by Paul Bishop
I scribbled something appropriate in the notebook and handed it back.
"Thanks, Mr. Chapel."
Something about the boy's open enjoyment of everything going on around him touched me. "Wait a minute, Billy," I told him. "I've got a better idea."
I walked across the locker room to the ball rack. Miles Norton, the Ravens' equipment manager, had restocked it with the inexpensive balls we kicked into the crowd at the beginning of the game. I noticed, however, that these new balls had red markings instead of black. There were about twenty balls on the stand. I picked one up to give to Billy. It felt a bit mushy, so I put it back on the rack and squeezed another one. They all seemed short of air. I put it down to the cheap quality used for promotion and settled for the best of the bad bunch.
I took the ball back with me to where Billy was waiting. I borrowed his pen to scrawl my name on one of the leather pentagons which made up the stitched fabric quilt of the ball and tossed it to Billy. His face came alive like that of a kid surveying his wrapped booty on Christmas morning.
"Gee, Mr. Chapel, this is great. Thanks."
"You're welcome, Billy." I turned to Pat Devlin, who'd watched the interchange with amusement. I handed him the chewed pen. "Sign the kid's ball and quit grinning your fool head off. You were ten years old once too."
"Oh aye," said Pat taking the pen. "And don't I just wish I was again."
"Here! What's going on? Give me that!" Miles Norton snatched the ball out of Billy's hands as he was handing it to Devlin.
"Where do you get off stealing this ball?"
"I, I, I..." Billy stammered, shocked.
"Cool down, Norton," I said, putting my hand on Billy's shoulder to reassure him. "I gave the kid the ball. He didn't steal it. It's only one of the ones we kick into the crowd."
"Well, he can't have it!"
"Why not?"
' 'We've given enough free soccer balls today. That's why not." Without further explanation Norton stormed off with the ball.
I looked askance at Devlin, but he just shrugged at me. "Must be his time of the month," he said.
"I'm sorry about that, Billy," I told the boy. "But don't worry about it. How would you like a sweaty goalkeeper's jersey instead?" I handed my jersey to the boy, who reacted like I'd given him the Holy Grail.
"Wow!" he said, with his eyes as big as moons.
Billy went off to make his autograph rounds, and the excited celebration around the locker room continued. Someone broke out a case of champagne. After the death of Maddox and the uncertainty surrounding it. the team had been thrown off its stride. Winning this game had restored the team's confidence and esprit de corps. More than anything else, that was what the celebration was about.
We had four days before the next game, when we would have to put it all on the line again. But right now, for this instant in time, we Ravens were invincible.
Chapter 17
Invincible is a relative term. By noon the next day, events had shattered the spell of our victory and had brought stinging reality into harsh focus. Five of us were gathered in the sitting room of the Marriott suite that Sticks and I shared. Bekka was draped over an easy chair while Sticks was slumped in its matching counterpart. Nina Brisbane, trim and mysterious in black pants, black silk blouse, startlingly white pearls, and the ever-present, shoulder-length, black veil, sat on the couch. I stood with my backside resting on a small writing desk while our surprise guest, Sir Adam Qwale, paced the plush carpet.
The previous evening, Sir Adam had been waiting at the airport when our plane arrived back from Houston. It was no secret that money was tight in the Ravens franchise, so there were no overnight accommodations for the team in Houston after the game. The closest we came to being splurged on were the two free drinks in the coach section of the red-eye flight back to Los Angeles.
Other business had kept Sir Adam from being at the game, but as half-owner of the Ravens, he was still excited to be part of the winning performance. After all, the thrill of vicarious victory was the main reason owners took the financial risks inherent in running a sports franchise. Prestige and love for sport were also elements, but winning was the big rush. Sir Adam's jubilation, though, like that of the others gathered in the room, had been blasted to hell by the morning newspapers.
The front pages had the whole mess smeared across a banner headline: Seattle gulls goalkeeper murdered. In smaller type beneath the banner was a second eye-grabber: Tom Sweet, Second AISL Goalkeeper Killed This Season.
"If anyone has any bright ideas, now is the time to air them out," Sir Adam commented flatly. He seemed to suddenly tire of his pacing and flopped down on the couch next to Nina Brisbane. With an angry gesture he snatched up the disarrayed newspaper pages from the floor in front of him. We had been hashing over the news in them for the past two hours and were no more settled than when we'd started.
Earlier in the morning, Nina Brisbane had been having breakfast with Sir Adam in the Marriott's dining room when she spotted a photo on the front page of the Los Angeles Tribune that had been left behind on their table. Shocked, she had shown the photo to Sir Adam, and they had immediately rushed to find me.
When they had pounded on the door to the suite, I was already being interrogated over the phone by Ethan Kelso. Bekka, who had come over to take me out on a long training run, answered the door.
I put my hand up to cut short any outburst from Sir Adam as he stormed into the room, and then spoke back into the phone. "Yes, all right, Ethan, I'll come by first thing tomorrow and talk to the Seattle detectives. I don't think there's anything I can tell them, but I'll come anyway."
I listened some more and then answered again. "Yes. Like you, I have no doubt it's Donovan, but I have no idea what he plans to do next. That's your job to guess, not mine. Okay. I'll see you tomorrow." I hung up and turned to Sir Adam. He thrust out the front page of the paper at me.
"Have you..."
"No, I haven't seen the papers," I interrupted, and took the outthrust pages, "but Ethan Kelso ..."
"Who's Kelso?" Nina Brisbane asked.
"He's the detective in charge of Maddox's murder. He told me that one of the reporters on the Seattle Times is an indoor soccer fan. ..."
"One of the few," mumbled Sticks as he came into the room to sit down opposite Bekka.
I gave him a quick glance and continued. "Anyway, the reporter connected this new mess up in Seattle with the Maddox murder down here. Now the Seattle police are looking for a direct tie between the two incidents."
Newspapers always seem to be the bearers of bad news and today was no different. The story had hit the front page of the Los Angeles Tribune in the form of a captioned photo with an allusion to a short article on page three's "Around the Nation" section. Sir Adam had arranged for a copy of the main Seattle paper to be immediately faxed to the hotel.
Tom Sweet was the AISL's rookie of the year. Before joining the Gulls, he had been a goalkeeper at Notre Dame University where he'd been majoring in physiotherapy and female physiotherapists. His stellar performances this season had kept the Gulls at the top of their division. The previous evening, while we had been playing in Houston, Sweet had been flawless as his team went on a 5-0 rampage against the Vancouver Totems in the other west coast quarter final.
The Gulls game had been played on their home turf before a good-sized crowd. After a brief celebration, Sweet had returned to his upscale townhouse and gone to bed with a soccer groupie. According to her statement, quoted in the newspaper, she had experienced numerous orgasms before passing out on Quaaludes and could provide no further details.
While the couple languished in sexual unconsciousness, somebody had entered the townhouse and put an end to Sweet's career by dropping a concrete slab on his chest.
Apparently, the first impact had only paralyzed him. The police believed the slab was dropped three more times before he died. The murderer, however, hadn't laid a finger on Sweet's passed-out bed partner. She was left to come out of he
r stupor in the morning and discover the eighty-pound, three-inch-thick slab of concrete embedded in Sweet's chest like a misshapen tombstone.
In an attempt to bulk up the meager facts about the murder, the Seattle paper had gone on to cover less important information. The story finished with the statement that the Gulls were scheduled to play the AISL semifinal game against the Ravens in LA on Wednesday.
The New York Lights and the Chicago Wind had won their respective quarter final games. They would now be paired off in the east coast semifinal game the same night. The winners of the semifinals would then battle it out on Sunday. Los Angeles had been chosen a year earlier as the site for the AISL's 1990 Super Soccer Bowl.
Nina Brisbane appeared distraught by the news of Sweet's murder. Sir Adam, on the other hand, was startled by it, but had quickly accepted and assessed the situation. It had angered him and started him pacing, but he'd accepted it and had immediately started to look for options.
"Is there any doubt in your mind at all that Liam Donovan is the slab dropper?" Sir Adam now asked me from his position on the couch.
"None at all. I also believe he wants us to know it's him. Why else would he use Sean Brody's signature killing method? Donovan swore he would hold me accountable for his partner's death. By using the concrete slab on another goalkeeper, he's sending a message that he hasn't forgotten about me. Whatever other motives are behind his actions, you can bet that I'm still somewhere high on his list."
"I don't understand any of this," Bekka said in exasperation. "What is really going on? Are you saying that Maddox's murder wasn't an isolated incident? That this Donovan character is some kind of madman running around killing off goalkeepers?"
I shook my head. "Liam Donovan is definitely a murderous loose cannon, but I don't know yet if we can say he's responsible for Maddox's murder as well as Sweet's. You're far from alone in not understanding everything that's happening." I turned to face Sir Adam. "What about pulling back and leaving the whole situation to the police? Maybe the rest of the season should even be cancelled. Or at least postponed until Donovan is either captured, killed, or chased out of the country."
Sir Adam looked back at me sharply. "We can't cancel the rest of the season. Soccer is bigger than the actions of any one man. It has often proven to be bigger than countries. The game is above politics, above wars. The game, like the show, has to go on. It has to endure."
"Even at the risk of human life?" I asked. In actuality, I agreed with Sir Adam's sentiment, but I couldn't help pushing the issue. I'm a perverse devil's advocate at heart.
Sir Adam didn't answer me, but his features turned morose.
The room itself seemed caught in a state of limbo at this juncture in the conversation until Nina Brisbane rose from her position on the couch. Appearing to have regained much of her normal composure, she walked the few steps to where I was standing. She placed her right hand on the intersection of my crossed arms, as if her touch could transmit her feelings better than her words.
"Ian." She paused after saying my name. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I could somehow sense the horrible slash of her mouth trying to twist into a gentle smile behind her dark veil. "The bottom line is that if the Ravens do not receive the gate revenues and league bonuses for the remaining play-off games ...if we do not, in fact, reach the finals...then the franchise will be bankrupt. We are hanging on by the slenderest of financial threads, like the league itself." She pulled on my arms, gently rocking them back and forth as if to shake some sense into me.
"I know this sounds terribly cold and self-serving, but we have to make this situation work for us. Maddox and Sweet are dead. If there was any price I could pay that would change that, I would pay it, but there isn't. And meanwhile their deaths are bringing public attention to the league like never before. We can't afford to squander that attention if the team and the league are to survive."
I didn't know how to respond. Her reasoning made no sense to me. "Quite the humanitarian, aren't you?" I asked with obvious sarcasm.
"I'm a businesswoman," Nina retorted. The level of her voice hadn't changed, but there was a different kind of steel in it. "Any humanity I had was stripped from me years ago." She jerked her hand off of me and put it to her veil. The depth of her sudden anger and frustration seemed to physically reverberate around me like the ringing of a gong.
I looked at her and realized I could never understand what went on in her mind. Even knowing what my own handicap had done to my mental outlook, I couldn't conceive of what had happened to this woman's inner being after her outer shell had gone from princess to gargoyle. My trials and tribulations seemed trivial by comparison, and I felt a sudden and deep compassion for her.
"I've never known you to run from a fight, Ian," Sir Adam said quietly.
"And I'm not running from this one." I shrugged my shoulders and sighed. "I'm just trying to consider all the options. I told you back in England that I would play the hand out, and I will."
I also knew that I didn't have much choice but to continue. Cancelling the season wouldn't stop Liam Donovan's personal quest for revenge. I was also struggling against the fact that it wasn't in my nature to sit around and wait for the axe to fell. Or in this case the slab to drop. I didn't know what was behind Donovan's actions, but if I kept trying to push the buttons of whoever was controlling him, I might get a crack at settling the situation.
As melodramatic as it appeared, it didn't change the fact that Donovan and I would end up confronting each other in a final showdown. Even if Donovan would let me walk away from the situation—no harm, no foul—I knew I couldn't. Moral outrage is an odd concept, perhaps, but two men were dead and the existence of something I loved was threatened. I was the individual who had a chance to rectify that situation. Not anyone else. Just me.
I looked away from Sir Adam, and back at Nina Brisbane.
"Thank you," she said, sensing my decision. Her hand reached out again for my folded arms. She seemed to have forgotten her outburst.
Turning her head away from me, she spoke to Sir Adam. "I have to meet with my father, but perhaps we could get together again later?"
"Yes, yes, of course," Sir Adam replied, and he stood up to see her out the door.
When she was gone, he looked at me. "I'm sorry for getting you involved in all this."
"Don't be."
"Why ever not?"
"Because last night, I was given back something in my life I never thought I'd have again. If the cost I have to pay is facing down Liam Donovan, then I'd consider it cheap at twice the price."
"Does this mean you won't be going home at the end of the season?" Bekka asked, and I turned to see she was attempting to lighten the mood.
"Don't worry too much about it, lass," said Sticks in his usual droll manner. "If Donovan doesn't get him, age will. You'll be playing first-string over him by next year."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
Sticks winked at Bekka and she laughed.
"Can we get back to a serious look at what's happening here?" Sir Adam requested. "If what you told me is true, about Caitlin Brisbane putting in the fix with the referee last night, do you think she could be directing Donovan's actions?"
"I don't see it," I said, and shook my head in the negative. "Caitlin Brisbane is about as subtle as a television preacher. Her attempt to blackmail me and her fixing of the referee were clumsy, both in their conception and execution. Donovan is being kept in check by a far stronger force."
"And even if she was running Donovan," Bekka chimed in, "why would she have him kill Tom Sweet? With him out of the picture it only increases the Ravens' odds of beating Seattle in the semifinals. That's just what Caitlin doesn't want. She wants the Ravens to be defeated."
"I must say, I have to agree," Sir Adam mused. "But if not Caitlin, then who? Terranee Brisbane?"
We all thought about that for a minute.
Bekka looked at me. "You did say it was Donovan's motorcycle parked behind th
e Golden Harp on the night old man Brisbane spoke there?"
"Aye," I agreed. "But we didn't see him inside, and I don't see Donovan mixing with the likes of Archer and Brisbane's other bully-boys. There could be a money connection between Terranee Brisbane and Donovan, though. After all, Ethan Kelso believes Brisbane is sending heavy financial aid to the IRA."
"But we know that Donovan is no longer with the IRA," Sir Adam said. "He's broken away and joined the Sons of Erin."
"Perhaps Brisbane doesn't know Donovan has splintered off. Or perhaps he's decided to knowingly support the Sons of Erin because he's tired of sitting back and waiting for the IRA to start a full-scale war. On the other hand, perhaps Donovan simply followed us down to the Golden Harp. Maybe looking for a chance to take another run at me like he did in the Acropolis parking lot."
"That's a little too scary to even think about," Bekka said, her voice quiet. "Do you really believe Donovan is stalking you?"
"I'm going to start acting that way. He was after me in England when I first went to visit Sir Adam. He swore revenge during our little punch-up on the docks after Brody was killed. And then he tried to run me over at the Acropolis on my first day here. If he isn't out to get me, then he's doing a good impression of someone who is."
Sweat kept dripping into my good eye from the band that held my eye patch in place. The salt from the sweat stung irritatingly and blurred my vision. I tried to wipe my forehead dry, but the cotton wristbands I was wearing were already soaked and virtually useless. Bekka and I were almost four miles into our five-mile run around Balboa Park, and the unseasonably warm California sunshine was taking its toll on me.
The Balboa Park area, adjacent to the Acropolis, was like a recreational oasis within the close-packed, middle-class city environment surrounding it. The route we were running circled the major parts of the park, starting from the intersection of Balboa and Burbank boulevards.