Offside Trap

by A. J. Stewart

  “And please pass on our thoughts to Jacob’s family.”

  “I surely will,” I said, and I strode to the fire stairs and down into the quad. The sky looked brutal, like something was brewing up there. Despite the heavy day it was glaring out, so I donned my shades and wandered back to my car, thinking that I would indeed pass on the good doctor’s wishes to Jake Turner’s parents, just as soon as I tracked them down and met them myself.

  Chapter Five

  BY THE TIME I headed north out of Fort Lauderdale and got back to West Palm Beach the sky had thickened and fat dollops of rain were hitting the windshield and spreading out like pancake batter on a hot pan. I made the call to head straight to Longboard Kelly’s. I could have gone to the office, but then I would have just disturbed Lizzy from getting on with whatever it was Lizzy got on with that kept LCI ticking as a viable entity. Business in the Palm Beaches was decent enough. There were plenty of rich nosy neighbors, jilted lovers and spouses, and annoyed insurance firms to keep us busy. But if it were up to Ron or me to keep focused on the business nitty-gritty, we would have been a sunk ship years ago. Lizzy held things together, and I think she more or less preferred it when I was out of the office, so I skirted downtown and pulled into the lot behind Longboard’s.

  It was as steamy as a crockpot when I got out of the Mustang, so I let the big raindrops hit me. It seemed I wasn’t the only one with the evaporative cooler idea, because most everyone was standing in the courtyard, eyes closed, faces to the sky. Ron opened one eye, scoped me and smiled, and then closed his eyes again and turned his weather-beaten face to the heavens. A large splotch exploded in his gray hair and he laughed. Muriel the bartender had abandoned her station and stood arms outstretched, huge breasts pointed to the rain, mouth open to catch her fill. All the other patrons were out there with them. A visitor might have thought they had landed in the Oklahoma dust bowl, a year since the last rains. Truth was it had only been three weeks. But three weeks in the tropics feels like forever, as the heat rises from the ground and the humidity builds like a pressure cooker. People start doing crazy things. Standing out in the courtyard of a bar that sells cold beer, waiting for a raindrop to land on your tongue was the least of the craziness. I glanced at the courtyard bar, where my favorite stool sat waiting. It was under a thatched palapa that usually served to shade me from the beating sun. My stool faced across the bar and into the main barroom. Mick, the owner of Longboard’s, stood behind the bar watching the lunatic rain catchers with an impassive face. Mick had no mind for such antics. He stood, tattooed arms crossed, wearing a tank top like Muriel but without the topography. I wandered over to him.

  “What do you think of the weather?” I said.

  “This too shall pass.” It was a truism alright.

  “Hard or soft?”

  “Hard,” he said. And he was right. We watched for barely a minute before the heavens cascaded down like Niagara Falls themselves. The crazies didn’t run for shelter. It took no longer than five seconds for each of them to be drenched to the bone. That’s the thing about tropical rain. It really gets about its business. And then there’s only so wet you can get. Mick grabbed a dish towel and threw it across his shoulder, and then he nodded at me.

  “Make yourself useful, Miami.” He ambled back into the dark bar and I wandered around past the bathrooms and inside, and then I ducked under the counter and stood behind the beer taps. Ron was my first customer. I poured him a Yuengling, and he held it up in cheers and wandered back out into the rain. I served a few more beers, two white wines from a bottle with no label and a couple of tequilas and lime. Everyone went back out into the rain. It didn’t matter. No one was catching a cold. It was pelting down but still eighty-five degrees out. People congregated around the plastic patio tables, each with a faded beer labeled umbrella in the middle. Everyone held their drinks under the umbrellas so they wouldn’t be diluted by the rain. For half an hour I acted barkeep and the rain pounded down. Then as quickly as it began, it stopped. The sun didn’t break through the cloud, but the humidity wrapped itself around the bar and everyone retreated, dripping and sodden, back to their seat or stool. Ron took his stool at the outdoor bar, where I poured two beers. Muriel swung in under the counter. Her skin was wet and tan, and the drops of water ran across her arms like mercury. She wrung her hair with her hands like a wet dish towel and dripped all over the floor, and then she patted me on the backside.

  “Thank you, darlin’.”

  I skipped back under the counter and took my stool.

  “So what’s the news on campus?” said Ron, sipping his beer and then running his hand through his wet mane.

  “A student-athlete overdosed.”

  “Not good. On what?”

  “As yet unknown.”

  “So no clues?”

  “None at all.”

  “How’s your friend? Kim, is it?”

  I sipped my beer. “Odd. You ever been close to someone? Someone who was like a brother or a sister, way back when. But you drift apart. Then when you meet again, you feel like you should know them, like you do know them. But you’ve both lived another half a life. So now maybe you’re working on bad knowledge, false assumptions.”

  “You need several more drinks, my boy.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” I took a long pull on my beer. As I did I felt a pair of arms wrap around me and a pair of cool lips plant themselves on my cheek.

  “Well, hello.” I smiled and put my beer down, and turned on my stool. She was wearing a summer dress, yellow with blue flowers, thin straps. Her short brown hair was, like everyone else’s, wet. The dress clung at her hips and thighs, and gave way to thin tanned legs.

  “You’re not wet,” she said. Her lips were thin and her smile stopped traffic. At least when I was driving.

  “Bar duty.”

  “Since you’re offering.” She took a seat and Muriel made her a vodka tonic. Muriel passed the drink across. “There you are, Danielle.”

  “How are you this fine, damp afternoon, Deputy Castle?” said Ron.

  Danielle smiled. “Better now.” She took a sip of her drink and turned to me. “And you? Campus tour?”

  “Weird. Just telling Ron. They got some odd dynamics going on there. Can’t make it out. But the upshot is they got a kid in hospital from a drug overdose.”

  “He okay?”

  “That’s the thing. No one really seems to know. It’s like they’re trying to put a lid on a situation rather than solving the problem.”

  Danielle sipped her vodka. “Wouldn’t be the first time a college did something like that.”

  “Right enough. But here’s another thing. They don’t have campus cops. None. Local PD does it all.”

  Danielle shrugged. “Not uncommon.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. There are lots of smaller colleges—liberal arts, privates, career colleges—that don’t have the size to justify a full police department of their own. So they subcontract to the town they are in. In many cases they’re an important part of the town anyway.”

  “So why don’t all colleges do it? Why does UM or Florida have their own cops?”

  “In some cases politics, often logistics. A big school like University of Florida has what, fifty thousand students and staff? That’s a decent-sized town right there. A town within a town, essentially. And they have unique issues, dealing with lots of underage kids, that sort of thing. So it really makes sense to have their own law enforcement unit. A school with a couple thousand population, not so much.”

  “Makes sense. But then the local cops moonlight as paid security on campus. That seems pretty cozy.”

  “It is,” she said. “But still not unusual. Lots of cops have second jobs and many as security guards, doormen or bouncers.”

  “Guys do that in the Sheriff’s Office?”

  “Sure, some. There are rules about what you can do, but it’s not outlawed. And that’s how these things happen. Cover-ups occur in colleges just
like towns. The colleges are hard though, because they have thousands of students and staff who are probably not so interested in keeping the secret and plenty of time on their hands, and these days they all have access to social media. News gets out.”

  I nodded and drained my beer.

  “What’s the next move?” asked Ron.

  “The kid’s parents are in town, down from New England somewhere. I guess I’ll go and see how things are doing at the hospital.”

  “Which one?” said Danielle.

  “Broward General.”

  “You want company?” said Ron.

  “Don’t think they’ll be all that receptive to my visit.”

  “I been married twice. I’m pretty sure I can handle it.” He smiled.

  “Then meet me at the office at nine.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  I turned to Danielle. “Swim?”

  “Actually these vodka tonics are going down pretty well, but I guess I better come in case I need to rescue your sorry carcass.”

  “You always say the most romantic things.” I turned to Ron. “You cab it?”

  He nodded, so I tossed him the keys to the Mustang.

  “You two behave yourselves, you hear,” said Ron. He didn’t wait for an answer; he just swiveled back toward the bar and tossed the keys to Muriel. She poured him another beer. She would be the ultimate arbiter of whether Ron drove home tonight, or stopped by in the morning to retrieve the keys from a hiding spot in the courtyard that both Ron and Muriel would take to their graves.

  Chapter Six

  WHEN I WOKE the next morning the heavy cloud had vanished and the first hints of orange light shone across a cloudless sky. I lay for a moment, allowing my brain to drift into the day. Danielle lay with her back to me, all soft tan skin and brown hair. I slipped out of bed and threw some water on my face. When I came back into the bedroom Danielle was sitting up, bare-chested with sleep in her eyes.

  “Going somewhere?” she whispered.

  “Thinking about a run.”

  Danielle smiled and bounded out of bed. She was the only person I’d ever known who rejoiced at the thought of an early morning run. She was ready and bouncing up and down on her toes when I got to the front door. We walked briskly to warm up, from my little seventies rancher on the Intracoastal side across Singer Island to the beach. Real estate wisdom said you should buy the worst house on the best street. I was a disciple of that logic. My place was the worst on the whole island. It was the only one on the open water that hadn’t been knocked over and rebuilt into a mini mansion. It was, like me, a seventies original, and I liked it that way. When we reached the sand we started running. We headed north to where the island thinned to a finger, past the apartment towers, and onto the empty stretch by MacArthur Beach State Park. I dropped in behind Danielle and kept her pace. It was convenient for both of us. She loved to lead, to set the pace and dance across the freshly washed sand. I liked to sit in behind and watch her. She was lithe and fluid. I could bounce a quarter off any part of her body. I wasn’t a natural runner and found the view super motivating. Her shorts were tight and she had sprinter’s legs. She took us up to where the park gave way to the homes that surrounded Lost Tree Golf Club, where she stopped, sucked in a deep breath, winked at me and then took off back south. By the time we got back to City Beach I was shot. Danielle stretched. We wandered back to the house, past the homes with pools in mosquito-proof cages, and showered. I went to the kitchen and pulled out the blender. I tossed in some flaxseed, kale, strawberries and pineapple, split a few dates and filled it up with ice. Two large glasses of smoothie were poured when Danielle came out of the bathroom. She was in her uniform, all starch and crisp lines, looking hard and serious but sexy as hell. We drank our smoothies as Danielle drove me downtown. Traffic was steady. She stopped outside the county courthouse building. It looked like something that belonged on the Mall in Washington DC. We kissed, and I got out and walked through the huge archway that separated the family courts from the criminal courts. The building was new but the revolving doors were old brass jobs, like something you might see in New York at the entrance to Bloomingdale’s. I cut across the road and wandered through the parking lot beside our building. Ron was waiting for me, sitting in the Mustang with the air-con running, eating a bagel with peanut butter and sipping on a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. I opened the passenger door and slid in.

  “You made it home,” I said.

  “Decided if I was visiting a hospital I didn’t want to look like a patient. So I headed to the yacht club for dinner. Coffee?” he said, offering me his Styrofoam cup. I shook my head, so Ron dropped the coffee in the drink holder, punched the gearstick into first and headed out to I-95. We took an easy hour to hit the hospital. The sign on the building said Broward Health Medical Center, but everyone called it Broward General. It was a sprawling campus that from the outside looked like a large shopping mall, cream concrete and glass. Ron parked in the multistory parking structure, and we took the enclosed footbridge across to the hospital. Inside it wasn’t like a mall. It was all hospital, cold and antiseptic. It took ten minutes and a couple of white lies to track down Jake Turner’s whereabouts. We got to the duty nurse’s desk. She was a fierce black woman in a pink uniform. She looked like she was at a pajama party but wasn’t enjoying it very much.

  “Jake Turner?” I said.

  She glared at me like I was a bug and she was a boot. “You are?”

  “I’m from his attorney’s office.” No one likes attorneys, but few people live in abject fear of them like medical professionals. She looked me up and down. I’d worn a plain shirt, no palm trees or surfboards, and tucked it into my chinos. The boat shoes didn’t really fit the attorney story, but she couldn’t see those.

  “You’re an attorney,” she said, eyebrow raised.

  “No, I’m from an attorney’s office.”

  “Let me guess. Jimmy Buffett and Associates.”

  Normally I was cool with wardrobe comparisons to Jimmy Buffett, because normally that was spot on. But I was wearing my good shirt.

  “No, ma’am. Croswitz and Allen. We specialize in medical negligence.” It was harsh but half true. They were attorneys in my building. Allen had retired to Naples and Croswitz specialized in whatever cases he could get his crusty old hands on, mainly wills and personal injury.

  “Is it casual Friday?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m on vacation but was asked to come and speak with them because of the boy’s grave condition.”

  The nurse gave me a good hard look. “You wanna chat? The boy’s in a coma.”

  “I know. It’s his parents I need to speak with. I understand they’re here.”

  “Room eight,” she said, nudging her head and then returning to her paperwork.

  Jake Turner’s room was opposite a small waiting area. A tight gathering of small-backed, uncomfortable-looking chairs sat on a square of industrial-strength green carpet. A man in a long-sleeve blue business shirt and purple tie was standing in the middle of the space, talking on a cell phone. He kept his voice down but his body language was angry. A young guy, maybe nineteen or twenty, sat on a chair against the wall. He wore a black hoodie with the hood over his head and a pair of burgundy basketball shorts. He watched me approach with a scowl of indifference. The man on the phone paid me no mind at all. I didn’t knock because I didn’t think Jake Turner would answer. We slipped into the room. It was a single room. Jake Turner lay on a bed, like he was asleep. He was flat on his back, a mask over his mouth, I assumed to assist with breathing. A small woman sat by the bed. She wore a long, blue dress, and pearls around her neck, as if she had just dropped by after church. She was facing the bed but looking at the window. Just staring at blue sky through tinted glass. Her body was in the hospital room, but her mind was a thousand miles and twenty years away. I figured that’s what a mother would think about, sitting in front of her son who was lying in a coma. I walked to the end of the bed, but she didn’t look at me. Ro
n hung back against the wall. The room was quiet but for the low-grade murmur of the building and the soft hiss of oxygen. The woman finally pegged my movement because she snapped out of her thoughts and looked at me, sleepy-eyed.

  “Hello,” she said. She didn’t smile or not smile. Her face was neither here nor there, like the emotion button had been switched off.

  “Ma’am,” I said.

  “Are you a doctor?” She seemed to consider it a possibility. But even in South Florida, doctors just in from eighteen holes at PGA National slipped a white coat on when they got to the hospital. It’s a status thing. The people in the pajama suits do the work; the lab coats collect the cash.

  “No, ma’am, I am investigating the circumstances of your son’s incident.” I picked up the slow cadence police talk from watching my part-time nemesis Detective Ronzoni on the job. It seemed appropriate.

  “You’re a policeman?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m a private investigator. I’m told your son played lacrosse.”

  She nodded slowly. “He does. He’s quite good. Captain, you know.” Still she didn’t smile, but there was a glimmer of pride in her eyes.

  “I know.” I smiled. “Did your son ever mention any trouble, any problems with school?”

  “No. His grades were good. I think he could have done better, but a mother always does, don’t you think?”

  “I do. So you never heard anything about drugs?”

  “Good Lord, no. He wouldn’t do that. He’s a smart boy.”

  I wanted to say he did do it, but I held my tongue. “Was Jacob on a scholarship?”

  “Jake. Not Jacob,” she almost whispered. “And yes, he had a tuition scholarship.”

  “How did he fund the rest?”

  “We paid for it. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  Not in my experience. “So his apartment, living expenses?”

  “We paid for everything. His father handles the college fund. I don’t know.”