The Dreyfus Affair, A Love Story PDF
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THE DREYFUS AFFAIR A Love Story Peter Lefcourt £h Random House New York FRASER VALLEY REGIONAL LIBRARY Copyright© 1992byChiaroscuro Productions Allrights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United Statesby Random House, Inc., NewYork, and simultaneouslyin Canada by Random House ofCanada Limited,Toronto. Grateful acknowledgmentis made toWarner/Chappell Music, Inc., for permission to reprint excerpts from "Old DevilMoon" by E.Y.Harburgand Burton Lane.Copyright 1946Chappell &.Co.(ASCAP) (renewed). Allrights reserved. Reprintedby permission. Libraryof CongressCataloging-in-Publication Data Lefcourt, Peter. The Dreyfusaffair :alove story/ Peter Lefcourt p. cm. ISBN 0-679-40344-2 I. Title. PS3562.E3737D7 1992 813'.54—dc20 91-4077 ManufacturedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 This bookwas set in Zapf Book Light Book design by Carole Lowenstein "Myburning protest is only the cry of my soul. Let there be an inquest in the full light of day. I am waiting." —Emile Zola, J'Accuse "You win a few. You lose a few. Some are rained out. Butyou got to dress for all of them." —Satchel Paige Acknowledgments I'd like to thankmy editor, DavidRosenthal, who boughtthis bookon a one-sentence pitch and never looked back, and also my copy editor, Amy Edelman, who cleaned up my act. THE DREYFUS AFFAIR I I .t was bad enough going 0-for-5 and committinga dumb-ass error that led to two unearned runs in the bottom ofthe ninth that beatyou. Notto mention the postgame buffetofoverspicedanchovypizzaandlukewarm lite beer. In Cleve land, no less, on a sticky night with a room in the Embassy Suites that had the loudestair-conditioningunitthisside ofa 747.Thiswas justyour average, everyday run-of-the-mill shit. What was really upsetting was what just almost happened in the shower. Jesus. He didn't evenwant to thinkabout that. Thatfell into the categoryof unthinkable things. Thatwas banished to the Siberia of his conscious thoughts, where, he hoped, it would freeze to death and never be heard from again. Often oflate, followinga road loss, Randolph MacArthur Dreyfus, Jr., a.k.a. The Shovel, found himselfhavingpeculiarthoughts. It had nothing to do with the game itself. It was something deeper and more troubling that stuck in his throat with the anchovy pizza and wouldn't go away. He felt like he was about to start crying. Like his insides weren't zipped down securely. He was hitting .335 and was a leading candidate for MVP, for chrissakes. And he was sit- ting in front of his locker fighting back tears. What the hell was going on? The error was already history. The official scorer could have gone eitherwayon it.The ballwas in the hole, and even ifhe hadn't kicked it he probablywouldn't have nailed the Cuban. The guy had led the Pacific Coast League in stolen bases last winter. Bernie Lazarre, the catcher, had gone over to him before the showerand told him that the scoringwasfucked and besides he got Axel Most off the hook on the unearned runs, keeping his E.R.A. below three, so Axel actually owed him a favor. Randy Dreyfus wasn't interested in anyfavors fromAxelMost or Bernie Lazarre, or anybody else, at the moment. He wanted to take a walk and think things out. But you didn't take a walk in the neighborhood around the ballpark in Cleveland. You took the team bus back to the hotel, or you took a cab. Rennie Pannizardi was trying to organize a trip to Omar's, a downtown strip joint, where for five bucks you could have a nude girl sit down onyour lap and gyrate for one minute. It was the cheapest hard-on in the American League. There was one whirlpool free in the trainer's room, next to the one where Willie St. James was soaking his bad hamstring. Randy climbed in and felt his heart turn over as the rush of adrenaline kicked in to accommodate the heat. Maybe he could just sit in the stew pot and bake the peculiar feeling out. He closed his eyes and tried to drift, but Willie St.James's cracked soprano pulled him out of it. "Youknow anything about tax-deferred municipal bonds, man?" "What?" "Mytax guywantsto putme into low-yieldbonds and some other shit." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah. He says my portfolio is too high-yield." "That so?" "What are you in?" "Bunch of things." "You know what Ephard's in?" Randy shook his head. "Windmills. Those things up north near San Francisco. Ephard's guy put him into a couple of dozen. Ephard says they're going to look good in twenty, twenty-five years. ..." One of the trainers came in to tell Randy that Charlie Gonse wanted to see him. "Ifhe givesyou shitabout the error, tell him no one in the whole fucking American League could've nailed Morales. The guy runs faster than a Mexican with a chili pepper up his ass." Charlie Gonse's office was on the far side of the trainer's room, separated by a glass partition through which he couldwatch what was going on in the whirlpools while he ate his postgame Greek salad. Ever since he got the bad news on his choles terol count itwas all he ever ate. He was up over220 and convinced that he would keel over dead if he so much as looked at a pat of butter. The manager beckoned Randy to a chair across from him. Still drippingfrom thewhirlpool, Randysatdown, and a smallpuddle of chlorinatedwaterbegan to collectunderneaththe chair. Gonse pol ished off the Greek saladwith a plasticfork and meticulouslywiped an olive stain from his mouth. Then he took out a fresh toothpick and began to work over his upper teeth. "Can I tell you what I think the problem is here?" Gonse said finally. "Problem?" "Lackoffocus. That'sthe problem. E6in the bottom ofthe ninth. The bottom of the ninth is no time for E6." "Charlie, I'm hitting .335.I've got seventy-eight RBI's. So I blew a ground ball. It happens to everyone." "You're not in the ball game ..." Randy closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and flexed his back. He felt a slight stab in his right rotator-cuffmuscle, which had been bothering him since April, when he tried to nail a guy at the plate on a cold night in Boston. "... you're spreadtoo thin, you're all overthe place. You're Mr. Baseball. Mr. This, Mr. That. You're going to have a goddamn shop ping center named afteryou, for chrissakes. Youcan't nail a guy in the bottomofthe ninthifyou're thinkingaboutwhatyou'regoingto say whenyou cut the ribbon of a shopping center in Van Nuys. Can youi??" "Charlie, Morales is one of the fastest guys in the whole league." "Marty Marion would've gotten him. Marty Marion would've nailed him by three steps. Marty Marion didn't have a shopping center named after him." Atthis point Randywished he had gone to Omar's. The chlorine puddle was getting larger. The anchovies were digging in for a firelight. The team had lost a game in the standingsto both Oakland andtheAngels. His headhurt. The airconditionerin his hotel room sounded like the "Anvil Chorus." And a very weird thing had just happened in the shower. "You're twenty-eightyears old. Yougot the best swing since Ted Williams. You'rethefastestwhiteguyin the league. You've gota nice wife, a family, you're pulling down two point three a year not to mention the TVand merchandising money. You've got a shot at the Hall of Fame ifyou don't get hurt or start putting powder up your nose. Allyou've got to do is keep your eye on the ball. You under stand what I'm saying?" "Right." "Andyou don't answeryour fan mail." "Huh?" "My sister Francine'sgot a kid in Glendale who wroteyou a letter awhile back.Younever answered it.Youknowwhatnoblesse oblige means, Dreyfus?" "I've got a service that takes care of that." "Giveyour service a call. Tell them to take a look for a letter by Ernest Turnack, 3890 El Rosarito Drive, in Glendale. The kid thinks you walk on water. That's it. Over and out." When he got back to the trainer's room, it was empty except for Willie St. James. Randy didn't feel like discussing municipal bonds with the left fielder so he ignored him and went straight to his locker. Lying in front of it was a bagful of baseballs to autograph and a copy of a Sports Illustrated cover story with a note from his publicist clipped to it: What about the 24th for Arsenio Hall? You'll be on with Bobby Vinton and Princess Caroline of Monaco. Need to know by Wednesday. Please call.
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