by Bill Syken
If Woodward is going to attempt to curry favor with compliments, at least he is choosing his wisely. The Dez Wheeler play happened last year, against Atlanta. Wheeler is their speedy return man, and among the most feared in the league. I hit a strong punt, about fifty-one yards with decent hang time, and he fielded it, sidestepped our first man downfield and shot forward, picking up speed with each tackler he passed. He was about to hit full sprint—that is, until I charged, planted my feet, and drove my shoulder into his midsection. Wheeler went horizontal, and the ball popped skyward.
We didn’t recover Wheeler’s fumble, of course, and the Sentinels were already trailing by two touchdowns, on our way to yet another loss, so it wasn’t much to celebrate in the moment. But on the next morning’s SportsCenter, my hit made their countdown of the top ten plays of the day—coming in at number four. I have the countdown saved on my DVR, and on a slow Tuesday I’ve been known to watch it a time or ten.
“Thanks, Woodward,” I say. “And please, go ahead and finish dressing.”
Woodward dutifully reaches for his other sock and pulls it on, and then grabs a shirt.
“You know, my folks actually saw you the other day over at—what’s that place called, the Jackson Suites.”
“You mean Jefferson?”
“Yeah, Jefferson, that’s right.” He pulls a gray Sentinels T-shirt over his head. “The team told me about it.” Which is exactly how I found the Jefferson years ago, after I won my job. “What a neat place. My family’s all staying there in one big setup. The team’s giving me a room when camp’s on, but I’m staying with my folks for now. My dad, my mom, two uncles, an aunt, and a couple of my cousins are all there. The Jefferson only rents by the week, so they came early and made a vacation out of it.”
“Do they know the minicamp isn’t open to the public?” I ask.
“Oh, they know.” Woodward smiles, pulling on a pair of tight-fitting jeans. “But when the Sentinels signed me, they were all so excited. They just had to come. I guess they figure that these three days might be my whole professional career.”
He’s right, the camp’s three days might be his whole career. They could also be the end of mine.
* * *
Woodward is on his way home. I have the entire outdoor practice area to myself, and my choice of the three fields behind the facility. I go to my regular spot, Field Three, which is in the back and where the kickers traditionally work.
I begin my standard practice routine, one I have repeated hundreds of times over the years, unvaryingly, in the quest to stamp perfect form into my muscle memory. I go to the jugs machine and set the timer to shoot a ball to me every forty-five seconds. Then I set up fifteen yards away and field balls and send them flying. It is only in my most active spurts—when I am catching the snap, and doing my step-step-step-kick—that the shootings leave my mind. Over the session a scenario develops in my mind. I imagine that I am in a game, getting ready to kick, and the guys on defense are distracting me by pantomiming reenactments of the shootings. I will be counting off the players in front of me to make sure we have eleven men on the field, and a guy on the defense will pretend to shoot two of his teammates; one will stagger and clutch his stomach, while the other falls lifeless and flat, and then bites down on a blood pellet. And with this distraction, the play clock runs out on me. After which the defense high-fives, and Tanner whispers about how sad it is, that I am psychologically ruined and he will have to get rid of me.
Despite this fantasy, I work my way through thirty-five punts, my standard number, and I manage to hit every kick solid. I hope Tanner is watching from his window; my proficiency is a little inhuman, given the circumstances, and he would no doubt see that as a plus.
During my post-kick stretching, lying on my back, the memories of last night flood in uncensored. As the side of my face touches the turf, while my arms are wide and one leg is crossed over the other, I think about the gruesome sight of Samuel’s head resting on the ground, halfway blown off. Then there is Cecil, a bullet taking up residence in his digestive system.
I wonder if there is there any chance, as Rizotti speculated, that the shooter was actually after Cecil. Samuel, it seems, didn’t have an enemy in the world. But I can’t think of anyone who would be after Cecil, either.
Or perhaps I was the target. Rizotti had raised that possibility, too, albeit primarily to set up an insult. But who would want to shoot at me? The only candidate that comes to mind is Jessica’s husband, Dan, assuming he’s found out about my three-year relationship with his wife. But Jessica assured me he hasn’t, and besides, Dan is supposed to be out of the country. And if he is planning to kill me, why e-mail me a couple of hours beforehand, for the first time ever? Plus, he is a rising star at the Federal Reserve. If he wanted to mess with me, he would be more likely to have me audited than to engage in a poorly executed drive-by shooting that hits everyone but its intended target.
Is the popular theory the right one—that Jai Carson was the shooter after all?
As I sort through the possibilities, I feel like I am drowning in ignorance. There is too much I don’t know. I tell myself I need to worry about my job, while I still have it, and let others do theirs.
I wish my meeting with Rizotti had inspired more confidence. He seemed more interested in nailing Jai than in conducting an open-minded search for the truth. I imagine myself pressing Rizotti to do his job better, and his response to me comes automatically. You’re the one who didn’t get the license plate.
CHAPTER 5
I NEED A FRESH IMAGE of Cecil to erase the one that keeps coming back to me from last night. So after I shower and down a mango-flavored protein shake from the team pantry, I return to the hospital. And I am able to see Cecil this time, luckily slipping into a brief window of visitation, though I don’t find the new image all that comforting.
Cecil has been moved into a small private room. He is covered with a pale green blanket, and he has an intravenous tube in his forearm. His body is sunk limply into the mattress, and his eyes are half open.
And he has visitors. His wife, Vicki, has made it in from Ohio, along with daughters Rose, nine, and Violet, six. Rose, a chunky blond girl, is wearing a sweatshirt from the Quad Cities Twisters, while Violet, a chunkier brunette, sports a shirt from Springfield State University. The shirts are a reminder of Daddy’s travels; he always brings home souvenirs from his trips to the small colleges and minor-league football franchises that he visits on scouting and recruitment missions. Rose and Violet are seated on the long gray sofa by the window having a pinch fight, which I take as an encouraging sign about Cecil’s prognosis. The kids, at least, have been assured they don’t need to worry.
I am surprised to see DaFrank Burns here. DaFrank is Cecil’s other active client, and the reason Cecil was able to land Samuel in the first place. DaFrank, like Samuel, went to Western Alabama, and his strong personal recommendation meant more to Samuel than any multimedia presentation from the big-boy agents.
DaFrank, a former college safety, is a special teams gunner down in Washington, and an intense young man. He makes his living running headlong into others with little regard for his own body.
“Hello, DaFrank,” I say, shaking his hand. “Good to see you.”
DaFrank shakes my hand and then pulls me in for a hug. Something between a bump and a hug, actually.
I go to Cecil’s bedside. “How you feeling?” I ask, placing a hand on his upper arm, above his IVs. He has a tube coming from his stomach area that I can’t look too closely at.
“I’m okay,” he says, though his muddled whisper suggests otherwise.
I turn to Vicki, who shrugs. “He’s going to be here a couple more days, at least,” she says. “The bullet hit the small intestine. They had to resect it. The doctors say his wound is amazingly clean, as these things go.” She smiles wanly at what now passes for good news, and adds, “We still have to worry about infections though.”
“Samuel’s funeral is in two day
s,” Cecil whispers, eyelids half closed. “I’m going.”
“You can’t go anywhere,” Vicki says, “until your bowels are working again.”
So he’s here until he proves he can take a shit.
“I’ll be at the funeral, Cecil,” DaFrank says. “I’ll be your ambassador.”
I put my hands on DaFrank’s shoulders.
“See, Cecil,” I say. “You’ll be well represented.” I wait a moment and then add, “It’s about time one of us is.” Cecil normally rolls along with my jibes, but with this one he just closes his eyes, seeking out dreamland.
* * *
In the dark of the hospital parking structure I sit in my Audi, titled on the downslope, and check my messages. My mother, at last, has been clued in.
Nick, where are you??? Are you OK?
I have missed a couple calls from her as well.
I send her a note:
At hospital, visiting Cecil. The prognosis is positive. I’m fine. I’ll talk to you later.
That is as much of a rehash as I am up for right now.
Jessica has been writing me, too—she has, at long last, gotten the news. In her first text, she asks how I am doing. In the second, she asks if I still want to come over tonight, referencing a date that feels like it was made in another lifetime. In the third, sent a half hour later, she says that she understands if I can’t make it, but she wants to see me soon, and she is worried about me. The messages reek of an earnestness that, coming from her, underline how wrong the last twenty-four hours have gone.
Not that Jessica and I don’t share intimacies with each other. Many times has she bemoaned to me the big lie of her marriage—her husband, Dan, son of a workaholic father, pledged to Jessica he wouldn’t live at the office, but now he puts in seventy-hour workweeks under the justification of “I could be Treasury Secretary someday. My name could be on money!” Jessica, meanwhile, has heard plenty from me about the stress and the boredom of my lucrative but low-security job. But mostly our time together is an escape from all that. She regards polite conversation to be an abomination; she prefers to keep people off balance. Once she told me this story about her husband, Dan. “Last year for my birthday, he took me the U.S. Mint,” Jessica said. “It was around one A.M., the building was empty. We went to the printing presses, and he turned on the computer guide and adjusted the setting to one-thousand-dollar bills. Then he hit a button and the presses whirred to life and sheets of money started flying off the rollers, and Dan spread his arms wide and said, ‘All for you, my dear. All for you.’ The catch was that I couldn’t spend any of the money. So I now have sheets of thousand-dollar bills lining my underwear drawer.” I was naive enough to ask: “Really?” She gazed at me pityingly. “If my husband were capable of such bold and romantic gestures, do you think I’d be here with you?”
That is the standard with us, all goofs and grab-assing. I write Jessica, tapping out the polite letters in a lifeless dirge:
Thank you, I’m holding up fine. I just need to be alone now.
After hitting Send, I see that a new text message has arrived, from a number not programmed into my phone.
Are you OK? I would really like to see you. Melody from Stark’s.
I remember how I gave her my number on that champagne bottle, and my need to upstage a twenty-one-year-old in front of a waitress on what turned out to be his last night on earth. I feel guilty, and small.
I am about to tell Melody, as I told Jessica, that I need to be alone. But of course that’s not what I need at all.
I call her from the parking lot.
“Please tell me this isn’t all my fault,” Melody says, her voice less assured than it was last night. “If I had been quicker with the Cristal…”
“That has nothing to do with it,” I say. “I guarantee it.”
Is Melody assuming Jai is guilty, too? I wonder if she or one of the other waitresses heard Jai say anything absolutely damning.
“I hope you’re right,” Melody says, not sounding all that assured. “Do you think JC did it, though? I saw the police had him in for questioning.”
“I don’t think he did it,” I say. “I don’t think so at all.”
“I hope not,” Melody says. “But who do you think did it then?”
“No idea,” I say, already weary of the topic. I had hoped that she would be an escape. “Probably some crackhead.”
“Hmm,” Melody says. I have left her nowhere to go with that. “Anyway, I’m calling because I am wondering if you wanted to get together. Drink that champagne you gave me.”
“Champagne?” I rarely drink, almost never during the day, and I try to keep my systems especially clean before I have to perform. Minicamp is five days off. “What are we celebrating?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Being alive. Another glorious day on God’s cement-covered earth. Come on. I feel like I need to be with someone right now, and I was just Samuel’s waitress. I can only imagine what it’s like on your end.”
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s do it.” Sitting in my car, in the dank gray of the parking lot, I feel like I need to do something.
* * *
Melody asks me to meet at Thirteenth and Locust, near a club called Voyeur—which won’t be open, she says, but it doesn’t matter because that’s not where we’re going. “There’s this place that I know how to get to from there,” she says, “but I don’t know the address.”
Melody arrives wearing big movie-star sunglasses, jean shorts, and a curve-accentuating tight black T-shirt with the words BUSTIN’ LOOSE written across her bountiful chest in fluorescent green script. She is fully clothed, and yet mildly obscene. She grips the bottle of Cristal by the neck.
“We’re going this way,” she says, pointing south. “And then that way.” Pointing east.
We walk south on Thirteenth Street for a couple of blocks, and then we stop at a corner and she points her finger around as if it is a divining rod. “This is it,” she says, and we turn east, down Pine Street.
“Where are we headed exactly?” I ask.
“Oh, you’ll see,” Melody says. “It’s a neat spot.”
We walk on until Melody slows and then stops in front of a coffee shop whose front window is papered with reviews from newspapers and Web sites.
“Is this the where we’re going?” I ask dubiously. This coffee shop is more crowded than I would prefer.
“Actually … no,” Melody says, distracted. “I’m just remembering something. Let me pop in here for a second.” She opens the door and I move to follow but she places her hand on my wrist, stopping me. “Better if you wait outside,” she says. I release an involuntarily sigh of impatience. “I’m getting you a little treat,” she says, with a reassuring smile. “I’ll just be a second.”
I wonder if she is in fact lost and is going inside to ask for directions. I watch through the openings between the taped-up reviews as she goes to the counter. A woman attempts to wait on Melody, but Melody waves her off. She then walks over to a young man operating a cappuccino machine and pulls something out of her bag—not all the way, just an inch—and the young man fetches a pastry, wraps it in paper, slides it into a bag and hands it to her. No cash is exchanged. She grabs a couple coffee cups on the way out.
Melody pops out of the store. “We’re moving again,” she says. “We should be there in a minute.”
We continue our trek east. “Did you know that guy in there?” I asked.
She looks at me askance. “Were you watching me?” she asks, with one eyebrow cocked.
“Yes,” I say. “What did I see, exactly?”
Melody taps my arm. Now we are turning right, headed south again.
“That guy is part of a little collective I’ve set up,” she says. “It all started when this guy at Stark’s left to work at one of those Garces restaurants, Chifa. He’d drop by Stark’s and want free drinks, so I thought, hey, what can he do for me in return? Long story short, we ended up starting this network of people who
work in the food service industry. We give each other free stuff. Just little things. All we have to do is flash this card.”
She pulls a card out of her handbag. Its only marking is the “no” symbol—a red circle with a line through it. But there is nothing behind the line. Nothing is forbidden.
“So you’re an organized crime boss,” I say.
She snickers. “I’m an organized misdemeanor boss at best. The stuff we scam costs five, ten bucks at most. And we all work at places that are very successful. We’re not ripping off any struggling mom-and-pops. The group has forty-four members in thirty-nine shops. I’ve said from the beginning, the key to making our thing sustainable is to keep the ratio of businesses and members as level as we can. That way no one is hit too hard. Keep it a mile wide and an inch deep.”
She taps my arm again and we turn east again. We are now walking down Addison Street, a narrow residential avenue with little foot traffic. We stop at a small park, maybe ten yards square. It is well maintained, planted with fresh flowers, and it has three benches—each tucked into a corner, and unoccupied.
“Here we are,” Melody says. “Pick your spot.”
I choose the bench in the far corner, and when I sit I notice that the planters are arranged so that each bench is in its own green enclave. For being in the middle of a city of two million people, the seclusion here is magical. I wonder why I have never heard about this park before.
“Pretty cool spot, right!”
“Very cool,” I say. “How’d you find it?”
“It was last fall, my first week working at Stark’s,” she says. “I went out with some of the busboys and we all got totally smashed. None of us could remember where the car was parked. So we wandered around this neighborhood for two hours looking for it. We kept passing this place and I filed it away for future reference.”
“So you’ve been coming here ever since?”
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “This is actually my first time back. But I figured after last night, you might prefer someplace a little out of the way.”