When No One Was Looking (22 page)

“So long as you’re not allergic to good court manners,” the umpire had answered huffily. But Kathy didn’t care. She was too happy.

She won her second round that afternoon in twelve games.

When the day was over and she sat in the backseat of the car with Jody and Bobby, she shared only the fact that she was pleased to have won. She wondered if she would have, had it not been for the girl three courts down the line who took off a shoe and emptied a pebble out of it. At first the memory had seemed distant and trivial. She had forced it back and back, trying only to think of the game at hand, but the white ball against the green had done it, and the picture, as clear as a photograph, popped out of its own accord, and all because someone shook a tiny bit of stone out of a shoe in exactly the same way that the Red Sox first baseman had done weeks before when she’d gone to Fenway Park. Carl Yastrzemski had sat down on first base, removed his left shoe, shaken out a bit of something, and retied it. He’d stood up and gotten a clap on the back from the Yankee coach. This had happened directly after the national anthem was over, at just the time when the camera panned the infield, player by player, starting at first base.

What a dope they’d think I was if I told them,
Kathy decided, and she kept this and the private war she’d been having with herself inside. She had to do one more thing. Then it would indeed be over forever.

“Let her go,” said Kathy’s father. “Let her go. She just wants to run over and tell Marty, I bet. Maybe Julia.” Kathy had jumped out of the car the moment they had pulled into the driveway. She left her rackets on the seat, grabbed her bicycle, and raced off down the street. Yes, she would tell Marty and especially Julia, but not just yet.

Did thunderclouds ever vanish, Kathy wondered, and leave those silver linings people talked about up there in the sky? She pictured a cloud’s silver lining as a sprightly blue-gray silk, just like the lining of her mother’s spring coat but in the classic puffy shape of a cumulus cloud. For the first time since Ruth had died, Kathy felt able to breathe to the very bottom of her lungs. She was able to smile, not for someone else but all alone, riding a bicycle down the street, and she could not recall having done that in several weeks. The dwarf dream would go now.
Of course they’ll all think I’m silly, beating a dead horse,
she told herself, but Kathy wouldn’t have given up the pebble in the unknown girl’s shoe for a hundred silver trophies.

Completely out of breath, she abandoned her bicycle sloppily against the granite wall of the Plymouth police station. She yanked open the heavy glass doors and stood, panting, at what appeared to be the main desk.

The officer behind the desk looked up, opened his mouth, and blinked. “You’ll have to wait a minute,” he said after sizing up Kathy’s wildly blown hair and impatient hands. Then he continued asking questions of a wispy little man, no bigger than a jockey, with a badly cut lip, who stood shaking between two very large policemen. “Name, please?” he asked calmly of Kathy when the wispy man had at last been hauled down a corridor.

“Kathy—Katherine Bardy. I have to see Chief D’Amico right away,” Kathy answered in a rush.

“Complaint?”

“I don’t have any complaints,” said Kathy. “I mean I just have to see him. It’s a matter of life and death,” she added, trying to sound grave and smoothing down her hair with both hands.

“Honey, the chief is a busy man,” the officer began.

“Oh, please, sir. Please just tell him I’m here. I know he’ll say it’s okay. I won’t take up much of his time.”

“Well, it’s been a slow day,” the officer allowed. “Please fill in your name, address, place and date of birth here.” He handed Kathy a paper and sighed, and then he repeated Kathy’s name into a telephone. “You should’ve told me,” he said to Kathy when he’d hung up. “I didn’t recognize you. Plymouth’s major league star! How about that! Go right in, honey. Down the hall, up the stairs to your right. First office at the head of the stairs. Congratulations,” he added when Kathy was halfway down the hall. She heard him say something about having voted for Bobby Riggs.

Chief Dom D’Amico suppressed a yawn and managed to turn it into a broad smile when Kathy walked in. “Isn’t every day I get a pretty young thing coming down these halls,” he said.

Kathy patted her hair again. She was dripping wet from her bicycle ride.

“Nice break from some of these no-goods and junkies and half-dead battered wives with beer on their breath. What can I do for you, honey? How did you do today, by the way?”

“Pretty well,” said Kathy, trying to sound very modest. “I guess I won and all, but it’s just the first two rounds. Tomorrow will be tough.”

“Hear you’re a sure shot to win the whole thing. Sort of like the World Series of kids’ tennis?”

“Well, almost,” said Kathy. “Chief D’Amico, may I ask you a favor?”

“Sure, honey. Anything my weary bones can deliver,” he said, wiping his mouth on his bare arm.

Kathy cleared her throat and straightened her tennis dress. She felt desperately stupid and wished she’d gone over what she had meant to say. “I know you’re going to think I’m awfully stupid,” she began.

“Not a bit, honey. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, could you imagine how you’d feel, Chief D’Amico, if you thought you had some kind of a terrible mark against you and that people thought bad things about you, and you wanted to clear the air once and for all?”

“Honey, I’ve got more black marks against me than the ten of spades, but I think I know what you’re getting at.”

“Well, it’s just this way, sir. Mr. Hammer ... Mr. Kenneth Hammer told me you’d ordered a videotape of the ball game the night before Ruth drowned. He said channel six has videotapes of all the games. This one wasn’t broadcast.”

Chief D’Amico smiled patiently, or was it impatiently? Kathy was not sure.

“Anyway,” she went on, “it’s just been bothering me so much. This whole thing. You see, I went to Fenway Park that night, Chief D’Amico. I didn’t save my stub or my scorecard. But today in the middle of my first match I remembered something crucial. Something nobody could fake if they hadn’t been to the ball game and actually seen it, and I know it would be on the tape because they always run the camera over the infield players in the same order every game. It was right after the national anthem was over. Carl Yastrzemski was playing first. He had something bothering him in his shoe. He sat right down on top of the first-base bag and took the shoe off. It was his left shoe. He emptied out a small white stone. Then he got up, and the Yankee first-base coach patted him on his left shoulder with his right hand. Then the coach folded his arms just like this and spat into the dirt on his left side. The coach was wearing a jacket even though it was a hot night. I remember that because no other player or coach wore their jacket, and I wondered how he could stand it or if he had a cold. Please, Chief D’Amico. If you could run that tape for me, you could see it for yourself. And if you would tell Ruth’s mother and father and also Mrs. Collins at the New England Lawn Tennis Association who called you, I would be so grateful. I would feel one hundred percent free at last.” Kathy gasped after she had said this.

The chief sat behind his desk, leaning on his elbows and playing all the while with a stubby pencil. He gave Kathy a part laughing and part frowning expression, and then he raised both hands as if in despair over a crossword puzzle. “Honey, honey, honey,” he began.

“Oh, please, sir. It would mean everything to me for the rest of my life.”

“I know. I can see that. Just listen a minute, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Kathy answered.

“First of all,” he began, out of the side of his mouth as he lit a cigarette, “to begin with, honey, I saw you were real upset last night. Wanna make an apology that I probably went a little quick for you. Didn’t realize how keyed up you were. I had a tough day. You know? I wish there were more kids like you in this world, honey. That kind of came to me when I was driving home last night. They give you a snort of whiskey, by the way?”

“Oh, no,” Kathy answered. “I’d get sick if I just smelled that stuff.”

“Huh,” said the chief, grinning again and closing an eye against the smoke. “Just what I mean. I wish there were more kids like you. I get teen-age alcoholics down here I could tell you about ... I got two young kids myself. I hope someday, if either one of ’em gets in a jam, he has the honesty to behave like you. Tough. Won’t take half an answer.” He waited, one eye still closed.

“Thank you, Chief D’Amico,” said Kathy. “Now may we look at the tape?”

“Hold your horses, Kathy. The tape was sent back. But as I said, I admire your spunk. I guess that’s an old-fashioned word. I mean to say your spirit and your good conscience, Kathy. Now, if you like, I’ll go and call Channel Six and get the tape back, and we can sit here and watch Carl Yastrzemski take off his shoes and spit in the dirt, but I guarantee you it’s unnecessary. The girl’s parents are satisfied, Kathy, and so is your Mrs. Collins. I saw to that myself because I kind of thought you’d like me to. Everything is cleared up. We did a lab test on the clay, and nobody who went near the Newton Country Club had any connection with the pool house that day or any other day unless they wore gloves and walked on their hands.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kathy. “Lab test?”

“Honey—this fella, Molina?”

“Yes?”

“Okay. We got this fella Molina yelling it isn’t his fault. Right? He’s yelling about people, particularly this tennis coach, tracking up his pool house with tennis court clay. He shows us a sample, and sure enough, it’s red clay all right. Anybody could see that. Now what happens is this. Any time the police department investigates something, we do a routine lab test on whatever we pick up. I hardly bothered to look at the lab report, Kathy, because there was never a
real
case here. No pranks, no murders!” He arched his eyebrows over this word as if it were slightly smutty.

“You mean it was all a big hoax or something about the clay? Are you sure?”

“Kathy, do you know anything about investigations? About the D.A.’s work? About inquests?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Your ideas about crime—now I’m not making fun, here, Kathy, this goes for ninety-nine percent of the adult population. Most people’s ideas are straight out of
Hawaii Five-O
or what’s her name, the detective writer. Do you understand even if we had a bloody hand print here, the D.A. would never go near this with a ten-foot pole? If the state chose to prosecute every last two-bit accident case as a homicide, we’d be booked up into the next century. In this instance there wouldn’t have even been a preliminary inquest, Kathy, because you’ve got too many people running around the area dropping bathing caps and sunglasses all day long. Number two, you’ve got a motive about as farfetched as my Aunt Ethel taking a potshot at the President. Number three, you’ve got your mechanical failure. Any one of those things would be enough to get a judge to laugh it out of court in two minutes. Now, if you still want me to get those tapes, I will, because you’re a decent, honest kid, and I don’t want to see you running around feeling like a heel inside.”

“Well ... I guess not,” said Kathy. “I’m so happy, though. And you told Ruth’s mother and father? You really did? And you told Mrs. Collins?”

“Called them the minute the guy from the pool company came down, Kathy. The parents were real nice, by the way. My guess is they felt a little ashamed to have made such a fuss about it. Volunteered themselves to call your Mrs. Collins. So here’s a Xerox of the analysis if you want a souvenir.”

Kathy shook Chief D’Amico’s outstretched hand. “I’m so sorry to have bothered you,” she said. “But what does this mean?” she asked, pointing out a sentence on the report.

Chief D’Amico appeared to be bored, like a doctor with a very healthy but inquisitive patient. “Huh?” he asked, his hands in his pockets. “Oh, that? That’s your chemical formula for tennis court clay. See, it’s completely different from our sample. Our sample is some kind of sculptor’s clay. Right here.”

“Sculptor’s clay?”

“Yup. See. Called Plastilina. Imported from France. Comes in great big sacks—mixed or in powder form. Cheaper in powder form apparently. No mistaking it. Now you go get a good night’s sleep and go win it for old Plymouth. I’ll see if I can get your name inscribed on the Rock. Okay, champ?”

Kathy was not sure whether it was a long while or a very short while in which she stood astride her bicycle, gazing at a piece of a candy bar that was stuck in the gutter. People seemed inclined to bump into her and to stare at her. She did not know where to go.
If only,
she kept repeating to herself.
If only. If only I hadn’t been so pigheaded as to pursue this down to the last stupid detail, then I wouldn’t know. If only Julia had not come over with Miss Greco’s head the night before Ruth died. If only I hadn’t gone running and seen Miss Greco’s footsteps covered with red clay dust. If only I’d gone in another direction. If only a hundred things.

“Miss, are you all right?” a woman asked.

“Yes, fine,” said Kathy automatically. The people on the street bobbed up and down before her dreamily. Kathy pulled her bicycle off the sidewalk and began to pedal it away in the first direction that occurred to her. She found herself heading toward the club and the sea.

Where are the very beginnings of things?
she asked herself, hoping to find some relief in what logical processes she could manage.
Where did this thing have a root? Was it because I, at least in Julia’s eyes, saved Julia’s life three years ago by dragging her and carrying her a mile when she fell out of that pine tree? Was it because I saved Julia’s dignity on the second day of school?
Kathy thought not. Was it because she, Kathy, had “no protective coloring,” as Julia had put it, and because she needed so terribly much from Julia and Julia had chosen to freely give?

If only,
Kathy began again,
if only I hadn’t bothered to go down to the police station, then at least I wouldn’t
know.
I don’t
want
to know. Why wasn’t it enough for me to just know that I didn’t do it?
She tried to picture life without tennis.