Day of the Ram

by William Campbell Gault

  “I could be. I will be when he gives up this silly football mania of his.” I said nothing.

  She said. “He came to see you this morning, didn’t he?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “His father.”

  “Did his father tell you why?”

  She shook her head, her eyes grave on mine. “You tell me.”

  “I can’t, Miss — uh — ”

  “Curtis,” she supplied, “Deborah Curtis. Why can’t you?”

  “Because he came in confidence; he trusted me. Don’t worry about him, though. He’s going to be all right. A number of important people are concerned with his welfare.”

  Some quiver in her fine chin and a scarcely perceptible shine of tears in the clear eyes. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he?”

  I shook my head.

  Her voice was shaky. “You’re lying. That’s another world, that world of John’s. Women aren’t permitted to enter, are they? You’d think there wasn’t any world beyond those goal posts. It’s like some crawling disease, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “Better men have had worse vices, Miss Curtis. John’s a mighty fine boy, from all I’ve heard.”

  “Not fine enough to stay out of trouble, it seems.”

  “Nobody is,” I said. “Nobody worth-while, anyway.”

  “Don’t give me your locker-room homilies,” she said fiercely. “I want to know about John.”

  “Do you, really? Then listen. He can be one of the greatest quarterbacks who ever played football in the toughest league in the world. Despite his money, he can be important on his own. And not only in Beverly Hills but in all the thousands of towns where sports are played. He can be one of the immortals instead of some puky little coupon-clipper and note shaver.”

  She sat rigidly in her chair, glaring at me. The tears were welling out of those blue eyes now and moving down her cheeks. I suddenly felt immensely sorry for her.

  I said, “Five, six, seven years — can’t you wait that long? You’ll have him for the rest of his life. Can’t the boys in the stands have him for a little while yet? He can make a lot of people happy doing what he’s doing now.”

  She dried her eyes very carefully with a small yellow handkerchief. She sniffed and said, “I should have known better than to come here. You were a Ram, too, weren’t you?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “They’re all crazy,” she said, “all the ones I’ve met, anyway. You’re no better than the others. I thought because you are older that — ” She took a deep breath. “Men — ”

  I tried to think of something comforting to say, and failed. Who can explain about football to a non believer? Women and professors can’t seem to understand the importance of it.

  She asked calmly, “You don’t want to tell me anything, then?”

  I shook my head. “Just don’t worry, Miss Curtis. Your boy is going to be all right.”

  She stood up. “Did he tell you where he was last night?”

  I lied with another shake of the head.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m sure he didn’t go to a movie. Sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Callahan.” She gave me her proud young back. She closed the door quietly behind her.

  I went back to picking up the paper clips.

  Two visitors in one day and not a dollar from either of them. I didn’t have the true merchant’s instinct. And that damned snooty Remington …

  My phone rang, and it was that damned snooty Remington. I thought he sounded embarrassed, but it could have been because I was hoping he would.

  He said, “Young Quirk seems to think a lot of you.”

  “I’m a Ram,” I said.

  “What was that?”

  “Never mind, you wouldn’t understand. You didn’t phone just to tell me that, did you, Lieutenant?”

  His voice was a little stiffer. “No, I didn’t. I phoned to tell you that we’re setting up a stake-out. We expect he’ll be approached further by these gamblers, and we’d like to be ready for that eventuality.”

  “You’ve decided they’re gamblers, have you?”

  Annoyance in his voice. “What else?”

  “Crackpots, Forty-niner fans, would-be humorists — ”

  “All right,” he interrupted, “the possibility of that has been gone over very thoroughly in this office. We’ve decided to take no chances. But young Quirk insists that you be included in any plans of ours. He’ll pay your fee.”

  “He’s a gentleman,” I said. “I await your command, Lieutenant.”

  “It’s Quirk’s idea, not mine,” he made clear. “He wants you to move in with him. Are you currently available for full-time duty?”

  “I think I can arrange it,” I said thoughtfully. “When do I move in?”

  “As soon as possible. And I’ll want you to keep in close touch with us.”

  “Of course, Lieutenant,” I said respectfully. “You can always expect the fullest co-operation from this office.”

  On which pleasant note we closed the conversation. And five minutes later, I’d locked the office door and was on my way home for some clothes to last me for a short stay at the Quirk home.

  three

  THE QUIRK house looked out of place in its grove of eucalyptus trees. It was a two-story mansion of red brick, a cross between Colonial and early-century Illinois. A wall of cedars hid it from view of the Sunset Boulevard traffic some two hundred yards from the front door. There it stood, a reminder of an earlier era, amidst the ultramodernity of Beverly Hills. I drove into the parking area at the side of the house and took my grip with me to the front door.

  A Negro servant answered my ring. He told me, “Mr. Quirk is waiting for you in the living room, sir. He would like to talk to you.”

  I thought he meant Johnny, but it was the elder Quirk who was slumped in a big chair near the fireplace in the living room. It was Johnny’s dad, Mr. Joseph Quirk.

  He was a stocky man of medium height with a florid complexion and lustrous white hair. He looked tired and troubled.

  He said quietly, “Sit down, Mr. Callahan.”

  I sat down and there was a silence of perhaps half a minute. Then he said wearily, “You’ve no children, Mr. Callahan.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not married, sir.”

  “I’ve two,” he said. “A daughter who wants to be a movie star and a son who wants to play football. What’s wrong with kids these days?”

  “Since there’s been football and movies, they’ve attracted the young ones,” I said. “Johnny looked like a pretty solid kid to me. Of course, I only talked to him for an hour or so.”

  “He is a solid kid. I thought he had more sense than he has. He was always an intelligent boy. But is football an intelligent occupation for a man?”

  “Some intelligent men think so.”

  “Coaches, you mean?”

  “And professional players. Some of them have pretty high IQ’s. Over 160, some of them.”

  “All right, all right, I’ll change my question. Is it an intelligent occupation for sensible men?”

  “I couldn’t answer you objectively, sir. I played professional ball, myself.”

  “I know you did. But your father didn’t have a number of influential friends who wanted you in their businesses, did he?”

  “No, sir, he didn’t. That might have made a difference to me.” I knew I was lying, but it was probably what he wanted to hear.

  Another silence, and then Mr. Quirk said, “I wonder if you would do me a very big favor?” I looked at him and waited.

  His voice had some pleading in it. “I wonder if you will try to discourage him in this — this trade of his?”

  “How, sir?”

  “Tell him what a rough and nasty business it is. That wouldn’t be a lie. I’ve made inquiries; I know that wouldn’t be a lie.”

  “I’d be telling him something he knew,” I said. “The Rams don’t all wear face masks for nothing.”

  “I know. But John’s arrogant, though
it isn’t as noticeable as it once was. I didn’t mean you should frighten him. I thought you could explain that the — doubtful rewards aren’t quite enough pay for the punishment one takes, and the danger of permanent injury.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Quirk’s smile was resigned. “I suppose you couldn’t tell him that and make it sound as though you believed it?”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t, sir.” I took a deep breath. “As I told Miss Curtis this afternoon, though, a man can’t play professional football forever. In four to seven years, Johnny will have all of it he’ll want. And a football reputation won’t hurt him any in business, sir.”

  There was the sound of the front door closing and then Johnny came into the room from the entry hall.

  He waved at me and smiled at his dad. “Chin up, Pop. You’ll be proud of me yet.”

  His father said, “I’ve been proud of you since the day you were born. Johnny doesn’t drink, Mr. Callahan, but how about you?”

  “Just beer,” I said.

  He rang for a servant and, when the maid appeared, looked at me again. “Any special kind of beer, Mr. Callahan?”

  “Einlicher, if you have it, please,” I said. Only among my clients do I ever find Einlicher.

  The maid went out and Johnny stretched out on a twelve-foot davenport. “Hard day?” I asked him.

  “We didn’t practice. Just a skull session. It’s been a day full of cops, though. They can be tiring.”

  “You’re a big man,” I said. “They worry about you.”

  “Yesterday I was a big man,” he corrected me. “Next week I’m a bum again.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “I think you’ve found yourself with the Rams. It takes time to get the feel of a team, as you probably know better than I do.”

  “Who knows more than Brock the Rock?” he kidded me. “You should have got Pool’s job.”

  The maid brought in my beer and Mr. Quirk rose. He said, “You gentlemen will have to excuse me. I have a number of phone calls to make before dinner.”

  Johnny waited until his father had left the room. Then he said quietly, “I suppose he’s tried to influence you to influence me?”

  I paused. “Ah — something like that.” I sipped the Einlicher. “I don’t drink in front of him,” Johnny said. “He’s a teetotaler.”

  “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have asked for the beer.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t mind it in others. And I suppose I could drink without breaking his heart. But I figured it was about time I thought of him a little more.”

  I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything very bright I could think of.

  “You see,” Johnny went on, “I was a real twenty-two-carat son-of-a-bitch as a kid.”

  “Oh?”

  “In trouble with a girl when I was fifteen. The girl was much older.”

  “It happens to rich kids,” I said.

  “No, the girl was no fortune hunter. She was one of my teachers. She tried to commit suicide.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m not a priest, Johnny.”

  He tilted his head up to grin at me. “Don’t worry, I won’t break down and confess all. I’m just thinking aloud. I was always too lucky; too rich, too good at sports. I was one of the most arrogant bastards in the world when I was in high school.”

  “And Princeton?”

  “Not much better.”

  “And then you joined the Rams and the Deacon made a Christian out of you.”

  He shook his head. “They all did. You know what the sports writers were saying about me, and the sportscasters.”

  I nodded. “That bothered you?”

  “It certainly did. But there wasn’t a man on the team who wasn’t rooting for me to make good.”

  “They expect arrogance in quarterbacks,” I said. “Maybe you wouldn’t have had the same tolerance as a guard.”

  “Maybe. And maybe I just grew up, all of a sudden. That’s no place for boys, that National League, is it? That’s a game for men only.”

  I nodded and he sat up. “Boy, I surely bent your ear, didn’t I? C’mon, I’ll show you your room.”

  The bedroom he showed me to was only about twice as big as my entire apartment in Westwood. It was in the front of the house, upstairs, and I could see most of Beverly Hills over the tops of the cedars that screened us from the road.

  It had its own dressing room and its own bath. The dressing room had one wall devoted to drawers, but one drawer took care of the few shirts I had brought. I was standing by the window looking down at the richest little city in the world when the butler came to tell me dinner was about ready.

  Johnny and his dad were waiting in the living room and there was a third member of the family there now and I was introduced to her.

  It was Johnny’s sister, Moira. She was a slim girl, fairly tall, and she looked both high-bred and high-spirited. Her hair was a dark and glowing red, her eyes some shade between gray and green.

  She told me I didn’t look like a policeman, as we were introduced. It was the second time I’d been told that today. I told her that it was a part of my business not to look like a policeman. That ended our living-room dialogue, but I was conscious of her appraising glances from time to time.

  Over the dinner table Mr. Quirk told us about his early years in the state. He’d come here from a small town in Illinois and gone into the hardware business. From that to real estate, and I could guess it had been real estate that had made his fortune.

  And where was I from, he wanted to know.

  I told him I’d known only three places of residence, San Diego, Long Beach and Los Angeles.

  That ended my contribution; Mr. Quirk went on to tell us some of the fabulous real-estate deals that had transpired in his lifetime. When a man dwells that consistently on the past, he is getting old in mind if not in body. Johnny was his only future.

  Johnny listened politely; Moira made no effort to hide her boredom. I enjoyed the food and managed to look interested enough to keep him going.

  Later, Johnny and I went for a swim in the indoor pool, and there he told me, “I hope Dad didn’t bore you. He can get dull, talking about the past.”

  “I’m being paid by the day,” I reminded him.

  He smiled. “Sure. I’m going to make him proud of me yet. I gave him some bad years. I’ll give him some good ones.”

  And then some others came; Johnny’s Deborah and a lad named David Keene and some tall and elegant swain of Moira’s. And a young married couple whose names I have forgotten now.

  It was all very gay and young and rich and the talk was about people I didn’t know and parties I hadn’t attended. But that wasn’t rude of them; I was here as hired help.

  Both Deborah and Moira did very well by a bathing suit, but I would still take my Jan in one of those and give them twenty-three points.

  Around eleven-thirty, the others went on to one of the night spots on the Strip, but Johnny didn’t go along. As we went up the stairs to the bedrooms he looked bored and weary.

  “Nice gang,” I said.

  “They’re all right. I — feel like they belong to another world.” He paused. “Except for Deborah, of course.”

  “A lot of people would like to be in that world.”

  “More people would rather be Johnny Quirk yesterday.”

  “Only football fans. Everybody wants to be rich.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I just want to be the best damned quarterback the Rams ever had.” He stopped at the top of the stairs to face me. “Consider this — my dad’s one of the wealthiest men in this state, and this is a big state. And yet, right now I’ll bet you a hundred times as many people have heard of me.”

  The competitive urge. The thing that makes all athletes tick. But Johnny had even carried it to his dad.

  I said, “Get a good night’s sleep, mister. There are some brutal days ahead.”

  When I came into my bedroom, I didn’t turn on the lights right awa
y, because through the window I could see the lights of the city and it was such an impressive sight I wanted a good look at it.

  That’s how I happened to notice the car parked down at the Sunset end of the driveway. For a moment it worried me. Then the headlights of a passing car illuminated it and I saw it was a police car. The little sanctuary of Beverly Hills was taking good care of one of its most prominent citizens.

  Tuesday, September sixth, I was wakened by the sun coming through the big windows. It was going to be a hot day.

  In the paneled breakfast room Johnny was eating with a man I hadn’t met. He was a beefy gentleman, not too tall, with a flat nose and a soft, almost womanly mouth.

  He was Sergeant Gnup, of the Beverly Hills Police. He didn’t look particularly ecstatic about meeting me. He told me, “I’ll take over from here, Callahan. You sleep late, don’t you?”

  Johnny smiled and winked at me.

  I said, “I’m a little new at this kind of work.”

  Gnup put three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee very deliberately. He didn’t look at me as he said, “This is no job for an amateur.”

  I couldn’t think of an answer to that one and I wouldn’t have voiced it if I could. I have my office in Beverly Hills. I ate in respectful silence while Johnny told Gnup his plans for the day.

  Mr. Quirk came in as they were getting ready to go. He looked from Gnup to me and then at Johnny. “Isn’t Mr. Callahan going with you?”

  Gnup said, “Lieutenant Remington thought it would be better if we took over during the day, sir.”

  Quirk looked at me, waiting for a comment.

  I said, “They’ve got the men and the experience, sir.”

  “All right.” Quirk looked at Gnup and said quietly, “His safety will be your responsibility, then.”

  Gnup colored slightly and nodded.

  I asked, “Shall I stay here, or does this end my participation?”

  Gnup said, “We won’t be home again until dinnertime. If Mr. Quirk wants you to sleep here, he’ll let you know.”

  Quirk said flatly, “I’ll want him here when John comes home.”

  Johnny smiled. “That should be around six o’clock. I’ll see you then, Brock.”

  They left, and Quirk looked at me. “Did you talk to John about — about the perils of his trade?”