Double Pass

by David Chill

  St. Dismas got the ball back a few minutes later, and they then did something which no one on the field expected. Noah took the snap and immediately threw the ball back to Austin, who had stepped back enough to ensure the pass was technically a lateral, making it a legal play. Not expecting this, and not knowing quite what else to do, the defense reacted accordingly. Nearly everyone on the St. John Hershey team raced to tackle Austin. Except Austin, of course, had no intention of running with the ball. He took a couple more steps back and heaved the ball to the other side of the field. And running uncovered, with no one within 20 yards of him, was Noah Greenland, the lanky body wearing number 4 was racing downfield all by himself. This play was called the double pass, which was two legal passes, one of which just happened to be backwards. Noah had become an eligible receiver, a reality the opposition either didn't grasp, or just responded to very slowly.

  As Noah looked back to gauge the flight of the ball, he found it, reached up, and plucked it out of the air easily. Slowing down, he literally danced into the end zone for another touchdown, with no defenders anywhere near him. Noah raised his arms, and both the crowd and his teammates roared jubilantly. His teammates were so excited that the entire 50-man roster left the sideline and flooded the end zone to join him. They mobbed Noah, causing the refs to immediately throw yellow flags all over the field. The St. John Hershey team stared in disbelief. This wasn't something that typically happened in the first quarter, or even at the end of a typical game. But this was not a typical game. This marked the return of a deeply troubled, heartbroken kid, someone who had been smacked hard by some of the worst things life could dole out. It was an ugly storm that Noah had had to weather, and I knew from personal experience it would be a long slog for him to get back to dry ground. But it looked like he might be starting the process, and football might be his lifeboat, and perhaps even his ark. And as he ran back to the sidelines, his teammates patting and hugging him along the way, Noah pulled his gold helmet off. For a moment, brief and fleeting but noticeable nevertheless, I thought I saw Noah Greenland smile.

  *

  St. Dismas won the game handily, 49-10, and it wasn't as close as the score indicated. The double pass was a backbreaker, and you could literally see the air go out of the St. John Hershey team. I stayed around for a while after the game ended, congratulating some of the players and finally getting a chance to speak with Curly Underwood. I gave him a high-five rather than risk damaging any tendons with a handshake. He seemed, if not happy to see me, at least bemused.

  "Burnside. Are you part of our fan base now?" he smiled.

  "I suppose I am. Congratulations. On both the win and getting yourself a nice gig. Head football coach at a prominent prep school. Right place at the right time?"

  "Something like that," he smiled as a parent came by, stopping only to pat the coach on the shoulder. "It's an interim position, but these things have a way of becoming permanent."

  "So no more Duke Savich."

  "Nope," Underwood said. "It was his idea to recruit Noah, but Duke was the one who capitulated when Bob demanded money. Someone had to take responsibility, and he was the one who gave the thumbs up here. High school is a different world now."

  "Apparently. I coached college for three years. There were always rumors that certain schools paid the players or their families. But it rarely gets divulged, and it's rarer still to have checks drawn."

  "Savich was sloppy," he said. "If he were smart he would have just delivered a few suitcases full of cash. No footprints."

  "That your plan?" I asked.

  Underwood smiled. "Those days are over. We're running a clean program now. Have to. Public scrutiny will demand it."

  "Not to mention the fact that players like Noah Greenland come along about every 40 years."

  "Maybe so."

  "What's Savich going to do now?" I asked.

  Curly Underwood smiled, held his palms up in a who-knows signal, and then tried to duck as a group of players doused him with what was left of a bucket of light green Gatorade. He laughed, told them they would be doing extra laps on Monday, and waved goodbye to me as he trotted off to the locker room, drops of fluid falling off of him. I took one last look around the St. Dismas field, headed to my Pathfinder and drove home in the darkness.

  The next day was Saturday, and I normally didn't go into the office on a weekend. But Gail and Marcus were off to a Mommy and Me class, and Chewy was still snoring away at 8:30 a.m. And when I checked my voice mail, I heard a message that got my attention immediately. The caller didn't leave a name, and their voice was only vaguely recognizable. They said they needed my help, and they had nowhere else to turn. They asked if I would be in the office Saturday morning, but did not leave a phone number for me to get back to them. Intriguing did not describe this so much as insanely compelling.

  The morning was sunny, but there were a few puffy clouds gathering overhead. I arrived at my office at 9:00 am, a grande cup of Starbucks Pike Place Blend in hand. The caffeine jolt was nice. I sat in my office, sipping coffee, my mind wandering back to the pain that kids like Noah Greenland and Dash Farsakian were going through. This was a part of me I could not control, the part that sympathizes with kids who have not received a fair deal in life. I never knew my father; he died in a car accident before I was born. Whatever pain I had from that loss lay deep inside of me, and it didn't surface much, only when I came upon someone whose pain might equal mine. When I was a kid, the only time it bothered me was when I saw a friend spending time with his father. I tried not to dwell on it, but that hole in my heart was always there.

  Having put in thirteen years with the LAPD, I saw so many examples of what not to do as a parent. I don't know if that was good training for fatherhood, but it at least showed me some potholes to avoid. Parenting involved sacrifice, but if you loved your child, there really wasn't much to give up. I didn't have a roadmap; I simply tried to be a good dad to Marcus. Or as good a dad as I knew how to be.

  These thoughts came full circle when I heard a soft knock on my office door. I told them to come in and the knob turned and the door opened slowly. The person who entered had the same sad eyes I had seen so many times before in my career. A person in desperate need of help. They didn't need to verbalize it, the look of pain and fear and panic and despair were so clearly evident. But this was a little different from all the others. The pain they brought with them, would include my own.

  She sat down quietly. Her long blonde hair hung down, slightly unkempt, unwashed for a few days, but still had that golden glow. She had been crying recently, the tip of her nose was red, and her mouth was twisted in a crooked way. Her eyes were watery, but they were still big and blue.

  It had been almost ten years since I had seen her. She no longer exuded the innocence of a teenage waif. She was still beautiful, but that beauty had hardened over the years. Her appearance still cried out that she was someone in need of protection. I steeled myself. I did not want to fall for this again. The last time had cost me, hugely, unfairly, and had changed my life in an unalterable way. I didn't want my life to change any more. But I did need to get closure on this particular chapter of it. Maybe Judy Atkin did as well.

  "Let me start," she said with a slight sniffle, "by saying, I'm really, really, really sorry for what happened."

  "Me, too."

  "I heard you got kicked off the LAPD."

  "Yes," I said. "A long time ago."

  "I made a big mistake," she said, looking down at the floor.

  "Yes."

  She hesitated. "But I need your help. I've got a big problem. I don't know where else to turn."

  I looked at Judy Atkin for a long moment and began to seriously consider that bad things actually did come in threes. I swiveled in my chair and looked out the window. The sky was still blue, and the sun was still shining. But the large clouds off on the horizon were growing bigger.

  THE END

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  Post Pattern Preview

  Chapter 1

  The people who tried to kill Norman Freeman last night came dangerously close to succeeding. Or at least Norman thought they were trying to kill him. Despite having the passenger window of his car shot out on the Santa Monica freeway, he still wasn't entirely sure.

  "They may have been after my brother," he said. "It's very confusing."

  "Getting shot at often is," I answered. During my tenure on the police force, I had exchanged gunfire on two occasions. Both times I escaped without physical harm but paid an emotional price. There were the countless nights where sleep never came, and many others that were altered by petrifying nightmares. Each shooting incident took a couple of months to overcome, but I don’t think I ever fully recovered. The bad dreams still slip in occasionally. Trauma can stay with you forever.

  "I'm just stunned at what happened," he said, as his pretty blonde fiancée sitting next to him took his hand and squeezed it slightly. A large diamond ring glittered from her finger.

  "You told me that over the phone," I reminded him, "but let me ask you something. How did you happen to select me? Burnside Investigations doesn't exactly stand out in the yellow pages."

  Norman brightened for a moment. "Dick Bridges recommended you."

  Dick Bridges was director of campus security at Los Angeles University, more commonly referred to as LAU, and we had known each other since I played football across town at USC. That was almost twenty years ago. Time goes by so quickly. It seemed like yesterday that I resigned from the police department; in fact it was only two years.

  I nodded. "Dick and I go back a long ways. He's done well for himself."

  "Mr. Bridges told me you were the best."

  Laughing, I said, "Dick owes me a few favors. Has he lost any weight?"

  Norman shook his head. "No. He'd make a good offensive tackle. I could have used him two years ago. I played quarterback at LAU."

  I was well aware of Norman Freeman. His name or photo had appeared almost daily in the Los Angeles Times. The blond hair, blue eyes, rugged jaw, and muscular frame were right out of central casting. He wore a long sleeve oxford cloth shirt with a button down collar and pressed khakis. It was as if Frank Gifford, the all-American boy of the fifties, had magically reappeared. He made me feel old, but at forty, that was far from a herculean task.

  Norman had been a second round draft pick of the Patriots, but his pro career was short-circuited by an injury during a pre-season game. When no receivers were open on one fateful play, he took off on a scramble and attempted to hurdle the safety who stood between him and the goal line. The defender upended him brutally, separating the shoulder of his throwing arm and causing a concussion when he landed on the unforgiving turf. Despite attempts at rehabilitation, the shoulder never fully recovered and headaches became a regular part of his day. And Norman Freeman's gridiron career came to a sudden halt.

  "So what are you doing now?" I inquired.

  Norman smiled shyly. "Working for my father. He owns a bunch of car dealerships on the Westside. I'm being groomed to take over the business."

  "Nice work if you can get it," I remarked. Being a smart ass was a gift which came naturally to me. And as off-putting as it might be at times, it often got people to say things they ordinarily didn’t intend to.

  But Norman Freeman sat in silence for a minute, pondering the end of his left thumbnail. I noticed that it had become slightly warm in my office, and I made a mental note to contact the property manager to fix the air conditioning. Had I something more interesting to do that afternoon I would have hurried him along, but Norman was more entertaining than staring out my window. And his fiancée was certainly a sight to behold.

  Her name was Ashley and she was about Norman's age, tall and slender, with golden hair that flowed freely down her back. She wore a black top, white slacks and pink and white Nikes. Despite the warm weather, she carried a white denim jacket with little silver stars sewn into the collar. She wore a face full of makeup including violet eye shadow and scarlet lipstick. When she smiled, her teeth were big and white, a gleaming Pepsodent smile if there ever was one. I tried not to linger too long on her and began to mentally review my calendar for the rest of the day. I needed to be at Mrs. Wachs' house at five o'clock, but that was a few hours away. Aside from that, the only thing I had to decide was what to have for dinner.

  "Mr. Burnside, you're probably wondering why I'm here," he said.

  "The thought crossed my mind."

  "As I told you over the phone, somebody tried to shoot me last night. Actually it may have been Robbie they were trying to kill."

  "So you mentioned. Robbie's your brother."

  "Right. He played for LAU also. He was a really good wide receiver. You may have heard of him."

  I nodded. "All-Conference if I recall."

  "Yes."

  "You were All-Conference as well, weren't you?" I inquired.

  He nodded eagerly. "Three years. Robbie was my best receiver the last two. Freeman to Freeman."

  "Then you graduated."

  "I was a year older."

  "Of course," I said.

  "They changed around the offense after I left. Started using the Read Option. That was probably why Robbie didn't have a great senior year."

  "So I gathered. I still follow the game."

  "Sure," he commented. "I remember watching you when I was a little kid, Mr. Burnside. You played safety at USC, didn’t you?"

  "You've got a good memory. But why don't we get back to why you're here."

  "Oh yeah," he paused. "Well it was like this. I was driving Robbie's car last night. You see, our parents had an affair up at the house. I needed to leave early and Robbie's Honda was blocking my car in the driveway. So I just borrowed his."

  "Sure. I do the same thing when someone double parks in front of me."

  Norman gave me a confused look but continued on. "Anyway, I'm driving on the freeway when all of a sudden someone pulls alongside and fires a gun at me. Shot the side window clean out. I was really lucky they missed, the bullet got lodged in the head rest."

  "And you think they were after your brother."

  "Who would want to kill me?"

  I decided to answer a question with a question. "Who would want to kill Robbie?"

  He thought for a moment. "I don't know."

  "Did you get the plate number?"

  "No," he said sadly. "I was too startled. I can't even describe the car to you."

  I asked if he had gone to the police, and both Norman and Ashley responded with concurrent nods. Norman had the perplexed look of a football player facing a Cover 2 defense for the first time. Ashley responded.

  "The police took a report,” she said, “but they told us that without a license plate number there wasn't much they could do. They also seemed very busy."

  "Business must be booming," I mused.

  "Excuse me?"

  I held up
my hand. "Never mind,” I said, and turned back to Norman. “Before I start sticking my nose into your brother's business, have you talked to him about this?"

  He nodded yes. "Robbie... Robbie told me not to worry about things. Not to get involved. He'd be very angry if he found out what I'm doing here. But I'm his brother. I care about him. And I'm worried for him."

  I watched Norman's face to see if it would reveal anything more than golden boy looks. He spent most of his time talking with his gaze aimed at the floor. That might have meant either he couldn't look me in the eye or that my linoleum was developing serious wax build-up. Trial judges often instruct their juries to consider a witness's body movements during testimony, but I've concluded that theory doesn’t always work well in practice. People can tell the god's honest truth with a drooped head and slumped shoulders, while others are able to commit blatant perjury while looking someone dead in the eye.

  "I understand."

  He continued to fidget. "So will you help me?" he finally asked.

  "I doubt I'll be able to find the guy who took a shot at you last night."