Life's Work

by Jonathan Valin

  11

  LAUREL HAD a downcast look on her face as we walked out of the restaurant. When we got inside the Pinto, she curled up on the seat, hugging her knees to her chest and propping her chin on her kneecaps.

  “You know,” she said mournfully. “This is the first time I ever felt like a whore. And I didn’t even turn a trick.”

  I glanced over at the girl who was staring gloomily at the dash.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Laurel. I’m not a cop. I’m not even a bad guy.”

  She turned her head toward me and smiled tolerantly. “I know you’re not a bad guy, Harry. I knew that when we first met. In my business, you learn to tell that sort of thing right away.” She touched me on the shoulder to reassure me. “It’s just that every once in a while I’d like to think that there’s a part of me that’s not for sale.”

  “Would it make you feel any better if I didn’t pay you?”

  “No,” she said with a hollow laugh. “Then I’d feel like a fool and a whore.”

  “Laurel, I’m going to tell you something,” I said and was damn glad there was nobody else around to hear me, because I’d sworn off giving fatherly advice too many times before, in too many public places. “You’re not a whore until you start selling what’s in here.” I touched her breast, over her heart. “The rest of it doesn’t matter.”

  “You think?” she asked with a halfhearted smile.

  I patted her curly head and said, “I think.”

  She leaned back on the car seat and snuggled up against me. “Do that again, would you?”

  “What?”

  “Pat my head.”

  I rubbed her head again, gently, and she pulled my hand down to her cheek and nuzzled against it. “Thanks for saying that,” she said. “Even if it isn’t true.”

  She put her hand over mine, pulled it down beside her, and held on tightly as we drove back downtown.

  ******

  I dropped Laurel off in front of the canopied entrance to the Waterhole around eleven thirty. She kissed me on the cheek before she got out.

  “What about your pay?” I said.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” she said. “I had a good time being with you. I want to be with you again.”

  I stared at her pretty, doll-like face, with its rouge spot on either cheek, red candy lips and shaggy blond bangs, and felt a surge of affection for the girl. The feeling embarrassed me a little, and surprised me too. I was too old to be feeling that way after a quickie with a twenty-four-year-old kid.

  “Laurel,” I said, “it’s a trite thing to say, but I’ve got twenty years on you.”

  She gave me a hurt look. “What does that have to do with it?” she asked in a wounded voice. “Don’t you like me? You know I don’t want to be with everybody I fuck.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that the girl was speaking my lines. She was speaking from the heart, while I was the one acting like a whore, making love to her and then kissing her off.

  “Well we do still have some business to transact, don’t we?” I said, smiling at her. “What say we get together later this week and . . . eat some more pizza?”

  She grinned back at me. “I’ve got a little place in Newport on South York. Two twenty-five. Can you remember that?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “You come by around eight tomorrow night. I might even have a surprise for you.”

  She said the last part with a cunning little smile that made me nervous.

  “Your surprise wouldn’t have anything to do with your friend C.W., would it?” I asked.

  “It might,” she said cheerily. “I thought maybe I’d give her a call. Tell her what a good guy you are. Could be she could talk Bill into seeing you.”

  “Why don’t you just give me her name and address, and let me handle it?”

  Laurel shook her head. “No, I got to talk to her first. It wouldn’t be right just to sic you on Bill without explaining things.”

  I admired the girl’s sense of fair play, but acting as a go-between could put her at risk, especially if the drug rumors proved out. On the other hand, unless she was willing to give me C.W.’s name or I found it through another source, I didn’t see where I had a choice. I temporized by telling her to wait until I gave her the okay before sounding C.W. out, and not to approach Parks himself under any circumstances. “Just leave Bill to me.”

  She nodded nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t heard what I’d said. I put my hand on her arm and squeezed it hard enough to get her attention.

  “Ouch!” she said.

  “Do you understand me, Laurel?” I said. “Leave Parks to me.”

  “Yeah, goddamn it!”

  I let go of her arm.

  “I don’t like being treated like that,” she said angrily. “I’ve had enough of that kind of shit in my life. My father used to put his hands on me all the time. And so did Dicky.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Hurting somebody so they won’t get hurt?” She gave me a long-suffering look, as if that were the sort of logic she was used to hearing from her men. “The only way I’m going to get in trouble is if you let somebody know what I told you tonight. I mean, about the drugs.” She looked me over carefully. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Harry?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t.”

  “Good.” She got out of the car. “See you tomorrow?”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “You better show up, mister,” she said, putting a tough look on her face. “You owe me something.” She turned to go, then glanced back coyly over her shoulder. “Get my drift?” she said with a wink, and walked off, hips swaying, into the club.

  ******

  I hadn’t been surprised by what Laurel had told me about Parks. It was merely the dark side of the picture that Otto had painted the night before, a picture of a man who couldn’t love without inflicting pain, who couldn’t compete without punishing, who probably drove himself hardest of all, like the narcissistic bodybuilders I’d seen in Kaplan’s club. A man who had mistaken physical strength for all of manhood, like the boys for whom the muscle magazines were designed. I didn’t for a moment doubt the fierceness of his heart, the competitiveness that Bluerock admired. And maybe it was also true that Parks had been made the way he was by other people—parents, lovers, coaches, club owners—who had bred him to violence like a pit bullterrier. Maybe that’s what it took to be a great football player, but I didn’t have to like it.

  I didn’t have to like the probability of drug abuse, either, although I certainly wasn’t surprised by it. I guess it would have been more surprising if a man like Parks didn’t take something to dull the pains and feed the fires inside him. I wasn’t even surprised to hear that he might have gotten his goods from Walt Kaplan, the guru of health and fitness. It certainly helped to explain why Walt had such a devoted following. You hear that sort of thing all the time, anyway—agents supplying their athletes with drugs to get them to sign, to keep them happy, to keep them indebted. It’s a way of life in the eighties, and not just for football players. However, it did shock me that the rumor was so current that a girl like Laurel had heard it. If Laurel had heard it, I figured the DEA couldn’t be far behind. Or the grand jury that Petrie had mentioned. All of which put an entirely different complexion on what Kaplan had told me, and on the case itself. I hadn’t bargained on butting heads with drug dealers, especially drug dealers who were as outsize and dangerous as Professor Walt. His warning to lay off Bill seemed a lot more persuasive, now that I knew the reasons behind it. I wasn’t about to risk my life or anyone else’s to help the Cougars to a winning season.

  If I confirmed what Laurel had told me, I figured I’d give Hugh Petrie one more day of my time. I’d locate Bill’s fiancée for him, even if I had to use Laurel to do it. And if Bill was with C.W., fine. If not, I’d leave a message in her mailbox, report back to the Cougars, an
d let them negotiate with Walt Kaplan.

  12

  I DECIDED to drop in on Otto Bluerock before I called it a night, to see if he could confirm the drug rumors or help me out with C.W.’s name and address. I wasn’t sure if he was going to tell me anything. There was a code of silence among athletes, especially when it came to the drug problems of their peers. And even if there weren’t an unwritten law on the subject, Otto had already proved that he was old-fashioned enough to value things like friendship and loyalty. What I was hoping was that he’d see the peril of my position and throw a little of that friendship and loyalty my way. Without his help, I’d have to rely on Laurel exclusively to locate C.W. And I didn’t want to do that if I didn’t have to.

  At half past twelve I pulled up in front of Bluerock’s dispirited-looking Victorian house on Wheeler Street. It was a hot moonlit night, and there were still a few college kids sitting on their front porches, listening to WEBN on the radio and getting high—or higher. I couldn’t see their faces in the dark, but I could hear their chatter and their music and see the flare of a joint dancing like a firefly from hand to hand. I walked up to Otto’s sagging porch, which creaked ominously underfoot, and knocked on the door several times.

  A moment or two passed. Then I heard a stomping in the hallway behind the door, as of an elk or a bear or a giant in snowshoes. The door opened a crack and Bluerock peered out malevolently. When he saw that it was only me, he opened the door a little wider. His bulldog face was grizzled with two day’s growth of beard. His eyes were swollen with sleeplessness and suspicion, and there was a purple bruise above his left brow, shaped like the business end of a nightstick.

  “What the fuck do you want!” he bellowed.

  “Glad to see you, too, Blue,” I said with a smile.

  Bluerock ran a hand through his short brown hair and stared past me toward the street and the late-night camp fires burning on the distant porches.

  “I’ve only been here a day,” he said, “and already I want to move. Listen to that shit!”

  A few riffs of electric guitar drifted across Wheeler and settled with the bang of a drum kit at Bluerock’s feet. Otto winced.

  “It’s like my worst nightmare,” he said, with real pain in his voice. “I’m out of work and surrounded by phonies.” He stepped further out on the porch, cupped his hands at his mouth, and shouted, “Shut the fuck up over there!”

  The music went off abruptly and was replaced by the sound of high-pitched nervous laughter.

  “They’re laughing at me!” Bluerock said with astonishment. “I ought to go over there and twist their legs off.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I won’t stop you.”

  He gave me a wry look. “What’s troubling you, sport? You’re supposed to be the cool head around here. Talk me out of this shit.”

  “Tonight you’ll have to fend for yourself.”

  “Had a bad day, huh?” he said dryly. “Try to imagine what mine was like.”

  “Hey, you brought some of it on yourself.”

  “I didn’t bring this crap on,” he said, sweeping one huge hand across the porch. “This is God’s handiwork, my friend. It’s his way of clueing us in to the fact that the end of time is near. We’re in the latter days.” He laughed hoarsely. “I heard some cocksucker say so on the radio tonight. Sounded just like Reverend Jimmy.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Rev Jim? He’s the dildo who says the team prayer.”

  Bluerock opened the door and went back inside. I followed him in. The downstairs was dark and swelteringly hot. Bluerock walked into the darkness and clicked on a lamp, lighting up a small, surprisingly neat living room. The furniture wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t the hodgepodge I’d half expected. There were even drapes on the windows and two teak bookshelves on either side of the mantel. If I hadn’t noticed the stack of comics by one of the couch legs and the chrome snout of a barbell peeking out from behind an upholstered chair, I would have thought I was in a rented room.

  “Who did the decorating in here?” I asked him.

  “My old lady,” he said.

  “You’re married?” I said with surprise.

  “I used to be,” Bluerock said in a voice that indicated that that was all he had to say on the subject. But from the condition of the house, it was pretty clear that he’d lost interest in the place once his wife had left him. I tried to picture the woman who would have tried to domesticate Otto and drew a blank.

  Bluerock dropped heavily onto the couch and propped his feet on a walnut coffee table. He was wearing a sleeveless sweatshirt, and in the lamplight I could see that the armholes were stained with sweat. Sweat covered his forehead too. Otto propped his hands behind his head and stared at me.

  “Do me a favor, Stoner,” he said. “Next time, call before you show up. This isn’t a fraternity house.”

  “You told me to get in touch after I’d talked to Professor Walt.”

  “I said to call, not invite yourself over. What did that douche bag have to say, anyway?”

  “According to Walt, your boy Billy has turned over a new leaf. He’s settled down, made peace with his past, and plans to get married to a wonderful girl named C.W. Something. I don’t know her last name.”

  “O’Hara,” Bluerock said dully. “C.W. O’Hara. And, believe me, the W doesn’t stand for Wonderful.”

  “C.W. O’Hara—that’s a help,” I said, and eyed him balefully. “You might have told me about her last night, Blue.”

  “C.W. and I aren’t exactly what you’d call pals,” he said.

  “Well, she’s pals with Parks. And according to Kaplan, the only reason Bill left camp was over a contract dispute.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Bluerock said with a sneer.

  “The contract dispute?”

  “Yeah, the contract dispute,” he said, giving me a long-suffering look. “What the hell did you think I was talking about?”

  To be honest, I was happy—and a little perplexed by the fact—that he was talking at all. “How do you know that he didn’t leave because of his contract?” I asked. “That’s what Petrie gave as the reason. Bill’s apparently got some money problems to go along with his legal hassles.”

  “Petrie!” Bluerock snorted. “What does that putz know about what’s going on in the locker room? The night before Bill ducked out of camp we went out drinking together, and he didn’t say a word about contracts, money, or the law.”

  “What did he talk about?”

  “His mother, Jewel. A Mormon bitch who lives out in Missoula, Montana. I met her once, when she came through here with Bill’s old man. The only things she had on her mind were the end of time and who was going to hell and who was going to be a saint. It was pretty goddamn depressing.”

  “What did Parks say about her?”

  “Not much really,” Bluerock said. “Talking to Bill is like opening a new bottle of ketchup—you gotta wait a while before anything comes out. Sometimes you wait and nothing happens. That’s the way it was on Monday. Of course, he was stewed to the gills and so was I, so that might have had a bearing on it. I think maybe Jewel had been lecturing him about C.W. again. C.W.’s a Baptist, and they’re goddamn heathens to the Mormons. Bill doesn’t usually talk about Jewel unless she’s giving him some kind of grief. She made him pay a lot of dues when he was a kid.”

  I thought about what Laurel had said about C.W.’s attempts to “convert” Bill. Apparently that was part of an old and somewhat surprising pattern in Parks’s life, although I could have guessed that his past had been pretty damn strange. It just turned out to be strange in an unexpected way. It occurred to me that marrying a pregnant girlfriend—and a Baptist, at that—probably wouldn’t sit too well with his strict Mormon mother. Though it seemed absurd in a tough cookie like Parks, it was just possible that he’d left camp in order to run home and explain things to Mom.

  “Did Parks’s mother know that he was going to marry C.W.? Or that she was seven months pregnant?” />
  “I didn’t know that they were going to get married or that she was pregnant,” Bluerock said. “But then, like I said, C.W. and I didn’t get along, and Bill knew that. I haven’t seen her since last December. In fact, I didn’t see Billy until the minicamp in May.”

  “What is it you don’t like about C.W.?” I said, out of curiosity.

  “She’s another version of Bill’s batty mother,” Bluerock said grimly, “full of the same crooked crap. An amen sister with a streak of self-righteousness a mile wide and the morals of a whore. I knew she’d sunk her hooks into Bill last fall. I guess I just didn’t know how deep. I always thought he put up with her Christian bullshit to score some steady ass. But if she reminded me of Jewel, I guess she must have reminded Bill of her too. A lot of football players end up marrying their mothers. Hell, did you ever take a good look at the wives’ section? It’s like staring at a shelf of bread.”

  I laughed. “Well, this loaf has some bruises on it. From what I hear, Bill beats her up pretty regularly.”

  “Yeah, and she loves it,” Bluerock said with contempt. “It gives her an excuse to tattle with the other players’ girlfriends. C.W.’s a shrewd little bitch. The way she looks at it getting slapped around gets her to heaven faster. Not to mention giving her a leg up on the other football wives. C.W. is always looking for an edge, a way to boost herself into the main ring. Self-pity and Jesus are her stepladder to glory. She’s just another cunt, looking to score a football player and to get respectable all at once. I used to think Bill had enough on the ball not to get caught up in her game. But maybe I was wrong.”

  “Do you think C.W. was why Parks left camp?” I asked. “Do you think he went back to Missoula, to settle things with Jewel?”

  Bluerock chewed on his lower lip. “I don’t know, sport. I’m beginning to wonder about why he left, myself.”

  Chewing his lip was about as close as I’d seen Bluerock get to expressing a doubt. And I was certain that his doubts went a lot deeper than he was letting on. I had the feeling that that was why he’d suddenly decided to talk to me about Bill. Of course, he hadn’t really said anything that could get Bill in hot water—nothing about the drugs that Laurel said Parks had been abusing. And nothing about Kaplan’s part in supplying them. While Parks might have left camp to visit home, I couldn’t see Bluerock getting worked up about it. But if he thought his friend was in some cocaine trouble, that would be a damn good reason to get worried. And he had shown a special interest in my conversation with Walt Kaplan. I had nothing to lose by bringing the subject up.