Spiral

off his age, he stuck out a hand. ”Don Floyd. Can I help you?”
    I shook with him, his accent Southern, his grip like a vise. ”John Cuddy. I’m looking for Cornel Radescu.”
    ”Cornel?” Floyd gazed out to the parking area. ”Well, that Checker—like the old taxis?—is his car, so he’s still here somewhere. In fact”—now Floyd gazed out over the courts, shading his eyes with a hand like the Indian scout in a black-and-white western—”I thought I saw him a couple—yeah. Yeah, that’s him, on Three, serving into the ad court.”
    Following his eyes, I saw a man with a ponytail smash the ball with the loudest ”thwock” sound I’d heard toward a much smaller, slighter woman. A little puff of green dust rose from the surface as the ball bounced up shoulder high on the woman, who nevertheless hit it solidly with a two-handed stroke like a baseball batter. The man was already in position for it, though, and after two more exchanges that looked pretty professional to me, he rushed to the net and dinked the ball deftly out of her reach.
    Floyd and I watched the woman bow her head, hit the edge of a raised sneaker with her racquet, then walk purposefully to the net and shake hands cheerfully with the man. As they moved to a seating area shaded by an awning roof between two courts, Floyd turned back to me.
    ”Their match is over, John.”
    I said, ”Should I wait for Mr. Radescu here?”
    ”You could try that, but Cornel lives on the other side of the complex, so he doesn’t usually come this way. You might want to catch him down there, assuming nobody else has the court now.”
    ”Thanks, Mr. Floyd.”
    ”Just call me ‘Don.’ Everybody else does.”
    And with another broad smile, he strolled to the tiki bar.
    There were walkways between the chicken-wire fences separating the courts spread around the club. I took a slatted path toward Court Three.
    As I opened the swinging wire door, the woman who’d played against Radescu was coming out, a large bag that I thought could hold four racquets slung from her shoulder. She looked even more athletic up close, with a deep tan and bright eyes.
    Surveying me head to toe, she said, ”He’ll kill you in those shoes,” then cuffed me lightly on the upper arm and went through the doorway, laughing quietly.
    I stepped onto the court surface, which did seem like pulverized green dirt. Moving around the white-tape edges of the playing area, I was about ten feet from Radescu before he turned, an insulated picnic jug to his lips.
    ”Tough match?” I said.
    He hefted the jug. ”A powder drink, to restore the electrolytes.”
    The accent you’d hear in a Dracula movie. Radescu stood about six feet tall and maybe one-eighty, though his serving arm was half again as big as the other. He wore a yellow, placket-collared shirt and black shorts, some fingerprints of the courts green dust on the thighs. The face looked like it was chiseled from a piece of Transylvanian cliff, with a long, straight nose and dark, steady eyes peering out from under darker eyebrows. No gray in the ponytail, either.
    Radescu set the jug down on a table near a chair with another tennis bag in it. ‘You are this John Cuddy?”
    ”Good guess.”
    Radescu smiled slightly, but made no effort to shake hands, so I didn’t either.
    He looked behind me, then slumped into a chair, pulling a towel from his bag and mopping his forehead and neck with it. ”I see no one to take this court, so we may as well talk here, in the fresh air and shade.”
    ”How did you know who I am?”
    ”Nick’s man—Duy Tranh?—calls me to say a detective will talk with me.”
    Nick. Aside from his wife, I couldn’t remember anyone ever calling the Skipper by his first name.
    Radescu shrugged. ”Also, Cassandra describes you.” A pause. ”Quite accurately. And is this how you know me, too?”
    I looked back toward the patio area. ”Someone pointed you out to me.”
    ”Who?”
    ”Why do you want to know?”
    A feigned look of surprise. ”I want to thank that person for their courtesy.”
    I weighed it a minute, including Don Floyd’s casual way of identifying Radescu for me, then said the name.
    ”Ah, the unofficial mayor of our little community here. Don knows everyone.”
    ”I would have recognized you from the videotape, anyway.”
    ”The video?”
    ”Of the Helides birthday party.”
    ”Ah, yes.” More towel work, this time across the eyes. ”The reason you are here.”
    ”What can you