No Accident

by Dan Webb

  “Del,” he said. Who had done this to Del, to his little brother?

  “Alex?” Del’s good eye searched the shadows until it found Alex’s face. “He was breaking in. I tried to jump him, but that didn’t really work out.”

  “Did you see who did it?” Alex said.

  “No. He was big, though. And one of his hands was darker than the other.”

  Alex thought for a moment. “Like from a birthmark?”

  “Maybe. His hands were flying pretty fast. He kept asking about some guy named Al Franks.”

  Alex felt his stomach drop to the floor. Alex regretted thinking Del had left without closing the door and, for that matter, regretted kicking Del out in the first place. Brothers were supposed to have each other’s backs, and when Del had been beaten in Alex’s own house, Alex hadn’t been around.

  “Oh, Del, I’m so sorry.”

  “Nothin’ you could do. It was a random nut.”

  “No. The man was looking for me.”

  Del opened his mouth in surprise, and Alex saw that the man had chipped one of Del’s teeth. “Oh,” Del said. “I told him my brother owned the house. Was that bad?”

  It’s not good, Alex thought, but he didn’t reply because he didn’t want to make Del feel more guilty than he already did. It was Alex who had put his brother in danger, not the other way around. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “Don’t tell Mom, all right?”

  Alex lifted Del under the arm and gently pulled him upright.

  Taking a gun into an emergency room would have been bad, so before Alex helped his brother out of the truck and into the emergency room, he slipped the gun under his seat. Del was too out of it to notice. Before Alex let go of the gun, he let his fingertip linger on the crosshatching on the grip, and he thought about the man with the birthmark on his hand.

  Alex realized that whoever beat up Del must have been from Liberty, because he asked Del about Al Franks, not Alex Fogarty. But the man with the birthmark couldn’t have been sent by Crash, because Crash had fled. And now that Luke had decided Al Franks was a stand-up guy, Luke also had no reason to send a goon out to Al Franks’ house. So somehow Al Franks had made his way onto someone else’s enemies list.

  * * *

  “Do you have to leave?” Sheila said in a whisper. They were in bed. In the shadows, Alex could make out clearly her shoulder and the strap of her nightgown that had slipped off it. Seeing the line of her body made him want to stay.

  “I have a meeting with your husband,” Alex said.

  “Don’t call him that.” Her voice told him not to be cute.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  It was a few minutes before daybreak, and just enough light came through the blinds for each of them to track the glistening action of the other’s eyes atop the pillows.

  “Are you angry with me?” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “If you’re having second thoughts about our little project, I hope you’d tell me.”

  “I’m not,” he said. Then, still in a whisper, he said, “How do you think you and your—how did you and Luke go wrong?”

  “Ah . . . so that’s it.” She pulled the sheet higher over her body. “You’ve met him now; he’s a charmer. When people first meet him, they come away thinking he’s a saint. He’s hard to get to know, really, and when you do, he’s very needy, very narcissistic.”

  Alex didn’t say anything. It was heartening to hear a little about Luke’s faults—especially from Sheila’s lips—because Luke had been so impressive in person. Luke came off as so polished, so confident, so successful—Alex didn’t know whether to shake his hand or break his nose.

  “I’m not saying I’m perfect,” Sheila continued, “but the affairs . . . eventually I reached my end. People are just a means to an end for him, and that includes me.” After a pause, she added, “And you.”

  Alex remembered Beto’s claim that Luke liked to sleep with teenage girls. “Were there a lot of affairs?”

  Sheila lifted herself up onto an elbow and turned toward him. She firmly set back in place the lacy strap that had looked so inviting as it hung loose a moment before. “This is some pillow talk,” she said. She said it in a daytime voice that felt like it was breaking a truce.

  Alex looked up at her from the mattress and responded in a quieter voice than hers. “It’s really none of my business. Meeting Luke just got me thinking.”

  Alex saw her eyes searching the shadows for his face. Finally, she spoke into the shadows. “Alex, don’t tell me whether you love me. But I’d like to know that you trust me.”

  Sheila’s mention of the word “love” sent a nervous twinge through Alex’s gut, and he was relieved to immediately be let off the hook. “I’d like to trust you,” he said.

  “I trust you,” she said softly. Then she drew her body against his, from his knee to his chest to his shoulder, and whispered in his ear. “I need to trust someone.” He held her until she fell asleep again.

  * * *

  Sheila woke up a little while later, when the day had brightened just enough to fill her bedroom with a cool, ambient glow.

  Alex was crouching next to the bed, stroking her hair. She smiled. He had gotten dressed. She mouthed the word “hi.”

  “I wish I could stay with you,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “I have something I want to give you.”

  Sheila’s eyes brightened, and she lifted her head off the pillow.

  Alex lifted his hand to show her what he had, and in the dim dawn light, without the benefit of any hints, it took her a moment to recognize it as a small silver pistol.

  “Don’t freak out,” he said.

  “Too late.” Her eyes remained fixed on the gun.

  “Have you ever used one?”

  “I don’t think I need one,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “I don’t think so either, but just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” She looked at him with both skepticism and alarm.

  “I finally met Luke and I’ve learned more about Crash. Frankly, I think they’re both nuts. And we already know they’re violent.”

  Her face softened and she sighed in resignation. “Some men just buy women jewelry . . .”

  “I didn’t buy it. Beto gave it to me.”

  Sheila’s eyes widened.

  “Don’t ask,” Alex said.

  Sheila sat up in bed, pulling up the sheet to cover herself. “We hunted a little growing up, but with rifles, and I haven’t touched a gun in years,” she said.

  She took a longer look at it. It had a slim profile and rounded edges. It looked like a ladies’ gun. “Doesn’t it look a little underpowered?”

  “Hopefully you’ll never use it.”

  “But you’re the one looking for Crash. Shouldn’t you keep it?”

  “I’ve got one of my own now,” Alex said. He laid Beto’s pistol on the nightstand and kissed her on the forehead.

  She laughed roughly and dropped back onto the bed. “I would have settled for flowers.”

  38

  The head coach of the USC Trojans football team was a hard man to get to see. His secretary insisted that she didn’t know where he was and that he didn’t have any openings for interviews for the next three weeks.

  “I don’t want an interview,” Alex said over the telephone. “I just want to speak with him.”

  “And what may I tell him this is about?”

  “Never mind.”

  Alex drove downtown to USC’s campus, which had once been in a decent part of town, but was now an island of cultivation and promise in an otherwise dreary urban expanse.

  Alex had asked himself, what was the closest thing to a home that Crash knew before he went to Liberty? The Trojans football team. And who was his protector there? The head coach. Alex had to see him. Alex was pretty sure Crash would come back to campus eventually, if he hadn’t already.

  The coach wasn’t in his office,
the woman at the field house told him. Then she said, “You’re the one who called before, aren’t you?”

  “When will he be back?” Alex said.

  “After practice,” she said, “but like I told you, he doesn’t have any time.” Alex turned to leave. “It won’t do you any good to go down there,” the woman called out after him. “It’s a closed practice.”

  She was right. Alex could see that practice was closed well before he got to the field. A big guy at the gate was checking the IDs of those who tried to enter—a football practice bouncer, of all things. Alex went back to the field house and, trying to look casual but feeling like he didn’t, took a stroll around the perimeter until he found something he could use as a prop. He found a stack of folded and laundered towels lying on a maintenance cart, which he decided would do the job. A bag of footballs would have been ideal, but the towels were better than nothing. He held the stack of towels under one arm and headed toward the entrance to the practice field.

  “Coach asked for some more towels,” he told the guy who barred the way in.

  The man just laughed. “Coach did?” he asked skeptically. “That’s a new one. No agents.” Alex wanted to protest, but saw that he was getting nowhere with this guy. He shrugged, put the towels down and waited.

  Waiting along with him were a few of the players’ girlfriends, some with infants. After a minute one of them approached and started to tell Alex about her man who was a star on special teams. Alex waited until she took a breath and then leaned in and whispered, “I’m not really an agent.” She gave him a look of outraged disgust, like he had been conning her, and returned to the little group of girlfriends.

  Practice lasted another hour. Through the gates, Alex could see the players from afar, running drills, collecting into groups and breaking up, all in response to whistles and yells from the assistant coaches that Alex could hear clearly even at a distance. The head coach never yelled—not that Alex could hear, at least—and the coach’s face was invisible in the shade cast by his cap. He would watch, and approach, then withdraw, and the players would move or gather or split up again without hesitation.

  When practice was over, the team emerged from the gates like a herd of steer. Up close, they were that big. Their rubber cleats tapped the asphalt like a hailstorm. Players, coaches and assistants—probably close to a hundred of them on the move, jogging in a loose column toward the field house and the showers. Alex picked up his towels and fell in near the back.

  The woman at the desk, the one who said the coach was too busy, didn’t see Alex enter the field house among the players and support staff. Alex went with the flow, until he found himself standing near the showers, still holding the stack of towels. A crusty old assistant coach told him to take the towels somewhere. Alex nodded and turned down a corridor.

  “The other way,” the coach said.

  The other way led to a supply closet, which had lots more towels, and beyond that, Alex found after a minute of walking, a suite of offices. The head coach’s office was there, too, according to a nameplate on the door. The offices were all empty. Alex opened the door to the head coach’s office, entered and shut the door behind him. Inside, the walls were bare of decoration, except for a faded photograph of a sunset over the ocean, which told Alex the coach had taken at least one vacation in his life. Alex sat in the coach’s chair, swiveled a little, then kicked his feet up on the desk.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Alex stood up.

  “Well?” the coach said. He was smaller than any of his players, but more menacing. The room felt smaller with him in it.

  “I’m—” Alex said. “I’m here about Crash Bailey.”

  The coach responded with a squint and a barely audible snort. He circled around to the back of the desk while Alex circled around to the front of it. The coach sat down and motioned for Alex to sit in one of the guest chairs. “How do you know Crash?” the coach asked.

  “I know Luke Hubbard. Luke asked me to find Crash.”

  “To turn him in?”

  “To save him.”

  The coach exhaled softly. “I’d like to think that’s possible,” he said after a moment. “But I’m not sure it is.”

  The coach looked like he had more to say. “What do you mean?” Alex said.

  “Crash came here. Couple nights ago, when everyone else was gone. Hadn’t seen Crash in probably . . . eight years.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t ask him about what happened. When players come back to me, I never ask.”

  “But he told you.”

  The coach nodded.

  “About Petra,” Alex said.

  “About a lot of things, in a roundabout way.” The coach tipped up his cap and scratched his forehead. “I’ve always believed that football tells you all you need to know about a man. I saw Crash play, and I thought I knew him.”

  “That’s why you called Luke, back when Crash got in trouble in college.”

  The coach nodded glumly. “I don’t know Crash anymore.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He didn’t make any damn sense,” the coach said. “The only coherent thing he said is that he wanted to get someone named Dmitri. Said he was his son. I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was talking about. I sat him down and said, son, you need some help. The man thought I was offering to team up with him in some sort of shoot out. No, I said, professional help. That’s when he got offended. Accused me of wanting to turn him into the cops.” The coach shook his head. “Of course not, but he wasn’t hearing it. That’s when he left, yelling about making me pay.” The coach pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked a drawer in his desk. “The next day I bought this.” The coach took a polished steel revolver out of the drawer and set it on the desk. To Alex, the gun looked comically large, but the coach wasn’t smiling.

  “Did you tell the police?” Alex said.

  The coach just scowled at Alex in a way that told Alex his question had been terribly rude. “Sorry,” Alex said, but the coach didn’t acknowledge the apology.

  Instead, he tossed his cap wearily onto his desk, revealing a matted head of salt-and-pepper hair. “You win a bunch of goddamn football games, and everyone thinks you’re a winner.” Alex waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “Does Luke know how bad off Crash is?” the coach asked. Alex shook his head. “He should,” the coach said.

  “I’ll tell him,” Alex said.

  “I sent my wife and kids out of state.”

  Alex thought of Sheila and was glad he had given her the pistol. “Luke’s getting divorced,” Alex said.

  “Right.”

  Neither said anything for a moment.

  “Well, I’ve got work to do,” the coach said, and so Alex nodded and stood.

  Alex looked back at the coach before he closed the door. The gun was on the desk.

  * * *

  Alex called Luke straightaway and told him about the meeting with the coach. For the first time, Alex heard worry in Luke’s voice—not so much for himself, it seemed, but for Crash. Alex thought Luke was in denial. He suggested that Luke get out of town for a while, like the coach’s family, or add a personal security detail, but Luke was unperturbed. “Crash needs my help, not my fear,” Luke said.

  They talked about what Alex would do next. Alex’s plan was to take some of the Liberty security crew out for drinks. Some of them were friendly with Crash, and so Alex figured maybe—knowingly or not—they would have something useful to tell Alex about where Crash was hiding.

  Luke was cool to that idea. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you go see Les Frees instead? He and Crash are pretty close, as I recall. If anyone knows where he is, Les might.”

  39

  Brad stood before the mirror that hung from the back of his office door. Quietly, he cleared his throat. He flashed himself a smile, didn’t believe it, and shut his mouth. Now that Sheila had money to pay Brad’s past due bills, he’d gone out and bought a n
ew tie. He liked it. He thought Cindy would like it. He straightened his tie, and straightened the mirror. Then, with a sweeping, unstoppable motion, he threw open the door.

  Cindy sat in the reception area typing on a keyboard. The rush of air from the door startled her, and she emitted a chirp like a small bird. “Oh, sorry, Brad, you surprised me there. Got something for me?”

  “Yes,” Brad said. Then, almost as an afterthought, he stiffly handed her a short stack of signed checks. “These should go out today.”

  Cindy flipped through them. “Ted’s Speedee Copies . . . I sure won’t miss the collection calls from ol’ Ted. Nice tie, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Yeah, now that I’ve got this case under control, I actually have time to go out for a real lunch . . .” Brad cast a glance toward the closed doors of the other offices in his suite. Walt Peters and the others were either away or in meetings. “Have you had lunch yet?”

  “No, I’m meeting a friend.”

  “Walt?” Brad’s voice broke a little.

  “No,” she said. Then she added in a whisper, “Does that guy have any friends?”

  Brad smiled at her. “Tons—just ask him.”

  Cindy giggled.

  “If not lunch, how about dinner?” Brad said.

  Cindy narrowed her eyes. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  Brad blushed and stammered. Cindy laughed. “Is this how you answer questions in court?” she said.

  “If we were actually in court, now is when I would make an objection—harassing the witness.”

  Her eyes sparkled at his little joke. “Well, I don’t object to dinner,” she said.

  “Great, how about tomorrow? I mean, whenever you’re free.”

  “Tomorrow’s fine.”

  “You like French? How about Le Chat Riant?”