Play Dirty

CHAPTER 11

THE SPORTS BAR WAS CROWDED AND NOISY, BUT GRIFF HAD thought if he spent one more evening cooped up inside his apartment, he was going to go round the bend.

Without anything constructive to do during the day, the evenings were particularly long. His tan was already too deep to be healthy. Although he kept to a strict exercise regimen, he was bored with working out. He’d seen all the current movies, some more than once. He’d caught up on his reading. Everything he found entertaining anyway.

Marcia was completing her recuperation at home, and via Dwight, she had asked Griff not to visit her there. “She’s dealing with a lot just to recover. Then she’s facing the plastic surgery,” Dwight had told him. “She needs some space. I’m sure she’ll contact you when she’s back to her glorious self.”

The message had been polite enough, but Griff could read between the lines. He was an additional complication she didn’t need. She didn’t blame him for what had happened, but distancing herself from him would be safer and healthier, for herself and for her business.

Consequently, he didn’t even have his daily trips to the hospital to look forward to. He was bored. And, possibly for the first time in his life, lonely. Being a social outcast was different from choosing to be alone.

One of the things he’d hated most about his incarceration was the lack of privacy. During those five years, he’d yearned for solitude, and swore that when he got out, he was never going to take it for granted again. But at least when he was in the mood to talk, there were other prisoners to shoot the bull with. His meals were eaten in the company of other people.

Now he had nobody with whom to do anything. Days would pass when he didn’t exchange a single word with another person.

Not that he was gregarious by nature. As Bolly had so candidly pointed out, he’d always been a loner. No doubt that tendency was a holdover from his childhood. His mother’s neglect had taught him to be self-sufficient. He’d relied only on himself for everything-sustenance, pacification, and entertainment.

That mandatory self-reliance developed into a personality trait. It also became a weapon he used to keep other people at arm’s length, out of either dislike or mistrust. He didn’t see the percentage in letting anyone hold sway over him. Even the most casual friendship required too much. To be a friend, one must give as well as accept. Griff found both equally difficult. Coach and Ellie had finally figured that out and had stopped pressuring him to make friends, resigning themselves to his preference for his own company over anyone else’s.

But in his former life he’d at least been around other people even if he didn’t mingle with them. At school, with the Cowboys, at Big Spring. Now he was actually lonely. So a few days ago, out of desperation, he’d called one of his former teammates, one with whom he’d been comparatively friendly.

The former tight end, who owned a successful software company now, congratulated him on getting released and lied by saying that it was great to hear from him. But when Griff suggested they get together for a beer, the guy ticked off a dozen excuses in the span of thirty seconds, one being that he’d gotten married.

“She’s a great lady, don’t get me wrong. But she keeps me on a tight leash. You know how it is.”

Actually, he didn’t. But what he did know was that this big, tough former NFL player would rather Griff think he was a henpecked husband than drink a beer with him.

Tonight, unwilling to spend another night in the solitary confinement of his apartment, Griff had dressed and gone looking for a crowd. He’d found one at an expensive sports bar in an upscale neighborhood. The place was sleek and snazzy, serving more fruit-flavored martinis than beer. It catered to the young, beautiful, and fit. Griff’s was the palest tan among them.

He was ogled by the twenty-somethings in skimpy summertime tops and short skirts. He ogled back, but not ambitiously. Which was somewhat surprising, since he hadn’t had sex with anyone since Marcia.

Well, and Laura Speakman.

Don’t go there.

That was what he told himself every time his thoughts went there.

People were standing three deep at the circular bar. He had to wait almost half an hour before a barstool became available. He claimed it, ordered a beer and a burger. While he ate, he watched a baseball game on the large-screen TV suspended over the center of the bar.

He’d become aware of a brunette sitting on the far side of the bar, facing him. She flashed him a smile and a glimpse of tit every time her boyfriend-or husband or whatever he was-wasn’t looking. Beyond that, Griff let the barroom dramas pulse around him without taking notice.

He stretched his meal out over five innings of the Rangers game. To maintain ownership of his barstool, and to keep from going back to the empty apartment, he ordered a second beer he didn’t want.

The Rangers were up by three. They were having a good season. If they made it to the play-offs, he would become interested. Otherwise, he didn’t much like baseball. He couldn’t make sense of a sport where the perfect game was one in which nothing happened. Baseball aficionados would disagree, saying that plenty happened during a no-hitter, but he couldn’t appreciate it.

Of course, it was a hell of a lot more fun to watch when you’d wagered on the outcome.

His gambling had started out as innocently as that. He did it for fun. Even while he was at UT, he would make calls, place bets on NCAA games, although he’d never bet on a Longhorns game. But he’d wanted to. He didn’t yield to the temptation of betting on his own games until he was drafted by the Cowboys.

The shrink who’d counseled him at Big Spring had a theory. He said Griff had felt guilty over his good fortune. The Longhorns had won the national championship his senior year. He’d missed being awarded the Heisman by two votes. He was the number one pro draft pick that year and an enviable prize for the Cowboys, whose veteran quarterback had retired. When he signed with the team, his picture was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Fame and fortune at twenty-three. Heady stuff.

The shrink’s take on it was that he’d gambled in the subconscious hope of getting caught, being punished, and losing everything, including Coach and Ellie’s affection. The shrink had emphasized that. “Coach Miller is perhaps the one individual in the world you respected and for whom you felt affection. Yet you deliberately did what you knew he couldn’t forgive, the one act that would cause an irreparable breach in your relationship.”

His summarizing analysis was that, subconsciously, Griff felt he should be penalized for all the good things that had happened to him-beginning with Coach giving him a home and ending with him becoming starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys-because in his deepest, darkest self, he’d felt these boons were undeserved. His ruin had become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Maybe that was right.

Or maybe that was horseshit.

He’d gambled because it was fun and because he could get away with it.

Then, when he got deep in hock, it stopped being fun. And he couldn’t get away with it anymore.

As he sat sipping his second beer, trying to make it last, he idly wondered how much money had been gambled on the outcome of this Rangers game. How much would his former business associates in the fancy Las Colinas office make off these nine innings? Plenty, you could be sure. The Vista boys had bookmakers all over the country working for them.

One less, now that Bill Bandy was no longer in their employ.

Griff hoped that sniveling little snitch was being slowly turned on a spit over the fieriest fire in hell.

“You got any money on it?”

Having been lost in thought, Griff turned his head to his right, to make sure he was the one being addressed. The man on the next stool was glaring at him, his upper lip raised in a belligerent smirk.

“Pardon?” Griff said.

“Ask him again.” A second man was standing behind the first. His truculent expression matched that of his friend, and his eyes were equally bloodshot from too much drink.

Calmly Griff said, “Ask me what?”

“I asked if you put any money on this game.” The one on the stool hitched his thumb toward the TV screen.

“No. I didn’t.” Griff turned away, hoping that would be the end of it.

“You don’t gamble anymore?”

Ignoring him, Griff reached for his beer.

The one on the stool jabbed his arm, causing him to slosh beer onto the bar. “Hey, asshole. Didn’t you hear me? I asked you a question.”

By now, those nearest to them had become aware of the cross words being exchanged. The music continued to blare through the speakers with palpable percussion. Action continued on the TV screen, but conversations were suspended as attention was directed toward them.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Griff said under his breath. “Why don’t you guys just back off, go somewhere and sober up, okay?” But he knew they weren’t going to simply walk away. The second one had moved up behind his barstool, crowding in close. Griff’s back was to him, but he sensed the man’s hostile, challenging stance.

He made eye contact with the bartender and motioned that he wanted his check. The bartender hastened over to a computerized cash register. Griff glanced across at the brunette who’d been flashing him. She was sucking her drink through a straw, watching him over the frosted glass. Her escort was looking at him, too.

The guy standing behind Griff’s barstool said, “I guess he only bets on the games he throws.”

“Fucking cheater.” The first guy jabbed his arm again, hard. “Fucking, fucking cheat-”

Griff’s hand shot out with the speed of a striking snake, grabbed the man’s wrist, and slammed it down onto the bar like the coup de grâce of an arm-wrestling match.

He howled in pain. The second one landed on Griff’s back like a mattress stuffed with lead. Griff came off his barstool and tried to shake the guy off. There was a noisy shuffling of feet as people hastily backed away. Somewhere a glass broke. Two bouncer types appeared and pulled the guy off Griff’s back. “Break it up.”

One of the bouncers pushed Griff’s shoulder, shoving him back several steps. Griff put up no resistance. He raised his hands. “I didn’t ask for any trouble. I didn’t want it.”

The two bouncers took firm hold of his hecklers and escorted them away. They protested drunkenly but were taken outside. But the show wasn’t over. All eyes remained on Griff, especially now that he’d been recognized. His whispered name moved through the crowd like a spreading stain.

The bartender presented his check. Before he could count out the bills to pay it, a young man in a fashionable suit materialized beside him. He was obviously the man in charge. “It’s on the house,” he said to the bartender, who nodded and retrieved the check.

Griff said, “Thanks.”

But the young man’s expression wasn’t hospitable. “I’m asking you to leave and not come back.”

Anger and embarrassment caused Griff’s face to grow hot. “I didn’t do anything.”

“I’m asking you to leave and not come back,” the young man repeated.

Griff stared at him for several seconds more, then pushed him aside and strode past. The crowd parted to clear a path. When he reached the door, one of the bouncers held it open for him. As Griff walked through, the bouncer muttered, “Cocksucking cheat.”

Outside, the air wrapped around Griff like a damp shroud. However, he would have had better luck throwing off the cloying, humid atmosphere than he would his anger. He’d been minding his own business, hurting nobody, and he’d been asked to leave and not come back by a guy wearing one of the shirts he’d passed over at Neiman’s because it looked too faggy.

Screw ’em. He’d had better burgers at Dairy Queen for a fraction of the cost, so what the fuck did he care, anyhow?

He cared because he’d been humiliated in front of people who used to cheer him. And going from a superstar of the Dallas Cowboys, surrounded by media photographers and screaming fans, to being escorted out of a glorified burger joint was quite a comedown.

He got to his car and unlocked it. Before he had time to open the door, he was grabbed from behind and flung against the rear quarter panel.

“We’re not finished with you.” It was the guy from the bar, the one who’d first spoken to him. His buddy was standing right beside him. They weren’t drunk. They were stone-cold sober. And, Griff realized with a blast of clarity, they weren’t disgruntled fans, either.

“This is for my wrist,” the guy snarled. He buried his fist in Griff’s stomach.

No, Griff thought as his knees liquefied, these guys aren’t sports fans with too many beers under their belts. They’re pros.