High Lie

by A. J. Stewart

  She frowned, presenting no visible wrinkles, which I figured made frowning kind of pointless. “Death threats? I’ve heard no such thing. And I’m on the floor every night.”

  “You make it into the fronton?”

  She leaned back in her chair with her little coffee cup. “Ah, the jai alai.”

  “You don’t like jai alai?”

  “Honestly, its not my kind of game, no. But it is part of who we are, and I like the guys. They work hard. So you say someone is threatening them?”

  I nodded. “The pelotari have been drumming up some PR. Seems someone doesn’t like that.”

  “You have picked up the lingua franca quickly, haven’t you?” she said.

  “What makes you think I’m not a life long jai alai fan?”

  “If you were a fan, you would come to see the performances, and if you’d come to the performances, I’d remember you.”

  “You remember everyone who comes through your casino?”

  She shook her head slowly. “Only the ones worth remembering.” She sipped her coffee. “So tell me about these threats.”

  “Your security isn’t very good here, you know that?”

  “I know good help is hard to find, but why do you say that?”

  “You’ve got a very impressive looking fellow manning the elevators downstairs. But I told him I had an appointment with you, when I didn’t. And I called you Mr. Almondson, neither of which bothered him a bit.”

  Almondson leaned forward and made a note on a pad and spoke as she did. “Like I say, good help is hard to find.”

  “The pelotari received death threats, left in their lockers. What kind of security is that?”

  She leaned back in her chair and looked at me. I saw her eyes move, up and down, then side to side, like it was her turn to inspect me. “There’s no money in the fronton, so it doesn’t have the same security level,” she said. “Having said that, if someone is getting into the locker room, that’s unacceptable. I’ll see things are tightened up down there.”

  “That would be a start. But it doesn’t explain why the threats are coming at all.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Jones. Things are tense right now, with the Compact due for renegotiation. The Seminole would like to see the backs of us, as would any number of the other pari-mutuels. A lot of the racetracks are struggling. One less competitor would suit them nicely.”

  “But why threaten the pelotari?”

  Almondson looked away, giving the question some thought. She made thinking look good.

  “I guess,” she said, returning her eyes to me, “because they are an easy target. They are not covered by the same security or regulation as workers on the casino floor. Perhaps they are a way to hurt the casino without drawing so much attention.”

  “But to what end?” I said. “I mean, let’s say the threats succeed and jai alai gets shut down. I’ve been out there, Miss Almondson; it’s not exactly a full house. Would there really be any impact to the casino?”

  She smiled. “It’s Ms. Almondson.” I nodded in apology and she continued. “But you can call me Jenny. And the effect, Mr. Jones, would be catastrophic. No jai alai means no casino. We are a pari-mutuel. That means jai alai is our raison d’être. The gaming laws say we cannot have a casino without the fronton.”

  I nodded as I recalled Eric Edwards explaining that to me, but now I realized how inextricably linked the two parts were. We sat watching each other for a moment, a game that I knew I was going to lose, so I stood.

  “Thank you for your time, Jenny. I trust you’ll look into the security issues in the fronton.”

  “I shall attend to it this morning, Mr. Jones,” she said, standing and gliding around her desk.

  “Call me Miami,” I said.

  She nodded and the earring shone across her smooth neck. “That’s an interesting name, Miami. Were you born there?” she said, walking me to the door.

  “No, it was a college thing that just sort of stuck. How about you? You didn’t go to school here.”

  “No, Princeton.”

  “How many months have you been here?”

  “Six. Is it that obvious?”

  I smiled. “You don’t look Florida.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t meet your approval,” she said with a half grin.

  “I assure you, it wasn’t a criticism.”

  We walked out to the main lobby, and she hit the elevator button.

  “You like it here?” I said, making waiting-for-the-elevator small talk.

  “I like winter.”

  “Yeah, summers can be brutal. You should get out on the water. You’d love it.”

  The elevator dinged, and I stepped in.

  “Is that an invitation?” she said.

  “It would be, if I had a boat.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “No,” I said.

  She cocked an eyebrow as the door slid closed between us.

  “That’s a shame.”

  Chapter Ten

  I FOUND RON at the fronton, watching the pelotari warming up. Ron sat about halfway back, but there wasn’t a soul in front of him.

  “How goes it, Mr. Bennett?”

  He looked up at me and blinked hard, like he’d been a million miles away.

  “Discover anything?” I said.

  Ron shook his head as I sat down. “I have just walked through pretty much every area that took my fancy,” he said. “There might be some big boys out there for show on the casino floor, but there’s nobody gives a hoot outside that. I just waltzed into the locker room behind the jai alai here. A janitor even gave me a wink.”

  I shook my head, and we turned to look at the court. Julio was rotating his arm over, whipping the ball against the granite wall.

  “This used to be quite the place, you know,” said Ron.

  “You’ve been here before?”

  Ron let out a soft snort. “I used to come to the fronton all the time. I met my first wife here.”

  “You don’t say.”

  He nodded. “Back in the late seventies, boy this was the place to come. The one down in Miami was bigger; that was amazing. But even here in West Palm. People used to come from the island, slumming it in West Palm, just to be seen at the jai alai. Everyone who was anyone was here. President Ford was here once, famous sportsmen, celebrities.”

  He turned and pointed at the darkened box behind us. “See there? That was the skybox where the celebs sat, the ones that didn’t want to mingle with the common folk. But that was the thing about the jai alai. It didn’t matter whether you were famous or not, rich or poor. Everyone came, all together.”

  He smiled at the thought, and I saw the silver hair and sun-bleached face go back in time.

  “There was a restaurant up in the box, with a chef from some five-star place. Really good food. I met Janice here in the stands.” He looked at me. “She was so young and so full of life. The pace of the jai alai had nothing on her. Anyway, I proposed in that restaurant. Just a kid I was, asking the love of his life for her hand.”

  “And she said yes?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” He let out a laugh and slapped my shoulder. “There was a dress code, did you know? Everyone looked so smart. Jackets, ties, cocktails dresses, the whole nine yards. Everyone was so beautiful. The seats here were bleachers back then. They reached high up to the back, not floor level like they are now. Rows of hats all the way up and cigar smoke that clung to the ceiling like a fog. On a big night there could be ten thousand people in here. Now the fire department would never allow it.”

  He looked around the empty seating area. “Even if people still wanted to come.”

  “There’s something I don’t get,” I said. “So Julio there. Why does his playing jersey say twenty-five on the back but four on the front?”

  Ron nodded. “Twenty-five is his player number at the fronton. He’s always that number. But four is his position in the order of play. That can change every day.”


  I nodded, and we sat listening to the ball echo off the wall.

  “That sound, the pelota, brings back memories.”

  “The what?”

  “The pelota, the thing they’re throwing.”

  “I just thought that was a ball.”

  Ron shook his head. “No,” he said, looking around as if searching for something. “I wonder if they’re still here.”

  Ron stood and waved for me to follow. We edged along the row of seats, then out to an open area where some of the pelotari were stretching. I got a few smiles and nods, which I returned. We wandered around the back of the skybox to an open door. A set of tight stairs led up, and Ron just started up as if it were his house. They were steep, almost like a ladder. At the top, Ron stopped and knocked, then entered.

  We stepped into a room that must have doubled as a time machine. Two men sat in front of a swamp cooler, and an old television replayed a Roseanne episode that neither of the men looked at. Each man must have been sixty, but they were as different as people get. One man was thin and bore some Asian heritage, maybe Filipino. He had an ageless face, tanned hard, with a toothless smile. He was hand weaving the scoop-like baskets that the pelotari attached to their hands to fling the pelota at the wall. The other man, larger, with olive skin and a heavy brow, was Spanish at a guess. He appeared to be making the balls, or pelotas. The laugh track went off on the Roseanne episode and the men both laughed, apparently at the laugh track, not the gag.

  “This man is making the cesta, the basket they use to catch the pelota,” said Ron. “He hand cuts these reeds, and then shapes and weaves them into the scoop shape.”

  I watched the old man at work, scraping at a long thin reed with a piece of broken glass. Then Ron drew my attention to the other man.

  “He is making the pelota,” he said. “They’re made from rubber, latex and goatskin.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought there would be much call for pelotas these days,” I said.

  “Well, each pelota only lasts about twenty minutes before it cracks. And they’re worth about a hundred bucks apiece.”

  “Wow, makes golf look cheap,” I said.

  We stood watching the men for a time. There were all kinds of metal implements hanging on the walls. It looked like a torture chamber. But the men seemed content to work in silence, with mostly their hands and cut glass. Ron tapped my shoulder, and we wandered out and back down the stairs.

  “That was something,” I said.

  Ron nodded as we made our way back to the seating.

  “So what happened?” I said. “If this game was such hot stuff, how did it end up like this?”

  Ron let out a sigh and sat, eyes on the brightly lit court. “Lots of things I guess. More competition for sure. The NBA arrived, the MLB, even NHL. All big sports with TV coverage. ESPN doesn’t even show jai alai on its Internet channel. Plus there was the big strike.”

  “The big strike?”

  “Yeah, back in eighty-eight. A huge players’ strike. It went on for three years, more or less. A lot of bad blood, inferior players came in, and the crowds walked out. NBA had just started a team in Miami in eighty-eight, and the Marlins brought Major League Baseball to South Florida in ninety-three.”

  “Hard to believe in less than thirty years it’s become this,” I said, looking around the near-empty stands as the announcer warmed up and the first two players took the court.

  “Believe it,” said Ron. “It’s the way of the world. Nations never think they’ll change, empires never think they’ll fall, but they always do. Sports are the same. It doesn’t take too much to see it happening. Take football. NFL is the most popular game in the country by a mile, in terms of viewers and supporters. But it has faced strikes before, and they hurt it. Well imagine a big strike—a season or two off, or with lesser players. Then add in rule changes, because of all the head clashes and suspected brain damage. Suddenly, the game has less appeal and people take their support elsewhere. Football is already dropping in terms of participation. Soccer is booming.” He shrugged. “The way of the world.”

  “Well, it sounded like a good time, while it lasted.”

  Ron smiled. “It was the best time. I’ll never forget it. Neither will anyone who was there. It was just one of those times, one of those places.”

  Again he looked into middle distance and drifted away. I wondered if he was thinking about being young, of having his whole life ahead of him, of crowds and noise and the crush of youth. Of young love and asking a girl for marriage for the first time, and the life ahead, and of all that meant.

  Ron drifted back and turned to me. “What about you?. Mr. Almondson, was it?”

  “Mister is actually Ms. And quite the package at that.”

  “Did you keep your mind on the job?”

  “About as much as usual, but she seems like a smart operator. I’m not surprised you found the security wanting. It was the same in the admin area. She says she’ll tighten that up, so we’ll see. I think the players will be safe enough, at work at least.”

  We watched the performance for a while, listening to the pelota crack on the granite walls and echo around the room like a memory. Then I turned and saw Lucas ambling into the fronton. He nodded in our direction.

  “Is that Lucas?” said Ron.

  “Yup.”

  “What’s he doing up here?”

  “We have to see a man about a bet,” I said, pulling a cell phone out of my pocket and sending a text message to a number I didn’t know.

  Chapter Eleven

  WHEN LUCAS HEARD the intel about the bookie’s van I had gotten from El Tiburon, aka Brandon, he said he wanted in. He was taking the whole thing with Desi to heart, so much so that I wondered what was behind it, but regardless there was no talking him out of it. He said whoever was at the top of the tree was as responsible for Desi as the two drunks that tossed him in the water, and he wasn’t letting another kid get tossed in the drink. Or worse. We left Ron to his reverie and wandered out into the daylight. The sunshine burned white after the artificial twilight of the casino, and we squinted to adjust our eyes.

  “You sent the message?” said Lucas.

  “Just as the kid said.”

  “El Tiburon.” Lucas laughed. “Kids. They really think they are indestructible.”

  “Were you any different?”

  “Nah, mate, not at all. But I didn’t call myself the Shark.”

  “I gotta say though, I can totally see you carrying that off,” I said.

  Lucas smiled and shook his head. “You’re having a lend of yourself, mate.”

  We walked around the building to the spot where we had our little altercation with the big Irish lugnuts on our first visit. There were still dark stains on patches of gravel, where the big boys had leaked some blood. I felt butterflies in my stomach. I’m not afraid of confrontation; there are very few good pitchers who are. But they say Jack Lemmon threw up from nerves before every performance, and that boy could act. It was the unknown that got in my guts, playing the scenarios out before they ever happened. It was wasted energy, and I didn’t like wasting effort, but I had felt it before every game I ever threw, and I felt it now. I reconciled myself with the fact that it meant I was still alive. Lucas on the other hand, looked like he had settled in for the afternoon. He was relaxed against the wall, hands slack by his side, eyes staring at nothing in particular.

  My mentor and friend Lenny Cox had met Lucas somewhere in his travels. Where and how I had never heard, but Lenny had always played his cards pretty close. I knew he had done something for the National Security Agency, and before that, some kind of special forces, Marines or Army Rangers or some such. He never really got into the details. Lucas had served in a similar capacity in the Australian Defense Force, the SAS maybe. Suffice it to say they had both seen and done things they didn’t care to talk about, and a lot of important people preferred they kept to themselves. Somewhere along the line, Lenny had done something that involved saving Lucas�
�s family, and Lucas had forever considered himself in Lenny’s debt.

  “You been to see Lenny, lately?” I asked Lucas.

  Lucas opened an eye and shook his head. “Not in a while. I need to get down there.”

  “Me too. I was thinking maybe we should drop by after this.”

  Lucas kicked himself away from the wall and looked past me. “Sounds good,” he said. “Looks like we’re on.”

  I turned to see a red delivery van approaching. It was the sort of thing that delivered fruit and vegetables, or dry cleaning, and it raced across the parking lot and skidded to a stop in front of us. The door slid open on the side, revealing two guys, plus the driver.

  “Get in,” said the guy operating the door. He was a short Mexican with a barrel chest and a black tank top. I stepped up and into the rear of the van. Two rows of bench seats were inside and Lucas followed me in. The little Mexican slid the door home and the driver hit the gas as he heard it sliding. We pulled around the building and out onto surface streets, headed under the freeway. The third guy looked like the main man. Apart from the fact that he wasn’t actually doing any of the work, he wore the casual arrogance of someone who considers himself the boss—even if that consisted of riding around in a beat up delivery van all day.

  The driver pulled onto one of the roads around the airport, and the boss man turned to us in the back. He had tattoos on his neck that moved when he spoke. They were just random lines to me, but they seemed to dance when he moved his jaw, and it made me smile.

  “What the hell you smiling at?” he said.

  “Your tattoos.”

  “You think my tats are funny?” he said, brushing open his shirt to reveal a handgun tucked into his jeans at the hip.

  “We got business or what?” said Lucas.

  “You better tell your amigo to mind hisself,” said boss man.

  “He don’t mean nothing. So where we going?”

  Boss man smiled. “We ain’t going nowhere, bro. This is the office, right here.”

  Lucas smiled back. “No, seriously mate. We need to speak to the main man.”