Playmates

by Robert B. Parker

  “Hello,” I said.

  She nodded behind the mug.

  Dwayne didn’t introduce us. “What you got to show me,” he said.

  “My name’s Spenser,” I said to the black girl.

  “Chantel,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you, Chantel.”

  “Cut the bullshit, Spenser,” Dwayne said. “What you got to show me?”

  I handed him my outline.

  “What’s this?” Dwayne said.

  “Read it,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”

  Dwayne looked at the paper. I waited. Chantel sipped her coffee. Sonya and her guests chatted on and on. I looked at Dwayne. There was something funny about the way he looked at the paper. Suddenly I realized what it was. He wasn’t moving his eyes. There were three sheets stapled together. He was still looking at the top sheet and his eyes weren’t moving back and forth across the page as he read.

  Finally Dwayne handed the typescript to Chantel.

  “Here, babe, what you think of this?” he said.

  Chantel took the paper with one hand and looked at it as she continued to sip from her coffee mug.

  “ ’Bout you, Dwayne,” she said, “ ’bout some games you played this year and what you did in them.”

  Dwayne turned his hard look on me again. “How come you writing stuff up about me?”

  I had a suspicion. “You read it, Dwayne, it should be pretty clear.”

  “It pretty clear to you, Chantel?” Dwayne said.

  “Dwayne, you know I don’t know a lot about basketball.” Chantel was reading more closely. She set her coffee mug down to turn the page, flipping it over its single staple and letting it hang down from the corner. “Say you didn’t get a rebound in some game against B.C.”

  “Hey,” Dwayne said, “how come you writing that shit about Dwayne?”

  “I love it when you refer to yourself in the third person,” I said.

  Dwayne frowned. “You gonna answer my question, man?”

  “Dwayne,” I said. “Can you read?”

  “Dwayne Woodcock don’t got to answer no bullshit questions from you, man.”

  “You can’t, can you?” I said.

  “Fuck off, man.”

  Dwayne was standing close to me, blocking the sun.

  I ignored him and looked at Chantel. “He can’t, can he, Chantel,” I said.

  Chantel said softly, “He can read a little. I’m trying to teach him.”

  “Shut up, Chantel. Don’t tell this honkie motherfucker nothing.”

  Chantel’s gaze was steady on Dwayne for a long moment. She opened her mouth and then decided not to speak and closed it. Dwayne turned toward me.

  “You tell anybody ’bout this and I’m going to kill your motherfucking ass,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t have to tell anyone, Dwayne. This is a goddamned college. You’ve been here four years. They should know.”

  “You hear what I’m saying?” Dwayne said.

  “You and Chantel go over the stuff I gave you, Dwayne. It says when and how I think you shaved some points. When you’ve got it, and you want to talk about it, give me a call.” I gave Chantel a card.

  She looked at me with her steady gaze for a moment. “What you going to do?” she said. “You going to tell?”

  “Never mind, Chantel. He ain’t gonna do shit, he knows what’s good for him.” Dwayne put his hand on my shoulder to turn me toward him. I felt the little switch go that always went when people put their hands on me. I went with the direction Dwayne was trying to turn me, but I went much faster than he had in mind and as I came spinning around I brought my right arm up outside his and gave him a sharp chop with my forearm behind his elbow. With the force of my turning weight behind it, the blow slapped his arm across his chest like a loose tiller. I was right behind it and with my chest pressed against his flattened arm and my face very close to his chin, I said, “Don’t make a bad mistake.”

  I could feel his body get rigid. I kept pressing against him. It pinned his right arm and I could feel what he was going to do before he did it.

  “Hey, man,” Dwayne said, “what’s wrong with you?”

  I looked up the nearly nine inches between my eyes and his. His eyes were soft. They weren’t scared. They were hurt. I stepped away, keeping my right foot back of my left, and my left shoulder turned slightly toward Dwayne. I could feel the air going in and out of my chest in big slow breaths.

  “You crazy, man,” Dwayne said, “fucking with Dwayne Woodcock? You crazy?” The voice was angry, street tough, Bed-Sty tough. But the eyes were hurt. The eyes were a kid who’d been startled and felt bad.

  “No touching,” I said. “You and Chantel talk and let me know.” I stepped past Dwayne carefully and went out the front door and closed it softly behind me.

  11

  THE kid can’t read,” I said to Susan. “He’s a senior in college, carrying a C+ average, and he can’t read.”

  We were having dinner in Rocco’s in the Transportation Building and I was halfway through a vodka martini on the rocks with a twist.

  “You mentioned that,” Susan said. “Twice on the ride over.”

  “It is outrageous,” I said. “Nobody ever noticed?”

  “Nobody ever cared,” Susan said.

  The waiter came to take our order. Susan decided on sweet and sour Thai soup and roast pheasant. I ordered black bean cake and Peking Duck.

  “Isn’t this the most spectacular room you’ve seen?” Susan said.

  I nodded. “There’s an academic adviser. Just for the team. Lot of major college teams have them. Try to keep the kids on time to graduate and such.”

  Susan nodded encouragingly as she gazed around the high-ceilinged trompe l’oeil faux art decor.

  “Academic adviser says Dwayne’s intellectually gifted despite an impoverished childhood.”

  “Could be,” Susan said.

  “Sure, but the kid can’t goddamn read. Don’t you think someone might someplace make mention of that? He’s twenty-one years old and in his senior year in college and he can’t read.”

  “You mentioned that. Who are you mad at?”

  I took a pleasing swallow of my martini. More than two and I got a headache, but one before dinner was just right, sometimes.

  “I’m mad at his teachers, his academic counselor, him.”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “Him too. He knows he can’t read and hasn’t corrected it.”

  “Hard for a kid like Dwayne to admit,” I said.

  “Yes,” Susan said. “Maybe too hard. He needs help.”

  “There’s a girlfriend, Chantel.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Chantel, she says she’s trying to teach him.”

  Susan said, “Way back, first grade, second grade, when he was trying to learn to read, he got passed over. He never broke the code.”

  “Meaning?”

  The waiter brought the first course.

  “Meaning that most of us learned to read phonetically. You can probably remember a teacher telling you to sound it out.”

  I nodded. The black bean cake had a slice of cob smoked ham on it, and a fried egg.

  “For whatever reason, people who never learned to read never quite got the sound it out part. They know letters have sounds. Most can read a little. Words like men, stop, rest room, beer, words that they’ve seen so often they have become kind of pictographs. But they come to a word like, oh, transportation, and they are stuck. They try to make sense of the sounds a little,” Susan did a halting imitation, “and then give up. They never learned the code and they never learned the rules. There are lots of rules, many of which we don’t even think of.”

  “Like two vowels, separated by a consonant the first vowel is usually long … sale, gale, pale,” I said.

  “Very good,” Susan said. “Or the business that ph is normally pronounced like f. If you didn’t know that you’d have an awful time. Of course he could be dyslexic.”

  “Can y
ou be dyslexic and be the best basketball player in the country?” I said.

  “Probably not,” Susan said. “Frequently, though not always, dyslexia affects your balance. A standard dyslexia diagnostic test for kids is to ask them to walk a balance beam.”

  “Soup good?” I said.

  “Yes, taste it,” Susan said. She held out a spoonful and I slurped it in. I gestured at my bean cake. Susan smiled and shook her head.

  “I haven’t the heart,” she said.

  “No wonder I love you.”

  The waiter came by to ask if I wished another martini. I said no.

  “So,” Susan said, “what are you going to do, sweet cakes?”

  “Eat all my Peking Duck as soon as it arrives,” I said.

  “What are you going to do about Dwayne and the point stuff and the fact that he can’t read?”

  “I was planning on consulting you for advice,” I said.

  The waiter took away our plates and brought the entrées.

  “What’s the girlfriend like?” Susan said. “Chanteuse.”

  “Chantel,” I said. “Hard to say. I only saw her that once and most of the time I was seeing her, Dwayne was breathing fire on my neck.”

  “He is, I understand, six feet nine inches tall?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he weighs in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds?”

  I nodded.

  “How’s your neck?” Susan said.

  “I was wearing my collar stylishly up, at the time,” I said.

  “Fashionable,” Susan murmured, “yet practical.”

  I put a slice of duck on a pancake, brushed on the hoisin sauce with the scallion brush, put the scallion on top of the duck, folded the pancake over and took a bite. Not too big a bite. If I ate normally I always had my plate cleaned while Susan was still getting her knife and fork in position. Susan carefully cut a small piece of pheasant and moved it to her mouth and chewed slowly. She swallowed. I started a second pancake.

  “I don’t know what you should do about Dwayne,” Susan said. “One option would be to do what you were hired to do.”

  “Report to the President that a viewing of the game films tells me that he shaved points in the following games?”

  Susan nodded.

  “Won’t help the kid much.”

  “You weren’t hired to help the kid.”

  “Kid grew up in one of the meanest ghettos in the world. He’s gotten through almost four years at a major eastern university. He’s going to have a pro career, unless he gets hurt, that will make him maybe a million dollars a year. Along the way he’s acquired a nice girlfriend.”

  “And if you do what you’re hired to do that all goes to hell,” Susan said.

  “Except maybe the girlfriend.”

  Susan smiled at me slowly. “That’s what it really is, isn’t it?” she said. “You are one of the three or four most romantic diddles in the world, and because this guy has a young woman who you think will stand by her man, you want to adopt them both.”

  “There’s no such thing as a bad boy,” I said.

  “Sure,” Susan said. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” Her eyes were full of laughter, and something else, as she looked at me over the rim of her brandy alexander.

  “A romantic diddle?”

  “It’s the first word that came to mind,” she said.

  “And yet you find me physically compelling.”

  “I find you compelling in every way,” Susan said. And I knew what the something else was in her eyes.

  “Even though I’m a romantic diddle?”

  “Especially,” Susan said, “because of that.”

  “So you agree that I should look into things a little more before I toot the whistle on the kid.”

  “I agree, I approve and, more than that, I knew before the conversation began that you weren’t going to ‘toot the whistle.’”

  “Nobody likes a know-it-all,” I said.

  Susan put her hand out and laid it on top of mine. “Somebody does,” she said.

  12

  I was sitting in my office with my feet up, thinking about Dwayne Woodcock and Chantel and point shaving and illiteracy and the backside of the new young paralegal who’d opened an office across the hall. The door to my office was open in case the paralegal wanted to stroll down the hall. A fine-looking black-haired man with a ruddy face walked in. He was wearing pale brown boaters and starched acid-washed jeans and a green polo shirt with the collar up. His jacket was silk tweed, dark brown and nipped in at the waist. His thick black hair was longish and brushed back on each side. A gold medallion on a thick gold chain showed at his throat. On his left hand was a big ring with a blue stone that looked like a high school or college ring. His sunglasses hung against his chest on a cord.

  “How ya doing,” he said when he came in.

  “Fine,” I said. I kept one eye peeled on the hallway.

  “Got a few minutes?” he said.

  “Sure.” The accent was New York.

  “Mind if I close the door?”

  I sighed. “No,” I said brightly, “go ahead.”

  He closed it and then turned and sat down in my client chair. He was about my height and slender. His hands were square and pale with a lot of black hair on the backs. The nails were manicured. I could smell cologne. There was a yellow silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket. He had the jacket sleeves pushed up over his forearms. On the left wrist was a gold Rolex.

  “Nice office,” he said.

  “Compared to what?”

  “Compared to working out of a packing crate in Canarsie,” he said. “You mind if I smoke?”

  I shook my head. He took a pigskin cigarette case out of his coat pocket, and a round gold lighter. He took out a cigarette, offered the open case to me. I shook my head. He snapped the case closed, dropped it into his side pocket, snapped a flame from the lighter, put the cigarette into his mouth and lit it, automatically shielding the flame as if the wind were blowing. He took in smoke and let it out through his nose as he dropped the lighter back into the pocket with the cigarettes. Then he leaned back in the chair and stretched his feet in front of him and surveyed my office some more. He nodded approvingly.

  “Nice little setup,” he said.

  I tried to look humble.

  “Must make a pretty nice living with a setup like this.”

  I looked at the closed door.

  I said, “I don’t mean to seem impatient, but for the last hour I’ve been trying to get a look at the young woman across the hall and she usually walks by about this time.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door and then back at me, pausing a moment to figure out if he was being kidded. Then he grinned.

  “Hey, pal, I never blame a man for hustling.”

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth oddly, with the palm facing away and the back of his hand closest to his face. He held the cigarette between his first two fingers, keeping the lighted end cupped slightly toward his palm.

  “I’ll make it quick,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “We got a problem, you and me. Not the kind of problem can’t be worked out. Couple of successful guys, a little good will, you scratch my back I scratch yours, everything is jake with a little effort.”

  I waited. He made himself even more comfortable in my client chair.

  “My name is Bobby Deegan,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I’m in business in Brooklyn,” Deegan said. “And I got some business interests up here.”

  I waited some more. He smoked some of his cigarette.

  “Business been going good,” he said, “and I’m showing a nice profit, but the interests up here are, ah … coming into conflict with your interests.”

  I leaned back on my spring chair and folded my hands across my stomach like Scattergood Baines and smiled.

  Deegan smiled back at me.

  “Dwayne Woodcock,” h
e said.

  “Dwayne Woodcock,” I said.

  We smiled happily at each other.

  Outside in the corridor, through the closed door, I heard the sharp tap of high-heeled shoes walk past my door. Deegan heard it too.

  “Balls,” I said.

  “Sorry,” Deegan said.

  “Always tomorrow,” I said.

  “With luck,” Bobby Deegan said.

  He let his gaze rest on me hard, steady, the hardcase stare. I waited.

  After enough time Deegan laughed. “Big yard stare ain’t going to do it, huh?”

  “Been inside?” I said.

  Bobby shrugged. It was a yes shrug. “So what are we going to do about Dwayne?” he said.

  “I was thinking of teaching him to read,” I said.

  “He can’t read?” Deegan said.

  “No,” I said.

  Deegan shook his head and made a silent whistle. “Any other plans?”

  I was getting tired of people asking me what I was going to do about Dwayne Woodcock.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I’d read somewhere that if you were patient and didn’t get mad and let people talk eventually they’d say something. I was skeptical, but I was experimenting.

  Deegan looked around for an ashtray, saw one on the top of my file cabinet, stood, walked over, and stubbed out the cigarette.

  “Don’t smoke yourself, huh?” he said.

  “Quit in 1963,” I said.

  “Good for you,” Deegan said. “I been trying for a couple of years.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re not helping,” Deegan said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  “Okay,” he said. “It can go a couple of ways. One way is we give you a nice fee for deciding that Wayne isn’t shaving anything but his face. The college likes that, Dwayne likes that, Coach likes that, we like it. Nobody doesn’t like it.” Deegan gave me a big grin.

  “And the other way?”