Murder Is My Racquet (29 page)

“I am going to stand up and you are going to let me hug you. I am going to put my hands on you in ways and in places you will not like. My apologies. But a person cannot be too careful.” He rose then, before she could object. She had half expected this precaution from him, so she merely winced and accepted the embrace that led to hands on her back, on her bottom, her underarms and between her breasts. He pulled it off smoothly, without it looking like he was frisking her for a listening device.

She wanted a shower.

“We will walk,” he said.

They walked.

“We had an agreement,” she said.

“It is true. I feel badly about this. I am only the messenger.”

“Four years and no promotion? I’d talk to my union rep if I were you.” She said, “You own the unions, but do you have one for yourselves? The Wise Guy Guild?”

“You are nervous. I can understand that.”

“You understand nothing,” she said. “What’s the point of an agreement if you break it?”

“Half of all marriages end in divorce. Did you know that?”

She said, “That doesn’t justify your being here, so don’t even try. We had an agreement. That’s the end of it.” She added, “I
knew
you people would do this.”

“Good. Then it’s not a surprise.” He said, “It is not the end of it.”

“You arrogant son of a bitch.”

The latest fad, silver scooters from Japan, streamed past
like bullet trains, small kids at the controls. Jessie switched to Michael’s other side to avoid a collision.

“Injury,” Michael said, “is a player’s biggest enemy. Do you agree?”

She caught her breath, a pain where her heart should have been, her lungs locked, like swallowing too much food at once.

“You will reach the semifinals without much competition now,” Michael continued. “You will lose the semis in three sets. A tiebreaker adds fifty to the three-fifty that will be deposited into any account you tell us.”

“Forget it,” she said.

“I wish I could.” He said, “Five hundred
and
the deed to a condominium in Naples, if you reach and lose the finals. An extra hun if it goes to a tiebreaker.”

“You’ll pay me six hundred to lose it?”

“And they’ll pay you two-fifty.”

“But I win seven-fifty if I win,” she said. “And I will win.”

Michael shook his head, discouraged. “I will be in a LiveWire chat room tomorrow night, called Common Cents. I will be TheWiseMan. Give me the account information then, and I will know you have agreed. Fail to make that chat room and you take matters into your own hands—for as long as they remain hands, that is.” He added, “They will hurt you, Jessie. Or that boyfriend of yours. I do not wish that to happen.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Michael did just that. She wanted to call him back, to argue. But he took a path to the right and continued walking at the same lazy pace. Jessie stopped, knowing better than to follow, shivering cold. A bead of sweat dripped coolly down her rib cage.

“I won’t do this!” Her protest suffocated by the trees and bushes.

“Of course you will.” He said this without looking back. People like Michael never looked back.

• • •

“W
hy the game face on a night you should be celebrating?”

She and Khol sat side by side in the stands. Eighth row. On net. A doubles match, the winners of which Khol might face in a night game the following day. Blistering serves from all players. Net play like gunfire.

“You know that for the women, this is the richest purse on the tour,” she said.

“Men, too. Tobacco company, don’t forget.
Serious
public relations problems. They’ve got to do something.”

“Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” she said.

“One-point-two-five for the woodies.” He never took his eye off the play. “It’s not an excuse. You can’t allow yourself to be intimidated by a purse, Jess. Players, yes. Though not you. Not at this point. You’ve held your ground with all of them. Do not psych yourself out.” He added, “Did you mean that this morning? About my net play?”

“Sort of.”

“You either meant it or not.”

“I was angry.”

“That phone call.”

“Yes.”

He said, “You still haven’t told me.”

“No, and I’m not going to.”

She stood up on the television time-out.

“Something I said?” he asked, meaning it as a joke.

“The loo. Right back.”

Khol grabbed her by the wrist. She wondered if the television cameras would capture this moment. Or the tabloids. Her life was Kodachrome. Fuji. The Internet. Beauty and athleticism could be lethal. It could also be profitable. Until that phone call, winning the tournament had meant not only the astounding purse, but also a lucrative endorsement for an athletic shoe company that her agent had been negotiating for four months. One win here, everything fell into place. She was three games away from that. Except for Michael.

He was four rows back, on the aisle, looking right at her. Sight of him caught her breath. Her knees felt weak.

He meant everything he had said. She had known this all along, but sight of him now cemented that certainty. Two young fans jumped out of their seats. Two more. A security man by the stadium tunnel spotted this onslaught, recognizing her, and moved to intercept.

“Seats everyone.” The umpire’s voice reverberating.

Jessie fired off four autographs. The security man ushered her into the tunnel. “Terrific game this morning,” he said. She turned her head, knowing he had said something to her, but having not caught it, unsure how to respond.

She had lied to Khol: she wasn’t returning to her seat. Lied to herself for the last four years. She felt like she had cramps. Her eyes stung and her throat was dry. Everyone seemed to be looking at her. Some of them said things to her, but she wasn’t hearing right. To her, all the voices were like the umpire’s. “Seats everyone.” She lived inside an echo chamber. She tried to smile, to use it as her answer, her response to these approaches. She fended off a few more fans and made it to the women’s room, realizing too late she
should have gone the extra distance and used the player’s locker room.

Inside, two women at the sinks and mirrors looked over and grinned at her, unsure how to act. Forty-year-olds, and they stood there like gum-chewing teens backstage at a rock concert. A stall door swung open and the woman there did a double take, sizing her up and down like a side of beef. Or an imposter. She felt more like the latter.

Over the speaker,
thwack, thwack, thwack
, just like the night before as she lay awake in her bed.

She struggled inside the stall, locked the door. Sat down on the open toilet, her pants still up. Placing her face in her palms, she cried. Softly at first, and then loudly enough to silence even the whispering going on in front of the mirrors.

The tabloids would get this for sure.

• • •

I
gnoring the amber blinking light on the hotel telephone that indicated waiting messages, Jessie entered the Internet chat room as she had been advised. She signed on as “Player,” searching the chat room’s right-hand column for any sign of TheWiseMan, but Michael had not yet joined the chat. A dozen people in attendance online wrote messages back and forth, alone and secure in their anonymity, using nicknames that ranged from bordering on the obscene, “hotlicks,” to the absurd, “AG45&˜6.” The latter was referred to as “Aggie” in the one-line messages that confirmed how meaningless a life could get.

hotlicks:::hi Player. Welcome!

AG45&˜6:::Player of what?

Her fingers rested on the keys. A player in trouble. A player in need. A player in over her head. Which way should she answer? Tennis, the truth, never came close to her fingertips.

To her left lay the slip of paper bearing the account number from a bank in Belize. She had not used this account in four years, and yet maintained a balance of nearly ten thousand dollars. She wondered why she had kept this account open all these years. Why hadn’t she closed it five or six months after the U.S. Open, after the majority of the quarter-million had been moved to other accounts? What had possessed her? Had she known all along that this day would come? Was she so predictable?

Blink. A name to the right of the screen. TheWiseMan. There, waiting for her. For this account number. The other attendees welcomed him: Hi, WiseMan. Welcome. Aggie asked: How wise?

TheWiseMan:::Looking for a friend.

There were any number of mistakes either of them might have made. But his using the word “friend” proved fatal. Her fingers hesitated, hovering over the number keys, ready to type out the account for him. But then, reading his comment, she clicked the button instead, and the name “Player” disappeared from the chat room’s list.

She could feel Michael’s anger as she shut down the laptop and closed it. She wondered and worried how that anger might manifest itself. But nothing in the world could will her to reconnect and provide him that account information. Ironically, he already had this account number somewhere in his records. It was her giving it that he wanted: the full weight
of her consent. Her participation. Her capitulation. Her compromise. And that wouldn’t come. Not tonight. Not any time soon.

She drew herself a hot bath, and attempted to feel clean.

• • •

T
he schedule put her quarterfinal match in front of USA Network’s prime-time cameras the following night, so she saw no problem accepting a late-evening dinner with Khol and sleeping in a bit. The Town Car picked them up from the lobby at 8:30, and drove them toward Trattoria Marcella on the hill for a 9:00 reservation.

The driver said, “Paparazzi alert, Ms. Jenkin. They’ve been with us since the hotel.”

Neither she nor Khol turned back to look. There would be a camera aimed at the back window just waiting to catch their faces, or a kiss, or whatever could be captured.

“Can we lose them?” She didn’t need this tonight.

“I tried something simple just after the hotel.”

“I caught that,” Khol said, remembering the odd set of turns.

“I can run a light,” the driver said. “But it risks my license. I’d rather not.”

“Of course not,” Jessie replied. She looked to Khol for guidance.

Khol said to the driver, “Please try a couple turns, run some yellow lights and see what happens. Either way, it is not a problem. It is only dinner.” To Jessie he said, “You did not tell me we were having company for dinner.” It amused him, this comment.

“When don’t we have company?” she asked, her mood
sour. She had hoped time with Khol might remove her from everything, but it only sent her more deeply inside herself. “They never leave us alone.”

“Oh, they will one day, Jess. And we will both wish we had them back.”

“Not me.”

“Yes, you, too. It is the human condition, I’m afraid.”

She took his hand in hers, lacing fingers. Their hands, arms, legs—their bodies—carried their livelihood, their paychecks, their futures. They guarded their health, they worked out to prevent tears and strains. For her, the game was as much about the mind, but lacing fingers with him turned her thoughts to the mortal body and its fragility.

“We need to take a break,” she said spontaneously. “You and me.”

“You asked me out to dinner to dump me?” He didn’t sound hurt in the least.

“It’s funny to you?”

“You amuse me. Women, in general. Are you serious?”

She asked, “Would I say something like that if I wasn’t serious?”

“I am asking you,” he said. “Are you serious? If you are, you are eating alone tonight.”

She craned forward, holding on through several turns by the driver. “Are they still back there?” she shouted forward.

“Maybe not,” the driver said. “I don’t think so,” he added.

Khol grabbed her by the arm to win her attention.

“I don’t know,” she said to him.

“You must decide. Alone, or together? I will live through it. Believe me.” He smiled contentedly.

“Together,” she answered without hesitation.

He nodded, the smile widening. “Good. That is the end of it, then. We have got that straight.” He pulled her hand into his crotch. “Other things, too.”

“It turns you on?”

He said, “When you are angry? Yes. Very much. It is your neck, I think. So red like that.” Leaning across the backseat and touching her thigh, he added, “Red at other times, too.”

“You’re completely weird.”

“We will deal with that later.”

She took her hand back, smiling along with him. For a moment, Michael was nowhere in her thoughts.

But only for a moment.

• • •

T
he Town Car awaited around the corner. Their dinner at Trattoria Marcella had stretched to two hours, aided by calamari over flash-fried spinach, polenta, lobster risotto and a bottle of Chianti. At eleven o’clock, Watson Road remained busy.

Perhaps, if either of them had bothered to note the license plate of the earlier Town Car, they might have picked up the deception. But with bellies full, faces flushed, and loins eager, the couple sauntered up to the limousine, tried the rear door, Khol immediately knocking on the window, and listened for the door lock to release. He offered for her to climb in first, in part because he wanted to see her skirt ride up her luxurious legs. Dinner with her had proved tantalizing. He wanted to take her while she was dressed like that, standing, and against the wall in her hotel room. He wanted those legs around his waist.

“I’m in a mood,” he said, pulling the door shut.

The car pulled away from the curb, executed a sloppy U-turn, and turned right onto Watson.

With no divider in the Town Car to isolate the driver, Jessie limited her response to an admonishing pursing of her lips, followed with a slight flick of her pink tongue and a suggestive licking of her upper lip. Khol replied with raised eyebrows. He seemed to be daring her. She shook her head “no.” Not in the car.

Khol was the first to notice. “Is this the way we came?”