Did He Jump or Was He Pushed?

Cyril Cassidy and Tripp Killian cross themselves as Hunter “The King” Kingsley’s casket is lowered into the ground.

Much like his reckless spendthrift life, baseball’s most exalted player, Kingsley, the Los Angeles Angels All-Star centerfielder, has been afforded an extravagant sendoff in death. His casket has a plush velvet interior, and the outside is made of solid bronze with “The King” written in script in 14 karat gold. Hunter’s body looks bronzed, brawny, and beautiful as if he could step out of the casket and smash the winning hit.

Cyril, Kingsley’s manager, and Tripp, his teammate, remain at the gravesite in reverent silence as many of baseball’s most prominent figures pass Kingsley’s grave, placing roses on his coffin. His eyes tearing, Fermin Casio, the Los Angeles Angel’s right fielder, places a team cap on top of the casket. First baseman Axel Hazelwood puts a ball autographed by Hunter’s teammates inside the casket. Steve Moneyman, the Angel’s Vice President, solemnly places two World Series next to it.

Resplendent in a figure-hugging short dress and heels, supermodel Claudia Kane Kingsley, Hunter’s third wife, sags against her father’s shoulder as the family leads her out. Claudia suddenly bolts from her father’s protective hold, running to Hunter’s gravesite.

“Why? Why did you leave me!” she wails, collapsing in the dirt next to his grave.

A reporter runs up snapping pictures until Claudia’s father retrieves her.

Tripp shakes his head in disbelief. “Jeez Louise,” the scrappy infielder says, squirming in his ill-fitting suit.

In contrast, Cyril is decked out in a close-fitting Versace suit that matches the grace of his styled hair, and Mauri alligator shoes.

“Quite a performance,” Cyril says, unfazed. “Claudia’s trying to show the world what a loving wife she was. They were married for a hot minute and spent more time apart than together. Another month and they would have been divorced. He’d already cut her out in his will.”

Tripp agrees. “She’s practicing for the court battle.”

A pair of amused gravediggers shrug, leaning against a backhoe, grateful to be able to see so many of their favorite players, even at such a tragic event.

“That Kingsley led a charmed life,” Judson Crick says to Caesar Alvarez. “Did you know he was the top college player in the country? The Red Sox drafted him, and they gave him a boatload of bonus money. He delivered though – seven battin’ titles, five World Series rings, and six most valuable player awards. He never spent a day in the minor leagues. I spent eight years in the minors ridin’ on rickety buses, eatin’ fast food, and sleepin’ in roach motels, while he’s sleepin’ with some of the most beautiful women in the world.”

“So, who would you rather be right now?” Caesar asks.

Two boat-sized limousines drive off, leaving Cyril and Tripp as the last of Hunter’s mourners.

Cyril watches the backhoe bury Hunter’s casket. “I knew he was in trouble. I should have paid more attention to his mood swings,” Cyril says. “It wasn’t easy being the best player in baseball. There were too many temptations, and he had the money to try them all. He was fine on the field, but off it…Still, I never thought he’d take his own life.”

Tripp huffs. “He didn’t jump from his apartment, he was pushed. Hunter’s death wasn’t suicide, it was murder.”

“No, Hunter killed himself. His personal life was spinning out of control. He came to me the day before and unloaded on me about his divorce, his kids, and the financial hole he’d dug for himself.”

Hunter bursts through Cyril’s office door, fidgeting and sweating profusely.

Cyril hangs up the phone. “Something wrong, Hunter?”

“I’m getting squeezed, Cyril. My exes are holding me up for more money. My second wife, Adrianna, wants ten thousand more a month in alimony!”

“You’re making forty million a year. You can afford it, providing you stop buying expensive cars you’ll never drive and ridiculous houses you’ll never live in. It would also help if you quit buying five-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne for every woman who bats her eyes at you.”

“Life is for living, Cyril.”

“And bankruptcy for the King of Baseball would be a very public embarrassment. If you want to go from driving a Rolls Royce to a Toyota Corolla keep it up.”

“I’ve got a bigger, more immediate problem.”

“Let me guess. Another kid has popped up. How much money does the mother want to keep quiet?”

“There’s this girl at my penthouse…”

“You didn’t get rough, did you?”

“No, of course not. We partied pretty hard, then passed out. When we woke up, she freaked out. She didn’t know who I was or who she was. She locked herself in the bathroom.”

“You have to learn that people don’t have your tolerance for drugs and alcohol.”

“It’s not as bad as the last time,” Hunter says.

“It better not be. That poor woman is still in a psych ward.”

Cyril dials his secretary’s phone, muttering his instructions, while Hunter continues to wring his hands.

“Something else?”

“I got in over my head earlier in the evening. We went to the casino, and I dropped nearly two hundred thousand. I know it was stupid, but I was trying to impress her.”

“The same woman who’s now so out of her mind she doesn’t know who you are? Good job.”

“Can you get the Angels to advance me some money? I was at Mossy Graves’s place. He’s not too flexible about markers and interest.”

“Stop going to his casino, he’s a mobster,” Cyril says. “How’s it going to look if your fans find out that the face of baseball is a gambling addict consorting with criminals?”

“I get it, Cyril. But I need a few thousand to make things right with Mossy, and a little for myself. I’m so stressed I can’t hit.”

“Yeah, you haven’t had a hit in three games,” Cyril replies. “Go to the stadium. Take some extra batting practice. Reclaim your title as the King of Baseball. I’ll handle the rest.”

The backhoe moves away. Caesar carefully rakes Hunter’s grave.

“So, you bailed him out,” Tripp says.

“Again. And again. And again,” Cyril replies. “It became a part of my weekly routine. So many women. So many kids. He barely saw any of them. I doubt he even knew all their names. How’d you like it if your dad was the greatest hitter of all time, and you couldn’t tell anyone?

“Hard for a kid to keep a secret like that. They don’t understand the concept of hush money.”

Cyril huffs. “They were all legal agreements. But the hardest part to cope with was the bad investments Hunter made without consulting me. I mean, who invests in a pet.com sock puppet? Or takeout haggis? All his troubles were mounting, so took a header off his balcony.”

“Hunter owed everybody. He even borrowed ten grand from me,” Tripp says. “But he owed the mob a lot more. He was a high roller, a preferred customer at Graves’ place. It was during a series against the Tigers that I realized the trouble he was in. This guy the size of a building wearing an overcoat was waiting for Hunter when we left the locker room. I knew something was up. I mean who wears a trench coat in California in the summertime? He stepped in front of me and Hunter, wearing this satisfied smile like he’s a cannibal and we’re his next meal. Hunter tried to be nice, but the thug was obviously there to deliver a message. He wasn’t interested in being friends.”

“Hey. Mario, what’s up?” Hunter says.

“Your time, that’s what’s up,” Mario “Three Fingers” Grimaldi replies.

“Look, I’m a million-dollar ball player. Mossy knows I’m good for it.”

“Your stallin’ makes him look bad. If there’s one thing Mossy Graves ain’t, it’s soft.

“I know.”

“You wanna know why you should pay up?” Grimaldi asks.

Grimaldi holds up his left hand, showing Hunter his two missing fingers.

“You can still earn your millions on the disabled list but you ain’t gonna like it, you savvy?”

“He may have been a train wreck of a human being, but he was one heck of a hitter,” Cyril says.

“Yeah. Too bad he didn’t trust his talent. You know how he hit so many homers?”

“Extra batting practice.”

Tripp snickers. “He wasn’t gonna waste time in the batting cage if there was a race going on, a tennis match to bet on, or a hot tip on a boxing match. If we were way ahead or the other team was crushing us, Hunter would promise the catcher a few grand if he let him know what pitch was coming.”

“That’s cheating. Hunter didn’t need to resort to that.”

“I followed him in the order. I was in the on-deck circle only a few feet away. Every time I heard the catcher say, “Here comes the express,” I knew The King was gonna get a fat fastball right down the middle, and so did he. Keeping up his stats helped him make money in the fantasy leagues. He couldn’t control how the team’s games turned out, but he had some control over his own stats.”

“Okay, so he made bets on himself in fantasy leagues. But I refuse to believe he bet on baseball,” Cyril says. “I know he took a few friendly bets on the golf course, and he dropped some money on boxing matches, but he knew gambling ruined Pete Rose’s chances of getting into the Hall of Fame. He promised me he’d never do it.”

“You need to get out of your office and come down to the locker room for a touch of reality more often. Hunter never bet on our games. That would’ve been a big old red flag for the Commissioner’s Office to suspend him. He bet on other games though. And now that he’s gone, the betting, the affairs, his depression, that’s gonna all come out.”

“He had his compulsive behavior under control.”

“Baseball players are superstitious and weird, but everybody in the clubhouse knew Hunter was a special level of strange,” Tripp says. “He seemed to be obsessed with the number two. He even wore it on his uniform. When we went out to eat, he’d order two rolls, or two Cokes or ask for two spoons. If he hit two homers, two doubles, two triples, or two singles he was happy. On the days he only got one hit or none at all, I had to get creative. I had to tell him he’d hit two fly balls, or two grounders, or fouled off two pitches.”

“But he was married three times,” Cyril notes.

“His first two wives were brunettes – Claudia was a blonde. He told me when he married Claudia, ‘I can’t marry anymore brunettes.’ You’re gonna have your work cut out for you when the reporters start digging for material to discredit him.”

Cyril gives Tripp a scornful look.

“Don’t worry. It won’t be coming from me. But I’ll warm you, Pickles Dornhoffer and Garrison Galt might spill a few secrets. Pickles lost his job as starting centerfielder to Hunter and wound up in the minors, and Garrison lost his wife to him.”

“Lies,” Cyril says. “The Angels planned to cut Pickles when Hunter beat him out for centerfield. Pickles should have been out of baseball because no team was willing to take him. He was too hot-headed and injury-prone. But Hunter asked management to send Pickles back to the minors in the hope he could get control of his temper and resurrect his career, which he did. And Hunter never took credit for it. As for Galt, he mistreated his wife. She asked Hunter to help her get away from him. The other players were too afraid to help. Hunter rented a place for her to stay and was still paying for it up until the day he died, even though Galt and his wife were divorced. There was no romance, no adultery. Hunter had his own love life to worry about.”

“He never got over losing Cara,” Tripp says.

“His first child?”

“Yeah, everybody knows she had pneumonia and only lived two months,” Tripp says. “But they don’t know is he and Marissa, his first wife, tried having more children but she couldn’t. It tore Hunter apart. He kept himself wrecked on anti-depressants and booze. He tried to show everyone how strong he was, that he could take the hit and still be the King of Baseball. But Hunter checked out emotionally, and that wrecked his first marriage. He had two kids with Adrianna and a slew more, but it was odd, the one kid he loved the most was the one he couldn’t have.”

“That happened when he was when he was playing for the Phillies,” Cyril remembered.

“Yeah, the fightin’ Phils,” Tripp said with admiration. “Toughest team I ever played against. They won two World Series titles in a row. Could have been three in a row if Cat Comer wasn’t disabled for the rest of the season, and Hunter hadn’t torn his hamstring at the same time. Hunter missed the last twenty-two games and they lost almost all of them. And Cat, he never played again. I always thought it was weird because the newspaper articles said Cat had Tourette’s, which I thought was treatable.”

Cyril’s head droops and his mood darkens. “It was a cover-up. I thought it was wrong because there were over twenty witnesses, but the word came down from the Commissioner himself. Hunter’s depression was peaking. One day he walked past Comer’s locker, and Hunter thought Cat was saying something to him, but it was the Tourette’s. It took five of Hunter’s teammates to pull him off Comer, who wasn’t even fighting back. Hunter seemed to calm down for a minute, then he grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed Cat in the arm. It wrecked the nerves in Cat’s arm. He could barely lift it, and being a first baseman, his career was over.  So, to keep things quiet, when Hunter got a three-million-dollar bonus for winning the home run title, Cat got a nice settlement.”

“Jeez, Louise. What did Cat say to him?”

“…Baby killer... Hunter got traded to the Angels the next year and had two more M.V.P. seasons. He was on meds ever since the incident, which is another reason I think he killed himself. He must’ve stopped taking them. You know what really did him in? The feds were looking into his finances. Hunter had some offshore accounts he never told me about, some investments in shaky businesses with Graves, and was part of a Ponzi scheme. He knew the feds were coming for him so, pfft!”

“Nah, that’s not it at all. He was going to talk to the feds about a deal to turn state’s evidence against Graves. Mossy found out, and Grimaldi got Hunter to take a long walk off the roof.”

A shiny black Cadillac Escalade slowly creeps into the graveyard, pulling up next to Hunter’s grave.

Wheezing uncomfortably, Mario Grimaldi struggles to get out, opening the SUV’s back door.

Tall, with hard, vulpine features, snow white hair, and unblinking, ice blue eyes, Maurice “Mossy” Graves steps out, his grim, unyielding stare preying on Tripp and Cyril.

“I’ve come to pay my respects. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

The two men shake their heads like rattles.

“You don’t have to be quiet on my account,” Graves says in a threatening tone that says otherwise. “Hunter was a great ballplayer, a lousy handicapper, and even worse at blackjack, but he had a good heart and was always up for some fun.”

Getting no response from the petrified pair, Graves continues. “I know what you’re thinking. Graves had something to do with his death, and he’s here because he feels guilty. Well, I’ll tell you what I told the cops, and what I told those nosey reporters sitting outside my house… I had nothing to do with it. Hunter owed me something south of two million, which I stood to lose if he died. That doesn’t mean someone else didn’t kill him.”

Cyril glances at Grimaldi.

“Hey, I ain’t paid to act on my own. I can’t afford to lose no more fingers.”

Cyril manufactures a peace-making grin. “I heard he killed himself.”

Caesar hurriedly seeds Hunter’s grave, hoping to go unnoticed, but he can’t escape Graves’s scrutiny.

“What about you? What do you think?”

The young, sun-tanned gravedigger hardens himself as he meets Graves’ stony stare.

“Guess you guys don’t listen to the news very much,” Caesar replies. “The coroner was on T.V. earlier. He said Hunter Kingsley’s death was an accident.”