Figgy licked his lips. “How much?”
“Five Gs. This is a one time offer. The book is ten-six.”
“I haven’t got five Gs.”
Gil moved past him, toward the rear of the apartment.
“Where are you going?”
“Bridgid’s got five Gs. She’s a regular little squirrel with money, everyone knows that.”
Gil went into the bedroom, Figgy hurriedly following. A shaft of sunshine poked through the slightly parted curtains, fell across the bed, spotlighting Bridgid, asleep under a sheet that covered her to the waist.
“Hey,” said Gil. “I never knew Bridgid had such nice tits.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Oh, my God,” she said, tugging at the sheet.
“It’s all right, Bridg,” said Figgy, coming into the room. “Gil wants to sell the car, that’s all.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“His car. The 325i. He’s giving us a deal. Five Gs. The book is ten-six.”
Gil sat on the bed. He smiled at Bridgid. “One time offer,” he said.
Bridgid opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “But we’ve already got two cars.”
“Mine’s a piece of shit, Bridg,” said Figgy. “You know that.”
She looked at Gil, at Figgy, at Gil.
Gil smiled at her again. “Strictly business, Bridg, old girl. No personalities.”
She nodded, glanced again at Figgy, got no help from him, and said: “I’m sure we appreciate the offer, Gil. We’ll have to think it over seriously, of course, think it over and let you know.”
“That’s right,” said Figgy. “Think it over and let you know.”
Gil kept the smile on his face, but it was work. “A onetime offer means a limited-time offer. I thought that was understood.”
“Let’s be businesslike,” Bridgid said. “I don’t see how you can expect-”
Gil grabbed the sheet and yanked it off her. Her body trembled. That made it all the more attractive. “You’re a lucky man, Figgy,” Gil said.
Figgy stiffened, as though he was about to do something; but that was it.
Gil took in the sight for as long as he wanted. Then he rose. “Let’s get going.”
They drove to Bridgid’s bank in the 325i-Figgy at the wheel, Bridgid in front, Gil in back. “Rides like a dream, doesn’t it?” Gil said. The pissy smell was almost undetectable.
With five grand in cash and his knapsack of knives, Gil took a cab to the airport. He unstrapped the thrower and put it in the knapsack as well. Inside the terminal, he paid cash for a ticket, checked the knapsack, passed through security, and boarded the plane. He took a coach seat, a tight squeeze for a man his size, and he didn’t like flying to begin with, but there was no choice. His team was playing on the coast. They needed him.
23
Jewel Stern parked in front of the peeling three-decker. The green garbage bags were no longer on the porch. She was about to buzz number four, Renard, when she saw that the front door was open an inch or two. She went in.
On either side were the doors to one and two; ahead, the stairs. She climbed them. At the next landing, she found number three on her left and a dim corridor on her right. She followed it, past a closed and numberless door- the bathroom; she could hear the toilet running-to number four at the end. Like the front door, it too was slightly ajar. She pushed it open a little more so she could see inside.
The room was small and without belongings: no clothes, no papers, no bedding. Deserted, abandoned, tenantless: except for the man in jeans and a T-shirt, standing at the window, his back to the door. Jewel cleared her throat.
He wheeled around. A slightly built man with wire-rim glasses, freckles, and red hair, graying at the sides, thinning on top.
“Mr. Renard?” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Remembering Bobby Rayburn in the pool, she wondered whether she had advanced beyond merely making men emotionally uncomfortable, as her mother would have it, to some ultimate disjunctive phase of physically terrifying them.
Like Bobby, the red-haired man said, “You didn’t scare me.”
“Of course not,” Jewel said.
His eyes, narrow to begin with, narrowed some more. “Who are you?”
“Someone looking for Gil Renard. Have I found him?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Nor you mine.”
“The difference is,” said the red-haired man, unfolding a badge, “I’m a cop.”
Jewel crossed the room and read it. The red-haired man was a sergeant in some town up north she’d never heard of. His name was Claymore.
“Has there been a crime?” she said.
Sergeant Claymore stuck out his jaw. She could picture him as a kid: scrawny red-haired scrapper. “I’m still waiting,” he said.
“Jewel Stern,” she said. “I’m a reporter.” She handed him her press card.
He examined it carefully. “What kind of reporter?”
“Sports,” she said. “Baseball, particularly.”
He gave it back. “And what are you doing here?”
“Working on a story.”
“What story?” he asked, and before she could settle on just the right evasive answer, his eyebrows, bushy and rust-colored, went up and he said, “Don’t tell me he still plays ball?”
“Who?” said Jewel.
“Gil Renard. Isn’t that who you said you’re looking for?”
She nodded. “But I didn’t know he was a ballplayer.” Her assumptions about the encounter in the men’s room at Cleats began to change shape in her mind.
“I don’t know as he still is,” said Sergeant Claymore.
“But he was?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“At what level?”
“What would you mean by that?”
“The majors? Triple A? Double A?”
Claymore smiled a shy, small-town smile. “Oh, nothing like that, to the best of my knowledge.”
“College? High school? Legion?”
He laughed, embarrassed. “We played Little League together, is all.”
“I see,” said Jewel, although she didn’t, not at all. The puzzle of what had happened at Cleats, barely begun, fell apart completely.
“Getting back to the story you were working on,” he said.
A scrapper. Well, she could scrap too. “I don’t have to tell you.”
He surprised her. “That’s true. Constitutionally, although I’m no expert. But on top of that I’m out of my jurisdiction. And it’s my day off. So you don’t have to tell me a thing.”
“You’re friends, is that it?”
“Who?”
“You and Gil Renard.”
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “Little League.”
“We’re not friends. Never were.”
“Then there has been a crime,” Jewel said.
