“That’s what Anderson says,” Pinky tells him. “Anderson says he felt it.”

“Maybe Blakely stretched Anderson’s foot with his nails, too. Is that it?”

“No,” Pinky admits. His face was all red by then, and not just from being mad. He knew how it sounded. “He says that happened when he came down.”

“Begging the court’s pardon,” I says, “but fingernails? This is a load of crap.”

“I want to see the kid’s hands,” Pinky says. “You show me or I’ll lodge a goddam protest.”

I thought Joe would tell Pinky to shit in his hat, but he didn’t. He turned to me. “Tell the kid to come in here. Tell him he’s gonna show Mr. Higgins his nails, just like he did to his first-grade teacher after the Pledge of Allegiance.”

I got the kid. He came willingly enough, although he was just wearing a towel, and didn’t hold back showing his nails. They were short, clean, not broken, not even bent. There were no blood-blisters, either, like there might be if you really set them in someone and raked with them. One little thing I did happen to notice, although I didn’t think anything of it at the time: the Band-Aid was gone from his second finger, and I didn’t see any sign of a healing cut where it had been, just clean skin, pink from the shower.

“Satisfied?” Joe asked Pinky. “Or would you like to check his ears for potato-dirt while you’re at it?”

“Fuck you,” Pinky says. He got up, stamped over to the door, spat his cud into the wastepaper basket there-splut!-and then he turns back. “My boy says your boy cut him. Says he felt it. And my boy don’t lie.”

“Your boy tried to be a hero with the game on the line instead of stopping at third and giving Piersall a chance. He’d tell you the moon was made of his father’s come-stained skivvies if it’d get him off the hook for that. You know what happened and so do I. Anderson got tangled in his own spikes and did it to himself when he went whoopsy-daisy. Now get out of here.”