Small Vices

Chapter 21

I went out of his office, and along the cinderblock corridor to the cage. The cage had a lot of high windows, a dirt floor, and a pale green, rubberized, ten-laps to-the-mile indoor track around it, banked high at the curves. There was a broad-jump pit in the infield, and a pole-vault set up with thick spongy mattresses to land on. On the far curve was a chain-link hammer throw enclosure, closed on three sides so the hammer wouldn’t get misdirected into somebody’s kisser by an inexpert thrower.

I walked around the track to a doorway on the far side. It opened into the tennis area where two red composition courts occupied most of the space. Along the back wall behind the baselines were solid green boards against which a tall rangy kid wearing a blue-and-white kerchief on his head was banging a tennis ball with a graphite racquet. He was wearing a set of blue and white sweats, and white tennis shoes, to go with the kerchief. He alternated slicing backhands and top spin forehands, hitting effortlessly and hard, without mishitting: backhand, forehand, backhand, forehand, alone in the big empty space. The sound of the ball was almost metronomic as it whanged off the racquet, banged off the board, and popped off the floor. If he was aware of me he didn’t show it. I waited for him to take a break. He didn’t.

So I said, “Clint Stapleton?”

The ball clanged off the rim of his racquet and dribbled away from him. He looked up at me.

“Goddammit,” he said. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

“And doing a hell of a job of it,” I said. “My name’s Spenser. You Stapleton?”

“Yeah, but I’m busy.”

“We need to talk.”

“No we don’t,” he said. “I need to hit for another half hour and you need to get lost.”

He was looking straight at me and I realized that he was... black certainly didn’t cover it. His skin color was about the same color as mine... of African heritage, or partly so, seemed to say it better. I don’t think I’d have noticed if the kerchief hadn’t predisposed me.

“I can wait,” I said.

“I don’t like anyone watching me.”

“Clint,” I said. “Under ordinary circumstances worrying about what you like and don’t like would occupy my every waking hour. But these are desperate times. And I’ll have to hang around until I can talk with you.”

“Maybe I could wrap this racquet around your head,” Clint said.

“No, you couldn’t,” I said. “I’d take it away from you and play Steamboat Willie on it.”

Stapleton stood and studied me for a time, slapping the racquet gently against his leg, looking as arrogant as he was able to, making sure that I knew he feared nothing.

“What do you want?” he said finally.

There was weariness in his voice, as if he was fighting off his darker impulses, trying to be civil. I was fairly sure that if I had been a short person with small bones he would have given in to his darker impulses.

“I want you to tell me about Melissa Henderson.”

“Who?”

He said it too fast, and too loudly.

“Melissa Henderson, whom you used to go out with, who was murdered.”

“Oh, Melissa?”

“Yeah. Melissa. Tell me about her.”

“Nothing to tell. We dated a few times. Then she got killed.”

“Don’t you hate when that happens,” I said.

He shrugged.

“How many times?” I said.

“How many times what?”

“How many times did you date her.”

“How the hell would I know? I go out with a lot of girls. I don’t keep track of every date.”

“More than five times?” I said.

He shrugged again.

“Yeah, I imagine.”

“More than ten?”

“For crissake,” he said. “I told you I don’t keep fucking track.”

He rolled a yellow tennis ball up onto his racquet and began to bounce it on the racquet, studying the bounce as if it was important.

“You got a girlfriend?” I said.

“What are you, Ricki Lake? Yeah, I got a girl I’m going with.”

“Who?”

“None of your goddamned business.”

“You give her your letter sweater?”

“No. What the hell are you asking all this crap for?”

“You gave Melissa Henderson your letter sweater.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I am wise far beyond my years,” I said.

“Yeah?” he said. “Well, bullshit.”

I had no idea where I was going. There was something phony about him. I didn’t believe a kid would give away his letter sweater to someone he dated casually. And I wanted to keep him talking and see what came out.

“So how come you gave Melissa your letter sweater?”

He continued to watch the tennis ball bounce rapidly on the racquet face. Then he gave it a little sharper bounce and it went up in the air. As it started down he whanged the ball across the length of the tennis facility and watched it burrow into the netting that hung around the outside of the courts.

“I’m sick of you, pal,” he said. “I got better things to do than hang around here and talk shit with you.”

“Good for you,” I said. “You know a State Police Detective named Miller?”

“Never heard of him,” Stapleton said.

He zipped his racquet up in its case.

“Talk to any cops at all about this case?” I said.

“Hell, no,” he said.

He put his racquet under his arm and walked away across the courts toward the exit, leaving the court area littered with yellow tennis balls. I wanted to tell him that it was bad form not to pick up the balls. I wanted to scuttle alongside him and ask more questions. But his legs were longer than mine and I decided to work on dignity. I’d already been compared to Ricki Lake. So I went looking for the Sports Information Office, instead, and found it in a wing attached to the field house.

“My name is Peter Parker, the photographer,” I said to the young woman at the reception desk. “We’re publishing a photo essay on Clint Stapleton, and I need some bio.”

The receptionist was clearly a student, probably a cheerleader in her other life, cuter than the Easter Bunny, but nowhere near as smart.

“Could you spell the last name, sir?”

I spelled it. She wrote it down on a piece of note paper. I could see the tip of her tongue resting tentatively on her lower lip as she wrote.

She read it aloud when she’d finished writing it down.

“Stapleton, yes, sir. Now what did you want about him?”

“Biographical material,” I said.

She looked a little uncertain.

I said, “A press kit maybe?”

She smiled with relief.

“Yes, sir. I’ll get you a press kit on Mr. Stapleton, sir.”

She stood and started to turn toward the file cabinet on the opposite wall. Then she caught herself and turned back to me.

“Would you like to be seated, sir? I’ll only be a moment.”

I said, “Thanks.”

She hurried across the room to a big metal file cabinet and began rummaging through the file drawers. I didn’t want to sit. But I didn’t want to offend her, so I compromised by leaning on the wall while she rummaged. She was dressed in the calculated slovenliness that was au courant: Doc Marten shoes, baggy jeans, and an oversized white shirt under a herringbone-patterned sweater that was also too big. The white shirt tail hung well below the bottom of the sweater, and the white shirt cuffs were turned back over the sweater cuffs. The sleeves of the sweater shirt combination left only her fingers visible. The bottoms of the jeans bagged over the Doc Martens so that she stepped on them when she walked. I shifted my other shoulder onto the wall. It was slow going at the file drawers, for Ms. Grunge. I wanted to say, “After R and before T.” But I feared she would find it patronizing, so I held back. And as it turned out, she didn’t need my help. After five or six more minutes she came back from the file cabinet and handed me a blue folder with the Taft logo on the front and the name Clint Stapleton hand lettered in black ink on the tab.

“May I keep this?” I said.

“Oh, certainly, sir. We have them available just for that.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Oh, you’re very welcome, sir.”

I smiled. She smiled. I left.