Choke (4 page)

Her male companion walked through the cockpit and stepped ashore. “Hi, I’m Dan Hailey,” he said, shaking hands.

“I’m Chuck Chandler, and this is my boat,” he said, nodding at
Choke.
“Where’re you in from?”

“Fort Myers was our last port,” Dan said. “We’ll be here for the rest of the winter, I think.”

“Let me know if you need any local knowledge,” Chuck said. “I’ve only been here for a few days myself, but I’ll tell you whatever I can.”

“Thanks,” Meg replied. “You can start by pointing me at a grocery store.”

“The Waterfront Market is just along the way. I’m headed that way; I’ll show you, if you like.”

“Be right with you,” she replied and jumped back aboard the yacht.

“You here for just the winter, too?” Dan asked.

“Maybe longer,” Chuck replied. “I’ll see how it goes.”

Meg returned wearing a T-shirt over her bikini and carrying a purse. “Be back in half an hour,” she said to Dan and kissed him on the cheek. She fell in beside Chuck, and they walked toward the market.

“So, you’re new here, too?” she asked.

“Yeah, I came down from Palm Beach just recently.”

“You going to play some tennis?” she asked, looking at his clothes.

“I teach tennis,” he replied. “Even on Sundays.”

“Sounds like a tough life,” she said, smiling.

“I bear up.” He returned her smile. “Well, here we are,” he said, pointing at the market entrance. “Anything they don’t have here you’ll have to drive to a supermarket for.”

“Thanks,” she said. “See you later.”

He watched her pick her way, barefoot, over the gravel and enter the store.
Thank God she’s married,
he thought. Otherwise she’d be real trouble. Not that her being married would slow him down; it was just that if she were single it would be harder to break it off when it was over. Clare was going to be available only when Harry was out of town, and it might be good to have another diversion.

He got into the old Porsche and headed for the other end of the island. As he drove through the intersection of Caroline and Elizabeth streets, Harry Carras’s Mercedes crossed just ahead of him.
Good thing I didn’t stay the night,
he thought.

He parked the car and approached the tennis club; a teenage boy was hitting with Victor, and he was stopped in his tracks by the boy’s grace of movement. He let himself into the court.

“Morning, Chuck,” Victor said. “This is Billy Tubbs; he’s interested in working with you, I think.”

Chuck shook hands with the boy, whose face was nearly blank of expression. He was at least six-two, 190 pounds. He seemed to be looking Chuck over very carefully.

“And this is Billy’s dad, Norman Tubbs,” Victor said, waving toward a short, thickly built, hairy man who was rising from a courtside bench. He and his son didn’t resemble each other.

“How y’doin’?” Norman said.

“Glad to meet you, Norman. Why don’t you and I sit down and watch Billy hit with Victor.”

“Okay,” Tubbs said.

Chuck watched the boy hit ground strokes for a few minutes, making a mental note or two. “Feed him some volleys, Victor,” Chuck called out, then watched as Billy returned them for another ten minutes. “Let me see you serve to Victor, Billy,” he called.

Billy sliced in a few serves.

“Now let’s see you return Victor’s serve.”

Victor served a dozen hard ones to the boy. He got most of them back, but not particularly well.

Norman Tubbs spoke up, handing Chuck a sheet of paper. “Here’s his numbers for last season,” he said.

Chuck looked over the sheet. “Okay, that’s enough,” he called out. “Come on over here and sit down a minute, Billy.”

The boy walked over to the bench and stood, leaning against the netpost, breathing hard.

“Norman, do you mind if Billy and I talk for a few minutes? Just the two of us?”

“I’ll be the one who makes the decision about who coaches him,” Norman said. “You can talk to me.”

“The boy has some problems that he and I need to discuss before I decide whether to take him on,” Chuck said, not unkindly. “When he and I are finished, then you and I can talk.”

Norman looked at him for a moment, then got up and left the court with Victor.

Chuck turned back to the boy. “Have a seat, Billy; let’s talk.”

“I’m okay,” Billy said.

Bad sign. If he wouldn’t sit when he was told, there was a lot he might not do.

“Okay, you stand. What kind of a player do you think you are? No need to be modest.”

“I’m a damned good player,” Billy replied.

“How’d you do in competition your junior year?”

“I was runner-up in the state high school championship.”

“Well,” Chuck said, “I guess that makes you a
pretty good high school player.”
He waited for that to sink in. “What do you want to do with your tennis in the next few years?”

“I want to join the pro tour as soon as I graduate in June.”

Chuck kept himself from laughing. “Well, let me tell you what I saw this morning. I saw a pretty good high school player who’s got some nice ground strokes and who’s a pretty good volleyer and who has a decent second serve.”

“Second serve?
” Billy said, astounded. “I didn’t even hit any second serves!”

“You mean that was your
first
serve?” Chuck asked, looking surprised. He looked at the sheet of paper in his hand. “I guess that explains why you only won fifty-two percent of your firstserve points last year.”

The boy glowered at him, but said nothing.

“Let me tell you what I see,” Chuck said, “and if you’re still standing there when I’m finished, we’ll see if we have anything to talk about.”

“Okay,” the boy said.

“First of all you’re using a western grip on your forehand …”

“You sound just like my high school coach,” Billy said. “My dad says I don’t have to listen to that schmuck to be good.”

“Your high school coach sounds like he’s smarter than you think.”

“I’m doing okay with my grip; it feels natural to me.”

“Let’s go on,” Chuck said, “and shut up until I’ve finished. You’re hitting a two-handed backhand, which you’ve probably been doing since you were six, but you’re not six anymore. You’ve got to learn to move your feet when you volley, and you’ve got to learn to hit a flat, hard first serve if you expect to get beyond being a
pretty good high school player.
You’ve got to learn how to place your serve, too, and you’ve got a long way to go on your return of service. Your returns are weak, just setups for a good player. Am I making any sense?”

“Some, I guess,” the boy replied, and his face was red.

“Good. And on top of everything else, you’re in lousy shape; you’ve been drinking too much of your old man’s beer. If you sign on with me, there’ll be no more of that. I’ll run your ass off. However, if you’ll shed some of your weight and your arrogance, and if you play the way I tell you to, I can probably get you a tennis scholarship at a good university, and if you keep learning while you’re in college, then you might make a pretty good touring pro. Then, if you have a good temperament and strong nerves, you might win some tournaments. In three months, I’ll be able to tell you if you can make it.”

The boy stared at the ground for a moment. “Okay,” he said, finally.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I’ll do it your way for a while.”

“You’ll do it my way every day for as long as I coach you, kid, or you’ll do it for somebody else,” Chuck said. “You better understand that up front. I don’t need your daddy’s money to get along, and I sure as hell don’t need any lip from a
pretty good high school player.”
It had been a lie about not needing his daddy’s money, but if the boy suspected his coach needed him, he’d be impossible to handle. “Do we have an understanding?”

“Yeah,” the boy said.

“Try ‘Yes, sir,’”Chuck said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, now go tell your dad I’d like to talk to him.”

Billy walked off the court, and a moment later Norman Tubbs came and sat down next to Chuck. “The boy’s good, huh?” he asked.

“Not nearly as good as you think he is,” Chuck said. “He’s got a lot of problems.”

“Listen, that boy beat just about everybody they threw at him last year,” Tubbs said.

“Norman, he was playing
high school kids.”

“So, you want to coach him?”

“If I can do it by myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t want you at practices.”

“Why not? I can help you control him.”

“I won’t have any trouble controlling him if you’re not around to take his side.”

“I’ve helped that boy,” Tubbs said.

“Norman, the best way you can help that boy is to give him only one instruction: ‘Do what your coach says, or I’ll kick your ass.’”

Norman looked at the ground. “It’s not that I want to interfere.”

“Norman, that boy has a very great deal of talent,” Chuck said. “But his game is all screwed up, and part of his trouble is that two people—his high school coach and you—have been telling him what to do. He needs just one voice in his ear, and that has to be me, if I’m going to coach him. To tell you the truth, I don’t think there’s anybody else in town who can teach him what he needs to know.”

Tubbs sighed. “All right; I’ll stay out of it. What’s it going to cost me?”

“Seventy-five bucks an hour, two hours a day, six days a week,” Chuck replied, then tried not to hold his breath.

“That’s what I figured,” Tubbs said.

“Tell him he has to go to college, too, or you won’t pay.”

“No problem there. I want him to go to college.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Norman. If he listens to me and plays the way I tell him to, by the time he’s a sophomore, the agents will be all over him. You’ll have to resign yourself to that; he’s not going to want to come home and go into the beer distribution business.”

“That’s kind of what I thought,” Tubbs said resignedly.

“Okay, then,” Chuck said, standing and offering his hand. “Send him over here, and we’ll get started.”

Chuck played a set with the boy and beat him six-love, ran him all over the court, humiliated him. When they were done he sat him down on a bench. “That’s what it’s like to play against a pro,” he said, “even a forty-four-year-old pro. Are you beginning to get the picture?”

Billy nodded, sucking in wind. “Yes, sir,” he said.

Chuck went into the pro shop to see who his next lesson was with. Merk looked up from his calculator.

“How’d you get on with Norman Tubbs and his boy?”

“He’s going to do two hours a day, six days a week, at seventy-five an hour.”

Merk beamed. “Now
that’s
good news.”

“The news isn’t all good, Merk; I’m going to keep fifty of it.”

“What?
”

“Merk, if you’d dealt with Tubbs, you’d have charged him fifty and kept twenty-five. You’re not losing on the deal.”

Merk nodded resignedly. “You’ve got a point.”

That was two bluffs Chuck had pulled off in half an hour. He was very pleased with himself.

T
ommy Sculley took a seat across the desk from his boss, the chief of police. “Welcome to Key West, Tommy,” the chief said.

“Thank you, sir,” Tommy replied, on his best behavior.

“I hear you got off to a roaring start, calling in that exploding yacht.”

“Yes, sir; I was having dinner at Louie’s, and it came with the dessert.”

“I’m going to tell you something you already know, Tommy: Key West ain’t New York.”

“You’re right, I knew that,” Tommy replied.

“For instance, I know you spent your last dozen years on the NYPD in homicide, that homicide is your forte, so to speak.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Well, last year we had a four hundred percent increase in homicides in Key West.”

“Four hundred percent?”

“That’s right. Of course, the year before, we only had one, so when we had four last year, it looked pretty big.”

Tommy laughed. “You had a year with
one
homicide? The guys in New York would never believe it.”

“In a normal year we get two, so you can see it’s not worth our while to have a homicide bureau as such.”

“I guess not.”

“Everybody does a little bit of everything around here. On your tour, you’ll take every call for a detective that comes in and some patrolman’s calls, too, if we’re busy. You’ll deal with everything from armed robbery to domestic violence, and in Key West that last category applies to as many homosexuals as heterosexuals.”

“Yeah, I heard you had a big gay population.”

“Big and valuable. They own shops and galleries, restaurants and bars, they’re waiters and doctors and professionals of all sorts, and they make a big economic contribution to the town. So you can see why we treat them with the utmost courtesy and respect, just as we treat everybody else.”

“I get the picture.”

“I hope you do, because there’s no room for a homophobe on this force. If you hold those views, my advice is to keep them to yourself, even with your brother officers, because some of them are gay.”

“I have no problems with gays, sir.”

“You should also know that, generally speaking, a record number of arrests is not something I look at with admiration. I like to think of my force as problem-solvers as well as enforcers. My policy is, if you can deal fairly with a situation, defuse it instead of busting somebody, that’s better than an arrest. The exception to that rule is anything involving violence. I won’t have it on my streets, and if you come across something as simple as a fistfight, haul in the perpetrator, if you can figure out who he is, and both of them if you can’t. We’ll sort it out later.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Something else to keep in mind is that although our population is less than thirty thousand, we have two million tourists a year in this town. They’re our lifeblood, and we do everything we can to treat them well. Again, violence is the exception to leniency.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

“You’ll get the hang of the paperwork in a hurry; it’s standard stuff, probably not much different from what you had in New York. Oh, and I have a partner for you.” He looked up through the glass door of his office. “And here he comes now.”