Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues Read online

  “Could you find out who he owes the money to? And how much?” There was a pleading tone to her voice, a tone more vulnerable than any I’d heard out of her. “Whatever it is, I’ll see that it’s paid. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

  “I may have to talk to Conrad,” I said.

  “No, please. At least don’t tell him we’ve spoken. If you have to talk to him, make it look like some other reason. I can’t have him finding out that I know what’s going on with him.”

  “If he truly has a gambling problem, he’s going to need some help.”

  “I’ll deal with that after this is over. For now, I just don’t want him to get hurt. Please help me get through this, Harry. Then we’ll work on getting Connie straightened out.”

  “You’re going to protect him, right? You’re going to fix things for him. The twelve-steppers would call you the Enabler.”

  She flared. “I ta hiring you in a professional capacity, Harry, but not as a therapist. That’s something else we can deal with when the time’s right. For now, do you want to help or not?”

  “Rachel, I—”

  “Of course, I’m going to pay your standard rate.” She reached into her purse again, this time drawing forth an expensive leather wallet with some kind of designer medallion on it. I didn’t recognize the brand; out of my league. She pulled out a fanfold of hundred dollar bills.

  “Rachel, that’s not—”

  “Don’t be silly. Are you going to tell me you can afford to work for free? What’s your rate?”

  I’ll give her this much; she’d become a lot tougher since we used to date in college. I guess life with a doctor’ll do that to you.

  “Two-fifty a day, plus expenses.”

  She counted off a stack of green, leafy bills. “Here’s enough for a week, with an extra fifty thrown in to cover extras. We’ll settle up when you find out who these bastards are.”

  “Rachel, are you sure you wouldn’t be better off going to the police?”

  She leaned across the desk and dropped the money on my desk calendar. Then she stood up, a hardness in her face that I hadn’t seen before.

  “I want this taken care of. Discreetly. And I want you to do it. Do we have a deal?”

  I raised my head and eyed her, my lips tightening involuntarily, my mouth suddenly dry.

  I never could say no to her.

  Then there was the money. There’s always the money, and there never seems to be enough since I said goodbye to the paper. Having the chance to bank five days’ worth of fees was something that, from a strictly business sense, I couldn’t pass up.

  Of course, if I had any business sense in the first place, I wouldn’t be caught in this squeeze. After Rachel left my office, I pocketed the $1,300.00 and walked down Seventh Avenue to the parking garage where I kept the Ford. I was a month behind on my contract and would’ve given the space up, but parking in downtown Nashville is about like parking in downtown Manhattan. Believe me, I’ve tried both.

  I gave the attendant one of the hundreds, then waited while he brought me my receipt and change. Now I was not only current, I was a month ahead. And if I wasn’t careful, I was going to wind up paying more to park the Ford than I paid for the car itself.

  I checked my watch as I pulled out into the line of cars moving, at four miles an hour, toward Broadway. I had just enough time to swing by the bank and deposit the other twelve hundred before my four o’clock racquetball game with Walter. Maybe I should have plunged immediately into Rachel’s case, but I needed a few hours to figure out a game plan. Her clock could start running tomorrow.

  Walter Quinlan and I have known each other since we both went to the same boarding school over twenty years ago. We’re buddies in the way that men who’ve known each other a long time are buddies, but I can’t say that we’ve ever been really close. For one thing, Walter’s an attorney, and I was a newspaper reporter, two occupations not exactly designed to foster trust and intimacy between individuals.

  But we play racquetball once a week and occasionally grab lunch together downtown when he’s not in court. Beyond that, we rarely see each other. Walter runs in different circles. While my circle of friends is gravitating more and more toward people who sit on their porches and drink beer in their boxer shorts, Walter’s runs toward the Belle Meade types who spend more in tennis club fees than most people pay in income taxes.

  Walter’s friends drive BMWs and Jaguars. Mine tune up their Dodges in the front yard.

  Walter was already in the court warming up when I opened the heavy wooden door and slipped in five minutes late. Walter’s one of those people who always look like they just had their hair cut. He wears workout clothes that cost as much as the last suit I bought, and he regularly beats the stew out of me with a $200.00 Ektelon racquet (an instrument I would personally like to drop in a trash compactor). The guy’s a holdover yuppie, up for partner this year at the law firm of Potter & Bell. He was divorced last year from some Belle Meade socialite with an IQ of 135 and nothing to do with it.

  I pushed the door shut behind me. “Hey, guy, what’s happening?”

  Walter fired one from the serve line. It hit the wall maybe an inch off the floor and came screaming out in a black streak. Walter’s killer serve had been the death of me more than once. I wondered why I kept playing with him. More than anything else in the world, Walter Quinlan hated to lose. On the rare occasions when I beat him, he did not take it well.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “Traffic’s terrible. Couldn’t find a parking space.”

  “If you’d pay for a space in the lot,” he said, bouncing another black ball off the floor, “you wouldn’t have that trouble.”

  “I already pay for one parking space a month,” I said, my voice echoing off the cavernous walls of the racquetball court. “I can’t afford another.”

  I leaned against the wall, hands out, racquet dangling from my right wrist, and did calf stretches. Walter walked over, rested his back against the wall, then slid down in a squat.

  “I got turned down for partner last Friday,” he said quietly.

  It took a moment for his words to penetrate. I pushed myself off the wall and sank, cross-legged, to the floor in front of him.

  “Get the hell out of here,” I said, aghast.

  Walter snickered. “That’s basically what they said.”

  “What the—? Did they give you a reason?”

  His eyes darted back and forth. They were darker, filled with more intensity than I’d ever seen before. There were even traces of purplish circles under his eye sockets, marring an otherwise too-perfect preppie face.

  “They never give a reason. In fact, they didn’t actually tell me I wasn’t going to make the cut. It’s my year, though, and when the list came out, I wasn’t on it.

  “It’s weird, man,” he continued after a moment. “It’s like nobody’ll discuss it. And there’s no appeal. Six years I spent working for these guys.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I can stay on as an associate another year or two. It’s not as if they actually lock you out of the office. I’ll need to get out as quickly as possible, though. Move on to something else.”

  “Do you have any idea why they passed you over?” I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder or something, but guys don’t do that stuff.

  He rubbed his hands on his forehead. “I’ve got the sneakiest little suspicion it’s related to my divorcing Madelyn. Her father’s in the Belle Meade Country Club with Sam Potter. They golf together.”

  “But, man, I thought the divorce was her idea.”

  “It was,” he sighed, “but only after she found out I was boinking one of her girlfriends. What was I supposed to do, though? Bitch hit on me. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything.”

  Yeah, I thought, nothing but not keep it in your pants.

  “Aw, jeez, buddy, I’m really sorry. I know how tough it is, man. Listen, we don’t have to be here.
You can’t be in the mood for this today. Why don’t we go get a beer?”

  He tapped his racquet on the hard wooden floor. “Actually, I’m kind of up for this. Want to go for it?”

  I dropped my head down, stared at the floor between my legs. “Oh, hell. I think I’m in trouble today.”

  I looked up to see Walter’s glistening white teeth, as regular as the kernels on an ear of corn, lined up behind a malicious smile.

  “I’ll give you first serve,” he said.

  It was the only way I’d have a chance at him, the killer frame of mind he was in. He was tense, poised on the balls of his feet. Taking up position behind me, he danced around gingerly as if I was going to turn around and open up on him with a shotgun—and he wanted to be sure he could get out of the way. A lock of hair dropped down on his forehead, centered perfectly above his eyes. Even in sweaty disarray, this guy looked like something out of GQ.

  I bounced the ball a few times, trying to get my timing right. Then I cocked my arm and let one fly. It wasn’t a bad serve, at least not for me, but I should have opened with a lob instead of a power serve. Walter was locked and loaded in the pissed-off position, just waiting for me to zing one by him.

  He jumped to his right, sent the ball flying to the upper-left-hand comer. It took a slow bounce off the roof, then came straight down at me. There was no time to prepare; I raised my racquet and let the ball bounce off it. It landed fair, then dribbled back off the floor. Walter was there as fast as a rat, his racquet under the ball, flipping it expertly off the corner away from me. I lunged for it and wound up on the floor. The ball bounced lazily past me.

  “Oh, hell,” I said again, pulling myself up.

  I didn’t score a point for the next twenty minutes. I did manage to return a few serves, a couple of times even got into a volley, but that’s about all. Walter usually beat me, but this time he was slaughtering me. He played not with skill, but with a controlled fury, as if each shot off his racquet was a bullet aimed at the head of one of the suits who’d turned him down.

  I was sweating like a linebacker in a summer workout, my gray YMCA sweatshirt several shades darker and heavier. The score was now 12–3 in the second game. I’d finally figured out that the only chance I had was to fake power serves and then give him slow lobs off the ceiling. The truth was, I was too tired to fire missiles at him anyway.

  My serve went high, but I must have laid some heavy English on it, because it went off the back wall, zipped erazily to my right, onto the side wall, and then back toward the front wall, Walter ran like hell for it, but he was slightly off target and too far back. His racquet went across his body in a blur, whooshing as it missed its target. I was behind him, already raising my arms to celebrate getting one by him, when he slammed into the front wall and screamed like a kamikaze pilot.

  He whipped around, sweat flying off him in all directions, and roared again. There was a look in his eyes of raw, uncontrollable rage, and for the tiniest part of a second, I thought he was going to come after me.

  I dropped my arms, victory celebration over. “Hey, bro, chill out. Just a game, man.”

  He tightened his arms around him, as if by pulling in on himself he could regain control.

  “Sorry, man, guess I’m a little tense today.”

  “Want to take a break?”

  He pushed wet, straight hair off his forehead, spreading it back greaseball-style, and raised his racquet. “After this game.”

  I stepped to the line again, wondering if his performance was just an attempt to psych me.

  “What the hell,” I whispered to myself at the serving line, “I can take this guy.”

  I put everything I had behind it. The ball hit the front wall to my left, a few inches off the floor. It was easily the best and hardest serve that ever came out of me. The ball zipped past my left shoulder in a blur. I didn’t even look behind, just dropped to a half squat, my legs cocked, ready to go after his return.

  Only problem was, I never saw it. All I did was hear it. There was a loud pinging sound, then an echoing ring as the ball went past me unseen, like a Hollywood sound effect of a ricocheting bullet. The ball boomeranged past me and was gone before I could even figure out which direction it came from.

  I looked around. Walter was behind me, relaxed now, grinning. I spread my arms, the outstretched racquet in my right hand like a frying pan.

  “Where did it go?”

  He pointed with his racquet. I turned; the ball had come to rest on the floor in the right-hand corner.

  “Isn’t there a rule against breaking Mach I?” I asked. Walter laughed as he came to the serving line.

  The game was over in about two minutes.

  “Let’s take a break,” I panted. I stumbled over to the left wall and settled down in a puddle of my own sweat. Walter walked around in circles, nervously bouncing the ball, waiting for another chance to maul me.

  “So what are you up to?” he asked.

  I thought for a second. Client confidentiality was a big one with me. “You still my lawyer?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “Of course, I’m still your lawyer. Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

  “No, it’s just that I got my first client today.”

  “No bull, man, that’s great! About freaking time.”

  “Yeah, well, you know her.”

  “I do?”

  “Rachel. Rachel Fletcher.”

  He dropped down in front of me, balanced on the balls of his feet, his racquet in front of him for balance.

  “Rachel Fletcher?”

  I smiled. Walter once had the hots for Rachel as well, but she had broken up with me and was already seeing Connie by the time they met.

  “Yeah, Rachel.”

  “She’s not divorcing that bastard she’s married to, is she?”

  I smiled. “What, Walter, you waiting for your shot?”

  “No, jerk off, just curious. That’s all. If anybody’s waiting for a shot at her, it’s probably you.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. And no, she’s not divorcing him. But he’s into some bookies, and they’re starting to make threatening noises.”

  “What for? I mean, what’s his game? Ponies? Football?”

  “You know, I forgot to ask.”

  He spewed out something that sounded like disgust. “Some detective.”

  “Hey, give me a break, I just talked to her this afternoon. Haven’t had a chance to formulate my strategy.”

  “Well, I hope you come up with a better strategy for him than you do racquetball.”

  “Okay, buddy, that’s it,” I said. “I’ve taken as much of this as I’m going to take. Prepare to eat rubber.”

  He laughed, stood up, turned his back on me. “Loser serves?”

  I bounced the ball a few times, cocked my elbow, and let one fly. It wasn’t a bad serve, but Walter had no trouble getting to it. His return was a little weaker, though. Maybe he was getting tired, too. I made it to the ball just as it was waist high, then cross-armed it hard. It hit the left wall, bounced into the back wall, then headed toward the floor. I dodged as Walter streaked by me and, with a loud grunt, caught the ball and sent it flying toward the ceiling.

  I caught it on the return and managed to send it back to him. We had a pretty good volley going, the best one of the day. A thought flashed through my head that this was fun, and that I was going to hate to see it end no matter who got that point.

  My right foot hit a puddle of sweat just as I was lunging toward the right wall. Something in my ankle gave way; pain shot up the outside of my right leg all the way to my hip. I felt myself becoming airborne, and the next thing I knew, I slammed into the hard wooden floor, facing the ceiling, wondering which way was up.

  Walter’s face appeared above me, an apparently genuine look of concern on his face. “You okay?”

  I tried to focus on him and take a mental inventory of my physical state at the same time. My head took a nasty bang, but I figured it was more or
less intact. The ankle, though, was another story. If I were lucky, it was only sprained.

  “Nothing a heart transplant won’t cure.”

  Walter grinned, reached out a hand to me. “Hell, boy, you can’t replace what you haven’t got.”

  I let Walter pull me up until I was firmly on my rump. I could see the ankle was swollen through my jock sock. I gingerly pulled down the thick cotton.

  Maybe it wasn’t too bad. A little red, swollen, but no exposed bone splinters, no streaking, not too much purple and yellow. And the pain was beginning to throb down to a gentle agony.

  “Help me up, man. I need to get some ice.” I grabbed his hand, and he pulled me up on my good leg.

  I threw my arm around his shoulder—guys can do that when they’re physically wounded—and let him help me into the locker room. One of the attendants got me a high-tech, chemical ice bag, and I sat on a bench, sweat still cascading off me, nursing the leg.

  Walter stripped down for his shower, then wrapped a towel around his waist and sat next to me.

  “That’s going to be sore tomorrow.”

  “You asshole, it’s sore now.”

  “You going to be okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, moving the bag around a bit. “You know, it’s funny. I was wondering how I could approach Fletcher without his suspecting why I was really there. Now I’ve got a reason.”

  Walter looked at me strangely. His expression was one I couldn’t come anywhere near reading.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe you need to go have that looked at.”

  By seven that evening, I knew I was going to have to have the leg X-rayed. The pain wasn’t severe, but the swelling remained, and the ankle was stiffening up. I’d broken an ankle playing soccer in high school, so I had an idea of what might be going down.

  I was only kidding when I told Walter that now I had an excuse to see Fletcher. But the more I thought of it, the better the idea seemed. Besides, if I went to the emergency room at the university medical center, my insurance would cover it. If I went to the local doc-in-a-box, it came out of my own pocket.

  It’s tough driving a straight shift car with a bum right leg. By now the ankle wouldn’t bend at all, so pressing the accelerator meant doing it all with hip and knee. The usual traffic out 21st Avenue didn’t help either. The university was still in session. It was a cool, clear night, and the streets were filled with freshly scrubbed little rich kids out for a stroll.