R
ODARTE WAS PARKED HALFWAY DOWN THE BLOCK. THE WINDSHIELD
of his car reflected the leafy trees above it, so Griff couldn’t see him. But he stuck his hand out the driver’s window and gave a friendly little wave.
Griff forgot about his apology to Laura Speakman. He jogged to the Honda, scrambled in, and cranked the motor. The tires left rubber in the driveway as he backed out. He sped the short distance and came to a squealing stop a half inch from the grille of Rodarte’s sedan. He was out of the Honda before inertia settled in.
Rodarte was waiting for him. His car engine was idling, but the driver’s window was down. It took all Griff’s self-control not to grab him by the neck and haul him out through that window. “You’re a goddamn coward, Rodarte.”
“Are you trying to hurt my feelings?”
“You hire goons to do your dirty work on men. Women you beat up yourself.”
“Speaking of, how is your favorite whore?” Rodarte laughed at Griff’s expression of rage. “Okay, so I got a little carried away. Why didn’t you report me to the police?”
“That was Marcia’s decision.”
“But I bet you didn’t argue against it, did you? The very thought of police involvement puckers your sphincter, doesn’t it? As for the working over you took, I heard you got jumped by a couple of former fans.”
“They were pros.”
“You know this?”
“You were behind it.”
Rodarte wagged his finger at him. “But you didn’t file a police report. I’ll bet you didn’t tell your lawyer, either. Or your probation officer. Jerry Arnold, right?”
“You know who my probation officer is?” Griff regretted the question as soon as he asked it. It revealed how surprised and alarmed he was to learn that Rodarte was so well acquainted with his life.
Rodarte grinned. “I know lots about you, Number Ten.”
He must. He must have been tailing him or he wouldn’t have known that Griff would be in that particular sports bar the night he sicced the brutes on him. He also wouldn’t have known to find him here, on this street, today. Right now.
Jesus.
And before Griff could even fully process the worrisome implications of that, Rodarte said, “One thing I don’t know is the name of your new gash there.”
Griff turned his head quickly to see Laura Speakman backing her car out of the driveway. Fortunately, she drove away in the opposite direction.
“Real estate agent,” Griff said. “She was showing me the house.”
Rodarte snickered. “You’re looking for a house just after getting settled into your duplex?”
“Turns out I’m not crazy about the neighborhood.”
“Where did you get the money to buy all those fancy toys? Sound system. Big-screen TV. All that.”
Griff’s mind was spinning. He wanted to cram his fist into Rodarte’s mouth because every word from it increased his alarm. Rodarte knew where he lived. He knew how he spent his money. And now he knew about this house. Most alarming was that he might learn about Griff’s arrangement with the Speakmans.
“See,” Rodarte said conversationally, “what I think is, is that before you used your big, strong quarterback’s hands to snap Bill Bandy’s neck, you dipped those hands into his private till.”
“That’s crap and you know it. How could I have taken any money? I was arrested at the scene.”
“A technicality,” Rodarte said with a dismissive gesture. “Before the real heat came down on you, you managed to stash the ill-gotten funds where nobody could find them. They’ve been sitting somewhere, earning interest, waiting on you to get out. Now they’re coming in handy. Just as you planned.”
He paused, frowned, and said sadly, “Only thing is, Griff, the way those Vista boys see it, it’s their money, not yours. They would be real grateful to anybody who could recover it and bring it home to them.”
“In other words, you.”
“I’m just trying to make things easier for you, is all. I’m doing everybody a favor. These guys get their money back, and they just might forget about what you did to poor ol’ Bandy. You see where this is going? How nice it would be for everybody?” His ingratiating smile collapsed. “Where’s the money?”
“You’re delusional. About Bandy. About ill-gotten funds. About every frigging thing. You think if I had money, I’d be driving this piece of shit?” He raised his arm toward the Honda. “A secondhand car I bought from my lawyer?”
Rodarte regarded him for a moment, then said smoothly, “You cut quite a figure in that new Armani jacket.”
Griff tried to keep his expression neutral. “Thanks. It would look like shit on you.”
Rodarte chuckled. “I’m afraid you’re right. I haven’t got the figure.”
“You haven’t got the balls, either. If you did, you’d get out of that butt-ugly car, stop making veiled threats, and fight me like a man.”
Rodarte pulled a face as though considering it. “You sure you want me to do that, Griff? Think hard now.”
Griff was seething, but he knew he could not give vent to his rage. If he laid into Rodarte, he’d be giving the woman-beating son of a bitch exactly what he wanted. “Marcia didn’t have anything to tell you,” he said. “You ruined her face for nothing.”
Rodarte shrugged. “I guess. She didn’t tell me anything useful, and from what I understand she won’t be telling anybody anything for a long time. Wonder if she’s able to give blow jobs, what with her jaw wired shut and all. And something else…” Griff didn’t bite, but Rodarte told him anyway. “You’d think a whore wouldn’t make such fuss over getting it in the ass.”
A tide of red-hot fury washed through Griff.
Rodarte sensed it and grinned. “You ever had her that way?”
Griff had wondered if Rodarte’s assault included rape. He hadn’t asked Marcia because he hadn’t wanted to cause her further distress. And, possibly, he just didn’t want to know exactly how badly she’d suffered on his account. Now that he did, he wanted even more badly to kill the man grinning up at him.
Rodarte nodded toward the house midway down the block. “And what about her? Even from this distance, I could tell your new lady friend has a sassy little butt. Just as well tell me her name. I’ll find out anyway.”
Griff’s outrage went from fiercely hot to icy cold in seconds. The degree of his rage frightened him, and it should have frightened Rodarte. “One of these days,” he said softly, with conviction, with promise, “I’m gonna have to kill you.”
Rodarte dropped the gearshift into reverse and smiled as he backed the car away. “I have wet dreams about the day you try.”
Reluctantly, the concierge rang Marcia’s penthouse. With his back turned to Griff, he spoke in whispers into the telephone until Griff reached across the counter and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Give me the phone. Please,” he added but with impatience. Reluctantly, the man passed Griff the receiver. “Marcia?”
“Actually, it’s Dwight.”
“Hey, Dwight. Griff Burkett. I want to come up.”
“I’m sorry, you can’t.”
“Who says?”
“She doesn’t want company.”
“I need to see her.”
“She’s resting.”
“I’ll wait.”
There was a dramatic sigh, followed by “She’ll probably kill me, but okay.”
Dwight answered the door to the penthouse and stood aside to admit Griff. “This isn’t one of her good days.”
“Mine, either,” Griff returned grimly as he followed Marcia’s neighbor into the spacious living room, where Marcia was reclined on her sofa. She appeared to be sleeping, although it was hard to tell because her head was swathed in bandages.
“She had surgery?”
“The first of many. Three days ago. Her nose had to be rebroken. She’s still got a lot of pain, but they said she was well enough to come home.”
“Generally, how’s she doing?”
“Not very well. She—”
“I can hear you, you know.” Her voice was muffled by the bandages and her jaw still had limited range of motion, but she was her droll self, and Griff took heart in that.
Injecting some levity into his voice, he said, “Hark! The mummy speaks!”
“I’ve got lobster bisque simmering on the stove,” Dwight said. “She’s cranky as a mama bear, but be sweet to her.” He patted Griff on the arm as he passed on his way into the kitchen.
Griff pulled an armchair closer to the sofa and placed it where Marcia could see him without having to turn her head. She said, “If you think I look bad now, just wait till the bandages come off. I’ll be a real freak show.”
She was wrapped neck to ankles in a bathrobe, but he could tell that her lush curves had been diminished. He wondered how much weight she’d lost just since he’d last seen her. He reached for her hand and pressed a kiss onto the back of it. “You couldn’t be a freak show no matter how hard you tried.”
“I’d hate for my own mother to see me like this. Not that she will, since she disowned me years ago.”
“So much for how you look, how do you feel?”
“Stoned.”
He laughed. “Good drugs?”
“I could make a fortune selling this stuff. If only it weren’t against the law. But then so is prostitution.”
“Speaking of breaking the law…” He looked directly into her eyes, which peered at him through a slit in the bandage. “I’m going to the police about Rodarte.”
Her reaction was immediate. “No!”
“Listen to me, Marcia. I know what he did to you. He bragged to me about it not an hour ago.”
She stared up at him for a long moment, then closed her eyes as though to shut out him, her memory, everything. Griff felt the shudder that went through her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“He hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“Bad.”
She opened her eyes then. “I’m a whore. I’ve done everything. But always when I was in control. Having it forced on you is different.” She closed her eyes again. “Believe me.” When she reopened her eyes, she said, “Try explaining that to a cop.”
“I will. You were raped.”
“And he’ll say it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!” He shot up from his chair, sending it over backward. Dwight came running, wearing an apron, a dripping spoon in his hand. “Get back to your bisque,” Griff ordered. Dwight hesitated, then cupped the spoon with his free hand and, walking backward, retreated into the kitchen. The decorator’s almost comical rush to her rescue had defused Griff’s temper. He righted the chair and sat down, taking Marcia’s hand again.
“Rodarte’s not going to give up. The son of a bitch has been stalking me. He knows everything going on in my life. But all that’s nothing compared to sodomy. I’d like to kill him for that. But I can’t, and he knows it. I can’t do anything without violating my probation. He’s going to stay after me, Marcia. Pushing. He’ll continue hurting people close to me. The only option left is to take it to the police.”
“I’m begging you, Griff, don’t.”
“But—”
“Look at me!” Tears filled her eyes. “If you do this, I’ll have a huge spotlight focused on me and my business. Every Bible-thumping Holy Roller—some of whom are clients, by the way—will come out of the woodwork, condemning me and my occupation. It wouldn’t matter to my self-righteous critics that I went to the emergency room, torn and bleeding. They’d say it was punishment befitting my sins.
“If Rodarte is made to answer for himself at all, which is doubtful, he’ll deny the beating and blame it on a customer or boyfriend who was there after him. Probably you. There’s no DNA. He used a condom.” Sourly, she added, “I’m glad of that at least.”
“Christ,” Griff swore, knowing that what she said was probably right. “So you expect me to do nothing?”
“I’m
asking
you to do nothing. I avoided public scrutiny when I was my gorgeous, voluptuous self. Do you think I could endure it looking like
this
? I couldn’t, Griff. I’d jump off the roof first.” She said it in such a way that he believed she would. “The threat of exposure would frighten my clientele away for good. I’d lose everything. If you have any regard or feeling for me at all, let it go. Let it go.” She withdrew her hand from his and closed her eyes.
“I think you should leave now. She needs to sleep.” Dwight had slipped back into the room. His tone wasn’t unkind, but unquestionably he was Marcia’s self-appointed advocate and protector.
Griff nodded and came to his feet. Before turning away, he bent down and kissed Marcia’s closed eyes.
Dwight saw him to the door. “I suggest you call before you come here again.” Griff gave his silent consent with a nod.
In the foyer, he punched the button for the elevator but was so lost in thought, he stood looking into the empty cubicle for several moments before it registered with him that it had arrived.
On the descent, he realized that further argument wasn’t going to change Marcia’s mind. Pressuring her would only add to her mental anguish. He had already inflicted enough suffering on her, and when all was said and done, she was right. Taking this matter to the police would fix a spotlight not only on Marcia but on him. He didn’t want that any more than she did.
No, he would have to solve his Rodarte problem alone, one-on-one with the son of a bitch.
He stopped at the florist’s in the lobby and ordered an orchid plant to be delivered to Marcia’s penthouse. On the enclosure card, he wrote, “Okay. It stays our secret. But he
will
pay.”
He didn’t sign it.
G
RIFF HEARD THE DOORBELL CHIME INSIDE THE HOUSE AND
then approaching footsteps. His gut tightened with apprehension over how he would be greeted. Maybe with the door slammed in his face.
Was coming here a bad idea?
Too late to change his mind now. Because the door was pulled open and he was looking into Ellie Miller’s smiling face.
He waited in dread to see her smile dissolve. Instead, it brightened. “Griff!”
She looked ready to launch herself against him and give him a big hug but checked the impulse and instead reached across the threshold and grabbed his hand with a strength surprising for a woman so petite. She looked him over from head to toe. “You’re thinner.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of swimming, less weights.”
She hadn’t stopped smiling yet. “Come in, come in, we’re standing here letting cold air out, and our electric bill is sky-high as it is.”
He stepped into the house and was instantly enveloped in its familiar scents and sights and textures. He paused to take a look around. The hall tree was where it had always been. The wallpaper hadn’t changed. The framed mirror, which to him had always seemed a little too small for that particular spot, was still there.
“I replaced the living room carpet last year.”
“It’s nice.”
Beyond the carpet, everything was exactly as it had been the last time he was here. Except that the picture of the three of them was no longer on the end table. The photo had been taken minutes after the NCAA national championship victory, he still in his grass- and bloodstained jersey, hair matted down by sweat and the weight of his helmet, standing between Ellie and Coach. Three beaming smiles. Ellie had had the picture framed and prominently displayed within days of the game.
The Millers had never been happier or more proud of him than after that Orange Bowl victory, except maybe the day he signed his letter of intent with the University of Texas. That day this house had been filled to capacity with sportswriters from all over the state. Ellie had fussed over the mess they were making, dropping cookie crumbs and spilling punch. Coach had complained when the TV lights blew out a fuse.
But their grumbling wasn’t taken seriously. It was obvious to everyone there that the couple was bursting with pride over Griff. Not only had he been offered a full scholarship to play football for the university but he was graduating cum laude from high school. Coach’s decision to take him in had been validated. His investment in that recalcitrant fifteen-year-old had paid off, and in ways beyond Griff’s athletic ability.
The four years Griff had played for UT, he was coached by some of the most respected and knowledgeable men in the game. But he still had relied on Coach Miller’s advice. He took everything he’d learned from Coach into that Orange Bowl game with him. It was Coach’s triumph as much as his.
It was later, after signing on with the Cowboys, that Griff stopped listening to his mentor’s advice and started thinking of Coach as a nuisance rather than a sensible guiding hand. The absence of that framed photo on the living room end table spoke volumes about Coach’s feelings toward him now.
“Come on back,” Ellie said, shooing him into the kitchen. “I’m shelling peas. You can buy them already shelled, but they don’t taste as good to me. Want some iced tea?”
“Please.”
“Pound cake?”
“If you’ve got it.”
She frowned at him as though her not having pound cake on hand would happen the day hell froze over. She cleared her pea-shelling project off the kitchen table. He sat down in the chair that had been designated his after his first dinner here and was embarrassed by the unmanly nostalgia that made his throat seize up. This was the only real home he’d ever known. And he’d brought disgrace to it.
“Coach isn’t here?”
“He’s playing golf,” Ellie said with vexation. “I told him it was too blamed hot to play at this time of day, but he hasn’t grown any less hardheaded. In fact, he just gets worse.”
She served the tea and pound cake, and sat down across from him, clasping her hands on the table. He looked at those tiny hands, remembering the bright yellow rubber gloves she’d had on the day he moved in and recalling one of the rare times he hadn’t avoided her touch. He’d had the flu. Sitting on the edge of his bed, she’d laid her palm against his forehead, testing it for fever. Her hand had been soft and cool, and to this day he remembered how good it had felt against his burning skin. To her it had been an instinctual thing to do, but until then, Griff hadn’t known that was what moms did when children complained of feeling sick.
Ellie and Coach had never had children. The reason for that was never explained to him, and even as a teenager he’d had the sensitivity not to ask. Maybe her childlessness had factored into her welcoming that surly and sarcastic boy into her home.
She hadn’t smothered him with motherly affection, which she’d sensed, correctly, that he would have rejected. But with the merest signal from him, she made herself available. She would lend an ear if he wanted to talk through a problem. In a thousand small and subtle ways she had demonstrated the maternal tenderness she obviously felt for him. He could see it in her eyes now.
“It’s good to see you, Ellie. Good to be here.”
“I’m so glad you came. Did you get my letters?”
“Yes, and I appreciated them. More than you know.”
“Why didn’t you write back?”
“I couldn’t find the words. I—” He shrugged helplessly. “I just couldn’t, Ellie. And I didn’t want to cause a rift between Coach and you. He didn’t know you wrote to me, did he?”
She sat up straighter and said smartly, “It’s not up to him what I do or don’t do. I make up my own mind about things.”
Griff smiled. “I know you do, but I also know you support Coach. The two of you are a team.”
She had the grace not to argue that.
“I knew how pissed he was,” Griff said. “He tried to warn me against setting myself up for a big fall. I didn’t listen.”
He distinctly remembered the day that their steadily declining relationship was finally severed. Coach had been waiting for him at his car after practice. The Cowboys’ coaching staff knew Coach Miller well, knew how influential he’d been on their starting quarterback, and always welcomed seeing him.
Griff didn’t. Their conversations had grown increasingly contentious. Coach had no quarrel with his performance on the football field, but he didn’t approve of much else, such as the rate at which Griff went through money.
Griff wanted to know the point of having it if you couldn’t spend it. “You’d be wise to put aside some for a rainy day,” Coach told him. Griff ignored the advice.
Coach also disapproved of the pace of his life. He cautioned Griff against burning the candle at both ends, particularly during the off-season, when he got sloppy with his workouts and kept late hours in the glossy nightclubs of Dallas and Miami, where he’d bought a beachfront condo.
“Discipline got you where you are,” Coach said. “You’ll sink fast if you don’t maintain that discipline. In fact, it should be more rigid now than before.”
Yeah, yeah,
Griff thought. He figured Coach’s dissatisfaction was based on jealousy. He no longer had control over the decisions Griff made or the way he lived his life, and that rankled the older man. While Griff appreciated everything Coach had done for him, he was old school in his thinking. His strict lessons no longer applied. Coach had got him where he was, but now that he was here, it was time to cut the apron strings.
Griff began distancing himself. Their visits became less frequent. He rarely returned his mentor’s phone calls. So he wasn’t happy to see Coach that day he ambushed Griff at his car. With his typical tactlessness, Coach came straight to the point. “I’m worried about your new associates.”
“‘New associates’?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Griff.”
He could only have been talking about the Vista boys, and Griff wondered how Coach knew about them. But then, he’d rarely been able to sneak something past the man. Coach’s vigilance had been a pain in the butt when Griff was a teenager. It was a bigger pain now that he was a grown-up. “You’re the one always harping on me to make friends. I’ve made some friends. Now you don’t like them.”
“I don’t like you getting too friendly with these guys.”
“Why? What’s wrong with them?”
“In my view, they’re a little too shiny.”
Griff guffawed. “‘Shiny’?”
“Slick. Slippery. I don’t trust them. You should check them out.”
“I don’t snoop on my friends.” Looking Coach straight in the eye, he said what he hoped would end the discussion. “I don’t go poking my nose into other people’s business.”
Coach didn’t take the hint. “Make an exception. Do some snooping.”
“What for?”
“See what they’re really about. How do they pay for those fancy limos and chauffeurs?”
“They’re businessmen.”
“What’s their business?”
“A tin mine in South America.”
“Tin mine, my ass. No miner I ever knew needed a bodyguard.”
Griff had heard enough. “Look, I don’t care how they pay for the limos. I like the limos and the chauffeurs, not to mention the private jets and the pussy they get me free for the asking. So why don’t you go away and leave me the hell alone? Okay?”
Coach did just that. It was the last conversation they’d had.
Griff looked at Ellie now and shook his head sadly. “I thought I was smarter than him. Smarter than everybody. When I got caught, Coach denounced me. I didn’t blame him. I understood why he washed his hands of me.”
“You broke his heart.”
He gave her a sharp look. She nodded and repeated solemnly, “You broke his heart, Griff.” Then she laughed lightly. “Of course, he was pissed, too.”
“Yeah, well, it’s probably just as well he’s not here. If he was, I doubt I’d have been invited in for cake.”
“Honestly, I doubt it, too.”
“I knew I took a chance by coming.”
“Why did you? I’m delighted. But why did you come?”
He left the table and moved to the counter. He took a black-eyed pea from the brown paper sack, held the pod between his thumbs and split it open, then shook the peas into the stainless steel bowl. He tossed the empty pod back into the sack.
“I keep hurting people, and I don’t want to.”
“Then stop doing it.”
“I don’t mean to. I just do.”
“How?”
“Just by being me, Ellie. Just by being me.” He turned and rested his hips against the counter, crossed his ankles, folded his arms over his chest, and studied the toes of his boots. They needed another shine. “I’m destructive. It seems to be the curse of my life.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
His head came up, and he looked across at her.
“Stop crying in your beer and tell me what’s going on. Who’s been hurt?”
“An acquaintance. She was hurt bad on account of me. No other reason, just because of her association with me.”
“I’m sorry for that, but it doesn’t sound like it was your fault.”
“Feels like it was. It goes back to…” He gestured as though saying,
back then.
“There’s this guy. Ever since my release, he’s been right here,” he said, holding his palm inches from his nose. “He’s got it in for me, and he’s not going to go away until I’m dust under his heel.”
Griff had kept one eye on his rearview mirror the whole time he’d been driving here. He’d taken a circuitous route, too, doubling back several times, to make certain he wasn’t being tailed by either Rodarte or somebody Rodarte had hired to follow him.
Of course Rodarte would know where the Millers lived. If he’d wanted to get to Griff by harming them, he would have done so. Griff supposed Rodarte didn’t consider Coach as vulnerable as Marcia. The idea of coming up against Coach might even scare him. And it should.
“Are you in trouble, Griff?”
He knew she was asking if he was involved in something illegal again. “No. I swear it.”
“I believe you. So go to the authorities and tell them about this person who’s hounding you and—”
“I can’t, Ellie.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s not acting strictly on his own.”
“You mean—”
“Vista. The same men Coach called slippery, and he didn’t know the half of it.”
“Then you certainly need to talk to the authorities.”
He shook his head, thinking back to what he’d resolved yesterday as he left Marcia’s penthouse. “I’ve been up to my eyebrows in the ‘authorities’ for the past five years. I don’t want anything to do with the authorities.”
He couldn’t report Rodarte’s crime without bringing a lot of shit down on himself and Marcia. The hell of it was, their silence gave Rodarte protection and room to maneuver. Rodarte could make a real menace of himself, and Griff was hamstrung.
“But the police or the FBI need to know if—”
“I no longer trust the system, Ellie. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I’ve formed a good relationship with my probation officer. I think he’s on my side. I want to stay under the radar, do nothing that would call attention to me.”
“And to that murder.”
“And to that murder,” he admitted.
“They never caught the person who killed that Bandy character, did they?”
“No, they never did.”
The silence became dense, stretched out. She didn’t come right out and ask. She didn’t want to insult him by asking. Or maybe she didn’t want to hear the answer. She took a sip of tea, returning the glass to the table with more care than necessary.
“You can’t live your life dodging the bad guys, Griff. You’ll just have to ignore them.”
“I’ve tried. It’s not that easy. In fact, it’s impossible. Ignoring them only makes them more determined to get my attention. And they’ll use other people to do it, to bend me to their way of thinking. I won’t play with them, Ellie. I won’t break the law again. But I don’t want other people getting hurt.”
Specifically, the Speakmans. If Rodarte found out about Griff’s deal with them, he could ruin it, and it was the only thing Griff had going. Beyond that, Rodarte could do irreparable damage to the couple’s reputation. Speakman might be as crazy as a loon, but he seemed like a decent enough guy. He was respected for his community service and for giving away barrels of money to charity.