Murder Is My Racquet (6 page)

• • •

T
he week before Christmas, on the clay courts of Flamingo Park on Miami Beach, Julie was serving at 40–15 in the second set. This was the final match of the most prestigious junior tournament in the world. The best players from Europe and South America and Australia had assembled, and Julie had roared through her draw to the finals, knocking off two seeded players in the process. After winning the first set, she was up a service break in the second. As the match progressed her serve seemed to be gaining strength. Now it was skittering into the corners, and occasionally blasting directly at her dark-haired opponent with such vicious pace that the poor Spanish girl’s heavy thighs were pocked with bruises.

Roger wanted to signal Julie to ease off. She was losing the sympathy of the crowd. There were already a few whistles, some murmuring around him about the tall, lean American’s lack of sportsmanship. But the referee sitting in the chair at the net had already given Julie one warning for sneaking looks at her father’s hand signals. Another warning and she’d be penalized a game. Though she was well ahead, such a small interruption in her concentration might just be enough to tip the momentum back to the Spaniard.

“She’s killing her,” Molly whispered. She beamed with motherly delight.

Roger Shelton’s wife, Molly, was as thin and jumpy as a whippet. She kept her sandy hair chopped short and her skin had been forever ruined by countless hours in the sun and now was crisped to the hue and texture of the wrappings of a cheap
cigar. She was an indefatigable doubles player, a woman who thought nothing of playing ten grueling sets in a day.

“I know, I know,” Roger said. “Two more games. Just two more.”

Roger sat still and suffered the crowd’s restlessness and loss of support for his daughter. Julie had begun to employ an ugly strategy, drawing the Spaniard to the net with vicious drop shots, and rather than lobbing over her to exploit her ponderous gait, again and again Julie drove the ball directly at the sluggish girl and more than once the ball found meat.

Finally Julie was a game from victory. The Orange Bowl trophy gleamed on a nearby table. Such a win would kick the door wide open for her tennis future. Endorsement requests would begin to tumble in the mail slot, media attention would escalate, all the best agents would be calling. Already in the last year she had been attracting ever-increasing attention. Tall and blonde with shockingly blue eyes and an easy smile, gorgeously muscled legs and a voluptuous figure so different from her mother’s hipless, flat-chested anatomy and from Roger’s rail-thin body. Known as “The Stick” for all his high school years, Roger found it amazing that he and Molly had produced such a plush beauty. In the last year a dozen websites had sprung up in cyberspace devoted to the worship of Julie Shelton. Fourteen-year-old boys posted photos of her lunging for net shots, her pleated skirt kicking up just enough to show a swatch of white panties. And it wasn’t just an adolescent following, either. Throughout her matches, Roger had to endure the soft groans of yearning all about him, a grumble of lust for his little girl. At first he’d wanted to search out each lecher and wrench him from his seat and toss him over the edge of the bleachers. A satisfaction he could not grant himself, however, for, like it or
not, Julie’s sexual aura would count as much in her future success as her victories on the courts.

She was serving for the match, for the Orange Bowl title, a win that would bring her a giant step closer to the day when she could etch her name beside those of the great ones of the game, Billie Jean, Chrissie, Martina, Steffi. Roger shifted on the bleacher seat, about to rise to his feet and head down to give her a hug, when he saw from three rows away Arthur Janeway glaring at him. In a white warmup suit, Gigi Janeway sat serenely next to him, her gaze fixed on the final moments of the match. On the far side of her ravaged daughter, Bettina was hunched forward, hollow-eyed and ashen. As if she felt the touch of his anxious stare, she turned her head slowly and locked her bitter gaze on Roger.

Shocked and befuddled, Roger raised a hand and gave the Janeways a ludicrous wave. Neither of them acknowledged the gesture, but continued to observe him coldly.

“Where are you going?” Molly asked as Roger rose. “She’s still serving. You’re going to distract her.”

But Roger was already in motion. Thudding down the bleacher aisle, leaving a murmur of displeasure in his wake, he pushed past two wolfish teenagers in red sweatsuits, the Hungarian contingent, excused himself and hurried into the shadows beneath the bleachers.

His breath was still hot in his throat when he felt the presence behind him.

“You can’t get away from me.”

Roger swung around and bumped his shoulder into the deep chest of Arthur Janeway.

Janeway was a few inches taller and outweighed Roger by fifty pounds. Since Gigi’s injury, he’d virtually disappeared
from the dealership. Indeed, this was the first time Roger had seen him in months. The man had lost his steak-and-martini paunch and his florid face, and the rigors of his grief had hardened his thickset body and turned his cheeks the color of frozen iron.

Roger tried to force some compassion into his smile.

“Hello, Arthur. It’s good to see you. How is everything?”

Janeway eased his bulk close to Roger. He drew down a breath and blew it out so fiercely it was as if the very taste of air disgusted him.

“I know what you did, Shelton. I know everything.”

Roger floundered for a half-second, then found a salesman’s smile somewhere down in the hollow depths of his chest.

“You mean that Olds Ciera fiasco? Yeah, yeah. I low-balled it a little, but I had the wholesale numbers jumbled. Don’t worry, Arthur, I’ll get it back on the next deal.”

“I’m not talking about a fucking Oldsmobile, Shelton. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Roger watched as Bettina helped Gigi down the last steps of the bleachers then halted and surveyed the grounds until she caught sight of the two of them.

“Hey, Arthur, you know I’d love to talk shop a little more, but I really need to give Julie a big hug of celebration.”

“You fucked my wife, Shelton,” Janeway hissed.

“What?”

Roger drew a careful breath and eyed the big man, whose lips had begun to quiver with rage.

“She told me the whole story. Everything.”

Bettina had her arm around Gigi’s waist. The girl was leaning against her mother as the two of them plodded closer.

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

Janeway’s eyes were slitted now, tipping close to Roger’s face. He could smell Arthur’s breath, taste the green peppers he’d eaten the night before, and the sour fumes of incompletely digested meat.

“She’s yours, Shelton. She’s your little girl.”

“You really shouldn’t joke about something like that, Arthur.”

“No one’s kidding.”

Roger nodded stupidly, a ridiculous smile twisting his lips as he watched mother and daughter draw near.

“Hello, Bettina,” he said. “Hello, Gigi. How’re you doing?”

Gigi’s mouth flickered. She stretched her neck as if something might be stuck in her throat. When she spoke, her voice was a raspy croak.

“I’m surviving.”

“Good, good,” Roger said, then turned to his employer. “Well, it’s certainly nice to see you all. Nice that you’re out and around again.”

Roger turned to go but Janeway clapped a meaty paw on his shoulder and spun him around.

“Don’t bother showing up on the lot again, Shelton. Not that anyone would notice you were missing.”

Roger shrugged free of Janeway’s grip and headed for the court where Julie was speaking to a writer for
Tennis
magazine. As he stood waiting for the interview to conclude, he could feel the sting of three pairs of eyes on the back of his neck.

A week later, Roger Shelton sat in the den surveying the bleak landscape of the want ads while Julie was in the living room knee to knee with a sales rep for Nike apparel. She was evaluating their latest offer sheet, and even from two rooms
away Roger could hear her bargaining tone turn severe. The girl adamantly insisted on making all her own deals. Even with the avalanche of offers she received after winning the Orange Bowl, Julie hadn’t so much as requested a hint of advice from Roger or Molly. So far she’d signed a half dozen contracts on her own, a shoe deal, a racquet contract, another agreement to wear a Rolex watch, another to drink only Gatorade on the court. Not even out of high school, and already well on her way to her first ten million.

Roger had been making the rounds of dealerships but had met nothing but cold smiles. He was certain Janeway had blacklisted him. Roger had not given Molly any details about the disquieting conversation with Janeway, only telling her that he’d been downsized from his job of twenty years, without warning or just cause. Molly made a sad face, gave him a buck-up pat on the shoulder and poured him a double martini, and the next morning she was back to her punishing tennis schedule as if nothing had changed, as if Roger was not languishing in his pajamas till noon with the classifieds open in his lap.

On the mantel across the living room, the round-faced clock ticked loudly. Roger stared at it, watching the second hand stutter around its face. He found himself ticking off the seconds as if counting down to some kind of blastoff, waiting, waiting, waiting for the great rocket to lift from its silos and carry him away, giddy and free of gravity. At last the terrible weight lifted from his chest, the earth’s pressures relieved.

“Hey, Dad.” It was Julie in the doorway. She was wearing a new outfit, a dark blue warmup with a silky sheen. Her name was embroidered in gold over the left breast. And beside her name was the company’s logo. His daughter, a freshly minted trademark.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Martino wanted to meet you.”

The young man with slicked-back hair and tight muscles and a dark tan marched across the room before Roger could rise from the chair. The salesman stuck out his hand and crushed Roger’s meager grip.

“Julie’s a damn hard bargainer, Mr. Shelton. Must’ve inherited that from you. I understand you’re in the car business.”

“Used cars,” Julie said. “The junkers.”

Martino nodded, fetching for a smile.

“And he couldn’t even hack that,” Julie said. “He got fired.”

Roger looked at his daughter and then at Martino. Roger tried to smile but felt it wilt on his lips.

“A career transition,” Roger said. He tapped the pile of newspapers in his lap, the pathetic red circles around job prospects.

“Well, I’m sure Julie owes a great deal to you, Mr. Shelton. You should be very proud.”

“I am, I am.”

“I owe something to Mom, maybe,” Julie said. She was looking down at the breast of her new warmup, studying the golden twist of letters that spelled out her name. “But I can’t think of what Dad did. What I think is, the two of them found me on the doorstep. I mean, come on, look at me. And look at him.”

Julie tugged the bottom of her warmup to tighten the fabric against her swelling breasts.

“Sure, genes can be funny, but hey, you saw my mother. She’s even skinnier than the old man. I think they found me under a cabbage somewhere.”

Roger worked up the smile again and showed it to Martino.

“She’s a spunky one,” Roger said. “She’s right, though. What she’s accomplished is her own doing.”

“Oh, sure, Dad picked me up after practice now and then. But he only did that so he could check out the other girls. He’s a major lech.”

“A lech?” Roger said. “Me?”

Martino backed up a step, looking between the two of them, trying to keep his smile in place as if this was a comedy routine still building to the punch line.

“I’ve earned it all myself,” Julie said. “Just look at Gigi Janeway and her dad. He’s got more money than the pope, so Gigi had all the best teaching pros. Lessons every day. A coach to work on her serve, one for her backhand, another one for her net game. I had like this one guy, he couldn’t even speak English. All he did, he hit me balls from his basket.
Bueno, bueno
. An hour like that, him just hitting me forehands then backhands and yapping in Spanish, ninety-nine percent of which I couldn’t understand. So yeah, I’d say I pretty much did it all on my own.”

Martino left, chuckling and nodding like it was all an enormous joke. That uproariously witty Shelton family.

Julie went up to her room, shut the door and turned on her rap music and Roger sat in the living room and watched the clock on the mantelpiece tick away the rest of the afternoon.

At dawn the next morning, he rolled from his sleepless bed and went downstairs and paced back and forth across the deck, staring out at the open field behind the house. As the sun broke into view above the pines, he went inside and took down a photo of Julie from the mantelpiece and stared at it. He sat in the living room easy chair and held it up, tilting it back and forth, to catch the light. He put the photo back on the mantel
and tiptoed upstairs and eased open the door to Julie’s room. She was lying on her back, her head denting the pillow exactly in the center. She snored quietly. He stood there for several minutes watching the girl sleep.

At nine o’clock he roared into the used car lot, got out and stalked into the showroom. Gathered around the coffee machine, the other salesmen watched him but didn’t so much as nod when he walked across the floor and went into his old office. Manny Mendoza was closing a deal with a black couple and their teenage daughter. He looked up at Roger and frowned.

“I’m looking for my stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“My photos,” Roger said. “The stuff I kept on my desk.”

Manny nodded toward the far corner where a cardboard box was jammed behind the black couple and their daughter. He picked it up and took it out to the showroom and set it on the hood of a ten-year-old red pickup truck and dug through it till he found what he was looking for. He walked over to the large portrait of Arthur Janeway that hung on the back wall. He held his daughter’s photo up to the portrait and cut his eyes back and forth between the two images.