Fourth Down to Death

by Brett Halliday

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  Shayne turned on the overhead light to look at her patient, who was lying back on two pillows wearing a head bandage much like Shayne’s.

  “Well, well, it’s Ronnie James,” Shayne said. “The famous quarterback. I’m a fellow patient, and I thought I’d stop in to see how he’s doing.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “They don’t know yet. I haven’t had all the tests.”

  The top sheet was partly thrown back. When he appeared in public, James wore elaborate clothes, given him free by a top California designer, but he had a way of always looking a little sloppy in them. Except in helmet and pads, he never looked much like an athlete. His shoulders were narrow and sloping. He was scornful of people who lay around on beaches getting suntanned, and the color of his own skin indicated indoor lighting and late nights. His long hair and hussar’s mustache needed work.

  Shayne thumbed back one of his eyelids. The pupil was showing, but it stared up at the light without wavering.

  “I see he’s been thrashing around,” Shayne said. “The bed’s a mess.”

  Letting the eyelid roll shut, Shayne picked up James’s wrist. The pulse was racing.

  “Very fast pulse,” he commented. “Is that normal?”

  The nurse came up to him. “This is my patient, and I’m in charge. Please leave the room immediately before I ring for an orderly.”

  “Is it usual to lock the door when you come in?”

  “Don’t be silly. The door wasn’t locked.”

  “And you’ve got blood on your uniform,” Shayne pointed out. Without letting go of James’s wrist, he touched a splash of fresh blood on her shoulder and another at her waist. Then he brushed the back of his hand across her breasts. “No bra. You’ve just been in bed with him, haven’t you? I know that isn’t regular hospital procedure.”

  “You are crazy. He isn’t even conscious.”

  “If you can believe the papers, Ronnie’s never in the habit of sleeping alone. What’s your name?”

  The call button was on the small table at the head of the bed. To get to it she would have to reach past Shayne. She began to drift toward the door.

  “But what are you after?” she said, puzzled. “Some betting information? See for yourself. He won’t be playing tomorrow. I don’t know who you are—”

  She spun and dashed for the door. Shayne’s foot was in the way when she tried to pull it open. She turned and hit him with both hands.

  He took her elbows. Forcing her back against the bed, he held her there, her legs locked between his knees.

  “I’m Michael Shayne, and I’m a private detective. I’ve been given a small piece of the Miami football club to trace down some rumors involving Ronnie and a few other players and gamblers. It’s more than the job is worth, which indicates that the owner’s sure something is going on. It’s been suggested to me that Ronnie’s no more unconscious than usual. If so, I can use some cooperation. Are you listening, Ronnie?”

  “Don’t bore me about it,” the nurse said. “Talk to his doctor.”

  “The doctor’s a personal friend of his. I think Ronnie’s holed up here so he won’t have to go into the game tomorrow behind a line he can’t trust. And being Ronnie, he’d arrange for a night nurse who’d lock the door and jump into bed with him the minute she came on duty. A little late tonight, because a funny thing happened on the way to work.”

  She was struggling to break the lock of his knees. “You have a diseased mind, my friend!”

  “But what Ronnie may not know is that this willing blond nurse has an association with a hoodlum named Lou Mangione. The guy seems to be very minor, but he has family connections. That’s Lou’s blood on your uniform. When he crawled out of Joe Truszowski’s kitchen, he had a few broken ribs and a broken jaw, and I thought he looked very discouraged.”

  She stopped opposing him. “You didn’t look so marvelous yourself, I understand.”

  “I’m used to it. Now what’s your name?”

  “Dody Germaine.”

  “Are you really a nurse?”

  “I really am, and I have a paper to prove it.”

  “You look more like a model.”

  “I’ve done that, too. But modeling only lasts a few years.”

  When he released her, she stayed where she was, leaning against the edge of the bed. One of her hands dropped casually onto Ronnie’s leg.

  Shayne pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down. “Do you want to wake up now, Ronnie?”

  The quarterback continued to lie still with his eyes closed, breathing deeply and evenly.

  “If you want to know what really happened,” the nurse said, “he began to come to the surface on Wednesday, I think it was. But he wanted to keep the reporters at bay for a few days, so he talked Dr. Prettyman into not making an announcement. He’s still very weak. I’m the only one of the nurses who knows about it. He sleeps during the day.”

  “And you wake him when you come in?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes he wakes up by himself,… Did I really snap the door? I didn’t intend to, and I admit he made a sort of feeble grab for me. He takes his reputation seriously, even when he’s half asleep. And then he conked out again just before you knocked.”

  “What about Lou Mangione?”

  “I suppose that does seem odd. It’s really not. I’ve known Lou for years. He found out I was Ronnie’s nurse, and he called to see if I could give him any news. He bets something like ten thousand dollars on football every weekend, or so he claims—he’s an exaggerator. He also says he has a retainer from the Orange Sheet… do you know it? A kind of tip sheet published in New York. He bought me dinner tonight. All I told him was that Ronnie wasn’t necessarily out of action for the whole season. On the way to the hospital he stopped off to see somebody, and he was beaten up terribly. Did you do that to him, Mr. Shayne? I couldn’t make out.”

  Shayne smiled at her appreciatively. She was a cool girl, and had made an excellent recovery. “After the fight started, I was on his side.”

  He picked up Ronnie’s wrist and found the pulse. The beat was now slow and regular.

  “Maybe I can drop a few things into his subconscious… Ronnie, have you been having sex with Chan Zacharias?”

  The pulse jumped.

  “It wouldn’t make sense from your point of view,” Shayne continued, “but a superstud like you can’t act like an ordinary person. You must run into no-choice situations all the time. There was something in the past between Chan and Joe Truck. Sometime I’d like to get your comments on that. But let’s talk about football. I’ve been hearing about a bad afternoon you had last fall against Kansas City.”

  Again there was a slight pickup in James’s pulse rate.

  “I think I’ve discovered something,” Shayne remarked, grinning, to the nurse. “This is better than a lie detector… Ronnie, did you win any money on that Kansas City game?”

  James moved his head slowly and his eyes opened. He pulled his wrist out of Shayne’s loose grasp and rolled his head to look up at the girl.

  She bent down to kiss him, and for an instant her long hair concealed them both.

  “Baby, you’re back,” she said.

  James came up on his elbows and punched an extra pillow into place behind him. “I haven’t been anyplace,” he said in a normal tone. “I’ve been lying here picking up odds and ends. Christ, Shayne,” he said to the detective, “if there’s anything I don’t want to do, it’s to answer silly questions about things that happened last year. That’s under the bridge. Have I had sex with Chan Zacharias? Who hasn’t, and what difference does it make?”

  He reached into the drawer of the bedside table and took out a partially consumed bottle of Scotch. “Do you drink Scotch, Shayne?”

  “On occasion.”

  “Get us some glasses, kid,” James said to the girl, “and then go away and hide.”

  She said calmly, “If we could have two minutes
in private—”

  “First I want two minutes in private with this man. He has priority.”

  “You’re tightening up, Ronnie. It isn’t like you. What did it—the name Mangione?”

  “Yeah, the name rings a very loud bell. The glasses, sweetheart, and then ciao.”

  She shook her head at Shayne. “I liked him better in a coma.” She brought two glasses from the bathroom and set them on the bedside table. “Mr. Shayne, move a little. Talking isn’t the best way to communicate sometimes, and I want to get back on good terms with Ronnie before I go.”

  Bending down to kiss the patient, she ran her hand under the sheet. She straightened after a long moment.

  “Why do so many lunatics want to bet on football games? Ring if you need me, Ronnie.”

  She made a good exit. Shayne watched her go, but James was busy pouring the drinks.

  “Let’s skip the ice. They’ve got good room service here, but I’m not supposed to be conscious.” He lifted his glass. “To the point spread.”

  After drinking, he said, “Did I really hear you say Sid cut you in for a percentage?”

  “One hundred shares.”

  James pursed up his lips. “He’s worried. My lawyer tried to get me a piece when I signed, but Sid’s very possessive about that ball club. Does he have any idea I’m planning to show up tomorrow?”

  “Are you?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Chan thought it was funny Dr. Bishop couldn’t get in to see you. Were you ever really concussed at all?”

  “I’ll tell you about it,” James said, looking at his Scotch. “After the first time I was hit, everything was double. Sometimes that clears up after a few plays. You hold on and hope. Then the pocket blew out again. You know that big iron ball they use to knock down buildings? That was what hit me. I looked up and this time everything was multiplied by four. Miami had forty-four men on the field. I decided it was time to let them carry me off. Sure I was concussed. But that was six days ago.”

  He threw back the rumpled sheet and slid out of bed. He was wearing pajama tops and jockey shorts. His legs were lean and spidery, the knees crisscrossed with surgical scars. He teetered for a moment, straightening each leg painfully before he was able to move laterally. Then he began stretching and bending.

  “Have you been working out all week?” Shayne said.

  “Every night, religiously. More or less.”

  He began running in place, creakily at first because of the trouble he had with his knees. “I’m going to stage a marvelous recovery and astound the bookies. My vision’s cleared up. I only see one thing at a time, and that’s the main thing.”

  “You’re in lousy shape,” Shayne commented.

  James broke off with a disgusted flap of his hand. “I can do two hundred sit-ups, and that’s more than most people.” He flexed his arm, feeling the elbow and the shoulder. “The arm seems to be OK. Passing’s mostly psychological, anyway. You have to psych the ball out there. If I play—I say if—I may not have the best game of my career, but there’s no way they can beat us by seventeen points. I wish we didn’t have rules against associating with gamblers. You could bet New York at seventeen, and then bet Miami when they hear I’m back and the points drop, and win both ways. People look all year for that kind of deal.”

  He took a pull of his Scotch and began to pace. “I’m sick of this room. What do you know about Dody, anything?”

  “She’s been working here a week. I doubt if they’d take her on if she wasn’t really a nurse.”

  “I could have been more careful. I didn’t know where I was until Monday sometime—I think it was Monday. I only lost about a day, and you do that when you cross the International Dateline, don’t you? I discussed it with my doctor. He’s a wild man. And we worked this out—the club’s paying the bills, so why not? Lying out up here is better than running laps. He fixed it with the nurses—I was out of the coma but I couldn’t talk; I was still a vegetable. Then came Thursday night. Dody was sponging me off, and you’re right about one thing, Shayne, she doesn’t wear bras. All of a sudden I got better.” He grinned. “That’s the only kind of exercise I like. Now what’s this about Lou Mangione crawling out of Joe Truck’s house?”

  He continued to pace, weaving and rolling his shoulders, while Shayne described the violent scene in the Truszowski kitchen.

  “You actually saw money? Cash?”

  “It was spilling out on the table. The top bills were fifties.”

  James scratched his stomach reflectively. “What I don’t understand—why was Mangione carrying a tape recorder?”

  “I heard two theories,” Shayne said. “Truck thought they wanted the transaction on tape so they could blackmail him with it. Mangione claimed that all they were doing was making sure they’d get value for their money.”

  “My name wasn’t mentioned at all?”

  “No, it was all Maxwell. When he goes out to try for a field goal, they want him to think about the larger picture.”

  “Which side of the bet are they on? Are they betting Miami to win or lose?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It matters to me. Didn’t Sid tell you a character named Stitch Reddick is in town?”

  “I think that’s the main reason he hired me. Whatever Stitch finds out, Sid wants to know about it first. And Stitch had a pickup device planted in Truck’s kitchen. He didn’t overhear anything, as it happened, because Joe’s wife smashed his receiver.”

  James had been about to drink. He turned slowly and put down the glass.

  “Tell me about that, will you?”

  Shayne shrugged and drank without answering.

  “I know,” James said, giving Shayne a look at his famous boyish grin. “Here I am, putting a fake on my own people, and why should you tell me anything? But football’s based on deception, Mike. You know I’m not here just to get out of going to practice. What am I trying to do—get to be a millionaire at the age of twenty-four?” He shook his head. “Money’s involved, because it’s a money game. If they knock me out of football they knock me out of the money. But I’m also thinking of my knees. I lost the right one in high school, both cartilages, medial and lateral. In college they began to work on the other. The doctors were in and out so often I had to get used to that great old zipper joke. Whenever a defense man gets through, you’ll notice that’s where he aims.”

  “What about Joe’s sloppy blocking last week?” Shayne asked. “Was that deliberate?”

  “I think so,” James said slowly. “Everybody messes up blocking assignments now and then. One of the things the front four is trying to do is pound your men so hard that after a while they lose track of where they are. But this was early. Joe hadn’t taken that much damage.”

  He paused and lifted the Scotch.

  “There are three men in this league who want to kill me. I was top cat last year, for both yardage and TD’s. Anybody who kills me will get a twenty-percent boost. What these guys are trying to do is put me on the ground so hard I won’t be able to play football against them anymore. There’s only one way to be really sure of that—if I’m dead. They work up to it all week. ‘I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill the mother.’ Of course if you asked them they’d say all they really want to do is cripple me for life. You have to see the look in their eye—it doesn’t show in the films.”

  “Number sixty-six is one of the people you’re talking about?”

  “Goddamn right! Off the field he’s a black militant, which gives him the extra incentive. Joe Truck knows he can’t get careless against Monroe. If he loses me, we don’t make the playoffs, and playoffs mean money. After I got that first bang, Joe and I had something to settle. There’s a theory Joe’s stupid, and the fact is that sometimes he is stupid. But you can get a look from Joe and it means something. This time he didn’t look my way in the huddle—he was blowing his ears. And so I knew I had to watch out.”

  “How do you explain it?”r />
  “I can’t, but that envelope on his kitchen table really jars me. When I woke up Monday I wondered if I’d done something to hurt his feelings. I know that sounds ridiculous, but even when you weigh two-sixty you can still have feelings. I decided to take the week off and think about it. I don’t get paid by the game. I thought Stitch Reddick might turn something up in the meantime. But Mangione…” he said thoughtfully, “That has to be inside money. It doesn’t fit with Reddick.”

  “Remember I just started a couple of hours ago,” Shayne said. “So explain that.”

  “The thing that gets Reddick interested is when a game goes off the board, when the bookies stop taking bets. If you look at it one way, he’s not working for the commissioner as much as he is for the bookies. They supply him with his information. But if it’s a bookie fix, or if the bookies have been cut in on it, the game stays up and they use layoff men to keep the points from moving. It’s queer as hell. Stitch has been here two weeks at least, long before I decided to take this vacation.”

  “Do you want to talk about the New Orleans game?”

  James winced. “You mean why did I pass instead of keeping the ball on the ground? That goddamn spread—when I first came into the league I didn’t even want to know what the points were. But that can be bad, too. The first game I started we tried for a field goal from the forty-five and Maxwell made it. And the next week the bookies refused to take bets on Miami because that field goal put us over the points. I tried to tell people I didn’t know what the spread was, but nobody believed me. Now I get very conservative in that kind of situation, and so does every other quarterback. We play careful football. The trouble is, against New Orleans—I had the feeling all day that they were reading me. On that pass play I tried to surprise them with an audible, but I didn’t surprise them. They were waiting.”

  “You’re beginning to feel persecuted,” Shayne observed.

  “Am I!”

  “Do you know a guy named Ted Knapp?”

  “Sure, he sold me a policy last year. He calls me once in a while. I kid him along. I hear he wants to buy the club.”