Sandra Brown - Play Dirty

They’d given him a concussion. He’d suffered a couple in football, so he recognized the symptoms. Even though he didn’t experience the amnesia that sometimes accompanies a concussion, the nausea, dizziness, and blurred vision had plagued him for twenty-four hours.

By rights, he shouldn’t have moved, except to use his cell phone to call 911, summoning an ambulance to the parking lot. But a trip to the emergency room would have involved paperwork, the police. God only knew what else.

Somehow he’d managed to climb into his car and drive himself home before his eyes swelled shut. Since then, he’d been popping ibuprofen tablets every couple hours and trying to find one position in which to lie that didn’t cause throbbing pain. He didn’t worry about internal injuries. The pros knew how to damage him so he would feel it, but they didn’t want a murder on their hands. If they did, he’d be dead. They’d only wanted him praying for death so he’d feel better.

He got up solely to pee, and not until his bladder was full to bursting. When he did leave the bed, he walked like an old man, bent at the waist, shuffling because every time he tried to lift his feet, a knifing pain in his lower back brought tears to his eyes.

Yesterday his mobility had improved a bit. This morning, he’d worked up enough courage to get in the shower. The hot water had actually felt good, easing some of the aches and pains.

The bedroom stank of him because he hadn’t been up to the task of changing the sheets. Sick of looking at the same four walls, he left the room for the first time in a week. Coffee sounded good. He realized he was ravenously hungry. Things were looking up.

He was scooping scrambled eggs straight from the skillet into his mouth when his doorbell rang. “Who the hell?” He couldn’t think of anyone who would come calling.

He made it to his front door and looked through the peephole. “You gotta be kidding,” he muttered. Then, “Shit!”

“Griff?”

Griff hung his head, shaking it in wonderment at his fuck-all rotten luck. “Yeah. Just a minute.” He fumbled with the locks, which he’d had the wherewithal to secure when he returned home the night of the beating, fearing that Rodarte’s thugs might show up for round two.

He pulled the door open. “Hi.”

His probation officer gaped at him. “Holy shit. What happened to you?”

He’d met Jerry Arnold in his office a week after speaking to him on the telephone. Griff had figured that a person-to-person meeting might win him some favor. When he’d left the ten-minute meeting, he knew he’d earned a few points.

Now Arnold ’s good opinion of him was in jeopardy. Ordinarily Griff would tower over the short, stocky black man. Today, since Griff was standing at a sixty-degree angle at best, they were roughly eye to eye. “What happened?” Arnold repeated.

This being the longest time Griff had been out of bed in a week, he’d begun to feel light-headed and shaky. “Come in.” Turning his back on his guest, he slowly made his way to the nearest chair and lowered himself into it as carefully as possible. Even so, every ache and pain that had been lulled by his hot shower was jarred awake again. “Take a load off, Jerry,” he said, indicating another chair.

Arnold dressed and conducted himself like a bureaucrat and looked like a man with huge responsibilities and a lot on his mind-a wife, a mortgage, a few kids to rear on a government employee’s salary. And unreliable ex-cons to babysit. He placed his hands on his hips, reminiscent of Coach. “You gonna tell me, or what?”

“I got thrown into the gorilla cage at the zoo. Those fuckers can get testy.”

Arnold wasn’t amused.

Griff sighed, in resignation and pain. “I ran into some former fans. Last, hmm, Thursday, I think.”

“And you still look this bad?”

“Don’t worry. It hurts a lot worse than it looks.” He grinned, but the other man’s frown stayed in place.

“Did you go to the emergency room? Has a doctor seen you?”

Griff shook his head. “I didn’t report it to the police, either. It was just a couple of drunks. They jumped me in the parking lot of a restaurant.” He made a gesture that dismissed the incident’s importance. “I didn’t fight back, so you don’t have to worry about them filing assault charges against me.”

Finally Arnold sat down. “Is this kind of thing happening a lot?”

“I get dirty looks, but this is the first time the hostility has turned physical. As I said, they were drunk.” He gave a sanitized version of what had happened.

“Do you think Vista was behind it?”

“ Vista?” Griff snorted. “If Vista was behind it, I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. It’s nothing, Jerry. Swear to God. I’m feeling much better.”

Arnold made a point of looking at the cold sweat Griff could feel beading on his forehead, but he didn’t comment further. “How are you doing otherwise?”

“Good.”

Arnold looked around the apartment, taking in the fancy TV, the new furnishings. “This is a nice place.”

“Thanks.”

The man’s eyes moved back to him. “How’d you pay for it?”

“Cash. Which I came by legally.”

“How?”

“It has nothing to do with Vista, none of that. I haven’t broken any laws. I haven’t placed a bet.”

“Do you have a job yet?”

“I’m looking into a couple of things.”

“You were going for an interview…”

“It didn’t pan out.”

“What was it?”

“I didn’t get the job, so what difference does it make?”

Arnold didn’t get visibly ruffled over the attitude behind the question, but he repeated in a no-bullshit tone, “What was it?”

Resigned, Griff said, “I asked a sportswriter if I could do legwork for him. You know Bolly Rich?”

“I read his column.”

“I proposed becoming one of his stringers. He turned me down.” Actually, Griff was glad Arnold had pressed him about this. He hoped the probation officer would call Bolly for verification. Bolly would confirm that Griff had tried in earnest to secure employment.

“Anything else?”

“Nothing concrete.” Griff hoped Arnold would let it go at that, because basically Griff liked the guy. He had a rotten job, but somebody had to do it. Griff had nothing personal against him, and he’d have hated lying to him.

“Let me know soon as you land something. It’ll look good on your record.”

“Will do. Soon as I land something.”

“In the meantime, no bookies, no Vista.”

“Hell, I know that.”

“No matter how discouraged you become.”

“Believe me, Jerry, I want nothing to do with them.”

“I do believe you.” He said it like he wanted to but didn’t. “Try to stay out of places where you might run into football fans.”

Griff gave him a look.

Abashed, he said, “Hard to do, I know, but try not to provoke another incident.”

“I didn’t provoke this one.”

“I believe that, too.” And this time he sounded sincere. He stood up to leave. Griff tried not to let his relief show. “Stay where you are,” Arnold said when Griff made to get up. “I’ll see myself out.” He turned to go, then came back around. “Have you heard anything from Stanley Rodarte?”

Griff was glad for the concealing effect the swelling and bruising had on his expression. “Actually, he showed up at the prison the day of my release.” He admitted it in case this was a trick question. Arnold might have been in contact with Wyatt Turner, who could have mentioned Rodarte’s unwelcome appearance.

“Did you talk to him there?”

“No.” Again, the truth.

“He’d mean trouble for you. The last person you’d want to see coming.”