The Trial Of Summary James — Chapter Nine

A great African nation has risen in North America. But something is… wrong. Chapter 9 of 20 in the novella.

Nov 07, 2024

Chapter Nine

The Hotel’s front desk clerk, whose name turned out to be Richland Price, perfect for a gambling man, I thought, was happy to give me the Thériault Mawlings baseball card. True to his word, he was willing to wait until my phone arrived so I could pay him the one hundred dollars it cost for the base card. When I asked him why each player had his own card when you could just store the information of every Carolina League player on one card, he said, “Then they wouldn’t be collectibles, too, would they?”

He gave me some quick instructions on how to use it. “You don’t need your phone to activate it,” he said, “but you will want to sync it up so that you can always monitor his progress. Which you can do with just the card, but you’ll not want to carry all your cards around with you.” I wanted to tell him this would be my only gambling foray, and thus my only baseball card, but I didn’t bother.

I wasn’t a gambling man, but I had an anthropological interest in this. “See look here,” he said, pointing to Mawlings’s stat sheet. “He only hitting two sixty-nine now. He gonna be a three-hundred hitter before this year is over. Good time to place your bet.” So it turned out the card was basically an investment in a baseball player’s future.

Price demonstrated to me how I could bet either way on the guy, for whatever period I wished. If I bet on him to hit .300 by the end of the year, that would cost me more but have a substantially better payoff than if I bet that he’d hit .280 by the end of the month. Or I could go the other way and make a bet that he’d be hitting .250 by the end of the year. That was an inexpensive gamble because nobody was betting that. The payoff was huge. Gambling. What a concept.

Price tapped on the card to run some videos of Mawlings’s performance in the minor leagues, and I was impressed. He had a beautiful swing, perfectly stated for the art of baseball. He was going places. But he was a rookie. Pitchers would discover holes in his swing. I decided I’d place my bet on an average of .249. Anything at or under that would score a lot of money. I could have also placed money on things like home runs, etc. Even lifetime stuff, like how many homers he’d hit throughout his career. I’d never gambled before, but I was already understanding the thrill. I’d have to wait until I could access my cryptocurrency through my phone to place the bet. Which was fine. I didn’t want to bet against Mawlings in front of one of his favorite fans.

When I got back to my hotel room, I crashed for a bit. That was a good way to bide the time, considering I was exhausted. Besides, I was emasculated without a phone. I hated sleeping during the day, especially considering it was late afternoon with the possibility that it could get dark before I woke up, sending me all the way to the morning in my slumber. But I didn’t have a choice. I was dragging.

I didn’t need to worry. I was woken by a loud knock on the door. I was pretty sure that Price had my back in such a way that he wouldn’t let anyone through who couldn’t demonstrate a formal relationship with me. I had told him I was expecting a delivery. But Price could also be dead. These were bad people.

So I peered through the door peephole and saw a man wearing a San Francisco Methodist Collective hat with a little airplane icon next to the lettering. When I opened the door, he thrust a small package in my direction. He used his scanner to scan my eyes, leaving without the usual polite goodbye type of thing.

I hoped he was just a guy in a hurry, but I was nervous enough opening the package to smell it for explosives. It turned out to be just a phone. Relieved, I closed the door, sat down, and called Trace, who, of course, was already installed on the phone as a contact, along with every other feature of my previous phone.

“Two things,” I said to him. “First, okay, three things. First, thank you, thank you, and thank you.”

“Those are the three things?”

“No, that’s one of the three things.”

“No problem, it’s what we do here,” he said, sounding like a customer service rep for a big retail congregation.

“That brings up the second thing. Look. I’ve never gone deep here with you on that, Trace. Ever since we met in Havana and had that little mutual flare-up with a local congregation…”

He interrupted me with, “You mean the first time I saved your ass?”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “that. Anyway, I’ve never asked who you work for, who pays you, how you do these things. You know?”

“Because you know better than to ask questions like this. That’s two. What’s the third thing?”

I realized I wasn’t going to find out how he managed to hire a small army to get me out of Alon’s hellish vision of a congregation, so I told him about the baseball card. On a hunch, I figured it might be useful for him to know about it.

My hunch was right. “Are you serious?” he asked. “Man, you just gained entry into the gambling underworld of Seminole City. You’re a likable guy, Longman, so maybe the dude is just sweet on you, but I don’t know about this. What do you know about this Price dude?”

“Not much.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. Well, no matter. Get up here now. I need to do some forensics on that card.”

“But Horse Luemba. He’s running around with trouble in mind.”

“And gathering dark forces to pummel you with. You’re safer up here and better off with a team of people who give a shit about you. This stuff isn’t something for lonely heroes.”

“Alright. I gotta pay my guy. I’ll get back to you.”

“If I know how these cards work, you can just pay using the card. Pop it out and let me see it.” We got on a video call so I could show it to him. He was right, there was a function for paying Price right on the card. I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling Price was harmless. I did what Trace said anyway.

When I did, a message popped up on the card. It must have been from Price. It said, “Thanks, my friend! Good luck to you. I guess that means you’ll be leaving our fine establishment.” I thought it might be a bad idea to tell him that, yes, I was leaving, but I also thought he’d be useful as a contact. I told him yes. Once a gambler, always a gambler, I thought to myself with a smile.

“You take care of yourself then,” he responded through the card. I told him to do the same. No goons came through the door as I prepared to head to Nzâmbi City.

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