Bad People Read Free Page A

Really really wrong, but even that thrilled him. For the first moment in as long as he could manage to recall, Barry felt alive.
     

 
     
    Chapter 3: Luke
     
    Luke crouched in the darkest corner of Robb Hart’s garage, in the space north of the workbench, on the side normally occupied by the wife’s Jetta, much longer than he’d planned. The Mariners’ game had gone into extra innings—fourteen in all so far. Luke listened to it on Robb’s radio, which rested on the open shelf under the work counter. Luke had the volume low, set to practically inaudible. He held one ear toward the tinny speaker while the other remained alert for oncoming vehicles. He stayed poised. There was no telling whether the target would stay for the whole game anyway.
    Robb Hart’s wife Connie was speaking at an engagement out of town. Luke had spent four months planning. He had considered following Robb to Vegas on one of his jaunts, but it wasn’t in the budget. Now, baseball season well underway, a game that Robb stayed in town for, finally coincided with one of Connie’s trips. Robb had season tickets, but many of the tickets went to clients. Never Oakland games, however. Robb came from the Bay Area and he didn’t miss games against Oakland. He never took his son Stephen-David. Though still in high school, the son went his own way, and didn’t come home before two Am. Not usually anyhow. That was a risk. The family kept irregular hours, and no perfect opportunity had ever presented itself, but things were working themselves out now, as they always seemed to.
    Oakland had an excellent chance that year. Luke had no interest in organized sports, except to understand Robb, but in his research he’d picked up the book Moneyball about A’s manager Billy Beane. The book riveted him. Oakland, with the smallest payroll in baseball, stayed in contention each year through careful analysis of the stats that actually mattered—not the stats conventional wisdom claimed mattered. Luke admired the thinking and strove to incorporate it in his own endeavors. He’d taken copious notes, and broken the book’s spine through many readings.
    Luke pressed his hands between his thighs and calves and squeezed, in a new body game he’d just thought of. He had made up games like that since he was little, at times when he had nothing else to do. He might stand up, stretch his arms wide, trying to touch distant walls, which was his favorite body game. Nine years ago, at fourteen, he popped his shoulder out doing it, and had gazed at the red misshaped shoulder for minutes. He didn’t even feel any pain, so fascinated was he. Adulthood had fewer moments like that, where one could be alone with one’s body, discovering what it could do.
    He kept himself fit, however. The odd, ordinary, bodies of baseball players were the one thing that amused him about the sport. Some, pitchers especially, looked like any old indifferent out-of-shape Middle-Americans. Beer guts and bad hair, unlike the superhuman bodies of other pro sports. Luke tensed himself. It would never happen to him. He had discipline. Robb was what? Nearly fifty. Yet he looked better than Barry did at only thirty-nine. Barry looked like a baseball player himself, right down to the gut and the beard, and hair sticking over his ears. Robb stayed fit. His hair was gray at the sides, but it hadn’t receded like Barry’s, and he kept it neat. He looked like Reed Richards in the early Fantastic Four comics. Luke felt he would look like Mr. Fantastic when he reached forty, or fifty. The expectation was reasonable; he now had corroboration, because Robb was doing it while running several successful businesses too. He prioritized.
    Luke let his hands free and shook them, fingers loose. Sweat pooled under the latex gloves but he couldn’t take them off and still ensure he’d be able to get them back on in time, should he need to hurry. The gloves, it turned out, were coated inside with something like talcum