The lights strobe, red and blue. “Could you turn that off?” Audrey finally asks, her voice sounding pinched. She closes her eyes and squishes up her face like she does when a migraine’s coming. Michael squeezes her hand again: I’ll take care of everything. And this time, he feels her press back, her thumb running over the callus at the base of his palm, pulling along the rim of his embroidered bracelet. Please, hers says.

What would Joe DiMaggio do? Take care of fucking business.

Miller continues without enthusiasm. “It could be anyone: your typical drugged-out vagrant, but maybe also a family down on its luck, a vet who’s a little out of sorts, some dumb kids from the university. You said there was booze in the house. Any drugs?”

“What?” Michael’s mind flashes to the empty vials in the bathroom, pain pills left over from the last time he threw out his back. Those don’t count. “No. Nothing.”

“So then how do you spot a squatter nowadays?” Audrey asks.

“Yeah,” Michael says. “From what you’re saying, it’s not like they’re hoboes trailing a swarm of flies.”

Miller sniffs. “They’re not. And you don’t. Y’all have homeowner’s insurance?” the officer says, capping his pen.

Michael’s nod feels more like a shrug. “Sure.”

“Get ready for a fight. They’ll nickel-and-dime you all the way to Kalamazoo. Document everything. Keep your receipts, take photos.” Miller hands Michael a card. “Call the station if you folks need anything. We’ll keep an eye out for the cars. You said the Cadillac was—”

“Ebony. With a little tint of navy blue.”

“That some sort of black?”

“Right. And a sky-blue Toyota Camry, nineteen ninety—”

“Seven.” Audrey remembers. Of course she does.

After the patrol car leaves, Audrey and Michael stand there for a minute, just holding hands and blinking at the house. Then Michael heads for the curb—their suitcases haven’t budged since the Taylors first arrived, when the cabbie plopped them down with such cheeriness. Audrey stops him, her hand wrapping around his arm with a surprisingly strong grip.

“I don’t feel safe here, Mikey.” Most days, his wife doesn’t look a day over fifty-five, big brown eyes and a cute nose and a smile that hardly sags. Not plastic surgery, just good genes, a little hair dye, and lots of moisturizer. But at that moment, her hair mussed out from its precise bun, her face damp from the heat and showing every one of its wrinkles, she looks frail. Like an old lady. “I don’t want to stay here.”

As much as it kills him to hear that, Michael can’t blame her. “Sure. Right.” So he walks back into the stinking kitchen and calls another taxi.

Everyone thinks ballplayers are made of money, but the big salaries—like that ten-year, $150 million contract Jason Goodyear bagged, the biggest in franchise history—are a relatively recent development. Really, everything changed with free agency and the ascension of the mega-agent, guys like Herb Allison, who could bark and bite and get teams to bid against one another until they pushed salaries into nine figures. Even seven figures sounds nice to Michael. Hell, he would gladly take six. As a minor league batting coach he makes about $68,000 a year.