Playmates (2 page)

"Whyn't you get off his case, Mister," said a young woman with very large pink-rimmed glasses.

"You happen to know the source of his rumor?" I said.

"No, but if I did, I wouldn't tell you."

I looked at the rest of the kids, slowly, one at a time. Nobody said anything.

"What's too bad," I said, "is you've fastened on to the wrong principle. The heart of the business is not protecting your sources. It's spreading the truth."

None of them said anything except one in the back, who said, "Yeaa!" And another kid said, "It's Lou Grant."

Then a girl giggled and three or four others laughed. It is hard to remain dignified when being laughed at by a group of adolescents. I succeeded, however. I left without giving them the finger.

THE "Taft Basketball Program" looks like Life magazine. It's in full color. It has biographies of all the players on both sides, pictures of everybody, individual statistics, and a history of the rivalry, which was Georgetown on a program Cort's secretary had given me. I had it rolled up and stuck in my left hip pocket when I drifted into the Taft field house and took a seat in the empty stands above the basketball court, put my feet up on the seats in front of me and spread out to watch the Taft Falcons practice. They were running switch drills in opposite corners of the floor under a couple of assistant coaches, and the head coach, Dixie Dunham, moved back and forth, commenting, correcting, reviling.

"Awright," Dunham was screaming. "Everybody around me down here." The group at the far left of the court came down to the far right end where Dunham was standing.

"Okay," Dunham said, "Dwayne, you got the ball. You pass off to Dennis, come down here, set the pick. Dennis, you go off and pick to the right. Now ... okay, . . . Robert, what do you do?"

"Fight through the pick, Coach."

"And if you do, and Kenny thinks you're going to switch, what happens?"

There was silence for a moment.

"What the fuck happens?" Dunham's voice went up an octave.

"Both guys guarding Dennis," Dwayne said. "I roll to the basket."

"That's right. Come on, boys, is Dwayne the only one of you thinking? So what do you learn from that? What's the lesson we take? What does my system say about that?"

"We got to talk to each other," Robert said.

"Check," Dunham said, "and double check. That, Robert, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar key. You got to talk. I don't care whether you switch, or you fight through the pick. Both of you got to know what the other guy's doing, otherwise, what? Kenny, what?"

"Two for them, Coach."

"You bet your ass." Dunham clapped his hands. "Okay, Frank, Billy, take them back, let's work on it some more."

Dunham was a legend. Certainly he was one of the two or three best college basketball coaches in the country. He was also a man of legendary temper and intensity and had sat out a five-game suspension a couple of years ago when he had gone into the stands after a heckler. Since he was six feet five and weighed maybe 225, when he went after the heckler it constituted a genuine threat. According to the program he'd been a small forward at Canisius, had averaged eight points, three assists and four rebounds a game, in a college career during which Canisius had won seventy and lost eighteen. He'd coached at Seton Hall, and then at Marquette, before he'd come to Taft, and he'd always won.

I sat quietly in the stands, one of maybe five or six people watching practice, and learning the players by comparing their pictures on last week's program with the faces on the court. In maybe twenty-five minutes I had them all memorized and attached to names.

I watched them scrimmage. I watched Dunham go into a frenzy at one point and send them all to the locker room, only to bring them back out of the locker room two minutes after they'd gone in. Finally the practice wound down and the players were shooting free throws at several baskets around the court.

Dunham turned away from this and looked up at me in the stands. Then he walked straight up the stairs from the court and over to me.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he said.

"What a clever way to ask," I said.

"I want to know what you're doing here," he said. "You're not a student."

"Now you don't know that," I said. "I might have stayed back a lot."

"Look, I'm not here to bullshit with you. You give me straight answers or I'll have your ass thrown out of this gym."

"Okay," I said. "I'm a spy from Syracuse. I've learned your secret, talk to each other on the switches."

"Listen to me, buster. And listen good," Dunham said. "I spotted you with the program half an hour ago. Why are you studying my players?"

I was laughing. "Listen to me, buster, and listen good'?" I said. "For crissake, Dixie." Dunham glared at me for five seconds and then his face began to crease into a slowly widening grin.

"Shit," he said. "I talk that way all the time." I shook my head.

Dunham said, "I still want to know what you're doing here." His face was mixed laughter and anger. "And I can still by God kick your ass if I have to."

I was still laughing, though it had calmed some and I kept it inside where it only made a murmur in my chest.

"Not if you fight like you talk," I said.

It is hard to be a tough guy when the intended victim is laughing at you. Dixie wasn't used to being laughed at. He wasn't quite sure what to do. The fact that he was half laughing too tended to compromise his position.

"Look," I said, and then I couldn't resist it, ".'and look good," I said. And this time Dunham laughed, before I did. I tried again. "Dixie," I said, "what I'm doing here takes some explanation. If you'll stop yelling at me and sit down and listen you'll learn a lot."

Dixie stared at me for a bit and then said, "I got to get these kids showered and out of here. I'll meet you for a drink in an hour."

"Okay."

"Local place, the Lancaster Tap," Dunham said. "On College Ave."

"Saw it when I drove in today," I said.

Dunham looked at his watch. "Be there about six," he said, and turned away and marched down to the court and across it and into the corridor on the far side. The team ended practice the minute he entered the corridor and trailed in behind him. A couple of undergraduates, one of them female, began picking up the basketballs. It had been a long time since I played. But I could remember the feel of the ball, the control as you bounced it, your hand knowing the ball would come back and when and where, bouncing it again in control, pulling up, the ball resting mostly on the fingers, the shot, the arc, just as your hand had specified. Swish ... Well, sometimes swish. Often, Clang.

DIXIE was glaring at me again, across a scarred table in a booth at the Lancaster Tap. I had a draft beer, Dixie had a large Coke. Between us were menus. On the table top in front of me was carved RP + JH. The table top was covered with initials, but RP + JH was carved deeper, and looked more permanent.

Dixie was holding the large Coke in his right hand. He leveled his right forefinger at me. "I'm here to tell you that's bullshit," Dixie said. "Not one of those boys would do that to me. Not one ever has and not one ever will."

I nodded. On the walnut paneled walls of the pub were pictures of Taft teams and players. There was a prominent picture of Dixie with the National Championship team.

"University rules for eligibility are a two point oh average. Mine is two point three. Every player graduates with his class. Every one. Kids know that once they've been in this program, they're part of this program for the rest of their lives. You unnerstand that? Whenever the Trail Blazers are in town, Troy Murphy comes over, helps out at practice, sits on the bench during a game. Still calls me Coach. When the Pistons cut Stevie Scott, who'd he call? I got him an assistant's job with Rollie at Villanova, one phone call."

A little of Dixie's Coke slopped over the edge of his glass. He put the glass down, wiped his hand with a napkin.

"This isn't a bunch of free-lance schoolyard assholes, Jack," Dixie said. "This is a team. This is a system. Greatest system ever devised to play this game. No way, you hear me? No way anybody is going to betray that system, no fucking way they're going to turn their backs on their team. No way any of those boys would turn his back on me."

Dixie had his intimidate-the-referee glare locked on me. I said, "I guess you don't think they're shaving points, Dixie."

"You are out of line, Buddy Boy." Dixie turned up the voltage on his stare. "And if I hear that kind of talk out of you or anyone else you're going to answer to me. You unnerstand me?"

I drank a little beer, wiped my mouth politely with the back of my hand, and smiled pleasantly.

"Dixie," I said, "establishing the truth of this point shaving stuff will require that I keep running in to you for a while. It's going to be a lot easier if we clear up something now. You're a big strong guy, and you're probably in shape. But I've been doing this most of my life and if we have a fight I will put you in the hospital."

Dixie stared at me without speaking, which was a relief. The Lancaster Tap was only half full. There were faculty-looking people having an early dinner, and a few parents with children dining out family style. It was the kind of place that would fill up later as the college kids came in to drink. There was only one booth full so far, at the opposite corner of the room. Drinking tequila with a Corona chaser, the kids were relatively subdued. As their ranks swelled I assumed they'd get noisier.

Dixie said, "How many times your nose been broken?"

"Several," I said.

The waitress came over to our table. She looked like Knute Rockne.

"You want to order, Coach?"

Dixie shook his head. "Not yet, Lila."

"That scar tissue around your eyes?" Dixie said.

I nodded.

"You used to fight."

I nodded.

"Any good?" I nodded.

"Ever fight anybody I ever heard of?"

"Joe Walcott, once," I said. "In the Garden. He was way past it, and I was just coming along. They threw me in to give Joe an easy one."

"And?"

"It's one of the times my nose got busted."

"Did he have an easy fight?"

"Easier than I did," I said.

"How much you weigh when you were fighting?" Dixie said.

"Hundred ninety-two."

"How much you weigh now?"

"Two oh one."

"Stayed in shape," Dixie said.

"Yeah."

"I fight it all the time. I'm down to two twenty-five now, but it's a struggle."

I nodded. Dixie picked up his menu and began to study it. I looked at mine.

"Mixed grill's good here," Dixie said.

I nodded. The waitress returned and took out her order book.

"Mixed grill, Coach?" she said.

"You bet, Lila, and another Coke."

She wrote it down eagerly and looked at me like I shouldn't dawdle. I ordered a club sandwich.

Lila lumbered off with the orders.

"You think I didn't see the column in the Collegian? Dumb ass kid writes it, what's his name?"

"Barry Ames," I said.

"Yeah, Ames' Games he calls it. Thinks he's Roger Angell."

"Most people aren't."

"This jerk isn't," Dixie said.

"So you knew there was talk of point shaving," I said. "You talk to the players?"

"I told them, 'Boys, anyone says that to you, you let me know, and I'll nail his ass up on the door of my office.'"

"You didn't ask them if it was so?"

"I tole you," Dixie said. "It ain't so."

"Dixie," I said, "somebody's got to ask them."

Dixie tilted his head back and let the ice cubes drain from his glass into his mouth. He crunched them with his teeth and rolled the fragments around in his mouth for a minute and then talked around the ice.

"We beat Syracuse Monday and we take the Conference championship. The playoffs come up in another week. Our first eight are as good as anybody's and we got one legitimate All-American. We don't get hurt and we could go the whole way. We don't have the stud in the middle, but Dwayne offsets that considerably."

Lila came back and slapped a green salad down in front of Dixie. It was sloshed with orange-colored dressing. Dixie swallowed his ice.

"You mind?" he said.

I shook my head and Dixie began to eat the salad. He acted like it was good.

"You figure that a point shaving investigation, even if it turns out to be groundless, will screw these kids' heads up," I said.

Dixie put his fork down and looked up from his salad.

"You know goddamned well it will," he said.

"I don't suppose they could shave points without you knowing it," I said.

Dixie snorted. Lila came with his mixed grill. There was a lamb chop, a kidney, a sausage, two strips of bacon, and a small minute steak. On the side was a large mound of french fries and a saucer of cubed carrots. Dixie sprinkled half a cellar of pepper on the carrots. Lila put my club sandwich in front of me. Her body language suggested that she found me unworthy to eat with the coach.

"Nobody's saying they're losing games, Dixie. Just beating the spread."

"You stay away from those boys, Spenser. You stay out of my gym, you stay away from my kids. Not one of them will talk to you."

"Because you told them not to."

"Because I told them not to. We've worked too hard to have you screw up our season now with some harebrained dip shit investigation so you can make a few bucks off the University."

"I can't do it, Dixie."

Dixie was silent for a while. The room was filling up. All the spots at the bar were full and most of the booths. The people at the bar were mostly Walford townies. The booths were full of college kids.

"Spenser, I swing a lot of weight around here," Dixie said. "You keep pressing this thing and I'll use some of it."

"Okay if I finish my sandwich," I said.

That was as far as I got with Dixie Dunham. I finished my club sandwich. He finished his mixed grill. He paid and when we left in silence I knew nothing I hadn't known when I came in. Maybe a little less.