Pleading Guilty (27 page)

The TV screen was full of a big close-up of the referee. As I watched the picture, some extraordinary sensation of discover
y t
ook hold of me: I was at once suddenly focused, rescued, finally free.

"That guy!" I shouted in the empty house. I knew him, I'd seen his face.

In Pigeyes's drawing.

That was Kam Roberts.

Chapter
XVII. I COULDN' T HAVE BEEN

THE HANDS HAD WON A. Phantom of the Fieldhouse

Among the many noble institutions that, years ago, had first sought Leotis Criswell's counsel was the U. For his partners, this connection was priceless, inasmuch as it allowed us to obtain prime seats for football and basketball games and private tours of important university facilities like the bevatron or the field-house, where the Hands played their games. I'd been down on the lacquered playing floor, with the huge-knuckled hands drawn at the center line amid a collar of vermilion, had capered down the tunnels and visited the locker rooms. Most important now, I'd also been to the ugly little changing room, where the refs dressed before games and sat out halftime and, after the final buzzer, immediately showered and put on their street clothes and dark glasses and escaped by mixing into the throng, rather than waiting for any lurking villain who wanted to engage in his own instant replay of various calls.

Flying out of the house, I grabbed only a tweed sport jacket and drove recklessly over the river back into the city, wary of black-and-whites as I spun the dial to find the game on the radio. I had to lower the windows to clear the odor from yesterda
y m
orning and the Chevy was frigid. I blew on my fingers when I stopped at each light. It turned to halftime, the Hands down by only a bucket. I was desperate to get there while the refs were off the floor so that I'd have some chance to get hold of this Kam.

Approaching this guy, whatever his name was, was going to be dicey. As far as I was concerned, the bookies and he could fix what they liked, but I didn't expect him to be carefree about that, and almost everything I might locution was likely to spook him. I was curious, naturally, although it didn't take much imagination to see how having a ref in your pocket could be, as they say in the law, outcome-determinative: a foul here and there, an out-of-bounds, a jump ball, a goal tend, a travel, all called or not. You could probably swing twenty to thirty points a game without being too obvious, given the usual grousing about officiating and the fact that in a sport like basketball, where everybody's always pushing and moving, a ref can only be expected to see so much. Archie had a great thing with this Kam, no question, but I had retired as a policeman. All I needed was to know about Bert--alive or dead, and if the former, how to make contact. For my sake, aside from my usual snoopy impulses, I didn't even need to know where Bert fit in their scam. The fieldhouse, "The House of the Hands," as it was known, was the usual old university structure, a formidable mass of the same red-clay bricks from which most of the U.'s buildings were constructed. The House was relieved of utter grimness by roof-line adornments of turrets and battlements and gunsight notches blocked out of stone. Someone will have to explain to me someday why the architectural plans for so many of the land-grant universities seem to have been borrowed from Clausewitz. What was the idea, that if the South rose again these buildings could be converted to armories?

At the moment I could have used my own militia, since without it I could not find any place to park. The attendant at the lot across the street stoutly refused the two twenties I tried t
o f
orce on him to get the Chevy inside, and I tore off around the block, sweating, swearing, itchy and bitchy, running out of time. Outside the fieldhouse the hawkers with the pennants and cups, buttons and banners, were milling with nothing to do, putting up with the little black kids in hooded sweatshirts and tatty coats who hung out just to get a scent of the game and the players. A dribble of early departees emerged through the gates two or three at a time. There were no more than five minutes left of halftime by now. The teams would be out there warming up, trying to look loose and jovial while they strutted their stuff without opposition, jamming and blocking, doing drills; the refs would soon follow them back out. I finally left the car on the street in a red zone. With luck, if I found this guy, I could be back out in ten minutes.

I did not have a ticket. This didn't occur to me until I saw the gate attendant. They guarded the entrances throughout the game due to the little kids outside, who employed considerable craft figuring out how to get in. I ran back to the ticket windows in front, which were closed when I got there. I had to get a glum kid to go fetch some old biddy, who raised the shade halfway, eyed me serenely, and said, "I'm sorry, we're totally sold out."

"I'll take standing room."

"Fire marshal doesn't allow that here in the House." The shade dropped. I heard her walking away while I pounded on the glass. Back in front, I found some guy with three young kids, leaving to put them to sleep; he did not mind parting with his ticket stub for ten bucks, and I ran back to a different gate. The two student ushers, a boy and a girl in their red sport coats, were both overweight and obviously amorous, still overcome by that first thrill of love, the amazing news that in the flight of life, solo thus far, there might be a co-pilot. Watching them, I had an abrupt thought of Brushy, pleasing and then somehow muddled and pained. I bulled through the stiles between them, shaking my head and smiling and telling anyone who could hea
r h
ow glad I was that I'd remembered the car lights. As I rushed on, I heard the boom of the horn and the crowd suddenly rousing itself: the second half was starting. I was in the dark rampway by then and I stood beneath the enormous welling crowd noise muttering, "Fuck." I could be one of those jerks who run out on the court, but the best that would come of that would be a trip to District i9, maybe even a clubbing.

Instead, I slowly paced through the warren of brick corridors, trying to remember where the refs' changing room was. The old interior bricks of the place were all painted in a heavy enamel, a garish Hands' vermilion that refracted the spectral light. The air had a sort of salty smell, not so much sweat as excitement, the way lightning leaves the pungency of ozone in its wake. Already there was a lull in the clamor, which meant that the Hands were fading. Passing by a ramp up, I caught a look at the big four-sided scoreboard suspended on taut cables between the rafters and the blue ribbons of smoke floated in from the hallways. Milwaukee had put up six points in the first forty seconds out of the locker room. Maybe the Hands weren't even on the court.

Finally I found what I was looking for, a simple wooden door painted the same red as the bricks and labeled "Authorized Personnel Only." I caught my only break of the night. The security guard in his ill-fitting red jacket was down the concrete corridor a good fifty yards, his radio clutched to his ear as he meandered, probably on his way for a leak now that halftime was over. I grabbed the knob and went through like I knew what I was doing. There were steel stairs, then a long low passage lit by bare incandescent bulbs, a janitor's gangway running downward beside the boiler pipes and plumbing into the field-house basement, where the refs changed.

To be under there while the game roared above was strange. Overhead there was glamour. The ash floor gleamed under the phenomenal brightness of the stadium lights. The cheerleaders, heartbreaking emblems of youth, simple in their grace, lik
e f
lowers, flounced their skirts and jumped up and down. In the stands that timeless thing that goes back to when we ran in packs was strumming like the current in a high voltage wire in i8,000 sober citizens who were now nothing but one mass of screaming freaks. People with troubles, with a disabled kid or a mortgage they couldn't meet, were shouting so loud that tomorrow they wouldn't be able to speak at work, but now they were thinking of nothing but whether some long-bodied kid in shorts could throw a leather ball through a hole.

And the refs would be out there, dressed in black and white amid the colors and brightness, the very figures of reason, the law, the rules, the arbiters, the force that kept it a game, not a fistfight. Down here was where they got ready, where they steadied themselves and came to grips with reality, and believe me, it stank. Literally. I remembered from visiting before. The changing room would be gamy with sweat, a little closet with a seven-foot ceiling, an architectural afterthought carved out of the service channel that runs for the sewer pipes. The walls were wood, painted some miserable yellowish eggshell lacquer that glimmered cheaply under the unshaded bulbs. There were two little partitioned changing cubicles and a shower and a crapper, each behind a blue canvas drape, a setup that offered about the same level of privacy that inmates get in a holding cell. At the bottom, the gangway joined a tunnel that ran up at an angle, leading to the court. Noise and light were funneled down, and as I got close to the door of the changing room, looking up the concrete channel to courtside, I could see the legs and red coat hems of two security guys stationed there to guard this area. The crowd above and the fury of the game, the pounding sounds of the court, the whistles, the yells, reached down here like exotic music.

The door to the changing room was like the one I'd come through above, an old wood thing painted red, with three raised panels. If the security guys up there were smart, they'd have locked it. If not, I'd hide inside, waiting. When I rattled th
e k
nob, it didn't give; I shook it twice and swore. I'd have no choice but to lurk about ten feet down the gangway, hoping for a chance as the refs came rushing down the tunnel right after the game. I was likely to get grabbed by security guys. They'd drag me away as I was screaming something dumb like "Kam! Kam Roberts!"

I was still holding the doorknob when I felt it move. The bolt shot back inside, and as my heart seized up, the door opened toward me.

Bert Kainin looked me up and down.

"Hey, Mack," he said. "Jesus, am I glad to see you." He waved me inside and threw the bolt at once when I was beside him. Then he told me something I already knew.

He said, "I'm in a lot of trouble."

B. Troubled Heart

Bert has never really mastered the gestures of amiability. In my unworthy suspicions about him, I imagined he was reluctant to put a hand on your shoulder for fear of what he might reveal. But the fact is that Bert is just strange. His usual manner is of some hey-man hipster. He chews his gum and gives forth with cynical carping from the side of his mouth. I'm never sure exactly who he thinks he is--he comes on like somebody who didn't quite get the sixties, who wanted to be in on what was happening but was too tough or unsentimental to take part. He reminds me at times of the first guy I ever busted, an engaging little rat named Stewie Spivak who was a student at the U. and seemed to enjoy peddling dope much more than taking it.

Bert stood there now bucking his head, telling me I looked good, man, I looked good, while I appraised him too. His dense black hair had grown to an unbarbered length and his hands kept moving to shove it in place; he was unshaved and that weird out-of-kilter light in his eye was brighter than ever. Otherwise
,
he was neatly turned out in a black leather jacket and a fashionable casual ensemble: Italian sweater with a snazzy pattern, pleated trousers, fancy shoes and socks. Was this the attire of a man on the run? He didn't look quite right, but then he never did.

"So who sent you?" he asked me.

"Who sent me?" I reeled around on that line. "Come on, Bert. Who the hell are you kidding? Where've you been? What are you doing here?"

He hung back, squinting a bit, trying to comprehend my agitation in the forgiving way of a child. He remained happy for familiar company.

"I'm waiting for Orleans," he finally said.

"Orleans? Who in God's name is Orleans?" At that Bert's eyes glazed--an aura of galactic mystery took hold. I might as well have asked the secret of the universe, of life. The level of misunderstanding between us was immense--different dimensions. In the silence I noticed that a radio was on. Locked away here in this dungeon, he was still listening to the game. The ceiling was low enough that he was hunched over a bit out of caution, which furthered the impression of something more yielding in his character. He hadn't replied yet when I figured out the answer to my own question.

"The referee," I said.

"Right." He nodded, quite pleased. "Yeah. I'm not supposed to be in here. You either."

Kam Roberts was Orleans. I was piecing it out in my head. Archie owned Orleans, and Orleans, the referee, was Bert's friend. Archie was dead and was once in Bert's refrigerator and Bert was alive and hiding from somebody, maybe just the conference officials of the Mid-Ten. It was not adding. I tried it again, hoping to settle him down and get better information. "Bert, what's going on here? The cops are looking high and low for you and, especially, for Orleans."

He jumped then. There was an old teacher's desk, probabl
y r
equisitioned from a classroom, on which the radio sat. Bert had rested against it until I mentioned the police.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he said. "For Orleans? The police are looking for Orleans? Why? You know why?" I realized then what was different about him--his emotions were unmasked. Grim and adolescent before, he now seemed almost childish. He was jumpier than I recalled, but also pleasingly sincere. I felt like I was dealing with a younger brother.