The Spellman Files (12 page)

Rae was speaking of the Spellman Investigations Employment Contract. All employees (full-time or seasonal) are required to sign it. Like my family itself, the contract alternates between reasonable employer dictums and wildly unabated whims. Section 5, clause (d) falls into the latter category. Essentially, the clause in debate states that Albert and Olivia have random wardrobe control whenever a case requires some element of camouflage. A tennis club falls into that category. When I reached maturity and was required to sign the contract, once again, I negotiated an addendum stipulating that section 5, clause (d) could be invoked no more than three times in a twelve-month period. My parents added another stipulation, which specified that if I breached this clause, they could fine me five hundred dollars. (This was added when the threat of firing me proved ineffectual.) The contract has been drafted and redrafted throughout the years by my brother. Therefore, it is legally binding and my mother insists that should any part of it be breached, she will enforce the fines.

Even so, I had to protest. “No. No,” I said, tossing my coffee into the sink and running upstairs to my apartment.

“If I were you, I’d shave my legs,” my mother shouted after me. I could feel a lump forming in my throat.

I found the outfit hanging on my front door. All crisp and white and painfully short. I’d never worn a tennis dress before—mostly because I’ve never played tennis. But if I did play tennis, I can guarantee I would never willingly wear the dress. I showered and shaved my legs (for the first time in two months). For about ten minutes, I stared in the mirror, trying to stretch the skirt out and diminish my posture so it would appear longer. Nothing worked. I pulled an extra-large gray sweatshirt out of my drawer and headed downstairs.

David was waiting in the foyer when I reached the bottom landing. At first he emitted only a hearty chuckle, but when my father joined him and doubled over, the two lost complete control and began laughing so convulsively it occurred to me they might need medical attention.

I walked into the kitchen and poured more coffee. My father and David remained in the foyer, apparently still paralyzed with hysteria. Uncle Ray entered the kitchen and looked me over inquisitively. He kindly remained nonreactive. He simply observed, “Section five, clause d?”

I nodded my head and told my sister to get her stuff. My mother stood in the corner, sipping her coffee with a satisfied grin. David and my father finally learned how to walk again and met us in the kitchen.

David turned to my mom and said, “You were right, Mom. It was totally worth it.” Then he handed me his tennis bag and suggested I not lose it.

“You need to get a life. All of you,” I snapped as I headed outside.

Rae quickly ran after me, racket in hand. I stopped in my tracks and looked over my shoulder at her.

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “How much is my ass hanging out?”

“How much is it supposed to?” Rae asked.

I tied the sweatshirt around my waist and got in the car.

R
ae and I entered the San Francisco Tennis Club minus the snobbish questioning we had anticipated. I suppose, in our crisp, white outfits, we passed for the country club set. Based on David’s brief floor-plan tutorial, Rae and I headed up to the second level. A clean, wood-floored hallway encircled the building, offering a glassed-in overhead view of the four courts below. The airy space between the concrete floor and the wood beams above offered an odd mix of echo and silence. The
pings
of the balls bubbled through the building, but voices, conversations, the things you really wanted to hear, remained mute and impenetrable.

I showed Rae the picture of Jake Peters and she spotted him immediately on the bottom middle court. We returned to the main level and found our way to the four-tiered bleachers dividing the courts. We sat to the left of center, pretending to observe two middle-aged women in outfits more immodest than mine.

But it was Jake we were really watching as he performed a slow but legal serve. His opponent responded with an even slower backhand.

“Who’s the other guy?” Rae asked, pointing at Jake’s weak but remarkably handsome opponent. While there were many things to notice about this man, it was his legs that were hardest to ignore. They were the color of cocoa, brilliantly set off by his white shorts. His sinewy muscles subtly contoured his long, elegant limbs, which were almost feminine, but never crossing that subjective line. The man was dark, but not swarthy, with a strong brow that highlighted a pronounced Roman nose.

“What are you staring at, Isabel?” Rae said, snapping me out of my daze.

“Nothing. Can you tell who is winning?”

Rae and I continued watching the painfully slow rally, accompanied by Olympian efforts and awkward stumbles.

“When you play as bad as this, who cares?” Rae said.

Something about this game seemed all wrong—suspicious, in fact. When we finally heard the score after the first set, it was Jake who was ahead four games to three.

In the realm of all things possible in this world, Jake beating his dark, handsome opponent was possible. However, Jake was a forty-eight-year-old man who—by his wife’s own admission—had only started playing tennis three months ago. His legs were scrawny, his belly was not. His arms, especially the serving arm, revealed no identifiable muscle category. So the idea that he was beating a man at tennis who was ten years his junior and had evidently exercised in recent years seemed off.

That said, we were not here to observe Jake’s tennis game. We were here to observe whether Jake seemed in love with his tennis opponent. He did not. He seemed eager to beat him, eager to shout out forty-love, but he in no way seemed eager to hop into the sack with him. And I can personally guarantee that if he were gay, that would be the foremost thing on his mind.

“Why do you keep staring at that guy? Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know,” she said in her annoyingly knowing way.

“Shut up, Rae.”

For forty-five minutes, Rae and I watched what would have gone down in history as the dullest tennis game ever if more people had witnessed it. We observed underhand serves and lobs so slow the ball appeared frozen in midair. We watched full-grown men beat themselves with their own tennis rackets and trip on their own shoelaces. When the game mercifully ended with Jake Peters a two-set victor, he leapt over the net and fell flat on his face.

His cocoa-legged opponent shook Jake’s hand as he helped him to his feet. He said, “Nice game,” without even a hint of bad sportsmanship.

Jake patted his opponent on the back and offered a compliment, trying to cultivate the easy confidence of a winner. The act seemed as unnatural as walking on water.

The mismatched men parted ways without a hint of longing on either side. I began to wonder what had garnered Mrs. Peters’s distrust. We could tell her that, simply, she was wrong, that she should look within herself for her own suspicions. But that would leave both her heart and pocketbook empty. She wanted more information, and for what she was paying, I was willing to give it to her.

Rae and I lagged behind our subject as he exited the court and passed through the hallway into the men’s locker room. I told Rae to sit in the foyer and keep her eyes peeled for Mr. Peters. She adjusted the volume on her radio and pulled out a newspaper. I turned back and looked at my sister briefly. She had been using the “reading the newspaper” foil for years. It always struck me as being silly, almost a parody—especially when she was eight or nine and would choose the business section of the
Chronicle.
But this was the first time I looked at her, newspaper folded in half, eyes darting between the pages and her environment, and it somehow appeared legitimate.

As I walked toward the hallway to the locker rooms, I saw the cocoa-legged opponent in the hallway talking with a preppy gentleman wearing a royal-blue shirt and powder-blue wristbands. His pricey cologne floated above the sweaty air. I quickly bent before the water fountain, trying to remain unnoticed.

“Daniel, you got time for another game?” said Preppy Gentleman. “Frank got called into surgery and had to cancel. I have the court.”

Daniel. Daniel. I had a name now for Cocoa Legs.

“I was heading back to the office,” Daniel said.

Now I knew Daniel had an office. You see how this whole PI thing works?

“Come on, you killed me the last time. Let me redeem myself.”

Perhaps I am stating the obvious, but this conversation was very wrong. Daniel couldn’t beat Jake Peters, but he could beat a preppy guy who gave the impression that he came out of the womb with a tennis racket? Since my water consumption was brimming on ridiculous, I walked over to the pay phone as the men finished their conversation.

“All right,” Daniel said. “You have one hour for payback. That’s it.”

I don’t imagine that I am the only person to notice the details. But I am the only one I know who would forgo her responsibilities to discover an explanation for an errant one.

I returned to my sister in the foyer and told her to keep her eyes peeled for Jake and to stay off the radios. They were too awkward in the club.

“Call my cell when he comes out of the shower.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have to check on something,” I said as I grabbed a section of her newspaper.

I returned to the courts and once again sat down on the adjoining bleachers.

Daniel served and the preppy lunged for the ball but couldn’t make the return: 15-love. Daniel served again. This time Preppy returned the serve and a sharp manic volley followed, which ended with Preppy landing an out-of-bounds shot: 30-love. I was, without a doubt, observing an entirely different tennis player. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the game. It was as compelling as the previous game was dull. I kept watching, hoping to construct a logical explanation, but there was none. This was simply schizophrenic tennis playing.

My phone was set to vibrate and I picked up.

“Subject is on the move,” Rae said.

I knew I couldn’t break away.

“Can you handle him on your own?” I asked, knowing this was irresponsible.

“Of course,” Rae said, already out the door. “Mom gave me cab money just in case.”

I briefly reconsidered what I was doing, but instead I said, “Keep your cell phone on, stay in public, and don’t do anything that is going to piss me off. Got it, Rae?”

“I got it.”

I began to feel too conspicuous sitting down on the bleachers for so long. So I returned to the upper level and entered the bar, sitting by the window and observing the rest of the game. I could no longer hear the scorekeeping, but the result of the match was obvious and I was more confused than ever.

I returned to the bottom level and waited for Daniel to exit the locker room. I called Rae on her cell phone.

“Rae, where are you?”

“I’m outside the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre in the Tenderloin. Subject entered the establishment approximately ten minutes ago. I tried to go inside, but they didn’t buy my fake ID.”

“That’s because you are fourteen.”

“But my ID says I’m twenty-one.”

“Stay put, don’t talk to strangers, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Izzy, I think this is a strip club, with women strippers.”

“It is,” I replied.

“You know what I’m thinking?” asked Rae.

“No.”

“I don’t think Mr. Peters is gay.”

“Yes. I would agree.”

Daniel, freshly showered and wearing blue jeans, a worn T-shirt, and flip-flops, exited the locker room and headed upstairs. I should have returned to my sister, but I needed an explanation and followed him instead.

Daniel sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. Not wasting any time, I sat down next to him. He turned to me slightly and smiled. Not the smile of a pickup artist, but the friendly open smile of one person acknowledging another’s presence. Up close I could see that his heavy-lidded eyes were the lightest shade of brown. His almost black hair, still damp and fragrant from some fantastic shampoo, formed a perfect cowlick over his forehead. His teeth were straight and unstained, but without the glare and perfection of your average talk show host. Suddenly I realized I had been staring way too long.

When the bartender served Daniel his drink, I woke myself from this daze and laid some bills on the counter.

“I’m buying,” I said.

Daniel turned to me. “Do I know you?” he asked without a hint of suspicion.

“Definitely not.”

“But you want to buy me a drink?”

“It’s not exactly free.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m offering a simple exchange. I buy you a beer, you answer a question. How does that sound?”

“I’d like to hear the question first,” he said, not touching his beer.

“You played two tennis matches this morning. The first one was against a man in his late forties who was substantially out of shape. Neither of you appeared to be skilled at the sport. I found this odd, since this is an exclusive tennis club, which implies that it caters to people who know how to play the game. Had one or the other of you been a capable opponent, that would have eased my curiosity.”

“Of course.”

“You lose the match against the inept opponent and you demolish the capable one.”

“‘Demolish.’ I like the sound of that.”

“So now it’s time for you to explain.”

“Some people need to win and some people need to lose,” Daniel said, taking a sip of his beer.

The simplicity of the answer took me aback. The fact that a man would use tennis as a leveler of the universe struck me as, well, beautiful. I am unaccustomed to immediate and unabated crushes. But I was experiencing one at that moment.

“That’s it?” I asked, preparing for my getaway.

“That’s it.”

“What’s your name?” I asked, still planning on moving from the barstool.

“Daniel Castillo.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a dentist.” It was like a punch in the stomach, like I was being punished for everything I had ever done wrong.

“Day off?” I asked, certain that the color had drained from my face.

“Yes. Saturday and Sunday, just like everybody else.”

“Well, have a nice day,” I said as I was halfway out the door.

Daniel caught up with me outside, just as I’d reached my car.

“What was that back there?” he asked.

“Is there a problem?”

“What is
your
name?”

“Isabel.”

“How about a last name?”

“I don’t give out that kind of information.”

“What do you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“For a living. What do you do?”

From the moment that I said it and since, I have regretted and paid for the following response.

“I’m a teacher.”

I said it because, well, men like teachers. I said it because if I told him what I really did, he would be uncomfortable. He would be concerned that I had been tailing him. He would want to know what I was doing at the tennis club and I would not be able to tell him. So saying “teacher” seemed so much easier at the time.

“You don’t seem like a teacher.”

“Why is that?” I said, somewhat offended.

“I don’t think you have the patience for it.”

“You’re quick to judge.”

“Can I interest you in a game of tennis?”

“No. I don’t play.” Since I was wearing a tennis dress, had been previously observed in a tennis club, and was carrying a racket, this was not the smartest response. I had to change the subject fast.

“I’ll see you around, Doc,” I said and quickly got into the car.

Daniel slowly turned and walked away. I watched him until he disappeared through the entrance of the club. The entire time all I was thinking was, Could this be Ex-boyfriend #9?