by Wil Mara
He stood, hands on hips, wondering if he had made a mistake. No, I know what I heard. Then where could it be? When his eyes fell upon the bathroom door, he laughed to himself. Of course … you dumb shit.
He went straight to the medicine cabinet. Same type as in every other dorm room, including his own—a tall steel box with a mirrored door. The glass on his had a diagonal crack running from one corner to another, whereas Reese’s was perfect. The only other noticeable difference was that Reese’s had a faded, rippled sticker along the bottom advertising an REM concert from eight years earlier.
Weasel pulled the door back and found what he was after; there was nothing else on the shelves. Just a plastic orange prescription bottle standing in the dead center. He took it out and read the label carefully to be sure.
Vicodin.
Beautiful.
“Let’s see how well you do without these, hotshot,” he mumbled through a grin. He cheerfully tossed the bottle once in the air, then stuffed it into the pocket of his tracksuit.
His heart thumped to a halt when he stepped back out—all three were waiting for him. In that instant he knew he’d been had. There was some kind of distant fascination in the fact that he never suspected it, never even had a clue he was being set up. He considered himself a fairly intelligent individual, and he’d done this kind of thing plenty of times before, hadn’t he? Yet he’d been masterfully outsmarted.
“You motherfucker,” Hamilton said with a scowl that would’ve scared Satan. “You slimy motherfucker.”
Glenn Maxwell, the team’s quiet and cooperative “other” tight end, found himself unable to respond.
Reese, standing in front of Hamilton, was nodding. “I had a feeling it was you. I was hoping I was wrong, I really was.” They’d talked it over, figured it out for themselves. Once they had convinced each other of their mutual innocence, they worked on puzzling out who the guilty party might be. At one point Hamilton thought it might be one of the coaches—he’d seen it before.
“Piece of shit,” Foster chimed in. He stood at the back, near the half-open door.
It had been Reese’s idea. He’d instructed Hamilton to make a point of talking about how much he needed the pills—how they were helping him cope with his back and he doubted he could play without them—to anyone who would listen. In practices, during meals, at meetings, everywhere. He focused on a handful of “prime suspects,” guys who seemed to have the most to gain by the sabotage. Then they simply waited.
Maxwell decided to try the offensive and see what happened. “What the hell?” he said in a lame attempt at anger. “I was just going to borrow some for myself.”
“Borrow some of what?” Reese said innocently. “We didn’t know you took anything.”
Maxwell opened his mouth. Then, almost on its own, it closed again.
Fuck.
“You sonofabitch,” Hamilton said, starting forward. “I oughta break your neck right n—”
Maxwell took a fearful step back. Reese turned and held Hamilton at bay. “No, take it easy. We’ll bring him to Coach Greenwood. We caught him, that’s good enough.”
“Yeah,” Foster added. “I’m sure the coach will have something to say about this.”
“Uh-huh,” Hamilton cut in, “like go the fuck home.”
“Maybe. Let’s find out.”
They took their prisoner by the arms and led him out of the room.
30
The Giants organization cleared out of Albany the Friday before the final preseason game. As much of a novelty as it was to have them there at the beginning, their hosts were happy to see them go at the end. During the first few weeks, students and other fans lined up along the chain-link fences around the practice fields to watch drills, get autographs, and, if they were lucky, have a conversation or two. Now those same fences stood empty.
Practices were held on Saturday in the bubble next to the home stadium in New Jersey’s Meadowlands Sports Complex. Like most bubbles, it was basically two enormous layers of vinyl, with a thin layer of insulation between them, puffed up by air pumped from outside at a pressure of no more than .05 pounds per square inch and held in place by hundreds of criss-crossing cables. Like the college fields, it was surrounded by a chain-link fence, this one with the added privacy of dark green slatting.
After the first practice, while most of the team was having lunch, Hamilton, Reese, and Foster detoured to the weight room—a magnificent, state-of-the-art facility, recently renovated by the team’s strength and conditioning coach. With bright fluorescent lighting and a cement floor painted Giants blue, it featured long rows of benches, racks, weight trees, lateral raises, and pullovers, plus leg presses, incline and decline combos, treadmills, and hundreds of dumbbells. A veritable playground of bodily health.
Hamilton lay on a bench doing three-hundred-pound presses while Reese spotted him. They were both dressed in shorts and nylon tops. Hamilton huffed and puffed, his face glistening with perspiration. Reese had a white towel around his neck and wore a filthy pair of fingerless lifting gloves. Nearby, Foster wore a navy tracksuit and had just passed his third treadmill mile. A heart monitor was wrapped around his right wrist.
Jim O’Leary came in through a far door, a clipboard in one hand and a whistle bouncing off his chest. Reese nodded to Hamilton, who set the bar into its cradle and sat up. Foster also saw him and stepped off the rolling rubber platform.
Surrounded by the shining equipment, the four men clustered together. O’Leary managed a small, forced smile.
“He said we’re keeping him,” the coach told them. Hamilton threw his hands up; Foster laughed and shook his head.
“Just like that?” Reese asked.
“Yeah. Dale said he wanted him to go, but Gray said no. He said he knew the playbook too well, and he was valuable at other positions. Which, I admit, is true.”
“This is a joke.”
“I know,” O’Leary replied. “I don’t like it, either. It changes the whole dynamic of the team. It’s going to cause havoc in the locker room. I don’t think anyone was crazy about Maxwell before. Now they’ll be looking over their shoulder every time he’s around.”
Word of Maxwell’s clandestine activities had spread quickly, and his teammates began treating him like he had leprosy. In response, he’d been walking around with the wide-eyed look of a child who’d lost his parents in a department store.
“Doesn’t the coach care?” Foster wondered. “Doesn’t it bother him that this guy is like a poison now?”
O’Leary shrugged. “Apparently not.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Or,” O’Leary added, lowering his voice, “maybe he likes it. Maybe this is the kind of thing he secretly admires.” Such a clear condemnation from the normally neutral O’Leary was surprising.
Hamilton lowered his head so his face was hidden. Reese took his gloves off and stuffed them into his pockets. Foster, looking away in disgust, couldn’t help but laugh.
“So that’s it then,” Reese said finally. “No openings for a tight end. We’re all screwed.”
“Well, yes and no.”
“Huh?”
“Dale and I have been talking, and we’ve come up with an idea that might help.” Another smile, this one sly. “In tomorrow’s game, we’re going to feature the three of you big-time. Lots of plays, lots of action. You’re all going to get the ball, make key blocks, the works. It’s going to be your final showcase.”
“What difference will that m—” Foster began.
Hamilton cut him off. “So other teams can get a good look at us?”
O’Leary nodded. “You got it. You guys are gonna have the spotlight from start to finish.”
“Oh, yeah,” Reese said. “Yeah, definitely.”
“Come Monday, when the final cuts are announced, your agents’ phones will be ringing around the clock. You’ve got thirty-one other organizations to choose from. So your hard work probably will pay off in the end.”
“That’s great,” Reese
said.
“Almost makes me wish I had an agent,” Foster added. He’d thought about getting one but wanted to wait until he made the team. That way, his business mind had decided, he’d have more leverage and could take his pick from the best people available. “I guess I’m still screwed.”
“I can recommend a few,” O’Leary told him. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”
Foster said, “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Wow, I really appreciate it.”
“Sure. I’m sorry I can’t do any better, but that’s how it is right now. Your fate after the last preseason game will have to be your challenge, all of you. So get ready to play the best four quarters of your lives. It might not be important in terms of score, but it could be the key that unlocks your future. I certainly hope so.”
O’Leary turned to leave. Just before he reached the door, Reese called out, “Coach?”
“Yeah?”
“Just curious—what about T. J.?”
“What about him?”
“He still has to play here, right?”
“Yes.”
“For the same contract? The same money?”
O’Leary’s smile faded a bit. “Yeah, same everything.”
“That kind of sucks. I mean, for him.”
“Yeah,” Jim O’Leary said. “It sure does.”
* * *
After a thorough and exhaustive search of the area during the first six months of his residency in North Carolina, Barry Sturtz managed to find just one restaurant that he really liked. It was called O’Mearas, in honor of the owner’s wife (whom he eventually divorced, but by then the name had become ingrained in the public’s mind, so he was stuck with it). It was a white-linen-and-crystal type of place, with soft lighting and cocktail-hour piano music. Not exactly what Sturtz had grown accustomed to during his wild youth back in Brooklyn, but it captured a certain New York ambience that, to his surprise, he missed quite a bit.
Sitting there now, in a darkened corner booth with a glass-globed candle flickering in the center of the table, he put his napkin in his lap as the waitress set down a plate of steaming veal francese, his favorite item on the menu. He’d decided this would be his night, a few hours all to himself, with no concern for his clients and their troubles. First his favorite restaurant, then a stop at his favorite bar. Have a few beers, shoot a little pool. He knew some of the guys there now, and none of them asked what he did for a living. (If someone did, he decided, he’d tell them he was in “career management.” That was obscure enough, yet truthful enough.) He needed this release more than he’d needed one in a long time. He was going to savor every moment.
His cell phone vibrated during dessert (pistachio ice cream). In spite of his vow, he’d left the phone on in case of a true emergency—and his clients had already been warned that, should they call him under circumstances that were anything short of dire, he would remove their testicles with a dull knife.
He didn’t recognize the number, nor could he even place the area code. He’d spent enough time on the phone over the years to know most of them, but this was a new one. Maybe a misdial, he thought. He doubted it, though. Odd how many wrong numbers landed on someone’s home phone, but so few on a cell phone.
He stuck his headset into his ear and took the call.
It turned out that he did know the person after all. Knew him quite well, in fact. They had never spoken before, but he recognized the name instantly.
He asked about the purpose of the call. The caller told him.
His carefully constructed plans for the evening were quickly forgotten.
31
“Come on, let’s go! Let’s go!” Jermaine Hamilton bellowed from the sidelines, clapping and pacing. His helmet was off, his uniform filthy. His hands had been bandaged, a bloodstain colored his pants on the right thigh, and every joint and muscle was in agony. He hadn’t felt so alive in ages.
This is what I remember, he thought. This is it right here. This is what I’ve longed for.
From the start of what Jim O’Leary called the Game of Their Lives, all three burst out of the gate and never stopped. Not once did it feel like a preseason game. It wasn’t exactly the Super Bowl, but it could’ve been. Every play mattered. Their senses had never been so sharp, so focused. They watched and absorbed everything. The only disappointments came when the offense had to hand over possession, forcing them off the field.
With Maxwell keeping the bench warm, Greenwood made good on his promise and dazzled the Dallas Cowboys’ defense—ranked eighteenth the previous season—with a variety of double tight end sets. On the second play from scrimmage, Reese caught a shovel pass in the backfield that he then tossed to Foster for a twenty-two-yard gain. Six plays later, Hamilton pulled the ball down over the middle, smashed his way through two safeties, and pounded into the end zone. Then Foster, in a special teams role, caught a Cowboys kickoff four minutes later and ran it back to his own forty-seven.
In the second quarter, with the Giants leading 17–3, Greenwood blew everyone away by putting all three in the same play—Hamilton on the right side, Foster on the left, and Reese as fullback. Hamilton went in motion, the ball was snapped, and it drifted past quarterback Mark Lockenmeyer directly into Reese’s hands. He tucked it in and plowed forward. With Hamilton leading the way, Reese motored through a hole up the middle and added another eighteen running yards to his eventual total of seventy-one—unheard of for a tight end. With less than a minute remaining in the half, Foster caught a Lockenmeyer laser in the end zone after finding open space in the corner. That one was so easy he went into the locker room laughing.
Early in the third, with the score 27–6, Reese was the final recipient of a double reverse, with Hamilton again throwing key blocks along the left side for a gain of twenty-two. On the next play, Hamilton ran a slant pattern and stiff-armed two defenders simultaneously on his way to his second touchdown. Daimon Foster would push the crowd into a frenzy at the end of the period when he drove into the middle of the field on a screen play, leaned down for a low block, and inadvertently flipped the guy up and over his back. The defender, more amused than humiliated, slapped Foster on the helmet and said, “Thanks for the ride, kid,” as he jogged away.
By the middle of the fourth quarter, with the score a comfortable 45–21, the media was running out of superlatives.
“I tell you, Jack,” WNYN broadcaster Martin Cole said from the booth, “I have never, ever seen a performance like this from a group of tight ends in all my years. I am just speechless.”
“And what’s even more amazing,” Jack Neuweiler said, “is that none of them will be here come Monday, as you know.”
“Right. For those of you who don’t know, the three young men who’ve been embarrassing the Dallas Cowboy defense all afternoon have been living on borrowed time since an independent arbitrator denied the grievance filed by star tight end T. J. Brookman in his quest for a more lucrative contract with the New York Giants. That decision effectively issued the death warrants for these three remarkable talents.”
“But only as far as the Giants are concerned,” Neuweiler added quickly. “They are free to sign with whoever else they wish.”
“And you know, Jack, maybe that’s exactly why we’re seeing so much of them today. Maybe someone down there likes them.”
“Maybe.”
Cole and Neuweiler weren’t the only announcers to make the connection; Dale Greenwood knew the media would eventually put the pieces together. The rest of his offensive guys figured it out, too. For that matter, so did the defense, special teams, the kids who carried the towels and the Gatorade bottles, the stadium security, the fans, and everyone else who watched the game.
Including Alan Gray.
Greenwood began feeling his icy stare starting around the middle of the second quarter. He made a point of putting as much distance between them as possible. He knew Gray was going to say something sooner or later. At halftime, he stayed at the far en
d of the locker room, but Gray finally caught up to him in the hallway as they approached the tunnel. Grabbing him by the sleeve, Gray said gruffly, “What will you be getting, a percentage of their new contracts?” When Greenwood didn’t respond, Gray added, “Cool them off, Dale. And do it now.” Seconds later they were enveloped by the deafening roar of the crowd.
Greenwood made no effort to heed Gray’s command. If anything, he was more determined than ever to see that the three young men were put front and center. When Daimon Foster caught his second touchdown, the head coach stood with his arms folded and stone-faced. It was such an odd moment—a head coach unmoved by a score from his own team—that several broadcasters commented on it.
O’Leary walked over to Greenwood at one point and said, “We’re going to have detention for a month,” to which Greenwood gave no reply. The hell with him, he thought. If I’m going to get fired, I’m doing it with a clear conscience.
With less than five minutes remaining, Greenwood asked his magical trio if they wanted to sit out the rest of the way. They vigorously declined.
The Giants got the ball again with 4:14 to go. On the first play from scrimmage, at their own thirty-one, backup quarterback Blair Thompson—who was now making the calls on his own—threw an incomplete post route. On second down, an end run produced just two yards.
When they returned to the huddle, Reese said, “Blair, this guy on the right, number 67, is exhausted. I can put some space between us pretty quickly.” Thompson agreed.
Following a short count, the offense executed the out pass perfectly. Reese started inside, 67 fell for it, and he cut out and took off like a bullet. When the ball came, he’d achieved a separation of almost five yards. He had to go up to get the throw, but not much. And he knew there was nothing but empty space ahead. One more score to cap off an unforgettable game.
Then it all went horribly wrong.
As he came down, he failed to notice the Dallas safety charging in his direction. This was Andre McKinney. Like Hamilton, McKinney was an aging veteran trying desperately to squeeze as much time as possible out of his career. Unlike Hamilton, he was failing miserably. Dallas still had eight cuts to make to get to the required fifty-three on Monday, and it was all but certain that he would be among those to go. He believed he still had a fighting chance today, but the stellar performances by New York’s three tight ends dashed any remaining hopes. As a result, McKinney, his blood boiling, was waiting for the opportunity to get even.