by Paul Bishop
"That still doesn't explain why you hated me."
Wagstaff released my arm and sat back. "I hated you because everybody else thought I kicked you in the face on purpose. Every referee in every game I played after you lost your eye kept me tied up in knots. The slightest contact I made with another player got me called for a foul. Other players, especially your English teammates, targeted me for revenge. The young players thought they could make their reputations by going up against me physically, like western cowboys going up against an ancient gunfighter.
"The first season I played after you lost your eye, I suffered more injuries than in the rest of my career put together. Even my wife believed I kicked you on purpose. When I came home to lick my wounds she laughed, told me that what I had done sickened her and that I deserved the treatment I was receiving. She left me at the end of the season. Took my sons with her.
"My career continued to falter until I ended up here on this broken-down excuse for a soccer team, in a country that doesn't even know the sport exists. I love this game. But, like my wife, it no longer loves me."
"I had no idea."
"No. And that made my hatred of you even stronger. That first day when you showed up for practice, I thought I would kill you. But now..." He shrugged his shoulders in the European way that spoke volumes. "Now, I find that hatred is useless. I saw that you had lost as much as I had. That all the support of your friends and family couldn't give you back the game."
"Not the game as we knew and played it."
"No. Neither one of us will ever play at the top again."
I thought about Sid Doyle. "I once had a friend who told me the only way to always be a winner was to go out each day and do the best that you can do. He said if you always do the best that you can, then you will always win no matter what the score of the game was."
"A wise man, your friend."
"No. A wise boy."
"If wisdom is coming earlier in life, then perhaps there is still hope for the human race."
Wagstaff stood up and poured more water on the heating stones. Steam billowed around us, and he regained his perch.
"Do you still hate me?" he asked.
"No. I've come past that point. I no longer see you as a nonperson, a nonfeeling, inhuman being to vent my inner poisons on. I see you as a man."
"And do you still think I kicked you on purpose?"
I paused before answering. Steam billowed around the room in gray clouds. "If I'm honest with myself, which is very hard to do, I don't think I ever did believe you kicked me on purpose. I wanted to believe it. I let everyone know that I believed it. I needed somewhere to put my anger and my frustration. If I could believe you kicked me on purpose, then I could put all of that on your shoulders. When I came face-to-face with you again...when we fought...and later when we played together, I knew I had only been fooling myself."
I saw something very strange make its way across Wag-staff's face. I could have sworn it was a smile.
"Is that a grin of triumph or relief?"
"Believe what you will," he said lightly.
I laughed. "You're still a bastard."
Wagstaff nodded his head. His voice became serious again. "Now, tell me what it is you want from me."
"You know I want something?"
"I may be a bastard, but I'm not deaf and blind. It is obvious that there is something going on with the Ravens team, and you are involved in it up to your eyeballs...excuse me, eyeball."
"Don't push your luck with bad jokes."
"Look, Chapel. You didn't come into the team room to compare demons. Explain to me what is happening. Tell me what I can do to help. The Ravens might not be much, but they're the only connection with the sport I have left."
"In that case how would you like to help me save them?"
Wagstaff leaned toward me again. "You mean between us we are going to do more than win the final tomorrow?"
The plan that I had started forming at breakfast with Sir Adam began to come together in my mind.
Chapter 23
The interior of the Acropolis rang with an empty hollowness. It wasn't quite a sound, more a feeling that involved several of your senses at one time without allowing you to pin it down specifically. It was late Saturday night. Almost Sunday morning. Bekka and I had said good night several hours earlier. Since then, I'd been aimlessly driving around on the Laver-da, killing time until I knew the Acropolis would be deserted.
The arena had played host to a professional wrestling match earlier in the evening. Now, however, the cleanup crews had been through and the maintenance teams had taken down the wrestling ring and set up the. indoor soccer boards. Once the preparations for Sunday's Super Soccer Bowl were completed, everyone had gone home. Everything was locked down, an only the amber safety lights illuminated the tunnels and hallways.
There had been a security guard sitting in his car when I'd walked through the middle of the parking lot. He had been engrossed in a paperback novel and hadn't even seen me when I used a key to enter through the player's entrance.
Ethan Kelso believed the Hardbirds were hiding out in the Acropolis and using it as a base. With the See No Evil Security Company on the job it was no wonder they could come and go as they pleased.
Inside the Acropolis's main arena, the giant score cube had yet to be lowered over the middle of the field. I thought again about the room that housed the cube for maintenance and wondered how many other small rooms the Acropolis might have for a variety of reasons that would never occur to the man on the street.
Since I had arrived in America there hadn't been a chance to search the structure myself, a fact I was rapidly coming to regret. Knowing your battlefield is of prime importance. If Archer and the Hardbirds had taken up squatter's rights in the Acropolis, they would know every in and out of the building and its complex maze of utility tunnels, delivery entrances, storage areas, equipment rooms, locker rooms, cash room, administrative offices, maintenance expeditors, and garbage dumps.
I made my way back down the tunnel from the arena to the home team locker room. There was a panel of switches on the inside wall closest to the door and I flipped them on. What had been dark became light, but there were no monsters lurking. Empty benches stretched out in front of the lockers that lined two walls. In the back, I could hear the dripping of a leaky showerhead. I picked up a loose soccer ball and carried it away with me.
I found another panel of switches in the player's tunnel and flipped those on too. I had no idea how to light up the arena itself and no convenient panel of switches presented itself. However, the glow from the player's tunnel cast noir shadows over the boards, through the goal nets, and across the artificial turf; enough light for what I needed.
Entering the field through an opening in the boards, I bounced the soccer ball on the artificial turf and caught it again with both hands. I do not like artificial turf. It is far more unpredictable than sod and provides no cushioning effect when you fall. Taking my time, I began to walk the perimeter of the field. I was bouncing the ball and catching it in my hands over and over every few steps.
I'd been walking the home field on the night before a game ever since the start of my career. The habit had started when I was a kid and couldn't sleep before my first big game. I had climbed out of bed and trotted all the way down to the school field. Once there I'd walked around and around the playing area until I felt tired and sat down with my back against one of the goalposts. The Games Master had found me there the next morning, snoring my head off. He'd sent me to see the Headmaster with a flea in my ear about sleeping at school.
Although sleeping with my back against a goalpost was not an experience I wished to repeat, I still found that walking the home field on the night before a big game helped to center my concentration. It was part of my own ritual for getting "up" for a game.
I wasn't superstitious to the point where I believed I would have a bad game if I didn't walk the field, but whenever I did, I found I was better p
repared. It really wasn't much different than a Grand Prix race driver walking a course. The exercise put my mind on the game. I imagined myself diving after shots and saving them. I thought about all the movements my body would make in the air, straining to reach a ball that looked impossible to stop. I imagined myself stopping that impossible shot. I made every thought during the process positive, and I knew I would play better for having taken the time to do it.
As I gradually made my way around the outside of the field, I began to bounce the ball off the boards. The sound of the ball hitting the boards echoed like gunshots. I threw the ball harder, making louder sounds on impact. Again, and again. Harder. Louder. Each time I threw the ball, I moved fast enough to gather the ball up in my arms like making a save. I imagined the crowd shouting, cheering, applauding.
Clap...Clap...Clap...
Applauding?
Clap...Clap...Clap...
I snatched the ball up in my arms a final time and turned to look behind me. A figure was silhouetted against the glow from the tunnel lights.
Clap...Clap...Clap...
In the seats stretching away to either side of me there was more slow, deliberate applause.
Clap...Clap...Clap...
Behind me now, in the seats behind the far goal, a fourth pair of hands joined in.
"Archer," I said. It was an acknowledgment instead of a question.
"In the effin' flesh, mate," confirmed the silhouette.
"I see you brought some friends with you again to the party," I said.
"Too bloody right, mate. We always run in a pack, and this time we ain't gonna give you the chance to do an effin' Houdini."
"Tell me," I said affably. "What do you get out of all the aggravation you cause?"
"Aggro is wot me and the 'ardbirds is all about. Some peoples, they likes to smoke. I don't smokes. Some peoples likes their drink. I don't drink. Me? I likes to fight. Fighting and punching lets everybody know you ain't gonna be pushed around. We does what we wants, when we wants. And ain't nobody gonna stop us. You come on our turf and we're gonna make sure you remember who's top of the heap."
"That's what all this is about? You being the top hammer?"
"Peoples respect you when theys got to answer to your fists."
"You have it all wrong, old son," I told him. "People might fear you, but they are not going to respect you."
"Fear's good enough."
"What are you going to do about me then? I don't fear you."
"You will do before we're done 'cause we're gonna bash you into the ground. Just like we did wif effin' Maddox."
"What in God's name did that poor bastard ever do to you?"
"Nuffin'." I saw the shoulders of the silhouette shrug. "We did him for kicks."
"No, I don't think so." I shook my head in disagreement, and I wondered how clearly Archer could see me. "There is more to Maddox's murder than that," I said. ' 'And I know there is more to your story than simply bashing for kicks. I think you're dancing to Terranee Brisbane's tune. He pays and you lick his boots. You imagine yourselves to be a bunch of tough guys, but you're nothing but a bunch of suck butts who can't make it in the real world."
"Who gives a tinker's fart what you think?"
"The police for one."
"Yeah? Well, I don't see no effin' filth anywhere around here. Nobody is 'ere 'cept you and us. And we don't likes anybody who don't run with the pack. So, maybe you're thinking of dialing nine-one-one. You gots a phone in your shoe?"
What Archer didn't realize was that I didn't want the police. I'd told everyone, including some of the press who were doing last-minute write-ups for the late Saturday edition, about my habit of walking the field alone on the night before the game. I'd hoped the grapevine would get the information to Archer.
I 'd made a big production out of obtaining the key from Terranee Brisbane to let myself into the Acropolis. I knew Terranee had contact with Archer and the Hardbirds because he'd used them as bodyguards. I wanted him to see my being alone at the Acropolis as the perfect chance to set them on me again. I was also running the risk that he would set Liam Donovan on me, but somehow, I didn't think that Donovan was connected to Terranee Brisbane. I'd come around to believing that Donovan was connected to another Brisbane.
After letting myself into the Acropolis, I'd made enough noise to raise the ghosts of the great goalkeepers of the past. I'd hoped that if Archer and the Hardbirds were using the Acropolis as their base, and if they hadn't picked up my message via the grapevine, that they would come to investigate if they heard the commotion. I'd wanted Archer and his crew to come after me. I was ready for them. But I wanted them alone for a while without the police.
I was operating by Sir Adam's rules, which meant that anything goes. The ends justify the means. The taking of the law into one's own hands. I had only this chance to break things open, so double standards be damned. I was going to start smashing the rules like everyone else. If that dragged me down to their level, then so be it. I wasn't going to wait to be kidnapped again. Or for Donovan to come after me at his leisure.
"Archer," I said, starting to walk slowly toward him. "You are nothing but a spoiled brat who suddenly found the royal teat turned off back in England, so you came over here to raise hell for a while. You've got yourself a bunch of losers who think you're King Kong because you dress funny and butcher the Queen's English. ..."
I heard a footstep behind me. I had been waiting for it and I pivoted fast with my left arm out-flung in a spinning back fist. I connected squarely with the face of the Hardbird who had originally been in the stands behind me. He staggered backwards with a grunt of surprise.
He was a big lad, about eighteen years old, but he was slow and stupid. I grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands, pulled him toward me, and smashed my forehead into his face. His nose exploded and blood flew everywhere. I nutted him again for drill, and then let him drop. He went down without a sound.
"Not real impressive," I said, turning back to face Archer.
"Get the sod!" he yelled to the other Hardbirds. He started to run toward me. As he ran, he let out a primal scream, but it didn't quite drown out the sounds of his compatriots clambering out of the stands and over the bards.
"Wagstaff!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, and then I dropped the ball I was still holding and charged toward Archer. If the boy wanted to fight, then I was going to teach him what it was all about. I'd grown up fighting, defending Gerald and the other kids in the neighborhood. The SAS had turned me from a fighter into a killer. And I embraced fear as a friend. Archer was in for a shock.
In the steam room earlier in the day, Wagstaff had agreed to stay hidden in the Acropolis after everything had been closed down for the night. He would stay inside so that if Archer and the Hardbirds appeared as I hoped and prayed they would, he would be there to back my play. Now, as I rushed toward Archer, I had a brief image of Wagstaff sprinting down the player's tunnel to join the battle.
When I was close enough to Archer, I threw myself down like I was going one-on-one with a striker who had broken free with the ball. The big difference in this situation was that I wasn't playing the ball, I was playing the player. If there had been a referee present, I would have been red carded out of the game.
As my momentum carried me forward, I raised one leg and planted it viciously in Archer's groin. He let out a howl of pain, and I allowed his motion to carry him over me and crash him down onto the turf. Giving credit where credit is due, I will say he was tougher than I had expected. Even with his testicles planted somewhere up around his stomach, he unbent himself and came back at me.
Through the shadows in the arena, I could make out Wagstaff mixing it up with the two other Hardbirds. I wanted to get in and help him, but I had to finish dealing with Archer first. When he came at me again, he was more careful, wary that I might have other tricks up my sleeve.
The light from the player's tunnel washed over his face as we circled. I again placed his age at a
round twenty, as I had when I'd seen him in the Golden Harp for the first time.
The five years between us should have given him the physical edge over me, but he wasn't even close to being in the league of hard men that claim Liam Donovan and his kind as members. A league that I had once held my own place in.
Archer was a charismatic enough leader for the young yuppie losers who ran with him as the Hardbirds. He led them in a pack to prey on the weak and the defenseless but being confronted by somebody who knew how to fight back was a whole new experience. I wondered how they had managed to take out Maddox—a man who had bounced around a couple of mob enforcers—and decided to add the question to the list of others I was going to ask.
In a street fight patience is truly a virtue. You keep your defenses up and wait for your opponent to make a mistake. Archer did not have what it takes. He wanted to mix it up immediately and get everything over and done with as quickly as possible. I had been this route before, so I covered up and let him come at me.
I absorbed a flurry of rights and lefts, with my forearms up to protect my head. The blows landed ineffectually on my shoulders while stealing energy from Archer. He quickly became frustrated by his inability to break through my defenses and decided to see what kind of damage he could do with his steel-capped boots. His kick landed hard on my shin, but I had come prepared for this kind of fighting and was wearing a pair of bamboo soccer shin guards.
Archer was surprised when his action did not elicit the usual reaction; the victim crying out and falling over in pain. I took advantage of his confusion to launch my own attack. I hit him hard over one ear with my open palm, and then over his other ear with my opposite palm. He flinched, and I clouted him on the nose with a downward-striking fist.