Break Point Down Read online

  Right. He'd wanted to know what he amounted to without that racket. Well, so far it had added up to a fat zero. Someplace out there Kari was paying for his arrogance, heaven knew where, maybe sleeping in a cardboard box. And what was she doing for money? Pursuing that thought very far could really make you crazy. She was thirteen and out on the streets. No, fourteen now. Her birthday was this week. Did she celebrate it? Did she even remember? He got a cake, just in case she got sentimental and couldn't stand it any longer. He stayed home, waiting by the phone. She didn't call, and by the end of the day he chucked the cake with its fourteen candles into the garbage.

  Occasional tennis clinics supplemented his job in a bookstore. The burial had all but wiped him out and even the piano money was running low. He was getting better at the art of budgeting, but years of traveling first class were not erased overnight, and when his first paycheck from the bookstore came he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. In February he wasted money on a private detective who not only didn't find Kari, but, he suspected, hadn't knocked herself out, either. For now he could do as well himself. When he got his hands on some serious money, he'd hire a better agency.

  The hours had become days and then weeks, a paralyzing sequence of workouts, classes, hours at the bookstore, and forays into the inner city and to Kari's school, where he kept after her friends until the principal asked him not to return.

  “If you have any more questions, please call me, Mr. Buchanan,” she told him. “We'll let you know if we find out anything.” He knew she meant business.

  Kitt was grieving as though for her death. The second spring of his new life was here, and the days seemed to grow darker.

  Laura was back, but when he called she responded only with the expected I-told-you-so's. He told her about the visit to Jeff, and Kari's reaction to his death. She made no comment and wouldn't discuss Jeff, but said she'd talk to Henry about posting a reward for finding Kari. Nothing came of it, and he stopped calling. She seemed almost relieved that he, too, had struck out as a parent to Kari, as though his failure justified her own. Grading on the curve, aren't we, Laura? Was she hurting inside, or had she simply erased Kari when she signed over custody? Laura had given birth to this child. She had loved her, nurtured her. Could people turn that off?

  Since his repeated inquiries with the police had met with little more than crisis-weary recitals of the statistics on teenage truancy, he asked naive questions of the kids who knew her.

  He felt old. At times he remembered being young, a long time ago, on the tour—a child, and then a not fully grown adult. At fourteen he'd been the breadwinner for increasing numbers of people and worked himself ever farther from adolescence into a clump of athletic prowess and financial promise. He'd traveled to most countries in the world, and he knew the airports and the tennis courts, the hotels and the taxis. Efforts to see the cities and the countryside had been hemmed in by time crunches between matches and practices and the mandated hours of rest and conditioning and interviews. After a while, they all ran together in his memory as one gigantic airport and an endless stretch of tennis courts in facing mirrors, smaller and smaller and rapidly losing significance.

  On his useless rounds through dirty streets and littered alleys he scanned kids' faces, but no one was talking. These were not ball kids, and he had no advantage. His weapons were a killer serve, an untouchable volley, sizzling ground strokes. Fat lot of good that did here.

  He wandered past warehouses and hollow buildings, boarded up against the neighborhood. There were kids all right, smoking and strutting and staring him down. A few gave him a look of chilling appraisal, and he could only guess at what they were sizing him up for. Stubborn, he refused to give up. Somewhere, some day he'd turn a corner and she'd be there.

  The answers would not be coming from these kids. Some looked at him as predators might eye a stray sheep, speculatively, with contempt and greed in their eyes, and sometimes malice. Were these the kids she was hanging out with? Behind those smirks, what did they know? For a fleeting moment one day he toyed with the notion of taking one of these sneering kids down and hammering the truth out of him the way he used to rip tennis balls with his racket when he was particularly intense.

  He thought better of it and after hours of futile scrounging around squalid back streets and ear-splitting teenage haunts his pain boiled up to a savage frenzy. He turned around and took Thor for a long, enervating run in the mountains, gulping down clean air, a five-setter that sapped every particle of energy from his tortured muscles and seemed to suck the very marrow from his bones. He ran and climbed till he collapsed on the ground and lay there till he could think calmly and clearly, the fury spent.

  Momentarily cleansed from the rage that haunted his sleep and poisoned his days, he lay quietly, looking up at the sky, and experienced peace. He fell asleep for a while, right there in last year's brown, wet grass, with Thor curled up by his side. When he woke up he thought of his questions. They were changing. Did the answers still matter?

  March came with heavy skies and endless rain. In a late-night downpour he trudged home, plodding through the storm in an attempt to wear himself out so he could fall asleep from exhaustion as soon as he got back, and not listen for her all night. He'd be too tired to yell at her when she waltzed in at an unearthly hour.

  A semi came barreling down the flooded street, and he ducked behind some dumpsters, cursing himself for slogging around the railroad sector at that time of night. What did he think she was going to do, take a train? When the truck had passed, he stood for a moment, taking stock.

  He was acting like an idiot. Kari ran his life and occupied his every thought. Everything was falling apart because of his obsession with Kari's welfare, and Kari's pain, and Kari's tyranny, and Kari's absence. She knew where he was. She could find him.

  How did you balance it all? Abandon Kari as Jeff had, as Laura did? Yes, she knew how to find him. But she was carrying too much baggage. She'd told herself she killed her father. It was bizarre, but she believed it.

  He pulled his jacket tighter around his neck and started out again, then stopped for a moment, puzzled at the sound he realized he'd been hearing for several minutes. Like someone crying. He looked around, but saw nothing, and shrugged irritably. This was beyond stupid. Now he heard her cry in the rain. He'd searched the area enough to know she wasn't there, and a night watchman by the warehouses down the road had given him some suspicious looks already. What was more, Thor hadn't found her.

  But the sound came again, and Thor was rooting around the dumpster excitedly, whimpering and wagging his tail.

  “Come on, boy,” he called, a little impatient at having to wait for the young dog, who always found something to inspect. But he saw something move. A mouse, no doubt. No wonder Thor was excited. Well, buddy, I don't like the weather either. Find yourself a hole.

  But Thor wouldn't leave, and as Kitt came closer the dog began to lick at a bedraggled bit of grey and white fur, soaked and scruffy. As Kitt reached out to touch it, it let out a scratchy, pathetic little mew. Frowning, he picked the kitten up. He was no expert on cats, but this one looked like a three- or four-weeker to him, ears still flat, not nearly old enough to be away from its mother. As he petted it gently under the chin, the weakest little purr began to rumble under his fingertips, and he couldn't help smiling.

  “So now what—bring home another reject?” he asked dubiously. He answered his own question as he cuddled the tiny creature under his jacket, instinctively trying to keep it warm and dry.

  “Oh well.”

  Thor wagged his tail in approval. Kitt was baffled by the dog's keen interest in the kitten. He'd never been around cats. Under a streetlight he pulled his jacket back a little for a closer inspection. It was pitifully thin and weak, but it was still purring. He sighed as he thought of another vet bill coming up.

  He stopped by an all-night supermarket, and came out with a bag of kitten stuff, food and a couple of toys and a small brush. He broke into
a run, now and then talking softly to the tiny bulge under his coat, or addressing the dog who trotted happily at his side.

  “Happy to have a bud, Thor?” he asked almost cheerfully. The dog let out some short, happy barks.

  “Guess that answers that,” he nodded, reaching a tentative finger under his coat and finding to his delight that the kitten tried to chew on it. He scratched the little head, and the purring became louder. The volume amazed him.

  As he walked in the door the house sounded empty. It was four o'clock, almost time to get up. Kari hadn't come home. A message on his cell? Maybe tomorrow.

  Out of the blue, Wynne called and they talked on the phone for a short while. He didn't bring up the scholarships for now. She told him about her recent travels and her plans to attend the last week of the French Open.

  “Any chance you'd come along, just to watch?”

  “No way,” he told her. “I'm going to school, remember?”

  “No such thing as spring break?”

  “Not at the end of May. Anyway, I have a job.”

  “Babysitting your mutt?”

  “Got a kitten now, too. I'm a family man with responsibilities.”

  “Another stray? One almost cost you your life this winter. You'll never learn, will you?”

  “Not a chance. Thor sort of brought her home.”

  “Oh, great, an alley cat. Probably brings home all kinds of diseases.”

  “Vet says she's healthy. She's a homebody. Had enough of the streets. Never, ever leaves the house.”

  They didn't talk long, and Kitt was relieved to hang up. He hadn't told her about his plans to play an exhibition in late July or early August. Rick was sure he could pull it off. The Cannon would still be a huge drawing card, maybe the more so for his absence. No one had stepped up to be a clear number one. A couple of months of training with George—he'd be back in playing shape. The knee had healed and he'd worked the stiffness pretty well out. The fans would be eager to see if he could still give a good account of himself after nearly two years out.

  “It could be a great beginning of your big comeback, like at the Open,” Rick told Kitt during a layover in a coast-to-coast flight.

  “Let's not go there, Rick.”

  “Give it some thought. You're almost two years out now. Going to be twenty-six this summer. Young enough to come back and make it big, with your tools. Not young enough to wait a whole lot longer. You'd be back in the top twenty like that. Number one within six months.”

  “That's not really the point.”

  “You need to recoup. You can finish school in six or seven years, after your tennis career is over. You'd be set for life. ”

  “And dump Kari.”

  “You play tennis and you can afford to have someone looking for her full-time.”

  “I tried that. I'd rather do it myself.”

  “You went to a third-rate outfit. You need to do your homework before you hire someone.”

  “You know an awful lot about my life.”

  “You're important to me. I want to see you back on the show courts.”

  “One exhibition. Gotta go now. Got an appointment with a professor.”

  Dr. White was blunt.

  “Frankly, I don't know what's happening with you. A year ago you were admitted on academic probation and went on to draw A's all the way. This year you're a wreck.”

  He was messing up. Skipping classes because he went out looking for Kari, and missing work because he was out following up leads, and at home instead of studying he thought about Kari out there somewhere, hooking up with other runaways, easy prey to the vultures of the streets.

  He sighed.

  The older man looked at him long and hard, and his tone softened somewhat.

  “You've been through a lot. But you won't last here on sympathy.”

  “They're going to kick me out?”

  “Unless you get your grades up, you run that risk. And there's another thing. Have you been rocking the boat somewhere in Administration?”

  He shook his head, surprised.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Nothing too definite. But I tried to talk a little while ago to some people on the scholarship committee, just trying to find out what happened there. Temperatures dropped considerably when your name came up.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Care to enlighten me?”

  He gave Dr. White the condensed version of his phone conversation with Walter Lloyd-Rutgers. The advisor shook his head.

  “And I always thought of you as a superb strategist.”

  “Me?”

  “On the court, you would set up a point, work it around until you had it just right, and then you'd hit some untouchable shot and win the game.”

  “That's tennis.”

  “That's life. You wouldn't have come out and tried to blast at 150 miles per hour when your serve was off. You would've made sure you got that ball into play. But you went at Lloyd-Rutgers like a bulldozer.”

  “Give me a chance to screw up, I'm all over it.”

  “Antagonizing him isn't going to win you any points around here. Right or wrong, he can make things pretty hot for you.”

  “It was stupid. But I hate being manipulated, and I wanted to know what was going on.”

  “Save your crusades for where you can do some good. This was a lost cause before you started. I respect you for standing up for yourself, but it's an expensive pastime. Now get those grades up.”

  A surprise awaited him when he got home. A police car was parked in his driveway, and curious neighbors were gathering in small clusters of humming conversation. A uniformed officer approached him.

  “You live here, sir?”

  “Yes. What's the matter? Did Kari—”

  “Take a look. Someone used your house for target practice.”

  He stared at the shattered windows and the cracked door. Unbelieving, he touched the splintered wood and started walking around the house.

  “A drive-by. Anything like this ever happen before?”

  “Just some vandalism a while ago. Anyone get a look at the license number?”

  The officer shook his head.

  “Only thing anyone saw was a truck barreling off down the street. I tried to take a look inside, but your dog won't let us in.”

  “Oh, no, Thor!”

  Kitt dashed inside, and Thor came running at him, accounting for his stewardship as watchdog in short, sharp barks.

  “Good dog, Thor. Good dog. At least they didn't get you.”

  The officer gave the huge dog a dubious glance, but seemed reassured when Thor obediently sought his pad in the corner at Kitt's command.

  Landlady was going to love this. He was going to have to replace the windows and that door. What was this, anyway—dumb luck, a random drive-by? A vendetta? Any chance at all that this was more than somebody's sick thrill? Had someone been shooting at him through those windows?

  He was up late that night hammering boards across the broken windows and shoring up the front door. When he was done he stared somberly at the bullet holes in the wall and in the furniture. The place looked like a battlefield, and inside he felt about the same.

  “Are you planning on moving?” asked Linda when on impulse he called for some information and wound up telling her about the gunfire.

  “I doubt it makes much difference. I lived in a quote unquote upscale neighborhood before and that didn't stop anybody. If Kari comes back, this is where she'd come, so I better stick around. Besides, the price is right.”

  “I don't like this, Kitt.”

  “Who does? I'll figure something out.”

  “That private investigator didn't do any good?”

  “Nope. And I've been thinking. Let's say a private eye finds her. Then what? If she doesn't come home on her own, she isn't going to stick around anyway. I can't chain her to the wall.”

  “You could talk to her.”

  “One thing I've learned—if a kid doesn't wa
nt to stay someplace, forget it. Unless they're wanted for something, police don't care. They know you can't make'em stay put.”

  Spring smells were around him when he ran the trails with Thor the next morning. It was Saturday, and he didn't have to be to work till eleven. He chafed at the stagnation in his life. Years of discipline and concentration should have kicked in by now, years when all needs and thoughts had to come in second to a little ball, a minute skill, especially on match days. Right now every day was a match day. How many times had he had to tune out pain and stress and focus all he had on a precise serve, a scorcher down the line? He should be setting aside study hours, work hours, rein in his galloping thoughts and worries.

  He chased the dog down the mountainside and through the foothills till they reached the truck. When he opened the hatchback, a tiny meow greeted them. The kitten was sleek and filled out now, with short and shiny fur of grey and white, strikingly marked with bluish grey and black tiger stripes. She stretched luxuriously and came over to rub up against Thor. The dog clearly enjoyed it and ran a wet tongue over the tiny creature, who promptly set about washing herself with painstaking care, holding down a quivering tail with her front paw. Thor settled down in the back of the car, and the kitten rubbed herself along his back and then snuggled between his paws, a bit of dandelion fluff against Thor's rough coat. Kitt smiled at the duet of tail-thumping and purring.

  In the mailbox was a notice from the landlady, canceling their month-by-month rental agreement. Kitt couldn't even blame the woman.

  How would Kari find him now? One month, that's about all he had left. At the bookstore he worked extra hard, lugging the boxes of books up from the loading area, arranging them on the shelves. The proprietor had warned him. One more absence and he was out of there. Eight-fifty an hour they paid you for this. What had his per-hour pay been on court? He'd been making more than thirty mil. If this were full-time work he'd clear less than eighteen thousand per year, before taxes. Who could live on that?

  He shrugged. At least after an exo he'd breathe again.