Stuart Kaminsky - Midnight Pass

“I’m a first baseman,” he said. “I make a good target on the field and at the plate and I didn’t give up when I was a kid. What position did you play?”

“Outfield. Babe Ruth League. I wouldn’t make a good target at first base.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” he said, pointing the bat at me as if it were a rifle. “You’d make an adequate target.”

“Trasker,” I said.

He shook his head and carefully placed the bat back in the rack.

“Upstairs, in bed. My dear friend is gravely ill. Can’t be moved. Doctor’s orders. Bill is in the terminal stages of cancer. He’s comfortable, well, as comfortable as modern medicine can make a dying man with cancer. He is watched over twenty-four hours a day.”

“Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?”

“Can’t be moved. If you like, you can talk to Dr. Obermeyer. That is if Mrs. Trasker says it is all right.”

He moved behind the desk and sat in the leather swivel chair.

“I love this room,” he said, looking around.

“Mrs. Trasker doesn’t know her husband’s here,” I said.

“Of course she does,” Hoffmann said. “Stanley called her when we brought poor Bill here, didn’t you, Stanley?”

We both looked at Stanley, who adjusted his glasses and said, “I forgot.”

Hoffmann looked at me with another shake of his head.

“Stanley is normally the most reliable of my employees,” he said confidentially but not so confidentially that Stanley couldn’t hear. “Stanley is bright and he has the virtue of complete loyalty. But he has many duties and sometimes little things and, yes, even big ones slip past him.”

“That speaks well of Stanley,” I said. “Then I can see Mr. Trasker?”

“I’ll call Mrs. Trasker right away, but I’m afraid Dr. Obermeyer means it when he says no visitors,” Hoffmann said, closing his eyes and nodding sadly.

“Mrs. Trasker’s going to want to see him,” I said. “She’s going to ask him if he wants to go to a hospital, maybe make the decision herself if he’s not up to it. Bring in another doctor or two to examine her husband.”

“Mr. Trasker has stated quite clearly that he wishes to remain here,” Hoffmann said, smiling up at me.

“Mrs. Trasker might want to ask him herself with a policeman or two at her side,” I said.

“She is welcome to proceed with any legal action she wishes,” he said. “I’ve sworn to my old friend that I will follow his wishes, and that I will do until the law orders me to do otherwise.”

“Which means warrants, lawyers, Dr. Obermeyer.”

“At the very least,” Hoffmann said amiably. “And that will take several days, perhaps a week.”

“At least till after Friday’s County Commission meeting?” I said.

Hoffmann looked as if this were something he hadn’t considered.

“I suppose that’s true,” he said. “But even if it weren’t, Bill is definitely in no condition to attend any meetings.”

“You’re a true friend,” I said.

Hoffmann made a fist with his right hand, put it up to his chest, and said, “I try to be. I want nothing more than to follow the wishes of my friend and mentor and let him exit this world, if he wishes, in the bed upstairs. He’s getting the best medical attention money can buy. I only wish that money could buy him more time and a return of his health.”

“I’m deeply moved,” I said.

“I can see that. But you plan to pursue this?”

“Yep.”

“I’m willing to go to great lengths to protect William Trasker,” he said, looking at the rack of bats.

“I’m moved even more deeply,” I said.

Hoffmann scratched his cheek.

“You are being threatened, Mr. Fonesca,” Hoffmann said. “I’ll be blunt. If I asked him to, Stanley could make you disappear. Is that right, Stanley?”

“That’s right,” Stanley said.

I think I smiled, a small smile.

“Are you suicidal, Mr. Fonesca?” Hoffmann said, puzzled.

“Someone asked me that yesterday. I’m not sure about the answer. It’s one of my problems,” I said. “But I’m working on it and I’m not going to take my own life. I’ve got a good shrink.”

Hoffmann looked genuinely interested.

“You mean what you’re saying, don’t you?” he said.

“I mean it.”

“Ah, a good Italian Catholic,” Hoffmann said. “You won’t take your own life but if someone else kills you…”

“I’m not a Catholic,” I said. “None of my family is.”

“What are they?”

“Episcopalians.”

“Then we are at an impasse,” Hoffmann said. “I think our visit is over. You can follow Stanley to the gate.”

He stood up.

“I’ve got a present for you,” I said, holding out the gift-wrapped box of chocolates I’d picked up at Walgreen’s.

He took it.

“I think you are more than a little bit crazy,” Hoffmann said.

I had shaken him, but not enough. So far I was just a determined little man who couldn’t be intimidated.

“Why are you giving me a present?”

“Yesterday would have been your birthday,” I said. “If you had lived.”

Kevin Hoffmann said nothing. He tapped his fingers on the wrapped box of chocolates, and I said, “Don’t you want to know what’s in it?”

“I’m not dead,” Hoffmann said.

“Then you must not be Kevin Hoffmann,” I said. “That confuses me. You’re using Kevin Hoffmann’s name and Social Security number. But the Kevin Hoffmann born with that number died in Modesto, California, twenty years ago yesterday at the age of fifteen, according to a county death certificate which I can have faxed or mailed to me. If you are Kevin Hoffmann, you’re thirty-five years old and much too young for senior softball. You’re breaking somebody’s rules.”

He considered me with eyes holding no fondness for humankind. But I’ll give him this: he didn’t try to lie.

“I’ve committed a minor misdemeanor,” he said evenly. “I’ve paid my taxes every year and legally took the name of Kevin Hoffmann two decades ago.”

“I don’t want to know who you were before that,” I said. “I don’t want to know what you were running from. I want to get Roberta Trasker, come back here with her and a doctor, and see her husband.”

“Now you’re threatening me,” he said as if he were enjoying our talk, which might in fact have been the case.

Hoffmann reached over and pushed the phone on the desk toward me.

“You know her number?” he asked.

I started to reach for my notebook but he lifted the receiver and hit seven buttons. He handed the phone to me.

“Yes,” Roberta Trasker said.

“Lew Fonesca. Your husband is at Kevin Hoffmann’s house. Hoffmann says your husband wants to stay here. According to a Dr. Obermeyer he shouldn’t be moved. I think it would be a good idea for you to get over here with a doctor or two of your own.”

“Bill is at Kevin’s house?” she repeated.

“Can you come with a doctor?”

“His, our internist is Gerald Kauffman,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll meet me there if he’s in town and I tell him it’s an emergency. His oncologist is, well, he has several, all in the same practice on Proctor.”

Hoffmann watched as I spoke and then reached for the phone. I handed it to him.

“Roberta,” he said. “Stanley was supposed to have called you about this. I wondered why you hadn’t called back or come over. I’m sorry. If you like, I’ll have Stanley come right over and pick you up.”

Hoffmann was smiling at me as he listened to Roberta Trasker. I heard his side of the conversation.

“You don’t have to, Roberta…Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do…You know I will…Yes…Of course…Yes, you know you can believe me…I’ll keep you informed and let you know when Dr. Obermeyer says you can see William. Believe me, he is resting quite comfortably.”