Playmates (9 page)

Gerry shrugged. He made a hand gesture at the counter.

"Over there, Jojo," he said. "For a minute." Jojo slid out of the booth carefully, his hand still under his coat, his eyes flickering back and forth between me and Hawk. He took a stool beside Hawk.

"How's it going," Hawk said pleasantly.

Jojo shrugged. I slid into the booth across from Gerry.

"Okay, what do you want?" Gerry said.

"Bobby Deegan," I said.

"Who's he?"

It was a standard reaction for a guy like Gerry. If I'd said George Washington he'd have said the same thing. College hadn't helped Gerry all that much.

"My question exactly," I said.

"Why ask me?"

"Because Bobby mentioned your name to my associate," I tipped my head toward Hawk, "and suggested you were a tight personal friend."

Gerry raised both hands in front of him palm out.

"Never heard of the guy," he said.

"Bobby says he asked you to point him at a good hitter, and you sent him to Hawk." Gerry pushed out his lower lip and shook his head.

"I was supposed to be the hittee," I said. There was a little movement in Gerry's eyes for a moment and then nothing.

"Would I send a guy to Hawk if he wanted you hit?" Gerry said. "How stupid you think I am?"

"Awful stupid," I said. "Bobby didn't tell you who he wanted hit."

"Look, asshole," Gerry said. "I told you I don't know nothing about no Bobby Deegan. You unnerstand? Nothing."

"Gerry," I said, "I've known you since you were a boy."

"You're a pain in the ass. You been a pain in the ass to the old man and you're a pain in the ass to me. The old man let it slide. I don't know why. He does what he does. But I ain't going to let it slide. You hear me talking? You get in my way and you're going to sleep with the fishes." Gerry's voice was soft, but he leaned forward and his face was reddish-looking as he spoke.

I turned toward the counter.

"Hawk, you hear this conversation?" I said. Hawk shook his head.

"Gerry says if I get in his way I'm going to sleep with the fishes."

Hawk's quiet face broke into a slow widening grin.

"Sleep with the fishes?" he said.

I was smiling too. "Yeah."

Hawk began to chuckle quietly and then to laugh and finally he bent over on his stool and pressed his hands against his stomach and laughed.

"Sleep with the fishes," he said, his voice shaking. "Sleep with the fucking fishes." There was a slim black guy who looked like a cabbie sitting next to Hawk at the counter, and in another booth there were two Irish looking women, who had probably walked the kids to school and were on their way home. All three studiously ignored the hilarity.

"Guppies," I said to Gerry, "could I sleep with some guppies? I always sort of liked guppies."

Gerry was redder than before. He jerked his head at Jojo and said, "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Jojo slid off the stool and stood by the booth as Gerry edged out of the booth and stood up. "Does this mean you're not going to tell me about Bobby Deegan?" I said.

"Fuck you," Gerry said, and stomped out of the coffee shop. Jojo barely got to the door in time to hold it for him. Through the window I saw them get into a charcoal gray Mercedes sedan, Jojo behind the wheel, and drive away.

Hawk got off the stool and stood beside me looking through the window.

"Not productive," I said.

"Counterproductive," Hawk said. "Now we got to worry about Bobby Deegan putting a hit on you cause you screwing up his scam, and we got to worry about Gerry putting a hit on you cause you hurt his feelings."

"Had to ask," I said.

"Sure," Hawk said.

"Hurting Gerry Broz's feelings isn't a bad day's work," I said.

"True," Hawk said.

I was back on paralegal watch when Chantel knocked on the frame of the open door. I put my feet on the floor and stood.

"Come in," I said.

She was wearing black stockings and a red leather mini skirt and a silver gray silk blouse with the top three buttons open. Her highheeled shoes were gray and she wore a silver gray duster open over her outfit. She walked in slowly, looking at my office the way people look around at a museum. She stopped maybe two feet in front of my desk, holding her black alligator purse in front of her thighs with both hands. Her hair wasn't corn rowed today, it framed her head in soft black curls. She wore eye makeup and red lipstick, and probably more subtle stuff that I didn't know about. She looked maybe twenty years old and she was beautiful.

"I . . ." she started and stopped. She looked back at the open door. "Can I close the door?" she said.

I came around the desk. "I will," I said.

I went and shut the door and came back and pulled one of the client chairs a little closer to her.

"Sit down, please," I said.

She looked at the chair and then at the closed door. Her movements were all slow, as if she had to think through each one before she made it. She looked at me again and then at the chair and then carefully smoothed her skirt against the backs of her thighs with her left hand and sat down. She sat upright, forward in her chair, her knees together, both feet on the floor, side by side.

I went around my desk and sat down and smiled at her. Encouraging. Supportive. Attentive. Entirely without sexual or racial prejudice. She could tell me anything.

She did not smile back. She gazed at me without any affect at all that I could discern. She held her purse now in her lap with both hands.

We sat and looked at one another. The steam knocked for a moment in the pipes and then stopped. I heard heels clack in the corridor again.

"Dwayne don't know I'm here," she said. Her quiet gaze didn't move. "He be really pissed off if he knew."

I nodded. Nice to hear a human voice again. We were quiet some more. She turned the purse once in her lap so that the open end now faced her. Too bad I didn't smoke. The heels in the hall clacked back from wherever they had clacked before.

"Excuse me," Chantel said. "I don't mean to just stare like this, but I'm shy around white people until I know them."

I nodded again.

"I don't know many white people," she said. "Even at Taft I stay mostly with other black people."

"You live with Dwayne?"

"Yes, since the end of sophomore year."

"You going to get married, you think?"

"Un huh. After graduation. Dwayne probably going to be drafted by the Clippers so we probably going to move to LA."

"You mind?" I said.

"No," Chantel said. "Me and Dwayne be fine anywhere."

I nodded. "How's his reading coming?"

Chantel shrugged. We sat and looked quietly some more. She didn't seem to be uncomfortable with the silence. I wasn't either. I'd heard too many silences to get uncomfortable.

"You told anybody?" Chantel said.

"About Dwayne can't read? No, nobody that you'd care about."

"How 'bout the other thing?"

"Same answer," I said.

Chantel nodded, as much to herself as to me. I waited.

"You married?" Chantel said.

"Not quite," I said.

"You got somebody?"

"Yes."

She nodded again, as if I'd passed some kind of test.

"What you going to do?" she said.

"I can't seem to help Dwayne from Dwayne's end," I said. "So I'm going to try to go back door. I'm going to bust his connection and see if I can spring him free."

"Dwayne's a boy," she said. "I know we not supposed to say 'boy.' We supposed to talk that man child shit; but it's true. He looks like a man, and he's good as any man, but he hasn't grown up at all."

"He's been a star so long he's never had a chance to," I said.

Chantel nodded her head four or five times rapidly. "Yes," she said, "that's right, and he always been bigger and stronger than everybody and he never had to, you know, do stuff he didn't like, do stuff he wasn't too good at."

"Like reading and writing," I said.

"That's right," Chantel said. "He wasn't so good at that so he just didn't do it. He so good at other stuff that he don't have to do it."

"What happens when you try to teach him?" I said.

"He get mad," Chantel said. "No, he don't get mad. That's not right." Chantel paused for a moment and looked out my window while she thought. She pushed her lower lip. And frowned just slightly. I wanted to pick her up and kiss her on the forehead.

"He gets embarrassed," she said.

"Yeah," I said.

"He is very proud," Chantel said. "He got this whole Dwayne Woodcock thing he got to live up to and protect and be, and it cost him a whole lot to do that all the time."

"You grow up with him, Chantel?"

She shook her head. "No, he from Brooklyn; I grew up in Germantown. You know, Philly. Met him here, freshman year."

"Damn lucky thing for him that you did," I said.

"Why you say that?" Chantel said.

"Because you are a woman and a half, Chantel. What's your last name?"

"deRosier," she said. "Chantel deRosier."

"What would you like me to do, Chantel?"

Her gaze was steady and unembarrassed on my face.

"I want you to help us," she said.

"Chantel, I will help you do anything you want forever," I said. "Where would you like me to start?"

She shook her head. "They are bad people he's with," she said. "They don't care about him. They call him 'big guy' and they tell him how terrific he is and they pretend to be scared of him cause he's so big and so good. But they aren't scared. And they don't think he's a man like them. They think they've got this here poor nigger boy by the nose."

Chantel's eyes were shiny, maybe a little damp.

"And they have," I said.

She nodded. "Yeah, they have, and he doesn't know it. He think they the cat's ass. They got cars, they got money, they take us to restaurants and clubs, and give us clothes."

"They treat you good?" I said.

"They treat me like I'm Dwayne's piece of ass," she said softly. "And Dwayne don't seem to notice."

I stood up from my chair and turned and looked out the window for a moment, down at Boylston Street and the people moving by. I looked across at the trees in very early flower outside the building that used to be Bonwit's and was going to be Louis'. Right below me a young man in a tuxedo passed carrying a cluster of balloons that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE KROCK. He crossed Boylston with the balloons and headed on down Berkeley toward the river.

I turned back around and looked at Chantel. She was crying, though not very much.

I said, "Whatever comes out of this, Chantel, I'm going to do three things. I'm going to save Dwayne's ass, I am going to see to it that no one involved will treat you like anyone's piece of anything, and I'm going to make the bastards wish they hadn't treated you like that to start with."

"I'm not, you know," she said.

"Dwayne's piece of ass?"

"Yeah. He loves me. I love him. We got each other. We got a space nobody can come in. When we sleep together that's making love, it's not no piece of ass thing."

"I know," I said.

"How you know that?" Chantel said.

"Because that's the kind of woman you are," I said.

She nodded, the movement of her head barely perceptible.

"How you going to save him?" she said.

"Like I said, I'm going to go after Bobby Deegan."

"You get them it going to get Dwayne in trouble."

"I know, that's the part I haven't figured out yet," I said. "Be nice to get some feedback from Dwayne."

Chantel shrugged and looked at her lap. "How much they paying him?" I said.

"I don't know. Dwayne never talks about that."

"Who's in on it with him?"

"On the team?"

"Yeah."

Chantel looked down and shook her head again.

"Don't know, or won't say?"

"Won't," Chantel said.

I nodded. "Okay," I said. "We figure it's Danny Davis."

Chantel didn't move.

"You know anything that will help?"

"Mr. Deegan got a friend named Gerry," she said.

"Gerry Broz?"

"Don't know his last name. White guy, scraggly mustache. Kinda fat ... not really fat, just sort of flabby-looking."

"That's Gerry," I said. "You know what he's got to do with this?"

"No," Chantel said. "I just see them together when we go out. They talk to Dwayne. Dwayne don't want me talking to them. He knows I don't like them. He's afraid I'll say something bad."

"Dwayne likes them?" I said.

"He likes Mr. Deegan," she said. "I don't think he likes Gerry so much."

"Most people don't," I said.

"Dwayne don't like white people exactly, but he likes them to like him, you know? He needs to have them think he's a big man."

"And Deegan makes him feel good?"

Chantel leaned a little forward toward me.

"Yes. Mr. Deegan got money, and he acts like he got money. He know what to do in restaurants and how to talk to headwaiters and what to tip the hat check girl, you know, that kind of man. Real sure of himself. Confident, seems nice, but very aggressive too, like a big success."

"Dwayne likes that?" I said.

"Dwayne been a star most of his life but he been poor most of his life too and where he lived was all black people like where I lived. But his was poorer. We weren't poor. And you'd see all these cool white guys on TV, and you didn't really think about it, and if you did you wouldn't admit it, but being a success got kind of mixed up with being white, or being like a white person, or having white people like you. Mr. Deegan is what Dwayne thinks he ought to be."

"He is better than that, Chantel, or you wouldn't love him."

"He needs to know he better than that," Chantel said. "He got to see that Mr. Deegan is a sleaze with nice manners."

"Okay," I said. "I think I've got it. I show Dwayne that Deegan's a sleaze, prove to Dwayne that he himself is not a sleaze, get Deegan off his back, keep anyone from finding out he shaved points, teach him to read and write and not let anyone know that he can't."

For the first time since I'd seen her, Chantel smiled.