In school, she had been an average student with average grades. Nothing special. Then Grace Johnson, her physical education teacher, put a tennis racquet in her hand, and she had gone from average to exceptional. Her family hadn’t supported her new and rather expensive hobby, but Mrs. Johnson had recognized her potential and devoted untold time, money, and energy to getting her tennis lessons and driving her back and forth to various tournaments.
Helen won her first state title when she was fifteen, defeating a string of competitors who had been playing the game much longer than she had. By the time she was eighteen, seeing her face splashed on the sports pages of local and state newspapers became a common occurrence. Then Swifty had come along, talking fast and promising her everything under the sun. Six years later, her cannery row days were behind her, everything Swifty had promised her had come true, and the riches he had always said would be hers were almost within reach. All she needed to do was sign her name on the dotted line.
She freed herself from a tangle of shapely limbs and champagne-stained sheets, threw on a robe, and padded barefoot to the door.
She let Swifty in before he could start that infernal pounding again. “What gives? It’s too early for even the roosters to be up, let alone humans.”
“Haven’t you heard? New York is the city that never sleeps.”
Swifty was impeccably turned out as usual in a snap-brimmed fedora and a tailored suit. His shoes were polished to such a high sheen they shined even brighter than the sun rising in the early morning sky. Not for the first time, Helen wondered if he gave her all the under-the-table expenses the US Lawn Tennis Association sent her way or if he pocketed a sizable portion of them for himself. No matter. In a few months, she wouldn’t have to worry if he took a slice here or there because she would have the whole pie.
“I had a breakfast meeting with a racquet manufacturer who heard you’re planning to turn pro next year. They want to sign you to a deal before one of their competitors beats them to it. It’s a good deal, but we can do better. I think you should hold out until something better comes along.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Helen hated the thought of leaving money on the table. Especially money that could disappear before she had the chance to claim it.
“Trust me. It will. You’re the second-ranked female player in the world and the top American. Promoters are clamoring to sign you.”
Helen rummaged through the discarded bottles of champagne until she found one that had more than a few drops left inside. “It feels good to be wanted,” she said, pouring herself a glass.
“I’m sure it does, but I didn’t come here to talk business.” Swifty snatched the champagne glass from her hand and downed the contents in one shot. “There’s a fed downstairs waiting to see you.”
“What kind of fed?”
“The kind that asks a lot of questions but doesn’t give any answers. Which means you need to make yourself presentable and I need to show your friend the door.”
“Which one?”
Swifty took a second look at the bed and let loose with an appreciative whistle that cut through Helen’s head like a buzz saw. “Jesus, kid. You saw more action in one night than I’ve seen in a lifetime.”
“They say it’s better to be lucky than good. Fortunately, I’m both.”
Swifty rolled his eyes. “And so humble about it, too.” He gathered the clothes littering the floor and tossed them on the bed. “Wake up, girls. The party’s over.”
The women Helen had met at the Cotton Club the night before—a high society type and one of the dancers from the revue—grumbled in protest.
“Chop, chop,” Swifty said. “I don’t have all day.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled two sawbucks off a fat roll of bills. Hush money to insure Helen’s nighttime activities didn’t land her in the early editions of the next day’s papers.
Helen wanted to have fun and enjoy the perks that came along with stardom, but she knew she had to be careful. Because of her working-class background and her brash, take-no-prisoners personality, some members of the press had it in for her. The same reporters who kept their pencils tucked behind their ears when they witnessed male athletes being unfaithful to their wives and girlfriends wouldn’t hesitate to take pen in hand if they ever got the goods on her. For them, sports was an all-boys’ club and she had dared to crash the party.
She had been dubbed “Hell on Wheels” because her temper sometimes got in the way of her talent. Despite her reputation as a hothead, though, she had won the Australian Championships three years running, and she had ascended to number two in the world rankings, right behind the unbeatable—and the unflappable—Meike von Bismarck.
Unlike Helen, Meike stayed cool when she played, earning her legions of fans around the world. Both in the press box and in the stands. Helen would miss going head to head with her, but she wouldn’t miss always coming out on the losing end.
Meike’s winning streak stretched back over two years. Helen had always thought she would be the one to break the streak, but the only thing she seemed destined to break was her own heart. No matter how hard—or how many times—she tried to pick up the pieces.
Swifty ogled Helen’s guests as he watched them dress. Helen tried to remember their names. The high society type was Persephone and the dancer was Peaches. Or was it the other way around?
“With the amount of ice around the blonde’s neck,” Swifty said, “she should be paying me instead of the other way around.”
Persephone—Helen was almost positive the moniker belonged to her—smoothed her beaded dress over her narrow hips and plucked the twenty from Swifty’s outstretched fingers. “Cab fare,” she said with the same haughty air that had drawn Helen’s attention to her in the first place.
After she stashed the money in her clutch bag, Persephone stood and waited for her cheek to be kissed. Helen dutifully obliged. Persephone reminded her of someone. Someone her head had told her to forget. Too bad her heart had never gotten the message.
“Do call on me the next time you’re in town.” Persephone’s voice dripped with manner and decorum, two things Helen had taken great pleasure in making her forget the night before. “Only next time, lose the unfortunate fellow in last year’s suit.”
Helen smiled at Swifty’s obvious displeasure over Persephone’s comment. He prided himself on always having the latest and greatest of everything so she knew how much Persephone’s wisecrack stuck in his craw. “You can count on it.”
“What about me?” Peaches asked in a sultry purr.
Helen took the second twenty from Swifty and slipped it between the lovely brown breasts she had spent several hours admiring initially from afar and, finally, up close. Then she took Peaches’s hands in hers and pressed them to her lips.
“I’ll be sitting in the front row for your next show. If you aren’t careful, you’ll high kick me right out of my chair.”
“No chance of that.” Peaches playfully batted Helen’s nose with the tip of an ostrich feather fan. “My mama always warned me to watch out for sweet talking men, but she never told me women had silver tongues, too.”
“Tell your mama my tongue’s pure eighteen carat gold, baby.”
Peaches let loose with a girlish giggle Helen hoped wouldn’t harden into something more jaded in the years to come. Chorus girls had short shelf lives at the Cotton Club. They were put out to pasture after they turned twenty-one. Peaches had just turned twenty-one for the third time. She couldn’t go on lying about her age forever. She could probably find work as a hostess or a cigarette girl, but Helen suspected she wouldn’t be truly happy unless she was up on stage flashing those gorgeous gams. The memory of having those legs wrapped around her made Helen want to spend a few more hours in bed. Then Swifty cleared his throat to remind her she had business to attend to.
She had almost forgotten about the mysterious visitor waiting to see her. She wondered if their meeting would result in only a minor inconvenience or
a serious roadblock. But first things first. She couldn’t begin the day until she put an end to last night. And what a wondrous night it had been. One that had almost made her forget about the past. Almost.
Peaches’s long, athletic dancer’s legs nearly came up to Helen’s neck. Helen stood on tiptoe to give Peaches a kiss on the cheek. “I look forward to your next performance.”
“Not as much as I’m looking forward to the one you’re about to give downstairs,” Swifty said under his breath.
Helen gave him the stink eye as she walked Peaches to the door. If he kept flapping his lips like that, the twenty could turn into a down payment instead of a payoff. “Why does a fed want to see me?” she asked once she and Swifty were alone.
“I don’t know. You tell me. You didn’t sleep with someone you shouldn’t, did you? On second thought, don’t tell me. The less I know, the better. I don’t want to wind up in the slammer because I had the inside dope that you showed the wrong dame a good time.”
“If that was the case, her husband would be coming to see me instead of the feds, and I doubt he’d take the time to set up a meeting first.”
She took a shower while Swifty looked through her things to find something suitable for her to wear. Most of her clothes were designed to be worn on the tennis court or out on the town. She didn’t own anything sedate enough for a powwow with a government official.
As she dried off, she wracked her brain to try to come up with a reason why Uncle Sam had sent someone to meet with her, but she couldn’t think of anything. Yes, she had accepted appearance fees and inflated her expenses, but she couldn’t think of a single “amateur” who didn’t. When she turned pro in a few months, she could be open about the money she earned for her skills. She wished she could be just as open about everything else. If she tried, though, the flood of sponsors who were courting her now would dry up like the Midwest during the Dust Bowl. She hadn’t fought to survive the Great Depression just to fall short now that the good times were finally back.
When she came out of the bathroom, she noticed Swifty had selected an outfit that made a nun’s habit look wanton. She picked up the white hat and matching kid gloves she hadn’t worn since last year’s trip to London for the Wightman Cup, the annual competition between teams of British and American female amateur tennis players. The US had won six years in a row, and she’d had a hand in four of those victories.
She liked winning tournaments, but she loved being part of a team even more. Winning was so much sweeter when she was competing for her country instead of herself. The biggest regret she had about turning pro was not being able to play in next June’s inaugural Confederation Cup, a weeklong contest that would pit teams from eight countries against each other on the slow red clay of Roland Garros, the annual site of the French Championships. The most important team competition in men’s amateur tennis was the Davis Cup. Next year, women’s amateur tennis would finally get its equivalent. And she was going to miss it. But, depending on how her upcoming meeting went, deciding between professional and amateur tennis might soon become the least of her concerns.
“Should I be nervous?” she asked as she began to dress.
Swifty shrugged and turned his back to give her some privacy. “Like I said, you tell me. I would go with you, but he gave me the impression he wanted to meet with you alone. After I make the introductions, I’m sure I’ll be eighty-sixed.”
As usual, Swifty wasn’t too far off the mark. After the hotel’s elevator operator let them off on the first floor, Helen took Swifty’s arm as they walked across the lobby.
“There he is.”
Swifty whispered the words out of the corner of his mouth, but he needn’t have said anything. With his carefully parted hair, square suit, and run-down shoes, the fed stuck out from the well-heeled New York crowd like a sore thumb.
“Miss Wheeler, I am Agent Paul Lanier.” He flashed his badge so quickly Helen wasn’t able to tell what agency he was supposed to be representing. “The hotel manager has graciously permitted us to use his office so we can talk in private. If you will follow me, please.”
Helen tightened her grip on Swifty’s arm. “I would feel more comfortable if my associate, Mr. Anderson, were allowed to accompany me.”
Lanier arched an eyebrow at her request but didn’t offer to fulfill it. When he adjusted the coat draped over his arm, Helen noticed the briefcase he was carrying. She didn’t know what was inside, but she doubted the case was filled with endorsement contracts requiring her signature.
Swifty freed his arm and gave Helen’s hand a reassuring pat. “I’ll be in the bar if you need me, kid.”
“Whatever you plan on ordering, make mine a double.”
In the manager’s office, Lanier sat behind the desk as if the room and everything in it belonged to him. Helen flinched involuntarily when he opened the locks on the briefcase with a snap.
“Relax, Miss Wheeler. I’m not here to harm you,” he said with a smile that was probably supposed to convince her to trust him but accomplished exactly the opposite. “In fact, I came here today to ask for your help.”
Now she was even more confused. “Unless you need tennis lessons, I can’t think of any way I could possibly be of help to you.”
Lanier reached inside the briefcase and pulled out a thick manila folder. He began to look through the folder, but kept it angled away from her so she couldn’t glimpse the documents inside.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation performed a background check on you last year when you agreed to put on a series of exhibition matches at US military bases at home and abroad at the First Lady’s request.”
Helen remembered the tour fondly. She hadn’t earned a dime—the expenses she had incurred crisscrossing the United States and Europe for three months at Eleanor Roosevelt’s request had outweighed the paltry stipend she had received—but the appreciative looks on the soldiers’ faces had been payment enough. Even though the matches were meaningless and the only thing at stake was each player’s competitive pride, the audience had cheered like they were watching Helen and her opponents compete in the final of a Grand Slam event.
“The questions you were asked were routine,” Lanier continued, “but your responses were far from it.”
Helen couldn’t recall saying anything out of the ordinary during the extensive question-and-answer session, but something in her file had apparently captured the feds’ attention. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be sitting here having to explain herself to one of them.
“It says here you have a photographic memory,” Lanier said. “Is that true?”
“Yes. Even if I read pages and pages of information, I can memorize them word for word in a few minutes’ time.”
The skill could have come in handy when she was in school, but most of the time she couldn’t have been bothered to read the assigned material at all, let alone memorize it.
“Your ability—and your notoriety—could be very useful to us. No one would ever suspect you of being a spy.”
Helen’s heart lurched. She felt like she was acting out a scene from a dime novel. Only the plot Lanier was laying out was even more ludicrous than the one found between the pages of any book she had ever read.
“You want me to be a spy? Do I look like Mata Hari to you?”
Lanier didn’t answer her question. Instead, he asked one of his own. “It’s safe to assume you’re familiar with Meike von Bismarck, yes?”
Helen couldn’t understand the change in subject. Why was a federal agent asking her about Meike?
“I should be familiar with her,” she said warily. “She’s the main reason I’ve never been ranked number one in the world, and she beat me in the finals of Wimbledon and the US Championships this year.”
Lanier shuffled the papers in his hand, drawing Helen’s attention to them once more. “You used to have a relationship.”
The word “relationship” took her by surprise. She was so mesmerized by the game of Three-card monte Lanier wa
s playing with the documents in the folder she nearly responded to his statement honestly instead of tactfully.
“We used to be doubles partners, if that’s what you mean.”
She didn’t know what truth he was trying to uncover. Was he going after Meike or was he going after her? Her carefully worded response might not have been the answer he was looking for, but it was the only one she was prepared to give.
“The two of you made a formidable team. Why did you end your partnership?”
He made it sound like she and Meike had been married and their union had ended in the stigma called divorce. To be honest, that’s what it had felt like when Meike had sat her down and told her they needed to go their separate ways. On and off the court. Fooling around with Peaches and Persephone and the dozens of women preceding them had helped to fill Meike’s absence from her bed, but Lanier’s questions reminded her how much she missed waking up to see Meike’s familiar face across the pillow instead of the string of women she was able to forget almost as quickly as she was able to get them undressed.
“She said she wanted to devote herself to her singles game.”
Even though the explanation had seemed logical, Helen had never been able to completely accept it. She had always known being the best was important to Meike, but she had never expected her to allow remaining number one to take precedence over everything—and everyone—else in her life. Until Meike cast her aside.
Lanier continued to flip through the documents in the folder, piquing Helen’s curiosity even more. Was he ever going to let her see what he was looking at or would he continue to keep her in the dark?
“Based on her results, I’d say she made the right decision. She plays the occasional doubles tournament with Liesel Becker, so she hasn’t given up the discipline entirely. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say she gave up on you.”
“I appreciate the history lesson, Mr. Lanier, but I’m getting tired of being given the runaround. Are you a tennis fan, sir, or simply a fan of Meike von Bismarck’s?”
Break Point Page 2
