Life's Work (8 page)

"What kind of measures?" I said curiously.

Petrie shrugged. "It's just scuttlebutt, but two guys from Youngstown who tried to set up a rival health club turned up mysteriously dead in a Little Miami culvert a couple of years ago. It was an unsigned picture, but Walt was generally given the credit."

"He killed them?" I said.

"That's how the story goes," Petrie said without batting an eye. "I know for a fact that he's worked over several guys who got on his bad side. He's got a couple of goons on his payroll who are built like refrigerators."

"I think I met one of them," I said, thinking of Mickey. "He's never threatened you guys, has he?"

"Not with violence," Petrie said. "Walt's too clever for that. Plus he's made friends in the media. You know, it used to be that your average fan dreamed of being a football star. But the yuppie of today has set his sights higher than that. He doesn't want to be a player, he wants to be an owner. He wants to buy and sell flesh, he wants to run a team. Most of your media men understand that, and so does Walt. In fact, the first thing he did during the last negotiation was get himself on the Trumpy show, where he could wail about the incompetence of ownership. He called us names in the Enquirer. He got interviewed by Dennis Jansen on the tube. There was nothing unusual about his tactics -negotiating through the press, fueling fan resentment. He was just a little better at it than most of them are, a little smoother and a little smarter and a little more reasonable-seeming. And then he got lucky. Somehow, the national media got hold of the story, and SI had an article using Bill as an example of the inequity of the player-management setup. The whole thing snowballed, and we ended up with a public relations nightmare, while this dumbbell with three assault arrests and his smooth-talking thug of an agent played the put-upon innocents. Eventually Bill got most of what he wanted -a raise, a bonus, incentives, the works. Of course, we got a piece of what we wanted too -a long-term agreement to protect our investment."

Petrie picked up the beer again and drained the glass. "Three weeks after we'd signed the deal and all the publicity had died down -three weeks, mind you- Parks came in to talk to me. He told me he was broke, and asked if I could arrange an interest-free loan for him. Now, I'd just got done signing a bonus check with his name on it for over one hunded fifty thousand dollars. I said to him, 'How the hell could you be broke, Bill?' You know what he told me? He'd signed the entire bonus over to Kaplan. Not only that, but Kaplan got a healthy bite out of his first year's salary to boot. And that, my friend, is why Bill Parks wants to tear up the deal his agent blackmailed us into and renegotiate now. To get back to even." Petrie laughed with disgust. "The hilarious part is that Kaplan will probably do the negotiating again. And I'm not about to sit around and get raped by that son-of-a-bitch a second time. This time we're going to talk directly to Bill. And if Kaplan tries to pressure us through the media again, we'll pressure back. This is one we're not going to lose. A man's word has got to mean something, even if he is a fucking football hero."

"Kaplan gets that big a bite of Parks's contract?" I said.

"Fifteen percent, right off the top. But even if Kaplan hadn't soaked him for a couple hundred grand, somebody else would have. Somebody is always ready to spend a man like Bill Parks's money."

"Couldn't you do something about that?"

"Like what?" Petrie said. "Talk him out of it? Who are you going to listen to? The guy that tells you to plan ahead because someday the money's going to dry up? Or the guy who tells you that they can't pay you enough? That management is just sitting back and raking in the dough?"

I looked around the room. "Seems like you're doing all right."

"I make a good living," he said. "I don't apologize for that. But so do they. Answer me this, Stoner -how much is enough? How much do you have to pay in order to pay someone what he's worth? Can you put a dollar figure on it?"

"Whatever the market will bear, I guess."

"We offered Parks three hundred thousand dollars a year, plus incentives, for five years. Is that enough? A million and a half dollars for playing a fucking game that he'd play even if nobody paid him a dime? Should I be penalized because he doesn't have sense enough to think for himself? Because he can't run his own life? Or because he has 'personal' problems, and a thief for an agent?"

"I suppose not," I said.

Petrie got off the stool and walked back over to the machines. "Look, I got things to do tonight," he said, as he boosted himself onto a chinning bar. "I gave you the facts. Are you going to stay on the case, or what?"

"I'll stick," I told him. "But I'm still not going to involve myself in a drug case. If I find out that Bill does have a nose problem, I'm going to throw him back to you."

"Fair enough," Petrie said and went on with his dips.

I walked back upstairs and showed myself out.
 

I had dinner at In The Wood in Clifton and spent a couple of hours listening to Katie Laur sing jazz at Arnold's on Eighth Street. Around nine, I drove down to the Waterhole to find Laurel Jones and try to weasel the name of Parks's girlfriend out of her.

There was a new doorman standing beneath the canopied entryway of the club. Which was probably a break for me. He didn't look any different from the other one, right down to the red suit and the billycock hat. As I walked up to him, I caught a whiff of cheap cologne coming off his mottled face, a smell like rotten bananas in a straw basket. I must have winced a little, because he smiled the way people do when they think they've embarrassed themselves but aren't sure how they've done it.

"You waiting for valet parking?" he said, as if he thought that that was why I'd given him the funny look.

I shook my head.

"'Cause we don't have valet service."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not waiting for it."

He nodded uncertainly.

"Actually," I said, "I'm looking for a friend, a girl named Laurel Jones. Do you know her?"

"They're a lot of girls in there, mister," he said without interest.

I dug a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and slapped it into his palm. I must have pressed the right button, because his mangy little face lit up like a store window going on for the night.

"Laurel Jones?" he said, as if he were scratching his head. "Blond? Early twenties? Nice build?"

"That's the one."

"Yeah. Come to think of it, I think she might be here tonight." He grinned at me. We were pals now. We'd broken bread together. "Tell you what, you ask Clay the bartender. Tell him Willie says you're okay."

"There's a recommendation," I said.

He smiled feebly, as if he didn't quite catch the joke. I pushed past him into the club.

The place was even more crowded than it had been on Thursday night. I worked my way through the maze of tables surrounding the dance floor over to the neon bar with its chrome stools. Clay, the impassive bartender, gave me a small smile. I crooked a finger at him, and he leaned toward me.

"Is your friend Laurel here?" I shouted over the din.

He nodded. "Upstairs with Stacey, in the game room." He pointed to a spiral staircase at the far end of the bar. "How's that friend of yours doing?" he asked with a grin.

"He's all right. I still don't know what got him so pissed off last night."

"I heard he was looking for Bill Parks, and just wouldn't take no for an answer."

"Could be," I said. "You haven't seen Parks in here tonight, have you?"

"Nope. Haven't seen him in weeks."

He flashed me the peace sign and turned back to the bar. I couldn't figure out why he'd been so agreeable, until it occurred to me that Laurel must have told him I was a cop.

I walked down to the end of the bar and climbed the spiral staircase. The second floor of the Waterhole was little more than a railed, four-sided balcony overlooking the dance floor. Pinball machines and video games were stacked against each wall. Most of the machines were occupied, and the noise was incredible -an electronic farrago of beeps, buzzes, sirens, and bells. Every now and then a computerized voice would issue a command or utter a threat in a robotic monotone.

It took me a while, but I finally located Laurel Jones standing with a girlfriend in front of a Galaga machine. She was dressed in a pink short-sleeve sweater and skintight blue jeans, and with her shaggy blond head bobbing over the video screen and her cute little butt swinging in time to the music drifting up from the first floor, she looked very young, very sexy, and very easy. Her friend was a redhead, dressed in a black leotard and black satin pants. She had affected a punk look, but it didn't go very deep, judging by the expert makeup job on her face and the manicured gleam of her long red fingernails.

I stepped up to blond, beamish Laurel and tapped her on the arm.

"Watch it!" she squealed, without looking up. "You're going to make me lose this rocket."

She'd apparently forsaken her vow of maturity, for the time being at least. I stepped back and let her finish the game. Her red-haired friend smiled at me in a speculative way.

"Damn!" Laurel said, when the last rocket had exploded. "Just once I'd like to beat this sumbitch!"

She looked up at her friend with a grin, realized that her friend was looking at me, and turned around.

"You!" she said with surprise. She put on a stern, toetapping face. "I don't think I want to talk to you, Harry. You lied to me."

Her friend arched an eyebrow at me from behind Laurel's back, as if to say that she'd be happy to talk to me if Laurel wouldn't.

"You told me you weren't a cop," Laurel said, wagging a finger under my nose.

The girlfriend's eyebrow collapsed, and her face went as blank as a chalkboard.

"I didn't lie to you," I said. "I'm not a cop. I just told the police that to keep them from killing Otto. Do you think they would have arrested me if they thought I was a cop?"

"And there's another thing," she said. "I don't like your friends, either."

"There doesn't seem to be much about me that you do like."

She squinted at me, and her friend squinted too. "I didn't say I didn't like you," she said. "I just don't want to get in any trouble."

"Well, at least let me buy you and your friend a drink, to make up for last night."

Laurel pretended to think it over. She turned to her girlfriend and said, "What do you think, Stacey?"

Stacey grinned. "I think he's neat."

Laurel jabbed her with an elbow. "Don't you know anything, girl," she said with disgust. "All right." She turned back to me. "We'll have a drink with you. But I'm still mad."

We went back downstairs, the three of us, and found an empty table in a dark corner of the barroom. I got drinks from Clay, who for some reason didn't need a translator on this evening, and brought them over to the girls.

They'd apparently been talking about me while I was gone, because Stacey giggled wildly when she saw me come up to the table, and Laurel jabbed her again -hard- with her elbow.

"Don't pay any attention to her," she said when I sat down. "She's just a kid and she doesn't know any better."

"While you're all grown up," I said.

Stacey giggled again and Laurel glared at her.

"I'm as grown-up as they come around this joint," she said defiantly. She stuck out her chest. "If you've got a hundred dollars, I'll prove it to you."

"If I was a cop, I could bust you for saying that."

"Go ahead," she said. "Arrest me."

I grinned at her and Stacey laughed.

"What's so damn funny?" Laurel said to her.

Stacey shrugged. "I dunno."

"That's your whole problem, girl -you don't know nothing. Why don't you just go over to the bar and find some company of your own?"

Stacey gave me a disappointed look, picked up her drink, and got to her feet. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, I'm sure," she said to me. She stared daggers at Laurel and walked away.

"She's such a child," Laurel said.

"Not too neat, huh?"

Laurel sneered at me. "I still think you're a cop, you know."

"I'm not a cop. I'm a private detective."

"Bullshit!" Laurel said with a giddy laugh.

"Want to see my ID?" I pulled my wallet out and flipped it open to the Photostatic copy of my license. She studied it for a moment. "Is this a joke or something?" she said, tapping the license with her thumbnail.

"No. That's me, all right. Harry Stoner, Private Investigator."

"Well, who the hell are you investigating? Me?"

I shook my head. "I'm trying to find Bill Parks."

"Why?" she said. "What did he do?"

"He didn't do anything. He's a missing person."

"Bill?" She screwed up her face, as if she thought I was putting her on. "This is a joke, isn't it?"

"Uh-uh. He really has disappeared, and I've been hired to find him."

"Hired by who?" she said suspiciously.

I'd already given her Petrie's home phone number, so I saw no reason not to tell her the rest of it. "By the Cougars. By the guy you called up last night."