by Paul Bishop
"Yeah?"
"Okay. I told you so. Now get out of here." He pulled the car's door closed and the black vehicle moved away with alacrity.
"Who was that guy?" Bekka asked.
I watched the black car disappear into the night.
"Bond," I told her. "James Bond."
The interior of the Acropolis was dark except for the light coming from the player's tunnel and the twinkle of a red bulb on each side of the scoreboard cube. The arena seemed vast and cavernous, echoing my footsteps.
"I knew you'd get by here sooner or later, laddie." The familiar voice came out of the darkness close by.
"Old superstitions die hard, Sticks. You know how it goes."
Sticks was sitting on the player's bench on the home side of the arena. I had just wandered onto the playing surface and was standing at the midfield point. Directly above me was a huge overhead scoreboard cube. One long support stretched from the top of the cube into the darkness of the ceiling. The effect gave the scoreboard the appearance of a huge, square, alien eye suspended by a straight optic nerve.
"Is Bekka with you?" Sticks asked.
"No, this is a solitary vigil."
I imagined Sticks nodding his head. "Aye. Well, I won't be keeping you long, laddie. I just wanted to make sure you were feeling ready for tomorrow."
"I appreciate it. I think I'm okay."
"You getting anywhere with this Maddox thing?"
"The only thing I seem to be getting lately is trouble. As far as solving Maddox's murder and finding out what's happening with the Ravens, I feel like a pigeon set amongst the cats. I'm simply wandering around wondering where the next attack is going to come from." I brought him up to speed on Liam Donovan and the events of that evening at the Golden Harp.
After escaping from the pub, Bekka and I had headed back to the Acropolis parking lot where she'd left her car. We'd been unable to talk while on the Laverda, but Bekka had held on to me tighter than ever. The warmth and feel of her body against me communicated something beyond words.
Standing at her car, I told her about my morning interview with Ethan Kelso. We discussed my theories about Archer and the Hardbirds, but we still couldn't put anything coherent together that fit all the facts. There were still far more questions than answers. Was Maddox's murder connected to Caitlin Brisbane's bribery scam? Or was it somehow connected to Terranee Brisbane and Archer's firm of soccer hooligans? Was Terranee Brisbane supporting the IRA financially, as Ethan Kelso and Pat Devlin appeared to believe? And if so, why was Pat Devlin so enraged as to jeopardize his entire soccer career? And how the hell did Liam Donovan fit into the grand scheme of things?
It was this last question which bothered me the most because the answer could prove to be fatal to my continued health. Donovan was a wild card. He had shown up in England before my involvement in this mess started, and because of my actions, he now had a personal score to settle. I'd have to watch my blind side very carefully.
I'd been busy espousing all of this to Bekka when she leaned forward, put her hand behind my neck, and kissed me full on the lips in midsentence. I felt my knees go weak.
She pulled away after a second, looking like a scared kitten whose curiosity was about to kill it.
"I'm sorry," she said, misinterpreting my stunned silence.
I reached out with both my hands and grabbed both of hers. "Don't ever be sorry for something as wonderful as that," I said when I found my voice. I bent forward slowly and kissed her gently. Suddenly, the kiss turned fierce as the passion between us erupted. We held each other tightly and our lips felt seared together.
When we broke the clinch, we were both breathing heavily.
"I... uhm...," we both started to speak at the same time and then laughed.
"You first," I said.
"Not fair."
I looked around the parking lot. We were alone. I pulled Bekka to me and kissed her again. It was as good as the first time.
"Whew!" she said when we parted.
"Yeah," I said, slightly breathless.
Neither of us seemed to know what to do or say next. Not an unusual state of affairs for me when I'm around a woman I have feelings for.
Bekka seemed as flustered as I was.
"Uhm ...I guess I'll see you tomorrow at the airport?" she said.
"Airport?"
"Yes. For the flight to Houston."
I shook my head to clear it. "Oh, yes. Of course."
"Uhm...Well, good night. It was ..."
"Different?"
She gave a suddenly natural and relaxed laugh. "Is that what it's called when your date almost gets you killed?"
I laughed too and we kissed again before she slid into her car and drove off with a wave.
I stood in the parking lot for a long time, not thinking about anything but the feel of her lips on mine. Why is it that romance always seems to spring up under the most inconvenient circumstances? According to my brief from Sir
Adam, I was supposed to be tracking down an insidious threat to soccer in America, but here I was, pursuing Cupid's promise. I never said I was smart.
When I finally got my act together, I entered the Acropolis through the player's entrance. It was time to play out my ritual of visiting the playing field on the night before a game. It didn't matter that the Ravens' home field wouldn't be the one we were playing on, or that the field was set up tonight for a hockey match instead of a soccer game. It was the ritual that was important because it gave me time to focus myself and prepare mentally for the game to come. Sticks knew my pregame habits and had waited for me to show up.
Sticks stood up in the shadows and came over to stand in front of me. He rested one of his frail hands on my shoulders. The light from the player's tunnel spilled around me and played across his face, showing me the compassion in his features.
"Tomorrow night will be a long way from an international confrontation at Wembley," he said quietly.
I nodded, suddenly unable to speak with the enormity of it all. I was going back between the goalposts. It was a feat that only days earlier seemed an impossibility.
"Do you believe in reincarnation?" I asked, my voice choking. Too many emotional swings in too little time. From anger to hope. From lust to love. From despair to ...to what? Life, perhaps.
"No. But I do believe in you, Ian. You were the best I've ever coached. Maybe the best anyone has ever coached. You can be again."
"No. I'll never be the best there is again." Tears sprang to my eye. Sid Doyle popped unbidden into my mind. "But I can be the best that I can be."
The following day would quickly show if that best was good enough.
Chapter 16
The Houston Sports Palace was rocking and rolling with a packed house of thirteen thousand fans eagerly awaiting the quarter-final game kickoff. I was waiting in the player's tunnel with my stomach in knots. The rest of my teammates were ahead of me in the tunnel, each one running out onto the playing field as his name was called over the loudspeaker. We all carried cheap soccer balls with us that we would kick up into the stands when the introductions were finished.
Finally, I was at the tunnel mouth. I could see the other players lined up at center field. I began to pray that I wouldn't trip over my own feet as I ran out to join them.
The arena announcer continued his hype-filled introductions. "...and playing in goal for the Ravens, wearing number eight, returning to goalkeeping for the first time in over a year...IAN...CHAPEL!"
I was rooted to the floor until Stavoros gave me a gentle push from behind to move me out into the arena. My heart was in my mouth, and the second the full force of the crowd noise hit me I felt like I was going to throw up. Then somebody in the crowd yelled, "Go home Cyclops!" and I knew everything was as it should be.
I stood with the rest of the Ravens as the crowd yelled their enthusiasm for their home team player introductions. We then fidgeted through the national anthem, and finally exploded into action by kicking the soccer balls
we were carrying into the stands.
Jogging over to the player's bench, I picked up my gloves, stuffed my hands into them, and pulled the Velcro closures tight at the wrists. I didn't normally wear gloves, but then I didn't normally wear a lot of the gear I had covering my body. My long-sleeve jersey came complete with padding quilted into the shoulders and under the forearms, and my sweatpants had knee pads permanently sewn in. I'd learned the hard way during practices that these items were essential to the survival of the indoor soccer goalie. The hard inside playing surface was nowhere near as forgiving as the outside turf.
"Good luck," Bekka said from where she sat on the bench next to the Hot Tamales and the coaches. In the first row of audience seats behind the player's bench, I could see Nina Brisbane, prominent in her black veil, and Sticks sitting side by side. They both nodded to me.
"Get yourself ready," I said to Bekka. "I might let four goals get by me in the first four minutes and you'll find yourself called into action real quick."
Bekka laughed, but Nick cut her off. "I'll be put in before she is," he said, and glowered at me.
"Nick," I told him disdainfully, "you're simply a legend in your own mind."
Impulsively, I gave Bekka a quick pack on the cheek and trotted out to take my position.
The Ravens' European line was on the field and Wagstaff came back to have a brief word with me.
"Get the ball to me in the middle of the field as much as you can. I want to score early and put this game away."
"Good luck to you too," I said.
Wagstaff grunted and, to my surprise, smiled. "You and me, we're too good to have to rely on luck.” He turned on his heel and glided back to center court.
The referee blew the whistle and we were under way.
There was something vaguely familiar about the referee. He was a short, stocky man with a shock of white hair above and heavily muscled thighs below. I didn't know the man, so I could only put the familiarity down to the white hair which was as full as that possessed by Terranee Brisbane. The mind association with Brisbane made me wonder if he'd been able to get the stains from Pat Devlin's blood balloon out of his suit.
Devlin himself certainly appeared no worse for the wear from the near riot he'd caused. He'd greeted me as we boarded the plane earlier in the day with a Cheshire grin and a copy of The Outlook, the local Santa Monica paper. It was folded to a half-page article detailing the events at the Golden Harp. Pat had stuffed it in my hands without a word and moved off to find his seat.
Now it seemed he had put the previous evening behind him and was concentrating strictly on soccer. He glided across the field like a wraith full of fury and power. I'd looked up his statistics in the form book and they were impressive. He'd scored forty-three goals over the course of the season and had been credited with thirty-three assists for a combined total of seventy-six points, the highest in the league. Now, watching the power of his play, it was easy to see the genius that lurked inside him.
It was only seconds after the kickoff that I had my first opportunity to get my hands on the ball, and my first indication that there was something out of kilter with the referee. The Alamos were renowned for their physical style of play, often drawing criticism from opposing teams. I found out firsthand how physical they could be when Bronco Powell, their captain and center forward, shoulder charged me while I was still in the air trying to gather in a high cross.
Instinct made me secure the ball between my arms and chest, but the air had vacated my lungs and there were dark spots before my eyes as I crashed to the carpet. The only thing missing from the tableau was the sound of the referee's whistle. I looked up from my fetal position to see him signaling angrily at me to play on and mumbling something about delay of game. Delay of game? The game should have been delayed right down his throat! I'd never been the victim of a more flagrant foul. I dragged myself to my knees, rolled the ball to Birch Bloodworth, and tried to prepare for the next onslaught.
It was about here that the differences between indoor and outdoor soccer became exceedingly clear. The indoor game was not merely a substitute for its more popular outdoor relative, nor was it some second-rate sport for broken-down footballers. I learned rapidly that indoor soccer demands that every skill learned in outdoor soccer be speeded up and honed to perfection. There was no margin for error.
The game also demanded additional skills as players rebounded passes and shots off the boards with consummate perfection. Set plays were used far more often than in outdoor soccer, and defensive players were expected to constantly push forward on offense as well.
Goalkeepers, in particular, had a far more demanding position to play. Within three minutes, I'd already been called on to stop five shots. In some outdoor games, I wouldn't have been called on to stop five shots during the whole ninety minutes. The pace of the game was tremendous, like being inside a giant soccer pinball machine being played by an expert.
I was also amazed to see the Houston goalie often come out of his net and dribble the ball a third of the way up the field with his feet before passing off and running back to cover his goal again. In outdoor soccer this move, while legal, would have been suicide. In indoor soccer, though, it was all part of the game. I began to wonder if I had really bitten off more than I could chew. I had enough on my hands just keeping up with my traditional goalkeeping duties without worrying about developing new field-playing skills.
Shortly, I was rudely introduced to another tricky aspect of indoor soccer, the shoot-out. Often a series of shoot-outs are used to determine the winner of a game tied at full-time, but a shoot-out in indoor soccer is also in place of a penalty kick.
Indoor soccer is played in four fifteen-minute periods, as opposed to the more traditional forty-five-minute halves of outdoor soccer. About ten minutes into the first period, the referee blew his whistle to call our fullback, Alan Hardacre, for a hand ball in the penalty area. Alan nearly went spare. There was no way, he insisted, that he had intentionally touched the ball with his hand, and I can't say as I disagreed with him. Bronco Powell had made a long, left-footed shot which had caromed off of Alan's side, striking his arm and hand through no fault of his own. The referee would hear nothing of Alan's protest, though, and sent him to the penalty box for two minutes while awarding Powell a shoot-out penalty shot.
I had practiced for this with Sticks, but this would be my baptism under fire. The shoot-out was different from a regular penalty kick in several aspects. It was still a one-on-one confrontation between the keeper and the penalty shooter, but that was where the similarities ended. In a shoot-out, unlike a penalty kick in outdoor soccer, the goalkeeper is able to move as the penalty shooter dribbles towards him from the red line located thirty feet from the center line in each half. The penalty shooter tries to dribble the ball, or shoot the ball, around the keeper and into the goal for the score.
When Bronco started toward me, I came out cautiously to cut down the angle. His sprint in was hard and fast, and he sold me a dummy like I was some wet-behind-the-ears rookie. I went one way, and Bronco easily ran the ball around me in the other direction and hammered it home for the score. The red light above the goal blazed to life, and a siren wailed over the cheering of the crowd. Bronco, fist clenched in the air, ran to accept the congratulations of his teammates.
I was again surprised when Wagstaff came over to help me to my embarrassed feet.
"So, they draw first blood and you are no longer a virgin." His clipped Germanic accent always reminded me of something out of a bad movie. "Now, you will relax and play better than ever."
Here was the man I'd hated with such intensity giving me a pep talk. It was seemingly incongruous, but I accepted his hand-up in the spirit it was given. Our fight during the first day of practice had taken a lot of hate out of the both of us.
The Alamos were soon coming back at us again. With Powell scoring on the shoot-out, Alan Hardacre was immediately released from the penalty box. It wasn't long, however, before anothe
r Raven took his place.
We'd finished the first quarter down by one goal and switched ends of the carpet for the start of the second quarter. The Hot Tamales were on the field. Pepe Brazos took the ball from Chico Juarez and streaked down the field in a dazzling one-man display of footwork. From six yards out, he fired a rocket shot that rebounded off the glass above the crossbar.
Danny Castalano had been following Brazos in on the play. In a spectacular display of gymnastic ability, he leapt into the air and executed a picture-perfect bicycle kick which sent the rebounded ball streaking into the back of the Alamos' net. Lights and sirens exploded, and we all ran out to embrace Danny.
It was all for naught, however, because the referee was blowing his whistle and disallowing the goal
"What the hell is he talking about?" Danny exploded when he realized what was going on.
"Dangerous play. High kicking in a crowd of players," the referee stated flatly. He had his palms up in the air as if to ward off our anguished arguments. "Two minutes in the penalty box for Castalano," he said, and then tried to walk away from all of us who were clustered around him.
At the timekeeper's table he briefly explained his decision to one of the two assistant referees.
We argued and raged, but the outcome remained unchanged. When order was restored, the goal was disallowed, and Danny Castalano went off to spend two minutes in the penalty box.
I gave the referee a hard look. There was something wrong, out of kilter. I'd felt it at the beginning of the game and put it down to the similarity in hair color with Terranee Brisbane, but now I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to it. I didn't know what yet, but there was definitely something.
I didn't have time to think about the problem, however, because the next two minutes were a solid blur of action. With Castalano in the penalty box, the Alamos turned the pressure up with a ferocious power-play offense. Bronco Powell was backed up by Jaime Estevez and Emilio Or-antes, two of the league's top strikers, and Erik Greenspan and Johan Luft, two brilliant defenders who also possessed strong striking skills. Between them they fired shot after shot on goal.