by Bill Syken
“You’d be surprised how blind people can be,” I told Dan, “to what’s going on right in front of them.”
“True dat,” Dan said, and then grinned at Jessica, like the phrase was part of some long-running in-joke between them. “True dat.”
Jessica has come back several times since then, and without Dan. We haven’t so much as touched each other in these visits, and she seems afraid to even sit next to me on the sofa. But that’s okay.
I’ve heard athletes say what they love about sports is the certainty it offers: you know the rules, you know who the winner is, and you know when the game is over. The best thing about life, I think, is that there are no rules and, as long you have your breath, you still have a shot. The game never ends.
* * *
I receive come-ons from agents who want me as a client. I ignore them all, even though I do need new representation. When Cecil came to visit me, I fired him.
“I will always be thankful for what you’ve done for me,” I told him as he stood at my bedside. “But your betting could have ruined both of us, and you knew it, and you did it anyway.”
Cecil put up the facade, at least, of a man who knew how to take a loss.
“It’s funny that you’re letting me go now,” he said, with an effort at a smile. “So soon before your $350,000 bonus is due.”
I am going to collect that bonus, too. Udall has assured me of this, even though I am currently on the team’s physically-unable-to-perform list.
“When you get your percentage,” I told Cecil, “please put it in the bank.”
The offers I have coming from the other agents are entirely credible—I now have the attention of the biggest sharks in the ocean. But for now, at least, I am toying with the idea of representing myself.
* * *
I receive a postcard from Alice. The front reads GREETINGS FROM INDIANA, and it has no return address; the postmark I trace to a town chiefly of note for being on Interstate 70. She congratulates me, apologizes for her lies, and says, “I wish I knew a better way to make money.”
I have received plenty of gifts, the strangest of which was from Jai. He delivered it personally, with the help of his minions.
“Hangman, you are about to see how JC takes care of people who take care of him,” Jai said, standing in the doorway, a day after I came home.
I heard a ruckus from outside and leaned forward on my crutches and looked down the hallway. There I saw Too Big to Fail and Cheat Sheet—the latter struggling considerably—carrying what looked like a coffin, except its exterior was fabric, and purple. As they brought it near, I saw that it was decorated with a painting of Jai, nude, aping the pose of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, but with starbursts all around him. One starburst was strategically placed between his legs.
“Do I even want to know?” I asked.
“This, Mr. Gallow,” Jai said, with a beatific gleam, “is your new best friend. This is JC’s personal hyperbaric chamber.”
I had heard of players using these chambers, which are supposed to spur cell development and speed the healing process. The science behind them isn’t completely verified, but many players swear by them.
“This baby is the whole key to JC being JC,” Jai explained. “I spend an hour in here every day. You pop out of one of these, you’re all ready to get your game on. Even if there ain’t no game, if you know what I mean. It helps every inch of you recover. You get me, right?”
“I believe so, yes,” I said.
“And the best part about this baby is, it’s got speakers inside, too,” Jai said. “Top-of-the-line shit. It’s rigged so that the second the lid closes, Sack Dance is coming at you in quadraphonic stereo.”
Sack Dance is Jai’s R&B album, a collection of soporific screw songs he released a couple of years back. The single was called, regrettably, “Puttin’ in the Dime Package.”
“Spend an hour a day in here, and you will cut your recovery time by thirty percent,” Jai said.
The chamber was the ghastliest and most tasteless gift with which I have ever been presented. But I accepted it, because the math was irresistible. If it really cut my recovery time by as much as Jai said, I could be back for Week One. I have been using it daily, ever since my noise-canceling headphones arrived in the mail.
After the drop-off I invited the guys to stay for lunch, and they did. My mom grilled for the whole crew.
As we ate together that day, I couldn’t help but think of my dad. Even though he didn’t care much for Jai’s antics, he was openly in awe of him as a linebacker. He would have loved to share burgers and beer with the former Defensive Player of the Year. Instead, it was Aaron who ate with us. He actually asked Jai which position he played.
But it’s like the coaches say. No use thinking about the guys who aren’t here. Play with the ones who are.
* * *
It is the day before training camp, and I am feeling more restless than I have in my entire recuperation. I know that tomorrow the news will be overrun with images of my teammates running around without me. Freddie comes by at two in the afternoon, as he has more or less every day. On these visits he brings an old Xbox with him and hooks it up to my television, and then he takes the console with him when he goes, at my insistence.
“I think maybe I should let you keep this baby from here on out,” Freddie says as he connects it into the back of my television. He is wearing white cargo shorts and a green Presidente beer T-shirt.
“Nah,” I say. “I’d rather only play it when you’re around.”
“Thank you, Nick, for walking directly into my segue,” Freddie says as he joins me on the sofa. “Because I’m not going to be around. I’m leaving for a while.”
He hadn’t mentioned anything like this. I search Freddie’s eyes for a coming punch line, but I see none. “What’s up?” I ask.
“Being in that law office, Hangman, made me realize I would be happier if I was doing work of my own.” He does not seem embarrassed to have realized this for the first time in his early thirties.
“You going to take the bar exam again?”
“No, no, no,” he says with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Fuck the bar exam, fuck the legal profession, fuck all that. For now, anyway. But I want to do something different. I have a book idea. Travel guides. I want to write a whole series of them. Here’s my title: If I Were a Pervert: A Guide to Going Away and Getting Away with It. The books will be for straitlaced people who go on vacation and do nutty things they would never do at home. And I’ll tell them how to do it. I’ll direct them to the wildest party scenes in Cabo, the best bath houses of Japan, identify the European brothels that feature women who are, in fact, women. Or not, whatever the readers prefer.
“I came up with the idea in the pantry at the law office. I was telling some of my travel stories and the lawyers were just amazed. They couldn’t stop asking me questions.”
“Way to impress the partners, buddy.” If Freddie ever did pass the bar, there was one place he would never be hired.
“If nothing else, I’ll enjoy the research,” Freddie says. “Anyway, I’m leaving tomorrow for Morocco, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
The start screen is up for the game Freddie has chosen—ice hockey—and it idles there as our controllers rest on our laps.
“Why Morocco?” I ask.
“For one, it’s supposed to have an amazing hash scene,” he says. “And it’s beautiful, allegedly. But the main reason is, I’ve never been there. So even if I don’t end up actually writing the books…”
“Freddie,” I say. “Don’t tell me you’re envisioning quitting before you even get on the plane.”
“It’s not so much that I’m considering quitting,” Freddie says coolly, “as that I’m factoring in a realistic possibility. I am, after all, me.”
“You have a point there.”
Freddie laughs. “You should join me,” he says, nudging my elbow.
By way of answer I pick up a crutch from
beside the sofa and tap at the baby blue soft cast in which my leg is encased.
“I’m healing,” I say. “I actually think Jai’s hyperbaric chamber is working.”
Freddie smiles but shakes his head. “I have long since given up telling you what to do,” he says. “But one day, when you’re locked in your health coffin over there, trying not to listen to music that you hate, and you think of me on the beach, just know you can join me any time you want.” Freddie cocks an eyebrow. “You and me, Hangman. Morocco. It could be an all-time classic.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say. And I will consider it, this lark, because I’ve said I would, even though joining him in Morocco would require me torpedoing my career, putting my obsessions in cold storage, letting go of all that I have spent my life building. It’s a change that’s almost impossible to imagine, except that there’s no reason I can’t actually do it.
Who, exactly, would I be disappointing?
But even in thinking about it for these few seconds I already know that I won’t be going anywhere, because I have a better dream: being back for Week One.
My leg is healing quickly, I can feel it, and that “health coffin,” as Freddie terms it, is helping. When I am in there I close my eyes and I can visualize my future. I will be on that field, ten yards back, counting the men in front of me. That first snap will arrive in my outstretched hands. I will punt the ball, and everything will be perfect.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In expressing gratitude to the people who helped bring Hangman’s Game to life, I must begin with Jennifer Weiner. Without her encouragement, I would have never undertaken this project in earnest. She’s the best.
Joanna Pulcini has been a tremendous agent, teacher, and friend. In Joanna’s office, Katherine Hennes was a shining star. Thanks to Rosemary Ahern and Ken Salikoff, for their readings and counsel.
At Thomas Dunne Books, Toni Kirkpatrick edited Hangman’s Game with great care and insight. Jennifer Letwack has been a pleasure to work with. Thanks to Jane Liddle, for her sterling copyediting, and also to David Rotstein, Kenneth J. Silver, Shailyn Tavella, Cathy Turiano, Kelsey Lawrence, Melissa Hastings, and Paul Hochman.
Doctors David Patchefsky and Elizabeth Hexner helped with medical matters. I learned much about punting from a phone conversation with the great Sean Landeta. I must thank my friends at the best sports publication the world has ever known, Sports Illustrated. It was on an assignment for the magazine several years ago that I attended a Colts practice, noticed Hunter Smith throwing to linebackers during an interception drill, and thought, “Wow, punters really do have a lot of free time.”
For years Joe Vinciguerra and I have talked about story ideas, usually his, and we continued that hallowed tradition with Hangman’s Game. Though the details are hazy, I believe Joe was also one of the guys in the room, along with Steve, Will, Jack, Rollo, Tubbe, and possibly others, when we were watching a game all those years ago, and we joked about how the Jets’ punter, Nick Gallery, had a name that sounded like it should belong to a private detective. That was a good time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After reporting for several newspapers, Bill Syken spent eight years as a staff reporter and editor at Sports Illustrated, where he continues to work as a writer and editor for its book division. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He lives in Philadelphia. This is his first novel. Visit him online at www.billsyken.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
HANGMAN’S GAME. Copyright © 2015 by Bill Syken. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
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Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: top of man © Antonio Guillem/Arcangel Images; woods © Andre IUC88/Shutterstock
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Syken, Bill.
Hangman’s game: a Nick Gallow mystery / Bill Syken. — First edition.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-06715-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-7511-1 (e-book)
1. Football players—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Sports stories. I. Title.
PS3619.Y52H36 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015017159
e-ISBN 9781466875111
First Edition: August 2015
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright