Dead Folks' blues d-1

by Steven Womack

  Walter fired one from the serve line. It hit the wall maybe an inch off the floor and came screaming out in a black streak. Walter’s killer serve had been the death of me more than once. I wondered why I kept playing with him. More than anything else in the world, Walter Quinlan hated to lose. On the rare occasions when I beat him, he did not take it well.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “Traffic’s terrible. Couldn’t find a parking space.”

  “If you’d pay for a space in the lot,” he said, bouncing another black ball off the floor, “you wouldn’t have that trouble.”

  “I already pay for one parking space a month,” I said, my voice echoing off the cavernous walls of the racquetball court. “I can’t afford another.”

  I leaned against the wall, hands out, racquet dangling from my right wrist, and did calf stretches. Walter walked over, rested his back against the wall, then slid down in a squat.

  “I got turned down for partner last Friday,” he said quietly.

  It took a moment for his words to penetrate. I pushed myself off the wall and sank, cross-legged, to the floor in front of him.

  “Get the hell out of here,” I said, aghast.

  Walter snickered. “That’s basically what they said.”

  “What the-? Did they give you a reason?”

  His eyes darted back and forth. They were darker, filled with more intensity than I’d ever seen before. There were even traces of purplish circles under his eye sockets, marring an otherwise too-perfect preppie face.

  “They never give a reason. In fact, they didn’t actually tell me I wasn’t going to make the cut. It’s my year, though, and when the list came out, I wasn’t on it.

  “It’s weird, man,” he continued after a moment. “It’s like nobody’ll discuss it. And there’s no appeal. Six years I spent working for these guys.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I can stay on as an associate another year or two. It’s not as if they actually lock you out of the office. I’ll need to get out as quickly as possible, though. Move on to something else.”

  “Do you have any idea why they passed you over?” I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder or something, but guys don’t do that stuff.

  He rubbed his hands on his forehead. “I’ve got the sneakiest little suspicion it’s related to my divorcing Madelyn. Her father’s in the Belle Meade Country Club with Sam Potter. They golf together.”

  “But, man, I thought the divorce was her idea.”

  “It was,” he sighed, “but only after she found out I was boinking one of her girlfriends. What was I supposed to do, though? Bitch hit on me. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything.”

  Yeah, I thought, nothing but not keep it in your pants.

  “Aw, jeez, buddy, I’m really sorry. I know how tough it is, man. Listen, we don’t have to be here. You can’t be in the mood for this today. Why don’t we go get a beer?”

  He tapped his racquet on the hard wooden floor. “Actually, I’m kind of up for this. Want to go for it?”

  I dropped my head down, stared at the floor between my legs. “Oh, hell. I think I’m in trouble today.”

  I looked up to see Walter’s glistening white teeth, as regular as the kernels on an ear of corn, lined up behind a malicious smile.

  “I’ll give you first serve,” he said.

  It was the only way I’d have a chance at him, the killer frame of mind he was in. He was tense, poised on the balls of his feet. Taking up position behind me, he danced around gingerly as if I was going to turn around and open up on him with a shotgun-and he wanted to be sure he could get out of the way. A lock of hair dropped down on his forehead, centered perfectly above his eyes. Even in sweaty disarray, this guy looked like something out of GQ.

  I bounced the ball a few times, trying to get my timing right. Then I cocked my arm and let one fly. It wasn’t a bad serve, at least not for me, but I should have opened with a lob instead of a power serve. Walter was locked and loaded in the pissed-off position, just waiting for me to zing one by him.

  He jumped to his right, sent the ball flying to the upper-left-hand comer. It took a slow bounce off the roof, then came straight down at me. There was no time to prepare; I raised my racquet and let the ball bounce off it. It landed fair, then dribbled back off the floor. Walter was there as fast as a rat, his racquet under the ball, flipping it expertly off the corner away from me. I lunged for it and wound up on the floor. The ball bounced lazily past me.

  “Oh, hell,” I said again, pulling myself up.

  I didn’t score a point for the next twenty minutes. I did manage to return a few serves, a couple of times even got into a volley, but that’s about all. Walter usually beat me, but this time he was slaughtering me. He played not with skill, but with a controlled fury, as if each shot off his racquet was a bullet aimed at the head of one of the suits who’d turned him down.

  I was sweating like a linebacker in a summer workout, my gray YMCA sweatshirt several shades darker and heavier. The score was now 12-3 in the second game. I’d finally figured out that the only chance I had was to fake power serves and then give him slow lobs off the ceiling. The truth was, I was too tired to fire missiles at him anyway.

  My serve went high, but I must have laid some heavy English on it, because it went off the back wall, zipped erazily to my right, onto the side wall, and then back toward the front wall, Walter ran like hell for it, but he was slightly off target and too far back. His racquet went across his body in a blur, whooshing as it missed its target. I was behind him, already raising my arms to celebrate getting one by him, when he slammed into the front wall and screamed like a kamikaze pilot.

  He whipped around, sweat flying off him in all directions, and roared again. There was a look in his eyes of raw, uncontrollable rage, and for the tiniest part of a second, I thought he was going to come after me.

  I dropped my arms, victory celebration over. “Hey, bro, chill out. Just a game, man.”

  He tightened his arms around him, as if by pulling in on himself he could regain control.

  “Sorry, man, guess I’m a little tense today.”

  “Want to take a break?”

  He pushed wet, straight hair off his forehead, spreading it back greaseball-style, and raised his racquet. “After this game.”

  I stepped to the line again, wondering if his performance was just an attempt to psych me.

  “What the hell,” I whispered to myself at the serving line, “I can take this guy.”

  I put everything I had behind it. The ball hit the front wall to my left, a few inches off the floor. It was easily the best and hardest serve that ever came out of me. The ball zipped past my left shoulder in a blur. I didn’t even look behind, just dropped to a half squat, my legs cocked, ready to go after his return.

  Only problem was, I never saw it. All I did was hear it. There was a loud pinging sound, then an echoing ring as the ball went past me unseen, like a Hollywood sound effect of a ricocheting bullet. The ball boomeranged past me and was gone before I could even figure out which direction it came from.

  I looked around. Walter was behind me, relaxed now, grinning. I spread my arms, the outstretched racquet in my right hand like a frying pan.

  “Where did it go?”

  He pointed with his racquet. I turned; the ball had come to rest on the floor in the right-hand corner.

  “Isn’t there a rule against breaking Mach I?” I asked. Walter laughed as he came to the serving line.

  The game was over in about two minutes.

  “Let’s take a break,” I panted. I stumbled over to the left wall and settled down in a puddle of my own sweat. Walter walked around in circles, nervously bouncing the ball, waiting for another chance to maul me.

  “So what are you up to?” he asked.

  I thought for a second. Client confidentiality was a big one with me. “You still my lawyer?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “Of course, I’m st
ill your lawyer. Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

  “No, it’s just that I got my first client today.”

  “No bull, man, that’s great! About freaking time.”

  “Yeah, well, you know her.”

  “I do?”

  “Rachel. Rachel Fletcher.”

  He dropped down in front of me, balanced on the balls of his feet, his racquet in front of him for balance.

  “Rachel Fletcher?”

  I smiled. Walter once had the hots for Rachel as well, but she had broken up with me and was already seeing Connie by the time they met.

  “Yeah, Rachel.”

  “She’s not divorcing that bastard she’s married to, is she?”

  I smiled. “What, Walter, you waiting for your shot?”

  “No, jerk off, just curious. That’s all. If anybody’s waiting for a shot at her, it’s probably you.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. And no, she’s not divorcing him. But he’s into some bookies, and they’re starting to make threatening noises.”

  “What for? I mean, what’s his game? Ponies? Football?”

  “You know, I forgot to ask.”

  He spewed out something that sounded like disgust. “Some detective.”

  “Hey, give me a break, I just talked to her this afternoon. Haven’t had a chance to formulate my strategy.”

  “Well, I hope you come up with a better strategy for him than you do racquetball.”

  “Okay, buddy, that’s it,” I said. “I’ve taken as much of this as I’m going to take. Prepare to eat rubber.”

  He laughed, stood up, turned his back on me. “Loser serves?”

  I bounced the ball a few times, cocked my elbow, and let one fly. It wasn’t a bad serve, but Walter had no trouble getting to it. His return was a little weaker, though. Maybe he was getting tired, too. I made it to the ball just as it was waist high, then cross-armed it hard. It hit the left wall, bounced into the back wall, then headed toward the floor. I dodged as Walter streaked by me and, with a loud grunt, caught the ball and sent it flying toward the ceiling.

  I caught it on the return and managed to send it back to him. We had a pretty good volley going, the best one of the day. A thought flashed through my head that this was fun, and that I was going to hate to see it end no matter who got that point.

  My right foot hit a puddle of sweat just as I was lunging toward the right wall. Something in my ankle gave way; pain shot up the outside of my right leg all the way to my hip. I felt myself becoming airborne, and the next thing I knew, I slammed into the hard wooden floor, facing the ceiling, wondering which way was up.

  Walter’s face appeared above me, an apparently genuine look of concern on his face. “You okay?”

  I tried to focus on him and take a mental inventory of my physical state at the same time. My head took a nasty bang, but I figured it was more or less intact. The ankle, though, was another story. If I were lucky, it was only sprained.

  “Nothing a heart transplant won’t cure.”

  Walter grinned, reached out a hand to me. “Hell, boy, you can’t replace what you haven’t got.”

  I let Walter pull me up until I was firmly on my rump. I could see the ankle was swollen through my jock sock. I gingerly pulled down the thick cotton.

  Maybe it wasn’t too bad. A little red, swollen, but no exposed bone splinters, no streaking, not too much purple and yellow. And the pain was beginning to throb down to a gentle agony.

  “Help me up, man. I need to get some ice.” I grabbed his hand, and he pulled me up on my good leg.

  I threw my arm around his shoulder-guys can do that when they’re physically wounded-and let him help me into the locker room. One of the attendants got me a high-tech, chemical ice bag, and I sat on a bench, sweat still cascading off me, nursing the leg.

  Walter stripped down for his shower, then wrapped a towel around his waist and sat next to me.

  “That’s going to be sore tomorrow.”

  “You asshole, it’s sore now.”

  “You going to be okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, moving the bag around a bit. “You know, it’s funny. I was wondering how I could approach Fletcher without his suspecting why I was really there. Now I’ve got a reason.”

  Walter looked at me strangely. His expression was one I couldn’t come anywhere near reading.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe you need to go have that looked at.”

  4

  By seven that evening, I knew I was going to have to have the leg X-rayed. The pain wasn’t severe, but the swelling remained, and the ankle was stiffening up. I’d broken an ankle playing soccer in high school, so I had an idea of what might be going down.

  I was only kidding when I told Walter that now I had an excuse to see Fletcher. But the more I thought of it, the better the idea seemed. Besides, if I went to the emergency room at the university medical center, my insurance would cover it. If I went to the local doc-in-a-box, it came out of my own pocket.

  It’s tough driving a straight shift car with a bum right leg. By now the ankle wouldn’t bend at all, so pressing the accelerator meant doing it all with hip and knee. The usual traffic out 21st Avenue didn’t help either. The university was still in session. It was a cool, clear night, and the streets were filled with freshly scrubbed little rich kids out for a stroll.

  The university area was one of my favorite parts of town, though. In a city full of automobiles, with lousy mass transit and few sidewalks, it was a delight to see strollers out enjoying the weather. It had turned into a beautiful evening.

  For once, my parking karma improved, and I was able to find a spot off 21st, barely a block from the emergency room. I limped up onto the walk and inched down to the huge glass doors, which slid open as I approached as if the building were hungry for another one. I checked in at the desk, described my problem, filled out paperwork for twenty minutes, then sat in a chair.

  Thank God I didn’t have a sucking chest wound.

  By nine o’clock, somebody deigned to see me. It was another hour before a doctor walked in and handed me the verdict. “Mr. Denton, we think you’re going to live,” he said.

  Typical E.R. humor. “Your X rays are fine. Nothing broken. I think it’s a bad sprain, maybe a pulled ligament. Nothing to take you down in the lower forty and shoot you over.”

  The doctor was young, fresh-faced, clean-cut, cheerful, with a white lab coat that had his name stenciled over the left pocket in green thread. He was obviously early enough in his shift that he could still put together a coherent sentence.

  “That’s great,” I said. “So what do I do with it?”

  “I’m going to wrap it for you,” he announced, pulling a chrome stool over to the foot of the table where I sat, bum leg dangling over the side. “Keep it elevated. Stay off it a few days. If the swelling hasn’t abated considerably in twenty-four hours, see your own doctor. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” I said. The doctor unwrapped a flesh-colored elastic bandage-one the insurance company would probably be billed about a hundred bucks for-and started gently wrapping the softball attached to the end of my leg.

  “Say, Doc, I got a friend here in the hospital. He’s on staff and the med school faculty both. Conrad Fletcher.”

  I yelped as the gentle healing hand jerked my ankle about sixty degrees to the right.

  “Sorry,” the doctor said. “Hand slipped. Fletcher, you say?”

  “Yeah, Dr. Conrad Fletcher.” I couldn’t fail to notice that he was winding the bandage progressively tighter.

  “Yes, I know him. I did my surgical residency under him.”

  “Great. You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s around the hospital tonight, would you? I’d like to say hi.”

  The young doctor looked up at me, any trace of warmth gone from his face. “Check with the nurses’ station on the fourth floor. If he’s around anywhere, they’ll know.”

  He pushed two silver clips onto the bandage to secure it. He stoo
d up, handed me some papers, and then was gone. A nurse came in after him with another set of papers for my signature. Then, thank heavens, my interface with the healthcare system was over.

  I asked for directions to the fourth floor nurses’ station.

  “East or west?” the blond, teenage candy striper asked. Again, I tried not to drool too loudly.

  “I don’t know. Whatever’s closest.”

  “Follow the yellow line down that hall. It’ll go left, then down another hall to a bunch of elevators. Grab one to the fourth floor and the nurses’ station should be right there.”

  “Great.” I limped away, following the yellow line down the hard linoleum as it ran parallel to, intersected with, and melded with other lines. All I needed was Toto hoofing along beside me.

  Hospitals late at night are weird places. The lights seem turned down low, but they’re probably not. The air is heavier, stuffier, as if the crowds of people who parade back and forth in the halls during the day had sucked all the oxygen out. On this night the people who passed looked more drawn, more tired, than the daytime people. The place was quieter, slower, creepier.

  I was the only one on the huge elevator creaking its way to the fourth floor. The doors pulled apart in front of me. Visiting hours were over, the lights were dimmer than ever. I hobbled down the hall, more from stiffness than pain. The hall dead-ended into a T I stood for a second at the intersection, my head bobbing first one way, then the outer, and did a mental coin flip.

  I turned right and walked maybe ten feet. So far, I hadn’t seen anybody or anything besides a few stainless-steel carts loaded down with medical gear. The place was a freaking ghost town, and if I didn’t find Fletcher quickly, I was going home to catch my nightly rerun of Green Acres on cable. I was tired, sore, and there was a cold one in the refrigerator with my name on it.

  I saw light and headed toward it. The hall intersected with another one again, and off to the left was a glass-enclosed nurses’ station. There were no nurses around, or at least nobody who resembled a nurse. But a woman with her back to me, in a well-tailored red dress, sat at a computer terminal. The phosphorescent green of the VDT bathed her dark hair in an eerie glow.