Murder is My Racquet

by Otto Penzler

  Ted said, “Just us.”

  When he had all the tapes, he edited them himself, in his own little studio, pleased he still had the moves from the days when he was first starting out, cutting tape at Channel 9, before he started making commercials; before the company took off and he got lucky in the market.

  A million years ago, when the money made it easy for him to see all the tennis he wanted.

  When he watched it all, it wasn’t as bad as he remembered, that was the amazing part.

  It was much, much worse.

  Tony Douglass, when he was young, was even crazier than he remembered.

  • • •

  “Was easier than I thought it was gonna be,” Lawrence Semple, Jr., said when Ted came back from the Wilton Market with supplies.

  Lawrence weighed about two-thirty now, maybe thirty pounds over his playing weight, but looked as if he spent more time in the weight room now than he did when he was still in the NFL. Ted knew the bodybuilding started when he did that stretch, out in California somewhere, for income tax evasion, another ex-athlete who took a fall for not reporting the money he was making at autograph and memorabilia shows. Lawrence had just drifted for a few years after that, more ashamed than anything else at what had happened, the football money gone, finally taking a job as a driver for Bermuda Limousine in the city. It turned out he had always loved tennis, all the way back to when he had played on the tennis team in high school in West Palm Beach. He became a dues-paying member of the United States Tennis Association, started playing in a regular game at the National Tennis Center, which the public could basically use when the Open wasn’t in town, and decided it would be fun to start working lines at some small local tournaments, eventually working his way up to the Open.

  That was where Ted met him.

  Ted joked one day, after a Connors match, that all tennis officials should be Lawrence’s size, look as menacing as he still could when he’d stare at a player with his arm out.

  Lawrence said, “I always wanted to stand up, grab one of ’em by they stringy hair and say, ‘Who you callin’ a moron, white boy?’”

  Ted hired him when the Open was over, as much for the company as for the driving.

  Now here they were, in the front hall of the elegant old mansion Ted had bought ten years before—Rachel the fixer-upper’s last expensive project—and it was as if Lawrence had a team again, with Ted calling the plays.

  Even if they really felt more like partners in crime.

  Ted said, “I never doubt you, Lawrence.”

  They walked back to what the original owners, a couple of New York aristocrats who’d built the place in the twenties, had used as a ballroom for their big, formal Fairfield County parties. The two new screens were positioned to the left and right of the chair, the screen he’d already owned in front, far enough away so you could clearly see the picture. Lawrence, Ted decided, had done a beautiful job of painting what looked like the lines of a real tennis court, even putting the net up.

  Tony Douglass would be able to see it later, when they took off his blindfold.

  For now, Douglass sat tied to the umpire’s chair, duct tape over his mouth, one of Ted’s Brioni silk neckties tightly covering his eyes. He was squirming like a fish on a hook, but wasn’t going anywhere, Lawrence Semple, Jr., had made sure of that.

  The growling noises he was making, Lawrence noted, didn’t sound so different from the ones he used to make when a call would go against him. Douglass had an apartment in the city, a beach house out in Amagansett, in the Hamptons. Lawrence Semple, Jr., had grabbed him there, on the solitary stretch of beach, behind some dunes, where Douglass liked to take his morning run.

  “His mouth,” Ted said.

  Lawrence walked over to the chair, just a little shorter than a normal umpire’s chair in tennis, reached up, ripped the tape away from Douglass’s mouth, causing him to howl with pain.

  “What the fuck?” Douglass said. “What the bloody fuck is going on here?”

  Neither Ted nor Lawrence said anything.

  “Who’s there?” Douglass said. “How many of you are there, for Chrissakes?”

  More silence from Ted and Lawrence Semple, Jr., just the sound of Tony Douglass’s voice bouncing around the old ballroom, giving off a faint echo, as if this were an empty stadium.

  “You want money, is that it? Well, let me explain something to you cocksuckers: I’ve got more money than God.”

  Douglass waited for an answer to that and when he decided one wasn’t coming he said, “At least let me see you.”

  He finally stopped trying to get his hands loose, which was smart, since Lawrence Semple, Jr., had fastened them all the way up to his elbows.

  “Assholes!” Douglass hissed.

  Lawrence Semple, Jr., walked over to the chair, put one foot on the bottom step, and slapped him hard across the face.

  Tony Douglass screamed again.

  “What… is… this… about?” he said. “Can you at least tell me that?”

  In a quiet voice, a friendly voice, Ted Carlyle said, “Sure. It’s your turn in the chair, Tony.”

  They walked out of the ballroom then, Ted and Lawrence both listening to Tony Douglass yell from an umpire’s chair this time, instead of at it.

  • • •

  Lawrence Semple, Jr., took care of feeding him the first couple of days, untying Douglass from the chair when he needed to use the bathroom, Lawrence walking him in there, standing right there next to the toilet. The first time they made the trip, Lawrence let Douglass feel the sap he was carrying, telling him he would use it if Douglass made any kind of move to take the blindfold off.

  The second day, Douglass tried to pull away as Lawrence was helping him back into the chair. Lawrence Semple, Jr., grabbed a fistful of blonde hair, still longish, as if this were the old days and Douglass were still young and said, “I told you, boy. I will bitch-slap you.”

  “Who are you?” Tony Douglass said in a raspy whisper, his voice already hoarse from all the yelling he did when he was alone in the ballroom.

  Lawrence got close to his ear and said, “Bill Tilden. Give us a kiss.”

  The third day, they started playing the tapes for him on the big screen.

  Ted would throw a switch and the room would go to total darkness and Lawrence would remove the blindfold. Lawrence would walk out a side door and then Ted would begin playing Tony Douglass’s worst tantrums, from the U.S. Open and the French and Wimbledon and Davis Cup, all three screens at the same time, the volume turned up to ear-splitting levels.

  Douglass got to watch himself throwing his racquet around, busting floral arrangements near the court, grabbing his crotch, standing over linesmen and lineswomen while he berated them, even throwing sawdust in the face of a fan who’d said something smart to him one time at the old indoor tournament in Philadelphia.

  But the best moments were always at the umpire’s chair, Douglass howling at the top of his lungs in the good-boy accent, face contorted with rage.

  Always looking, Ted thought, mad as a fucking hatter.

  “I can’t listen to this shit anymore,” Douglass said late the afternoon of the third day, after the show was over and blindfold was back in place.

  “Is anybody still here?” Douglass said.

  “I’m begging you to shut this shit off,” he said.

  Ted Carlyle’s voice came over the speakers. “I’m sorry, Tony. What were you saying?”

  “I said I can’t take listening to this shit anymore.”

  Ted said, “Imagine how the rest of us used to feel.”

  “You’ve had your little fun,” Douglass said. “I get it, okay? I was an asshole, okay? I was an official asshole. You’ve made your point. Just dump me back in the car, drop me by the side of the road someplace, I don’t even care who you are anymore.”

  Silence.

  “Do I know you?” Douglass said. “I swear I recognize your voice from somewhere.”

  “Do you now?” Ted C
arlyle said.

  “Bloody hell!” Douglass shouted. “Who are you?”

  “All of them,” Ted said.

  “Fuck you,” Douglass said.

  “No,” Ted’s voice said over the speakers. “That’s where you have it wrong, Tony. It was ‘fuck you’ all those years when you were number one, when you were on top, when you came along and actually made Connors and McEnroe look like choir boys. It was ‘fuck you’ when you were running the sport, when you were the attraction, when you were the one who could get any appearance money he wanted, because promoters would sell their souls to have you play their tournaments. But that was a long time ago.”

  There was a pause and then Ted said, “Fuck me, Tony? Oh, no. Now it’s fuck you.”

  • • •

  The fifth day Tony Douglass said, “How long is this going to last? I assume you’re not going to keep me here prisoner forever.”

  Lawrence Semple, Jr., had just come in behind him, the lights off and the afternoon show over, and put the blindfold back on him.

  “Not too much longer,” Lawrence said. “We comin’ to the end soon, on account of my boss wanted to do this chronological.”

  “I’ll figure out who you are eventually,” Douglass said. “You know that, right? And when I do, I’m going to come after you, you bastard.”

  It came out bah-stid in his Brit accent.

  Lawrence Semple, Jr., said, “’Course if you still haven’t learned manners by the time we fixin’ to turn you loose, we may have to extend your engagement here at the Bad Boy Ramada.”

  “Kiss my English arse,” Tony Douglass said, and Lawrence slapped him hard across the face, saying, “Somebody shoulda done that the very first time you smart-mouthed somebody in a junior tournament.”

  Lawrence left him there, went and found Ted Carlyle sitting and smoking a cigarette in his study.

  “You sure you want to show him the big one?”

  “Against Lockhart at the Open? Lawrence, it’s the grand finale.”

  “He was sayin’ the other day he might recognize your voice.”

  “You know what, Lawrence? I don’t care anymore.”

  “You’re tellin’ me you don’t give a rat’s ass he figures out it was you in the chair that day? You who brung him here?”

  “Maybe I want him to know,” Ted said. “But not before I yell back.”

  Ted did that the next afternoon, after they’d played the explosion in that Lockhart match over and over again, Tony Douglass pleading with them after two hours to turn it off before he lost his bloody mind. If Douglass knew it was Ted Carlyle who’d been in the chair that day, Ted Carlyle whom he’d humiliated that way, he didn’t say.

  Maybe, in the end, they all sounded alike to him.

  Ted got right in front of him, right in front of the chair, and said, “So how do you like it?”

  “It sucks.”

  “Doesn’t it, though?”

  Douglass, somehow managing to shrug, said, “What can I say? The shit got out of hand. Whoever the guy you have with you, he’s right. Somebody should’ve stopped me when I was young. But no one ever did.” He shrugged again. “Shit happens.”

  “So it wasn’t your fault, is that it?”

  “It’s not what I’m saying exactly, but—”

  “Shut up!”

  Ted Carlyle said it with such force it snapped Douglass’s head back.

  “I was just trying to explain—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Ted shouted, louder than before, a foot up on the side of the chair, his mouth practically next to Douglass’s ear, the one with the diamond stud in it. “I suppose it was somebody else’s fault that you only won those four majors with your talent, is that it?” Ted said.

  “I told you, shit happens…”

  “Bullshit shit happens,” Ted said, spitting out the words. “You know who the ignorant moron was, Tony? You were. Did McEnroe have more talent than you? Did Connors or Borg or Sampras or any of them? You know they didn’t. But you finally pissed it all away, didn’t you? You were more interested in being some asshole bad-boy character than you were in being the champion you should have been. Isn’t that right, Tony? At least McEnroe used to play doubles to keep himself in shape. You were too big even for that, weren’t you? There was always another party, wasn’t there? Maybe that’s why you were so pissed off all the time, it was because you were so fucking hung over.”

  “I worked,” Douglass said in a small voice. “Maybe not as hard as the others…”

  “Liar!” Ted’s voice was as loud as gunfire in the ballroom. “Who’s the one who can’t see now, Tony? Who’s the one who’s so stinking blind?”

  Ted Carlyle was out of breath, his chest heaving, sweating as if they were playing a match, both feet back on the ballroom floor, a high heat rising in the back of his neck.

  Jesus, he thought, it’s finally happened, I’m as crazy as he is.

  “I’m the one who’s right, aren’t I, Tony?” he said.

  “No, it was more complicated than that…”

  “Yes!”

  “No!”

  “The people in the chair, the people calling the lines, you just abused them for sport, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t like that. Sometimes, maybe, because it had become part of my act by then, people expected it…”

  “Liar! They weren’t even worthy of being on the same court with the great Tony Douglass, were they?”

  “I just expected them to do their jobs properly.”

  “Bullshit!” Ted velled. “They tried to do their jobs properly, but you wouldn’t let them, would you? At least not after the first call that went against you.”

  “I saw things…”

  “You saw what you wanted to see!” There was only the harsh sound of Ted’s breathing in the ballroom. “And then you did exactly what you wanted to do, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” The word seemed to die a foot in front of Tony Douglass’s mouth. “Yes,” he said, in a whisper now.

  Ted said, “You didn’t give a shit about anything or anybody, did you? It was all about you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, goddamnit!” Tony Douglass said. “Yes! Is that what you want to hear? I fucked up myself and I fucked up tennis. Is that what you want to hear? Bloody Christ! What else do you want me to say?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ted said.

  “What?”

  “Tell me you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry!” Douglass screamed from the chair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry. Now please let me go.”

  At last, Ted thought, at last, it was Tony Douglass who sat in that chair wanting to cry.

  “Not yet,” Ted said, and left him there. Lawrence Semple, Jr., was waiting on the clay court out back for their afternoon hit.

  • • •

  Ted and Lawrence Semple, Jr., sat on the back terrace having coffee the next morning.

  “Was it enough?” Lawrence said.

  “It?”

  “Bringing his sorry ass here, makin’ him watch the shit, talkin’ to him the way you did? Was it enough for what he did to you that time? Hell, what he did to everybody all the times?”

  “No,” Ted said, staring down the long expanse of lawn, stretching all the way to the lake, the tennis court right before it looking beautiful in the morning sun, Lawrence having already rolled it. “But it will have to do. I mean, we can’t kill the sonofabitch, can we?”

  Lawrence smiled.

  They finished their coffee. Lawrence had already taken Douglass to the shower, stripped off his clothes as he did every day, thrown him in there with his hands tied behind him, let the water wash over him, roughly dried him before he helped him on with one of the T-shirts they’d bought for him, underwear, jeans, Nike tennis sneakers.

  Then it was back to the chair.

  They both walked into the ballroom.

  “We’re done with you now,” Ted said.

  Douglass sighed.

  “At last,” h
e said. “When do we leave?”

  “Not just yet,” Ted said.

  “What do you mean not just yet? I’ve been here a bloody week? You’ve tortured me for a bloody week. I’ve learned my lesson, I swear to you! What more can you say to me than you already have? What more can I say to convince you? I believe your friend when he says that if I ever act up again, he’ll come for me.”

  “I’ve said all I wanted to say, Tony,” Ted said. “But that doesn’t mean even body has.”

  “We nearly needed a damn waitin’ list,” Lawrence Semple, Jr., said.

  Lawrence opened the double doors to the ballroom then and Helen Kaiser, the chair umpire from Westchester Country Club, dressed smartly in a beige summer suit, came walking across the shiny hardwood floor, the one painted to look like a tennis court, to where Tony Douglass sat in the chair.

  “There’s so many who want to talk to you, Tony,” Ted Carlyle said.

  “My turn,” Helen Kaiser said.

  They had left the windows open when they left her there with him. Halfway through their first set, Ted and Lawrence could still hear the shrill sound of Helen Kaiser’s screaming from up the hill.

  CONTINENTAL GRIP

  DAVID MORRELL

  As much as anyone could tell, the murder weapon was a Prince long-body racquet, the edge of which had been driven into the top of the victim’s skull. There was some uncertainty because the victim wore a tennis cap, so the indentation that the edge of the racquet made wasn’t as defined as the police would have liked. But by trial and error, it turned out that Wilsons and other racquets didn’t fit the groove as much as Princes did, so Prince owners became the initial suspects. That narrowed the list to about 50 percent of the club’s membership.

  The victim was the club’s pro, Rocky Radigan. A tennis player doesn’t usually have a boxer’s nickname, but it fit. The way a first-rate boxer keeps dancing all the time he’s in the ring, that’s how Rocky moved on the tennis court, always shifting rhythmically. A beautiful thing to see. He was thirty-seven, tall and lanky, good-looking in a boyish way, with hazel eyes and dark hair, although those last two details were hard to notice because almost nobody ever saw him without his sunglasses and his tennis cap. For several years, he’d been on the pro tour, was ranked as high as 85, made it to the third round at the U.S. Open, and had lots of good stories: the shock of seeing Pete Sampras vomit in the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open, for example, or the reaction of the Wimbledon spectators when a female player went onto the court in a white spandex cat suit. Eventually Rocky had gotten tired of the tour’s exhausting schedule and moved to Santa Fe, where he became the pro for the Land of Enchantment tennis club and where, after a successful five years, he was found dead on Court One when the first players showed up at eight on a sunny September morning.