by Paul Bishop
"I wanted to."
"That's not the same thing."
"I know, but it's as close as I ever want to come."
Bloodworth and Devlin had helped Wagstaff to his feet. He staggered slightly but pushed them away and walked unsteadily toward me. Everyone fell quiet. I couldn't believe he was coming back for more.
He stopped in front of me and stared hard into my one eye. "You fight like a German," he said.
I figured that was supposed to be a compliment.
"And you've got the guts of an Englishman," I told him.
He nodded and extended his hand. I shook it. He held on to my hand for a second and then spoke, "Between us we'll teach the rest of the bastards in the play-offs what soccer is all about."
Chapter 10
That kind of display of macho belligerence was that supposed to be out there?" Nina Brisbane was spitting mad and I couldn't say I blamed her.
We were alone in her Acropolis office where she had demanded, via Stavoros, that I present myself after showering. The office itself was not large, but it was still intimidating because of its stark decor.
Behind a white antique desk, a picture window displayed a solid green expanse of golf course. On the opposite wall, a low white love seat sat beneath a huge Angus Myrtle original. The scarlet and black slashes of paint which screamed across the canvas gave credence to the painting's attached title—77ze Heart of Chaos. I wondered if Nina had chosen it for its aesthetic value, its monetary value, or because it pertained to something more poignant in her personal life.
Between the desk and the couch, two ornate visitor's chairs stood patiently on the antique white carpet. I sat in one of the chairs while Nina Brisbane wound down.
"Sir Adam assured me you were going to be an asset to this team. I think the statement he made was, 'He'll be the difference between winning the play-offs and abandoning the franchise.' This team is on the edge and from what I saw out there this afternoon, I may as well put my head in the noose and kick the chair out from under me. I'd rather do it myself than wait for Caitlin to do it."
I saw my chance to interject and perhaps get something useful out of this conversation. “Just how bad is the relationship between you and your sister?"
"What relationship?"
"Like that, is it?" I took the cold compress away from the scratches around my good eye. The blood seemed to have stopped oozing, but I wasn't going to win any beauty contests for a while. A fresh black cotton patch was respectfully back in place over my puckered socket, and I had to keep twisting around in my chair to relieve the aching residuals of the fight.
"My sister and I hate each other as only people who are related can. I don't give a damn about my father's money or the control of his business interests—I'm good enough to make it on my own in any other business I choose—but I'll be damned if I'm going to let Caitlin walk away with everything just because she's currently Daddy's little favorite. She's got about as much business sense as a fence post and has an IQ to match." Quivering with anger, she stood up from the chair behind her desk. "But all of that is beside the point. We were talking about your behavior."
I was rightfully chastised, but I was aching too much physically to put up with any more haranguing. "You're right," I told her sincerely. "Both Wagstaff and I were out of line, but we're now at a point where we can concentrate on playing soccer instead of trying to score points off each other. The fight was stupid and juvenile, I'll grant you, but perhaps it was the best way to stop further trouble between us. I could rant and rave about being ambushed with Wag-staff's presence. ..."
"I didn't know ..." Nina tried to interject, but I overrode her verbally.
"It doesn't matter. Let's put both the ambush and the fight behind us and get on with saving the Ravens and winning the play-offs."
Nina still stood behind her desk, leaning forward now, with her fists on the polished tabletop. She didn't say anything for a bit, and I could feel the heat of her glare burning through her veil.
"Do you really think we can win the play-offs?" she asked finally. The emotion in her voice was almost pleading. Perhaps, as she'd said, she could make her mark in any other business she chose but making it in her father's world was far more important to her than she was willing to let on. I sensed her desperation had much more to do with gaining her father's approval than getting the upper hand over her sister.
"I'm in no position to give you any guarantees," I told her. "I believe Sir Adam has an overinflated view of my talents both on the playing field and in the investigative sense. However, I agreed to give you my best effort, and I will."
"I'm not interested in any investigation." She had taken on a haughty tone. "The police are handling the Maddox murder, and I don't see how it affects the Ravens except as a publicity tool. My only concern is seeing this team win the play-offs and keeping this franchise afloat."
"Quite the ice queen, aren't you?"
"How dare you."
"I dare because it's true. A man is dead. Murdered. A man who played for your team and helped you get through the season in a position to win it all. What if Maddox's murder is connected to the downfall of the Ravens? What if the police are too late to figure out what is really going on? They seem to think the crime is simply connected to a string of local muggings. Sir Adam believes differently."
"And your money is with Sir Adam?"
"He's never steered me wrong before."
"What is that? More of your macho male-bonding crap?"
I looked down at my hands and didn't respond.
"I don't care what Sir Adam thinks." Nina was working herself up into a fury again.
"He is your partner," I pointed out.
"That may be, but only because his money was in the right place at the right time, and it spent like any other. You do what you want with your investigation, just make sure you make practices and that you don't give up any free goals on game nights."
I looked up at the black veil over Nina's face and remembered how I was before my interaction with Sid Doyle had put my handicap into perspective. It is amazing how sometimes the longest emotional journeys can be accomplished in the shortest of time periods.
I stood up and took the one step needed to bring me into a mirror-image position facing Nina on the opposite side of her desk. We stared at each other. At least I believe we did. Even up close it was impossible to pierce the thick folds of black lace.
With one hand, I reached up and popped back my black patch to reveal the puckered socket underneath. If I wasn't careful, the action could become a habit. I put my hand back flat on the desk and continued to stare.
Nina didn't move, but I first sensed, and then heard her breathing patterns change. She was tense, almost sexually charged. I leaned forward to rest my body against the desk for balance and reached out slowly with both hands. When there were no cries of outrage at my obvious intentions, I continued my actions and slowly began to raise the veil.
I swallowed hard, trying to steady both myself and my expression, knowing that I was about to reveal the remains of a face which had once been as strikingly beautiful as Nina's sister, Caitlin. The lace rose smoothly, and I continued to stare at the top of Nina's head until I had the lace material turned back completely. Then, and only then, did I let my eyes drop.
The horror was no less than advertised. The facial flesh was folded in on itself in puckered lines like a dried apple. The effect offset the alignment of her eye sockets, and I was startled to notice that one of the eyes was missing. Sir Adam had mentioned that Nina had lost an eye to the shotgun blast, but I had forgotten until now.
A single tear welled up in the remaining eye and ran freely down the mottled color of her skin to disappear between the living purple worms that were her lips.
The suture scars, from the Frankenstein stitching which had held the jigsaw puzzle of her face together, still showed white and livid, and small hairs sprouted grossly in various spots. The whole unsightly mess was framed by lifeless la
nks of pastel-colored hair hacked off at random lengths.
"Satisfied?" Nina asked.
I waited for a beat while maintaining eye contact. "That isn't one of the words I would apply to the situation."
"Oh? What words would you think appropriate?" Nina still hadn't moved. She was close to hyperventilating.
I sat down again to give myself a second to gather my thoughts. "Perhaps, I would say that I am now more at ease with the situation."
"Perverse curiosity satisfied, then? You show me yours and I'll show you mine. A comparing of war wounds."
"I was thinking more along the lines of a sympathetic sharing of burdens."
Even though she had been giving me a ticking off, I was somehow more at ease around this woman than most others. Maybe because the shared disfigurements gave us a common ground—much like the frank discussion of handicaps with Sid Doyle had helped me come to terms with other facets of myself.
"How far would you be willing to share burdens?" she asked.
"I don't understand."
"Could you make love to this face?"
"Is that an offer?"
"If you feel threatened, you can think of it as an academic question."
"I've never made love to faces, only to women."
"Then you're unlike any other man I've ever known. Tell me—if we were making love would you leave the light on?"
"I honestly have no idea."
Nina pulled the veil back into place, took a deep breath, and sat down. "Then don't think that just because I asked the question, you'll get the chance to find out." She pushed herself back more comfortably in her chair before continuing along a different tangent. "You're the first person outside of my immediate family and the doctors who has seen behind the veil. What made you attempt it?"
"Because somebody else recently snared their pain with me and it made it easier for me to carry mine."
"Am I cured now, Doctor? Do I come out of hiding and parade my face around in public? Do I stop being angry?"
"Don't be bloody stupid," I said without heat. "Nothing can ever make right what happened to either of us. But someone who understands can sometimes help us face the next day or the next challenge." Sid Doyle had turned me into quite the philosopher. "It's a valuable lesson I've only recently learned for myself."
Silence stretched again. A clock chimed somewhere in another office. I readjusted my eye patch.
Nina fiddled with her watch strap. There was a slight catch in her voice when she spoke again. "I was born almost two years before Caitlin. I was ten weeks premature and it was a miracle I survived at all. I needed a lot of specialized care during my first few years of life, but my father always said I repaid everything by being a beautiful child with an abundance of talents both musically and socially. I learned quickly how to use my charms and talents to wind adults around my little finger.
"It was an act which caused a great chasm to develop between my sister and me as the years went on. Caitlin was a plain child, although you wouldn't know it to look at her today, and she was all thumbs and feet when it came to the social and artistic graces. The chasm was as much my fault as hers. She was jealous of the attention I was given, and I was greedy for the spotlight." She stopped talking to take a deep breath and expelled it as if she were trying to blow cobwebs off past glories.
"Everything changed, of course, when my face exploded." She actually laughed when she saw my expression shift with her use of words. "Yes, that's how I think about what happened. My perfect face exploded along with my perfect world. Instantly, I had been transformed into the Wicked Witch of the West, and just as instantly Caitlin seemed to blossom, and Father had a new favorite daughter.
"Seventeen operations later led to what you just saw—what the doctors consider a success." She waved her hands around in the air and theatrically raised her voice. "The patient lives. Long live the patient. A testimony to the god-surgeon's skill." She lowered her voice again. "I would rather have died."
The sentiment sounded familiar. I opened my mouth to speak, but it was Nina's turn to cut me off.
"No questions. No condolences. I've had enough for one day. If you want more soul-searching, you'll have to wait."
"I'll probably need more, especially about your father and other family skeletons."
"The Irish connection rears its ugly head again." She chuckled ruefully. "Like I said, leave it for another day. If it will help solve the mystery of what happened to Maddox and what is happening to this team, I'll tell you what I can."
She made a gesture of dismissal and I stood up. Her voice, however, stopped me at the door. I had a feeling the crux of the matter was coming.
"I need to win this one, Chapel." I knew she was not talking about the play-offs. "I need my father back. I need him to stop loving faces."
I walked through the door. In my mind, I was remembering her one askew eye welling up with a single tear.
Walking back into the Acropolis complex, I was surprised to hear the continuing sounds of a soccer ball bouncing off the boards even though the regular practice session was long over. I made a quick detour to the locker room to pick up my gear bag, and then followed up on the noise of the bouncing ball.
The scene out on the playing area was as I had expected. When Sticks had not been waiting for me outside of Nina's office, I figured he was off somewhere pursuing his single-minded obsession. I had not been wrong.
On her knees, about eight feet back, Bekka Ducatte was facing the four-foot-high retaining boards. Behind her, Sticks was kicking balls, so they ricocheted back off the boards, forcing Bekka to dive from side to side to stop them. Having the balls kicked from behind made it impossible to tell what side or what angle they were going to come from. It was a drill Sticks had forced me to practice over and over until I hated it, but it did wonders to improve reflexes and timing. I could tell from the way she was moving that the drill was playing merry hell with Bekka's knees despite the pads she wore, but I gave her credit for working on without complaint.
Finally, she made a rather spectacular series of dives, saves, and recoveries, and Sticks brought the drill to a close. He always had a knack of ending a session on a high point, judging to the moment when a player had received the most from a routine. Bekka collapsed on her side, breathing heavily. I made my presence known by starting a slow applauding. Both Bekka and Sticks looked around.
"Very impressive," I said to Bekka and she laughed.
"Is he always a slave driver?" she asked.
I nodded. "Now we're in America, I guess somebody should explain to him about your Mr. Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation."
"Bah! You're a couple of daft buggers," Sticks said. "Complaining about a speck of hard work."
Bekka and I rolled our eyes at each other. She smiled at me and laughed again. She shook her head slightly, in either amusement or weariness, and the movement tossed her hair gently around her shoulders. It was a simple movement, but something in it touched me and I felt my knees go rubbery. I leaned back against the boards for support, and noticed Sticks giving me a funny look. This was silly. How could this woman be having this kind of effect on me?
Bekka bounced up from the artificial turf when several men from the maintenance crew entered the arena to change it from soccer field to ice rink. There was a game scheduled that evening between Caitlin's Blade Runners hockey team and a Sacramento franchise.
"Thanks for the workout," she said to Sticks. "Can we do it again sometime? It's almost impossible to find a goal-keeping coach in America who really understands the position. I'm sure I could learn a lot from you."
Sticks’ smile wrapped around his face from ear to ear. "I'll be around for a while trying to keep this lummox"—he jerked a finger in my direction—"in good enough shape to get down after the low balls. He fell in front of a bus the other day, but everything turned out okay because the bus went under him." Sticks cackled so hard at his own joke that I thought he was going to have a coronary.
&nbs
p; Bekka walked over to me and put her hand on my arm. I jumped slightly at the contact, and when I looked into her eyes, I wanted to believe I could see something which indicated she had felt the electricity also.
"Would you wait around while I take a quick shower?" she asked me. "Perhaps, we could grab a bite to eat afterwards? Do you like Mexican food? There's a ton of stuff I want to talk to you about."
I agreed to wait, and Bekka jogged away to the women's locker room. I had wondered at first if there even was a women's locker room—it was not the usual type of consideration for a soccer team—and then I realized there were women on both the volleyball and tennis teams that were part of the Acropolis's other franchises.
Sticks finished putting balls and equipment away before walking up to stand next to me. "You better watch yourself around that one, Ian my lad," Sticks said softly as he looked down the player's tunnel where Bekka had disappeared.
"And what exactly does that mean?"
“Take a look in a mirror at the wistful expression on your face and you'll know what I'm talking about."
"Humpf!"
Before our conversation could deteriorate further, Nick Kronos came out of the player's tunnel. He walked past us as if we were invisible, and continued on to the player's bench, where he retrieved a pair of goalkeeping gloves. Stuffing them in the small duffel bag he carried in his right hand, he turned back toward us.
When he arrived at where we were standing, it looked like he was going to ignore us again. At the last second, however, he stopped and turned to face me.
"You must think you're pretty hot stuff to be stepping into a starting position on a team already in the play-offs." The statement was rhetorical, and since his face was clouded with emotional thunder, I didn't bother even attempting a reply. "But let me tell you, the Ravens don't need you, not while they've got me," he continued blithely. "I'll be playing on the American World Cup team next time around, and there isn't anyone better at playing in goal than me. Especially not you, old man."
I smiled. I knew the bit about the American World Cup team was a load of codswallop. It's great to be confident of your abilities, but no national teams had chosen their lineups yet. However, arrogance is a wonderful weapon to turn back on its owner.