by Cassie Cole
“Hi Roberta!” Sophie said when I arrived. She frowned. “You’re sweaty. And wearing pajamas.”
“I’m fighting a cold.” When Sophie leaned away, I quickly said, “But I’m totally not contagious. It’s a stomach bug. So you have some video to show me?”
“I sure do! Do you want to see just the suspicious part, or do you want to watch everything they do from the moment they got inside?”
“Start from the beginning,” I replied.
“Right. That way you can see how they got inside.” She swiveled the monitor on the desk so I could see. “Take a look at this.”
The video filled the entire screen. It was black-and-white, and a timestamp in the bottom corner said 07:10 PM, 10/05/2019. It showed the front door of the athletic building. Three guys in grey hoodie sweatshirts lingered off to the side, taking puffs off vape pens.
“Of course they vape,” I grumbled.
Sophie grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like the bubblegum flavor! Oh—here they go.”
Someone else approached the front door, scanned their keycard, and went inside. The door began swinging closed on the hinge… But then one of the hooded figures reached out to stop it. He paused for a few seconds, then went inside with the other two on his heels.
“Let me switch cameras for you,” Sophie said, closing out of that video and searching for another.
“What time is the front desk staffed?” I asked.
“Until 8:00 most nights, but only 7:00 on Saturdays.”
So they waited until the front desk person was gone, I thought.
“Here we go.” Sophie opened another camera video. This view was from the inside, pointed across the room at the front door. From this angle I got a head-on view of the three men. I still couldn’t see their faces, but from their size and shape I knew exactly who they were. Nicky and his two goons. One of them held something in his hand, like a paper bag.
“They come right in, and go down the left hall,” Sophie explained. She switched cameras again, which showed them walking down a narrow hallway. “They act like they know where they’re going. You should see the janitor… there.”
A janitor pushed a cart around the far corner. The three guys walked by as if it wasn’t a big deal…
…and then the last guy reached out and shook the janitor’s hand in passing.
“Did he just hand him something?” I asked.
“Yep! At first, I thought I was witnessing a drug deal. But then…” She switched videos again. “Here’s where it gets weird.”
“Is that the athletic director’s office? Coach Mueller?”
“Uh huh.”
The three hooded figures came down the hall and stopped at the door. The one who had shaken hands with the janitor hunched over the door while the other two were lookouts. A moment later, the door opened.
“A key!” I said.
Sophie nodded. “Most of the offices have traditional keys instead of keycards. That’s what the janitor gave him.”
One of the goons raised the object that he’d been carrying. From this camera I could tell what it actually was: one of those lunch coolers with the top that folded down. He reached inside and pulled out a small container.
“That’s a cup!” I blurted out. “A pee cup!”
“A what?” Sophie asked.
“Nothing,” I said. It was definitely a pee sample cup for drug tests. It was already filled with liquid, and had a protective film of tape holding down the lid.
One of the goons took the cup and went inside the office, closing the door behind him. The other two tried to look natural in the hall while they waited. Maybe 30 seconds later, the first guy emerged from the office with something in his hand, which they quickly put in the lunch cooler.
“They go back the way they came,” Sophie explained, “and shake hands with the janitor again.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
Sophie grinned like a dog that had performed a trick. “Right? Super suspicious! This is going to be good footage for your presentation, huh?”
Impulsively, I hugged Sophie tight. “You’re amazing!”
She squeaked and said, “You must really need a good grade in that class, huh?”
I had her copy all of the relevant videos onto a flash drive, and then I jogged out of the athletic building.
This was it. Evidence that San Antonio State players had tampered with the drug test samples. They had set all of this up. It was like a criminal conspiracy! And all because of a stupid football game.
Feeling paranoid, when I got back to my dorm I copied all of the videos onto my laptop, and then saved another copy onto my cloud storage drive. It still didn’t feel like enough, so I made a copy on a second flash drive. I went into the bathroom, stood on the sink, and moved aside the ceiling tile by the fluorescent light. I stuffed the drive inside, then closed it up.
Yeah, that felt like some paranoid secret agent stuff. But I didn’t care. I had the golden ticket to Lance’s innocence, and I wasn’t going to let it slip away.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Lance. He picked up on the third ring. “Hey Babs.”
“You at your place?”
“Yeah. Danny and Feña just got back from the game.”
“Don’t go anywhere. I have something to show you.”
I ran across campus again, a stupid smile on my face the entire way. When I busted through the door into their house, I kept running and leaped into Lance’s arms.
“Eww, you’re all sweaty,” Lance said while I clung to him like a spider monkey. “And still wearing pajamas.”
“Shut up. I come bearing gifts.” I raised the flash drive high, as if it was Excalibur.
“Is that the San Antonio playbook?” Danny asked glumly. “Because that’s the only way we’re going to beat them next week.”
“Better.”
They were skeptical until I showed them the video on Lance’s laptop. Rather than show them everything, I cut straight to the part where the three men broke into Coach Mueller’s Athletic Director office with a decoy pee cup.
“Is that Nicky?” Danny immediately said. “I recognize that cocky posture anywhere…”
“Holy fuck,” Lance said, pointing at the timestamp. “Babs, October fifth is when we had our piss test! I think they’re messing with the samples!”
I smiled sweetly at him. “You’re not just a pretty face, you know that?”
I explained everything that the rest of the footage showed. Them sneaking in, getting a key from the janitor, and then breaking into the office. By the time I was done, they were high-fiving me and celebrating like we’d won the war.
“Have you shown anyone this?” Feña asked. “The police?”
“You three were the first ones I had to tell.” I pointed at the laptop. “They had a long-term plan all along. They knew they were going to lose the regular season championship to Appleton, so they came up with a plan to take out three of their most important players.”
“But I’m the only one who popped on the test,” Lance said, frowning.
“It’s much more than that.” I nodded to Lance. “They swapped your pee sample with a tainted one, ensuring you would get suspended.”
I turned to Danny. “They picked a fight with you at the restaurant, then immediately went after your injured knee once you were on the ground.”
I faced Feña. “And they knew I was tutoring you somehow, and looked up our exam schedule and made an anonymous phone call to claim we cheated.”
“None of this was a sure thing, though,” Danny said carefully. “Just making an anonymous phone call wasn’t guaranteed to get Feña put on academic probation. And they didn’t know I would try to fight them in the restaurant. If I had shown more restraint, they never would have injured my knee.”
“Maybe they didn’t expect all three to work. Cast a wide net and see what works. Then they got lucky and all three did.” I spread my hands, encompassing all three of them in one sweeping gesture. “Wide receiver,
quarterback, and place kicker. All knocked off the roster right before playing San Antonio.”
Lance stood very still, a white-hot fury building within his tall frame. “I want to beat the shit out of Nicky fucking Tarkenton. Wipe that smirk off his face.”
“Not if I get to him first,” Danny said.
“You have done enough fighting,” Feña cut in. “Save your precious knee and let me blacken both of his eyes.”
Danny gave a carefree laugh, the first one I’d heard from his lips since he’d gotten injured. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just fantasizing. Alright, so what now? I guess we report him to the police today?”
“I have a better idea,” I said with a feral smile. “Let’s get even first.”
47
Roberta
The final week of the football regular season was a whirlwind of activity for us.
We didn’t go right to the police. We didn’t even go straight to Coach Mueller to let him know Lance’s test was falsified. Instead, I did my research and made some phone calls. I planned, and schemed, and set everything up. Like dominoes, waiting for the first one to be pushed over.
The guys were totally on-board with my plan. They trusted me, just as they had trusted me all throughout the season up to this point. It made everything else I did much easier knowing I had their support. It helped that they wanted to squeeze as much revenge out of the situation as I did, even if it was risky, timing-wise.
Now that we had a plan, it was like the guys had been rejuvenated with injections of caffeine. They continued working out in the mornings, even Danny using the leg press machine on low weight. Lance threw himself back into his daily conditioning with so much enthusiasm that even Coach Mueller asked if he was handling his suspension well.
“I’m just super fucking happy, Coach,” Lance told him.
Feña and I lifted weights together before the rest of the team, as we’d been doing all along. And after setting a new personal record for his overhead press, Feña threw me over his shoulder and carried me into the locker room and fucked me on the changing bench until we were sweaty and exhausted for two reasons.
Everything felt right in the world again. So long as our plan works.
Saturday arrived. The final game of the season, the big game against rivals San Antonio State, was at home that night. But we had an action-packed day leading up to it.
First was the academic integrity board meeting in the morning. Feña and I dressed formally, like we were going to church. The board administrator gave a little speech at the beginning about honesty and integrity being integral parts of an Appleton education, and other cliches that I wasn’t in the mood to hear.
When it was time for us to make our defense, I pulled out the records that I had requested and placed them on the table in front of the board.
“These are the phone records for Professor Barton’s office,” I said.
Professor Barton blinked from behind his glasses. “I… pardon me?”
“Don’t worry—there’s nothing embarrassing there,” I said. “We’re only interested in one number. Can you point to the one from the anonymous tip? The person who claimed they witnessed Feña Martinez cheating off my exam?”
“Um. Let me see. It should be this one. Yes, that was when I was in my office hours that evening.” His finger settled onto the number I was expecting.
I dialed the number, then put my phone on speakerphone and placed it on the table. “That number should belong to an Appleton student, correct?”
The phone began to ring.
“Ms. Gallo,” the board administrator said, “if the point you’re getting at is that the number belongs to a land line or someone else, I do not think that is sufficient evidence to prove your innocence. Someone leaving an anonymous tip could use any number of phone lines to…”
The phone stopped ringing and a chipper-sounding young man answered the phone. His voice filled our little room.
“San Antonio State University, Kiser Dorm. How may I direct your call?”
Everyone in the room leaned toward the phone, shocked.
“Hi there Kiser Dorm,” I said cheerfully. “I just received a phone call from this number. Can you help me figure out who placed it?”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t help you there,” the chipper young man said. “This is the routing number for the entire building. I won’t be able to narrow it down without knowing the extension.”
“Aww, that’s too bad,” I said. I was unable to suppress my grin now. “But if I received a call from this number, that means it definitely came from the Kiser Dorm. Correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Thanks for the help!” I pressed the red button to hang up.
I looked up at the faces around the table.
*
“It went exactly as we planned,” I told Danny on the phone as I walked back across campus. “Feña is re-taking the exam with Professor Barton as we speak. We should know how he did in about an hour. What about Lance?”
“He just left for the NCAA hearing,” Danny said.
“Perfect. I’ll meet him there.”
I got to the athletic building at the same time as Lance. He grinned when he saw me, sweeping me up in a big embrace and kissing me.
“You look good in a skirt,” he said, cupping my ass. I reached back and got a handful of his cheeks too.
“And you look good in dress clothes—even if the shirt does cover up your tattoos. Can’t wait to see how you look on draft day.”
“Don’t jinx it, Babs! We’re not out of the woods yet.”
We went inside to the conference room where the meeting was supposed to take place. Officially, this was a meeting with the NCAA member representative to discuss Lance’s appeal. It had taken some begging and pleading to get them to meet so soon, but everyone was here on a Saturday: the NCAA member rep, an official from the Sports Science Institute, and Coach Mueller.
“Let’s make this quick,” Coach said when we sat down. “I know that as a suspended player you’re not as in-tune with the schedule, Lance, but we have a somewhat important football game today.”
“This should be over quickly,” I said. “In fact, Lance will be reinstated this afternoon.”
The NCAA rep gave me a patient, but patronizing, look. “The appeals system is a long, exhaustive process. It takes weeks and months to gather the information, file the paperwork, and receive a ruling. And as I said before, you may only appeal a decision if something improper has been discovered in the testing process.”
I opened my laptop and hit play. By now I had stitched all the different camera views together into one master video. I watched with satisfaction as their eyes widened and their jaws dropped.
“I think you will all agree that this sheds plenty of doubt onto the validity of Lance’s drug test,” I said to the group.
“Son of a bitch,” Coach Mueller breathed. “Those bastards took out my star receiver! Son of a bitch! Do we know who they are?”
“That’s Nicky Tarkenton,” Lance announced. “And two of the other linemen that are always hanging around him. They took me out so I can’t play against them in the big game today.”
The NCAA rep was as pale as a bedsheet. “This is certainly compelling evidence. And I have no doubt that you will win your appeal. However, again, the appeals process is a long and methodical endeavor. Even if I were to expedite the appeal, it would be at least a month before we could overturn your suspension.”
I wasn’t dismayed by his statement. I’d been expecting it. And I was prepared.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, addressing him and the Sports Science Institute official. “Your NCAA drug testing program is already mired in national scandal because of the San Diego incident. The last thing you need is another scandal involving one team using your program to sabotage another. Especially since we have video evidence.
“So, here’s what’s going to happen.” I pulled out a copy of the NCAA Drug Enforcement Progr
am rules and guidelines. It was 300 pages long. “Section eight, sub-section B, article five says that the representative from the Sports Science Institute who makes the initial suspension, can also retract the suspension during an appeals process. If he’s presented with sufficient evidence, of course.”
I slid the stack of paper across the table.
“I’m about to send this video to ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and every other sports journalist in the country. But if Lance’s suspension is retracted, well, then there’s no need for me to do that at all.”
The two men swallowed audibly.
*
On the way home, I passed the football practice field. It should have been deserted right now since there was a game over at the main stadium in a few hours, but there was one man standing alone in the middle. He crouched down, took an imaginary hike from an imaginary center, and then dropped back like he was going to throw a pass.
“Didn’t expect to see you out here,” I said as I approached.
Danny’s smile was weary. “Just feeling my knee out.”
“You’re not thinking of playing today, are you?”
“Of course not,” he deflected. “That would be stupid. How’d it go?”
The big smile that split my face told him. He wrapped me in a tight hug.
“The suspension was lifted?”
“They made the call on the spot. Lance went straight to the football stadium with Coach to suit up. He wants to get some extra drills in with the backup quarterback before the game.”
Danny sighed into my hair. “Roberta, you’re amazing. You know that?”
I laughed wryly and sat down on the nearby bleachers. “Except you’re still out. And that’s my fault.”
Danny sat next to me and twirled the football between his hands. “Nah. You can’t take the blame for something they did.”
“But it’s my fault,” I insisted. “If I wasn’t there, you wouldn’t have lost your cool and attacked them.”
Danny laughed. “If that didn’t happen, they would have found another way to injure me. Maybe they would have tried twisting my leg on the first play of the game tonight. Or maybe they would have worn ski masks and jumped me when I came out of my house one morning. After seeing the lengths they went to to rig Lance’s drug test, none of that would have surprised me. I’m lucky it’s only a grade one sprain.”