Playmates

29

IN the morning Susan called Chantel for me. I didn't want Dwayne to answer and recognize my voice and hang up.

"Chantel?" Susan said. Pause.

"Mr. Spenser calling, just a moment."

We were still in bed and Susan handed the phone across her body to me.

"Chantel," I said.

Her voice was sleepy. "What you want?"

"Can you talk?"

"Not much," she said.

"Okay, listen then."

"Un huh."

"I want Dwayne to see Bobby Deegan and Madelaine Roth at an address in Newton I'm going to give you."

"I don't understand that, Ma'am." The "Ma'am" must have been diversionary.

"I'll be there, and Hawk, and my friend Dr. Silverman, the woman who just spoke to you."

"Un huh."

"So you've got to get him there under whatever pretext. What's a good time today?"

"Today?" Chantel sounded confused.

"Yes. This morning would be good. In an hour, say."

"We ain't even up yet," Chantel said.

"We need to do this quickly, Chantel. Can you get him there?"

"Yes," she said. "Two hours."

"Okay." I gave her the address and hung up. "Kid's okay," I said to Susan. "No argument, no maybe. Just yes."

"And Hawk will meet us there?" Susan said.

"He's there now," I said. "I called him before you were awake."

"You awoke from an evening of rapture thinking business?"

"First I thought about the rapture," I said. Susan nodded.

"Hawk will make sure that Madelaine and her boyfriend don't leave," Susan said.

"Yes."

"Wise," Susan said, "though it came rather hard upon the heels of rapture."

"I'll make breakfast," I said, "and you can start getting ready."

"If I start getting ready now, I won't be able to hurry."

"I know," I said.

"I like to be in a hurry," Susan said.

"Puzzling, but true," I said. I got up and put on my Darth Vader robe. Susan slipped out of bed and walked naked toward the bathroom. "Except when I take a bath," Susan said. "I like long slow baths."

"Among other things," I said.

Susan looked at me the way she does, sort of sideways. She took her robe from a hanger in her closet and slipped it on. Susan was never naked except when there was occasion for it. She always looked a little relieved when she got into her robe.

I headed for the kitchen.

Susan and I had sweet potato pancakes and two cups of coffee each. Decaffeinated. No problem. I didn't miss real coffee at all. We cleaned up the dishes afterward and then Susan said, "My God, look at the time," and began to speed around her condo. I went into the bathroom and took a shower and came out and found a neutral corner in her bedroom and dressed and put my new Browning on my hip, slid past her into the living room and stayed out of the way until she was ready.

At nine fifteen we were on the Mass. Pike to Newton. We got off at West Newton and headed west on Washington to Commonwealth Ave. and west on Commonwealth to Madelaine's condo.

"I still say it would have been shorter," Susan was saying, "to go straight out to 128 and come back in."

"No hurry," I said. It was seventy-three degrees and sunny, an atypical late March day in Boston.

"Easy for you to say."

Hawk's jag was parked in the apartment lot across the street from Madelaine's. I pulled in beside it and Hawk got out of his car and climbed in my back seat.

"They there," he said. "Deegan came out and took the paper off the front stoop about half hour ago."

"How are you, cutie," Susan said.

"Formidable," Hawk said.

Susan leaned back over the front seat, and Hawk leaned forward, and they kissed.

"The basketball star coming?" Hawk said.

"His girlfriend says she'll have him here at ten," I said.

"And when he get here, what is it we going to do, again?"

"We're going to bring him in and observe his interaction with Madelaine Roth and Bobby Deegan," I said.

"Interaction," Hawk said.

"They must be the people Dwayne's loyal to," Susan said. "Maybe we can get some sense of how or why."

"Besides, I can't think of anything else to do," I said.

"Could put them both in the river," Hawk said.

"Come on," I said. "Up here the river's almost swimmable again. Aren't you opposed to pollution?"

"We've done it before," Hawk said.

"The reasons were better," I said, "than any we've got now."

Hawk shrugged and leaned back against the seat.

"There need to be some reasons, Hawk," Susan said.

"Worried about reasons all my life, I be a long time dead by now," Hawk said.

"Yes," Susan said, "that's probably true." Hawk grinned in the back seat.

"Don't make much difference to me, sweet potato," he said. "Kill them, interact with them, tell them about God. Whatever works. Or make you happy."

"How sweet," Susan said.

"There's Dwayne and Chantel," I said. Across the street a bright red Trans Am slowed in front of Madelaine's condo and then swung into the lot in front and into an empty parking space. Susan and Hawk and I got out of the car and crossed Commonwealth and joined them. Chantel was in the driver's seat.

Dwayne, looking a bit cramped, was in the passenger seat.

The car windows were down. Dwayne looked out at me and turned toward his girlfriend. "What's he doing here, Chantel?"

"He's going to help us," she said.

"I don't want to have nothing to do with him," Dwayne said. "Let's get out of here." Chantel shook her head and took the keys and stepped out of the car.

"Goddamn it, Chantel," Dwayne said. "Get your ass in here and drive this thing away."

"He's going to help us," Chantel said.

"That honkie motherfucker?" Dwayne said. "He the one got me benched."

"Honkie motherfucker," Hawk said. "He does know you."

"He'll help us," Chantel said.

"He'll help shit. Dwayne say get in here and drive, you fucking well better listen to Dwayne."

Chantel threw the keys into the car. "You want to go. You drive it away. This man going to help us, if you'd just let him, dope."

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 Chantel.

"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 wrist 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 abou 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 armles 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 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.