Authors: Gary Brandner
The Players
THE PLAYERS
Gary Brandner
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
Mike Wilder stood on the sun-deck roof of the Players’ Tea Room and gazed around him at the white-lined tennis courts. From his vantage point twenty-five feet above the ground Mike could see most of the sixteen grass courts, empty now, where the action would begin in three days in the biggest of all tournaments … Wimbledon.
The fussy little man standing next to Mike was an official of the All-England Tennis Club, the organization that ran Wimbledon, and he made no secret of the fact that he was not happy about showing the American journalist around prior to the tournament. He had a hundred other details he should be attending to. However, there was nothing he could do about it. Mike’s name and that of his magazine carried enough clout to get him in almost anywhere but Buckingham Palace.
This visit to Wimbeldon had been a last-minute idea of Mike’s. A message radioed from his transatlantic flight had set it up, and he had come directly here from Heathrow Airport. In addition to the cover story he was doing for
Sportsweek
, Mike would continue to file his syndicated daily column. He thought there might be a thousand words or so in how the arena looked before the battle.
He sniffed derisively at the word “battle.” Mike’s own sport at the University of Missouri had been boxing, and at forty-one he still had the build of a light-heavyweight and a slightly bent nose to go with it. In his personal ranking of sports for toughness, tennis fell somewhere between needlepoint and squat tag.
The truth was that after twelve years writing about sports, professional and amateur, Mike was having serious doubts as to whether any of them had redeeming social value. In an age when governments toppled, leaders fell, nations starved, and races warred, what excuse was there for grown men to make their living playing games? Closer to home, what excuse was there for a grown man to make his living writing about them?
“What are those flowers they’re planting out there?” Mike asked the fussy man, whose name was Landers.
“They’re hydrangeas. We have them put in every year for the tournament. They’re part of the tradition.”
“I see.” Mike stared without appreciation at the pink and blue flowers. Well, why not? If a football game can associate itself with roses, and a horse race with black-eyed Susans, what was the matter with hydrangeas for a tennis tournament?
Tennis. Mike tried to work up some enthusiasm for the game. There was no denying it had changed dramatically in the past ten or fifteen years. It was a big money sport now like all the rest of them. And the payments were at last above the table, now that the staid old rulers of the game had decided the presence of professionals would not defile their stadiums, and had finally allowed them to play in the hallowed tournaments.
The game itself had changed too. Gone forever were the pittypat days with their ritualistic displays of court etiquette. There were still a few of the old-fashioned gentleman players on the international circuit, but they were usually watching the play from the stands by the quarter-final round. The men who stayed around to collect the big prizes were tough, sun-browned fighters who played the game any way they had to in order to win. Mike had once seen an American player who learned his game on Cleveland playgrounds call his gentle French opponent a name so foul that the Frenchman almost fainted on the court. The American didn’t lose another game for the rest of the match.
Wimbledon, of course, retained more decorum than other courts. Here the serious, knowledgeable crowd in the three-tiered stands around Centre Court would still cry, “Shame!” at a player who displayed bad manners. But the players were just as tough as anywhere else. They had to be.
Mike scribbled some notes on his spiral pad and said to Mr. Landers, “Where does the name ‘Wimbledon’ come from? I couldn’t find it in American reference books.”
“I daresay,” Landers sniffed in a tone that conveyed his low opinion of American reference books. “Wimbledon has been the scene of many an historic battle. Canning and Castlereagh, Tierney and Pitt, Lord Winchelsea against the Duke of Wellington. Ethelbert of Kent fought Ceawlin of the West Saxons here. At that time it was known as Wibbas dune, meaning home of the Saxon, Wibba. Through the years the name has evolved through Wipandune, Wibaldowne, Wymblyton, and finally to Wimbledon.”
I’m sorry I asked, Mike thought, but what he said was, “Interesting. Can we walk down now and take a look at Centre Court?”
“If you wish,” Landers said coolly, miffed at having his history lecture dismissed so abruptly.
They walked down through the glassed-in Players’ Tea Room where the action for the next two weeks would be as furious as out on the courts. This was where the hustlers, the wheeler dealers, the money men would vie for the players’ signatures on deals that would run to six figures for some. Here recruiters for other tournaments, advertising men with endorsement contracts, representatives from sporting goods firms would go after the big names—the winners. What was left over would go to the lesser players for a lesser price. The Players’ Tea Room was sometimes called the meat market of international tennis.
A groundsman watched Mike suspiciously as he walked out onto the smooth, hard surface of Centre Court. The man’s scowl implied that he wouldn’t put it past the American to wear cleats on his shoes.
The grass was not the velvety green described so enthusiastically by the British press; rather, it was brownish in color, but the quality of the surface was excellent. At other tennis clubs Mike had seen grass that was a rich shade of emerald, but which tore away in ugly divots under the players’ feet.
It was here on Centre Court, surrounded by the twelve-sided grandstand that the defending Wimbledon champion, Ron Hopper of Australia, would open the tournament on Monday in his first-round match. And it was here that two weeks later this year’s champion would be crowned. Hopper would play all of his matches on one of the three courts that had a grandstand to accommodate the people who wanted to watch the champion. The other players would open on one of the outlying courts. These were separated from one another by walkways ten feet wide, lined with benches. It was in these courts that most of the doubles, mixed doubles, and women’s singles matches would be played. In spite of Billie Jean King, the big attraction at Wimbledon, as at most international tournaments, was the men’s singles.
Mike nodded his thanks to the groundsman and walked off the court. The man inspected Mike’s footprints, then lifted his eyes in apparent relief that his turf remained intact.
Mike walked out to the parking area and said goodbye to Mr. Landers, who looked no less relieved than the groundsman at the American’s departure. He climbed into the waiting taxi where the driver studied a racing paper while the meter clicked merrily.
“Regency House,” Mike said.
“Right you are,” came the cheery reply.
No wonder he’s cheery, Mike thought. This trip will add up to a tidy day’s pay for him. Outside, the gathering dusk pulled a curtain across the streets of Greater South London. Mike leaned back in the seat and tried to think of something
he
could be cheery about. Paula Teal. He would be seeing Paula tonight. For the first time since his plane took off from Kennedy some ten hours before, Mike Wilder smiled.
The man with the knife eased deeper into the shadows. A film of perspiration oiled his face in spite of the chill in the hotel corridor. He wore a loose-fitting camel’s hair jacket. One of his hands was tucked inside the lapel, his fingers gripping the hilt of a heavy hunting knife
.
From where he stood the man could see the closed doors to the three lifts that carried guests up from the lobby. Across from him, just before the hallway made a right-angle turn, was room 313. Every little while the man would leave off watching the lifts and turn to stare at the door. He waited
.
• • •
“Your room is 313, Mr. Wilder,” the desk clerk said. “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in London.”
“Thanks.” Mike Wilder tried to pump sincerity into his voice, but without much success. He did not like London. As yet he had no reason for not liking the city, but he didn’t need one. All he had seen so far was Heathrow Airport, Wimbledon, and the inside of his taxi. Nothing specific to dislike, but he would find something. In his mood of general depression there was not a city on earth that would have pleased him.
“You’re here for Wimbledon, I expect,” the clerk said.
“That’s right. Are you a tennis fan?”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” the clerk admitted. He leaned across the desk as though to pass on some slightly scandalous information. “Actually, I’m rather more keen on rugby league. More of a man’s game, it seems to me, than skipping about in shorts and sneakers.”
Mike lowered his voice to match that of the other man. “Actually, I’m inclined to agree with you. But don’t tell my editor.”
The truth was that Mike’s editor at
Sportsweek
knew all about the writer’s low opinion of tennis as a competitive sport. The whole point in sending Mike to cover Wimbledon was to get one of the biting satiric articles for which he was famous. A Wilder piece that hacked up somebody’s favorite sport or home town always brought a flood of angry letters to the editor, but never failed to increase newsstand sales.
“I’m a bourbon and hamburger man,” Mike had complained in the New York office when he was handed the assignment. “Why would you pick me to go all the way across the ocean and sip pink gin and strawberries while a bunch of inbred Englishmen applaud politely for a couple of glorified Ping-Pong players?”
“I see you’ve already written your lead,” the editor had grinned. “Look at it as a cultural exchange. We let them have you for a couple of weeks in return for sending us the London flu.”
“Funn
ee
.”
Mike had taken the assignment, of course. He made a comfortable living from his column, but these extra commissions were most welcome just now while he was going through a divorce.
“There were two callers for you this afternoon, sir,” the desk clerk said. He took a folded sheet of notepaper from the pigeonhole marked
313
and handed it to Mike.
The message said Paula Teal had phoned, and would he please return her call. Reading it, Mike’s smile returned. It had been a year since he met Paula at a New York publishers’ convention. She was there as an editor representing the London office of Worldwide Publications,
Sportsweek
’s parent company. The two of them had spent only a short time together, but there was an immediate mutual attraction and an unspoken promise of good things to come. With Paula here to act as his guide, the London trip might not be a total loss.
“You said there were two calls?” Mike asked the clerk.
“Yes, sir. The other was a gentleman who left no name or message. He merely asked if you had checked in yet and what your room number was.”
Probably some promoter, Mike thought. He was used to the wheeler dealers with fistfuls of money and other treats trying to get the name of whatever they were pushing—a brand of golf ball or a ski resort or a jumping-frog tournament—into Mike’s column. Those that tried were wised up in a hurry. Nobody bribed Mike Wilder; his column was not for sale. The sharpshooters might try it once, but never a second time. Mike’s icy ridicule in print had sunk more than one promoter’s pet project without a trace.
The clerk touched a bell on the counter, and a smartly uniformed young porter marched forward and took possession of Mike’s room key and his two traveling bags. Mike followed the boy to the elevator alcove and into one of the waiting cars, which he reminded himself to call a lift. It was not one of the new pushbutton models, but operated with a brass tiller which the boy cranked back and forth. Like the rest of the hotel, the car had been recarpeted and the walls resurfaced, but the architectural style placed it solidly somewhere in the 1920s. Regency House had about it a feel of solid respectability without being stuffy. It was a hotel where a man might be comfortable if he did not detest hotels.
As the lift clanked upward Mike pulled off his black-rimmed glasses and slipped them into the breast pocket of his suit coat. Although he had worn glasses since high school, Mike had never lost the habit of yanking them off as soon as he was not required to look at something in detail. A stupid vanity, he knew, for a man of forty-one, but he did it anyway. A couple of years back he had tried a pair of tinted aviator-style glasses with gold rims, but decided they made him look like a pimp or a record company executive. He went back to the old plastic frames, and kept them in his pocket most of the time.
The car gave a shudder in its ascent, and the porter turned, prepared to reassure his passenger that it always did that, then smiled at himself. This man did not look like the type to frighten easily. Despite being a two-pack-a-day smoker and a hearty drinker, Mike made it a point of pride that he kept in shape. He would be embarrassed to be caught at it, but Mike spent fifteen minutes every morning doing situps, pushups, and door-jamb isometrics. There was strength in his face, and a slightly pugnacious look that came from the jutting jaw and the off-center nose.
“Third floor, sir,” the porter said as they clattered to a stop. “If you’ll follow me, please, your room’s just down the corridor.”
Letting the boy lead the way, Mike glanced idly up and down the dim hallway. Much of London was dim these days, a reminder of the late energy crisis. The only other person in the corridor was a man in a camel’s hair coat who kept his back turned.
The porter opened up room 313 and trotted around snapping on lights and opening windows. The room was clean and bright, and the furniture had a solid, permanent look to it that was uncommon in hotels.
“Will there be anything else, sir?” the boy asked.
Mike tipped him and said, “How are chances of getting a bottle of whisky?”
“I’d say chances are quite good, sir. Might I bring you some ice?”
Mike grinned at this recognition of the strange drinking habits of Americans. “Thanks, some ice would be fine.”
The boy backed out of the room closing the door behind him, and Mike yanked off his necktie and dropped into a chair.
• • •
It seemed to the man with the knife that the porter was never going to come out of room 313. When he finally did, the man was perspiring heavily. He turned quickly and walked in the other direction until the lift came and swallowed up the boy behind its sliding door
.
The American would be alone in the room now. There was no doubt that he was the right one. The man with the knife knew him from his photograph. Oh, how well he knew and hated that square-jawed face with the thatch of brown hair. He had risked enough of a look when they passed in the corridor to be sure he had the right man. The right Mike Wilder. The Mike Wilder who so casually took what belonged to another man. Now it was time for him to pay the ultimate price
.
The man drew the knife from the folds of his jacket and ran his thumb across the cruel blade. He held it low, down by his hip, as he had seen knife fighters do in the cinema. There would be no amateurish hacking, just one straight thrust to the belly and Mike Wilder would be a dead man
.
The man with the knife moved toward the door
.