Murder is My Racquet

by Otto Penzler

  Thought of this commingling heightened her senses. She touched her chest with her free hand and felt a shiver pass through her. A rapid drumming filled her ears, and her breath drew short as she watched him respond, still fully asleep. At first, she believed the sound she heard was nothing more than self-generated excitement—her own pulse pounding more rapidly, more strongly as she witnessed his reaction to her touch. But it wasn’t so. It was something outside. Something foreign that had no place at an hour so late: the sound of one thing striking another. Sharply, and crisp.

  Naked, she slipped out of bed, leaving him fully aroused, his flagpole in need of a bugle call.

  She caught sight of herself in silhouette in the full length mirror as she crossed to the window. Her body was not simply strong and feminine, but a thing of infinite beauty, as finely tuned a specimen of athletic perfection as could be found anywhere, from professional dance to supermodels. The few openly gay women on the tour teased her in the locker room about her wasting herself on men. Her taut legs stretched endlessly to the full curve of her hips and a tummy as flat and firm as a serving tray, her rib cage bulging slightly as it rose to breasts that remained tight and substantial despite the 4 percent body fat. Her large, exceptionally dark nipples received the most comments in the shower because, for whatever reason, they remained pointed and sharp, erect around the clock. Even now, at three in the morning, there was no mistaking their condition, halfway across the room from the mirror, and in the dark. Men found them so sexy and titillating that she got lurid fan mail describing solo sex acts as they sat in their recliners watching her matches on network television. One fan went as far as ejaculating onto the note he sent her. That particular note had gone into the “Worth Concern” file that both she and her manager kept in the event anything ever happened to her.

  She tugged at the hotel room’s internal sheer window covering and wrapped it around herself modestly, being careful not to stand naked even in a dark window, as she looked out in search of the source of that sound. It grew louder now, and more clear. As her eyes peered out at the darkened courts, there was no mistaking this sound—a tennis rally. She threw the lock on the sliding balcony door and hauled the heavy glass open a crack, and the sound became even louder and better defined. Crack came the serve, whoosh, the return.

  And yet the courts stood empty.

  She jumped as a male hand reached around and cupped her left breast while another hand arrived lower and eased her legs apart. “Do you hear that?” she asked, her body already responding to him. He could do magic with those hands. Other women on the tour found his boyish looks and his constant joking a put-off, but clearly they had not experienced those hands. Her knees quivered. She thought she might fall.

  “I hear you breathing heavily,” his Swedish accent replied. He pulled himself against her back and buttocks, forcing her to bend over, and she let go the sheer and it spilled away like a wind. He drew up against her and drove her slowly out onto the balcony.

  She giggled at his persistence, for it became immediately clear to her that her efforts in the bed had produced continued results. She pleaded, “Not out here…” but lacked the resolve to convince him. His hands had turned her skin electric. Heat pulsed through her. She arched her back and reached for the balcony’s warm steel rail, steadying herself. “Someone will see us…”

  “At three in the morning?”

  “It’ll end up in the tabloids.” But she was through arguing. She lifted her bottom invitingly and held on to that rail. He might help her to find sleep.

  He said, “Then we’ll make it base enough they can’t print it.” With that, he hoisted her by her hips and helped himself to her, holding her twitching bare feet off the warm concrete, her fingers white where they gripped the railing.

  “Do… you… hear… it?” she gasped hoarsely, unable to think clearly, her senses dreamily confused. Her throat went dry, and her eyes rolled in her head, and suddenly she did not hear it herself, only the gentle, moist slap of their skin, and her quickened pulse singing sweetly in her ears.

  • • •

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” Jessie asked Khol. They occupied the same balcony. But morning now stood a few hours in the sky, and they were adorned in white terry cloth bearing the crest of the luxury hotel chain. The sounds from the courts were real. So was the traffic and the screams of the kids from the pool, directly below. He ate from a giant platter of fresh fruit, and drank chilled celery and carrot juice. She ate granola, a plain bagel with lite cream cheese, a fresh banana and a protein drink. She would play in the third round today; he would not. Her opponent was an aging star who wouldn’t put up too much of a fight as long as the first set was close. The trick with her was to tire her out with a competitive first set. Regardless of who won it, if the match went an hour or longer, she wouldn’t have the strength to win. The endorsements in the off-season had replaced this woman’s commitment to six-hour workouts, and she no longer posed much of a threat as long as you worked her hard early on. Her mental tenacity could win the second set if you didn’t beat her down physically in the first.

  “Not exactly, no,” Khol answered. “But in spirits, yes. You bet-cha!” He’d picked up the expression early on in a career that now stretched seven years on the tour. It sounded strangely Minnesotan. She found it endearing: one of those amusing quirks that lovers come to love.

  “Spirits, then,” she said between mouthfuls. “Have you ever seen one?”

  “No, of course not,” he dismissed. “Spirit is not something you see.”

  “Hear?”

  “Same answer.”

  “Then how do you know it’s there?”

  “Not hear as in ears and brain function and all of that,” he answered. “Not something a tape recorder would pick up.”

  “But you could pick it up,” she attempted to confirm.

  “Your spirit could connect with another spirit, with other spirits,” he suggested.

  “And you would know this how?” she tested.

  He looked across the teak table skeptically. “What’s all this about?”

  “You’d hear it, or see it, don’t you think? Or at least you might convince yourself you had.”

  “Okay. Point taken. Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And have you ever heard or seen such a thing?”

  He pondered this while he appreciated a slice of kiwi. “Sometimes I dream things and I don’t understand them until days later when they seem to come true.”

  “They either do or don’t come true,” she pressed.

  “Sometimes I’ll be thinking about a person I haven’t thought of in a very long time, and the phone will ring and it’s them.” He added, “That has happened quite a bit, actually.”

  “To me, too,” she agreed.

  “So,” he said, clipping off a strawberry top with his thumbnail and then sucking the fruit into his mouth, “you’re hearing things, seeing things? Which is it?”

  She wanted those lips on her, and glanced around for a clock to see if they had time for that. She had to hit for at least forty minutes before a match, nearly twice as long as most of the girls on the tour.

  “You know what time it is?” she asked.

  “No idea. Nine-something, I think.” He ate another strawberry in the same provocative way. It wasn’t a gimmick with Khol, an act. He was a physical, sensual person who came off as sexy whether he tried or not.

  “Hearing,” she answered.

  “Voices?”

  “Tennis balls. Late, late at night. Several nights now.”

  “That’s called anxiety.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Listen, firemen hear alarms; cops hear sirens; pilots hear air traffic controllers. You hear tennis balls. It’s simple: You’re preparing for your match.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, repeating herself. “I don’t know,” she reconsidered, “maybe that’s right.”

  “You’re going to win. I know it. You know it
. Personally, I think the whole tournament is yours to lose. And don’t talk to me about ranking. You missed three weeks to that laser surgery. The computers penalized you for that. Technically, you’re number two, not number five.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence,” she said. She knew better than to argue against his compliments because it angered him. His temper was nothing to mess with.

  “You have been so close for so long. Your time has come. You’re just nervous about it.”

  She thought so, too. She had played them all, some more than others, and had identified chinks in the armor of the top three players—a weak second serve in one; endurance, in another; temper, in the third—but had been waiting for another chance to attempt to exploit their weaknesses. This tournament was that chance, and she knew it.

  The room phone rang. It was her room; his was the Hilton down the beach. Technically, they weren’t supposed to be “fraternizing” while on tour. But everybody did it: the men with the women; the women with the women; a few men-on-men. If rumor had it right, the thirteen-year-old Romanian wunderkind was sleeping with her thirty-six-year-old German coach, a lech of a man with a potbelly and bad English. Jessie had a pit in her stomach over that one. It hadn’t won either of the two any friends on the tour. The women’s locker room had nicknamed her Lolly, for Lolita, when her first name actually began with a P and was basically unpronounceable. Every play-by-play announcer called her something different. (The current accepted pronunciation approximated “Fotlana.”)

  Jessie strode inside to the phone, her athleticism and muscle tone evident even beneath a half-inch of terry cloth. “Hello?”

  “You’re playing well.”

  “Thank you.” She couldn’t identify the voice, and yet she recognized it. She hated it when the hotel operators put through fan calls. Her agent had provided the hotel a list of callers she would accept; the rest were supposed to go to voice mail. The hotels seldom got it right.

  “We need to talk. You know who this is, don’t you? It’s Michael. Michael, from the Open.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.” Her voice trembled. She felt all the blood drain from her head as her face went white and her balance faltered. She glanced out toward the balcony where Khol looked in with concern. She couldn’t get much past him. Their relationship was all of three weeks old—a record for her while on tour—but he already knew her too well.

  “We have much to catch up on,” the voice of Michael disagreed. “I’m in the lobby.”

  “You’re what?Where?” These people were all nerve, no tact. She feared them as much as she feared anything.

  “What room?” the man asked.

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” she said, lowering her voice so Khol couldn’t hear. “You made certain promises, remember?” She added, “Including never contacting me again.”

  “And I wish I could keep them, I really do. But I cannot. You will see me. And right away.”

  “I have a match.”

  “You’ll win it in two sets. Fifty minutes at most. What room number?”

  “I have a guest. It’s impossible.”

  “Khol Cedarbach? Ask him where his net game has gone.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Forest Park. Main entrance. Two hours after your press conference. Two hours to the minute.” He repeated, “Ask him about his net game. If he went to net more often he’d win more games. He can’t let a few passing shots take him out of game. Win some lose some, am I right? But his game is at net, and he has gotten away from that.”

  “I’m hanging up now.” Gently, she dropped the phone into its cradle, not at all sure of her own actions.

  “Who was it?” he asked. Did she hear jealousy in his voice?

  “No one I wanted to talk to.”

  “You should have them screen your calls.” He added, “I have so much to teach you.”

  “You’re a pompous idiot,” she snapped, not wanting any company. Her lust of only moments earlier had evaporated without a trace.

  He stared at her blankly.

  “You should go,” she said.

  “Jess!”

  “Please go.”

  He looked hurt. She didn’t care.

  As she spoke, she disrobed and found pieces of clothing in a dresser drawer, donning them. Her body felt firm and not bloated at all. She had gone off the Pill to time her period to end a week before the tournament, and felt physically perfect as she pulled a jog bra in place. “You’ve abandoned your net game,” she said harshly. “You lose a few points and you back off of it instead of trusting it. If you trusted your own talent more you’d win more matches. It’s why you do so well in doubles: You lean on your own confidence in your partner, and you’re forced to play more net. Confidence and your net game are the only things standing in your way of winning a Grand Slam event. Everyone says the same thing. It’s all anyone says bad about you. You have more natural talent than anyone on the court. More physical ability. It’s the head game for you. And your net play. You’re the Tower of Power, Khol. That nickname didn’t just happen.”

  His mouth hung open, as did his robe from his turning in his chair to face her. “Since when do you…?”

  “Since now,” she interrupted. “I have a match to play. I need some alone time. I’ve got to hit some balls.”

  “Who the hell was it?” he asked, florid-faced and coming out of the chair.

  She pulled on the shorts, slipped on the plain white T, and sat down on the unmade bed to find her way into socks and shoes. There would be press in the lobby. And quite possibly him. A shiver ran through her. “I’m going out the back,” she informed him. “The kitchen.”

  “They’ll still find you. And when they do, they’ll ask why all the subterfuge.”

  She knew he was right. “So I’ll use the lobby, but I won’t say anything.”

  “And neither will I, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  It wasn’t what worried her, but she didn’t tell him that. “Fine,” she said. But she wasn’t fine. That call had ruined everything.

  • • •

  Forest Park, the Central Park of St. Louis, steeped in heat and humidity like a cup of fine tea. One hour and fifty-eight minutes after the close of her press conference that celebrated a win over the aging star, Jessie climbed out of the Town Car instructing the driver to wait in the main parking lot. Her face was not known to everyone, the way a Venus Williams or Martina Hingis might have been, but her carriage and composure attracted attention nonetheless as did that badge of physical beauty she wore. A few heads turned, but fortunately, no autograph seekers.

  She paused, looking around for him. Not wanting to see him. Hoping he might not show. She had played revisionist history on the drive over, remembering the events of four years earlier on her own terms. Reinventing the wheel. How easy she found it to challenge the actual facts as she knew them and mold them to suit her needs. Players did this with line calls, so why couldn’t she negotiate with the Devil? He put that sound of tennis in her ears late at night, after all. She knew the source of such phenomena. Four years those sounds had been keeping her awake. There were few surprises left in her life.

  A wide-faced man in his late thirties, Michael carried a row of hair implants in his forehead, a thick, flat gold chain around his neck, and a wristwatch that probably weighed a pound or more. Brown, unflinching eyes. Confident to the point of alarming. He sat with his legs spread apart, his black-and-white checked shirt stretched at the buttons, his pant cuffs riding to the middle of elastic socks. If his teeth were his, which she doubted, they were bleached to the point of blinding. She kept her sunglasses on, and switched her purse to her other shoulder out of habit—always protecting the racquet arm.

  “The television does not do you justice,” he said.

  “You’ll never be Tony Soprano, so don’t try so hard.”

  He pursed his lips, as if ready to spit. “Sit.”

  “Not on your life.”
<
br />   “It is not my life we are here to discuss.”

  She said, “Do I look scared?” She delivered this impressively. Inside, she was cowering.

  “I am going to stand up and you are going to let me hug you. I am going to put my hands on you in ways and in places you will not like. My apologies. But a person cannot be too careful.” He rose then, before she could object. She had half expected this precaution from him, so she merely winced and accepted the embrace that led to hands on her back, on her bottom, her underarms and between her breasts. He pulled it off smoothly, without it looking like he was frisking her for a listening device.

  She wanted a shower.

  “We will walk,” he said.

  They walked.

  “We had an agreement,” she said.

  “It is true. I feel badly about this. I am only the messenger.”

  “Four years and no promotion? I’d talk to my union rep if I were you.” She said, “You own the unions, but do you have one for yourselves? The Wise Guy Guild?”

  “You are nervous. I can understand that.”

  “You understand nothing,” she said. “What’s the point of an agreement if you break it?”

  “Half of all marriages end in divorce. Did you know that?”

  She said, “That doesn’t justify your being here, so don’t even try. We had an agreement. That’s the end of it.” She added, “I knew you people would do this.”

  “Good. Then it’s not a surprise.” He said, “It is not the end of it.”

  “You arrogant son of a bitch.”

  The latest fad, silver scooters from Japan, streamed past like bullet trains, small kids at the controls. Jessie switched to Michael’s other side to avoid a collision.

  “Injury,” Michael said, “is a player’s biggest enemy. Do you agree?”

  She caught her breath, a pain where her heart should have been, her lungs locked, like swallowing too much food at once.