#
Sammy starts the Babe Ruth League All-Star Game full of confidence. He and Jimmy have pitch sequences down pat and worked out how to change any sign at any time, as Jimmy or either of them feels fit or necessary. Art has all the Division leaders, which includes a sharp pitching bullpen. He has Aman, Lundquist, and three others who were voted into the All-Stars.
Jimmy has Sammy toss a traditional sequence; Fastball, Curveball, and Change of Pace. There are two men on, and Jimmy makes a change. The new sequences are Curveball, Splitter, then Gyroball; Screwball, Change-up, Eephus Pitch, and then Knuckle Ball; Sinker, and Cutter.
These pitches, especially with Sammy’s speed and his ability to throw exquisite Change-ups mow down the competitors one after another.
“Nice job adjusting you guys.” Art says to his pitcher and catcher.
The hitting suffers today, which makes him doubly grateful for a great pitching staff. Barfield gets on twice but gets stranded, however, he also dings a three-run homer in the eighth. Going into the last inning, Sammy stands for the last time today on the All-Star mound.
He strikes out the first batter in the lineup. He stands quiet and still while waiting for the pinch hitter to prepare then step into the batter’s box. The batter is not a starter but stands at about six feet tall and overweight, probably nearing 245 pounds. Yes, Sammy thinks, yeah, he is intimidating.
He plans on pronator pitches to this guy; some tricky stuff. No Fastballs – even his movers and shakers. Jimmy and he decide on a pronator round-house Curveball. The batter takes it for a strike. Sammy throws a wicked Cutter. The batter swings and misses.
There seems to be a quiet pause all around him, and Sammy steps back, takes a deep breath, and has a look around the park. People are on their feet. He sees the cheering but barely hears it. It is for him, but he pays no attention and does not feel distracted at all.
Art, McDowell, and Seaver taught him well. He steps forward enough to barely toe the rubber. He swipes at it with his cleats. He knows what he’s about to throw at the big batter, who is squared and ready.
Sammy takes his full windup and delivers a Knuckle Curve. Jimmy reaches high as the ball refuses to drop. The batter looks like ol’ Frank Howard as he takes a flashing quick swing. A loud crack echoes through the small stadium. The bat breaks and flies twirling toward third base. The coach there catches the fat end, looks at it, and throws it down to the ground.
Sammy immediately collapses on the mound. He is—
Starched.
He already has a Baseball-sized knot just above his left temple and he is out cold; lifeless.
The batter begins to run toward first base but once there stands still, as ordered by his first base Coach. There is a small crowd surrounding Sammy. Art calls for space. The paramedics on the scene are right there. They confirm that Sammy is unconscious but alive … yet barely so.
Art, the Coaches, Jimmy, and the team are in tears and completely in fear. The gurney wheels Sammy into the back of the ambulance. Art travels with Sammy in the back. The medics take vitals and try in vain to wake the young man up. The pulse is slow. The breathing is shallow, and he is put on a Respiratory Breathing Pump. Every three pumps he flat-lines for two.
The game is called given the circumstances and given to Marusso and Costello. Jimmy sits in the dugout repeatedly uttering the words, “Freaking Meatball . . .
“Freaking Meatball . . .
“Freaking Meatball.”
. . .
#
“He’s in a coma, Art,” the doctor says. “Looking at the ex-rays, we’ll need to operate: He needs a head-plate.”
. . .
#
Sitting crossed-legged in front of his seat in Fenway Park, the bleacher cleaner is cool and calm. He has his non-metallic rifle pieced together. It’s tight. It’s solid. He looks at the ammo. He nearly completed this task at home last night, capping his own using ceramics, plastics, copper, and aluminum high-velocity materials. He calibrates his scope. Round-nosed ammunition will work well. One hunter he read about shot and killed a moose with a plastic .22 rifle in Alaska. He read the book and watched the movie “Into the Wild,” which talks about this. Neither offers anything to his application.
He lays down with his legs and feet underneath his seat. He aims at his target. Art is in his skybox, and, in the crosshairs. The shooter owns a perfect posture and with Art in his sights, he rests a finger on the trigger and takes a deep slow breath, but then, in a split-second decision, he hears the voice inside say something.
“If I kill Mr. Costello, he does not suffer: He just dies.”
He’s got a bead on the young little beat-off, he holds it and follows it with every movement. The lineup goes one, two, three, and Boston takes long strands off the field into the dugout.
There’s no action in the bottom of the eighth but Boston is in the lead. All they must do is keep the Yankees down in the ninth. Sammy takes to the mound. The crowd goes dub-nuts. The translucent bead is once again on target, like a bullseye. The first batter goes down on a Gyroball, a Knuckle Curve, and a Cutter. A perfect sequence.
The second batter steps in and cocks his bat, and stares into the eyes of Sammy Costello. He holds his bat belt high over the middle of the plate. The wind-up delivers a Slider, swung on and missed but there is a sound of a bat hitting a ball. And then, another sharp-sounding pop explodes in the stadium.
Jimmy runs out to the mound where Sammy is lying down. Trainers, paramedics, and team physicians surround Sammy and ask everyone else to please step away.
“We’ve got an emergency on our hands!”
With everything in the case hastily wiped down and oiled, the tall, skinny man throws the case as hard as he can over the wall behind him. He hopes that the case wedges between two vertical segments on the outside of Fenway. He then runs to his manager’s office for orders. He is stopped three times on the way and briefly interrogated by the law.
“I work here as a maintenance man and a bleacher cleaner; right up there.” He points at the right-field nosebleed section.
He continues to the manager’s office, where his boss tells him to find a seat: “We’re all on lockdown.”
#
The left side of Sammy’s head is bleeding. Art rushes down to the mound. People want to run, just run away. Meanwhile, security police and extra cops radioed in are trying to lock down the stadium. The attendees behind his observation booth have all run; to where, who knows? Many of the spectators weep.
With medics, Jimmy, and Art surrounding him, Sammy sits up leaning back on his elbows, like he’s at the beach, looking out at the surf.
“What the heck happened this time? He missed the freaking ball!”
“Sammy, slow down. You’ve been shot in the head. What do you feel?”
“I feel like something hit me pretty hard right here in the middle side of my head. I’ve got a bad headache, Dad.”
The ambulance pulls away carrying Sammy and his father.
“Sammy, Sammy,” Art pleads. “Talk to me. Please say something to your Dad.”
The Paramedic suggests holding the young man’s hand.
“Is he still alive?” Art cries.
“He is conscious at this point, sir. We’ll be at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in three minutes. Hold on now.”
Sammy is immediately attended to. It is one of two or both rounds that hit Sammy in the head, bringing him down. As the surgeons operate, they keep a close eye on the pulse. It’s no time for hospital police work just yet but they do have the weapon’s trajectory. They radio into the Lieutenant stationed at Fenway.
The Press picked up on it, and of course, speculated; more imagination inflation.
“We’re extremely sad to report the assassination of young Baseball phenomenon, Sammy Costello, of the Boston Red Sox. More as we get it.”
CSI is all over the right-field bleachers. They see nothing but garbage and trash all over.
“Jeez,” one cop says. “The cleaning crew can’t be an easy job.”
“Yeah. . .Naw. . .Shit.”
“Hey,” one of the investigators gets everyone’s attention. “What is this?”
He is clanging his nightstick across bars made to keep whoever is in there safe, and he says so.
“Hey, Stump!” His boss calls him over. He is the smallest guy in the office.
“Yeah?”
“I want you to find the way in, and carefully perform a CSI. There’ll always be someone nearby. Just call out if you need help or have retrieved an artifact.”
“Okay, boss. You got it.”
Very few leave the Park without a stop, frisk, and interview. Women scream, they beg, and men begin to fight. The Boston Police Department has approximately 2,015 officers and 808 civilian personnel, with patrol services covering an area of over 89 square miles. Nearly one-quarter of the entire force is called out to Fenway.
Everyone’s IDs are scanned while being questioned. The detective team of 48 interrogates the entire Park Crew and staff. Stump orders sample tape to lift all the debris, and a fingerprint kit. According to the portable lab, he has at least three samples of foreign matter; black powder, ceramics, and plastic.
Stump crawls back out of the caged seat and stands up, stretches, and places his equipment hard-shell carrier and evidence bags down. He calls his Captain, who asks him to work closely with a small team that is on the way up. They are to look everywhere in the vicinity, leaving nothing unseen.
“Holy shit, Stump. Look at this!”
“Well, we are up in the highest bleachers, brother.”
“And this vertical alleyway. Look down there.”
“It’s all part of the original, old architecture. These verticals encircle three sides of Fenway.”
“Well, to me,” the detective replies. “These verticals are an extension of our crime scene.”
“Okay, done. Get a spot up here!” Stump commands.
In between the two columns directly behind the attendant’s cage, they see something. It’s pitch black down there, so even with the spotlight, the object is unidentifiable.
“Lieutenant, we see something, sir.”
“Well, what the christ is it?”
“We can’t tell from up here. Get someone with a high-powered searchlight to look between the two columns we’ve got the spot on. We’re directly over the right field bleachers.”
The detectives on the ground use a ladder to peak over the 12-foot divider between the two columns. They move the light no more than six inches at a time to get a look at all the crap in the crevasse.
“We’ve got a hit! We’ve got something!”
They set up a pully and drop a man down the void to retrieve the object. He brings out what looks like a pool cue case, and a nice one at that. A lead CSI investigator gloves up, opens the case, and finds a handsome-as-hell custom stick.
The molded interior appears to be loose. CSI on the ground gently lifts the sculpt and hands it to his partner.
“Well, god-damnit … would you look at that! A freaking plastic rifle? Jeeziz!”
“Get me a metallic scanner.”
“Not one positive ping, boss.”
“Get this and Stump’s evidence bag to the Lab, ASAP!”
They’ve got prints all over the place. They are sure who they belong to, as they have an indisputable match. The suspect remains nameless but is kept in custody under observation.
In the wee hours of Monday morning, the BPD conducts a raid on the subject’s apartment. He doesn’t have much, but the police do collect cardboard boxes and dividers, plastic blasting caps, black powder, ceramics, and assorted tools. Finally, they carry out his laptop.
There is a match on the ceramic, black powder, and plastic between what is found in the stadium and the apartment. One of the last interweb bookmarks and historic entries on his laptop are underground weapons sites. It’s kind of like the Silk Road for firearms.
Witnesses from the Fenway Park employee pool testify freely that the case came in and out of the Park nearly every day. It passes the security checks, including that for metallic material. The story is that the guy is an avid pool enthusiast always looking for someone to shoot with him.
“Yeah . . . Right. Shoot.”
“But all that could be a front to set security at ease and suspicions down low.”
“And he passes that check with ease when he finally fits his rifle into the forged construct below the stick and enters Fenway.”
The suspect is held at Logan Airport, as he attempts to board a flight for the Mediterranean. He is taken into custody and interrogated thoroughly. He is presented with reams of affidavits and testimony that he’s asked to speak to.
#
“Mister Art Costello, please. This is Detective John Radmonelli from the BPD.”
Sophia, whimpering, asks him to hold on. Art does not want to talk to anyone, but he knows he must.
“Hello. This is Art Costello.” There is absolutely no inflection in his voice. It’s monotone and tired.
“Detective John Radmonelli, BPD.”
“Yes?”
“I have a couple of questions for you if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Do you know of anyone that would want to hurt Sammy, or you, or anyone else in your family?”
“Let me see. Nobody should hate me that much, God forbid.”
“Are you familiar with a man named Hubert Bobotonis?”
“Jesus. Naw, I don’t think . . .” says Art. “I’m sorry …”
“Wait! Yes! He is my ex-son-in-law! We use the nickname ‘Bo’ to snip the syllables but that is him! That’s him for sure.”
“I am very sorry, Mister Costello. He is the individual who shot your son.”
#