Murder is My Racquet

by Otto Penzler

  It was the first bit of queasiness Fabiano experienced. She turned her attention to the television.

  It wouldn’t be her last.

  • • •

  At the height of the third set, Jessie no longer felt her body. Somewhere along the way she had merged with the tennis racquet, had become the tennis racquet, and now every twitch of muscle, every drip of sweat was aimed at the ball. The ball was everything. She even lost score for a while—something that seldom happened to her—as she focused only on winning each point, not how those points added up. She took the third, fourth and fifth games in nine minutes, a period of time that reporters would later refer to as “perfect tennis.” Clips from those three games would run for years on television, as Jessie made her mark not merely as a player, but as the player. It was nine minutes of women’s tennis no one had ever seen before. Jessie had attained Knighthood, win or lose.

  Losing seemed out of the question. The racquet wouldn’t let her, Khol wouldn’t let her, and finally the crowd wouldn’t let her. Brazinski was the last to understand the preordained nature of their competition. It simply wasn’t in the cards. Jessie briefly attained the stature of a tennis god, and poor Brazinski found herself on the other side of the same net, giving it her absolute best, and finding it largely insufficient. No matter what she threw at Jessie, the ball came back lower, faster and more perfectly placed. When Brazinski broke her racquet in frustration in the ninth game of the third set, when Jessie delivered a heat-seeking overhead slam to lead 5–4, the television color commentator called the game. “It’s over,” she said. “Mark my word, Jessie is going to break for match. This one’s already over.”

  • • •

  Khol worked the needles out of the fingers of his broken arm as he looked on from a hidden vantage point as Michael Raphael began checking around himself in the stands for any faces he might recognize. With his job to “bring in” Jessie now in question, Michael Raphael had to wonder if his boss had already dispatched the knee-cappers to teach him a lesson about crossing the mob. Khol reveled in the moment and prepared to act out his own risky role in their plot. Raphael, no doubt, still clung to the belief that Jessie would throw what could be the final game, tying the match and inching it toward a 6–6 tiebreaker. But if he was watching the same match as the other seven thousand spectators he knew differently, and hence his increasing concern. Jessie did not have the look of a woman about to lose the final. She was on fire. The crowd could barely contain itself. This match was already over.

  Khol placed a call to Todd Seaborn and said but one word, “Go.” He hung up. Over the course of the next ten minutes every bookie in this town—and more important, a few in Las Vegas—would hear that Michael Raphael had placed a twenty-thousand-dollar bet on Jessie to win. The bookie who had handled the bet would be mentioned by name. Khol couldn’t allow all the information to be passed along, not without the setup being spotted for what it was, so he left the rest of it up to greed and malice. The people for whom Raphael worked would already be disconcerted by Jessie’s sensational performance. When word came that their own bagman had placed twenty large on a victory by the woman who was supposed to shave points, the shit would hit the racquet. Khol’s only concern now was that he manage to pull off placing himself squarely in the middle of the chaos that seemed certain to ensue. Anything short of that, and their efforts would fail.

  • • •

  Jessie no longer saw herself as a backboard. All these years, and she realized that she’d been imagining herself as a backboard to the other player’s serves. Get in the way of the ball, and at least it got back over. Suddenly, right there on “center court” of the finals, she found herself attacking Brazinski’s serves, winding up and pounding them back down the pipe so that they seemed to return faster than they’d arrived. She caught Brazinski flat-footed and looking on in complete disbelief. The old Jessie was gone. One serve, a single stroke, and everything was different. Jessie was no longer a weak returner. A matter of attitude was all. Jessie took the game 40–love, the set, 6–4, the match 2 sets to 1. Invincible. The crowd erupted in adoration. Jessie searched the stands for any sign of Khol, and prepared herself for the acting role of a lifetime.

  The color commentator hurried across the court with a camera crew. Every eye in the place was trained on her, as she shook both Brazinski’s and the referee’s hands and then collapsed into the chairs alongside her racquet bag.

  “What’s it feel like to be number one in the world?” the commentator shouted loudly over the roar of the fans.

  Jessie bent over, threw a towel over her head, and cried.

  • • •

  Khol had been in the stands of tennis matches his whole life and could judge their movement like a fly fisherman can judge a river’s current. Michael Raphael, a relative newcomer, hadn’t a clue. With his attention on the people surrounding him, now more than ever afraid the Baseball Bat Brigade would fall into lockstep somewhere behind him, Raphael misjudged which exit tunnel to push toward and got caught in the mother lode of all logjams.

  Khol mastered his own entry into that throng so that Raphael could not miss seeing him (what with all the fans spotting Khol and demanding his attention) but could not reach him either. Khol made sure that their eyes met and that he smiled in a way that would both frustrate and anger Raphael. He wanted the man pissed off and raving mad. He scored on both counts.

  The chase began. Raphael could punish Jessie through Khol—if he could only catch him.

  The challenge would prove to be the parking lot. Again Khol knew this better than the thug who now pursued him. For this reason, Khol had a Town Car waiting outside any of the dozen parking garages that surrounded the downtown sports facility, parked waiting out on the street by the players’ entrance to the facility. He needed Raphael to be able to follow him in the Town Car—and he needed it to seem believable that in all this mess two cars could find each other. He would make it appear that he, Khol, was waiting for Jessie. Michael Raphael was certain to check the players’ entrance.

  If all went well, the worm was on the hook and the hook was about to sink into the lip. He made one final call, making sure the other money they’d spent had been spent well. Only time would tell. Everything, everyone was now in place.

  • • •

  Jessie’s interview on live television was followed by a presentation of the two trophies. Brazinski spoke eloquently and graciously about the loss, surprising everyone. “The way Jessie played today, no one on the tour could have beaten her.” Jessie held up a fake check the size of a desk and paraded it around the pavilion to the cheers of many—money confirmed her the victor. She found this showy moment the most difficult of all. Did CEOs parade their checks around the stockholder meetings? Finally, the ordeal wrapped up with photos and handshakes and air kisses—two sweaty, smelly women pretending to enjoy the exchange of sticky lips on each other’s cheeks. The things the ATA put you through!

  Jessie watched Brazinski head for the locker rooms as quickly as allowed. She followed a few moments later under the escort of security. The bodyguards stopped at the door to the women’s dressing room, which fortunately was out of bounds for press. Jessie was allowed exactly five minutes to pee, towel off and make it to the press room for a press conference. The next thirty minutes were carefully choreographed, giving the national sports press nearly unlimited access to her.

  Brazinski was heading into the press conference right as Jessie showed up to use the toilet and fix her face in the mirror. “You smoked me today,” Brazinski said. “It won’t happen next time.” No love lost.

  More than anything, Jessie wanted air. She eyed the EXITthat led down a back hall to the players’ entrance. She checked the locker room’s wall clock: perfect timing.

  • • •

  Khol told the driver to wait another couple of minutes. He eyed the dashboard clock and asked the driver twice how accurate it was. As if on cue, a dark Pontiac with a wide grille swept around the corner,
Michael Raphael behind the wheel.

  “I think we’ll be leaving about now,” Khol said to the driver. “Remember: Let him come out of the car. We make him get out of that car.”

  Raphael pulled a U-turn and came up behind the Town Car. Khol rubbed the cast on his painful, broken arm, hoping he wasn’t about to earn another.

  The door at the players’ entrance swung open. Autograph seekers had collected here already. A dozen or more teenage girls, some with their mothers, all prepared to wait an hour or more for the stars.

  As the door opened, Jessie staggered out, bent and clutching her waist. Khol looked more closely. Her hands were covered in red. Blood everywhere. He threw open the door to the Town Car, shouted, “I’m calling nine-one-one!” and punched the number into his cell phone.

  At that moment, only feet away from a fallen Jessie, Khol caught sight of Michael Raphael coming out from behind the driver’s seat. A siren. Loud. Close by.

  An ambulance screamed around the corner.

  A step toward the front of his car, Raphael hesitated. Khol appraised the situation as well. He dove back into the Town Car. “Hit it!” he shouted to his driver, the car ripping away from the curb, while Khol struggled to pull the door shut behind him. He watched as the two EMTs hurried from the ambulance toward the fallen Jessie.

  Michael Raphael’s black Pontiac left twin black lanes of rubber as the car screamed off in pursuit of the Town Car.

  Behind them, the small crowd parted, as the bloodied EMTs raced Jessie onto a gurney and toward the waiting ambulance.

  • • •

  By the time the Town Car reached the Freeview Motel off 1-70, two miles from the airport, Khol’s driver had nearly lost the Pontiac twice, and had a good enough lead that Khol wondered if he could make it into the rendezvous room in time. He hurried from the car, crossed through parked cars to room 108 and knocked loudly, his eyes scanning the parking lot for any occupied cars that didn’t have their engines running.

  Raphael skidded into the motel parking lot in time to catch the door to 108 closing, and in too great a hurry to see the car following him, as Khol was able to.

  The empty Town Car sped off.

  Michael Raphael parked, climbed out, and actually took a second to brush down his black clothes and inspect himself. He’d seen Khol enter that motel room.

  Now, he had a job to do.

  • • •

  Michael Raphael grabbed a Bosnian house cleaner, working on room 210, and paid her fifty bucks to key open 108, which she did with no attempt at conversation. He thanked her and made sure she was heading back upstairs before he opened the door.

  He stepped inside and closed the door. “What’s this?” he said to the sturdy man he didn’t recognize. The guy looked like a professional wrestler.

  The bodybuilder clarified Raphael’s identity. “Michael Raphael?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  The brute opened a wheeled airline overnight bag, revealing a suitcase filled with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. “Eighty thousand dollars.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “You wanted your winnings delivered here, pal, not me.”

  “What winnings?”

  Califoni’s goons came through the door, taking the door-jamb with it. All six men now filled the small motel room.

  “Don’t fucking move a muscle, Raphael,” the leader of the barbershop instructed, brandishing a Glock. He was short and square and needed a change of diet.

  “What we got here?” the tenor of the group asked, indicating the suitcase. “Betting against the house, Raphael?”

  “Jimmy, Danny,” Raphael pleaded to the leader, “this is bullshit.”

  “Hey,” the deliveryman said, “my job is done here.”

  “I’d say everyone’s done here,” said the leader of the four, directing this to Raphael. “Go on,” he told the deliveryman, “get the fuck out of here.” To Raphael the man said, “This here is a no-no. A serious no-no.”

  One of the two others got the door basically shut behind the exit of the deliveryman.

  The first blow came from Jimmy, the lean tenor. He kicked Raphael in the knee, dislocating it backward in a single stroke. Michael Raphael went down hard.

  “Fifty-fucking-love, or however the fuck you say it,” said Jimmy the Weasel. “Say good night, Mikey. Time for another swerve.”

  “Serve, you asshole,” said Danny Divine, “not ‘swerve.’”

  “My game’s bowling. What can I tell you?” With that, he dropped his shoe onto the other of Raphael’s knees. Then the biggest of the four hoisted Raphael to standing, putting all his weight on both knees. He looked a Halloween scarecrow three weeks after the festivities.

  His looks didn’t improve from there on out.

  • • •

  The white paddle wheeler, which really wasn’t a paddle wheeler at all, but a floating casino and cruise ship made to look like one, steamed lazily down the mighty Mississippi. The boat’s largest stateroom was occupied by two people, a man and a woman who had not showed their faces to anyone but room service for the duration of the trip. Nor would they.

  Jessie rolled over, naked in bed, talking into the phone. Khol teased her, his one good hand working points south, while she attempted to carry on the conversation. She clamped her legs around his hand, attempting to stop him.

  “I see,” she said.

  “Said the blind man,” Khol whispered, still trying to interrupt.

  “I see,” she repeated.

  “You’re going to see God in a minute,” Khol told her.

  “You’re sure?” she asked into the phone. She sat up on the edge of the bed then, her back to Khol. “No. I’m fine with that. We’re both fine.” She made some pleasantries and hung up the cell phone. She pressed its warmth against her cheek. She asked Khol, “How did you know they’d buy that?”

  “The Feds will buy anything that makes them look good and gets them the bad guys. They’re much more flexible than they’re given credit for being. My citizenship went the same way. You pay enough taxes, they listen to you.” He hesitated and asked, “Did we get it?”

  “The ATA will report that I’m healing from my stabbing and won’t return to the circuit for six to seven months. I keep my winnings and my ranking holds until the next tournament.”

  He hugged her from behind: This had been all they’d wanted. They’d risked everything to win it.

  “Michael Raphael?” he asked.

  “Alive. Brutally beaten. Won’t be skateboarding any time soon. He turned state’s witness, as did the four others they rounded up at the motel. He rolled on Califoni. No word on whether that gets back to Umbrizi or not. They—the Feds, I’m talking about—apparently asked about the ambulance. Who had arranged for it to pick me up.”

  “Don’t look at me.”

  “We—Jan, my attorney, I’m talking about—denied any knowledge of the ambulance. The Feds were pissed we did this to them, but as you said all along, with the warrants in place, and the arrests, they put the best spin possible on the situation and never mentioned the ulterior plan. As far as everyone knows, this was their plan all along. I was never supposed to lose.”

  “Would it were so.”

  “We’re in the clear, Khol. You did it.”

  “We did it.”

  She entwined her fingers in his and squeezed, holding him to her breast. “We got away with it.”

  “You’re number one. Congratulations, Best Woman Tennis Player in the World.”

  “For two weeks.”

  “For Two Weeks,” he added to her title.

  They made love and ordered room service, and for the first time in five years she ate whatever she wanted to eat. She wouldn’t allow herself to fall out of shape, and she knew he wouldn’t either. There was a lot of tennis yet to play.

  That night she awakened with a jolt around 2:00 a.m. Sat up in bed, half in a dream, half in the present. She tossed the covers off both of them in the process, and Khol came
mildly awake.

  “Those sounds again?” he asked, knowing how they had plagued her.

  “That’s it,” she mumbled out, groggy and still unable to think clearly. “That’s it exactly.”

  “They’ll go away,” he told her. “Just pretend they aren’t there. They’ll go away.”

  He didn’t understand. She slipped out of bed and left him to fall back to sleep. She crossed to the set of French doors that led to the suite’s small balcony, and she cracked open that door, allowing the river’s cool air to spill across her and raise the delicate hairs that covered her, a ripple of gooseflesh coursing across her arms and legs.

  The rumble of the boat. The swish of the river water sliced by the flat-bottomed hull. The dull beat of music from one of the floating casino’s all-night lounges. She strained her ears, listening for the return of that haunting sound of tennis balls in the dead of night. That sound was nowhere to be found. That sound did not exist.

  She glanced back at Khol, once again fast asleep. Six luscious months of persona non grata, the only requirement to give a deposition, and at the city of her choosing. She would not be required to testify. Her next public appearance would be on court in a tennis dress, the unbelievable recovery from a stabbing that could have killed her had it not been a bag of theatrical blood purchased by her lover.

  She closed the door, suspiciously still listening for that sound that had denied her sleep for the past four years. Only the hum of the boat, and now his gentle snoring.

  She stayed up another hour, just to savor those sounds.

  LOVE MATCH

  LISA SCOTTOLINE

  Assistant District Attorney Tom Moran had barely gotten back to the office when the telephone started ringing, and he sprinted down the hall to catch it. His secretary was long gone; it was after business hours, which to her meant 5:01. Ring! Tom reached his office, leaned over his desk, and grabbed the phone. “Babe?” he said, breathless, into the receiver.