“That’s Dr. Sweetie to you,” Claudia replied, unfazed. She dug into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small ampoule of smelling salts.
I had to admit that it was an elegant and audacious plan.
She broke it open quickly, held it directly under Jake the Giant’s nose, and then neatly stepped out of the way. He was on his feet in an instant, roaring like he’d been stung, and looking around for someone to take it out on. For an instant I had to fight the urge to run, and I immediately discovered a newfound respect for bullfighters, rodeo clowns, and anybody else who was willing to get into the ring with three hundred pounds of thundering flesh.
Fortunately, this wasn’t the first time the cops of the Eighteenth had been called upon to wrestle a drunk. Eventually, using the same technique that is used for herding angry elephants, they managed to get him on his feet and set him moving toward the door. However, getting him into my Volvo was a whole new adventure.
As soon as we got him out on the sidewalk and into the cold air, he seemed to take notice of where he was and started bellowing about police brutality until I was sure that we were going to draw a crowd. He also took a swing at one of the officers who had the good sense to duck. Surprisingly it was Claudia who got him into the car. She grabbed his arm and twisted it with a well-practiced snap behind his back and used it as a lever to maneuver him into the backseat. I wondered whether this was something they taught in medical school or whether it was just something you had to pick up on the job.
I thanked the cops profusely, hopped behind the wheel, and stepped on the gas. It wasn’t until we were rolling that I realized that I had absolutely no idea where we were going. When I stopped at the red light at Michigan and Chicago, Jake the Giant reached over the seat and tapped me on the shoulder. It was like being hit with a ham.
“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded in the unmodulated bellow of the truly plastered.
“My name is Kate Millholland. I’m the attorney sent by the team to pick you up and take you home.”
“There’s no way I’m goin’ back to Alabama!” he screamed. Every time he opened his mouth, he seemed to emit an alcoholic breeze. I could hear him scrabbling in the dark for the door handle and prayed that he was too drunk to find it.
“We’re not taking you back to Alabama,” I assured him hastily. I was still wondering where exactly it was that we were going to take him.
“Where do you live?” asked Claudia.
“Great house, real big, all full of marble and shit. You want to come and check it out, baby? You want to come over, go skinny-dippin’ in my hot tub?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline that very kind offer,” replied my roommate, who as a rule preferred to deal with people while they were safely under anesthesia.
“I’m sure he lives in Milwaukee,” I sighed, wondering why this simple fact had not previously occurred to me. “Then what are we going to do with him?”
“Let’s just take him back to the apartment. He can sleep it off on the couch.”
“Surely you’re kidding.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Her silence formed an eloquent reply.
We rolled down the windows for the rest of the ride. Even if the cold air didn’t actually sober him up, I hoped it Would at least keep him from throwing up. The inside of the Volvo, which I used interchangeably as a garbage can, Was already disgusting enough without adding the eruptions of an offensive lineman to the mess.
By the time we arrived in Hyde Park, Jake the Giant was sound asleep and snoring.
“Can’t we just let him sleep it off in the car?” inquired Claudia as we pulled into the parking space behind our apartment.
“I don’t know,” I replied dubiously. “It’s pretty cold. What if he dies of hypothermia?”
“You’re right. I guess the Monarchs would be pretty pissed off if you accidentally killed him.”
“That’s not it,” I replied, grabbing one of Palmer’s legs and starting to pull. “I was just thinking that once rigor mortis set in they’d have to saw the damn car in half in order to get him out.”
The next morning I slept through my alarm, and by the time I finally got out of bed, both Jake Palmer and Claudia were already gone. I might have imagined the entire episode except that the blanket we’d used to cover him was still there, lying neatly folded on the end of the couch. He’d also left an autographed football card on the kitchen table along with five crisp, new one-hundred-dollar bills. He’d probably taken a good look at the apartment and decided we could use the money.
I took my time getting ready, deciding that I deserved it, and took a detour to the Starbucks across the street after I parked my car at the office. Juggling two hot lattes and my briefcase, I arrived upstairs and set them all on top of Cheryl’s desk. From the pocket of my coat I extracted the money that Jake the Giant had left and handed it to my secretary.
“What’s this?” she asked, her head cocked to one side.
“Donation to your scholarship fund. Bring in your pad and I’ll tell you where to send the thank-you note.” I picked up my coffee and stopped in my tracks. “Before you do that,” I added, “do me a favor and get Jeff Rendell on the phone for me.”
“He already called. There was a message on your voice mail when I got in.”
“What did he say?”
“Just thanks for picking up the package.”
“Some package.”
I hung up my coat, gave my hair a distracted pat, and made my way to my desk, which was already lined with dozens of pink message slips arranged by Cheryl in order of importance. I picked up the first one; it was from my mother reminding me that Stephen and I were scheduled to meet the following afternoon with the decorator to make our final selections of fabrics and wallcoverings. Stephen had already canceled or rescheduled four times.
“I want you to call Rachel over at Azor and tell her that if Stephen isn’t back from London tomorrow afternoon and at the meeting with the decorator as promised, his ass is grass,” I said.
“Do I detect a hint of irritation in the famously unruffled Millholland manner?” demanded my secretary impishly.
“I swear, if I have to face my mother and Mimi and talk about wallpaper all by myself, I really am going to kill him.”
My phone rang, and I pushed it across my desk to my secretary. I make it a policy to never answer my own phone when my mother is in town. Cheryl shot me a look.
“Oh, come on,” I pleaded. “If it’s her, just tell her I’m in a meeting or something.”
“You are such a baby,” replied Cheryl, who was happy to talk to her own mother every day. But then, of course, her mother was a normal person. “Good morning, Ms. Millholland’s office,” she chirped with exaggerated cheerfulness. She listened briefly, her smile slowly dissolving into an expression of concern. “She’s right here,” she said. Then she put her hand over the receiver. “It’s Chrissy Rendell,” she whispered, and handed me the phone.
“Hi there,” I said.
“Oh my god, Kate, I’m so glad you’re there.” She sounded breathless and upset, her words practically tumbling over each other.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded.
“I just got home from the grocery store. When I walked in the door, the phone was ringing and I rushed to answer; it. It was a reporter.”
“Oh, no,” I groaned. It was hoping too much that of all the people at The Baton last night there wouldn’t be at least one who would talk. “How bad is it?”
“It’s terrible,” she sobbed.
“Why don’t you just try to calm down and tell me everything that’s happened.”
“I don’t know how it happened. Nobody told me anything. All I know is that he’s dead.”
“Dead?” I demanded. Suddenly I felt sick. I should never have let Jake out of my sight. I thought of the blanket and the football card and wondered where he’d gone after he left my apartment. “How did he die?”
�
��The reporter didn’t know.”
“Where did it happen?”
“At the stadium. They found him at the bottom of the stairs leading up to his office.”
“Whose office?” I inquired. Football players didn’t have offices, at least not at the stadium they didn’t.
“His office,” she replied.
“Who are we talking about?” I was starting to feel confused.
“Beau.”
“Beau’s dead?” I demanded incredulously.
“Yes. Who did you think we were talking about?”
“What can I do?” I asked automatically, not yet able to let the implications of the news sink in.
“Just come,” whispered my best friend from the time we were both thirteen. “Please, just come.”
CHAPTER 5
In an instant everything changes. An event, a piece of information, and suddenly your world shudders, convulses, and reconfigures into something else. Whenever Chrissy and Jeff looked back, they would remember this as being the day, the nexus around which everything had shifted. I knew that I should have felt more sorry, but as I threw my briefcase into the back of my car all I could think of was that by dying, Beau Rendell had taken the easy way out.
Of course, Chrissy didn’t want me to come because she needed my sympathy. I’m sure there were people in Milwaukee who were already lining up to offer their shoulders for her tears. No, she and Jeff needed me for something else. People in their position are afforded many things, but the luxury of time for grief is not one of them. When Beau threw off his mortal coil, he left his son in a world of trouble. I was one of the handful of people who not only knew, but was also in a position to do something about it.
Under the best of circumstances the drive to Milwaukee is nothing but a boring gauntlet of tollbooths, cheese shops, and outlet malls. Today, desperate to get there and cursing every orange construction cone, it was also an agony. By the time I arrived at Beau Rendell’s house, the street was already lined with cars. I parked mine at the end of the block and hoped that I wasn’t violating a community ordinance against rust.
River Hills is an exclusive community where the residents live in splendid, pseudorural isolation. The houses were enormous, the lots ran to acres, and the grocery store parking lot looked like a Range Rover dealership. Beau Rendell’s house was considered the local eyesore. He’d built it twenty years ago when he was between wives, hoping to erect a swinging bachelor pad. Now, of course, it looked hopelessly dated, as if someone had consulted Hugh Hefner for ideas about what was hip. I wondered who would buy it now that Beau was dead.
Inside the color scheme was black and white, and as I pushed open the front door, I felt like I was stepping inside; a pair of dice. I pulled the door shut behind me and made sure that it was locked. Most likely the people who had already arrived were friends of Beau who had come to pay their respects, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before the curious started showing up.
I found Chrissy in the kitchen looking perfect. She was dressed in a simple black pantsuit, and with her blond hair pulled into a tortoiseshell clip and her flawlessly understated makeup, she looked like a tasteful advertisement for grief. She was staring at the innards of an old-fashioned percolator looking as though if she just stared at it long enough, it might give up its secrets.
“Have you ever made coffee in one of these things? she asked, as if picking up the thread of a conversation that had only recently been interrupted.
“Is that what that’s for?” I asked. “I thought it was a small still. The crowd out there looks like they would prefer gin. Who are all those people?”
“I don’t know most of them. I think they must be neighbors. Of course, Coach Bennato’s wife, Marie, was the first to arrive. She and their weird daughter, Debra, brought along a lovely tuna casserole. I don’t know when they even had time to make it. They must have cooked it in the car on the way over....”
“Well, put that thing away. You don’t have to entertain anybody today. Where’s Jeff?”
“He’s still down at the stadium. Harald Feiss called a couple of minutes ago and said that they’d be leaving soon.”
“So do they know what happened yet?”
“According to Harald, they think Beau either had a heart attack and fell down the stairs, or he fell down the stairs and had a heart attack. I guess at this point it doesn’t matter....” She began slowly winding the cord to the coffeepot into a careful bundle, a task that seemed to require all of her attention. “I know it sounds awful to be even thinking about money at a time like this,” she continued finally, in a small voice, “but I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have any.”
“It’s not awful,” I assured her. “Under the circumstances it’s the most natural thing in the world.”
“So what’s all this going to mean?”
“Financially? It’s hard to say without knowing what Beau’s testamentary plans were.”
“You mean like his will?”
“Yes, that and any irrevocable trusts he might have set up. Who handled his estate planning, do you know?”
“I’m sure it was Harald Feiss. He handled all of my father-in-law’s business and financial affairs.”
“I know that Beau relied on him heavily for advice,” I began, carefully, “and the last thing I want to do is put pressure on you and Jeff, but the two of you should probably decide fairly quickly how you feel about continuing that relationship.”
“We both think that Harald’s an ass,” said Chrissy simply. “If Beau had had someone who knew what they were doing advising him, he’d never have gotten into this mess in the first place.”
“Then you’re going to have to decide who you want acting on your behalf. I guarantee you that Harald is expecting to take charge of things, especially until after the funeral. He’ll see it as a kindness—”
“Will you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Help us.”
“Of course, I’ll help you,” I replied without hesitation. “But no matter what, handling Feiss is going to be a delicate business. Don’t forget your father-in-law wasn’t just his closest friend, but his most important professional connection. This has to be disastrous for him on every level. No matter what, you want to keep him on your side. Not only is he a minority shareholder in the team, but he’s the person who has the most intimate knowledge of Beau’s business affairs. To put it another way, he knows where all the bodies are buried.”
“Yes,” replied Chrissy, “but that’s only because he’s the one who buried them.”
In the end it was Coach Bennato not Harald Feiss who brought Jeff back from the stadium. They slipped into the house through the garage after having somehow managed to avoid the news crews who’d begun to congregate on the front lawn hoping to get footage of the still-arriving mourners, or better yet, the grieving family, to air during the five o’clock news. Both men had the empty, sheep-like ( look that I have come to associate with sudden grief. Pale-faced and shaken, even their tread was gingerly, as if in the aftermath of calamity they had suddenly lost their faith in everything including the ability of the floor to remain solid beneath their feet.
“You’d better take him upstairs and make him lie down,” said Bennato to Chrissy, a note of something very close to warning in his voice.
Chrissy nodded wordlessly and took her husband by the hand. Jeff, bewildered and completely undone by grief, was apparently in no condition to resist. Chrissy put her arm around her husband’s waist and, as if helping an invalid, led him from the room murmuring words of comfort and encouragement.
Coach Bennato, no stranger to Beau’s kitchen, immediately made for the liquor cabinet. As he opened the doors it was pretty clear that Beau Rendell would have never died from thirst. Bennato selected a bottle of Balvenie single malt Scotch from among the dozens of bottles and helped himself to a generous dose. Although legendary for his nerves of steel, as he poured his drink his hands shook badly, like an alc
oholic in need of a drink or a temperate man suffering from shock. He knocked it back in a single shot and quickly poured himself another.
Now that we were alone I found it strange to see Coach Bennato in person. He was much bigger than I’d imagined from all the shots of him pacing up and down the sidelines. He also seemed older and, if anything, less genial. In person you could see that the wrinkles in his face were as deep as channels and that his knuckles, like his nose, bore the signs of having been broken more than once during his career as a player.
The man himself was a mass of contradictions. One local sportswriter who described him best said that Bennato had the face of a parish priest, the vocabulary of a sailor, and the temperament of Attila the Hun. Mercurial, methodical, and prone to sweeping fits of both rage and generosity, he had at some point in his long career been the winningest and losingest coach in the league. He’d been hated, loved, reviled, and carried off the field in triumph.
He was a cagey and complicated man. Born in Palermo, in either a tenement or a manger depending on who was telling the story, he immigrated to America with his parents when he was three. His father found work in the oilfields and he spent his childhood moving from one dusty wildcatting site to another along the Texas panhandle, proving himself with his fists in every new town.
Legend has it that it was a judge who ordered him to play football. Bennato was fourteen and had been hauled before him after one scrape or another and he’d been given the choice of working his aggression out on the gridiron or in juvenile hall. I had no idea whether the story was true. He played second string in college, spent an undistinguished season in the pros, and immediately went into coaching, landing a spot as an assistant to Joe Patemo in his first year at Penn State.
After three years at Penn State, Bennato returned to Texas and landed his first head coaching job. Apparently his fiery temper served him well, and after ten years as a head coach he had two national championships under his belt and a reputation for fashioning winning teams out of losers. Celebrated for his ability to turn green young men into effective gladiators as well as for giving rich boosters something to open up their wallets for, by all accounts he was on top of the world.
Rough Trade Page 5
