King Tide

by A. J. Stewart

  “Who’s that for?” I asked.

  “Miss Pastinak,” he said, placing the glass on a tray.

  I turned to see Carly Pastinak finishing off the remains of Neville’s previous effort .

  “I’ll take it over,” I said.

  Neville cocked an eyebrow at me. “As you wish, sir.”

  I stood and reached for the tray.

  Neville said, “Sir? Be careful.”

  He gave me a look that suggested he wasn’t talking about spilling the drink, and then he picked up another glass and began polishing it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I delivered the drink with considerably less pomp than Neville would have, but it got there fully accounted for so I called it a job well done. Carly Pastinak watched me place it on the table and then gave me a thanks but not a smile. I lingered. I do that. Eventually she looked up at me and I asked if I could take the seat beside her since she was sitting alone. She shrugged.

  “Whatever you like,” she said.

  Not a ringing endorsement but I took the seat and slipped the tray onto the table.

  Carly Pastinak was an attractive woman. She was blond and thin and had Scandinavian bones. Her eyes were the color of the Mediterranean just off Monaco. Not that I had ever been to Monaco, but I had watched the Grand Prix, and it was one hell of a color. She looked like she might have been a cheerleader in college, but she had lost some of that athleticism. We all do. Some of us put weight on, some of us lose a little. Carly had lost a little. Her skin was a touch tight across her cheeks, like the cocktail in front of her was a regular form of meal replacement.

  “Miami Jones,” I said. I didn’t offer my hand. I wasn’t concerned that I’d lose it, but it felt a bridge too far. Attractive women like Carly have a way about them. They are like Star Trek vessels, zipping about the galaxy with their shields on full power. They assume every conversation is an angle, every approach will result in them being hit on. Dr. Hook had sung about how hard it was to be in love with a beautiful woman. Actually being the beautiful woman was no picnic, either.

  “Carly Pastinak,” she said. She didn’t reach for the cocktail. She rolled her shoulders like she was stiff in the neck. I got the sense that she was afraid of some implied contract—since I had delivered the drink, her drinking it meant she owed me something. It was way too complicated a line of thought for me. I couldn’t live like that.

  “Mr. Neville says he hopes you enjoy the drink,” I said, trying to dismiss the idea from her head. She nodded and her hair fell across her face. She still didn’t touch the drink. Maybe I was reading too much into it. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  “So what brings you here?” I asked.

  “Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

  “I’ve never been stuck in a hurricane having to make chitchat before. Not my strong point.”

  “Clearly.” She relaxed her face and there was almost the beginning of a smile there.

  It was true. Small talk wasn’t my strong suit. I was more comfortable with complete silence than most people. So I decided to play my strength and keep quiet. Most people hate silence. They feel the need to fill the void with banality. Or use an escape, which is what Carly did. She pulled out her cell phone. Frowned at it. Tapped at it a few times and then frowned again.

  “No reception.” She looked at me. “You have any cell phone reception?”

  I didn’t bother to check. “No,” I said.

  She gave up on the escape and silence and the implied contract and picked up the drink.

  “So what is it you do, Mr. Jones, was it?”

  “Miami,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yep.”

  She put her drink down. “How exactly does a person get into that line of work? Did you go to college for that?”

  “I went to college to play baseball. The PI thing happened later. What about you?”

  “No, I’m not a private investigator.”

  “So what are you?”

  “I’m a sports management consultant.”

  “An agent. That’s what they were called when I played.”

  “We don’t really use that term anymore. Where did you play?”

  “Wherever the organization sent me.”

  She looked me up and down. It wasn’t furtive and it wasn’t seductive. It was more like a farmer checking over a prize hog. Being an athlete, even a former athlete, presented a different side to folks like Carly Pastinak. I had known a few agents in my time. To them, non-athletes were just people they had to walk around at the mall.

  “And now you’re a PI.”

  “That’s right. And you’re a sports management consultant. With who?”

  “GSM. Global Sports Management.”

  “I know GSM. They’re the big time. ”

  “We are.”

  “Don’t they run the Case Tennis Academy now?”

  She stopped for a moment, just a second, as if she were reconsidering me.

  “We do. It’s now GSM Academy. We added baseball and softball. Football, too.”

  “And you manage Anton?”

  This time she stopped properly. “You seem to know an awful lot.”

  “I usually know just enough to be dangerous.”

  “Is that so?” She picked up her drink and took another sip, and then she put it back down. The action seemed to be a consumption management tool.

  “How did you end up at GSM?”

  “Hard work.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I’m sure they like to get their pound of flesh.”

  “They like to win. I like to win.”

  “How did you land Anton?”

  Her eyes narrowed and then relaxed. “Are you playing me, Mr. Jones?”

  “Moi ?” I had no idea what she was talking about but I didn’t want her to know that.

  “I think you know more than you’re letting on.”

  “People make that mistake about me all the time, but generally I know very little.”

  “I’m sure it is a mistake.”

  I shrugged.

  “If you know the business so well, how do you think I landed Anton and GSM? ”

  I hadn’t thought she had landed Anton and GSM. I figured she got Anton because she worked for GSM. But it got me thinking. Which was the chicken and which was the egg?

  “You got the gig at GSM because you landed Anton as a client.”

  She nodded like I was right on the money.

  “So where were you before GSM? Before Anton?”

  “I joined a small firm out of college. Based in Orlando.”

  “And in order to land the job, you had to bring a client with you.”

  “Of course. That’s how you prove yourself.”

  “But a small firm, and you fresh out of college? Hard to get a name athlete.”

  “Very.”

  “So an up-and-coming athlete.”

  “Could be.”

  “But there are rules about that. NCAA doesn’t like agents, even when they call themselves sports management consultants. So you can’t sign a college athlete, or a high school athlete for that matter.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Unless they didn’t plan on going to college.”

  “No NCAA rules if someone goes professional.”

  “So someone who went pro right out of high school,” I said. “Happens in basketball, from time to time.”

  “It does. Some guys go to Europe instead of college.”

  I looked around the room as I thought about it. There weren’t any basketball players in the hotel. There was no link to basketball. There were professional athletes, but from only one sport.

  “Tennis,” I said.

  “You are good, Mr. Jones. ”

  And then I thought about the conversation I had seen in the lobby, and about what Shania had told me.

  “Sam Venturi,” I said.

  Carly smiled. It could melt butter. O
r steel.

  “How did you figure that?”

  “I heard he was the best of them, back then.”

  “He was. Wimbledon boy’s champion.”

  “But he was at Case Academy. Surely GSM had their eye on him.”

  “Of course.”

  “But they can’t sign any of their students because most of them want to play in college, and they become invalid if they have an agent.”

  “You know your NCAA rules.”

  I looked at Carly and this time she held my eye. She was a beautiful woman with one hell of a brain. A lot of men made the mistake of thinking those two things never came in the same package.

  I said, “Sam was planning to go to college. Then he won Wimbledon juniors, right? And someone put it in his head that he should just turn pro.”

  “Did they?”

  “You.”

  “You flatter me, Mr. Jones. But Sam made his own decisions. He saw the opportunity and he went for it.”

  “And you signed him up from under GSM when he did.”

  She smiled and went for her drink again.

  “So how did that lead to Anton?”

  “Anton doesn’t like the rules to apply to him. He wasn’t receptive to GSM’s offers to manage his career.”

  “I bet GSM didn’t agree. ”

  “They did not. Why would they? They put a lot of effort into those kids at the academy.”

  “And make a lot of money from tuition fees.”

  “They make money off the rich kids. The ones who really aren’t good enough to go pro but who might get into college on the back of a sport. Those parents pay full load to keep little Janey’s dreams alive. The Antons and the Sams are there on GSM’s dime.”

  “In the hope that they’ll sign up with GSM when they go pro and GSM will get twenty percent of everything for the rest of their lives.”

  “Quid pro quo.”

  “But Anton didn’t play.”

  She shook her head.

  “Let me guess. GSM offered you a deal. Rather than be angry that you stole Sam from them, they were impressed. So they offered you a slot in their roster, on one condition. You had to sign Anton for them.”

  “Were you as good a baseball player as you are a detective?”

  “I’m an investigator, and the climax to that story is yet to be written. So you got Anton on board. But what about Sam?”

  “Sam didn’t work out.”

  “You mean he didn’t mature?”

  “That’s a very good way of putting it.”

  “So what happened? You dropped him?”

  “GSM didn’t want him, they wanted Anton. So they got Anton. Sam stayed with my old company.”

  “For how long?”

  “Not long. It became obvious pretty quickly that he wasn’t going to cut it on tour, and they let their agreement lapse.”

  “And Sam gave up a shot at a college scholarship because he had gone pro. ”

  “Sam wasn’t really college material. He’s a tennis player, and now he’s a coach. He’ll be happier as a coach than he realizes.”

  She flexed her shoulders again. Perhaps discussing the shark-eat-shark world of sports management brought home the stress. Perhaps she wasn’t as comfortable in the company of clients as she made out. Perhaps it was an uncomfortable chair.

  “Do you come to all your clients’ bachelor parties?”

  “Not as a rule.”

  “So why here? Why now?”

  She smiled again. It was disarming. I think that was the point, because she said, “Do you know if there is a masseuse in the hotel?” She rolled her shoulders again and avoided my question.

  “Normally, I’m sure there is. But not in this storm.”

  “Shame.”

  “Tense?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “I get worked on every week. You want me to do your shoulders?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  I wasn’t sure why, but I was glad she said that.

  “Maybe you should take a hot tub.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. You know where it is?”

  I shook my head. “Deshawn knows. Shania’s friend.”

  “Mmm. Perhaps I’ll ask him. But first . . .”

  She picked up her drink. I thought she was going to offer me a wink but she didn’t.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Detective Ronzoni caught my eye and I took that as my cue to leave Carly to her cocktail. I ambled over to Ronzoni who still didn’t look himself without his suit. It occurred that we had swapped bodies, or at least looks. But my linen hand-me-down was probably worth a couple weeks’ salary and most definitely not wrinkle-free, and he looked more like a lost tourist than a South Florida beach bum. I met him near the bar, where Sam Venturi was nursing a white wine and chatting with Andrew Neville.

  “You got any cell coverage?” Ronzoni asked me.

  I pulled out my phone. “One bar. But my battery’s losing its will to live.”

  “I got nothing. Damn city and these cut-rate phones. It’s no way to run a police department.”

  You knew the state of the world was not good when the Palm Beach police were complaining about budgets.

  “You got someone you need to call?”

  “I just want to get a brief on the weather.”

  “You try the radio? ”

  He looked at me like it was a crazy idea. Or maybe that was just how he usually looked at me and I hadn’t noticed.

  “I’m thinking we should have these folks get some shut-eye. I’d rather them have an hour or two now than have to wake everyone if something goes wrong later.”

  “What’s to worry about? This place is built like the Titanic.” I gave Ronzoni a big grin, but he didn’t get the Titanic reference at all. It was like throwing fastballs at a little leaguer.

  “Still. Better to be prepared,” he said.

  Neville appeared on the other side of the bar and asked what we wanted and Ronzoni advised that everyone get some rest.

  “I could arrange for Chef Dean to prepare a late supper, for, say, 10 p.m.?”

  “Très European,” I said.

  Ronzoni liked the plan and asked for a bottle of water. I didn’t think anyone would sleep with the guttural hum of the hurricane whipping through the vents. Ronzoni made the rounds and Neville went out behind the bar to tell the chef. I took a pew next to Sam Venturi.

  The kid looked like he was ready to drink himself into oblivion but didn’t have the heart to do it. He was hunched over his wine like a guy in a country song hangs over a bourbon. He looked up and I gave him a nod.

  “I see I’m not the only one who repulses the ice queen.”

  “Ice queen?”

  “Carly.”

  I noticed that she was gone and her cocktail glass sat empty on the coffee table.

  “She’s no ice queen. She might feel the stress a little too much.”

  “That’s why she drinks.”

  “I told her to take a hot tub. Less hangovers. ”

  He nodded to himself and stared at his drink before he spoke.

  “Sorry about before.”

  “That’s okay, it only took one lunatic.”

  “Huh?”

  “To get the maid. Out of the water.”

  He frowned at me. “No, I mean about in the ballroom. Walking out.”

  “Oh, that. Think nothing of it.”

  He looked at me. “You have anything you want to say to me?”

  “You okay? You looked pretty shaken up after the whole nearly getting washed away in a flood thing.”

  “No, I mean about what you said about me playing on the tour.”

  “You want an apology for that?”

  “I think it’s warranted.”

  “Kid, let me give you a nickel’s worth of free advice. Grow a pair.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, I won’t. Normally I would, but I’m making an exception for you. ’Cause you are clearly in need
of an attitude adjustment.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You better believe it.”

  “You don’t know a damned thing about me.”

  “Let’s try this. You were great at sports as a kid. All sports. P.E. was probably your favorite class at elementary school. And tennis was all natural. And you were good, and you won a lot. And then you won Wimbledon juniors. And then something unexpected happened. You didn’t grow. You didn’t get taller, and you don’t really have the body type to get much stronger. And in the blink of an eye all these kids you beat became men and started beating you. And then you found out that no one really cares a jot about winning a junior tourney, even Wimbledon. So you crawl back to Tampa to coach. How about that?”

  He clenched his jaw. In another guy I might have readied myself for a sucker punch, but this kid didn’t have it in him. He’d been beat down some by life and was still enjoying wallowing in it. He was yet to realize that it wasn’t about him. Life wasn’t vindictive. Bad things happened to everyone. But if you hung on long enough, good things happened, too. I let him stew for a minute before I spoke again.

  “Don’t beat yourself up, kid. But if you live your life in the memories of what you did when you were a teenager, you’re gonna miss some pretty awesome stuff in the now.”

  “In the now? What are you, a Zen master?”

  A bit of spunk. I liked it.

  “Nah. I’m just a guy who was good at sports as a kid. Got a scholarship to college to play football and baseball, won a college world series, and went pro. And then I spent all but twenty-nine days of the next six years in the minor leagues learning that I was good, but there were plenty of guys who were better.”

  He stared hard at his drink. I had a mind to tell him that sauvignon blanc didn’t grab me as the beverage of choice for a bender, but that was going well off topic, even for me.

  “You did that?”

  “I did.”

  “Don’t you miss it?”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I know. And I wouldn’t have either. But I know better now. I have the most amazing woman in the world who keeps me around despite everything I do, and I have great friends and I get to wake up to Florida sunshine most days.”