A Man's Game

by Newton Thornburg

  “Jesus, that puts me in sort of a bind,” Slade said. “Here’s this girl I really dig, this girl I might even want to get close to. But if I try it, I get my head blown off. You think that’s fair?”

  “You bet I do.”

  Slade said nothing for a few moments, just sat there looking at Baird now. And Baird could see in his pale eyes that it was getting harder for him, carrying on the banter, acting as if none of this touched him. A muscle began to jump in his flat cheek and his sneer lost its edge. He looked over at the stage again, where the young nude dancer was pretending to copulate with a light post. Then he shook his head, as if in sad amazement at such a perfidious world.

  “I just don’t get it,” he said. “I’ve never even touched your goddamn daughter.”

  Baird was happy to explain. “It’s your record. You see, I know about the Ravenna woman. And I know about your stepmother, and the little girl when you were twelve.”

  Slade was not smiling now, not even sneering. “You been listenin to that cunt Jeffers, right? Well, she’s a lyin bitch. If I did that woman in Ravenna, how come I ain’t in jail? Cuz I didn’t do it, that’s why. Shit, man, I’m probably cleaner than you are.”

  Baird pushed back his chair and got up. “Well, you know where we stand. Stay away from my daughter.”

  “Or I get shot, right?”

  “I’ve said my piece.”

  “That’s for goddamn sure.”

  As Baird headed out the door into the vestibule, he was surprised to hear Slade right behind him. Wary, he kept the man in view as they went out the second door into the parking lot, where the club’s many neon signs—the hundreds of flashing lights—made it seem as if they had stepped into a Fourth of July celebration. In front of them, coming from his own parked car, was a huge black man with a shaved head. As he passed by on his way into the club, the man looked the two of them over with such open curiosity that Baird turned and glanced back, only to find the man still watching them. Then he went on inside, and Baird suddenly remembered where he had seen him before: at the police station, in the detective’s bull pen. He was the man Jeffers had spoken with when she’d wandered across the room.

  Slade apparently didn’t know the detective, and hadn’t noticed his interest in them. “Listen,” he said, “why don’t the two of us talk some more, huh? Hit a few bars and have a few drinks together? I want to prove to you I ain’t this crazy fuckin monster you think I am.”

  Again Baird had a hard time believing he had heard the man correctly. Until this moment, he’d been afraid Slade was about to pull a knife on him. “I’ve said all I care to say,” he told him now.

  Slade threw up his hands in a clumsy burlesque of exasperation. “Jesus, what a hardnose! I try to be friends and what good does it do me?”

  Baird was at his car. “Get real,” he said.

  “The man whose daughter a guy can’t even look at—or bang-bang, huh?” Slade laughed and shook his head. “Man, you are some piece of work, you really are.”

  As soon as he got behind the wheel, Baird started the car and drove off, leaving Slade standing there in the parking lot like a jilted lover. And it troubled Baird—scared him—the way Slade had reacted to the whole thing. If he had been in the creep’s shoes, facing an antagonist who talked about hiring Samoan bone-crushers and threatening to shoot him, he would have readily agreed to the man’s every wish. For certain he would not have tagged along with him out to the parking lot, suggesting that they carry on their conversation elsewhere. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that Slade had seen right through him from the beginning, had known all along that no matter what “old Pops” said about Samoans and shotguns, he simply wasn’t to be taken seriously.

  It filled Baird with a cold rage, the idea that this tyro degenerate, barely out of reform school, had judged him as so impotent that he felt free to toy with him, waltz him around like some pathetic maiden aunt. If that had indeed been the case—and Baird was convinced it was—he had a good idea what Slade’s next move would be. How better to thumb your nose at “old Pops” than by driving straight out to his house and parking a safe and legal hundred feet away, virtually inviting him to break out the firearms?

  Baird at the moment was on busy Olive Way, the most likely route Slade would take on his way to Fifteenth Avenue, which in turn would take him almost all the way to Baird’s house. So he pulled over and parked. And he didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes the old Impala came smoking up the steep grade. Baird waited until the car was well past him before he pulled out and followed. And a few minutes later, he was not surprised to see it turn onto Fifteenth. Two blocks farther on, however, Slade pulled into the parking lot of Gide’s, one of the area’s many gay bars. Slowing down, Baird waited until he saw Slade enter the place. Then he drove on.

  Five

  Overnight a cold front had moved in off the ocean, turning the Monday morning sky a sunless gray and dropping the temperature a dozen degrees. The air was uncommonly humid and still, but no rain fell; and whether for this reason or his encounter with Slade, Baird felt uneasy and irritable all day long. Given his mood, he wasted little time on chitchat with his customers and as a result had finished his route by the time he picked Kathy up at work.

  Unlike him, she was upbeat and happy. “Guess what,” she said. “I sold over a thousand today.”

  “Well, that’s great,” he said. “You can take us all out to dinner.”

  Kathy laughed. “Not a chance. I’ve already spent my commission on a mauve cocktail dress you would not believe.”

  “But you don’t go out for cocktails.”

  “Maybe I will one of these days.”

  “You ever think of going back to school?”

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m in no hurry.” She looked at him. “Why? Are you ashamed of me, selling jewelry?”

  “Of course not. You ashamed of me, selling paper?”

  “Yes!” Laughing then, she took hold of his arm and gave him a hug. “Never,” she said. “In fact, whether I go back to school or not, what I plan to do is meet a nice old guy like you—only a lot richer—and stay at home and raise kids.”

  “Why an old guy?” Baird asked.

  “Who knows?” She reached over and touched his crow’s-feet. “Maybe because I like these cute little wrinkles you seniors get.”

  He smiled. “You sure know how to hurt a guy.”

  “Well, that’s a woman’s job,” she said.

  They were almost home by then, moving along Alton Street past the park, with the house dead ahead. As Baird slowed down, preparing to turn into his driveway, he saw Sergeant Lucca and Detective Jeffers waiting in a gray Ford LTD parked in front of the house. He pulled into the driveway and went around to the garage.

  “What do you think they’re here for?” Kathy asked.

  “We’ll soon find out,” he said.

  The two of them went in the back way. By the time Baird reached the front door, the detectives were already on the porch, ringing the bell. Baird opened the door.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions.” Lucca looked as if he’d eaten a rodent for lunch.

  “Of course. Come on in.”

  Baird stood to the side as the two detectives came into the foyer. Jeffers, following Lucca, looked about with casual interest, not once making eye contact with Baird.

  “God, I love these old houses,” she said. “So much room. And brick too.”

  “We like it,” Baird said.

  As before, she was wearing designer jeans, a T-shirt, and the same tan-suede jacket. Lucca was in a shapeless brown suit. Even after Baird had closed the door, the two of them just stood there in the foyer, understandably unsure which direction to move in, with the dining room on one side and the museum on the other: a choice of straight-backed chairs or ferns in doll buggies.

  “You
remember Detective Jeffers,” Lucca said.

  Baird smiled slightly. “Of course.”

  Which caused her to give him a furtive look of reproval, apparently trying to warn him against making any reference to their conversation at Leo’s.

  “Hello,” she said, nodding coolly.

  They both said hello to Kathy, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, as if she were waiting to be excused.

  “Let’s sit in here.” Baird went into the dining room. “Would you like coffee or a Coke? Anything?”

  “This isn’t a social call,” Lucca said.

  “Well, I’m going to sit.” Jeffers pulled out a chair. “I think better sitting down.”

  Shrugging, Lucca followed her lead. Meanwhile Kathy was still waiting in the foyer.

  “Kathy, why don’t you go on up?” Baird said. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Maybe she ought to hear this,” Jeffers suggested. “It involves Slade.”

  Remembering the shave-headed detective outside the strip club, Baird had a pretty good idea what the detectives were there for, and he had no desire to be scolded in front of his daughter. So, as he headed around the table, moving behind the detectives, he gestured for her to leave, giving her a conspirator’s wink at the same time. She smiled and went on up the stairs. Sitting, Baird reflected that his luck wasn’t all bad, since Ellen was out for the evening, having dinner and seeing a movie with two of her women friends, divorcées she once had referred to as members of her “support group.”

  “What’s this about?” he asked.

  “You’ve got no idea?” Lucca said.

  “Should I have?”

  “Yeah, you should.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me.”

  “Saturday night you were seen in the company of Jimbo Slade, the man you just had a restraining order slapped on. You care to explain that?”

  “No problem. After Slade showed up here and at my daughter’s place of work—”

  “Within a hundred feet of her?” Lucca cut in.

  Baird ignored the interruption. “When he did that, I decided to have a word with him. So I followed him to Harold’s strip club and told him to stay away from Kathy altogether.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or nothing.”

  Lucca laughed at that, a weary snort. “No threats or anything like that?”

  “No, that would be a crime, wouldn’t it? Threatening somebody?”

  “Yes, it would be,” Jeffers put in. “And it could also be pretty damn dangerous, Mister Baird. Especially with somebody like Slade.”

  Lucca sighed. He appeared troubled. “You know, if I had my druthers, I’d just tell you I really don’t give a shit about this,” he said. “I mean, if a man wants to play chicken with a psychopath, that should be his business, right? But we don’t work that way. I’m afraid it’s very much our business when you meddle in an open case.”

  “And what case is that?” Baird asked.

  Smiling slightly, Lucca shook his head, as if he were both amused and stymied. Then suddenly he exploded. “We don’t have to tell you that, for Christ sake! Do you really think you can meddle in official police business and then demand a fucking explanation when we tell you to back off?”

  Baird was surprised. Jeffers looked shocked. Lucca’s face had flushed deeply and his hands had tightened into fists. Looking down at them now, he slipped them under the table, as if he’d just discovered they were covered with warts. Jeffers tried to explain.

  “It really gets to us,” she said. “We do all we can to nail a slimeball like Slade, so we naturally expect a complainant to cooperate with us, to do what we ask—”

  “Just what the hell are you two talking about?” Exasperated himself by now, Baird smiled in bewilderment. “I don’t know what case you’re referring to. I don’t know how I’ve compromised your investigation. I don’t know what the hell any of this is about.”

  “Sergeant Lucca told you that Slade was under suspicion for assault and rape,” Jeffers said, looking confused herself by now, obviously caught in the middle, trying to back up her partner without at the same time revealing that she and Baird had already gone over these matters, alone. “And then you start making contact with the man. How are we to know what you tell him? We want his guard down, and here you could be alerting him that we’re still on his case.”

  Lucca pushed back his chair, getting ready to leave. “Enough of this bullshit, okay?” he said. “Mister Baird, the fact of the matter is this—our chief and the people who put him where he is, they don’t look kindly on vigilantes. That’s why we have police, you understand? Now I know you say you didn’t threaten Slade, but of course the three of us here know better. Why meet him if not to threaten him? So our concern is that you don’t goad the bastard into an act of violence against your daughter, or for that matter, against you or your wife.” He stopped there for a few seconds, as if he’d run out of breath. Baird had the feeling that if the two of them had been closer, the sergeant would have begun poking him in the chest with his finger.

  “And just as important,” Lucca went on, “we don’t want you committing an act of violence against him. In fact, if you did—if you were that stupid—we’d go after you just as hard as we would him. A crime is a crime is a crime, as I once said. And that’s why we’re here, Mister Baird—to make sure none of these unlawful things take place. You understand?”

  Baird pushed back his own chair and got up. “Perfectly,” he said. “I never thought anything else.”

  As soon as the two detectives were gone, Kathy came hurrying down the stairs, her eyes wide with wonderment.

  “You were with Slade?” she asked.

  At the moment, Baird’s full bladder was the only thing on his mind. “In a minute, okay?”

  But in the bathroom, standing over the bowl, he sighed more in disappointment than in physical relief. He had hoped Kathy would not overhear his conversation with the detectives and learn about his having met with Slade. He tried hard to think what he could say to her, what magical words might lessen her fear and put her mind at ease. But when he came out of the bathroom, she was already gone. He called for her, but there was no answer. Going upstairs, he knocked on her door, then went on inside, where he found her sitting at her drawing board, coolly sketching out a dress of some sort.

  He sat down on the bed. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “No I’m not. I’m not a reckless man. You know that.”

  She swiveled on her chair, facing him now. “I know how he looks at me. He’s a killer, Daddy. And if you were alone with him—”

  “I was perfectly safe,” he cut in. “I saw him in a public place.”

  “But why?”

  “There were things I wanted to say to him.”

  “Like what?”

  “For one, that his cause was hopeless. I told him that you’d never have anything to do with him, and that if he ever did anything to you, I’d make him pay.”

  “How?”

  “By having him killed.”

  “By what?”

  “I told him I’ve made contact with men who do that kind of work.”

  She said nothing for a few moments, just sat there looking at him in shock and confusion.

  “And have you?” she asked finally. “Do you know such people?”

  He shook his head. “No. But the important thing is that I make him believe it’s true.”

  “But what about you? Who protects you?”

  “The same men. I told Slade I’d already arranged for that. If anything happens to me, they’ll come after him.”

  She was looking at Baird as if his face had undergone some unearthly transformation. “I just can’t believe any of this—us talking about such things,” she said. “It’s so unreal.”

  “That’s the word, all right. And it’s even more unreal when you’re sitting right there with the creep.”

  “I don’t k
now how you could do it.”

  “Incentive,” he said.

  As she looked at him, her eyes began to fill. Getting up, she came over and sat next to him on the bed. She laid her head on his shoulder and hugged him.

  “If anything ever happened to you—” she said.

  Baird tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll be fine.”

  Before Ellen came home, Baird cautioned Kathy that her mother would be upset if she learned that the police had come to the house and that he had made contact with Slade. Of course she might learn these things eventually anyway, he said, but he couldn’t see that it would serve any purpose to tell her now and ruin her evening, not to mention his own. Kathy listened politely, gave him a Mona Lisa smile, and resumed her communion with a Neiman-Marcus catalog. But when her mother finally did come home, the girl said nothing about the police or Slade.

  Ellen seemed to have enjoyed her night out with the “guys,” as the women called themselves now. She zestfully recounted how one of her guys had just ended a long-term relationship with her live-in boyfriend, virtually tossing the poor fellow out into the street. Then she told how much they had enjoyed seeing A Room with a View again. “The heroine’s intended is such a perfect twit,” she said. “An absolute hoot.”

  Later, in bed, Baird thought her good spirits might extend to him. But it was not to be. She was much too tired, she said. And then too, he thought, why on earth would she want to ruin such a fun night out with the guys?

  The next day the heavy cloud cover finally gave up a bit of its moisture, the first rain in over a month and fairly rare for Seattle in August. Spurred by the change in the weather, Baird tried to make up for the previous day, taking his time with his customers and making sure that if they ran out of any paper products during the next two weeks, it would not be his fault.

  He stopped to take Kathy home and then resumed his route, not finishing until after seven. At Leo’s, he called home and told Ellen that he would be late, then went back to the bar, aware that Sally was watching him as if he were parading around with his pants around his ankles.