Michael Monroe, owner of the Richmond Rifles, called his luxurious train car the “Big Sorrel.”
Preston found that distasteful, even if he never liked Stonewall Jackson or his ugly god damned horse. He only saw Jackson once, riding around like a fool in the middle of some swamp while his soldiers trudged barefoot across Massaponax Creek. History was funny in that way. All he remembered about Jackson was that he was an awkward and unlikeable officer with an exceptional capacity for cruelty. Then again, the profoundly good luck of being plucked from the front lines to the Division staff for a game of baseball did not make one a reliable historian. With a sigh, Preston supposed that the eccentric General’s desire to stack the cards saved his life in more ways than one.
The Virginia countryside unfurled from the latticed window of the ornate car. They were speeding out of tidewater country, with hills already high on the horizon. It was a Richmond Rifles tradition to join the team for opening day–all twenty-eight players were currently stuffed into far less commodious cars ahead of Big Sorrel.
Scars of desolated fields were only now returning to a forest, where thousands of men once desperately deprived the countryside of anything that could burn. The crowded carriage was thick with cigar smoke and the rolling din of fat, fob-watched men laughing boisterously from their stuffed chairs. The engine whistled. The old General Manager let his mind wander to those same fields along the Crescent Corridor, and the dark groves beyond. He was a boy out there once, somewhere, catching flyballs and fishing in the dark, rolling waters. Shortly after the trees came down, his boyhood was gone.
A lanky shadow in a poorly fitted suit slid across from Preston, and his memories subsided. Six years in Langhorn, Pennsylvania had turned Old “Iron Horse” Maw into an old man. What was left of his hair stood peppered and haphazardly combed across a sun-stained brow. His shit-eating grin, however, was the same.
“So this is how the front office travels.” Ivy leaned back in the chair, stretching his unusually long arms.
Preston knotted his wrinkled brow. “No luxury coach with the goddamned Langhorn Goats?”
Ivy smiled from his eyes. “No—but plenty of booze.”
Preston was not amused. “You’re lucky the opening series is in New York, Ivy. They were still burning your effigy at Libby Hill in ’15.”
“I imagine they were.”
“Fourteen years. Fourteen years you were a hero to every kid from Norfolk to Washington.” Preston shook his head and rubbed his eyes, adjusting his large tie. He swept up a bottle of Old Forester and poured two generous tumblers, sliding one toward his new Pitching Coach. “Three runs in seventeen innings to win the Legacy Cup, and you take the first train to Philadelphia for a bag of silver.”
Ivy sighed, pulling the tumbler to his lips. “Had my reasons, Kirb. Thanks for hiring me back.”
Preston shook his head. “Don’t thank me. I was out there with the kerosene. I had nothing to do with whatever harebrain took your charity case on.”
Ivy chuckled. “Whatever you say.”
More boisterous laughter erupted from the tables across from Preston and Ivy. Glaring, Preston inhaled, and then grimaced, racking into a coughing fit. He retrieved a kerchief from his sleeve as several of the nearby politicians and corporate magnates exchanged quiet, sidelong glances. Ivy’s eyes narrowed.
“Robley tells me you’re dying.”
“We’re all dying,” Preston hissed, whisking off his spectacles and wiping them clean. He drained the tumbler and sighed. “God just doesn’t have the guts to kill me quick.”
Ivy nodded, rolling the ornate tumbler in his large hand. “Speaking of death,” he looked over to the adjacent table, where half a dozen large men continued to laugh, smoke cigars, and quaff whiskey. “Old Monroe doesn’t travel with the team for opening day anymore?”
“Not for years.” Preston set his spectacles back on his nose and leaned back, waving a hand to the adjacent table. “Junior handles the day-to-day.”
“Not a fan?”
Preston grunted. “Somehow worse than his father.”
Michael “Junior” Monroe sat at the center of his coat-tailed crew of smoking businessmen. He had a long brow with wide cheeks, taking up nearly two seats, throwing his head back in laughter as he recalled recent illicit exploits in Florida.
Nodding, Ivy set his tumbler down.
“Oh, out with it, Iron Horse.”
“Hm?”
Preston gave Ivy an accusatory glower. “I watched you throw curveballs for two decades. I know when one’s coming.”
“Alright.” Ivy smiled, folding his hands on the table. “I ran into your son in Washington.”
“Nate?”
“James. District Attorney—you must be very proud.”
“Ivy, there are two types of people I can’t abide in this world: tobacco salesmen, and small talkers.”
Ivy’s grin widened. “Alright.” He looked over to the larger table and leaned in. “I know what you’re up to, Preston. I want in.”
Preston squinted but did not immediately reply. Instead, he poured himself another four fingers of Old Forester. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No? Let me jog your memory.” Ivy reached for the bottle, helping himself to another glass. “ Monroe would have canned you ten years ago if he had the votes. Except he can’t, because the tobacco business has been about as profitable as cholera for over a decade. And with your sorry ass missing the playoffs for four straight years, he’s been bleeding shares to cover losses.”
Preston inhaled slowly from his shoulders. “Ivy, you were always too smart for your own goddamned good.”
Holding up a finger, Ivy took a pull from the glass and continued. “War in Europe is good business, but old Monroe needs capital. And could we put it past an old miser like him to borrow against the pride of Richmond to beat those yankees to the bowl?”
Ivy drank from his glass.
“Two percent here, four percent here. Now where, I wonder, were those shares going? Too many angry Republicans in the state house to shove them under a buddy’s mattress. You’d need a real clean whistle to keep the paperwork above-board. Some darling of Lincoln’s party.”
Preston only glowered, casting a sidelong glance at Junior and his cronies.
“That’s right. Your old pal, General Winfield Garrison. A Union cavalry officer owns nearly thirty percent of the Richmond Rifles. It’s almost made for vaudeville. Except, he doesn’t really own them, does he?”
Ivy chuckled. “It’s smart, Kirb. Real smart. Someone like Monroe thinks that running a racket’s a one-way street, and here you are–right under his nose.”
Preston drummed his fingers on the table, staring down Ivy with an increasingly furrowed brow.
“Look.” Ivy’s smile was gone, his unassuming face now solemn and level. “You and I both know that idiot (he jerked his head toward Junior) will run the Rifles into the dirt the moment his miserable old dad gives up the ghost. If he’s smart, he’ll sell to the first heiress he sees and move the ballclub to Washington. But he’s not smart, and you’re counting on it.”
“Get to the point, Ivy.”
“I know your son is funneling the shares through Garrison. I know that Preston Kirby owns a third of the ballclub, and nobody else knows it. And a third is all it will ever be, short of some act of God, or mysterious benefactor from the beyond. I want in.”
“I suppose this ‘mysterious benefactor’ is supposed to be you?”
Ivy’s smile returned, and he leaned back on his cushioned seat.
“You ever wonder what old Cooper Fowler’s been up to?”