Conspiracy (8 page)

Alone in the security office minutes later, Maria made six copies of the first page of the stadium plans, wrote a note, attached it to one of the copies, and placed it carefully on the supervisor’s desk. Then she went back to the photocopy machine and made single copies of the remaining pages of the plans. She put those copies in her purse, switched off the machine, and picked up the originals of the plans and stacked them neatly with the duplicates of the first page. Then she turned out the lights and left, locking the door with the key Raul had given her.

Raul was waiting outside. She gave him the key, and also the copies of the plans from her purse.

“You did well.” He spoke quietly, in Basque dialect. “Now I want you to forget these papers.” He put them inside his shirt and tapped his chest for emphasis. “Do not ask me about them or speak of them again, even when we are alone. Do you understand?”

“You men with your secrets,” she replied, also in Basque. She kissed him lightly and hurried back to the stadium tunnel where the UBC trucks were parked. Maria was grateful he had not asked why she was working so late, for if he questioned her and learned how her stupidity had nearly lost both of them their jobs, he would be very angry.

She would not tell him about Miguelito’s ticket, she decided, until just before the championship game.

16

Wayne Taggart’s gray eyes glittered with resentment as he peered over Cindy Ling’s shoulder. The slender young oriental production assistant could not see Taggart’s expression; she was busy adding a musical soundtrack to replace a voice-over in the final segment of Dan Richard’s documentary on the Russian team. Cindy also did not notice that Taggart was reading the instructions Sharon had given her, and that the instructions were making him progressively more angry.

Taggart’s temper was flaring for several reasons, the basic one of which was that the orders Cindy was following were Sharon’s and not his. Production—Larry Noble and Sharon— had gone ahead and made their decision without even consulting him. They would say, he knew, that time pressures were involved, that the responsibility was theirs and not his, and would be quick to point out other occasions on which they had sought his advice. But that changed nothing. 

He could see the trend developing. He could feel in the pit of his stomach the same hurt and bile that had come up two decades ago on the neighborhood vacant lot in Weehawken, New Jersey, when one of the bigger, faster kids would come back to the huddle and say, “Let’s try one with me at quarterback instead of Taggart.” It made no difference that it was Taggart’s football; the others would nod, yeah, yeah, and one or two plays later Taggart would be down in the dirt on the line getting his teeth kicked in, all because one kid had succeeded in getting him to step aside for “just this one play.”

Taggart’s memory often dwelt on the consequences that had flowed inexorably from those vacant-lot games. In his mind’s eye he could see now the high school try outs on the hot, dirty August afternoons, four years of them, when he would stand in cleats and shoulder pads with the others, trying out for quarterback, waiting for his turn to throw, or hand off, or run—and because he hadn’t had the experience in the sandlots that owning the football should have entitled him to, the others had been better. And after two or three days, every year, the burning in his stomach would come back as the assistant coach would take him aside after practice and say, “Wayne, we’ve gotta make some cuts now.”

In baseball and basketball it had been the same story, but he remembered football the most vividly because of what had happened in his senior year. Cut as a player, he had still been determined to earn a letter for the bulky white sweater his parents had bought him. So he had gone out for team manager. During a critical game, he had spotted a weakness in the opposition and sent in Ernie Zapporello with a play he just knew would work. “Coach says go in and run a forty-eight counter, Ern!” he had whispered between plays, and Ernie had charged out onto the field, followed moments later by a surprised and angry coach, screaming for Ernie to get back to the bench. 

Taggart was dismissed on the spot. The play would have worked, though, Taggart was sure of that to this very day.

Another thing that burned him about Sharon’s instructions: they blunted the cutting edge of the documentary. You had to be outrageous with this kind of thing if you were going to be remembered, and Sharon had dropped all the inflammatory stuff. Worse, she had picked the worst possible time to go into her “responsible conservative journalist” act—the very night that they’d learned the ratings were crucial. Taggart’s stomach gave another twinge. He could see it now, having to come back to his Bank Street apartment three weeks early and tell the friend he had sublet to that the project had bombed out.

Not that he hadn’t tried to get the decision-making control for moments like this. He’d offered to produce and direct the World Cup for Cantrell at only a slight increase in salary. He’d even had the name picked out: “A Wayn-Art Production.” But Cantrell had made this prior commitment to Larry Noble. So because of this prior commitment, the whole month’s setup was about to go down in flames.

His fingers toyed with his gold medallion, rubbing it in a circle on the smooth skin above his navel. Possibly, he thought, this one didn’t have to go the wrong way.

Cindy was finishing up. Expertly she flipped the completed video cassette out of the slot marked “2” on her editing deck. Then she took a bright orange gummed label from her supplies cabinet and penned in “Russian Documentary— Revised.” She removed the paper backing and pressed the label onto the cassette’s rough gray plastic shell.

“Just to make sure we don’t get ’em mixed up,” Cindy said, and removed the other cassette from the “1” slot, placing both on the table behind her, where Taggart was sitting. “Might as well save the original copy for Dan’s scrapbook, yes? Now I’m all ready to work on yours, Mr. T.”

She lifted the big reel containing the two and a half hours of Barcelona coverage and hoisted it into place on the deck, snapped the spindle clip to hold the reel firm, and with skilled fingers threaded it through the machine’s innards. Then she took a blank cassette from her supplies cabinet. “Goes ’round and ’round,” she said, snapping the cassette into the “2” slot, “and it comes out here.”

Taggart put his clipboard in front of Cindy. “Can you read my writing?” he asked pleasantly. “That’s forty-three minutes in, where I want to start. It’s the first Argentina goal”

-As he spoke, Taggart lifted the revised cassette from the table and carefully peeled the orange sticker from the nubbly plastic. Cindy’s eyes were on the timer readout on the editing machine, waiting for the reel to spin to the forty-third minute of coverage. There she would begin to transfer the signal to the smaller cassette that would be used for the master tape for tonight’s broadcast.

Taggart had no difficulty placing the orange sticker on the cover of Dan Richards’s original cassette.

Slightly over an hour later, Cindy had finished editing the game coverage, and also Rachel Quinn’s interview with Keith Palermo. Four cassettes were lined up on her table, three of them with orange stickers.

Dan Richards opened the door to the editing cubicle. Small in stature, he had been known in his earlier broadcasting days as “the little man with the big grin.” Now he was in his fifties, tanned and weathered, and an institution in sportscasting. The grin was still bright and infectious. Even in his green UBC Sports blazer, Dan looked like good company, as though he had news to report that would make a person feel better right away. Just off the shuttle plane from Barcelona, he was freshly shaved, his shoes freshly shined, the crease in his tailored slacks sharpened. After many years of travel, he had mastered the art. Whether he was arriving for a dinner with a placekicker or for a taping, as he was tonight, Dan could be counted on to arrive immaculate.

“Hiya, troops!” he said, turning on the grin. “Set for round two?”

Taggart grinned back and got to his feet, scooping the three orange-labeled cassettes into his brief case and holding out the fourth. “Cindy wants you to have this one for when you write your memoirs. It’s your original documentary on the Russians, before we had to cut.”

Dan walked with Taggart to the studio, where they would tape the introduction and voice-overs for tonight’s broadcast. He talked about the game, about the shots that Taggart had included. Then he lowered his voice. “Hey, what’s all this about a twenty-one rating? Did you know about that before we came over here?”

“No, I didn’t. Would have thought twice before coming to Spain if I had.”

“You think there’s a risk?”

“People don’t know my name the way they know yours, Dan.” Taggart scurried ahead a step to open the door to the studio. “If we wash out over here, people aren’t going to blame Dan Richards or Rachel Quinn. You’ve proven yourselves. But you know they’ll always blame the director.”

“Don’t get rabbit ears, son—just get ratings.”

Taggart laughed. “I guess that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? By the way, I like that documentary on the Russian team. Hard-hitting, controversial. That’s the kind of stuff that brings in the viewers.”

17

The evening was almost over for Rachel Quinn. She felt very tired, washed out with the fatigue that always followed a session in front of the cameras. Her back hurt, partly from her fall on the mat earlier that evening, and partly, she suspected, from the effort of helping maneuver Alec from the taxicab to the sofa here in his room.

She turned to the uniformed bellboy, a dour-faced, pallid man who reminded her of Bogart somehow made small and old. “I think he’s resting comfortably,” she said. “I hope you’ll see to it that no one else learns of Mr. Conroy’s illness.” Reaching into her purse, she extracted two five-hundred-peseta notes and held them so the bellboy could see them. “I would not like to have gossip in the hotel.”

The man nodded. “No one saw us, Senõra. And you may depend on my discretion.” He spoke as though he were accustomed to giving the same assurance to others.

She handed him the pesetas and watched him leave. Then she turned to the couch where Alec lay on his back, unconscious, his breath heavy with alcohol. One thing remained to be done. Before she could rest, Alec had to be properly put to bed.

She loosened his belt, unbuttoned his shirt, slipped off his Gucci loafers and socks. Then it was time for the trousers. She took them by the cuffs and pulled slowly, so not to wake him, though she knew he would not wake now even if handled roughly. She treated him gently, always, for the same reason she put him to bed properly when he had drunk too much.

As she lifted the trousers into the air, jerking them upward to fold them, a small roll of bills fell from the pocket. She recognized the bills as American money and was curious— why would Alec be carrying money he could not spend? More to the point, where had this money come from? She had not given him American bills, only Spanish peseta notes for walking-around money.

When she counted the money, her curiosity became fully aroused. She decided to check the other pockets. It took only a moment or two to empty them, resulting in a meager yield of a white-enameled cigarette case, half full, a lavender pocket handkerchief with Alec’s initials in white, and a small green cocktail napkin. She remembered the style of the napkin—an “R” crest and scalloped edges—from the British suite at the Ritz. Thinking Alec had simply stuffed it carelessly into his pocket, she was about to throw the napkin away. Then she noticed something written inside the folds. In red ink, possibly with a felt-tipped pen, a flowing feminine hand had written three numerals: 702.

She stared at the numerals, trying to recall each of the women at the British party. A number of them had talked with Alec after she had arrived. Though the interest of many had waned visibly as Alec had become progressively more intoxicated, it was clear that several would gladly have traded places with Rachel for the remainder of the evening. The numbers on this napkin might well be a reminder from one of those women that she would be available in room 702 of the Ritz—or possibly in another hotel that she expected to remain in Alec’s memory after the haze of alcohol had cleared. Then too, the napkin might have been given to him by some other woman earlier in the evening, before Rachel had arrived. And the fifteen hundred dollars? Why would a woman in a room 702 somewhere in Madrid give Alec Conroy that much money? Or did the numbers have another meaning—a baggage claim, perhaps, or a post office box? If Alec had become involved for the money, it was plainly no trifling matter.

And yet Alec had chosen not to tell her about it.

Thoughtfully she replaced the money and the other things from Alec’s pockets. She would have to find out what he was up to, that much was certain. She would not ask him directly, for if he wanted to tell her, he would do so without her asking, and if he did not, he would only lie convincingly. Then, alerted to her suspicions and wary, he would cover his tracks, making her task more difficult.

Her mind fastened on the one starting point for her inquiry: the gathering for the British team at the Ritz. Whatever Alec had done, the napkin proved that someone from that hotel suite was involved with him. How to find out which someone was the problem, also how to accomplish that feat while still attending to her job as a reporter—to her “comeback.” After Ross Cantrell’s dire-straits warning, which had reached her immediately following the Palermo interview, she knew she would have to find a way to distinguish herself, to produce something really memorable. Otherwise, people would say that an aging Rachel Quinn had dragged down the World Cup ratings and made the show fold.

Quietly she folded Alec’s trousers and put them neatly on the chair beside Alec’s dressing table. She picked up a light cotton thermal blanket and pillow from the bed and returned to where Alec lay on the couch to tuck him in for the night. As she did, she noticed an unmistakable bulge protruding beneath his bikini-style briefs. Perhaps he was having an erotic dream, or perhaps the night air on his uncovered legs stimulated him. But whatever the cause, Alec had a lovely erection.