Known to Evil

17

I emerged from the park without having to resort to physical violence. The big white guy read my smile the way Barack Obama read the hearts of the American people.

The torch had passed. The old intimidation and fear-mongering had given way to a kind of diplomacy… with teeth.

ON SIXTY-NINTH, ON THE far East Side, was a twelve-story building that had a tennis court on the roof. There well-heeled men and women rented one of the three courts for $120 per half-hour to play tennis under a Manhattan sun or moon.

Shad Tandy taught those who could afford his rates how to strengthen their backhands and their serves.

According to the records given me by Rinaldo, Shad was the son of a woman who once had been wealthy. She was poor now but somehow had managed to get her son into the right schools on scholarships and spit. He had the pedigree and manicure of a young Kennedy and the bank account of the man who tried to take my dollar in the park.

Shad was a shade under six feet, with sandy hair and deep-brown eyes. He had the lithe body of a tennis player, with strong legs and lean arms.

The middle-aged woman he was teaching was thrilled to have him hug her from behind to show how the backhand felt in its execution. I was sure that she paid the four dollars a minute just for that physical closeness once, or maybe twice, a week.

I sat at a table which stood upon a synthetic patch of grass reserved for those waiting to use the courts. I had paid for an impromptu lesson from the thirty-year-old Tandy. The country was going through a serious recession and there were many gaps in the schedule of the courts. I had a briefcase full of money, and so the $120 was nothing to me.

"Can I get you something to drink, Mr. McGill?" Lorna Filomena asked.

The twenty-year-old brunette wore a fetching white tennis outfit replete with short-short skirt, white tennis shoes, and bluish ankle socks.

"You got some cognac in that cabinet?" I asked her.

"No, sir," she said, still smiling, "we only have bottles of water."

"Sparkling?"

"Flat."

"Why not?" I said. "Man cannot live by bread alone."

She went to the door that led to the elevator and bent over. From somewhere she came out with a small bottle of Evian.

Handing me the chilled plastic container, she asked, "Are you really here to play tennis?"

"Why? Don't I look like a tennis player?"

"People don't usually play in a suit and street shoes."

"Don't you like my suit?"

"It's really very nice," she said, putting a spin on the third word to show that she meant what she said. "But it's just not tennis wear."

"Why would I have given you all that money if I didn't want to learn?" I asked.

"I don't know," Lorna speculated. "You asked for Mr. Tandy by name, and I've heard that he's had trouble with people he owes money to."

The playful tone didn't disguise the girl's dislike of Shad Tandy.

"I look like a leg-breaker to you?" I asked.

"I don't know." She leaned against the wall and cocked her head. She really was very pretty. "You sure don't look like a tennis player."

"Who does he owe money to?" I asked.

"Shad's mother is a total bitch," Miss Filomena said. "She has to live like she's rich, but her family lost their money before Shad was born. His father's still in jail. Shad's always doing something to get money. Sometimes maybe he goes too far."

"Did you and Shad have a thing?"

She thought for six seconds or so, decided that she didn't have anything to lose, and said, "Yeah, we did. He gave me all kinds of trinkets and told me even more lies. Then his mother said I wasn't good enough, and he cried when he told me it was over."

"So if I was here to beat a few dollars out of him you wouldn't exactly mind?"

"It would probably take me ten minutes to get to the phone to call the police."

I like honesty in the people I talk to. Nine times out of eleven, truth trumps good intentions.

"Hey, Lorna," Shad Tandy said.

He was running up to us. His middle-aged student had disappeared from the court.

"This is your next lesson, Shad," she said in a very friendly, even perky, tone. "Mr. McGill is a walk-in but I knew you wanted the classes."

They had certainly been lovers. Shad heard the threat in her pleasant voice. He looked at me, saw what she had seen, considered running, and then decided I might catch him, or shoot him in the back, if he tried. He glanced at Lorna, hoping that she just wanted to see his sweat, not his blood.

"Have a seat, Mr. Tandy," I said. "They serve a good water here."

The cell phone vibrated in my pocket but I ignored the request.

"You're here for a lesson, Mr. McGill?"

A door closed and Shad looked up quickly. Lorna had gone and shut us in on the roof. There was no one else there.

When he turned his attention back to me I was staring daggers.

"You owe a lot of money, son," I said.

"I got it. I got the whole twenty-five hundred. He, he, he said I had to the end of the week. Mr. Meeks said I had till Friday."

My gaze didn't waver.

"I don't have the money on me," he said. "It's in a safe deposit box. But I can get it."

I looked so deathly certain to the tennis pro he must've thought that I was planning to push him off the roof.

"Where is Angelique Lear?" I asked.

Shad's tanned white skin went suddenly pale. His fear deepened with a sense of the unknown.

"I don't understand," he said.

"Angelique. I want to know where she is."

"But, but…"

He leaped from his chair. I lunged, too, hitting him on the cheekbone with a schoolbook right-hand lead. Shad fell and stood… then fell again. It was the kind of punch that catches up with you as the moments click by.

Shad was on his back with his hands up over his face.

"I don't understand," he said. "I already told Grant. That's where I got the money to pay Meeks."

"Mr. Meeks," I reminded.

Shad's lips trembled.

The phone vibrated in my pocket.

"What did you tell Grant?"

"That, that, that Angie had broken up with me a few weeks ago… But then she called me the other night to borrow some money. She said that she was at her friend Wanda's house."

It bothered me that this coward would call Angelique by the nickname I decided on.

"Stand up," I said.

He did so.

I knocked him down again.

"Do you know what happened at Wanda's place?" I asked the bleeding young man.

"No. What happened?"

I answered him with threatening silence.

"Angie had been moving around a lot," Shad whined, "and Grant said that he had the answer to a scholarship she'd applied for. I didn't see anything wrong with that."

"Did you call her to tell her that he was coming?"

"He said that he wanted it to be a surprise."

"Stand up."

"No."

"Where is this Grant?"

Shad tried to crawl away on his back, looking very much like the worm he was.

"I can get down on my knees to beat you, boy."

"He met me here. Paid for a lesson, just like you did, only he had the right clothes. After the lesson he bought me a drink and asked about Angie."

"Didn't that make you suspicious?"

"I needed the money. He said it had to do with a grant. That wasn't unusual. Angie was always getting grants and stipends. She's the luckiest person I know."

"What did he look like?"

"Bald, white, maybe forty."

"What was his first name?"

"I don't know. Maybe Grant was his first name."

I could have broken his jaw with a well-placed kick. I certainly wanted to.

"Have you heard from Angelique since last night?"

"No. No."

"If you do," I said, "and you tell anyone-anyone-I will come back here and throw your sorry ass off the roof. Do you understand me?"

Shad nodded, sniffling some of the blood back up into his nostrils.