Play Dirty

CHAPTER 12

FOSTER?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you come to the office tomorrow?”

He set down the book he’d been reading and looked across at Laura. She’d brought home paperwork from the office. Since dinner, she had been sitting on the sofa in the library, riffling through various reports. “If you want me to.”

“Some of this stuff is over my head,” she said. “It’s technical and requires your input. It’s been almost a week since you were there. I think it’s important for you to go to the office whenever you can.”

“You think the mice are playing?”

She smiled. “No, because they know I would tattle on anyone slacking off.” She hesitated, then said, “I think it’s important to you that you go.”

“Oh, so you think that I’m slacking off.”

She placed her hands on her hips in feigned exasperation. “Are you trying to pick a fight?”

“Okay, no more teasing. But you do understand, don’t you, that just because I’m not physically at the office doesn’t mean I’m not working.”

“I know that your mind is always busy, but there’s an energizing quality about actually being in the office.”

He considered her for a moment. “You’re doing your job as well as covering for me. Have the dual responsibilities become too much for you?”

He’d touched a sensitive spot, and she reacted. “Do you think they have?”

“Not at all. I’ve just noticed that you seem tired.”

She let that go for the moment. “I’m concerned for you, not me. You love SunSouth. It’s your lifeblood. You need that airline as much as it needs you. And when was the last time we went out to dinner?”

His head went back a fraction. “Sorry. I must have missed the segue. When did we switch subjects?”

“We didn’t. It’s the same subject.”

“It is?”

“We rarely see our friends anymore. I can’t remember when we last went out or had a couple over for cards or Sunday brunch. You stay here most days. All I do is work. I love it, and I’m not complaining, but…” She stopped, dropped her chin, and let the sentence trail off.

“You got your period.”

She raised her head, met his gaze, and as her shoulders gradually sank, she nodded. “I’m sorry.”

He frowned with regret. “I knew it.”

“By my whining?”

“No. This was the first morning that I didn’t ask about your period.”

“Foster.” She’d been mistaken. It wasn’t regret behind his expression but self-reproach. He’d been tracking her cycle diligently, asking about it every day, sometimes several times a day.

“I jinxed it this morning by not getting up in time to see you off before you left for your breakfast meeting. I always ask you about your period first thing in the morning. This morning, I didn’t ask.”

“Foster, believe it or not, my menstrual cycle doesn’t depend on your asking about it.”

“You were late.”

“Only two days.”

“Why were you late?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve never been late before.”

“Not usually, no.”

“Then why now?”

“I don’t know, Foster,” she said, trying to contain her impatience. “Stress, maybe.”

“Dammit!” He struck the arms of his wheelchair three times. “When you didn’t start two days ago, I let myself begin to hope. I should have asked. If I’d have asked-”

“I would have menstruated anyway.”

“We’ll never know.”

“I know. My temperature had dropped, indicating I wasn’t pregnant. I’ve felt premenstrual for days. That’s why I’ve been draggy and tired. I hoped I was wrong but…” She shook her head wistfully. “I dreaded telling you.”

“It’s not your fault. Come here.”

His soft tone compelled her to set aside the paperwork. When she reached him, he guided her onto his lap. She sat down gingerly. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

“If only you could.” They smiled at each other but left unsaid the many things they always left unsaid about the accident and its residual effect on their lives. He squeezed her shoulder affectionately. “This is a letdown, but it’s not a defeat. You did everything you could.”

“Which obviously wasn’t enough.”

“Success has been delayed. That doesn’t equate to failure.”

She ducked her head, murmuring, “You know me so well.”

“I know how your overachiever’s mind works. Sometimes to a disadvantage.”

Both being type A personalities, they had compared their childhoods and discovered that, despite the sizable financial gap between the two families, they had been reared similarly. Her parents, like his, had expected much from their only child.

Both their fathers had been dominant but not unloving. The pressure to succeed that they had placed on their children was more implied than overt, but that didn’t make it any less effective.

Her father had been career Air Force, a bomber pilot who’d served two tours of duty in Vietnam. After the war, he was a test pilot and trainer. A natural daredevil and risk taker, he rode his motorcycle without a helmet, slalomed on both water and snow, went skydiving and bungee jumping.

He died in his sleep. A cerebral aneurysm burst. He never knew what hit him.

Laura had adored him and took his death hard, not only because of the bizarre unfairness of it but because he hadn’t lived to see her achieve all the goals she’d set for herself.

Her mother had considered her dashing husband an unparalleled hero. She worshiped him and never recovered from the shock of finding him lying dead beside her. Grief deteriorated into depression. Laura was helpless to stop its inexorable pull until eventually it claimed her mother’s life.

Laura had been a straight-A student, valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa. She had achieved every goal she’d ever set for herself. Her parents had openly showed their pride. They’d called her their crowning achievement. But their deaths, both tragic and premature, had left her feeling that she had failed them miserably.

Foster knew this. She pointed her finger at him now, saying, “Don’t start with that psychobabble about me not wanting to disappoint my parents.”

“Okay.”

“But that’s what you’re thinking,” she accused. “Just like you’re thinking that this is your fault because you didn’t ask me about my period this morning.”

He laughed. “Who knows whom well?”

She ran her fingers through his hair. “I know that you don’t like changing your routine, because if you do, terrible things will happen. Isn’t that the principle by which you live, Foster Speakman?”

“And now here’s proof of how sound that principle is.”

“The laws of nature are also sound.” She shrugged. “An egg wasn’t fertilized. It’s as simple as that.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “Nothing’s that simple.”

“Foster-”

“It’s indisputable, Laura. Unwritten laws govern our lives.”

“To some extent, possibly, but-”

“No but. There are cosmic patterns in place that one should not violate. If one does, the consequences can be severe.”

Lowering her head, she said softly, “Like switching drivers at the last minute.”

“Oh, Christ. Now I’ve made you even more unhappy.” He pulled her head down onto his chest and stroked her back.

She couldn’t argue this with him. To try to do so would be futile. Shortly after they were married, in an effort to better understand his OCD, she had talked with his psychiatrist. He had explained Foster’s conviction that disorder predestined disaster. Patterns could not be broken. Series could not be interrupted. Foster believed this with his heart, mind, and soul, and the doctor had told her that trying to convince him otherwise was a waste of breath. “He copes with it extremely well,” he’d told her. “But you would do well to remember that what to you is a hitch, is chaos to him.”

Tacitly agreeing to let the matter drop, they sat quietly. After a time, Foster said, “Griff Burkett will be disappointed, too.”

“Yes. He’ll have to wait at least another month for his half million.”

He hadn’t asked her anything specific about her first meeting with Burkett. When she came home that evening, she’d given him a detailed account of everything that had taken place in the office, but she’d told him nothing about that until he asked. “How was your appointment with Burkett?”

“Brief. He did what he needed to do and left.”

She hadn’t elaborated, and he hadn’t asked for more information, perhaps sensing that going into detail would make her uncomfortable.

“So you’ll be calling him again in a couple of weeks?” he asked now.

She sat up and looked deeply into his eyes. “Do you want me to, Foster?”

“Yes. Unless it was unbearable to you.”

She shook her head but looked away. “If you can bear it, I can.”

“Isn’t this what we agreed?”

“Yes.”

“It’s what we want.”

“I know. I just hope it happens soon.”

“It’s what we want.”

“I love you, Foster.”

“And I love you.” Then he drew her head to his chest again, saying, “It’s what we want.”

A week after the beating, Griff began to think he would live. For the previous six days, he hadn’t been so sure.

The sons of bitches hadn’t even been kind enough to beat him unconscious. And that had been deliberate. They’d wanted him awake to feel every punch, grind, and gouge. They’d wanted him conscious so that when they lifted up his head by his hair and pointed out to him a car parked nearby, he would recognize it as Rodarte’s olive drab sedan and see the cute flashing of its headlights. They didn’t want him muzzy or confused. They wanted him to remember the beating and who was behind it.

They’d given him a concussion. He’d suffered a couple in football, so he recognized the symptoms. Even though he didn’t experience the amnesia that sometimes accompanies a concussion, the nausea, dizziness, and blurred vision had plagued him for twenty-four hours.

By rights, he shouldn’t have moved, except to use his cell phone to call 911, summoning an ambulance to the parking lot. But a trip to the emergency room would have involved paperwork, the police. God only knew what else.

Somehow he’d managed to climb into his car and drive himself home before his eyes swelled shut. Since then, he’d been popping ibuprofen tablets every couple hours and trying to find one position in which to lie that didn’t cause throbbing pain. He didn’t worry about internal injuries. The pros knew how to damage him so he would feel it, but they didn’t want a murder on their hands. If they did, he’d be dead. They’d only wanted him praying for death so he’d feel better.

He got up solely to pee, and not until his bladder was full to bursting. When he did leave the bed, he walked like an old man, bent at the waist, shuffling because every time he tried to lift his feet, a knifing pain in his lower back brought tears to his eyes.

Yesterday his mobility had improved a bit. This morning, he’d worked up enough courage to get in the shower. The hot water had actually felt good, easing some of the aches and pains.

The bedroom stank of him because he hadn’t been up to the task of changing the sheets. Sick of looking at the same four walls, he left the room for the first time in a week. Coffee sounded good. He realized he was ravenously hungry. Things were looking up.

He was scooping scrambled eggs straight from the skillet into his mouth when his doorbell rang. “Who the hell?” He couldn’t think of anyone who would come calling.

He made it to his front door and looked through the peephole. “You gotta be kidding,” he muttered. Then, “Shit!”

“Griff?”

Griff hung his head, shaking it in wonderment at his fuck-all rotten luck. “Yeah. Just a minute.” He fumbled with the locks, which he’d had the wherewithal to secure when he returned home the night of the beating, fearing that Rodarte’s thugs might show up for round two.

He pulled the door open. “Hi.”

His probation officer gaped at him. “Holy shit. What happened to you?”

He’d met Jerry Arnold in his office a week after speaking to him on the telephone. Griff had figured that a person-to-person meeting might win him some favor. When he’d left the ten-minute meeting, he knew he’d earned a few points.

Now Arnold ’s good opinion of him was in jeopardy. Ordinarily Griff would tower over the short, stocky black man. Today, since Griff was standing at a sixty-degree angle at best, they were roughly eye to eye. “What happened?” Arnold repeated.

This being the longest time Griff had been out of bed in a week, he’d begun to feel light-headed and shaky. “Come in.” Turning his back on his guest, he slowly made his way to the nearest chair and lowered himself into it as carefully as possible. Even so, every ache and pain that had been lulled by his hot shower was jarred awake again. “Take a load off, Jerry,” he said, indicating another chair.

Arnold dressed and conducted himself like a bureaucrat and looked like a man with huge responsibilities and a lot on his mind-a wife, a mortgage, a few kids to rear on a government employee’s salary. And unreliable ex-cons to babysit. He placed his hands on his hips, reminiscent of Coach. “You gonna tell me, or what?”

“I got thrown into the gorilla cage at the zoo. Those fuckers can get testy.”

Arnold wasn’t amused.

Griff sighed, in resignation and pain. “I ran into some former fans. Last, hmm, Thursday, I think.”

“And you still look this bad?”

“Don’t worry. It hurts a lot worse than it looks.” He grinned, but the other man’s frown stayed in place.

“Did you go to the emergency room? Has a doctor seen you?”

Griff shook his head. “I didn’t report it to the police, either. It was just a couple of drunks. They jumped me in the parking lot of a restaurant.” He made a gesture that dismissed the incident’s importance. “I didn’t fight back, so you don’t have to worry about them filing assault charges against me.”

Finally Arnold sat down. “Is this kind of thing happening a lot?”

“I get dirty looks, but this is the first time the hostility has turned physical. As I said, they were drunk.” He gave a sanitized version of what had happened.

“Do you think Vista was behind it?”

“ Vista?” Griff snorted. “If Vista was behind it, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. It’s nothing, Jerry. Swear to God. I’m feeling much better.”

Arnold made a point of looking at the cold sweat Griff could feel beading on his forehead, but he didn’t comment further. “How are you doing otherwise?”

“Good.”

Arnold looked around the apartment, taking in the fancy TV, the new furnishings. “This is a nice place.”

“Thanks.”

The man’s eyes moved back to him. “How’d you pay for it?”

“Cash. Which I came by legally.”

“How?”

“It has nothing to do with Vista, none of that. I haven’t broken any laws. I haven’t placed a bet.”

“Do you have a job yet?”

“I’m looking into a couple of things.”

“You were going for an interview…”

“It didn’t pan out.”

“What was it?”

“I didn’t get the job, so what difference does it make?”

Arnold didn’t get visibly ruffled over the attitude behind the question, but he repeated in a no-bullshit tone, “What was it?”

Resigned, Griff said, “I asked a sportswriter if I could do legwork for him. You know Bolly Rich?”

“I read his column.”

“I proposed becoming one of his stringers. He turned me down.” Actually, Griff was glad Arnold had pressed him about this. He hoped the probation officer would call Bolly for verification. Bolly would confirm that Griff had tried in earnest to secure employment.

“Anything else?”

“Nothing concrete.” Griff hoped Arnold would let it go at that, because basically Griff liked the guy. He had a rotten job, but somebody had to do it. Griff had nothing personal against him, and he’d have hated lying to him.

“Let me know soon as you land something. It’ll look good on your record.”

“Will do. Soon as I land something.”

“In the meantime, no bookies, no Vista.”

“Hell, I know that.”

“No matter how discouraged you become.”

“Believe me, Jerry, I want nothing to do with them.”

“I do believe you.” He said it like he wanted to but didn’t. “Try to stay out of places where you might run into football fans.”

Griff gave him a look.

Abashed, he said, “Hard to do, I know, but try not to provoke another incident.”

“I didn’t provoke this one.”

“I believe that, too.” And this time he sounded sincere. He stood up to leave. Griff tried not to let his relief show. “Stay where you are,” Arnold said when Griff made to get up. “I’ll see myself out.” He turned to go, then came back around. “Have you heard anything from Stanley Rodarte?”

Griff was glad for the concealing effect the swelling and bruising had on his expression. “Actually, he showed up at the prison the day of my release.” He admitted it in case this was a trick question. Arnold might have been in contact with Wyatt Turner, who could have mentioned Rodarte’s unwelcome appearance.

“Did you talk to him there?”

“No.” Again, the truth.

“He’d mean trouble for you. The last person you’d want to see coming.”

“You can say that again.”

“I’d like to know if he comes around. In fact, I need to know.”

“Absolutely.”

“You’d be dumb to take him on alone, Griff.”

“I won’t.”

Thoughtfully Arnold threaded his clip-on necktie through his fingers. “His reputation being what it is, I’m a bit surprised he’s keeping his distance. Nothing from him since that day at the prison, huh?”

“Nope. Nothing.”

So much for not lying to his probation officer.

Griff’s physical strength and conditioning served him well, and he mended. During the week following the surprise visit from Jerry Arnold, the swelling around his eyes and mouth subsided and his face began to look familiar.

The bruises faded to an ugly greenish yellow, then the green began to go away, leaving him with only an overall jaundiced look. The gash above his eyebrow was reduced to a faint pink line. It matched the faint pink line across his cheekbone, a lasting gift Rodarte had delivered himself that night in the parking garage.

Rodarte had a shitload of grief to answer for. Despite what he’d told his probation officer, Griff couldn’t wait for the opportunity to pay the bastard back.

He hadn’t resumed his multi-mile runs yet, but he had swum laps the past two days. His muscles were sore, but in the good way that came from exercise, not from being pounded on by fists that had felt like meat tenderizers.

He wasn’t up to full speed, but he no longer moved like a ninety-year-old with arthritis in every joint. He was feeling more like himself. Which was good. Because Laura Speakman called one morning as he was stepping out of the shower.

“One o’clock?”

“That’s good for me.”

“I’ll see you then.”

He looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his bathroom door. If she had turned her head away from him before, she might go into a full-fledged cower at the sight of him today. His appearance had improved, but he still looked like he’d taken a sound beating.

He gave himself another critical once-over in the mirror, front and back. One good thing, he thought, she won’t be seeing me naked.