Shannon was but part of his name, not the first nor the last, but the middle, after his mother's people, and he chose it as his only identification when they released him from prison rather than to use an alias. Should he resort to the full Andrew Shannon Connelly there were those, he felt, who might remember him, although it was doubtful there in Canada. Generally, the sportsminded were hockey people, some football, but baseball had yet to come into its own, even with the new Montreal Expos; still, he wanted no ties nor to be reminded of that segment of his life if only by chance, and especially now with what he had in mind.

He'd been sixteen-years in the majors, a husky corn-fed farm boy of eighteen from upstate New York in the beginning, foregoing college in '47 to sign with St. Louis, and later with Boston, then Milwaukee. He'd been good, having two no-hitters to his credit with the Sox, and great things still expected of him even at thirty-four, but Maggi had ended all of that.

Maggi Delaney Connelly, his wife of thirteen years, mother of Paulie, their six-year old son, had been an ardent baseball lover, an excellent hostess, and a Godamned promiscuous woman. One afternoon in July, six-years past, Paulie, left alone had struck his head on the side of their swimming pool, tumbled into the water and drowned. He, Shannon, had been in Chicago and they'd wired him there. It was two days following the funeral that a friend advised him of seeing Maggi in a bar with a man at the time the accident occurred.

He'd said nothing to her, only pretended to return to the team. That night he'd found them together in his bed and attempted to kill them both with his bare hands. He might have succeeded, he remembered, had not Maggi managed to floor him from behind with a chair, knocking him unconscious and breaking his arm… his left arm… his pitching arm.