Playmates s-16 Read online

  "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.

  4

  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.

  5

  "WHY not talk with the best player," Susan said. We were in my kitchen, Susan sipping coffee at my counter while I was attempting johnny cake for the third time, trying to get the batter thick enough to form cakes on the griddle.

  "Because the coach can intimidate him less?"

  "Maybe. Have they got a best player?"

  "Dwayne Woodcock," I said.

  "If he disobeys the coach what would be the punishment?"

  "He doesn't play."

  "And if he doesn't play does the team go down the tubes, or whatever revolting sports cliche fits?"

  "The team suffers," I said. "Don't shrinks use cliches?"

  "It would not be appropriate," Susan said and smiled at me as Mephistopheles might have smiled at Faust.

  "Worth a try," I said. The johnny cake had been on the griddle nearly ten minutes and was holding its shape, although it had spread out to be a bigger cake than I had in mind. I edged the spatula under it and when it was loose I flipped it carefully. The shape held.

  "What are those doughballs you're cooking?" Susan said.

  I shook my head sadly. "You Jewesses know nothing about honest down-home cooking," I said. "This is johnny cake, rich in history and tradition, favored by goyim in this part of the country for three hundred years."

  Susan shrugged. "Vot do day know from fency cooking?" she said.

  "I seem to remember that punch line in slightly different form," I said.

  "I destroyed the alliteration," she said.

  I pressed down on the johnny cake with the spatula. It did not sizzle. I slid it onto a plate and put it on the counter in front of Susan. I spread on a bit of butter and splashed on some dark amber Vermont maple syrup. I cut a piece for her and held it out.

  "Take a bite," I said. "Learn something." She nibbled it off the fork with a bright flash of teeth and chewed thoughtfully.

  "Dried mush?" she said.

  "Well, maybe a distant cousin," I said. "It's cornmeal, mostly. Originated with the Indians."

  "Can I have some lox with it," Susan said.

  Susan managed to eat three johnny cakes, without lox, and I put away four, and two cups of coffee. Susan was wearing the white silk peignoir I braved Victoria's Secret to buy her for Christmas. She had no makeup on and I could tell what she'd looked like when she was a little girl. Except when she looked at me. The eyes were not those of a little girl. The eyes had seen life intimately and clearly.

  "Gee," I said, "that robe seems to fall open very revealingly."

  "Must be a design flaw," Susan said.

  "Well, I certainly wouldn't have bought it if I'd known it was a second," I said.

  "The thought of you in Victoria's Secret is heart warming, though," Susan said.

  "I blushed," I said.

  "Good to know you can," Susan said and got up and started putting on her makeup. I cleaned up breakfast and went to shower and shave.

  Two hours later, with the johnny cake still sticking to my ribs; I fell into step across the Taft Quadrangle with Dwayne Woodcock. At six feet nine and 255 pounds Dwayne was the premier power forward in the country; he was also probably the number one pick in the NBA draft next year, and, according to the papers, a fair head case. Most men his size played center in college and switched to forward in the pros.

  The Taft center in fact was six foot seven, but Dwayne had made that condition when he came to Taft. He would be the power forward, giving him a four-year start on his pro position. Walking beside him was walking in the shade. "Dwayne Woodcock?" I said.

  He looked down at me silently and, after a moment, nodded.

  "My name is Spenser. I need to talk with you for a moment."

  "Know who you are, man."

  "You on your way to class?"

  Woodcock smiled and shook his head. "Breakfast."

  "Good, mind if I join you?"

  "Coach says I ain't supposed to talk with you," Dwayne said. There was no apology in his voice, or embarrassment. He was just reporting a fact to me.

  "You always do what Coach says?"

  "Don't do what nobody says, man. Do what Dwayne Woodcock says." Again the smile, genuine, but not friendly, condescending, as if to say he would overlook the fact that I was a short old white guy. It was probably hard not to seem condescending if you were Dwayne's size. You looked down from above the everyday world.

  "So what does Dwayne Woodcock say about having breakfast with me?" I said.

  "Free country, man, you want to walk along, okay with me."

  As we walked across the campus a hundred people said hello to Dwayne. He was friendly but regal.

  "So what you want to talk about, man?"

  "Didn't Coach tell you?"

  Dwayne smiled again. "Naw. Coach don't do a lot of telling. He just say stay the fuck away from you and not to talk with you."

  "What happens if you do talk with me?"

  "Me? Nothing."

  "How about somebody else?" I said.

  "'My way or highway,' Coach always say."

  "How come nothing happens to you?"

  "Man, don't you know nothing? Coach wants that final four so bad, he eat shit to get there. I don't play, he don't get it."

  "Well, I'm a detective and the University has hired me to see if there's any truth to the rumors of point shaving."

  Dwayne frowned down at me.

  "You what?" he said. And I realized I'd gone too fast for him.

  "I'm a private detective," I said. I'd feed it to him in small bits.

  "Like fucking Magnum, PI?"

  "Just like him, except I do it in Boston."

  "What kind of wheels you got, man?"

  "I'm driving a jeep for the winter," I said.

  "Love that four by four."

  I also drove it in the spring and summer and fall and would drive it for a number of seasons to come.

  "You carrying, man?"

  "Sure." I opened my coat to let him see the Browning. "The University hired me."

  "The University," Dwayne said. "This place? You working for this place?"

  "Un huh. They heard that there was point shaving going on."

  "Point shaving? They hired you to investigate fucking point shaving?"

  "Yeah. Article awhile ago in the college paper about it. You see it?"

  Dwayne shook his head. "No, man. I never r
ead that shit."

  We reached one of the campus dining rooms and went in. It was in a lovely Georgian brick building with a big, small-paned picture window that looked out onto the quadrangle. Inside was mostly white walls and quarry tile. Dwayne had four fried eggs, over easy, two orders of bacon, home fries, four pieces of white toast, two large orange juices, and two containers of milk. I had coffee. Regular, two sugars. I would have had decaf but I didn't want Dwayne to think I was a sissy. The dining room was nearly full, but Dwayne led me to a section marked Faculty Only where there were plenty of seats. We sat at a table for four and Dwayne spread his food out over most of it.

  "So, man, what you want to talk about?"

  "There's a rumor that some of the players on the Taft basketball team are getting paid off for shaving points," I said. "Can you tell me anything about that?"

  "How come you talking to me, man?"

  "Because I know that Dixie told his players not to talk with me and I figured maybe you'd be the only one with balls enough to do it anyway."

  "Dwayne Woodcock talk to whoever he fucking wants," Dwayne said.

  "What I figured," I said. "So what do you think?"

  "Nobody throwing no games, man," Dwayne said.

  "I know. But are they keeping the score down so that someone can beat the point spread?"

  Dwayne shook his head. "No chance, man."

  "Would you know it if they were?"

  "Shit man, I know everything going on out there. Dwayne Woodcock born playing this game, you know? Who say we dogging it?"

  "Just a rumor, printed in the college paper."

  "Who start the rumor?"

  "Some guy was kidding about it in front of his girlfriend, or so they say at the paper."

  "School paper?"

  "Yeah, the Taft Collegian."

  "Shit, they don't matter."

  I shrugged.

  "Who the girlfriend?" Dwayne said.

  "They didn't know."

  "Who you talk to over that newspaper?"

  "Kid named Barry Ames." Dwayne could find out easily enough. I might as well earn points by telling him. I liked his interest.

  Dwayne shook his head. "Never heard of him."

  We were quiet for a moment while I drank a little coffee and Dwayne ate.

  "So, maybe you wasting your time here. Broad probably didn't understand what the guy was joking about. Probably some kind of basketball joke and she don't get it."