Page 155 of Never Flinch

7:10 PM.

The crowd at the Mingo Auditorium is getting antsy. One of the pro-lifers, a cheerleader at St. Ignatius before marriage and six children, starts chanting, “Kate McSlay, Kate McSlay, chickened out and ran away!” It’s an immediate success. The other pro-lifers, outnumbered but game, take up the chant. The cheerleader stands and motions for the pro-lifers to get up and get loud.

“KATE McSLAY, KATE McSLAY, CHICKENED OUT AND RAN AWAY!”

Someone throws a can of peanuts and bops Cheerleader Mom on her bouffant. It bounces away harmlessly—all that hairspray—but one of the pro-life men lunges over the seat and grabs the woman he believes to be the culprit.

Fisticuffs follow.

It’s on.

Chapter 25

1

7:11 PM.

Betty is starting to think she’ll have no choice but to go to that old hockey building—she’s called up a picture of it on her phone—with a comet-tail of autograph seekers trailing out behind her. They’ll be around her, too, and probably in front as well, holding out their phones and their damned autograph books:Just one, please, Sista, please.It’s not like she can run away from them. Once upon a time, maybe; fifty years and two hundred pounds ago.

Outside the Holman, Holly also hears cheering from the softball field. Inside, there’s shouting, then silence, then more shouting. Gibson speaks in three voices: his own, the child he was, and a deep voice that she supposes is his daddy. So far there have been no gunshots, but she expects them at any time because the man is obviously as mad as a hatter.

Her indecision is drivinghermad. Any move she makes could be the wrong one. Her dead mother is making it worse, shaking her head sadly and saying,Bad decisions lead to grief instead of relief, I’ve always told you that.

Holly thinks,I’m fracked.Then she decides that’s too mild.Fartoo mild.Fucked is what I am. And I really want a cigarette.

At the Mingo, the fight is petering out. It wasn’t much to begin with; these folks are more used to fighting their battles on social media.Ushers are separating the outnumbered pro-lifers from the pro-choicers. Cheerleader Mom is weeping in her husband’s arms, saying, “What’s wrong with these people, what’s wrong with them?”

On the softball field, the cops have gone down one-two-three, and Isabelle Jaynes takes her position on the mound for the first time since college. Her adrenaline is working overtime, and the first warm-up pitch she uncorks doesn’t just go over her catcher’s head; it goes over the backstop and into the overflow fans who are standing behind it. This produces laughter, hoots, and catcalls from the Hoses bench and their fans. Some leatherlung in the Hoses dugout revives an old favorite: “She’s tryin ta hit the SKYYYLAB!” This jape produces more heckling from the FD fans and players, to a great degree fueled by beer.

The Guns catcher is a fourteen-year radio patrol car veteran named Milt Coslaw, six-five, a real moose. He’s also the PD’s cleanup hitter. In his blue shorts, his hairy legs look like pillars. He trots out to the mound. The leatherlung, realizing he has a hit on his hands, bellows, “SKYYYLAB!”

“You got that out of your system, Detective Jaynes?” Coslaw asks. He’s grinning.

“God, I hope so,” Izzy says. “I’m scared to fucking death, Cos. And call me Izzy. At least until I walk the park. Then you can call me shitbird.”

“You’re not going to walk the park,” Cos says. “Shoot ’er easy while you warm up. Mellow and easy. Like you were throwing batting practice this morning. Were those assholes watching that? You know they were. Save the steam for when you’re loose, because you ain’t nineteen anymore. And whatever you do, don’t show them that dropball until it’s for real.”

“Thanks, Cos.”

“Sure. Let’s get these jakes.”

The big man has settled Izzy down, and she finishes warming up, hardly doing more than lobbing it in.Save the steam, she thinks.Save the dropball. She’s not thinking about Bill Wilson, Sista Bessie, the dead surrogate jurors, or Holly. She’s not thinking about her job. She’s living with one thought and one thought only:Show these jakes who we are.

Betty barely hears the shouts from the ballfield, or the groans andcheers when the lead-off Hoses batter opens the bottom of the first by striking out on a perfectly thrown dropball. She has peeked out once, and saw Red and Jerome still on the bench outside, telling hopeful Sista Bessie fans with pads and cell phones to keep their distance. She thinks,I’ll never get out of hereandI have to get out of hereandmighty Jesus, mighty Jesus.

In the penalty box, Kate McKay is thinking,I need to prepare to die, but God, there’s so much work still to be done!

Nearby, Corrie and Barbara are thinking much simpler (and perhaps more practical) thoughts:If I could live. If I could see my mom and dad again. If only this was a dream.

2

7:17 PM.

Izzy dispatches the Hoses team easily, two strikeouts and a grounder. Her catcher, Coslaw, leads off the top of the second and on the first pitch pounds one over the centerfield fence, narrowly missing Mr. Estevez’s vintage Thunderbird. Guns 1, Hoses 0. A Hoses fan throws a bottle at him as he rounds first. Coslaw bats it contemptuously aside.

Betty’s phone suggests it’s about a quarter of a mile from her current location to the old arena on the other side of the park. She can make it by 7:40, but her margin for error is melting away. She wonders if she could send Jerome in her place. Barbara ishissister, after all. But if—no,when—Gibson asks Betty to say something before he opens the door, Jerome is not going to sound anything like a soul singer in her mid-sixties. Also: What if he kills Barbara’s brother?

At the back of the Mingo auditorium, two ushers come in and announce to an already unsettled crowd that there’s something very weird going on with the signs over the lobby doors and out by the street. People begin leaving to look.

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