The Players (2 page)

Around the corner, in room 321 of the Regency House, Tim Barrett perched on the edge of a settee while his father beamed at him and his mother fussed around the room putting things away in drawers and shaking the wrinkles out of clothes as she hung them up. Tim was a well-built young man with the healthy good looks of Southern California.

“Tim, you really look great,” his father said for the seventh or eighth time. “I mean really great. How do you feel?”

“I feel fine, Dad,” Tim said for the ninth or tenth time. “Hundred percent.”

“Your face looks a little thin, dear,” his mother said. “Are you eating well?”

“I’m eating fine, Mom.”

“Tennis players are supposed to be thin,” Tim’s father put in. “Who ever saw a fat tennis champion? Right, Tim?”

“Sure, right, Dad,” Tim answered, letting his eyes stray toward the door. Being alone with his parents, especially his father, made him acutely uncomfortable. Despite his open-faced, all-American-boy appearance, Tim was not at ease around people. The lone exception was his coach, Vic Goukas, who was father, mother, teacher, and confidant. Tim became inarticulate and evasive in any other personal relationship that was not divided down the middle by a tennis net. This had given him a growing reputation for arrogance, which Tim did not try to deny since it was more acceptable in his world to be arrogant than to be shy.

That afternoon he had been asked by some of the Australian players to come along later when they went out to sample London after dark. Pleased by the unaccustomed invitation, Tim was anxious to break away from his parents’ hotel room. He did not drink himself, but he had always admired the fun-loving Aussies who brought back tales of uproarious adventures as they caroused their way through the cities on the international circuit. Strangely, the oceans of beer they put away never seemed to affect their play.

“It’s a shame you can’t stay here with us, Timmy,” his mother said. She was a plump, pretty woman with soft brown eyes and a sweet smile.

Tim’s father waved away her comment. Jack Barrett, trim and handsome at forty-seven, was an older version of his son. “Now, Fran, Tim’s not a baby any more,” he said. “He’s nineteen. At that age a young man appreciates a little freedom.”

Sure, freedom, Tim thought. Since he had been old enough to look over the top of the net freedom was just a seven-letter word to Tim Barrett. The game of tennis owned him. When other youngsters his age were learning the multiplication tables Tim was learning the five basic strokes of the game. When the other boys in his class were discovering girls Tim was training for the Junior Singles. Which he won. It was his father who had steered Tim into tennis. Jack Barrett had been a good club player himself, and had once been ranked in the top twenty by the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association. However, Jack had never really been tournament class. He determined early that his son would make it. Tim would be a champion if Jack had anything to say about it The boy had the best private coaching available, and his schools were chosen for their tennis facilities rather than scholastic rating. Nominally a freshman at UCLA, Tim had yet to attend a class there. He was given special leave for this year’s world tennis tour. Tim was well aware that he had always been given special considerations. But freedom? What was that?

Jack Barrett clapped his big hands together, stood up, and walked over to where Tim was sitting. “Boy, this is really something, I don’t mind telling you. Jack Barrett’s son seeded eighth at Wimbledon. You haven’t been home to see the office since I had it redecorated. One wall is nothing but pictures of Tim Barrett, tennis star. A fellow down at the
Times
gets them for me from the wire services. I’ve had some of them blown up to poster size. You should see the way people react when they find out I’m Tim Barrett’s father. It really impresses clients. If you were to get as far as, say, the semi-finals here at Wimbledon people would be knocking the door down to talk tennis and, incidentally, do a little business. Honestly now, what do you think your chances are, son?”

“I think I just might win it all.”

“You mean …
win
it?”

Tim’s eyes shifted away from his father’s gaze. “Yeah, win it.”

Jack Barrett moved a step closer to his son. “I mean seriously, Tim. Hell, I know you’re good. Nobody knows that better than I do. But maybe you’re still a couple of years away?”

“Dad, this is my year. I mean it, I can win it all.”

“But what about Ron Hopper? He’s defending champion and top seed. He won the Australian championship, and he’s had plenty of rest.”

“The word is he’s hurting. Something about a leg. That’s the reason he hasn’t played since Melbourne. People who ought to know are saying he might not even make the semis.”

“I’ll be damned,” Jack Barrett said, a light growing in his eyes. “I don’t wish Hopper any bad luck, but that sure would help our chances. What about that crazy Hungarian? He’s given us a lot of trouble.”

“Yuri Zenger? He’s tough, and he threw me off stride in Melbourne, but I know him now. I know his whole bag of tricks. If he can’t get you rattled his own game goes to hell. He’ll never do that to me again.”

“Brian White? I know you’ve beaten him often enough, but he
is
number four seed.”

“Brian’s the nicest guy on the tour, and you can put his high seeding down to niceness. Oh, he plays well enough, but I can always beat him in the big ones. Brian never wins the big ones.”

Jack Barrett chewed on his trim moustache as he ran the names of the other seeded players across his mind’s screen.

“Ismael Vasquez?”

“He’s playing on his reputation and a big serve. That Latin scowl wins him a lot of points, but the fire isn’t there any more.”

Tim’s father thought that over, then broke into a big smile and shook his head in a that’s-my-boy kind of gesture.

Fran Barrett spoke up, and her son and husband turned toward her in surprise. “What about this British player, this Alan Doughty? There’s been a lot written in the papers about him.”

“Heck, Mom, he’s pushing forty. The only reason the papers are giving him so much space is that he’s the only Englishman with even an outside chance. One of their own hasn’t won at Wimbledon since they wore long white flannels. Alan Doughty’s having his last burst of energy like a light bulb just before it burns out.”

“You’ve changed, Timmy,” his mother said.

“How, Mom?”

“You were always a quiet, modest boy. Confident, yes, sure of yourself, but never boastful. Now you sound so, well, almost cruel.”

Tim reddened in embarrassment. He had become so accustomed to the defensive arrogance he assumed as a shield against the press that he had forgotten to drop the pose here with his parents.

Jack Barrett answered for his son. “That’s not being cruel, Fran, that’s telling it like it is. The boy is good and he knows it. And he knows the weaknesses of his opponents. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Fran Barrett relaxed into a smile. “I suppose I should be used to the way star athletes talk after living around them all these years. Will you be coming home after the tournament, Timmy?”

“Maybe, but just for a few days. I’ve got to get ready for Forest Hills. I’ll be out in California for the Pacific Southwest, anyway.”

Tim’s mother walked over and smoothed her son’s longish blond hair. “It will be nice to have you home for a while. The house seems so big and empty with no young people around.”

“Look, I really should go,” Tim said suddenly. “I promised to meet some people.”

“I wish you could stay and shoot the breeze for a while, son,” his father said.

“Maybe later.”

“That’s all right, we understand. You need your rest. Are you sharing a room with Vic Goukas again?”

“What else? The coach gets nervous if I’m out of his sight.”

“Well, he does know his tennis. Maybe your mother and I could come over there one evening?”

“Gee, I’d like that, but it might not be a good idea. You know how Vic gets during a tournament.”

“Yes, of course, we understand.”

Sure you understand. They always understood. Always approved. Tim kissed his mother’s cheek, endured a clap on the shoulder from his father, and escaped from the room. If only once in a while they would not be so damned understanding … tell him what to do sometimes instead of always letting him decide. No, it was too late for that. That should have happened a long time ago. Tim shook the thought out of his mind and headed for the elevators.

As he rounded the corner Tim almost collided with a man in a camel’s hair coat who was standing in front of the door to room 313. The man jumped away with a guilty start.

“Excuse me,” Tim said.

The man stared at him, damp, pale hair pasted to his forehead. He was sweating even in the unheated hallway, and there was something about his eyes that made Tim uneasy. At the elevator he turned to look back, but the man was disappearing around the corner.

• • •

The man with the knife swore silently through clenched teeth. The boy had seen him, looked closely at his face. The boy would remember him if Mike Wilder died here tonight, and would describe him to the police. The man with the knife would never allow himself to be locked up again. He would just have to bide his time and wait for another opportunity. This chance was gone, but he still had two weeks to act. Mike Wilder would survive this night, but he would not leave London alive
.

Across the Thames in a flat in Lambeth Alan Doughty and his wife Hazel sat before a small black-and-white television set. Doughty was a tall man with a friendly homely face and curly black hair that he clipped much shorter than was fashionable. His eyes were squinted with sun wrinkles, and his body was so lean there was not an extra pinch of flesh anywhere.

Hazel, a plain woman who turned beautiful when she smiled, was not smiling now. And she was not watching the American police show on the telly. She was studying the deep lines of her husband’s face and trying to guess his thoughts.

Alan Doughty’s thoughts were far away from the Lambeth flat and the action taking place on the small screen. His thoughts were some seven miles to the southwest on the grounds of the All-England Tennis Club in the residential borough of Wimbledon. In his mind Alan was already on one of the outlying courts where he would begin play in the most important tournament of his life. It was the most important tournament because it would be the last.

There would be no crowd of spectators and no reporters watching Alan’s opening match, just Hazel and a few friends on the benches. Maybe a few strollers who circulate among the far courts, not having seats in the stands. The real crowds would be at Centre Court and at Courts One and Two where the high-seeded players would be toying with the luckless opponents they drew for the first round. Alan was seeded thirteenth this year, the highest ever for him, but he knew nobody really gave him much of a chance. He had got more publicity than he deserved up till now merely because he was a Briton.

His first-round opponent was a Spaniard with a precise baseline game but little else. Alan knew he could beat the Spaniard without extending himself. It was the later matches he would have to work at to win. And he had to win them. This would be his last chance.

The doctor had written the word out for him when Alan had trouble pronouncing it.

Aneurysm
.

“What does it mean, Doc?” Alan had asked.

“Do you ride a bike?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever had an innertube with a weak spot that pooched out in kind of a bubble? Well, that’s what’s happened to one of your large arteries. The wall’s become weakened at one point and bulged outward with the force of the blood pumping through.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“If it blows out you’re a dead man.”

“What can be done about it?”

“Surgery can be performed and a chunk of plastic tubing put in place of the weakened section of the artery.”

“An operation? How soon would I need to do it?”

“Right away.”

“But next week is Wimbledon.”

“Alan, listen to me. Whether you have the operation or not, you’re going to have to forget about competitive tennis.”

“You’re not serious?”

“Never more so. In any strenuous activity the body tissues need more oxygen. To supply that need the heart pumps the blood all the faster, putting more of a strain on the arterial walls. Once you’ve had the operation you’ll be able to live a normal enough life and be as active as any thirty-eight-year-old man, but extreme exercise will be out of the quesiton.”

“Doc, I’ve been playing tennis since I was fifteen years old. It was tennis got me out of the mines where my old man died and where my three brothers are living dead right now. The game hasn’t made me a lot of money, but it’s given me a far better life than I could ever have had without it. Right now I’m playing the best tennis of my life, and for the first time I’ve got an honest shot at Wimbledon. Do you have any idea what a win at Wimbledon could do for me, Doc?”

“It could kill you, that’s what it could do.”

Alan went on as though the doctor hadn’t spoken. “A Wimbledon champion can get a lifetime job with a sporting goods firm, and never have to worry again about the rentman or the greengrocer. And all you have to do is travel about to schools and the like, signing your autograph and showing the kids how to hold a racket. Your company’s racket, of course. Doc, you just don’t know what that kind of security could mean to me and Hazel.”

“I understand your situation, Alan, and I do sympathize. But that doesn’t change the facts. I can’t order you to have an immediate operation. I can only emphasize that if you don’t have it, and if you continue to play tennis, you will surely die. Quite possibly at Wimbledon.”

“And if I quit now, what would I do? Go back to the mines? I doubt they’d even have me now. I have no trade, no skills except hitting a tennis ball with a racket.”

“Of course, the decision is yours,” said the doctor, “but if it were me I know what I’d do.”

Alan had looked around the doctor’s office at the richly paneled walls, the leaded windows, the Oriental carpet. “It’s not quite the same thing, is it?”

• • •

Now Hazel Doughty reached out and touched her husband lightly on the shoulder. “Are you all right, love? Would you like me to massage your legs?”

Alan pulled his mind back to the present. He grinned at his wife and said, “You can if you’d like, woman, but you’ll risk driving me into a passion.”

“Go along with you,” she smiled. “I’ve lived with you long enough, Alan Doughty, to know there’ll be no bedtime frolics until after the tournament when you can loosen up again. Perhaps you’d fancy a beer. There’s a couple of pints left.”

Alan rose and took hold of his wife’s hands. He drew her up gently to stand facing him. “Damn the beer,” he said. “And damn the tournament. What I want right now is you.” He smiled at her. “Besides, I’ll likely play better than ever afterwards, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Hazel circled his lean body with her arms and pressed close against him. “I love you, tennis player, do you know that?”

“I suspected as much,” he said. “Now, are you coming to bed with me or do I have to see what I can pick up down at the local?”

Laughing softly, Hazel walked with her husband into the small, neat bedroom. Alan kept his face turned away so she would not see the tears.