Playmates (3 page)

"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 read 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."

"Maybe," I said.

"You keep hanging around, man, annoying us, everybody gonna get pissed off at you."

I nodded. "Happens a lot," I said.

"You understand what I'm saying to you, man? Dwayne Woodcock don't blow smoke."

"That's not what Smoke tells everybody," I said.

Dwayne gave me the hard schoolyard stare. "You fucking with me, man?"

"Yeah."

"You fucking with Dwayne Woodcock, you fucking with the wrong man."

"Who would be the right one?" I said. Dwayne had no food left. He surveyed the table to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

Then he stood up. Looking down at me, he said, "You remember what I tell you, man. You keep snooping around, you going, to wish you hadn't." Then he turned and stalked off.

I gave his back a grim look as he went. "Oh yeah," I said.

IN the spirit of experiment I checked out the coeds as I walked across campus and concluded that I was still able to respond to twenty-year-old women, but preferred them older. At the President's office I consulted with Ms. Merriman, the President's secretary. She, for instance, was older.

"I need a copy of Dwayne Woodcock's transcript, academic record, whatever; any documentation on him that the University has."

Ms. Merriman frowned.

"It's not policy to show material like that without the student's authorization."

Ms. Merriman was very trim and well dressed. She was maybe forty-five with a tight body and short black very curly hair. She wore an engagement ring on the wrong hand and no wedding ring. Her dark blue tailored suit must have set her back about $600. She treated me like some sort of distinguished barbarian, like the king of a very important cannibal nation who still wore a bone in his nose.

"We'll find a way," I said.

"You feel it's necessary?"

"I have no idea," I said. "Detective stuff doesn't really lend itself to 'policy' decisions. Detective stuff is pretty much weaseling around and finding out anything you can and then sitting down afterward and figuring out what's worth knowing."

"I don't know. I don't feel right about it."

"Why don't you consult with President Cort."

Her eyes widened. "Well, he's in an important meeting right now..."

"Something crucial?" I said. "Like whether full professors should be required to show up at all?"

"Mr. Spenser, please."

"Or whether a book that sells can be considered favorably in the course of a tenure decision."

"Mr. Spenser. Running a large university like this one is a serious administrative challenge. President Cort's time is as important as any executive's."

"I rest my case," I said. "But let's not argue. Let's compromise. Call up somebody and get me Dwayne's file."

"President Cort did say you should have our full support."

I nodded encouragement.

"All right, these are unusual circumstances. I'll call the registrar's office."

"God," I said, "you're beautiful when you're decisive."

"Oh, please," she said. But she went to the phone and called. In about fifteen minutes an undergraduate-looking kid showed up with a manila envelope and handed it to Ms. Merriman. She opened it, saw that it was what she'd ordered, closed it again and handed it to me.

"I hope you'll return that straight here once you are through with it."

"Right here," I said. I gave her the complete smile. The one where my eyes crinkle at the corners and two deep dimples appear in my cheeks. Women often tore off their underwear and threw it at me when I gave them the complete smile.

Ms. Merriman didn't.

I left the office and found the library and settled into a yellow oak chair with arms, near a window in the reading room.

According to the transcript of his grades Dwayne was a B -, C + student. He was on full scholarship, had been before the Dean for two incidents of fighting and a charge of larceny. The charge, apparently brought by another student, was dropped. There were several evaluations of Dwayne from his academic counselor, a woman named Madelaine Roth, Ph.D. The evaluations all stressed Dwayne's native intelligence despite his impoverished background. According to the transcript Dwayne had grown up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, had a mother and four sisters, all on welfare. No father.

I settled back a little deeper in the chair and put my feet up on the window ledge and watched the students move across the campus. Most of them were noisy and oddly dressed and looked hung over. A few were carefully dressed, some of the girls wore eye shadow, many of the girls wore very tight jeans. I rolled my head a little on my neck to loosen my shoulders. The sun coming through the windows fell warmly on my back.

Dwayne had seemed too easy to talk to. He'd seemed too interested in who knew what. Or maybe I just thought so because I wanted to. Because it would be a place to start. Either way the transcript didn't tell me much. I swung my feet off the window sill and stood and brought the transcript back to Ms. Merriman.

LENNIE Seltzer still had the back booth in the Yorktown Tavern on Mass. Ave. He was normally there from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, sipping beer, reading newspapers, taking bets, getting up to use the pay phone on the back wall next to the rest rooms. His hair was shiny slick and parted in the middle. His face was pale and smooth. His three-piece suit had a fine windowpane plaid in pale blue running through the gray sharkskin fabric. He was getting plumper as time passed and a lot of the plumpness settled as he sat each day sipping beer. On the table in front of him were the New York Daily News, the Globe and the Herald. To his right, on the table against the wall, a portable computer screen stared grayly at me.