“Thanks for the afternoon,” she said, and opened the door on her side.
“Aren’t we friends?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Brock. I don’t want to talk about it now. Phone me tomorrow, if you want.”
She got out and didn’t look back. She went up the slope toward her house and the Doberman wagged his tail and tried to stick his nose through the wire netting of the fence. He loved Jan, the Doberman did, and I didn’t blame him.
I guessed I loved Jan, too, in my vulgar and insensitive way.
The radio played an oldie, “Who’s Sorry Now?” The Ford coughed and murmured as I headed it toward Westwood, which is home to me.
But on Westwood Boulevard, I didn’t turn left, toward home. I kept going, toward the ocean, toward Malibu and a gang I knew would be waiting — a mild poker game among the old warriors, gridiron soldiers now over the hill. There would be memories and prophecies and beer. There would be some bragging and some heckling and the scarcely perceptible sadness of time-dimmed glory and faded newspaper clippings.
That’s where I wound up Sunday, September fourth, the day that Johnny Quirk came to glory, the day the new team, jelled, the day of the Ram.
two
MONDAY, September fifth, dawned clear and dry. Outside my little apartment door, the Times lay fat and pompous and I took it in before putting the coffee on to perk.
Frank Finch devoted almost all his wordage to what he considered a breakdown of the Bear defenses in the last twenty-two minutes of the game. He couldn’t have been more wrong; it had been an offensive miracle, not a defensive collapse. Cronin tried to get funny and failed as miserably as he always did. Well, Flaherty would see it; the Examiner really had the only major-league sports writer in town. Hyland devoted his column to his own spectacular career at Stanford and with the Marines, explaining that very few Big Ten athletes ever achieved officer status with the Marines. Because they hadn’t played rugby.
Yesterday, on the Coliseum turf, a star had been born, a man who could possibly become one of the game’s all-time greats. But the Times sport pages were concerned with other things, the greatness of U.C.L.A. and the appalling powerhouses on its schedule, schools like San Diego State and East Compton College.
I ate my eggs and drank my coffee and thought back to last night and the seventeen dollars I had won. The talk had been Quirk, Quirk, Quirk last night, even among the losers. Usually the losers are only concerned with deal, deal, deal, but Johnny Quirk had been too big a discovery to make anything else worth discussing.
I bought an Examiner at the drug store near my office and opened it to Vincent X. Flaherty before I even looked at my mail.
Mr. Flaherty had seen it. From the first word to the last, his column was devoted to the new Ram quarterback. And his last sentence was: “This will be one of the immortals.”
I didn’t read any of the other columnists; that was enough for me. I turned to the mail and there was nothing of importance. I got a paper cup of water from the water cooler and stood by the window, looking down at the traffic.
I’d opened the agency because there wasn’t any other trade I could think of where I could do better. My dad had been a cop and as a Ram I’d known a hell of a lot of Los Angeles policemen. That wasn’t much to bring to the profession, but some successful practitioners had originally brought less.
Of course, if one wanted to play the shadier angles of this game … Yes, of course. There were a number of ways to skin this cat and I’m not the most moral man in the world. But then again, I’m not the least moral either, I’m sure.
Behind me, the door opened and I turned to see a young man standing there. I thought, for a moment, that I’d gone simple.
Because it was Johnny Quirk. “Am I seeing things?” I asked. “You’re Brock Callahan,” he said.
I nodded. “And you’re Johnny Quirk, and yesterday you were the best in the business. Man, you were great.”
“Thanks,” he said, and his smile was weak. “I guess I was pretty hot, all right. I hope it keeps up.”
“So do I. So does every fan in town.” Then I paused. “You seem nervous, Johnny. Something wrong?”
He nodded. He closed the door and came over to where I stood and handed me a piece of folded paper.
I put my half-empty cup of water on the desk before unfolding the paper.
The message was typed without salutation or signature. I read:
You’re good enough to make the difference. And there’s a lot of money to be made in this game if you’re smart. We hope you’re smart. We’ll get in touch with you again.
• • •
I read it over twice and looked up to meet his anxious gaze. “Why did you bring this to me, Johnny?”
“You’re a detective, aren’t you? And a former Ram?”
I nodded. “But this is for the police. You should have taken it right to your head man Mr. Reeves and let him contact Commissioner Bell and get the police alerted. You knew that, didn’t you, Johnny?”
“I knew if I was approached by gamblers, I had to report it, sure. This could be just a gag, though, couldn’t it? What the hell would I want with money?”
I shook my head. “What we all want with it. You’re not that naïve, boy.”
“My dad’s got more money than they’re likely to have,” he said. “I don’t play this game for money.”
“They don’t know that, maybe.”
“If they can read, they know it. I think it’s a gag.”
“No, you don’t. Or you wouldn’t have brought it to me. Tell me, why did you bring it to me, Johnny?” I nodded toward my customer’s chair. “Sit down and tell me all about it.”
He sat down, and I studied him. He didn’t look much like a football player, but who does? He was slim, though fairly tall. The program carried him at a hundred and seventy-one pounds.
He took a deep breath and looked past me, at the window. “Your folks?” I guessed. “You didn’t want to worry your folks?”
“There’s just Dad,” he said. “Mom died when I was nine. No, it’s not Dad. He doesn’t scare. But my — There’s a girl — I mean — ”
“She doesn’t like football?”
“Oh, she doesn’t want me to play it. In high school, she thought it was great stuff. At Princeton, too, it made her a big girl at all the parties. But now, she says, it’s time to put away these childish things.”
I smiled. “You’ve gone with her since high school? That’s a pretty good record for these days.”
He shook his head. “Off and on. We never went steady until the last couple of months. We’re not engaged, yet, but …” He shrugged.
“Why aren’t you engaged? Because of the football?”
He nodded. “Mostly. I thought maybe you could check the typewriter or whatever you fellows do and we could find out who the wise drip is and maybe — well …” He shrugged again.
“Maybe what?”
He frowned. “Golly, I don’t know — I didn’t think much beyond that.” He smiled briefly. “You a Ram and all, and a guard, I suppose I figured you might work him over lightly.”
“There must be more than one. This letter uses ‘we.’”
“So do columnists, but one man writes the column.”
I chuckled. “This isn’t from a columnist. I doubt if even Hyland would send out a note like this. How did you get it? Have you the envelope?”
“It wasn’t in an envelope. I found it folded on the seat of my car last night when I came out of a movie.”
“It must have been someone who knew your car, then, or someone who followed you to the show. Is it an unusual car?”
He nodded. “It could be the only one in town. It’s a bronze Ferrari with alligator upholstery.”
Even in this town, that could be the only one. I stood up and said, “Let’s go down to the station.”
He stared at me. “Station? The police station?”
“Where else? Let’s go boy. Right now.”
&nb
sp; He looked doubtful. Then he smiled. “It was just a gag, Brock. Some of the boys thought we’d have some fun with you, and — ”
“Come on,” I said. “You’re a respected resident and they’ll sit on it as long as they can. This is Beverly Hills, you know, not Los Angeles.”
“But the Los Angeles police will have to know, won’t they? And that means it will get in the papers and — ”
“Maybe they won’t have to know,” I said. “We’ll talk about that down at the station.”
The Beverly Hills Police Station is on North Crescent Drive and we walked over from my office. On the way I asked him, “Didn’t you take your girl to the movie last night? Didn’t she see the note?”
I thought he colored. “I — uh — wasn’t with her last night.”
“Who were you with? The police will want to know.”
“A — girl. I’d rather not say.”
“It might be important, Johnny. Your girl probably won’t find out.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry I showed you the note.”
I didn’t argue with him. We went in and I asked for Lieutenant Remington and we were in his office within a minute.
He listened to the story and read the note, and then picked up a phone and asked the operator to get him Dan Reeves, the Ram manager.
While he waited for the connection, he said, “It could be a prankster or a crackpot, but there are strict rules on this kind of thing, Johnny. We don’t want football to go the way boxing did.”
Johnny nodded, looking faintly abashed.
Remington fiddled with a pencil. “Who was the girl, Johnny?”
Johnny shook his head.
Remington smiled. “Look, I won’t tell your dad about — ” Then he transferred his attention to the phone. “Dan? George Remington, Dan, and something rather important has …”
• • •
Monday, September fifth, that was and there was a long-distance phone confab with the National League Commissioner, Bert Bell, and then I was told by Remington that he really didn’t need me at the moment, and he stayed with Johnny, trying to get the name of the girl.
I am a Beverly Hills businessman, but Johnny was a Beverly Hills resident, and there’s a slight difference there, anyway a few million.
It was around noon and I went to the drug store for lunch. My most constant fan said, “I saved you some of those rye rolls. The short ribs are good, Brock.”
“I’ll have them.” I said. “And the rolls and a glass of milk. What kind of potatoes have you?”
“Au gratin, baked, French fried. They never should have let Pool go. Old Hamp wouldn’t have lost all those exhibition games, right?”
“Baked,” I said “and right. How about that Quirk?”
He made an “O” with thumb and forefinger. “A doll. A real Ram. This year, we go. Good-by, Detroit.”
He brought over two rolls and three pats of butter. “Local boy, too. Needs the money like I need another head. Who’d have thought a Princeton punk would make it with the Rams, huh?”
“Some great boys have come out of the Ivy League,” I said.
“Eah,” he said. “You can have ‘em. And the Big Ten, too. And seventeen points. I’ll take the good old P.C.C.”
I nodded. “Sure you will. Only they’ve been taken before, too often. Don’t you watch the Rose Bowl games?”
He gave me a crushed look and went to get my short ribs. The Rose Bowl is a touchy subject out here.
I took my time eating and had another glass of milk.
I was still a little miffed at Remington’s dismissal. My bad knee ached faintly and the memory of Martino came back — a slob in an Imperial, coming home from the game.
So, he was entitled; you don’t need credentials to buy a ticket to a football game. All you need is the money, money, money …
“What did you say?” the counter man wanted to know. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were muttering. And scowling. Something wrong?”
I shook my head.
“It sounded like ‘money’ you were muttering about. What is that, a foreign word?”
I glared at him and he smiled at me and in a few seconds I smiled back. I couldn’t lose him; he was one of the few remaining members of the Brock (the Rock) Callahan Fan Club.
There was nothing to draw me to the office; I walked over to a narrow shop on a nearby street. It was flanked by a pair of women’s apparel stores. It had a wormwood front door and jan bonnet in uncapitalized black script on the shining show window. There were some metallic fabrics in the window and what looked like an ebony table with a marble top.
Jan was in soft green jersey today, with her hair up. She sighed and said, “Good afternoon. Something I can show you?”
“Pity? Tolerance? Ecstasy? What’s your special today?”
She sniffed.
“Have fun last night?”
She nodded.
“I was thinking,” I said, “that if you’d lend me the money, I could buy a ring and then we’d be engaged and we wouldn’t have any reason to fight any more.”
“To hell with you,” she said.
“Don’t be childish. Jan, we’re friends and you know it. If we never kiss again, we’re still friends. I may not like your friends and you may not like mine, but that doesn’t change us.”
She sighed again. She managed a small smile. “Sit down, Brock. It’s been a bad morning. I had that Jethroe Ringlan all sold on the exquisite taste of Jan Bonnet and then he went to Les Hartley.”
“Hartley, that queer?”
Jan’s smile was bitter. “It seems Mr. Ringlan is, too.”
I couldn’t help it; I had to chuckle. “Taste and price and contacts mean nothing; you’ll never beat that kind of competition, Jan.”
“I would have netted seven thousand,” she said. “Chuckle over that, muscle man.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve had a bad morning, too. I’ve been snubbed by a crummy police lieutenant.”
Her eyes widened. “Police? That means you have a case, you have a client?”
“I might have had. The police have taken it over.”
“I’ll bet I know why,” she said quietly. “Because you insisted on going to the police. Old ethical Brock the Rock gets a customer and then leads him right down to the men who work for nothing. Aren’t you supposed to be a private investigator? Isn’t privacy what you sell?”
“Within the law, I sell it. Only within the law.”
“You couldn’t cut a close corner?”
“Not on this one I couldn’t.”
“What was so special about this one?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s privacy I sell.”
She shook her head. “Oh, you — ” She studied me. “Every trade, profession, business has it angles, Brock. Every intelligent operator within those categories learns the angles, or he gets out of the business. You don’t have to be crooked to make a living, but it’s also very juvenile to make a little plaster saint out of yourself.”
“Yes’m,” I said humbly.
“Well,” she said briskly, “I can’t sit around here. I have an appointment with a client.”
I stood up. “I’D be seeing you, won’t I?”
Her smile was a little too automatic. “Of course you will. We’re friends.”
I went out without any further words. One of the angles of the interior decorator’s business is the kickback. The merchants send the bills direct to the client and then kick a part of the price back to the decorator. And the decorator charges for his or her — or its — services on top of that.
One of the angles of the private operative business is setting up phony infidelity situations for unhappy husbands or wives. And blackmail, and —
I bumped into something and saw that it was a small and angry man.
He glared at me. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”
“Because I’m not sure where I’m going,” I told him gently.
He
went around me, shaking his head and muttering.
It was quiet in the office. The street is only one floor below, but the cars on the street are mostly new cars with big, fat tires. The little town of Beverly Hills has more Cadillacs than most states.
I made a target on a sheet of yellow paper and taped it to the filing cabinet. I sat in my swivel chair with a rubber band and a box of paper clips, improving my mind.
It wasn’t long before I had the range and was hitting the bull’s-eye with one out of three. And none of them were completely missing the target.
I had emptied the box and was picking up the clips from the floor when my door opened to my second visitor of the day.
She was a girl of medium height and slim figure who could have been eighteen or twenty-five. I’m not good at guessing. She had black hair in one of those new short cuts and dark blue eyes. She looked from me to the clips on the floor and back to me.
“The box broke,” I explained. “Could I be of service?”
“Are you Mr. Callahan?”
I nodded. “Won’t you sit down?” I indicated the chair.
She stood where she was. “The Mr. Callahan who is a friend of John Quirk’s?”
“I’ve met Johnny. Won’t you sit down?”
She made no move. “John was here this morning, wasn’t he?”
I frowned. “I — forget. I don’t think it was this morning.” I went back to picking up the paper clips. “You needn’t be rude,” she said.
I straightened and gave her a steady look. “Nor you. Won’t you sit down and tell me why you’re here?”
She looked at the chair a moment and then went over to sit in it. She smoothed her skirt over her knees and said, “You don’t look like a private detective.”
“What do private detectives look like?”
“Oh, I thought they would look like men who would shoot girls in the stomach.”
I laughed, and she smiled. I told her, “Those are the expensive kind. I’m more for the middle-class trade. Are you a friend of Johnny Quirk’s?”
She nodded. “But I wish you wouldn’t call him ‘Johnny.’ Why is he ‘Johnny’ to everybody all of a sudden?”
“Those things happen. Are you his — are you engaged to him?”
Day of the Ram Page 2
