A Man's Game

by Newton Thornburg

  Yeah, he knew the victim. No, not as a prostitute, just as a friend. Yeah, that was right, just a friend he drove around with. He would take her this place or that and just wait in the car for her while she went inside to visit friends.

  Harrelson was grinning. “And last night did you take her around to visit friends?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And when was the last time you saw her?”

  “I don’t know. Twelve or one, something like that.”

  “Where?”

  “On Rainier. An apartment a few blocks north of here. She went up to see some guy—Arnold Dunlap, or something like that. And I guess she came out early. I mean after being there only a couple minutes. And I guess we fought about that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I got tired of waiting.”

  “But you said she came out early.”

  Dice shrugged, his eyes still half-closed. “I don’t know—I guess I was a little hammered. I was drinkin Scotch.”

  “Did you hit her?”

  “Naa. We just talked, you know? I mean, I talked and she yelled. Then I split. I drove off and left her there.”

  Dice quite naturally did not want to admit to being a pimp, even though it would have helped him in this instance, since he could have been more explicit about what they had fought over—most likely money, whether or not she had held out on him. But Harrelson made do with what he had. He wrote down the name and address of the girl’s last john, said that’s where he was going next, then turned to Lee and Lucca.

  “Okay, he’s yours. What d’ya want to know?”

  Dice didn’t look up at either of them.

  “You know a small-time dealer named Jimbo Slade?” Lee asked. “A white guy with a ponytail. Wears just vests—likes to show off his pecs.”

  Dice shrugged. “Maybe I seen him around. I ain’t sure.”

  “You didn’t see him last night?”

  Dice shook his head.

  “Was he one of May Tan’s ‘friends’?”

  “Beats me.”

  “You know, if you did see him last night,” Lee said, “it might help get you off the hook.”

  At that, Lucca exploded. “You can’t tell him that, for Christ sake! You’re inviting him to perjure himself.”

  Harrelson clucked his tongue. “Heaven forfend,” he said.

  But Dice was interested. “What hook?” he wanted to know.

  Waving his arms, Lucca moved between him and Lee. “That’s enough. We’re finished.” He looked at his partner as if she had just thrown up on him. “And your case is finished, Detective. You’ve got four separate crimes here, and all the tugging and twisting, and now the coaching of a possible suspect—it ends right here. Your Jimbo Slade is no longer a suspect of any kind, at least not in the Metro Squad. Is that clear?”

  Lee felt like a little girl again, one who had just been slapped in public. For one searing moment she thought of bringing her booted foot right up into Lucca’s groin. Her face burned. She looked at Harrelson, who was smiling, shaking his head in comic reproval.

  “You’ve done it now, Lee,” he said. “You have offended the Bill of Rights, the ACLU, and His Holiness, your partner, all in one fell swoop.”

  Lucca was as calm as Dice. “Again, Harrelson—fuck you.”

  Finally Lee found her voice. “Well, we’ll see what case is closed and what case isn’t.”

  Lucca concurred. “Bet on it.”

  Harrelson called one of the uniformed officers over to the booth and told him to take Dice downtown and hold him for questioning.

  “I’ll be in later to take his statement,” he said.

  Dice got up and went along with the uniformed officers. He was still cool and unruffled, his drowsy eyes proclaiming that whatever The Man threw at him, he could take it.

  Lee envied him that.

  Nine

  The next five days were almost peaceful. There was no sign of Slade. He didn’t make any appearances at the department store, he didn’t park outside the house at night, he didn’t even burglarize the place. As a result, Baird began to feel pretty good about things. He couldn’t help wondering if his campaign of “getting in Slade’s face” was beginning to pay off.

  On Monday evening, just two days after his late-night bar crawl with old Jimbo, Baird offered to take Ellen and Kathy out to dinner and a movie, but Ellen declined without bothering to give a reason. When Kathy kept after her, urging her to reconsider, Ellen remained adamant. She suggested that the two of them, father and daughter, go on alone. But Baird didn’t care to step into that trap, giving his wife one more reason to feel left out and embittered. Even that failed to improve her mood, however, so for the rest of the week Baird was not inclined to hurry home in the evenings, often not dropping off his orders at the warehouse until eight or nine o’clock. Each evening he spent an hour or so at Leo’s, shooting the breeze and pricing his orders and even chancing a steak sandwich on two occasions.

  The peaceful days came to an end on Friday. By noon of that day, Kathy was feeling ill enough to leave work, her menstrual period having begun that morning. She tried to phone Baird in his car, then Ellen at the university library, but was unable to reach either of them and instead took a taxi home. And she evidently found it a frightening experience, being alone in the middle of the day in the large old house, where Slade so recently had roamed at will. Upstairs, she undressed and locked herself in the bathroom to take a long, hot shower before getting into bed.

  It was while she was showering that Baird came home himself, stopping off to pick up a catalog for one of his customers. As soon as he came through the front door, he heard the shower running upstairs. Thinking it was Ellen who had come home early, he called to her and started up the stairs. At that same moment, the shower was turned off. Then there was an interval of a few seconds before the screaming began, Kathy having heard something while she was showering, and now someone on the stairs. It was a gulping scream, staccato and shrill, full of terror. Baird ran up the last few stairs and pounded on the door.

  “Kathy!” he cried. “Kathy, it’s me!”

  But she went right on screaming, as if once she had begun to let it all out, there was no stopping it. Desperate finally, Baird took a step backwards and kicked the door, breaking the lock. And the moment she saw him, she seemed to implode, sinking down onto the bathroom rug as if her body were a burst balloon. She was naked still, wet, and beginning now to sob. Baird put her terry robe around her and picked her up and carried her into her room. Holding her on his lap, he sat down on the bed, hugging and kissing her, trying to console her.

  “It’s just me, baby,” he kept saying. “You’re all right. You’re safe. It’s only me.”

  Minutes passed before she could stop sobbing long enough to speak.

  “I thought it was him, Daddy!”

  “I know, baby. I know.”

  In time, he got a towel out of the bathroom and dried her hair. He left the room again while she got into her pajamas. Then he came back, tucked her into bed, and sat with her while she explained about feeling sick at work and trying to phone him and finally taking a taxi home. He stroked her head and told her to sleep or at least to rest. But almost an hour passed before she let go of his hand and closed her eyes.

  That evening Baird told Kathy and her mother that he still had customers to call on and that he would probably be late coming home. Then he drove to West Seattle, stopping on the way to pick up a burger, fries, and a cup of coffee. He expected to have to wait past midnight for Slade to show, if indeed the creep showed at all. But when Baird got there, pulling into the gravel parking lot of the rundown, one-time motel, he saw the old Impala in front of number twelve. Getting out of the car, he stepped up onto the low porch and knocked. Inside, a radio or record-player was blaring the music of a heavy-metal band. When the door finally opened, Slade stood there red-eyed and sleepy-faced, wearing only a pair of old jeans, zebra-striped with holes, the kind the hip pe
ople had worn a few years earlier.

  “Jesus Christ, if it ain’t my old pal Jacko,” he said. “What can I do for ya, man?”

  Baird smiled thinly. “You could invite me in.”

  “Well, hell yes—goes without sayin.”

  Inside, Baird felt almost physically assaulted by the rock music. Closing the door, Slade padded over to the radio, a boom box, and turned it down.

  “Iron Maiden,” he said. “They’re my boys.”

  The one-time motel room was still only that, a box about a dozen feet square, with a pulled-out daybed, a table, a few chairs, and a connecting bathroom as well as a small refrigerator and a two-burner stove. There were holes in the rug and the place reeked of marijuana smoke. The dingy walls were covered with taped-up pictures of Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds, along with a number of black-and-white pages from hardcore rags—pictures of men and women performing sex acts in various groupings.

  Flopping back on the daybed, Slade gestured for Baird to take one of the chairs. “Take a load off,” he advised.

  Baird sat down.

  “You want a beer? Or a little weed? You want some weed, Jacko?”

  “No, thanks. I’m okay.”

  “So…?” Slade threw out his hands. “So what d’ya want?”

  Baird squirmed. “Well, you remember what we talked about last weekend? That guy you know. The one who—for a consideration—might, you know…”

  “Let you watch?”

  Baird sighed. “Well, yeah. I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “No shit.”

  “But what I said still goes—I wouldn’t want anyone hurt because of me. I mean, because I paid.”

  Slade was sneering by now. “Of course not.”

  “And only if it was gonna happen anyway. I mean, I wouldn’t want this guy to do the thing on my account. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for it, you know?”

  “Sure. You want your fun, but you don’t want to get your fuckin hands dirty.”

  “Something like that.”

  Yawning, Slade stood up and got a beer out of the refrigerator. He popped the can and slurped the foam off the top, then straddled the other kitchen chair. “So all that talk last Saturday,” he said, “that wasn’t all bullshit, huh? You really are a—”

  “A sicko?” Baird cut in.

  Jimbo was grinning. “Hey, I was just feelin ya out, that’s all. Shit, every fucker likes to watch. Just like they like to do it too—if they can, that is. It’s no big deal. I don’t dis you for it, like the brothers say. Shit, I don’t mind watchin myself now and then.” He paused for a few moments, his pale eyes narrowing. “Fact is, I used to watch my old lady—my mother—all the time, with Uncle This and Uncle That. What a pig she was.”

  Baird was feeling so tense he wouldn’t have been surprised if he pulled a muscle, just sitting there. And he was sure it showed, this tension. It didn’t worry him, however. He figured he would seem more natural that way, more believable to Slade.

  “This guy,” he said. “You know if he’s made any plans?”

  “You mean, has he got some cunt already picked out?”

  Baird nodded.

  Slade grinned. “Normally, no way. I mean, guys don’t advertise it when they’re gonna commit a felony, right? But in this case, I happened to be with the cat just last night. And you know where? At the Oolala, same as us. And guess what? Guess who really turns him on—just like me and you and every other fucker with a cock.”

  “Satin,” Baird said.

  “You got it. But listen—don’t get the wrong idea. This guy ain’t some nut-case rapist. He dates women, he sleeps with ’em—hell, he even lived with one for a while. It’s just he’s got a real hard-on against ones like Satin—females who think no guy’s good enough for ’em, not unless he’s got a couple million in the bank. Anyway, this friend of mine, he kinda likes to teach ’em a lesson, you know? Teach ’em who’s boss.”

  Baird was wishing he had accepted Slade’s offer of a beer. His throat was parched and he was beginning to get a headache.

  “And he actually said it?” he asked. “I mean, that he’s gonna do it? And soon?”

  Slade took a long pull on the can and belched. He shook his head. “Now come on, Jacko, let’s not get ahead of ourself here. We don’t know this guy would even consider lettin you in on the deal. I mean, you ain’t exactly his type of cat, right? Mister Clean and all that. All I’m sayin is, I’ll take your money, I’ll go to him, I’ll propose the deal, and we’ll see what happens.”

  “The money,” Baird said. “How much you think he’d want?”

  Slade shrugged. “Who knows? For starters, let’s say a hunnerd up front, just to see if he’s interested. Then bring three or four more Monday night, in case he says okay.”

  “Monday?”

  “Yeah. He said that was gonna be the night.” Slade gave a laugh of sorts. “He said he was gonna do her right there on the stage, but he was only jokin.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “But he’ll be there. That’s what he said anyway.”

  “How do I know he won’t just take my money and walk?”

  “You don’t, Jacko. In this kind of deal, you take your chances. There ain’t no guarantees.”

  “I guess that figures.” Baird reached for his wallet, got out two fifties and gave them to Slade, who stuffed them into his pants pocket as if they were Kleenex.

  “Remember,” Baird said. “I really don’t want this to happen. I don’t want Satin hurt. I’ll probably try to talk the guy out of it.”

  “Sure you will.”

  “No, I mean it. I don’t want to be the cause of anyone getting hurt.”

  “Then what the fuck you doin here?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of mixed up.”

  Slade sneered. “Yeah? Well, I ain’t. I know what you want, Jacko, even if you don’t. And remember this—you know about somethin ahead of time, you can’t go waltzin to the police later. Cuz you’re an accessory, you understand that? And if you’re there, at the scene, you’re just as guilty as the main man. You talk and you could wind up in the slam same as him. You got that?”

  Baird nodded. “Don’t worry. I’d never go to the police. Not if I was involved.”

  Getting up, Slade drained his can of beer, crumpled it, and tossed it into a waste can. He yawned again and ran his fingers over his washboard stomach, not scratching it so much as fondling it.

  “I hope not, Jacko,” he said. “Cuz that would be stupid, you know? Real stupid.”

  Baird got up now too. “I realize that. Don’t worry about it.”

  Slade laughed again. “Hey, man,” he said, “I don’t worry about nothin.”

  Slade turned off the lights in the room and went to the window to watch Baird drive off. Grinning, he reflected that he even hated the man’s fucking car, a four-door Buick Le Sabre, a family man’s car, a square’s car. Slade could imagine old Jacko making regular payments on the goddamn thing, sending them off month after month like all the other nine-to-five jerks in the world. It irritated him that Baird probably pitied him his shitty wheels and crummy little room, never dreaming that he already had enough money—cash money—to buy a like-new Corvette and rent a decent apartment somewhere, maybe even with a view. But he was still on parole, and he didn’t want his nosy goddamn case officer thinking he was eating higher on the hog than a dishwasher was supposed to. Also, the brothers got a good laugh out of his car, and he figured that as long as they were laughing at him, they wouldn’t be shooting at him. He felt safer that way.

  All this, though, barely registered in his mind, was at most a whispered aside compared to the rebel yell of hatred and resentment he felt, watching Baird drive away. He wanted to whirl and plunge his fist into the wall as hard as he could. But that would have been stupid, he knew. Even though the wall was plasterboard and he probably could have punched right through it, he also could have wound up hurting his hand in the process, in which case, the pol
ice—Jeffers and Lucca—would have tried to make something of it, evidence that he had beaten the jogger, or now, the gook hooker.

  That was a good part of his beef against Baird. He blamed him for what had happened to the girl. If it hadn’t been for him, Slade wouldn’t have been that drunk or angry, and wouldn’t have lost it the way he did, going off like a goddamn rocket when the cunt refused to get in the car with him. Even now he kept seeing her as she bent down and looked in at him, her sexy mouth curling slightly downward as she shook her head in rejection, as if he were not Jimbo Slade but someone altogether different, some fat, ugly, old pervert.

  “No tank you,” she had said, her almond eyes still full of tears from her fight with the dude.

  Immediately he had slammed the gear into park and slid across the seat, scrambling out the passenger door after her, scaring her so badly she tripped and fell on the sidewalk. He hit her just once at that point, to keep her from screaming. Then he dragged her back to the car and threw her in. Driving on, he was surprised to see the chicken joint again, just a few blocks from where he’d picked up the girl. Turning at the next corner, he’d pulled into the alley behind the restaurant and parked there, probably because there were no houses around, just a few commercial buildings and vacant lots.

  Still drunk, he’d had a hard time getting in her, and he guessed he made her pay for that too, more than he should have, as it turned out. But he figured it really wasn’t his fault. It was Baird who had made him that angry, playing his goddamn games all night long, treating him as if he were some kind of retardo, too blind and stupid to know when he was being conned. Slade was positive that things wouldn’t have gone that bad for the girl if only Baird hadn’t been so arrogant, if only the bastard had come right out with it and admitted that what he really cared about wasn’t voyeurism but the same old thing as before: keeping Jimbo Slade away from his precious fucking daughter.

  Slade still couldn’t figure out what the man was planning, though. The likeliest scenario, he imagined, was that the bastard would actually go along with him and watch him do some girl, like Satin, and then plant something at the scene: say, a bottle with Slade’s fingerprints on it, something like that. Then he’d make an anonymous phone call to the police, and Jeffers and Lucca would come calling.