Penalty Shot

by Paul Bishop

  When this was done, Ethan's partners all moved off in different directions. No words had been exchanged between them, but they were like parts of a well-oiled machine, each of them knowing exactly what was expected of them and how to accomplish it. While two of them dealt separately with Archer and the other Hardbirds, Ethan and his other partner searched for and gathered up all of the promotion soccer balls. All of the balls were marked with the trade name "Mizak" and a red or black lightning bolt logo. One by one the balls were cut open. All of the balls with the red lightning bolts had cocaine inside them.

  We had kicked the balls with the black lightning bolts into the stands. There had been no dope in those balls. However, before the end of the game Terranee Brisbane's contacts had replaced the give-away balls with a batch of dope-filled balls with red lightning bolts. These had been mixed in with the remaining black lightning bolt balls to be transported and distributed in the cities where the Ravens played.

  When Brisbane was ready to hand over the dope at its final destination, he was able to easily identify which balls contained the dope because of their red lightning bolts. A new batch of the innocent black lightning bolt balls was then supplied for kicking into the stands. Neat and simple.

  The dope-filled balls had been the perfect smuggling device until I'd almost given one away in the locker room. It wasn't any wonder Miles Norton had been so upset, and his actions that day certainly implicated him in the scheme. None of the players on the team, however, necessarily needed to have known what was going on under their noses.

  Ethan placed a sample of the narcotics into a small, clear plastic holder. Inside the plastic holder were two chemical vials. Ethan broke one vial, shook the contents about, and then broke the other vial. The contents turned a vivid pink.

  "Test positive. Real positive," he said. "I don't think this stuff has even been stepped on yet. I'd say it's about eighty to ninety percent pure. Right off the rock."

  "How much is it worth?" I asked.

  Ethan looked around him at the stash. "With what's here? A hundred balls ...A quarter key of coke in each...Twenty-five kilos of coke this pure...You're looking at maybe three million dollars wholesale. Ten million by the time the stuff hits the streets. I figure Brisbane is the middleman. His cut would probably be close to five million. Small change by the standards of some operations today, but certainly enough to keep the bloody IRA boys in beer, guns, and explosives for a while. And that's just this shipment. Who knows how long this has been going on.”?

  While Ethan's crew continued their flurry of activity, Wagstaff and I sat in the locker room with Sir Adam and rehashed the events of the evening. Because of Wagstaff s involvement in the discovery of the dope, Sir Adam had allowed me to bring him up to speed on the other aspects of the situation. If Wagstaff had been shocked by the discovery of the cocaine, he was truly astounded by the full breadth of what had been occurring more or less under his nose. He looked slightly sad.

  "How are you going to handle Terranee Brisbane?" I asked Sir Adam eventually.

  He shrugged slightly. "I'm not quite sure yet. Our people are in touch with the big boys who run Ethan's unit. Brisbane has already been unobtrusively picked up. Perhaps we'll be able to turn him to our advantage. Perhaps not. But for now, we'll be keeping him on a very tight leash. We've got him by his John Thomas, and I have no doubt he'll see things our way in the end."

  "What about Miles Norton, the equipment manager? I'm sure he was in on the smuggling caper."

  "Norton and several others," Sir Adam agreed. "Once we get a handle on the scope of the operation, we'll handle them all."

  "And these Hardbird idiots?" Wagstaff asked. I could tell he wasn't used to the way things were handled in Sir Adam's world.

  "I wouldn't worry too much about them," Sir Adam reassured him. "Justice will be served. Right now, I'm sure they are spilling their guts to Ethan's partners. There'll be some minor publicity when their arrest is announced, followed by a quick court proceeding where they'll all plead guilty to manslaughter. They'll go down for Maddox's murder without a whimper."

  "How can you be so sure?" Wagstaff pushed the point.

  Sir Adam looked at me.

  I shook my head. "You and I are playing out of our league here," I told Wagstaff. "Justice is different for some. I don't know if that's wrong or right, but it's the way things are."

  Ethan Kelso had warned me when we first met that his unit operated a lot differently than the rest of the police department. "Like no other place on earth" was how he'd put it, and I believed him. I'd seen Sir Adam operate this way before.

  Wagstaff continued to look slightly stunned, but after a moment he asked, "And the game goes on?"

  "The game goes on," Sir Adam confirmed. "I will not allow soccer in America to become a victim of Terranee Brisbane or anyone else."

  Wagstaff nodded his agreement with this, but he still asked, "And you have the power to do this?"

  Sir Adam's smile was his only reply.

  After a few seconds of introspective silence, Sir Adam spoke up again. "There are loose ends about this situation that bother me."

  I knew exactly what he meant. "One of them is that nothing here tonight ties in with Liam Donovan, right?"

  "Exactly." Sir Adam stood up and began to pace back and forth with his hands behind his back. "Why did he come after you in England, and what game is he playing here? Why did he kill the goalkeeper in Seattle? And why is he playing cat and mouse with you?"

  I walked over to the water cooler and used a paper cup to retrieve a few mouthfuls of water. "I've had some thoughts in that area," I said, when I'd finished drinking. "I don't like where they lead, but I don't see any other answers."

  Ethan Kelso wandered over. "Any thoughts you've got would be better than what I have," he said. "Because I'm as stumped as Sir Adam."

  I rubbed two fingers under my eye patch and then ran my palm over the rest of my face. I was tired, and from what Sir Adam indicated there was still going to be a soccer final to play.

  "Has anybody located or been contacted by Nina Brisbane yet?" I asked Sir Adam.

  "Not that I'm aware. If Archer and his followers weren't in custody, I could believe she'd been kidnapped like you were. However, I'm still very concerned." He gave me a hard look. "Do you think Liam Donovan has her? Do you think he's working for Caitlin Brisbane?"

  "No, that's one thing I don't believe. Caitlin certainly has enough Irish contacts through her father to find someone like Donovan, but her goal was to stop the Ravens from winning. I could believe she sent Donovan after me in England to stop me from coming to Los Angeles, but then why not have Donovan kill me when I arrived here? And why would she have Donovan kill the Seattle keeper? That action only made the odds more in our favor when we played against the Gulls."

  "Where does that leave us?" Ethan asked.

  "It leaves us with Nina Brisbane as Donovan's control," I said.

  "How does that figure?"

  "When we talked before," I said, turning back to Sir Adam, "I told you I believed we were involved in a two-handed game—two separate agendas with only the Ravens in common. After what Archer has admitted, I think we are actually looking at a four-handed game: Terranee Brisbane using the Ravens and the Hardbirds as a front for the narcotics he was selling to fund the IRA; Stavoros Kronos, who was involved with Brisbane in the narcotics smuggling, but had his own priorities when it came to using the Hard-birds to help get Nick a starting position with the Ravens; Caitlin and Nina Brisbane's struggle for control of their father's sports empire; and Nina Brisbane's personal agenda for revenge."

  "Revenge?" I could practically see the gears whirring in Sir Adam's brain.

  "Yes. I think the tragedy which resulted in the destruction of Nina's face has finally pushed her trolly off the track. Between her father's continued support of the IRA, and the power struggle with her sister, Nina has gone over the edge."

  "She told you she was going to make everybody pay, didn't she?" Si
r Adam remarked thoughtfully.

  I was embarrassed by the memory of the seduction scene, but it was the one event which had given me a glimpse of Nina's cards.

  “How much did you tell Nina about me before you asked me to come and play for the Ravens?" I asked. "Did you tell her how reluctant I might be to accept the offer?"

  Sir Adam scratched his head. "Yes. I also convinced her that you were the only goalkeeper available who was good enough to get the Ravens through to the finals. Anyone else who was any good was already being used in the league or was committed to outdoor teams."

  I nodded. "Okay. Stay with me on this for a second. Nina's objectives were two-fold. First, she had to get the Ravens through to the finals in order to stand a chance against her sister in the struggle for the Brisbane sports empire. On one hand, she desperately wants her father's approval—she told me she lost him to Caitlin after the destruction of her own face, and Caitlin's blossoming beauty. On the other hand, she hates her father for continuing to support the IRA and Duncan Finlas, the man responsible for the nightmare of her injuries."

  "Are you saying," Ethan began to ask, "that Nina Brisbane is plotting to revenge herself on her father?"

  "Not only her father, but also Finlas' son, Pat Devlin, the IRA, me, and anybody else her confused mind has targeted as victimizing her."

  "And Liam Donovan?" Sir Adam asked.

  "Give me a chance. I'm getting there," I said. "We agreed that Caitlin Brisbane could have had enough access to her father's Irish contacts to find someone like Liam Donovan. If Caitlin had that kind of access there is no reason that Nina couldn't have found Liam Donovan, or someone like him, as well. I'm sure the fact Donovan and his partner, Sean Brody, were IRA outcasts appealed to Nina. The pair of them would have no qualms about screwing up the flow of money from Brisbane to the IRA because they were no longer a part of that team."

  "They would have wanted the money for the Sons of Erin," Sir Adam said when I paused.

  "And I'm sure Nina promised it to them."

  "But why did they go after you in England?"

  "Wait for it," I said. "Nina had everything on schedule. Pat Devlin was on the team where she could get to him whenever she wanted. The Ravens were headed into the play-offs, and she had two very hard men to do whatever she had planned."

  "And then Maddox got bumped off," Ethan said.

  "Right," I agreed. "With Maddox out of the team the odds were against the Ravens getting through the play-offs."

  "That is true," Wagstaff interjected in agreement. "Nick Stavoros didn't have enough experience to take over for Maddox, and nobody had any idea Bekka was as good as she is."

  I filled up my water cup and took another drink before continuing. "So, Nina was in danger of losing the Brisbane sports empire to her sister. She felt she'd already lost her father to Caitlin, and she believed by beating her sister in the business competition she could win him back. "I took a pause to see if everyone was with me. Nobody jumped in with any questions. "Not willing to take the risk that I wouldn't agree to play, Nina sent Donovan and Brody after me. Their brief wasn't to kill me, just to make it appear that way and make the threat to the Ravens appear even stronger than it was. She was using reverse psychology—believing the actions of Donovan and Brody to discourage me would only add fuel to Sir Adam's arguments to convince me to play."

  "And the goalkeeper in Seattle? What was his name?"

  "Tom Sweet," I said. "After the game with Houston, where Caitlin bought off the referee, Nina became more than willing to play hardball. Caitlin had already shown herself capable of taking drastic steps to stop the Ravens, so Nina decided to take out a little insurance for the next game. She ordered Donovan to kill Sweet. With their first-string goalkeeper gone, the Seattle Gulls were an easy mark for the Ravens at full strength. When I went missing, Nina probably believed Caitlin was behind the disappearance. She must have felt even more justified about the murder."

  "Likewise," said Ethan, "she's kept Donovan reined in from killing you because she still needed you in goal for the Ravens."

  "Right. After the season was over, she'd turn Donovan loose on me. However, after I turned down her advances it's hard to say if she still has the same priorities."

  Everyone thought about that situation.

  "Okay. I'll buy it as a scenario," Sir Adam said. "But what kind of revenge is she planning that is going to take out everyone she has in her sights?"

  "I'm afraid that's the point where I run up against a brick wall," I said. "I have a bad feeling, though, that we're going to find out real soon."

  And I knew none of us were going to like it.

  Chapter 25

  I was exhausted by the time Ethan and his crew were ready to wrap things up. Wagstaff was curled up on a padded bench in the physical therapy room taking a catnap. Ethan woke him up and told him to go home and get some proper rest. I needed sleep too and getting my head down on a soft pillow for a few hours was the most important thing on my mind.

  With Wagstaff and Sir Adam tagging along, I followed Ethan out through the Acropolis player's entrance and into the parking lot. Ethan's partners had already hustled Archer and the Hardbirds away and into what remained of the night.

  After calling back the on-call judge he had spoken to earlier, Ethan told him what the search of the Acropolis had turned up. He also detailed for the judge the admissions Archer and his buddies had made to the other police officers. According to Ethan, once their lips had been coerced into moving, Archer and the Hardbirds couldn't seem to tell their story quick enough.

  In the parking lot, I straddled the Laverda and then started it up. My missing eye was throbbing to beat the band. It seemed to be keeping pace with my pulse, and the beat reverberated through my entire body. If Donovan had chosen that moment to kill me, I think I would have been happy to let him do it.

  I rode slowly back to the Marriott, where I parked the bike and made my way up to the suite. Inside, I could hear Sticks snoring through his open bedroom door, sleeping the sleep of the righteous. I envied him. I thought of the method I had employed to break Archer, and I wondered who had appointed me God. Was there any difference between Liam Donovan and myself, or were we simply a one-eyed Jack and a two-eyed Jack at opposite ends of the same face card? Was I to be considered on the side of the angels only because the people who supported me were in the current position of power? I hoped not, but I was too tired to argue the morality of the point with myself any longer.

  I wanted to call Bekka to let her know everything that had transpired, but one look at the clock told me that sane people were still off in the land of nod. Still in my clothes, I flopped on my bed and joined them.

  When I woke up, I found someone had thoughtfully removed my shoes and covered me up with a blanket. Someone was also moving about in the suite's living room, and there was the smell of bacon and coffee. I rolled over, dragged myself off the bed, and made my way out there.

  "Good morning, Sunshine," Sticks greeted me. "Did you sleep well?"

  "Mmph," I grumped. I'm not good when I first wake up. Sticks ignored me.

  "The papers have given the game decent coverage for a change," he said, rustling the pages of the Sunday sports section from the Los Angeles Tribune. He spread them out on the small table in front of him.

  There was a room-service cart next to the table and I began to investigate the contents of the covered dishes on top of it—eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, toast, pots of tea and coffee.

  "Is all this for me?" I asked.

  "Say thank you," Sticks said. "I had to think of some way to bring you back from the dead."

  "Thank you. It smells good. What time it is?"

  Sticks checked his watch. "Eleven o'clock."

  "Has Bekka called?"

  "No."

  I shoveled food into my mouth and poured a cup of tea. As I chewed, I picked up the phone and dialed Bekka's number. There was no answer. I told myself not to be concerned, but my heart didn't want to l
isten to what my mind had to say. I've never put much faith in precognition, but my heart was racing.

  As I put the phone down it suddenly rang, making me jump. I snatched up the receiver and at the same time sent up a quick, silent prayer: Please let it be Bekka.

  "Hello," I said into the receiver. My voice sounded funny. There was still food in my mouth, and I was having trouble swallowing.

  "I told you I'd get you, you bastard," a gruff voice said. It was filled with gloating. The voice of a nightmare. "Your girlfriend is real cute, Chapel. Gorgeous red hair. Long legs that go all the way up and make an ass out of themselves."

  "What do you want, Donovan?" My insides had turned into a glacier.

  "I want to tear your beating heart out of your chest, but before I do, I'm going to make you wish your mother had aborted you before you ever saw the light of day."

  "You have Bekka?"

  "How many other girlfriends have you had time to develop since you've been in America?"

  "You're out of luck, mate. She doesn't mean anything to me." The statement was the hardest I have ever had to make, and I could not stop the lie from creeping into my voice. I felt physically sick. My empty eye socket began to throb with lightning stabs of pain.

  Donovan laughed. "You're a pathetic liar, Chapel. I saw the stars in both your eyes at the Golden Harp. And I was watching the two of you together on the beach and in your little floating love nest." The thought of Donovan watching the Corrienearn while Bekka and I were aboard making love scared the hell out of me. "If she means nothing to you," Donovan continued, "you're not going to care that I'm going to cut off one of her fingers for every goal you let by you during the game tonight."

  "You're crazy, Donovan," I said with venom in my voice. "If you harm her in any way, you'll be signing your own death warrant. I won't rest until I kill you." I saw Sticks looked at me across the table and I turned away from his gaze.