Well, uh, I think I would have remembered."
"Have we ever met?"
"Well, no."
"Never?"
"Never."
"That’s what I thought.  You see, I’m Susan Slusser."

My jaw dropped faster than Joe Kennedy’s trade value.  If this was Slusser, then who hired me?  Who set me up?  Did they still give three hots and a cot in elephant sizes at Santa Rita?  I needed to get out of this.

"Now wait a minute, Ms. Slusser.  I think there’s been some misunderstanding here.  There’s no point in getting tough with me."

"I don’t get tough with anyone, Mr. Stomper.  The Chronicle’s lawyers do."

She turned to leave and I reached out to stop her.  A second later I was being choked with my own trunk at the business end of a well-practiced hammerlock.  I kept pleading.  "I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in business. And believe me, Ms. Slusser, whoever set your boyfriend up set me up. The East Bay's a small town, people talk. I'm just trying to make a living. I don't want to become a local joke."  

She let loose her grip and I fell to my knees, gulping air into lungs long-shriveled by Buglers and ammonia fumes.  Then she loosened her grip more.

"Mr. Stomper, you talked me into it.  I’ll drop the lawsuit.  Let’s just drop the whole thing."  I watched her retreat down the steps, stride subdued, her slumped pose backlit by the morning sun as it crested Mount Davis.

I’d gone to bed a saint and awoken a sap, been sued and choked and done more before 9 AM than most people do all day.  A patsy, played like a puppet with no idea who held the strings.  The sun made the shack a tarpaper sweatbox, and I oozed beads of pruno and foolishness.  And then Halsey burst in.

"He’s dead, Stomper.  Clay Wood is dead."

I grabbed my hand-cranked KQED radio from a pile of crap in the corner and found Marty Lurie breathless with the news.  Wood had been found at the bottom of a huge pile of 2 x 4s at Economy Lumber on High Street.  At Coliseum Way.  I’d gone from patsy to perp in about eight seconds.  Oblivious, Halsey babbled on.

"In the middle of a hitting drought the groundskeeper gets killed by lumber.  Only in the East Bay."

They say stripes are slimming, but I didn’t want to model them for the boys in Santa Rita again.  I needed to find out who was setting me up...fast.  With my copy of Bobby the ballboy’s Escort key I had wheels, and I was southbound, retracing Wood’s steps.  I had a date with a cistern.

The dusty brown field seemed the same, but now I had time to look more closely.  The cistern, I realized, was new, concrete still bright and unweathered.  Someone was building a new irrigation system in a long-dead field.  Water poured in.  Tracing it back I saw a broad culvert feeding into the north edge of the pool.  The water carried the acrid smell of colloid products.  It was strewn with litter.  Something flashed in the stream:  the wrapper from a Coliseum dollar dog.

This water came from the East Creek Slough.  In Oaklandtown the fetid tidal flow with trash and industrial effluent was a scourge.  Down here, it was liquid gold.

I returned to find my Escort blocked by a black Lincoln Town Car.  Its doors opened, and out stepped Assistant GM David Forst, flanked by the diminutive Farhan Zaidi, the team stat geek, whose data analysis talent was surpassed only by his lack of social skills.  I played it cool.

"Hey, Forst, where’d ya get the midget?"

Forst answered with his fist, doubling me over with a gut punch.  Zaidi pulled a switchblade and came close, eyes wild, lips sneering, hissing words in my ear, drawn blade at my trunk.

"You’re a very nosy fellow, LOL, kitty-cat, huh?  You know what happens to nosy fellows, LOL, kitty-cat?  Huh, no?  Wanna guess?  Huh, no?  OK.  LOL.  They lose their noses."  He jerked the blade up my trunk from the nostril, opening a long cut, gushing blood onto the dirt by my feet.  "Next time you lose the whole thing.  I cut it off and feed it to my goldfish.  Understand?  Understand!?"

Forst and Zaidi got into their car and left laughing.  For the second time that day I was left on the ground, in pain, alone.

It’s not easy scaling stadium steps in giant clown shoes.  It’s harder still with the weight of the world piled on.  But all that vanished at the top step when I found Susan Slusser waiting for me in the camera shack.  Smoking a cigarette, dressed in mourning black, she was softer than before, quiet, with a small unhappy smile.  

"What’s your usual salary?"

"I get a bag of peanuts and a frosty malt per day, and a dollar dog for my operative, plus as much Oxy as I can find in the Chron sports desk.  And a bonus if I get results."  I’d aimed high and she was still listening.

"Whoever’s behind Clay’s death...why have they gone to all this trouble?"  She had so many questions, and had just asked them all.

"Money.  How they plan to make it by diverting the slough, that I don’t know yet."

"I’ll pay your salary and I’ll add you to Tim Goodman’s bar tab if you find out what happened to Clay, and who was involved."

I buzzed down and told Halsey to draw up one of our usual contracts.

"So, Ms. Slusser.  Did you start seeing Mr. Wood before or after Lew Wolff gave you the scoop on the turf farm plan?"  She blanched, and with shaking hands lit another smoke.  I pressed.  "Lew Wolff is your source on the turf farm story, isn’t he?"  She nodded but wouldn’t look me in the eye.  "You already have a cigarette going, Ms. Slusser.  Does my talking about Mr. Wolff upset you?"

"Mr. Stomper, let’s just say there are some kinds of reporter-source relationships which even the Chronicle cannot abide."  Now it was my turn to cringe.  I stammered,  "For very long?"

"I don’t see anyone for very long, Mr. Stomper.  It’s difficult for me.  Now, I think you know all you need to about me.  I didn’t want publicity.  I didn’t want to go into any of this, then or now.  Is that all?"

With that she signed the contract and gracefully descended the third deck stairs to the resonant beat of my sclerotic heart.

They don’t let just anyone into the Mackerel Club, which was why security personally escorted me to my lunch the next day with Lew Wolff.  Which was ironic, since besides me Wolff himself was the one who looked like he didn’t belong.  His rumpled khakis were on their second day at least; his tan-on-tan combo was topped by a Members Only windbreaker from a Reagan era thrift store.  He waved me into my seat.

"Mr. Stopper."
"Stomper."
"Oh.  You’ve got a nasty reputation, Mr. Stopper.  I like that."
"Thanks."

The waiter delivered our plates:  whole trout, some rice, no garnish.  Wolff saw my stare.  "I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Stopper.  I think they should be served with the head."

"Fine.  So long as you don’t serve the steak tartar that way."

Wolff laughed humorlessly.  "Tell me. What do the police say?"
"They're calling it an accident."
"Who's the investigating officer?"
"Frank Vazquez...we used to work together in Oaklandtown"
"Would you call him a capable man?  Honest?"
"Very.  Of course he has to swim in the same water we all do."

Now Wolff’s grin had some teeth in it.  "It disturbs me, Mr. Stopper, to think of you taking advantage of Susan.  You’re dealing with a disturbed woman who just lost her groundskeeper."  His smile twisted into a leer.  "Are you sleeping with her?"

I stood to leave.  "If you want an answer to that question I can always put Halsey on the job. Good afternoon, Mr. Wolff."

He wasn’t done, not hardly.  "Sit down, Mr. Stopper.  You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don’t."  Now it was my turn to laugh, and his turn to wonder.  "Why is that funny?"

"It's what the D.A. used to tell me about Oaklandtown."
"Exactly what do you know about me, Mr. Stopper?"
"Mainly that you're rich and too respectable to want your name in the papers."
"'Course I'm respectable.  I'm old.  Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

I knew at least one ugly building he wouldn’t call respectable.  It was surrounded by the smog of the freeway, the shriek of the BART tracks, and the stench of the East Creek Slough.  And while I still had one good nostril to smell with, it was time to take my leave of Lew Wolff.

"Stomper, I’m gonna be rich!  I can have the surgery!  To hell with Billy!"  Halsey was stoked.  "Look at this page from the Santa Clara Assessor’s book." I tried hard not to imagine what he’d done to get it.  "It’s the agricultural deed list for the whole 880 corridor, Fremont-Milpitas-San Jose, everything.  Look!"

The page was plastered tape flags, hundreds, each a recent land deal.  He read the words.  "Danny Putnam, 5,000 acres.  Hiram Bocachica, 8,000 acres.  Charles Thomas, 15,000 acres!"  The whole damn valley’d been sold in the last few months.  "It goes on and on...River Cats are cashing in...I’m a River Cat!"  

"Halsey you moron, Danny Putnam couldn’t buy a compost pile in Santa Clara County.  Those names are phonies.  Do you have any idea what this land would be worth with a steady water supply?  Now buzz off, someone’s calling in on Bobby the ballboy’s cell phone."  

It was Susan.  Directing me to her place.  Like I had a choice.  The mile markers were dots on the way to her house in the Berkeley hills.  I was sweating like Larry Davis when I reached the house on Euclid Ave.  She was waiting at the door, two drinks in hand.

"Tell me something.  Does this usually happen to you, Mr. Stomper?"  
"What’s that, Ms. Slusser?"
"Well, I’m only judging on the basis of a day and a half, but, your nose, and...I..."  She trailed off.  We both knew what she meant.  I finished my drink and poured another.

"Actually this hasn't happened to me in some time.  Since the old days in Oaklandtown.  Working for the D.A."
"Doing what?"  This was getting uncomfortable.  My reply was terse:
"As little as possible."

I touched the duct tape bandage Halsey’d slapped on my trunk, and winced.  She took my arm, led me to the bathroom and removed the clumsy dressing, exposing the ugly red gash.  "God!  It’s a nasty cut.  I had no idea."  It hurt me a lot...it was hurting her worse.  Her skilled hands applied peroxide and real gauze.  She leaned towards me, looking closely.  Our eyes met...our lips drew near...we clutched desperately for each other, with no more choice than a 40th round draft pick, and less control than the average Zito start.

Later we smoked together, sheets up, guards down.  Susan wanted to know more.  

"Why does it bother you to talk about it?"  
"It bothers everybody that works in Oaklandtown.  Everybody.  To me, it was just bad luck."
"Why?"
"You can’t always tell what’s goin’ on...like with you."  I stopped, but that wasn’t enough.  She’d earned more.  "I was trying to keep someone from bring hurt.  I ended up making sure that she was hurt."

That was more than I’d ever told anyone about Oaklandtown, and as much as I was ever going to.  We both startled as the phone rang.  Whatever she heard made her face go pale.  "Look, don’t do anything.  Don’t do anything till I get there."  She hung up the phone, saw my look and reassured me.  "I have to go.  This has nothing to do with you or any of this.  Please, trust me this much."  

I didn’t.  

Following Susan was easier than I thought.  Turned out she drove a green-and-gold metalflake ’88 Cutlass Supreme with a crushed velvet Kelly green interior, rolling on 22" rims.  A StreetGlow green neon frame lit the custom plates:  SLUSSIN’.  

So following her was easy.  Accepting the truth was very, very hard.  Familiar miles clicked by on 880 southbound; again past Fremont, again on Mission Blvd., again to the burnt brown field by Rancho Higuera, which seemed to mean something to everyone but me.  She parked and I did to; by now stealth was needless.  She was unhappy to see me.

"Give me the keys, Ms. Slusser."
"You bastard!"
"It’s either that, or you drive yourself to the police."
"The police?"
"Come on, Ms. Slusser.  When a lady shows up at the dried up nowhere piece of land that got her man killed, land that’s oh by the way ten times more valuable since being bought by a bunch of sham front men, I’d say the police would be interested."

She hung her head.  "I would never ever have harmed Clay, you must believe that.  He was the most gentle, decent man imaginable... and he put up with more from me than you'll ever know...I just wanted him to be happy..."  She began to sob.  It took more strength than I thought I had to keep from rushing to her comfort.  

"Just tell me the truth, Susan.  I’m not the police.  I don’t care what you’ve done.  What is this place...why does everyone come here?  What’s it to you?"
"It...it’s my cistern."  More doubletalk.  I slapped her.
"I said I want the truth!"
"It’s...it’s my water."  I slapped her again.  "It’s my cistern."  Slap.  "It’s my water."  Slap.  
"I said I want the truth!"
"It’s my cistern AND my water!  Lew Wolff and I...understand?  Or is it too tough for you?"

Revelation blew up in my head like a Sterno shooter.  Slusser and Wolff weren’t lovers.  They were partners.  She explained that she was the one who’d picked up the water rights to East Creek Slough for a song.  She’d set up a deal Wolff could never have imagined and would never refuse.  "I didn’t think it would lead to murder.  But Wolff got too greedy, and when he tried to get Clay to pimp his turf farm, Clay figured it out.  And it cost him his life."  She was still crying softly, but a hard edge of resolve crept into her voice.  "I’ve done a lot of things wrong, and no legit paper will ever hire me again.  Maybe the Examiner, or KNBR.  But I didn’t kill anyone.  And my part of this sordid business ends now."

I was in.  "We need to get you to the airport.  Wolff already killed once for this deal; he’ll snuff you too.  Since BART doesn’t stop near here, we’ll head for the Pacific Renaissance.  I know the manager there; he’ll get you out quietly.  We’ll take the Cutty."

I called Halsey and told him where to meet me.  "It’s on 9th Street, between Franklin and Webster."  His voice quavered, matching the feeling in my stomach.  "But Stomper...that’s in Oaklandtown..."

We rolled up Broadway in silence, slowly, catching every red light, the throb of the Olds V-8 masking furtive activity behind every door.  The neon and lanterns of the restaurants were blurs in the foggy Oaklandtown night.  As Susan eased the car to the curb on 9th I saw Halsey waiting.  He was in handcuffs.  Three cops stepped out and slapped the irons on me too.  Another figure emerged from the shadows.  It was Lew Wolff.

"You’re a tough customer, Mr. Stomper.  But I have far too much riding on this to suffer you any further."
"It’s too late for that, Wolff.  Once the people find out you’re shipping their water to Santa Clara County for your latest land grab, they won’t stand for it."
"Oh, that’s all been taken care of.  You see, Mr. Stomper.  Either you bring the water to Alameda County, or you bring Alameda County to the water.  I’m incorporating everything from Milpitas to Los Gatos.  Territorial rights my ass."

He’d worked every angle, held every card.  He even owned the police.  I had lost.  But while I felt only defeat, Susan knew she had nothing left to lose.

She emerged from the Cutty, her shaking hand outstretched, pointing a gun at Lew Wolff.  Beads of sweat formed along the edges of his tousled white hair, but an oily lecherous grin curled the corners of his mouth, and his voice stayed calm.  "Susan, pleeeease, pleeease, be reasonable.  How many years have I got?  The deal is mine too."  Slusser’s hand steadied:  "They’re never going to know that."

"Susan, you’re a disturbed woman.  You cannot hope to...you’ll have to kill me first."

That choice, Slusser’d already made.  She fired once, hitting Wolff in the arm.  In an instant she was back in the Cutty and heading down 9th Street.  The police lieutenant drew his pistol.  As I lunged towards him he squeezed off a shot off toward the receding taillights.  The big car slowed and veered to the right, then came to a hard stop against a phone pole a hundred yards away.  It was the longest, most painful sprint of my life.

We all ran.  Me and Halsey, still handcuffed.  The cops, guns drawn.  Lew Wolff, clutching his hurt arm with his good one.  I got there first.  I opened the heavy Oldsmobile door.  Susan’s body was slumped against the wheel, and her head fell back awkwardly.  She was dead.

Everything was a blur.  I fell back in horror.  Halsey held his head in his hands, swaying.  Lew Wolff kept lamenting "Oh Lord, Oh Lord" while he rummaged for papers in Susan’s briefcase.  The police lieutenant said "Turn them all loose," and while the cuffs were removed I felt a different kind of shackle being clamped on my soul.  The cop shook Halsey into coherence, and pointing my way hollered "Take him home.  Take him home!  Just get him the hell out of here."  To me he whispered, "Go home, Stomper.  I’m doing you a favor."

Halsey gave me a shove to start me going.  I moved numbly, feet shuffling, eyes unfocused, heart dead.  As we moved unsteadily into the fog, he offered absolution which I neither wanted nor deserved.

"Forget it, Stomper.  It’s Oaklandtown."