Dwayne’s shoulders hunched, and his head sank. He seemed to shrink in on himself so that he looked like a huge black Richard Nixon, looking out under his eyebrows.
Chantel stepped around the car to the open window. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She patted Dwayne’s face. “Okay. I’m not mad. I love you, and I want you to be helped.”
Dwayne’s head was hanging. He stared at the floorboards.
“You’re not a dope, Dwayne. I just mad when I said that.”
Dwayne nodded without looking up. “Let these people help us,” Chantel said. “I trust them.”
Dwayne nodded a little and slowly got out of the car and straightened up. He didn’t say anything, but he looked at me with a blank implacable gaze that didn’t seem to mean anything, though it was clearly not friendly.
“Wait here,” I said to Chantel and Dwayne and Susan. Then I started for the front door and Hawk came with me.
He stood to one side of the door, and I stood to the other. Hawk’s .44 Magnum was out, the long barrel resting lazily on his shoulder. I took the Browning off my hip. It looked sort of embarrassing next to the Mag. “Is that a siege weapon?” I said. Then I rang the bell. Nothing happened. I rang it again. Then I could hear footsteps and a female voice say something that was probably, “I’m coming.” The door opened and there was Madelaine in a blue-and-white striped tank top and white shorts and leather sandals. I put the barrel of the Browning up under Madelaine’s chin and said softly, “Where’s Deegan?”
Madelaine’s face stiffened and she said very slowly, “What?”
I pushed her backward and Hawk came behind me.
“Where’s Deegan?” I said again, softly.
“Patio,” Madelaine said. And looked toward the back of the house.
The hallway went straight back along the right wall of the condo. The rooms all opened off to the left and a stairway rose halfway down the hall.
Hawk and I moved Madelaine down the hall ahead of us, and when we had about reached the staircase she seemed to come out of shock. She hollered, “Bobby.” Hawk held her arm and I reached the door at about the time it opened. Deegan came in frowning in a lavender polo shirt and acid-washed jeans with a section of the Globe in his hand, his forefinger keeping the place.
“Bobby,” I said, “how’s it going?”
The muzzle of the Browning was right in front of his left eye as it adjusted to the interior light.
“What’s this?” Deegan said and then as he looked at me, “Spenser? What’s with the gun?” He looked past me at Hawk, who was still with Madelaine. A slow recognition moved across his face. “Shit,” he said.
Hawk smiled at him in a friendly way.
“Let’s all go in the living room,” I said. “There’s folks I want you to talk with.”
“So,” Deegan said, “knock on the fucking door, you know? How come you got to bust in here waving a piece and scaring the shit out of Mad?”
“Just being safe,” I said. “You did hire some people to ace me.”
“Hey,” Deegan said, and shrugged a New York shrug.
We went into the big white-painted living room. There was a fireplace at an angle across one corner, and some Scandinavian modern furniture in white pebbly material, and a big teak entertainment cabinet with TV and stereo and CD, and VCR, and maybe a hot tub.
Hawk stepped to the front door, and in a moment Susan and Chantel and Dwayne filed in. Madelaine said, “Dwayne?”
Deegan said nothing at all, but he looked at Dwayne. Susan leaned against the wall to the right of the door. Hawk leaned on the left door jamb, in the door. The Mag was back under his coat. I had put the Browning back on my hip. The only place Deegan could be carrying a piece would be in an ankle holster and Hawk or I would probably be able to spot him bending over and unlimbering. I went and leaned against the mantel of the fireplace.
“These are my friends Susan and Hawk,” I said. “Hawk is the taller of the two.”
“Better dancer, too,” Hawk said.
Susan had already begun to concentrate. When she did, other things no longer impinged. She was watching Dwayne. Dwayne was looking at Deegan.
“I didn’t know you was going to be here, Bobby,” Dwayne said.
“No problem, Dwayne,” Deegan said. “No problem.”
I said, “Why, you are doubtless wondering, did I call this meeting?”
No one said anything. Dwayne continued to watch Deegan.
I felt like Philo Vance.
“We are the components of a vexing problem,” I said.
Peripherally I saw Hawk grin and say the word vexing silently.
“Usually the problem is you don’t know what happened. Here I know what happened, I don’t know what to do about it.”
Everyone was watching me now, except Susan, who was watching Dwayne, and Hawk, who was watching Deegan.
“I know that Deegan stuck up an OTB in New York and started investing the money in a gambling scheme that involved point spread control by Dwayne. I know that Madelaine was the intermediary in the deal. I know that when I got involved and Bobby needed a shooter to take me out of it Madelaine put him in touch with her old school chum Gerry Broz, who without knowing the shootee recommended Hawk.”
“Why not send the very best,” Hawk said in a radio announcer voice with no hint of ethnicity.
“Hawk, being my frequent associate, reported this plan to me and hung around with me thereafter to help me foil it.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Deegan said.
“Might be able to prove the solicitation of a shooter,” I said, “but your point is well taken. So far we can’t prove anything much unless Dwayne is willing to talk about you.”
“Dwayne is not a squealer,” Deegan said.
Dwayne nodded silently.
“Or we could probably get this proved if we turned it all over to the D.A., but that would sink Dwayne.”
“And you don’t want to do that,” Deegan said.
“No.”
Chantel said, “I didn’t know you was a friend of Mr. Deegan’s, Dr. Roth.”
“You know that, Dwayne?” I said.
Dwayne looked at Deegan. He didn’t answer me.
“Did you know that they met at Queens College while they were both in grad school?”
Dwayne didn’t move.
“You know she picked you out to help him control the spread?”
Madelaine said, “You don’t know any of that, it’s simply supposition.”
“You pick Dwayne out for any special reason, Bobby?” I said.
Dwayne was frowning, slightly. Deegan didn’t answer me. He simply shook his head.
“Makes sense, I suppose, to find a star you can buy.”
The room was quiet. I didn’t know where I was going, I was just trying to keep it going. I knew Deegan wouldn’t say anything. He didn’t know I wasn’t wearing a wire.
“What made you think Bobby could buy him, Madelaine?”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at,” she said.
“You steered Bobby, you must have. How does a Brooklyn wiseguy end up buying a Boston basketball player.”
“I’m from Brooklyn,” Dwayne said suddenly.
“Did you know Deegan before?” I said.
“No,” Dwayne said.
I waited. No one else said anything.
“We from the same city,” Dwayne said.
“That how you guys got together?” I said.
Dwayne looked back at Deegan. The arrogance and pizzazz were gone. Dwayne was scared and confused and trying to disappear in upon himself like a rabbit trapped in an open field.
“Didn’t Dr. Roth introduce you?”
“You don’t have to say a word, big guy,” Deegan said. “These people got no right to be treating you and me like this. And they couldn’t get away with it if they didn’t have guns.”
“Dwayne,” Chantel said, “how you meet Mr. Deegan?”
Dwayne made a shushing sound with his hand at C
hantel.
“You want to get up and walk out of here now, Mr. Deegan,” Dwayne said, “you and Dr. Roth, I walk ahead of you. I don’t give a fuck about these motherfuckers. Dwayne Woodcock want to leave, he leave and his friends go with him. You want, Mr. Deegan, I take you both out of here.”
I liked him better then. It was a moment much better than the ones in which he sat looking at the floor. But I didn’t like the development. Hawk and I weren’t going to shoot him and he’d be a handful otherwise, with Deegan thrown in, who didn’t look like a day at the beach himself. I would have thought of something, but Chantel saved me from it.
“They aren’t your friends, Dwayne. Mr. Spenser’s your friend. These people going to throw you away when they through.”
“Dwayne,” Deegan said, “have I ever lied to you? Have I ever given it to you any way but straight? You get out I’m going to represent you. I’m going to get you a deal with the Knicks, like Willis Reed never had, like Ewing never had. You know that. I know that. These people don’t know. They don’t matter, buddy. We matter.”
“Let’s walk out of here, Mr. Deegan,” Dwayne said. In the doorway Hawk was motionless. The prospect of stopping a six-foot-nine-inch, two-hundred-fifty-five pound guy without shooting him seemed to present him no perplexities. He leaned against the jamb, his body loose, his face blank except for the hint of distant amusement that he almost always showed.
Chantel moved in front of Dwayne and took hold of his shirt with both hands. Her face as she stood was nearly level with his as he sat.
“No,” she said, and her voice was scraping out of her throat. “No. You walk out with him and it’s over for you. He’s a crook. The cops want him. He’s not going to get you a deal with the Knicks. You stay with me, Dwayne. You do what I say.”
Dwayne said, “Don’t you grab me, Chantel.”
“I will,” she said. “I gonna hang onto you so you won’t drown. I won’t let you drown with these people.”
Dwayne said, “Chantel.”
Chantel shook her head doggedly. She still hung onto Dwayne’s shirt. He took her wrists and gently tried to pull her hands away. She hung on tighter.
“He going to ruin you, Dwayne.” Intensity made her voice rasp. “Ruin you.”
Deegan said, “Dwayne, you shut that little fucker up.”
Dwayne still had hold of Chantel’s wrists.
“She ain’t no little fucker,” he said, softly, a little embarrassed.
“Well, she’s your broad,” Deegan said. “Keep her quiet.”
“See,” Chantel said. “See what I am? See what he thinks of me? That what you think, Dwayne?”
Dwayne shook his head as if he had a bee in his ear.
“No,” he said. Still soft, still a little embarrassed. “No, Chantel, you know I don’t.”
“He don’t care about me. He don’t care about you,” Chantel said. “He just care about gambling and making money. He call her a little fucker?” Chantel tossed her chin at Madelaine who was sitting as far back in a white armless chair as the chair would let her.
“Dwayne,” Deegan said, “you let her come between us and the dream is over. You understand? Now you shut her the fuck up, or someone else will have to.”
The minute he said it Deegan knew it was a mistake. But it was out and he couldn’t reel it back in. Dwayne’s head came up and he looked at Deegan as if he were a sudden intrusion.
He said softly, “Let go, Chantel,” and she did and he stood, his head nearly touching the ceiling. He looked down at Deegan. “Who gonna do that, Bobby?” he said.
“Hey, buddy,” Deegan said, “I just mean we got to have quiet so we can talk. We can’t have hysteria, you know?”
“Who gonna shut her up if I don’t?” Dwayne said. There was no referring to himself in the third person now. No swagger; and there wasn’t any petulance either, any sulky confusion. “You gonna do that, Bobby? You gonna have somebody do that, like you tried to do with this guy?” He jerked his head at me.
“Dwayne, cool it, big guy. You misunderstood me. Hey, if I offended Chantel, I’m sorry. Chantel. No harm intended, hon, none of us want to be talking out of turn.”
“How long you been sleeping with her?” Dwayne said. He was looking at Madelaine, who managed to look frightened and embarrassed and angry and above it all at the same time. If I got a chance I would ask her how she did that.
“Hey, Dwayne, nice talk,” Deegan said.
“How long, Bobby? You scoring her while she telling me that you be a good guy to meet cause you had important sports contacts in New York?”
“Dwayne,” Deegan said. “You’re talking yourself right into big trouble.”
“What kind of trouble, Bobby?”
“The kind that will take you down too, Dwayne. Don’t forget it. I go, you go.”
“I been a stand up guy for you, Bobby,” Dwayne said.
“Better keep it that way, Dwayne.”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think you a stand up guy for me, Bobby.”
“I’m not going alone, Dwayne. What you think you’re going to do? Tell everything you can think of about me and nobody’ll notice that you’ve been shaving points. That you’re on the fucking pad? Get sensible, kid. I go, you go.”
“Guess we ain’t as close as you said we was?” Dwayne said.
“Close enough to go down the shit chute together, buddy boy.”
Dwayne took a long step and was directly in front of Deegan. Deegan tipped his head back to look up at him. “And don’t think I’m scared of you, Jumbo. The bigger you are the better target you make.”
Deegan stood up unhurriedly.
“I’m walking,” he said.
From the doorway Hawk looked at me. Deegan stepped around Dwayne. Madelaine said, “Bobby?”
“You gonna shoot,” Deegan said to me, “start now.”
I shook my head.
“I got more than I hoped for already,” I said.
Hawk stepped aside and Deegan walked out the door.
30
WHERE you suppose he’s going?” Hawk said.
“Probably down to the Marriott and sit in the lobby,” I said.
“Embarrassing to stomp out and stand around outside on the street,” Hawk said.
Madelaine was looking at us in her living room as if we didn’t have tenure.
“You’re in this, Madelaine,” I said. “When Bobby goes you’re going too.”
She shook her head.
“Yes,” I said. “You are the yenta in this thing. You knew Dwayne was a good prospect. He couldn’t read. He needed money. He trusted you.”
“I can read stuff,” Dwayne said.
“You knew Bobby had money from knocking over that OTB parlor. You knew he was looking to do something with it, put it somewhere would give him a nice return, account for his affluence.”
“I had nothing to do with that holdup,” Madelaine said.
“But you knew it took place,” I said.
“I …” She looked around the room and her eyes rested on Susan. “Can’t you make him leave me alone?” she said.
“I can’t make him do anything,” Susan said. “It would be easiest if you told him.”
“Genie’s out of the bottle now, Mad,” I said. “No corking it up. Sooner or later it’s all going to get said.”
She shook her head.
“You in this with Bobby, ain’t you, Dr. Roth?” Dwayne said.
She kept shaking her head.
“Get out,” she said. “Get out of my house.”
I looked at Dwayne.
“You ready to tell me about it?”
He looked at Chantel and then at Madelaine. His eyes moved to Hawk and to Susan.
“I got to think,” he said.
I started to speak. Out of Dwayne’s view Susan shook her head. I stopped and then started again.
“Okay, Dwayne,” I said.
Dwayne looked around the room again. Then he put his hand out and Chantel
took it, and they left, walking past a motionless Hawk at the door.
Hawk looked at me. I nodded and he trailed behind them. If Deegan had been a danger before, he’d be a lot worse now.
“Are you going to leave?” Madelaine said. Her voice came out in a breathy rush. “Are you going to get out?”
I looked at her for maybe seven seconds.
“Sure,” I said, and we left.
In the car I said to Susan, “Time to let Dwayne rest a little?”
“Yes” she said. “He’ll come around. But he’s giving up a male authority figure and it’s hard for him. He needs a little time to find a new one.”
“Be better if he didn’t need one,” I said.
“He’s what,” Susan said, “twenty-one? twenty-two?”
“Okay,” I said.
“I watched him as all that went on,” Susan said. “He looked at Deegan or you all the time we were there. One or the other of you. He was continuously aware of both of you and of the way either of you reacted to anything.”
We were headed down Commonwealth Ave., past the Marriott and the canoe rental landing toward 128 and the Mass. Pike interchange.
“Deegan made a mistake when he threatened Chantel,” I said.
“Yes,” Susan said, “he did. And that’s an encouraging sign. That his need for the young woman is strong enough to offset his need for the male authority figure.”
“Might be something a little more than need,” I said.
Susan turned her startling Technicolor smile on me.
“Love?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“If love is more than need,” Susan said, “or obsession or other pathological manifestations.”
“You babes are such flighty romantics,” I said.
I was looping around the complicated clover-leaf at the junction of Routes 30, 128, and 90.
“Is it love that made you go this way?” Susan said. “Because I think it’s shorter?”
“No. This is stubbornness. I wish to prove to you that it’s longer.”
I dropped thirty-five cents into the automatic toll hopper and headed in the turnpike extension toward Boston.
“Love is what makes me care whether you know which way is shorter,” I said.
She put her hand lightly on my thigh. I dropped my right hand on top of it and drove with my left.
Playmates Page 13