Playmates (6 page)

"There's no such thing as a bad boy," I said.

"Sure," Susan said. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother." Her eyes were full of laughter, and something else, as she looked at me over the rim of her brandy alexander.

"A romantic diddle?"

"It's the first word that came to mind," she said.

"And yet you find me physically compelling."

"I find you compelling in every way," Susan said. And I knew what the something else was in her eyes.

"Even though I'm a romantic diddle?"

"Especially," Susan said, "because of that."

"So you agree that I should look into things a little more before I toot the whistle on the kid."

"I agree, I approve and, more than that, I knew before the conversation began that you weren't going to 'toot the whistle.' "

"Nobody likes a know-it-all," I said.

Susan put her hand out and laid it on top of mine.

"Somebody does," she said.

I was sitting in my office with my feet up, thinking about Dwayne Woodcock and Chantel and point shaving and illiteracy and the backside of the new young paralegal who'd opened an office across the hall. The door to my office was open in case the paralegal wanted to stroll down the hall. A fine-looking black-haired man with a ruddy face walked in. He was wearing pale brown boaters and starched acid-washed jeans and a green polo shirt with the collar up. His jacket was silk tweed, dark brown and nipped in at the waist. His thick black hair was longish and brushed back on each side. A gold medallion on a thick gold chain showed at his throat. On his left hand was a big ring with a blue stone that looked like a high school or college ring. His sunglasses hung against his chest on a cord.

"How ya doing," he said when he came in.

"Fine," I said. I kept one eye peeled on the hallway.

"Got a few minutes?" he said.

"Sure." The accent was New York.

"Mind if I close the door?"

I sighed. "No," I said brightly, "go ahead."

He closed it and then turned and sat down in my client chair. He was about my height and slender. His hands were square and pale with a lot of black hair on the backs. The nails were manicured. I could smell cologne. There was a yellow silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket. He had the jacket sleeves pushed up over his forearms. On the left wrist was a gold Rolex.

"Nice office," he said.

"Compared to what?"

"Compared to working out of a packing crate in Canarsie," he said. "You mind if I smoke?" I shook my head. He took a pigskin cigarette case out of his coat pocket, and a round gold lighter. He took out a cigarette, offered the open case to me. I shook my head. He snapped the case closed, dropped it into his side pocket, snapped a flame from the lighter, put the cigarette into his mouth and lit it, automatically shielding the flame as if the wind were blowing. He took in smoke and let it out through his nose as he dropped the lighter back into the pocket with the cigarettes. Then he leaned back in the chair and stretched his feet in front of him and surveyed my office some more. He nodded approvingly.

"Nice little setup," he said. I tried to look humble.

"Must make a pretty nice living with a setup like this.

I looked at the closed door.

I said, "I don't mean to seem impatient, but for the last hour I've been trying to get a look at the young woman across the hall and she usually walks by about this time."

He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door and then back at me, pausing a moment to figure out if he was being kidded. Then he grinned.

"Hey, pal, I never blame a man for hustling." He took the cigarette out of his mouth oddly, with the palm facing away and the back of his hand closest to his face. He held the cigarette between his first two fingers, keeping the lighted end cupped slightly toward his palm.

"I'll make it quick," he said.

"Thank you," I said.

"We got a problem, you and me. Not the kind of problem can't be worked out. Couple of successful guys, a little good will, you scratch my back I scratch yours, everything is jake with a little effort."

I waited. He made himself even more comfortable in my client chair.

"My name is Bobby Deegan," he said. I nodded.

"I'm in business in Brooklyn," Deegan said. "And I got some business interests up here."

I waited some more. He smoked some of his cigarette.

"Business been going good," he said, "and I'm showing a nice profit, but the interests up here are, ah ... coming into conflict with your interests."

I leaned back on my spring chair and folded my hands across my stomach like Scattergood Baines and smiled.

Deegan smiled back at me. "Dwayrie Woodcock," he said.

"Dwayne Woodcock," I said. We smiled happily at each other.

Outside in the corridor, through the closed door, I heard the sharp tap of high-heeled shoes walk past my door. Deegan heard it too.

"Balls," I said.

"Sorry," Deegan said.

"Always tomorrow," I said.

"With luck," Bobby Deegan said.

He let his gaze rest on me hard, steady, the hardcase stare. I waited.

After enough time Deegan laughed. "Big yard stare ain't going to do it, huh?"

"Been inside?" I said.

Bobby shrugged. It was a yes shrug. "So what are we going to do about Dwayne?" he said.

"I was thinking of teaching him to read," I said.

"He can't read?" Deegan said.

"No," I said.

Deegan shook his head and made a silent whistle. "Any other plans?"

I was getting tired of people asking me what I was going to do about Dwayne Woodcock.

"I don't know," I said. I'd read somewhere that if you were patient and didn't get mad and let people talk eventually they'd say something. I was skeptical, but I was experimenting.

Deegan looked around for an ashtray, saw one on the top of my file cabinet, stood, walked over, and stubbed out the cigarette.

"Don't smoke yourself, huh?" he said.

"Quit in 1963," I said.

"Good for you," Deegan said. "I been trying for a couple of years."

I didn't say anything.

"You're not helping," Deegan said.

"No," I said. "I'm not."

"Okay," he said. "It can go a couple of ways. One way is we give you a nice fee for deciding that Wayne isn't shaving anything but his face. The college likes that, Dwayne likes that, Coach likes that, we like it. Nobody doesn't like it." Deegan gave me a big grin.

"And the other way?"

"We put you in the ground," Deegan said. His voice was pleasant.

"Eek," I said.

"Sure, sure," Deegan said. "I know you're tough. We talked to a couple guys we know up here. But think about it. What's worth dying for here? You take Dwayne down, you ruin a kid's life that ain't got many options. And you probably get killed in the deal. Who gets hurt if you walk around it? You get some bread for your trouble. Dwayne gets to be a big star in the NBA instead of a small time hoodlum in Bed-Sty. And who gets hurt? Team wins that should win, fans are happy. You think the college wants you to find out that there's points being shaved? Dwayne's a good kid, pal. Why fuck him up?"

"How much you willing to give me?" I said.

Deegan glanced around my office again. "Two bills," he said.

I shook my head.

"How much you want?" Deegan said.

"Two hundred thirty-eight billion," I said.

Deegan was silent for a moment, then he grinned slowly. "Well, like the old joke, we've established what you are, now we're just haggling over price."

"Be a long haggle," I said.

Deegan nodded. "Option two's looking better," he said.

We sat for a moment quietly while Deegan lit another cigarette.

"So what are you going to do?" Deegan said.

"Hell, Bobby, I don't know. I was trying to figure that out when you came in and distracted me."

"I thought you was trying to get a look at some broad's ass," Deegan said.

"That too," I said.

Deegan rose. "Okay, pal. You think about it some more, and I'll check back with you. Try not to be too fucking stupid."

"I been trying for years," I said. "Usually it doesn't work out."

Deegan laughed and walked to the door. He opened it and stopped and looked back at me. "You know we mean it," he said.

"Sure," I said.

Deegan shrugged and started out.

"Leave the door open," I said. "I didn't hear her come back yet."

MAYBE a minute after Deegan left, the paralegal across the hall came back from wherever she'd been. Worth the wait.

I put my feet up on my desk and looked at the toes of my Reeboks. Okay. I knew that Dwayne was shaving points for some New York guys of whom Bobby Deegan was one. Maybe Danny Davis. Deegan hadn't mentioned him, but he had no reason to. I hadn't talked to Davis. Bobby had no reason to think he was a suspect. But the kid at the school paper had said the story source was somebody's girlfriend, and I was willing to bet it hadn't been Chantel. Which meant at least one of the others was in on it. So what? If I decided to take Dwayne down, anyone else involved would have to go down too. If I let Dwayne off, they got off too. No point thinking about them at the moment. The thing was, a lot of Deegan's arguments were right. Some bookies took a bath, but otherwise nobody much suffered from point shaving. The integrity of the game maybe suffered, but that was too abstract for me.

Outside my door the corridor was still. All around me people were working away on bills of sale, and order forms and service calls. No one had time to be hanging around the corridor, not if they were going to get ahead, or be number one, or not get fired. Actually it was probably Dwayne who got hurt. Shaving points couldn't do much for your self-respect unless you got a good feeling from slipping one by the establishment. It would make a guy like Deegan feel good. He was a nearly ideal wiseguy. He'd love the shiftiness, the hustle of it, the smart money he was making. I didn't think Dwayne was like Deegan ... He might want to be. Who knew. So was I going to bust Dwayne for his own good? Hurts me more than it does you, Dwayne.

"Shit," I said.

I owed Baron Morton and Taft University the job I'd agreed to do when they hired me. I owed Dwayne Woodcock nothing. He was an arrogant kid, but he was sullen. Okay. So I don't turn the kid in.

I got up and looked out my office window at the still bleak spring. Berkeley Street was washed in a pale yellow sun. On the corner of Boylston, opposite me, a young woman walked with two short gray woolly dogs on a pair of leashes. She held the leashes in one hand and carried a pooper scooper in the other. The task was a challenge to her. The dogs, who looked straight from a Disney movie, were crisscrossing in front of her tangling their leashes, and the young woman was trying to untangle them without letting go of the pooper scooper.

"You think you've got problems," I said.

I sat back down and began admiring the toes of my shoes again. I couldn't just walk away from it. I couldn't blow the whistle on Dwayne yet, but I couldn't leave Deegan and company in place either, and there was the matter of literacy. I figured Deegan wouldn't try to shoot me for the moment. If I was killed while investigating point shaving it would produce just the result they were trying to avoid. If they were logical. I picked up the Taft file from my desk and flipped through it looking at my notes. Madelaine Roth, Ph.D.

I got up and put on my leather jacket and went out and closed the office door behind me. When in doubt do something; and hope that if you keep doing it you'll come to understand what it is. Across the hall the door to the paralegal office was open. She was at her desk thumbing through The Harvard Law Review.

She looked up as I stepped out of my office, and smiled. I smiled back and gave her the kind of wave where you hold your hand still and wiggle your fingers. She wiggled back.

Enthralled.

MADELAINE Roth had high cheekbones and very pale skin and a mass of auburn hair. She sat in her office wearing a dark blue silk dress splattered with red flowers, crossed her legs and let her swivel chair tilt back behind her big blond desk. The wall was covered with pictures of the Taft basketball team, clippings, letters from former players and announcements of summer tutorial offerings, new courses, new academic regulations and her three degrees, each separately framed in blond wood that matched her desk. There were bookcases on two walls filled mostly with paperback books that had the look of required reading. Her desktop was covered with papers. Her big round blue-rimmed glasses lay among the papers. There were two ballpoint pens and a red pencil among the papers as well.

"I read the article in the student newspaper, Mr. Spenser," she said. "And really, unfounded allegations, rumors, unnamed sources. It is simply amazing how much these students refuse to learn."

"Amazing in fact," I said. "Did you ever notice that Dwayne Woodcock can't read?"

Madelaine's face flushed and her dark blue eyes rounded and then narrowed almost at once.

"I beg your pardon," she said.

"I said have you ever noticed that Dwayne Woodcock can't read?"

She shook her head. Her face was still flushed.

"That's, that's simply, ah, crazy. Dwayne's a senior in college, of course he can read. Why on earth would you say he can't."

"I gave him a few pages of typescript to read and he couldn't read it."

"Well, for heaven's sake, it's like the old voter literacy tests in Mississippi, you ask someone to read a complicated technical report and when they can't, or perhaps simply won't, you assume they're illiterate."

"It was a discussion of several basketball games in which he played," I said.

Her face was very red now, and she shook her head firmly. "Literacy testing is quite a complex specialty, Mr. Spenser. I suspect that you were not entirely qualified. I wonder if Dwayne were white if you'd be so quick to assume illiteracy."

"Some of my best friends are jigaboos," I said.

Dr. Roth looked like she'd swallowed a hairbrush.

"Mr. Spenser, I assume, you're trying to joke; but the racial cliche is offensive."