Inside Cut

by Tom Fowler

  “I need to find him first.”

  “You will,” Gloria said.

  I hoped so.

  My phone vibrated on the nightstand. Morning sunlight framed the edges of my curtains. I reached for the phone, almost dropped it, swore under my breath, and looked at the time. Seven-thirty. Coach Bowser was an early riser. I didn’t want him to blow me off, however, so I slid out of bed and answered the call.

  “I wake you?” he said. Considering how sleepy I sounded in my greeting, he must’ve known the answer.

  “Of course you did. We lazy millennials sleep past sunrise.”

  “You and most of my players. Can you meet me at my office?”

  “On campus?”

  “Yeah. We don’t have a game for a few days, so there shouldn’t be anyone else here.” He gave me the building and room information, and we hung up. I rubbed sleep from my eyes, threw water on my face in the bathroom, then freshened up and got dressed. Downstairs, I made coffee, drinking one cup with my quick breakfast of yogurt and fruit and taking another with me. I left the remainder of the pot for Gloria when she woke up and set off for Howard Community College.

  The school is in Columbia, which sits between Baltimore and DC just off I-95. The city loves to boast of itself being a “planned community,” which always makes me wonder how many unplanned ones there have been and what they look like. Columbia is in the affluent Howard County, and despite some of its patently absurd street names, it’s a nice suburban town.

  I pulled onto the campus shortly before nine. Finding the athletic buildings proved easy enough. Maybe good signage was the lynchpin of a planned community. I parked in a nearby visitors’ lot and went inside, traversing the labyrinthine corridors until I came to Coach Bowser’s office. His door was cracked. I rapped on it.

  “What?” he bellowed.

  I poked my head in. “I’m here for my film study.”

  “You Ferguson?”

  “You expecting any other handsome visitors?”

  He smirked. “Come in, come in. Shut the door.”

  I did. As I looked around, I realized doing so would also block the view of this hideously messy office. I pegged it for ten feet a side at most, making it smaller than a lot of extra bedrooms. The ritzier areas of the county featured larger sleeping quarters for servants. Bowser put his desk near the center of the room, which was probably the worst place for it, and it forced all the other furniture into bad places. Navigating the room on foot required a map. I picked my way past a table and over piles of paper to a shopworn guest chair.

  Whiteboards hung on the walls with basketball plays diagrammed on them. Bowser seemed to grasp Xs and Os but not feng shui. A few other small tables existed mostly to support more stacks of paper. A TV sat atop a rolling cart with a DVD player and a freaking VCR connected. Why it hadn’t been consigned to the incinerator or a museum was not the mystery I’d been tasked to solve. More documents and an impressive collection of Red Bull cans littered the oaken desk. “Want one?” Bowser said, offering me a can of his favorite beverage.

  “No, thanks. I prefer my caffeine the old-fashioned way.” I held up my travel mug and sipped the delicious coffee within. Maybe it didn’t give me wings, but it also wouldn’t kill me before I turned forty.

  “You got money?”

  “Maybe. You got more for me than shitty beverages?”

  “You bet.” He got up and carried his laptop to the TV. Bowser was a tall man, which seemed to be a desirable attribute in a hoops coach. I pegged him for six-five. He probably tipped the scales at close to three hundred pounds. His shaved black head combined with a perpetual frown to lend him a serious and even unfriendly appearance, something his demeanor also supported. Somehow, Bowser found a folding chair amid the chaos, set it up, and plopped down onto it. It groaned but held. I turned in my seat.

  The coach connected his computer. “I’ve watched a bunch of the games.” Considering the quantity of Red Bull cans strewn about the room, I wondered if he did anything else.

  “Any conclusions?”

  “They’re playing Nellie ball.” I felt I should nod as if I understood. “You know what it is?” I turned up my hands. “Don Nelson ring a bell?”

  “Nope.”

  Bowser sighed. “Longtime NBA coach. He basically popularized an offense with three guards, sometimes no true center, and lots of passes. The Warriors play a version of it now.”

  “I’ve seen their games.”

  “So you get the idea,” he said.

  “More or less.”

  “Great. Let’s look at some things.” He called up the file for a game early in the season, a non-conference tilt against Towson. I recalled the Presidents being decent favorites but only putting the game away on a late three-pointer from—of all people—Calvin Murray. Bowser consulted one of the many documents near him, but he found the moment he wanted to show me. “Watch this play.”

  He advanced the film. Another JHC player pulled down a rebound and immediately passed the ball to Calvin. He dribbled it up the court, looking around at the defense and taking his time. Then he drove to the basket and fired off a quick pass. It missed the mark and sailed into the stands for a turnover. “He threw it away on purpose,” Bowser said, sounding as confident as if he walked outside and confirmed the grass was in fact still green.

  “How do you know?”

  “Let me be clear. I don’t know any of this for certain. I can only tell you what I think is extremely likely. You understand?”

  I nodded. “I took a lot of math. I get probability.”

  “All right. Good.” The coach rewound the film and paused it about a second before the errant pass. “Calvin moves the ball well,” he said. “Kinda have to if you’re a point guard. He’s got good vision, and he can put the ball where it needs to go. I’ve seen him fit them in really small windows. This one, though . . .” He shook his head. “Watch.”

  I leaned forward as if getting a few inches closer to the screen would guarantee an epiphany. The game resumed. Calvin took a couple steps and heaved the ball into the crowd. “What am I supposed to see?” I asked when Bowser paused the video and offered nothing.

  “Look at his head and feet.” We watched the clip a third time. Bowser slowed the footage down and narrated the action. “His four is on the other side of the paint. Not a hard pass. The closest defender doesn’t have a good angle.” Pause. “We can’t see his eyes, but his head ain’t in line with the four. And look at his lead foot.” I did, and it pointed about twenty degrees to the left of where the ball would need to go.

  “What’s a four?”

  “Power forward. Now follow the ball.” Bowser resumed the clip, and the would-be assist followed Calvin’s foot, zipping past every other player to land in the hands of a very surprised fan in the first row of seats. “One bad pass, right?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “It’s not. Calvin’s too good. His footwork is too clean. He doesn’t make this mistake.”

  “Unless he’s on the take,” I said.

  “Now we’re on the same page,” Bowser said. He exited this game and scrolled to a video he must have made himself. “I did some shooting charts. Looked at the games you didn’t suspect as a control group and compared them to the fishy ones.” He fired up the footage. It showed plays from an assortment of games. “He misses all these shots. Every single one. They’re all open looks at the top of the key.”

  “Does he normally make them?”

  “For the season, he’s a fifty-six percent shooter overall. Pretty good. In the control games, he’s seventy-seven percent from the spot I showed you.”

  “Seems high,” I said.

  “Above average,” Bowser confirmed. “Hell, I wish I had a player who came within five points.” On the TV, Calvin tossed up another brick. “In the other games, he made the same shot about forty percent of the time.”

  “Wow. Quite a drop.”

  “Sure is. Now, it’s probably consistent with probabil
ity and random chance for him to be a good shooter from this area some games and a bad one in others. I get it. But when you add in the possibility of point shaving, you see the pattern.”

  “Impressive,” I said. “This is great work. Thanks, Coach.”

  “I have some notes I’m gonna type up and send you in case you need them. Meantime, you can grab those two papers closest to you.”

  I snagged the sheets before they got lost in another mountain. “I appreciate it.”

  Bowser asked me for five hundred dollars. Considering the time he must’ve put in, I scored a bargain. I paid him six hundred, saying the final C-note was for the extra information he would prepare and send. This seemed to make him happy, and I got the impression few things outside of basketball achieved this.

  I drove away from campus more certain than ever Calvin Murray was shaving points. What did this get me, though? I was pretty confident before. I still needed to figure out who Eddie was, and I needed to devise a way to get Calvin out from under his thumb.

  Knowledge was nice, but I still had work to do.

  When I got home, I tried Calvin again. Before, I approached him like I harbored a suspicion. Now, I felt certain he was on the take. I sent him a text. Calvin, I know what’s going on, and I know you’re in trouble. This is bigger than you. Let me help.

  I waited a few minutes, but no reply came. Calvin would be in class now, but this rarely stopped someone his age from answering a message or doing something else with their phone. Count this among the reasons I was glad not to be a college professor. I checked on my clone of his phone. My message sat unread.

  Eddie piped up again over WhatsApp last night, though, after Calvin didn’t answer him last time. You know what to do.

  Calvin replied this time. Yeah, I know. Quit hounding me. We’re good.

  It seemed Eddie didn’t care for being told what to do by Calvin. I’ll hound you as much as I need, you little shit. Don’t forget what I did. You’re not even to the halfway point yet.

  This must have been the genesis of what Denise told me. Eddie was laying it out here—he expected Calvin to remain at JHC next season. Calvin’s feeling about this were neatly summed up in his next message. I’m out after this year.

  No you’re not was Eddie’s retort.

  The conversation ended there. Calvin didn’t have any idea how much trouble he was in. I didn’t either, as Eddie remained an unknown, but I got a glimmer of a much better idea. While I pondered how short-sighted and selfish he was behaving, Calvin answered me. Fuck off.

  He was in over his head. Whether he wanted it or not, I meant to throw him a life preserver. I only hoped he didn’t drag me to the bottom with him.

  Chapter 11

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Gloria and I tried tandem cooking. My kitchen barely allowed us both space to move—hers would have been a much better choice—and I did a good eighty percent of the work. Still, she tried and seemed to enjoy the effort. I chalked it up as a small win, though I still didn’t want to leave her unsupervised near the oven, microwave, or anything else which could catch food on fire.

  The next morning, I got up and went out for a run. I took my usual laps around Federal Hill Park. The chill in the air no longer bothered me by the middle of my first circuit, and I felt the first drops of sweat as I began the second. I’d skipped yesterday to meet Coach Bowser, and while it was productive, I did an extra lap to make up for it.

  At home, I showered, got dressed, and made a quick breakfast of oatmeal and yogurt. Gloria joined me once the coffee finished brewing. We chatted a bit over breakfast—she told me she’d be going home and invited me to stay the night with her—and then she left. After I kissed her goodbye and closed the door, I pondered where I stood with my current case. As usual, I didn’t know nearly enough. I normally have a suspect after a few days. Eddie made for a convenient villain, but I didn’t even know who he was, let alone if anyone pulled his strings.

  I got in the S4 and drove to the office. After parking in the lot, I walked into THB Bagels and Deli for another cup of coffee. Maybe the third would help me crank out a powerful insight. If nothing else, at least it tasted good. When I left the shop, I glanced to the right and saw two men standing near my car. I paused and watched them. They continued to loiter in open defiance of laws forbidding it. I crossed the street and approached. One elbowed the other as I drew near.

  When I was a few steps away, I took a sip of coffee. It was almost too hot to drink. I also caught the lid in my teeth and pried it up just enough to make it loose. “You guys know loitering is illegal, right?” I said as I sized them up. They had the height and builds of the football players I’d tangled with a few days ago, but these two fellows were older, more my age. I presumed this made them more formidable, too. One wore his blond hair in ridiculous spikes while the other failed to hide a receding hairline by reversing his Orioles cap so its adjustable strap and gap were in front..

  “You gonna take us in?” the fair-haired one said.

  “I think I have to. First, it’s loitering, and then what’s next? This is how societal decay begins.”

  “Ain’t you a fucking philosopher?” the hat-wearing one said.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You two assholes are here to get me to back off.” They both nodded. “We could do the whole song and dance where I pretend not to know what you’re talking about, but I think we can skip it today. We’re all professionals here, right?” Their heads bobbed again. “Great. So let’s fast-forward to the point where I tell you to go piss off.”

  “Thought you might want to do it the hard way,” Orioles Cap said. He took a step forward, and I threw my hot coffee in his face. He screamed, and his hands went up as he dropped to the asphalt.

  His partner barely spared a glance at him. “He made me waste good coffee, dammit,” I said. “You walk away now, I’ll take five bucks from your friend here to replace my drink, and we’ll call it a wash. What do you think?”

  He threw a punch. “A simple ‘no’ would’ve sufficed,” I said as I blocked another couple haymakers. To my right, the other man moaned still flat on the parking lot. The goon with the ridiculous hair advanced. He fired off a pretty good side kick, which I turned away. He launched another. I stepped to the side and put my foot in the back of his knee. It buckled, but he staggered forward and regained his balance without toppling over.

  I barely avoided a wild swing as he recovered faster than I expected. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied a couple people across the street near the entrance to my building. I’d hoped we weren’t attracting attention, but I didn’t park very deep in the lot. A few more rows back, and we might’ve gone unnoticed. I blunted another couple punches and countered with a hard right jab in the gut. My foe backed off a step, and I walloped him again. This bent him in half. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and rammed his head into the door of a nearby SUV. He bounced off it, hit the asphalt, and didn’t get up.

  By now, the other guy stopped moaning. He took his hands away from his face, which was red and swollen already. His eyes, already narrowed from the puffy tissue around them, glared at me. As he tried to get up, a kick to the head sent his baseball cap flying and put him down again.

  I heard the first siren. Great. Whoever saw us across the street called the cops. In the grand scheme of things, I supposed it was preferable to getting sweet footage for Instagram. Our scuffle drew a few more onlookers, some of whom now pointed at me. I turned away to spoil their videos. Leaving the scene wasn’t an option at this point. The SUV blocked the first guy I knocked out from view. I crouched beside him and took out his wallet. I pocketed a five-dollar bill for my coffee and snapped a photo of his driver’s license.

  Then I saw his mobile peeking out of his right front jeans pocket. How could I not look at it? It was an iPhone and it asked me for Touch ID or the passcode. I put the unconscious goon’s thumb on the sensor and unlocked the device.

  Another siren joined the first one. Both drew
closer. I looked in the contacts and was disappointed to find Eddie listed by only his first name. I quickly memorized the number in his entry, locked the device, and put it back where I found it.

  Then, I waited for the cops.

  I'd never before seen the two officers who questioned me. A man and a woman, both black and around my age, frowned at me as I truthfully recounted the events of a few minutes prior. They took my PI license, checked it in their car, and returned it to me with a warning not to take on two large men in parking lots. I didn't bother telling them I hadn't sought the encounter.

  When they were finished with me, I replaced the coffee I'd used as a weapon and went to my office. The number I got from the goon’s phone didn't help. It matched the one I had from Calvin’s. In the futile hope something changed, I conducted another reverse lookup. No results. Eddie continued to be a local man of mystery. I added the first names Edward, Eddie, Ed, and Eduardo to the search. Nada.

  Next, I scoured social media for the name of the assailant whose license I'd photographed. Christopher Horace Robbin, whose parents must have loathed him from the moment of conception to saddle him with such a dreadful name, maintained a fairly small online footprint, especially for a millennial. He had no LinkedIn or Instagram, a barely-used Twitter, and a Facebook profile he mostly used to share lame memes and send creepy DMs to uninterested women. He showed one friend whose name was a variation of Eddie. Ed Fells looked to be about sixty years old in his profile picture, quite a bit overweight, and listed his city of residence as St. Paul, Minnesota.

  It made him an unlikely local bookie, or whatever Eddie was supposed to be.

  I still had little to go on. What did I know about Eddie? He was some kind of bookie or big gambler who made money on point shaving. He employed at least two supposed toughs. Rumors swirled he worked in the county. What else? He exerted a lot of control over Calvin Murray.