Offside Trap

by A. J. Stewart

  “We just liked each other’s company. We had stuff in common. I listened to him, about his parents and stuff, and he listened to me.” She looked at the fries and played with one, knocking it around the bowl.

  “Sometimes we didn’t even have to talk. You know?”

  I nodded. I knew. I thought of Kim Rose, and the times we did just that at college. I thought of Danielle, and how sitting on my patio in silence with her was among the best times I could have. I thought of the relationships that didn’t work, like Beccy Williams, gorgeous and vivacious and sex in a bottle. Five minutes silence between us had been an eternity. Now she was in Connecticut, giving the sports updates on ESPN, fitting lots of words in between plays in college football. Angel was more on the money than her tender years let her know.

  “Did you see him the night he OD’ed?”

  Her eyes moistened again and she nodded.

  “We hung out on the bleachers for a while. It’s where we liked to go after practice. To you know, decompress.”

  I nodded. “How was he?”

  “Distracted. And worn out.”

  “Worn out how?”

  “We only stayed a little while. I had to get home and he was tired.”

  “Tired of what?”

  “From practice, I guess. Some days hit you harder than others. He was kind of out of it, clumsy even, which wasn’t him at all. When he knocked his Gatorade over he giggled at it and said he was beat. Said he’d catch me the next day.” She gazed at the fries. “But he didn’t. He didn’t catch me the next day.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For Jake. For your loss.”

  She dropped her head like she was in prayer. “Thanks.”

  “So tell me, why were you sitting on my Mustang?”

  She looked up. “I’ve been meaning to say. That car doesn’t seem very inconspicuous, for a private eye.”

  “I’ve been thinking that.”

  “I saw it from across the lot. Figured you’d come back to it after the service.”

  “So?”

  “So you wanted to know what Jake was into? Parties and stuff?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can get you into that scene.”

  “How so?”

  “Everyone’s been pretty low-key since we heard about Jake on Saturday. People will go easy tonight cause of the service, then tomorrow out of respect. By Wednesday there’ll be a party. Everyone will have steam to blow off. You can come with me.”

  “What about Saturday?”

  “What about it?”

  “No one will wait until the weekend?”

  “This is college. I thought you said you were young once?”

  “I’m starting to wonder. So where’s this party?”

  “Dunno yet. I’ll know on Wednesday. Why don’t you call me?”

  Angel took a pen from her day pack. She grabbed my hand and opened my palm and wrote the number on my skin. Then she half-smiled and put the pen away.

  “So Wednesday, you think?” I said, looking at the blue ink on my hand.

  “Def.”

  We finished our malts in silence. Not the comfortable kind. The slurping the bottom of a milkshake kind.

  “Can I drop you home?” I said.

  “You want to hang out?”

  “No, I can’t hang out. I have a previous engagement.”

  “A date?”

  “What it is, is of no relevance to you. You wanna ride?”

  “No thanks, I’ll walk. I gotta work off these fries.” She didn’t seem put out by my rebuff, which stung a little more than it should have. Angel flicked her hair, slipped her day pack onto her shoulder, and led me out of the burger joint.

  “Later,” she said, wandering hands in pockets toward the campus. I turned back to the parking lot, headed for my car, looking for an explanation and hopefully a better understanding of the female side of our species. I feared I was in for disappointment.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “AND SHE WROTE the number on your hand?”

  Danielle was twisting the top off a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and looking at me with a scrunched brow.

  “Exactly. What’s with that?” I had a mini blender full of chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini and water. I sprinkled some salt in and a dollop of olive oil and hit the button. Danielle poured two glasses of wine and sauntered out to the patio. I could watch her walk on video loop. For hours. She had one of those bodies that looks so good in motion. Like a cheetah looks impressive enough just lying about in the grass, but in motion, it looks like physiological perfection. I released the button, scooped out the hummus into a bowl and placed the bowl in the middle of a plate of pita crisps. When I got out to the patio Danielle had lit a candle that smelled of vanilla. I put the plate on the table between our two lounger chairs. She was taking in the view of lights shining from Riviera Beach, as they were bounced and tossed across the ripples on the Intracoastal waterway.

  “Cheers,” I said.

  Danielle smiled in the candlelight. “Cheers.” We both sipped our wine.

  “So?” I said.

  “Hmmm? Oh, the girl?”

  “ Aha,” I said, nibbling on some hummus.

  “Be careful.”

  “What does that mean? Be careful.”

  “She just lost her buddy—who she liked a lot more than she’s telling, I’m just saying—and now the mysterious, older man has swept in to save the day.”

  “You think I’m mysterious? Like dark and handsome, mysterious?”

  “You’re blonde. You look like a retired beach bum.”

  “Well, just handsome mysterious,” I said.

  “I was thinking more Loch Ness monster mysterious.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Just watch yourself is all I’m saying. She’s looking for something. And it isn’t you, but she might mistake you for it.”

  “I think I’ve been pretty upfront.”

  “Before or after she wrote on your hand?”

  “Touché.”

  “Be brutal. Young girls’ self-denial is matched only by that of older men.”

  “Thanks. You available for therapy sessions? Cause I reckon you could do wonders for my self-esteem.”

  “I’ll work on your self-esteem later tonight.” She sipped her wine and winked. I gulped and dove in for some more hummus.

  “So that’s my women troubles for the day,” I said. “How about you?”

  “No women troubles.”

  “Shame.”

  “Did go out for lunch today.”

  “Ooh, Sheriff goes out for lunch. Exciting. Let me guess. Donuts?”

  “That’s police, you goose.”

  “Right. Danish?”

  “Seafood, actually. Crunchy grouper.”

  “Proper food? What was the occasion?”

  “I got invited.”

  “Okay, you’re going to make me drag it out of you. Invited by whom?”

  “Eric.”

  “Eric?”

  “Edwards.”

  “Eric Edwards. Your ex-husband Eric Edwards?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “And what did the state attorney for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit want?”

  “Lunch.”

  I looked at her as though I was looking over reading spectacles, which I don’t own. The effect was to give her a face full of wrinkled forehead. She shrugged.

  “What can I tell you? He called and asked me if I was busy for lunch. I wasn’t so I went. I don’t think I have to hate him forever, do I?”

  “Nope.”

  “So I asked him what was up, and he said nothing. I told him to cut the crap, and he said that he just wanted to have lunch. He said we were law enforcement colleagues despite everything and he just wanted to catch up.”

  “He taking any other Palm Beach sheriff’s deputies out for crunchy grouper?”

  “No. I think he’s just trying to move on.”

  “He stil
l seeing his bit of fluff?”

  “I didn’t think it appropriate to ask. But I haven’t heard anything, so I assume she’s still in his office.”

  I sipped my wine and looked at the city lights.

  “What?” said Danielle. “You’ve got something to say.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Oh, Miami. I was married to the man. I’d know if he was up to something. I really think he figures we’re going to bump into each other professionally, so why not get along?”

  “If you say so. But a wise woman once said, the only thing more self-delusional than a young girl is an older man.”

  “Touché.”

  Danielle nodded and sipped her wine. We watched the lights play across the water, and we descended into a long, comfortable silence that wasn’t even broken when Danielle’s glass ran dry. She waved the empty vessel before me. I smiled at her, and she at me, and I padded into the house to get refills, thinking to myself: Miami Jones, how did you ever get so damn lucky?

  Chapter Fifteen

  I WOKE UP thinking about Hollywood. California, not Florida. About those movies where the rogue CIA director and his personal unit of flag-bearing patriots commit all manner of sins in the name of country. But then they don’t tell the president, either for plausible deniability, or because they think he won’t get what they are doing. Either way POTUS is left in the dark. I suppose in such a large organization it is possible that the people at the top don’t know what the troops are really up to. But in my experience, the actions of any organization aren’t driven by what the leadership knows, but by the culture the leadership creates. Hire a bunch of clean-cuts with Midwest work ethics and you’ll get different actions than if you hire a team of fast-talking leather jackets from the Jersey shore. It was a pretty deep train of thought for first thing in the morning, and it was only interrupted by Danielle waking up, rolling over and laying a warm, moist kiss on me. To hell with deep and meaningful.

  Post shower and smoothie I found myself on I-95, zipping back down to Lauderdale. I’d resolved that if I wanted to understand the culture of a movie studio, I was wasting my time asking the producer. I needed to take a walk on the studio floor. As I pulled the Mustang into the gym parking lot I also resolved that I had taken my Hollywood metaphor further than it was designed to go.

  Across the speed hump on the dividing road, there was activity on the fields. Some kids were running drills. Most should have been in class. But the buzz was back around campus. The mourning was over. I ambled up to the portable office that housed the coaching staff. The Lacrosse poster hung in the window like a reminder. I went straight in and knocked on Coach McAllister’s door. No come in. So I turned the knob. It was locked. Perhaps Coach didn’t keep office hours. Perhaps he was on the field, watching over drills. I turned to head out and heard noise from the office opposite. It was the only one of the four that had no name on the door. I knocked on it. Heard a muffled come in. Coach McAllister was laid back in a tatty old sofa with a Dr. Pepper in one hand, pen in the other and clipboard balancing on his belly. A television remote lay on the clipboard. He was facing an old television on a rack with casters, the kind I hadn’t seen since elementary school. He looked up from the screen for a moment.

  “What do you want?”

  “Morning to you too. Bad news about Jake.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  “What are you watching?”

  “Film.”

  I stepped into the room and closed the door. “You watch film?”

  “Of course I watch film. You think this is Hicksville? That only Division I football coaches watch film?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it. At University of Miami we had used coaches’ film in football to analyze both our own game and our opponents’. Although the games were televised, coaches’ film generally showed a static angle, known as the all-22, which was like watching the game from the clouds. It allowed coaches and players to analyze setups, pre-snap movements and the plays themselves. In baseball film was used less, but still helped to analyze players, especially batters, and which type of pitches they liked or disliked. I never considered it for lacrosse.

  “How do you get it?”

  “We have someone on the sideline with a camera. Then we swap tapes with our next opponent. It’s not the NFL, but it tells us a little about their players, their structure.” He picked up the remote and paused the game on screen.

  “You come here to talk about film?”

  “No. I came to talk about Jake.”

  “It’s sad. It’s a waste. But I got a game on Saturday. Jake was a pro. He’d want us to play to win.”

  “Can you win? Without him?”

  McAllister sipped his Dr. Pepper. He was wearing his whistle around his neck. “We’re a team. We’ll do our best.”

  “I heard you were a shot at the NCAA title.”

  “Still are.”

  “Without your best player?”

  “Is there a point you’re making or are you just trying to rub me the wrong way?”

  “I was wondering where the team got their HGH, steroids and that sort of thing.”

  He curled his lip at me. “Why don’t you get the hell out.”

  “You really want to be left holding the bag on that one?”

  “There’s no bag, there’s no drugs. Jake took some kind of meth, I heard.”

  “I’m not talking about what he OD’ed on. I’m talking about what he dealt.”

  “You’re crazy, fella. Jake was our best player, but it wasn’t ’cause of no drugs.”

  “But the rest of the team wasn’t quite as good, were they? Needed some help. To get bigger, faster.”

  “I’m not going to ask you to leave again.”

  “Good, because it’s really boring. I’ll leave once you tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Ah, the Oliver North defense. Not buying it Coach. I know for fact that PEDs were being used by your team, and that Jake Turner was the source of those drugs.”

  “Looks like you’ve got the case sewn up.”

  “Not quite. I don’t know where Jake got the drugs from, or how and why a kid so committed to enhancing his performance ended up overdosing under the bleachers.”

  “Like I say, I don’t know anything about that.”

  I took a breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Then I glanced at the television. A kid in lacrosse kit was mid-stride. His cheeks were puffed out, straining for oxygen.

  “You really are that stupid, aren’t you,” I said.

  “You are seriously asking for a smack in the mouth.” He had forearms like Popeye and would do some damage if he landed a punch. But it was the landing part he wasn’t going to be able to do.

  “I’d like to see you try and get your pudgy ass out of that sofa, let alone lay a punch.” He didn’t move. “I didn’t think so. You’ve lost a player on your watch, and you’re sitting here looking at tape, oblivious to the fact that when the fit hits the shan you’re going to be the one they hang out to dry. You’ve got scapegoat tattooed on your forehead so you can’t see it.”

  McAllister looked like he was going to puke. The color washed from his face, and he pushed himself forward in the sofa and put his head between his knees. The clipboard and remote dropped onto the government-issue industrial carpet. Then he threw up. It was unpleasant. The sound of throwing up doesn’t make me nauseated, especially when it’s coming from someone I don’t care a lick about. But that don’t make it pleasant.

  Normally I wouldn’t stick around for such a display, but McAllister had more to say, and I wanted to hear it. He must have had a hearty breakfast. After a minute and a few dry retches, he gained control of himself. I didn’t offer to help. McAllister ripped a sheet from the clipboard and wiped his mouth. He looked terrible. Puffy and pale and red. He was out of breath. Vomiting takes a lot of effort. He looked up at me. The eyes he g
ave me weren’t so much puppy dog as smacked cow.

  “My wife loves it here.”

  “No reason she can’t stay.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure. You’ll be the one going to prison, not her.” That brought more dry retching. It was like watching a 250 pound cat hack up a fur ball. He wiped his mouth with his bare arm. The hairs glistened with spittle.

  “I’m not going down for this. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You think.”

  “I didn’t give anyone drugs. Not ever.”

  “But you knew it was happening.”

  “Everyone knew.” He took a gulp of Dr. Pepper, washed it around in his mouth and then swallowed.

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “Everyone. The players, the coaches, the administrators.”

  “You mean it’s happening in other sports?”

  “Of course. Everyone’s doing it. Jake, he had stuff for everyone.”

  “Why? You’re a Division II school. No major sports outside of basketball, and none of those guys will make the NBA. Why?”

  “Winning. It’s all about winning. That’s all Jake cared about. Winning. Team. That was what the administration demanded. Do it for the team. For the school. For your teammates.”

  “Which administrators? Millet?”

  “Are you kidding? Not Millet. He wants sports out. If he knew about drugs, he’d make it public. Use it against us.”

  “So who?”

  “Director Rose. Kimberly is all about winning. Doing everything for the team. Winning at any cost.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s in her DNA. Besides, Division II athletic directors don’t want to stay in Division II schools forever. And they don’t go to Division I without winning.”

  “It’s political?”

  “Isn’t everything?” He wiped his face with his palms, and then left his hands over his face.

  “What about drug testing? How could you avoid USADA on every test?”

  “I don’t know. There are ways. Jake knew when they were coming. He’d pay other kids, non-jocks, to provide urine samples, and sometimes blood. Or the USADA reps would do legit tests on clean players only. Random, but not that random.”