The Players (8 page)

Sunday morning arrived misty and gray, but with a luminescence that promised sunshine later. The man with the knife cared nothing about the weather. He hesitated before the entrance to the Regency House and smoothed his pale hair down before walking in. He strode across the pillared lobby with a precise, determined step. The clerk at the registration desk looked up and smiled politely as he approached
.

“Yes, sir, may I help you?” the clerk said
.

“I believe a friend of mine is registered here. Mr. Michael Wilder.”

“Yes, sir, the American journalist. Shall I ring his room for you?”

“No, don’t do that,” the man said quickly. “You see, several of his friends have got up a bit of a surprise for him today. We’ll be waiting across the street, and if you would be so good as to signal us when he’s about to leave the hotel …”

The clerk looked doubtful. “I really don’t know, sir, whether I should do a thing like that.”

The man drew a billfold from the inside pocket of his jacket and removed a five pound note. He smoothed the edges with thumb and forefinger and laid the note on the counter between them
.

“Your discretion is quite admirable,” he said, “but I’d appreciate it if you could bend the rules this one time. And of course, no one need ever know.”

The eyes of the clerk barely flicked over the note lying on the counter. He said, “Actually, your friend just rang down to ask me to arrange a car hire for him. He should be down directly when the car arrives.”

“Thank you,” the man said shortly, and turned to hurry from the hotel. He left the five pound note where he had dropped it. It did not stay there long
.

This was a lucky break at last, the man thought. Now he would not have to sit forever in the dreary café across the street drinking coffee until Wilder chose to come out. He hurried around the block to the parking garage and
got into the green Jaguar sedan he had left there a few minutes earlier. He drove back to a spot where he could watch the entrance to the Regency House and waited, the Jag’s powerful engine rumbling softly in idle
.

• • •

The telephone in Mike Wilder’s room jangled as he stroked the last ridge of whiskers from his upper lip. He toweled the lather from his face and walked out of the bathroom to take the call.

“Your car is here, Mr. Wilder,” said the clerk’s voice on the other end.

“Thank you, I’ll be down in five minutes.”

Mike splashed lotion on his face and dragged a comb through his hair. He felt rotten. He had been replaying in his mind last night’s scene with Paula all morning. Now he could see at least a dozen ways he could have handled it better. But as the boys at the race track said, the hindsight system never loses.

Maybe he had just expected too much of Paula. Or too much of him and Paula together. There was no reason for him to assume that because Paula stimulated his mind and attracted him physically, she was going to be great in bed too.

For that matter, how did he know she
wasn’t
great in bed? It was time to give the male ego a rest and admit that maybe
he
had done something wrong. It took two to fail just like it took two to succeed. How could he ever forget that wretched period with Lorraine while he was writing his ill-fated novel. He had been close to despair on finding himself impotent both at the typewriter during the day and in bed at night. Then he found out what Lorraine was doing to him.

Yes, it might have helped last night if he had been a little more understanding. He had stomped out of Paula’s apartment like some pimply high school kid with his first case of passion cramps.

Mike grimaced at his reflection in the mirror and turned away. He pulled on a soft sport shirt and a jacket and headed for the lobby. He had awakened at dawn this morning after a few hours of fitful sleep. He had hauled out the typewriter and struggled through his column for tomorrow. It was a sarcastic piece based on his encounter last night with J. J. Kaiser, filled with sneering remarks about the growing commercialism of tennis. Mike was not happy with the column when he finished it, but he had sent it off by messenger all the same. You couldn’t come up with a literary gem every day.

After that he had been at a loss for something to do. He didn’t feel like talking to anybody, and the thought of sitting around the hotel room put his teeth on edge. Then he recalled a brochure he had picked up at the airport that talked about the beauty of the English countryside around London. A drive in the country, he decided, might be just the thing to blow the cobwebs out of his mind. He had called down to the desk and arranged for a rental car to be brought around.

The desk clerk looked up as Mike crossed from the elevator and had a set of keys and a sheet of paper ready for him when he reached the counter.

“This is it?” Mike asked.

“Yes, sir. All that’s required is that you sign the rental agreement. You do have a valid driver’s license in the United States?”

“Yes, I do,” Mike said, scratching his name at the bottom of the form. “I thought they might send over somebody from the agency to check me out on English driving—keeping to the left and so on.”

“There’ll be a folder in the glove box explaining the traffic laws and road signs,” the clerk said. “You’ll find that you get the hang of it in no time.”

“I hope so. Tell me, what’s the best way to get out of London and drive through some restful countryside where there isn’t too much traffic?”

“I’d suggest you motor out to Kent, Mr. Wilder. If you cross the Thames at Waterloo Bridge, take Kennington Road south through Lambeth and Kennington, you can drive east on Motorway A1 into Kent. There are a number of lightly traveled roads there that will take you out past some small farms and through an old village or two.”

“That sounds like what I’m looking for.”

“You should find a map in the car. Enjoy yourself.”

“Thanks.” Mike palmed the keys and walked out in front of the hotel where a small white English Ford awaited him. He slid in behind the wheel, feeling strange and uncomfortable on the right-hand side. He took several minutes to read through the pamphlet on traffic laws and look at the map. When he was ready he started the engine and moved cautiously away from the curb.

Luckily, there was little traffic at this hour on a Sunday. Mike drove slowly and carefully down the Strand to the turnoff for Waterloo Bridge. As he eased across the bridge and south toward St. George’s Circus, Mike kept his mind busy thinking,
keep left, keep left, keep left
.

By the time he had passed the warehouses of Southwark and the small, dust-colored dwellings on the outskirts of the city,” Mike was becoming more at ease driving on the opposite side. While this allowed him to relax his grip on the steering wheel and unclench his teeth, it also allowed him to think about other things.

The cars on Motorway A1 were well spaced out, so Mike fell in behind a Morris Minor that was cruising along at a comfortably slow pace. He did not want to think any more about Paula just now, so he let himself think about Lorraine.

At first he had found it flattering when Lorraine had referred to him as a
writer
in her own vocal italics when he thought of himself strictly as a reporter. Later on he put the word in proper perspective when he understood that Lorraine also thought of herself as a
writer
, having taken a number of creative writing classes. The instructors invariably told her she had a rare insight. At Lorraine’s insistence, Mike had read some of her early efforts. They were formless, introspective stream-of-consciousness pieces, utterly amateurish in conception and execution. Only once did he try to honestly criticize her work. That time Lorraine had gone into a sulk that lasted the better part of a month. She never asked his opinion again, but continued to send her pieces off to “little” magazines, from which they always returned without comment.

Meanwhile, Lorraine appointed herself Mike’s number one critic and literary adviser. It was she, he realized much later, who goaded him into writing a novel in the first place. Her main reason, as far as Mike could tell, was so she could introduce him at parties as “my husband, the
author.”

The actual writing of the thing had been sheer torture for Mike. Although he let himself be convinced that he wanted to be a novelist, he grew to hate the damn book. Lorraine’s practice of nightly reading aloud what he had written during the day was especially painful. He knew the book was going badly, but he also knew Lorraine’s comments were worthless.

It was during this period that their sex life dwindled to an occasional joyless coupling. Lorraine expanded her critical opinions to include his performance in bed. The results were what might have been expected.

Perversely, Mike had felt vindicated when the published novel sank without a ripple. Lorraine never forgave him.

The sound of a horn brought Mike back to the present with a start. While daydreaming he had drifted over toward the right-hand side of the road, and an oncoming lorry had given him a warning blast of the air horn. Mike wrenched the steering wheel and veered back to his own side.

Shaken, he turned off at the next opportunity to a narrow road that meandered off between low, gentle hills of green grass speckled with wild flowers.

There was no one ahead of him on the new road, nor to the rear, except for a green car that turned a couple of hundred yards behind him. It seemed to Mike that the same car had followed him for some time, but he gave it no further thought.

The job, that’s what he should be thinking about. Tennis. Wimbledon. To do the job they were paying him for he would have to get beneath the surface action. Let the other reporters write about the scores and the turning points of the matches and what Player A’s past record is against Player B. People expected more from Mike Wilder. They expected more depth, and they expected a hatchet job.

Mike frowned at the thought that he had got where he was because of his reputation as a put-down artist Somewhere early in his career his enthusiasm for sports had begun to drain away. As his writing became more sarcastic and critical, the number of papers carrying his column had increased. The public loved it when he found boxing brutal, football unimaginative, baseball dull, and basketball a haven for glandular cases. At one time or another he had called auto racing bloodthirsty, hunting cruel, fishing stupid, track childish, and horseracing a fool’s pastime. Once when he tried to say a mildly good word for golf—a game he had just taken up—the papers were flooded with letters accusing him of selling out. Mike Wilder was not supposed to like anything.

A pale sun began to push through the fading cloud layer as the morning drew on. Mike rolled down his window for a breath of the country air. In the rearview mirror he caught sight of the green car closing on him at a rapid pace.

Nothing unusual about that. Even at home Mike was not a fast driver, and here in England driving a backwards car on the wrong side of the road he was not going to press any speed limits. He eased over to the left to give the other car, which he now recognized as a Jaguar sedan several years old, plenty of room to pass.

Lately it seemed to Mike that he was no longer writing with the honesty of his younger days. Sometimes he seemed to be doing a parody of himself to please his editors. Like the column he did this morning on J. J. Kaiser. Without mentioning the man by name, Mike had made him out to be a greedy little parasite living on the fringes of sports and contributing nothing. True, Mike had not found much to like about the pushy little man, still underneath the brashness of the hustler there was a certain vulnerable quality that could be appealing. If he was to write honestly, it was these insights that he must stress, and not take cheap shots like some college humor writer. He would have to start doing better.

Mike glanced in the mirror again, and his hands gripped the wheel convulsively. The Jaguar was right behind him now, and showing no signs of pulling around to pass. The driver wore a cap and wrap-around sun glasses that obscured most of his face, but Mike could see that his lips were drawn back in an ugly grimace.

Even as Mike spotted him, the driver of the Jaguar stamped on the accelerator and the sedan lunged forward to clang solidly into the rear of the little Ford. He let the space between them widen to about three feet, then surged ahead again to thump into the Ford’s rear bumper.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Mike shouted into the blast of air that rushed in through his open window.

Bang!
A third time the Jag hit him. The guy must be crazy, Mike thought. He stood on the accelerator, and cursed the lack of response from the little engine. As the Ford gradually picked up speed the Jaguar hung in behind it like a beast of prey.

The road eased into a series of curves among the rounded hillocks, and Mike could not take his attention from the pavement in front of him long enough to look back at the man driving the Jag. A part of his mind marked the irony of having traveled so many freeways in so many cities only to meet a psychopathic driver on this charming road through the peaceful English countryside.

The larger car was moving up on him again. Mike could coax no more speed out of the Ford. Helplessly he felt the impact as the bumpers clashed again. This time the Jag did not back off, but held contact with the lighter car and accelerated. Mike found himself being pushed at upwards of sixty miles an hour around curves of the narrow English road that suddenly became deadly hairpins. He did not hit the brake for fear the car would slew sideways and roll. With all his strength Mike fought the steering wheel-as the little car came closer to breaking loose from the pavement each time they squealed around a corner.

The two cars roared along at an ever increasing speed until Mike knew the Ford must flip over at the next corner. Up ahead he could see the road sweep off to the right and vanish behind a clump of alders. He would never make it.