The Man Offside

by A. W. Gray

  I’d fixed her Drambuie in a tiny stemmed glass earlier, and her drink sat half full on the nightstand. She had a dainty sip. “That’s not what Jack said. Or the other guys on the team, either. They—”

  “Donna, it’s great of them, but those other guys aren’t coaches. I’ve never seen a ball player yet who knew beans about talent. They’ve got talent, but they can’t recognize it. So let’s let me go ahead and feel sorry for myself, it’s kind of fun. The long and short of it is that when the Rams finally had enough of me and let me go, there I was. In L.A. with about two cents to my name and a phys ed degree to fall back on. Man on the move, huh?

  “So-oh,” I said. “Well, I don’t guess I went to a party the whole time I played football where there weren’t some drugs around. Uppers, downers, cocaine, grass, you name it.”

  “I went to some of those,” Donna said. “Remember?”

  “Yeah. I don’t remember you taking any dope, though.”

  “My point exactly,” she said.

  “And your point’s well taken. So I wasn’t so smart and hindsight’s twenty-twenty, what can I do about it now? I had a habit of living high that was harder to break than a dope habit, what can I say? Only I wasn’t making any money anymore. So I knew a guy in L.A. I’d met at some of those parties and he knew a guy back here in Dallas and the two of them were in need of somebody desperate for money and too dumb to know better. Which was me. I was going to get twenty thousand dollars just for flying to Dallas, picking up a package, flying it back to the coast, and driving it down to Newport Beach. Easy money, huh? Only when the guy in Dallas handed me that package at the Marriott, boom. Lights came on and guys in dark suits came in. This Dallas guy had been working with the feds all along.”

  “God, didn’t you know that was the way it works? All you have to do is read the paper.”

  “Hindsight, Donna. Hindsight. You’d have to have been there. And understand this, I’m not bitter about what happened to me up to that point. I’d made my own bed and I was ready to lie in it. But then along came Mr. Norman Aycock.”

  Her chin lifted. “The same one that’s prosecuting Jack?”

  “The same old guy. Small world, huh? Aycock’s been around here since the Alamo. He wanted me to testify against the guy in L.A., the one who sent me, and I wouldn’t do it. I guess somebody somewhere taught me that you’re supposed to take your own medicine. Since I wouldn’t cooperate, Aycock decided to frame me. Hell, Donna, what I did was worth two years in the joint, tops, but by the time Aycock got through running in all these phony witnesses to testify about things that never even happened, I wound up with a ten-year sentence. Of which I served half. Which I’m not really thrilled about.” I tried some of the Drambuie myself. It was warm and sticky and burned going down.

  “Is that what’s going to happen to Jack? God, you’re scaring me.” She hunched her shoulders and hugged herself. The movement squeezed her breasts together, and their tips quivered like pink lambs’ noses.

  “It ought to scare anybody, babe. The old gnome has got the power of God, and he’s crooked enough to do just about anything. That’s why Cassel wanted me. So some of the things I’m doing aren’t exactly cricket themselves, but on this deal my conscience isn’t going to bother me. Call it rationalization if you want to.”

  Donna got up, rose on her tiptoes, and stretched. Then she knelt beside me and massaged my chest and shoulders. Her hands were cool and firm. Her forearm muscles rippled with the movement of her fingers. “Rick,” she said.

  “Yes. Ouch. Careful, Donna, that’s tender.”

  She traced the scar on my shoulder with her fingernail. “That’s still sore after all this time? You had that operation right after Jack and I married, didn’t you?”

  Four months to the day after the wedding, to be exact. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Sometime around then. It still hurts if you touch it a certain way, I guess it always will. Another thing to thank football for.”

  “Poor baby.” Her tone was gentle and teasing. Then, more seriously, she said, “Do you think about me?”

  I wasn’t sure how to handle that one, but I decided to tell her. “Sure I do. But things have worked out. You wanted things I couldn’t give you. That I still can’t. Like homes and permanency and fidelity and whatnot. Things you’re entitled to.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got them now,” Donna said. She lowered her gaze to her lap and rested her hands on her round thighs. “I do love him in a lot of ways. And Jacqueline’s my life. One problem we’ve had, well, Jack has real problems with you and me and what was. If he knew about tonight ...”

  “It might put him under,” I said. “I told you we might be sorry. I just don’t know what’s right. What we want? What Jack wants? I’m pretty sure he’s going to be home in a couple of days, out on bond. You going to have trouble facing him?”

  She turned her back to me and lay on her side. “I suppose I’ll have to deal with that when the time comes.” She groped for my hand, found it, pulled my arm around her. “For now just hold me,” she said.

  6

  Norman Aycock probably hadn’t looked so glum since the Supreme Court threw out the death penalty, way back in ‘69. He turned his craggy face around and peered birdlike toward the rear of the courtroom. Nothing there. He piddled around at the prosecution table, picking up typewritten pages one at a time in long, skinny fingers and pretending to read them over. He poured himself a glass of water from a chrome-plated carafe. In the hushed courtroom the sound was like a waterfall.

  From his seat at the bench, Judge Sid Fitzwater said impatiently, “The court has a lot of business, Mr. Aycock. Can’t we get on with this?” Fitzwater was a recent appointee by the Reagan administration, the youngest federal judge in the history of the Northern District of Texas. His flowing black robe was a couple of sizes too big for him. He looked like a high school kid playing dress-up judge.

  Fred Cassel stood at the defense table, wearing a navy Brooks Brothers (I briefly wondered how many identical suits Fred owned), and today a maroon silk hanky in his breast pocket. He took his glasses off and tapped an earpiece against his front teeth. “I agree with the court, Your Honor. My client’s been in jail for a week, and it’s high time he learned something about his bond.” He threw an encouraging sideways glance in Jack’s direction. Jack was seated at the defense table wearing a dark brown suit. The two U.S. marshals who’d escorted him over from Lew Sterrett Justice Center were lounging against the rail. There was a slight stoop to Jack’s posture that I’d never seen before.

  Aycock lifted his bony frame and stood as well. His suit was black, the sleeves about a half inch too short. His hair was gray-going-to-snow-white, cut short in the fifties style and parted on the left. Aycocks’s idea of liberal was a woman whose skirt showed her knees. He said, after clearing his throat, “Please bear with us a moment, Your Honor. This case is of the utmost importance to the government, and I assure you that we’re not taking up the court’s time intentionally.” He was doing his best to speak respectfully, but I caught a tone in his voice that said the old prosecutor thought that the young judge was an upstart twerp. I wondered whether Fitzwater had caught it as well.

  Fitzwater tapped on the bench with the eraser end of a pencil. “I’m giving you two minutes, Mr. Aycock. Then we’re proceeding with the bond hearing, ready or not.” A giant Stars and Stripes hung from a gilt pole on his left.

  The door behind me swished open. I turned. There was a muted rustle as fifty or sixty spectators—three reporters I’d counted, four or five lawyers with other cases on the docket, the rest the usual gawkers and hangers-on—turned as well. I was seated five rows behind the rail, practically in the center of the spectators section. I had to crane my neck a bit to see what was going on at the rear of the courtroom.

  A Mutt and Jeff duo came in, one tall and wearing a charcoal suit, the other short and squat and wearing a plaid sports coat. I’d never seen either one of them, but they’d both be federal agents. W
hen you’ve been through the system as I have, you get to know the look. Mutt looked perplexed while Jeff signaled Aycock, then extended his hands palms up and shrugged.

  We got no witness today, boss. My lips were spreading in a grin as I turned back toward the bench. I froze. Aycock had spotted me.

  The look that the old prosecutor was shooting in my direction wasn’t exactly a glare. It was more the look of a man who’d picked up a rock in the creekbed and found a moccasin writhing underneath. Or who’d just walked into his bedroom unannounced and found the plumber banging his wife. He turned back to the bench with a snap that must have popped a couple of vertebrae in his neck. Now it was Cassel who was staring at me. He was a little green around the gills. I grinned, tossed old Fred a wink, folded my arms, and slid downward in the cushioned pew.

  Aycock said, “Your Honor, may counsel approach the bench?” His voice was raspy and sounded old.

  As Aycock and Cassel converged on Fitzwater, I watched Donna. She was sitting in the front row, in front of me and to my left. She’d worn conservative gray, a modest business dress that buttoned up to her throat. Her luxuriant hair was confined in a bun and she wore a small gray hat. Her neckline was elegant and slender, and there was a royal tilt to her chin. Jack turned around and smiled hopefully at her. She raised a manicured hand and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

  There was quite a show going on before the judge. Aycock was talking a mile a minute, gesturing frantically with his hands. Cassel had one ear bent in the prosecutor’s direction as he listened. Good old Fred’s mouth was agape in disbelief, and he now turned and stared in my direction as though he’d never seen me before in his life. At the same time Judge Fitzwater leaned forward and regarded me through narrowed eyes. Finally Aycock made it a threesome, interrupting his discourse long enough to fix me with a beady-eyed stare. I put on my blandest, who-me expression and looked at the ceiling.

  The judge shrugged his shoulders and said something to the lawyers. Both Cassel and Aycock returned to their respective places. The judge popped his gavel. In the foreground, the slim female court reporter sat up straight, her fingers poised over the keys on her shorthand machine.

  Fitzwater droned, “The court calls Case No. 87-CR-371-J, United States of America versus Jack Stuart Brendy. Are the government and the defendant present in the courtroom?”

  Cassel and Aycock stood as one. Jack rose slowly to his feet at Cassel’s side. Both sides said that they were there. Fitzwater went on.

  “The matter at hand is a bond hearing, ladies and gentlemen. Before we begin, are there any announcements?”

  “The government has something to say, Your Honor,” said Aycock, squaring his shoulders. The rasp was gone from his voice and he spoke in a rich, youthful baritone. Norman Aycock might be an asshole, but he was some kind of orator when the spotlight came on.

  “Proceed,” said the judge. He sat back and folded his hands.

  “We’d planned to present probable cause evidence, much more than probable, that the defendant here, Jack Brendy, did conspire to transport two hundred kilograms of a controlled substance—to wit, cocaine—into this country from Colombia. But it seems we can’t. It seems our witness has disappeared. Disappeared under circumstances, I wish to go on record as saying, that lead me to suspect foul play.” He sounded like the guy on “Inner Sanctum.” He turned to stare once again at me.

  There were whispers and rustles in the courtroom.

  People stared. An elderly woman in a blue dress, her white hair tinted electric blue to match, regarded me from an aisle seat like, Oh, you dirty dog. I cleared my throat and kept my gaze straight ahead.

  Now Fred Cassel chimed in. “I want to go on record also, Your Honor. I want to go on record as saying that if something has happened to their witness—and I’m not agreeing that anything has happened, Your Honor; there isn’t any evidence that anything has—but I want to go on record as saying that I know nothing about it. The law offices of Fred S. Cassel wouldn’t get involved in anything that even hinted of being so ... so wrong.” Now it was Cassel’s turn to stare at me. Old standup Fred.

  “Well, that’s a matter for the U.S. prosecutor and the FBI,” Fitzwater said. “And I’m sure, Mr. Aycock, that you’ll see things are fully looked into.” Now the judge looked at me. I’m sure that he wasn’t, but I got the feeling that Fitzwater was about to laugh. Then he said sternly, “But that doesn’t solve our current dilemma. We must proceed with the hearing, witness or no witness. The statute says plainly that the defendant is entitled to a bond hearing within seven days of his arrest.”

  Aycock cleared his throat. “Your Honor, since we’re currently without any ammunition, the government withdraws its request to hold the defendant without bond.”

  “I should think you’d have to,” Fitzwater said. “Request granted.”

  Now Aycock bowed his neck and stuck his chin out like an old bull pawing the ground. “But we’re going to ask the court to set substantial bond. The defendant is charged with drug smuggling, one of our highest crimes. Higher than high. He has assets. His assets are going to be the subject of a seizure order that I’m going to ask the court to consider in the near future.

  But for now, anyway, he has assets. He’s known to be connected; he can step aboard an airplane and be halfway around the world in hours. And foremost, we feel he’s a risk to commit further crimes while he’s out on bond. These—these drug dealers have a tendency.”

  “Objection.” Fred Cassel’s voice was a mild tenor and didn’t carry very well. On the heels of Aycock’s rich baritone, Cassel sounded like a scratchy old Dennis Day album.

  “Sustained,” Fitzwater said. “Mr. Aycock, you haven’t presented any evidence that the defendant has done anything in the past, much less that he’s going to do anything in the future.”

  Cassel strutted in place. The reporters scribbled notes. To the unwashed masses it looked like a timely move for the defense, but I’d been around the courthouse enough to know better. With no government witnesses to point the finger at Jack, Fitzwater had to sustain the objection. His hands were tied.

  Aycock plunged on. “Nevertheless, Your Honor, we are asking for a substantial bond to guarantee the defendant’s presence. Two million dollars, Your Honor. Two million minimum.” He stepped back and folded his arms.

  Fitzwater arched an eyebrow. Then he said to Cassel, “Does the defense have anything to say?” This part was for show. Fitzwater already knew how much Jack’s bond was going to be, but he was going to give Cassel a chance to blow and go anyway. Make it look as though Cassel was earning his fee. It was like a goddamn fraternity.

  Cassel took the judge up on it. He tweaked, “Yes, we do, Your Honor. We ask the court to bear in mind that Mr. Brendy is well established here, a homeowner with wife and child.” He gave Donna an over-the-shoulder glance that reminded me of an Oral Roberts sermon I’d once seen on TV while waiting for a Giant-Bear kickoff. “Also,” Cassel said, “and this is in the past, but Mr. Brendy is not an unknown. He was an outstanding player with the Dallas Cowboy football team. He’d have a hard time going incognito.”

  “And I’m sure his old teammates would back him up,” Fitzwater said. He threw a smirk in my direction.

  “To the hilt, Your Honor,” Cassel said. I cringed inside. Cassel said, “And under the circumstances the defense asks that bond be waived and the defendant be place on personal recognizance. Thank you.”

  Fitzwater regarded Cassel for a moment, and I got the feeling that the judge thought old Fred sounded just as dumb as I thought he did. Finally Fitzwater said, “Well, I hear two million and I hear personal recognizance. That’s quite a spread, gentlemen. Mr. Brendy,”—now he spoke directly to Jack, ignoring everyone else—“Mr. Brendy, I’ve no choice but to set bond for you in this matter. I’m also telling you here and now, sir, that if the government can prove its allegation regarding what’s happened to their witness, things will not go easy on you. Bond is set at five hundred thousand dollars.”<
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  Fitzwater’s gavel banged and echoed. The courtroom buzzed and tittered. Jack’s shoulders sagged even more.

  Donna half rose and turned to face me. Her look was close to panic and there was a mist in her eyes. She mouthed silently, “We can’t.”

  It wasn’t a big surprise that Jack couldn’t post bond. He had some assets, yeah, but the reason he’d gotten into the drug deal in the first place was that he’d been in a bind. Hell, Aycock probably knew exactly how much bond to post; five would get you ten that he’d briefed the judge on what to do if they couldn’t deny bond altogether. I winked at Donna, at the same time mouthing back to her, “You can.” Then I turned around and looked for Sweaty Mathis.

  Sweaty was making tracks. I spied his round form just as he hustled out of the courtroom into the hallway. I charged after him, almost knocking over an old gent with a cane in the aisle. Steadying the old fellow and mumbling, “Excuse me,” I caught Sweaty halfway to the elevators.

  “Where you going, Sweat?” I said.

  Sweaty was living up to his name. Rivers of perspiration ran down his forehead and made little tributaries around his eyebrows. He was round-faced with pudgy cheeks, about six inches shorter than I was. He was wearing a dark green suit that was too big for him, and that needed pressing.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Half a mil. Half a fucking mil. What I’m going to do if the guy runs off?”

  “Sweaty. Did I ask you what I was going to do if I got caught when I was helping take a little income tax heat off you? If he runs you’re going to hire a bunch of lawyers to keep you from having to pay off, that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going the wrong way, Sweaty. The bond posting desk is in the other direction. Jack won’t run, take it from me.”