Death Match - Diane Duane [50]
Catie grinned. Winters, seeing the grin, rolled his eyes.
“Yes, well,” he said. “Normally we do our best to resist the urge to use Mark as a stalking horse. It’s all too easy to get in the habit of relying on a talent so close to home, and it would be exploitative. Mark has a right to a normal childhood, one that doesn’t involve being the tool, willing or otherwise, of a law enforcement agency.” He raised his eyebrows, a resigned look. “But since Mark seems to routinely and consciously sabotage all attempts by his parents to provide him with a normal childhood, we’re all aware that mostly this is a losing battle. And anyway, there are occasions when it becomes briefly appropriate to temporarily set our scruples aside.”
Catie got up and started to pace a little herself.
“Anyway,” Winters said, “will you think about it?”
“I have been thinking about it,” she said. “For my own part, the answer’s yes. And for George’s part…I have this idea that he may be asking for help, somehow. Maybe he suspects what’s going on. Either way, it sounds like you’d be in a position to help him out.”
“…Yes,” said Winters, and he was looking at her thoughtfully. “And so would you. You and he seem to have struck it off pretty positively…and he seems willing to talk to you about what’s going on.”
“Not just willing,” said Catie, “but positively eager.” That was, in fact, something that had made her wonder a little.
Winters sat quiet for a few moments at that. “All right,” he said. “Catie, as the play-offs progress, would you be willing to be a good listener for a while?”
“To find out whether anything illegal is going on inside the club?”
“That would be part of it.”
Catie held still for a moment, thinking. She wasn’t wild about the idea of being some kind of informer. Yet she thought back to what George himself had been saying about the difficulties of spatball in general, and South Florida in particular.
“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable about this,” Winter said. “If you feel you can’t in good conscience be involved in an operation of this kind, even tangentially, I’ll understand. Yet at the same time it’s a unique opportunity to make sure that the forces we suspect are moving in on spatball don’t get a chance to consolidate a choke-hold on the sport at large. The money coming into spat means that all the levels of play, especially the more amateur ones, can funnel their share of the funds into the community projects they love…and keep their sport clean and alive in its present form. But a loss to the organized crime people moving in on them now will suggest that the rest of the sport is weak as well, and can be covertly suborned by illegal payments and shady influence….”
Catie stood silent for a few moments. “Mr. Winters,” she said. “George is a friend. I’m not going to lead him on. But what he tells me freely—”
“That’s all we’d want to hear about,” Winters said. “I wouldn’t think of asking you to betray any confidences. But any indication that George was uneasy about what was going on inside his team would definitely help us work out how best to keep the damage that we suspect is about to happen, from happening at all….”
He stood up, too. “Obviously you’re going to need to talk to your parents about this, and so am I. But there wasn’t any point in talking to them until I’d spoken to you first. This isn’t likely to be a dangerous business, which is one of the reasons I’m willing to involve you. At the same time, you’re going to need to keep your eyes open. We are going to be