"Mary?" he called into the second of three rooms devoted to copying sound. Like many of the work areas, it was windowless and furnished only with electronic equipment and a chair. I noticed an old-fashioned turntable, space-age consoles with knobs and slides and needle gauges, and two rectangular speakers perched on a wrap-around desk that also supported a computer monitor and yet another TV screen.
"Guess Mary’s gone home," he concluded, "but we'll manage."
Off to the left was a small storage room containing reel to reel equipment. A low bank of narrow metal drawers spanned the length of the wall. About waist height, the cabinet top was covered with rows of white-labeled cassettes like a sales display that only offered one artist.
Ronnie scowled as he ran his finger down what I assumed were the most recent additions. He lifted out two cassettes labeled with the current year, "Tomcats/Hombres," and the week-number of their game.
"You know what you're listening for?" he asked.
"I think so."
If my audio theory was correct, it ruled out everyone except those who had been filmed speaking to Tim Duffy on the sideline. Bobby Frye, for example, had spent the entire game in the owner's box and never went anywhere near the murder victim. Nor had I seen Patrick Dionne speaking to Tim in any of the film I watched earlier that day.
Willet Smith, however, the third and now second-string quarterback; receiver Bo Shifflett, Roger Prindel, the offensive coordinator; and Walker Cross, the $1.7 million dollar man, remained in the running.
Kicker Charlie Quinlan or Teal's husband, Morani Todd, qualified as suspects, but I temporarily ruled them out because of their body shapes. Although I’d merely glimpsed Ronnie's attacker before I closed my eyes to scream, my impression was that Morani was too large and Charlie too slight. Plus I hadn't discovered even a hint of motive for either man.
My money was on Roger Prindel. The way his face fell when Duffy spoke into his ear right after he came off the field seemed out of place, backwards, like an employee had just criticized his boss. It was the single oddity in an afternoon of otherwise expected sideline behavior. Slim evidence, I realized, but worth pursuing.
At the baby shower Debbie Quinlan, the kicker's wife, mentioned how angry Charlie had been when the offensive coordinator sent in a running play that probably would have ruined her husband's last chance for a field goal. Wisely, Tim changed the play in the huddle, electing instead to throw a gutsy pass. The result: a touchdown that just happened to cover the published point spread.
Yet in spite of the insubordination, both the offensive coordinator and the quarterback should have been jubilant; that is, unless one of them happened to be dirty and the other angry enough to throw that dirt back in his face.
One way or another I needed to hear what Duffy said to Prindel, and I prayed that the audio tape had caught it.
"Just get me wired, and you can go," I told my injured cousin.
He watched me fidget from foot to foot and shake my hands. "Yeah, yeah," he agreed, but he went ahead and turned on a tape deck, plugged in some earphones with a long cord, and demonstrated the controls I would need. "Fast forward, rewind, stop," he lectured.
"Child's play," I said, thinking of Garry.
"Hardly," my cousin disagreed, reminding me of the gravity of my task.
“You going to be in that same room?" I inquired, now that I fully appreciated the extent of his work-ethic.
"Yes. Come and get me?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Still, Ron lingered a moment just looking at me. He had invited me to joust this particular windmill, and now that my nearly impossible goal almost seemed attainable, we both felt like cocky teenagers with the world at our feet. Even after my cousin squeezed my arm and left me to my chore, our moment lingered like the afterimage on an old TV.
Twitching, clammy with nervous sweat, I nevertheless welcomed being alone with my enormous challenge, free to do whatever would settle my nerves without Ron there to make me feel self-conscious.
First, I turned out all but one dim desk light. After I put tape number two in the player, I fast forwarded to the middle and picked up the big soft headphones. Then I sat on the floor with my back to the wall and hugged my knees. I did not need comfort; I needed to stifle every sense but my hearing.
This had to be it. It just had to be. There was nothing else to try. I put the headphones on and closed my eyes.
And popped right up. Too loud.
Yet I did not lower the volume much. Crowd noise still assaulted my ears then fell to murmurs, footsteps, phrases, and grunts. I was a mute, blind listening devise. Garry's battery-run tape recorder hidden under the sideline bench–that was me.
And so for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes I listened to every voice, every collision, every oof, crackle or pop the soundman had collected, not the fancy stuff taken off a wired player, for that was on another cassette. I had whatever the boom mike got: beer vendors shouting, coaches calls to the officials, one and two word reactions to what happened on the field, much of this in the abbreviated code of the profession, sound bites only the truly initiated could interpret.
"So if he's in your face, f-ing beat him inside with the swim move."
Or, "When we double Morph, you gotta get in Dwyer's shorts on the flare or circle. If he blocks, take a seam and get a f-ing piece of Singer." Colorful stuff that would never make it into the special.
Hearing it all made my heart pound; yet with no video to show me the plays, the score, the clock, I was mostly listening to a strange soup of noise with surges of volume and respites of relative silence. Still, I stuck with it, and soon enough I began to summon up my own mental pictures to go with the auditory story.
I heard, "All right now," spoken by an unidentified coach, delivered with a nervous clap to a shoulder pad. Then Doug's voice called, "Blue fifty-six. Blue fifty-six. Hut...hut...hut," across several yards of Astroturf.
Still too early. I needed to fast-forward to the portion of the game after Doug went down and Tim went in.
Initially, I thought I had forwarded too far until another coach's voice shouted for Quinlan to stand by. That meant the Tomcats were either anticipating a fourth down punt, a field goal attempt, or a point after touchdown effort. With any luck I was near the part where Duffy threw the late touchdown.
And so I was. After grunts and thumps and sideline cheers, a brief hush fell, soon giving way to the pandemonium of the score. Footsteps pounded off the field, backs were slapped, congratulations exchanged...and then I heard it.
"Don't ever pull that again," threatened the same voice that had called the play on the field just moments before–the substitute quarterback, the murdered Tim Duffy.
"What?" asked a stunned Roger Prindel.
"You heard me. I'm onto you. Don't ever do that again."
I leaped off the floor and punched the stop button. Throwing the headphones onto the padded chair, I rushed from the room–downstairs, down the hall, around a corner and thirty yards more. Then breathless, half-delirious, I interrupted my cousin's work yelling, "Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie. I've got it!"
My cousin, whose mind had been totally elsewhere, blinked and asked, "You've got what?"
Hands on my hips, I bent at the waist to breathe.
"The murderer of course," I said, straightening up. "Did you think I was up there listening to the Rolling Stones?"
"It's just...I didn't think..." He had been way way into his world and far far from mine.
"Geez, you sound like Doug," I teased. "What did you send me to Norfolk for if you didn't think I could do this?"
"It was all I could...I didn't really think..."
I pulled his hand toward the door and reassured his co-worker, "He'll be back in half an hour. No, wait a minute. Is this where you put audio together with a print and make copies?" More and more of my tour information had become a vague blur.
"No," the kid replied as if one of us was on Mars.
"Gin," Ronnie pulled my hands aroun
d, but it was his tone that caught my attention. "I'm with you," he said, much to my relief. "We'll use Dennis's stuff. Just show me what you need."
I squeezed his cheeks in Aunt Harriet's hated manner. "Great!" I said for punctuation, and that was the last word either of us spoke until we were back upstairs.
Wearing headphones as big as earmuffs, Ronnie's expression went from concentration to incredulity to puzzlement as he listened to the section of tape I wanted him to hear.
"Well?" I prompted.
He rewound the tape, listened again, and scowled, looking even more quizzical and confused.
I yanked the headphones off and almost screamed with frustration. "'I'm onto you,'" I echoed the tape. "Don't you get it?" I actually stomped my foot. "It's like what's-wrong-with-this-picture? Have you ever heard anybody say anything remotely like that on the sideline before?"
"Well, maybe," Ronnie thought aloud. "It sounds kind of familiar."
"Of course it does," I said through clenched teeth. "You heard Tim Duffy say it to Roger Prindel eight days ago. What's the matter with you?"
"I guess I just thought Duffy was onto the fact that Prindel was a lousy coach, or something like that."
"Then you remember absolutely positively it was Prindel he said it to?"
"Sort of, now that you mention it. I still don't think it means anything."
I pulled out the tweed secretarial chair and pushed it behind Ronnie's knees. As he flopped into it, he glanced up at me with worry in his eyes.
"Roger Prindel gambles," I lectured, enunciating each syllable as if English were my student's second language. "And he called for a run when a run wouldn't accomplish a damn thing. Don't you see? Prindel was doing a favor for somebody. A big, big favor, Ron. He was risking his career in the NFL by trying to mess with the outcome of a game."
"I don't know, Gin."
I drew in a huge breath and let it out slowly.
"Tim Duffy was an observant guy who'd been around a while. Right? What if he caught onto Prindel's gambling habit ages ago? Now and then Prindel had to have overreacted to the score of some nothing baseball game or got all excited when Podunk High beat Central Thingamajig in soccer. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that the guy had money down. But the bets were never on football, so Duffy kept quiet. Who cared? Live and let live, or so he thought until the Tomcats/Hombres’ game.
"The score was 21–20. Two minutes to go. To everyone's surprise, Doug leaves the game for a second time giving Duffy another chance to show his stuff, maybe even dazzle the coaches into giving him back the starting position. He desperately wants to pass for a touchdown, I mean he really really wants to go for it, but Prindel sends in a running play. Once again, who was to care? Nobody except Tim Duffy and, as it turns out–Roger Prindel. Unless the Hombres could pull off a last minute miracle, the Tomcats already had the game in the bag."
Ronnie almost looked convinced.
"So what happens?” I hastened to add. “Tim changes the play in the huddle, scores, and comes off the field both proud as punch and angry as hell. 'Don't ever pull that again,' he tells Prindel. 'I'm onto you!' Now do you get it?"
Ronnie's expression remained a little too vague, so with more than a little impatience I said, "Prindel must've just about had a heart attack. He had to have been terrified Duffy would tell Laneer or Frye or the league watchdogs that he tried to mess with the spread. But Duffy doesn't say he's going to do any of the above, he just lets Prindel know he knows Roger intended to alter the outcome of a game.
"So," I said, pacing and punching the air, "Prindel figures it's now or never, pop the guy before he gets really righteous and decides to blow the whistle."
I clamped both hands on my cousin's shoulders and spoke to his face. "If Duffy talked, Roger would never get another sports job anywhere. He'd be ruined, maybe even jailed." I shook my head. "That's the way it had to have happened, Ron."
"I believe you, Gin. I really do, but how're the police going to prove it?"
I hadn't had much time to address that problem, but my cousin's question prompted a thought. "If they hurry, they'll catch Roger with the film in his possession. He can't afford to get rid of the cans before he's sure they contain the incriminating part, and I'm guessing that requires equipment he won't readily have–at least not until he gets back to the stadium."
"Not even then," Ronnie remarked. "He stole negatives, remember?"
"Right. So for sure he can't have looked at them, and he can't ever listen to them because the audio isn't even on there."
"Which he doesn't know." The bags under Ronnie's eyes had gone nearly blue with fatigue, yet he managed to show me a beautiful grin.
"Exactly. Now. While I call the police, can you please get somebody to put this audio together with the picture? The print should still be locked in Dennis's desk."
Ron rubbed his hands together on his way to the door. "Ab-so-lutely, Cuz. I'll do it myself."
Chapter 28
RONNIE'S PREPARATION of the combined audio/video tape for the police didn't take long. Like everything else, there was a special roomful of the exact equipment he needed.
"Detective Schwartz, Officer Winthorpe," I greeted the two men as Ronnie ushered them into the narrow room. There were no seats, just a long table with work units lining the walls left and right.
"Ms. Barnes," Schwartz nodded formally.
The detective had been so reluctant to attend our private presentation that Ronnie finally asked, “Isn’t it your job to follow every lead?” As a result, Detective Schwartz’s attitude probably wasn’t ideal, but there was no time to bring any other law enforcement people up to speed. At least the theft of the negatives had occurred within Schwartz's jurisdiction, as had the attack on Ronnie.
He closed the blinds and gestured for another coworker who’d been using the room to scoot.
Winthorpe noticed and sneered. Schwartz merely sniffed and scratched his nose.
"Gentlemen," I opened with the grace of Vanna White turning a letter on Wheel of Fortune. "I'm sure you'd like to arrest Tim Duffy's murderer while he has incriminating evidence in his possession, so let me quickly explain our thinking.”
First I talked about Prindel's gambling habit, supported by the information Pamela Wilkinson had provided. Then I mentioned that the offensive coordinator and Tim Duffy had worked together long enough for Tim to catch onto Roger's gambling problem, “but as long as Prindel wasn't betting on football, Tim probably figured 'Live and let live.' He had his own career to worry about."
Schwartz brought out a toothpick and rolled it back and forth across his lips with his tongue. Winthorpe merely stared.
Leaving Coren Turner out of it, I related enough history about Doug and Tim to convince my listeners that Duffy desperately wanted to beat out Doug as the Tomcats' starting quarterback. Even without their history that motive was a no-brainer.
"So you can imagine that when Tim went into the Hombres game for the second time, he was dying to impress the crowd with something big–preferably a touchdown pass.
"Except..." I paused for effect, "Roger Prindel sent in a running play."
I paced a little, took a deep breath. "Duffy had to have been furious," I said, raising a palm. "It was third and 24 on the 44 yard line with just under two minutes left in the game. Why would Prindel make such a stupid call? A run would use up the clock, but not necessarily enough to prevent the Hombres' offense from pulling off a miracle. The Tomcats' might not even get the field position they needed for their own field goal attempt." I faced the men and spread my hands.
"The call only made sense if you factor in Prindel's gambling habit. He owed someone who’d bet heavily on the Hombres to win. I'm guessing that person was his brother, the guy who placed most his bets for him."
Much to my relief, Schwartz nodded. As a veteran cop, he would know that the only assured winners in gambling were those who provided the action–the bookies, or race tracks, or casinos who took their cut up front–along with
the state if the betting was legal. In that respect gambling was very much like musical chairs; with something taken out of the betting pool at the beginning of each round, those who didn't cut their small losses early found it more and more unlikely they would ever come out ahead. In other words, inveterate gamblers were almost guaranteed to get into trouble sooner or later.
So Prindel, a long-time gambler, was almost certainly indebted to his brother–and not just for hiding his habit from public scrutiny–or to their bookie, and probably to both. And, judging by the chance he took with his career, not to mention his freedom, Prindel had to have been aware that the people he was indebted to bet big money on the Hombres that week.
I shook my head. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. With one bad call Prindel could have preserved the Tomcats win while wrecking the spread and paying off his debts. He must have been ecstatic.
"If he ever had to defend the call, he could have argued that he was using the clock or trying for the element of surprise. Without the gambling factor, the higher-ups would have written it off as an isolated mental error.
"Except it didn't happen like that. Tim Duffy changed the play in the huddle and successfully threw for a touchdown. Ronnie?" I gestured for him to start the tape, and we all leaned in close to watch the ten-second video.
"Again," Schwartz ordered as soon as gray and white snow sizzled on the screen.
Ronnie rewound the tape and pressed "play."
For the second time we watched the breathtaking touchdown catch. Once again Tim Duffy trotted off the field along with his joyous teammates. Yet again he received thumps of congratulation to his helmet, arms, and shoulders from both offensive and defensive players alike, and once again he accepted the proffered hand and brotherly hug from the offensive coordinator, Roger Prindel. This time I noticed the boom mike dip briefly near Roger's head then disappear up above the camera shot.
Initially Prindel's face appeared in the center left third of the picture mostly facing forward. Then Duffy used the handshake to pull his coach in closer, and the shot showed the quarterback's profile speaking directly into the coach's ear.
A Score to Settle Page 17