Play Dirty

CHAPTER 8

THE BOYS STOPPED THEIR PLAY, WATCHING AS HE WALKED TOWARD them. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” They said it in unison, cautiously.

“Is this Bolly Rich’s house?”

“He’s inside,” replied the taller of the two. “He’s my dad.”

“What’s your name?” Griff asked.

“Jason.”

“You play ball?”

Jason nodded.

“What position?”

“Quarterback.”

“Yeah?”

“Second string,” Jason confessed self-consciously.

“Want to play first string?”

Jason looked at his friend, then back at Griff. “Sure.”

“Give me the ball.”

Again Jason first consulted his friend with a look, then passed the football to Griff, keeping himself at arm’s length. “I’m throwing ducks.”

Griff grinned at his use of the term for a slow and wobbly pass. “That happens to everybody once in a while, but you can avoid it.” He took the ball in his right hand, pressed his fingertips against the laces. “See this?” He held the ball for Jason and his friend to observe.

“You’ve gotta keep the pads of your fingers tight, like you’re trying to squeeze the air out of it. So when you let it go…” He motioned for Jason’s friend to run out for a pass. The kid went willingly. Griff drew back his arm. “You’ve got control, better aim, and speed.”

He threw the ball. It sailed straight and sure. The kid caught it and beamed. Griff gave him a thumbs-up, then turned to Jason. “A bullet instead of a duck.”

Jason raised his hand to shade his eyes against the sun. “You’re Griff Burkett.”

“That’s right.”

“I had a poster of you in my room, but my dad made me take it down.”

Griff snuffled a laugh. “I’m not surprised.”

“Griff?”

He turned. A slight man, wearing cargo shorts, a holey T-shirt, and old sneakers, had opened the front door and was standing on the threshold between the flowerpots. He was balder, but his eyeglasses were the same ones Griff remembered from the last time Bolly had interviewed him.

“Hello, Bolly.” He looked down at the boy. “Keep practicing, Jason.” The youngster nodded respectfully. Then Griff joined Bolly at the door and extended his hand. To the man’s credit he shook hands with him-after only a second or two of hesitation. But the eyes behind the wire frames weren’t exactly glowing with happiness to see the most hated man in Dallas at his front door.

“I think Jason has the potential of being good one of these days.”

Bolly nodded absently, still trying to recover from his shock. “What are you doing here, Griff?”

“Can I have a minute or two of your time?”

“What for?”

He glanced over his shoulder at the two boys, who were watching this exchange with undivided attention. Coming back around, Griff said, “I promise not to abscond with the family silver.”

The sportswriter hesitated for several seconds more, then went into the house and motioned for Griff to follow him. Off the entryway, Bolly led him down a short hallway and into a compact, paneled room. Shelving was jam-packed-even overflowing-with sports memorabilia. Framed photographs of Bolly with star athletes took up most of the wall space. There was an untidy desk in the corner dominated by a telephone and a computer. The monitor was on. The screen saver showed fireworks blossoming in multicolored silence.

“Sit down if you can find a spot,” Bolly said as he squeezed himself behind the desk.

Griff removed a stack of newspapers from the only other chair in the room and sat down. “I called the sports desk at the News. The guy who answered said you were working from home today.”

“I do most days now. Go into the office only a couple days a week, if that much. If you’ve got e-mail, you can conduct just about any business from home.”

“I used a computer in the library this morning. Felt like a caveman looking at the control panel of a 747.”

“They build in obsolescence. Keep you buying upgrades.”

“Yeah.”

An uncomfortable silence followed. Bolly picked up a stray tennis ball on his desk and rolled it between his palms. “Listen, Griff, I want you to know I didn’t contribute anything to that piece about you that came out during your trial.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

“Well, good. But I wanted you to know. That writer-You know he’s in Chicago now.”

“Good riddance.”

“Amen. Anyway, he pumped me for information on your background. Your folks. Coach Miller. All that. All I told him, the only thing I told him, was that you had the best arm and best hustle of any quarterback I’d ever seen. Topping Montana, Staubach, Favre, Marino, Elway, Unitas. You name me one, you were better. I mean that.”

“Thanks.”

“Which makes me all the more pissed off at you for what you did.”

Bolly Rich, a sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, had always been fair to him. Even when he didn’t perform well, like one Monday Night Football game against Pittsburgh. It was his rookie year, his first time playing the Steelers on their turf. He played the worst game of his career. Bolly’s column the next morning had been critical, but he’d placed part of the blame for the humiliating loss on the offensive line, which had done precious little to protect the new quarterback. He hadn’t crucified Griff the way other sportswriters had. That wasn’t Bolly’s style.

Griff was hoping to appeal to Bolly’s sense of fair play now. “I fucked up,” he said. “Huge.”

“How could you do it, Griff? Especially after such an outstanding season. You were one game away from the Super Bowl. All you had to do was win that game against Washington.”

“Yep.”

“No way Oakland could have defeated the Cowboys that year. Y’all would have waltzed through the Super Bowl game against them.”

“I know that, too.”

“You only had to get the ball to Whitethorn, who was standing on the two. The two! Nobody near him.”

Bolly didn’t have to recount the play for him. He’d replayed it in his mind a thousand times since he threw that pass while the final seconds of the game ticked off the clock.

Fourth and goal on the Redskins’-it would be the goddamn Redskins-ten-yard line. Cowboys trail by four. A field goal won’t do it.

The center snapped the ball into Griff’s hands.

Whitethorn shot forward off the line of scrimmage.

A Redskins lineman slipped, missed the tackle. Whitethorn got to the five.

Skins defenders trying to blitz were stopped dead. They couldn’t climb or penetrate Dallas ’s line, collectively named “Stonewall” that season.

A Skins linebacker was charging toward Whitethorn, but Whitethorn was now on the two with space around him. The team was only one step shy of the goal, of victory, of the Super Bowl.

All Griff had to do was lob a short screen pass over the line into Whitethorn’s hands.

Or miss him, and get paid a cool two million by the Vista boys.

Cowboys lost 14-10.

“It was a crushing loss,” Bolly was saying, “but I remember how the fans still cheered you as you left the field that day. They didn’t turn against you until later, when it came out that you’d missed Whitethorn on purpose. And who could blame them? Their Super Bowl-bound star turned out to be a cheat, a crook.”

Talking about it five years after the fact still made Bolly angry. He dropped the tennis ball, which bounced off his desk onto the floor, ignored. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes with agitation, and asked brusquely, “What do you want, Griff?”

“A job.”

Bolly replaced his glasses and looked at him as though waiting for the punch line. Eventually, realizing that Griff was serious, he said, “What?”

“You heard right.”

“A job? Doing what?”

“I thought a paper route might be available. Could you put in a good word for me with someone in that department?” Bolly continued to stare at him; he didn’t smile. “That was a joke, Bolly.”

“Is it? Because beyond that, I can’t imagine why you’ve come to me asking about a job. You go anywhere near the sports desk at the newspaper and you’ll probably be tarred and feathered. If you’re lucky.”

“I wouldn’t have to go near the sports desk. I could work directly for you.”

Bolly frowned. “What’d you have in mind? Not that I think there’s a chance in hell of this going anywhere. I’m just curious to see how your mind is working.”

“You can’t be everywhere at once, Bolly. You can’t cover more than one game at a time. I know you use people to cover games for you. Provide the color only someone who is actually at the game can get.”

“I use some stringers, yeah.”

“Let me be one. I majored in English. I have a fair command of the language. As much as anybody in Texas.” His quick grin wasn’t returned. “I can at least put two sentences together. Most important, I know the game. I lived the game. I could give you insightful play-by-plays that nobody else could, add a perspective that would be unique, based on actual experience. Years of it.”

He’d rehearsed the pitch, and to his ears it sounded good. “I could describe how great it feels to win. How lousy it feels to lose. How much worse it feels to win when you know you’ve played like shit and the win was a fluke.” He paused, then asked, “What do you think?”

Bolly studied him a moment. “Yeah, I think you could give an accurate account of wins and losses with some original flavoring thrown in. You’d probably be pretty good at it. But even with terrific language skills, you couldn’t come close to describing what it’s like to be a team player, Griff. Because you don’t know.”

“What do you mean?” But he didn’t have to ask. He knew what Bolly meant.

“You were a one-man show, Griff. You always were. Going all the way back to high school, when you first started gaining notice from college recruiters, it was all about you, never the team. You led your teams to victory after victory with your amazing ability on the field, but you were a piss-poor leader off it.

“Far as I know, you were never voted a team captain, which doesn’t surprise me. Because the only thing that made you part of any team was wearing the same color jersey. You made no friends. Teammates admired your game. Those who didn’t envy you idolized you. But they didn’t like you, and that was okay with you. You didn’t give a damn so long as they carried out the plays you called.

“I never saw you encourage another player who’d made a mistake, never saw you congratulate one for making a good play. I never saw you extend your hand in friendship or lend a helping hand to anyone. What I did see was you giving back Dorsey’s Christmas present unopened, saying, ‘I don’t do that crap.’

“I saw you rebuke Chester when he invited you to a men’s prayer breakfast for his wife, who was going through horrible chemo and radiation. When Lambert’s fiancée was killed in that car wreck, you were the only one on the team who didn’t attend the funeral.

“You were an outstanding athlete, Griff, but a sorry excuse for a friend. I guess that’s why I’m surprised, and slightly offended, that you would come to me now, like we’d been good buddies, and ask for my help.”

It wasn’t easy to hear those things about himself, especially since they were true. Quietly, humbly, Griff said, “I need the work, Bolly.”

Bolly took off his glasses to rub his eyes again, and Griff knew he was about to turn him down. “I hate what you did, but everybody can make a mistake and deserves a second chance. It’s just…Hell, Griff, I couldn’t get you into any press box in the league.”

“I’d cover college ball. High school.”

Bolly was shaking his head. “You’d be met with the same animosity there. Maybe even more. You cheated. First you broke the rules by gambling. Then you threw a game. You fucking threw a game,” he said with heat. “For money. You robbed your own team of a sure-win Super Bowl. You were in bed with…with gangsters, for crissake. Do you think anybody would allow you near kids, young players?” He shook his head and stood up. “I’m sorry, Griff. I can’t help you.”

He had lunch at a Sonic drive-in. Sitting in the borrowed Honda, he gorged on a jalapeño cheeseburger, a Frito pie, two orders of Tater Tots, and a strawberry-lemonade slush. It had been five years since he’d had junk food. Besides, he figured that if he was going to be a despised outcast, he might just as well be a fat one.

On the drive out to Bolly’s neighborhood and up till the time Bolly had told him not only no but hell, no, Griff had congratulated himself for having the character to seek a job when, by two-thirty this afternoon, his immediate money problems would be solved. He’d sought work before going to the bank to check the contents of that safe-deposit box. In his opinion, it had taken a lot of integrity to humble himself and appeal for a job, hat in hand, when after today he wouldn’t have to do any labor, ever, if he didn’t want to. He’d even endured Bolly’s sermon, and the sportswriter hadn’t gone easy on his personality flaws.

Although he had to admit that Bolly’s memory was sound. The man also had a keen insight into his nature. That was why he hadn’t asked forgiveness or tried to justify himself. He’d never been the touchy-feely type. He’d never wanted to pat his teammates on the ass after a big play, and he sure as hell hadn’t wanted any of them patting his. He’d left all that rah-rah bullshit to the benchwarmers, while he was out there on the field doing the bone-breaking, bloody work, getting creamed by tacklers who got marks on their helmets if they sacked him.

But why was he stewing about Bolly’s censure? None of that mattered. Now he had only two teammates, and all he had to do to make them happy was get one of them pregnant. Easy enough.

He had indigestion as he walked inside the bank building. He blamed it on the jalapeños, not nerves. He looked about him, as though expecting to be spotlighted and exposed for the most gullible fool ever to walk the planet.

But it went exactly as Foster Speakman had told him it would. No muss, no fuss. He made an inquiry at the information desk, then was escorted to an elevator that went into a subterranean part of the bank, where a polite, grandmotherly type asked him to sign a card. She compared it with the signature card that Foster Speakman had filed, as promised. Satisfied, the grandmother showed Griff into a cubicle.

His heart was knocking in a beat out of time with the Yanni filtering through the overhead speakers. Grandmother delivered the box, told him to take his time and to press the button on the wall when finished, then withdrew. The key Speakman had given him last night was in the pocket of his jeans. He fished it out and unlocked the box.

From the bank, Griff drove straight to NorthPark for a shopping spree. He liked his jeans old and “worked in,” but he bought two new pairs anyway-because he could. His boots were too comfortable to replace, but he had them shined. He found three designer shirts in Neiman’s that didn’t look too faggy. He changed in the dressing room and wore one of them out of the store.

None of the sports jackets in the Armani boutique were wide enough in the shoulders for him, but he found one that would work with some tailoring. He was told he could pick it up in a few days.

He bought a four-hundred-dollar pair of sunglasses. Odd that styles of sunglasses had changed more than anything in the past five years. He also bought a cell phone. It probably wouldn’t have taken as long to buy a house. By the time all the added features had been demonstrated to him, and the calling plan options explained, and his voice-mail retrieval set up for one-digit dialing, he was impatient to get out of there and actually use the damn thing to make a call.

Which was to Marcia. He dialed the first number listed on the card she had given him and got an anonymous, innocuous recording asking him to leave a message, which he did. Waiting on her to return his call, he drove around the area, taking in all the commerce, going past his old haunts and favorite restaurants. Some were still in business, others had given way to new.

When, after an hour, Marcia still hadn’t called, he dialed a number that belonged to one of her girls. Young, gorgeous, satisfaction guaranteed.

“Hello?”

She had a husky, sexy voice. He liked her already. “Hi. My name is Griff Burkett. I’m a client of Marcia’s. She recommended I call you.”

At first he thought she’d hiccuped, but then he realized she was crying. “Marcia-” She got choked up and couldn’t finish. Then she wailed, “Oh, God! It’s just so awful!”

“What’s so awful?”

“Marcia’s in the hospital.”

Presbyterian Hospital was surrounded by a network of roads under repair. By the time he wound his way through the construction zones and the detours they imposed, Griff was swearing as profusely as he was sweating.

He jogged across the seeming miles of parking lot and, after finally reaching the main entrance lobby, had to wait his turn at the information booth. He was raw with impatience by the time the attendant gave him Marcia’s room number.

Standing outside her door, leaning against the wall, was the neighbor Griff had seen last night getting off the elevator. When he noticed Griff striding down the corridor toward him, he jumped as if he’d been struck with a cattle prod and positioned himself in front of the hospital room door.

Frantically, he waved his hands in front of his face. “No, no. Go away. She won’t want you to see her like this.”

“Why is she here?” Griff hadn’t got anything out of the hysterical girl on the phone.

The man stopped his protestations and lowered his hands. His sharp, foxy face contorted into a mask of misery. His eyes were already red from crying. They began to leak fresh tears. “I can’t believe this happened to her. At first I thought it was you, although you didn’t look the type. The savagery of it was-”

“Savagery?”

The man started waving his hands in front of his face again, this time in embarrassment over his emotion. Frustrated, Griff moved him aside, ignored the No Visitors sign, and went into the room. The blinds were drawn against the glare of the afternoon sun, and all the lights were off. But he could see well enough, and what he saw caused him to halt midway between the door and the hospital bed.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I told you it was savage.” The neighbor had followed him in. “I’m Dwight, by the way.”

“Griff. And I didn’t do this to her.”

“I realize that. Now.”

“What happened?”

“About an hour after I saw you in the lobby, my doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting a guest, and the concierge hadn’t announced anyone. I looked at the security monitor and saw Marcia, standing there in the foyer, only sort of…doubled over. She was…like this.”

She’d had the living daylights beat out of her. Griff couldn’t see all of her, of course, but there were bruises and swelling on every inch of exposed skin. If the rest of her looked like her face, she was lucky to be alive. Several cuts had been closed with butterfly clips. Blood had matted her hair to her head. Her face was so misshapen with swelling that if he hadn’t known who she was, he would never have recognized her.

“Her jaw was broken,” Dwight whispered. “They did surgery this morning to wire it together. Last night, no amount of morphine could dull the pain.”

Griff lowered his head and took several deep breaths. When he raised his head, he asked with deadly calm, “Who was her next client? After me. Someone was coming at midnight. She hustled me out so she could get ready for him. Do you know his name?” He turned to Dwight suddenly, and his expression caused the man to back away in fear. “Do you know his name?” he repeated angrily.

A moan from the bed drew their attention to Marcia. In two strides Griff was at her side. Being careful of the IV needle taped to her hand, he gently pressed it between his. “Hey there,” he said softly.

Both eyes were swollen shut, but she managed to pry one of them open. The lovely green iris was floating in a lake of bright red. Since she couldn’t move her jaw to speak, she merely made a whimpering sound in her throat.

“Shh.” He bent down and kissed her forehead, barely letting his lips touch for fear of hurting her. “Take advantage of the drugs. Rest.” He kissed her forehead again, then straightened up and turned to Dwight, who was standing at the foot of her bed, sniffling softly.

“Did you call the police?”

Dwight shook his head.

“Why the hell not?”

“She couldn’t talk because of her jaw, but she became hysterical when I mentioned calling the police. I guess…” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure there were no eavesdroppers about. “Because of her profession, she didn’t want the police involved.”

“But you called 911.”

“Immediately. Paramedics were there within minutes.”

“How did you explain her condition?”

“I have a circular staircase in my apartment. I told them she’d gone up to use the powder room and had fallen on her way down.”

“And they believed that?”

“Probably not. But they left it to the ER staff to summon a policeman. He didn’t believe the staircase story either and urged Marcia to identify her attacker by writing down his name. She refused.”

With limited strength, Marcia squeezed Griff’s hand. He leaned down over her again and gently lifted a strand of hair away from a patch of her scalp that had been shaved to allow for sutures. “Who was it, Marcia? Who were you seeing after me?”

Barely moving, she shook her head. She applied more pressure to his hand, and he realized she wanted him to lean in close enough to hear her speak. He bent low, placing his ear just above her lips.

When he heard the single word she whispered, he jerked his head up and looked down into the single eye she could hold open. She closed it for several seconds, letting him know that he’d heard correctly.

“This was about me?”

She nodded.

Rage surged through him. His veins swelled and pulsed with it. But his voice remained remarkably calm. “He’s going to die.” He said it as a fact, meaning it unequivocally, telling her that she could bank on it. “Stanley Rodarte is going to die.”

Now he understood why she had refused to call the police. Rodarte would have made it understood that accusing him would bring on a reprisal even worse than the beating he’d already given her.

Most sickening was knowing that the only reason Rodarte had victimized Marcia was to send a message to Griff. In that, he’d succeeded. Griff read the message loud and clear. Rodarte wasn’t finished with him yet.

Well, guess what, cocksucker, Griff thought. I’ve only begun with you.

“I’ll make him pay for this,” he vowed to Marcia in a whisper. “I swear to you.”

She pressed his hand. He bent down to her lips again. The garbled sounds came from the back of her throat, but she managed to make her warning understood. “Be careful of him.”