Offside Trap

by A. J. Stewart

  “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  “You are not responsible for this man’s choices, Mr. Jones.” She turned to leave but stopped and glanced back over her shoulder.

  “But you are responsible for putting an end to it.” Ron put his arm around her waist and helped her out. I wandered out to the balcony, a large space with an outdoor dining setting of what I guessed to be walnut. I leaned on the railing. The view was breathtaking. The sky was washed-out gray, like a watercolor, and the ocean was a thrashing melange of ash and caps of white. It was the kind of day that could turn either way and bring sparkling sunshine or a hurricane. The kind of day that held in its bosom the darkest of thoughts. I waited on the balcony until I heard the glass slide behind me.

  “Is she alright, really?” I said to the ocean.

  “She’s embarrassed as much as scared.”

  “That’s how it goes. The victims end up thinking it was their fault.”

  We both stared off at the horizon for a time.

  “This place secure?”

  “You saw it. The elevator’s keycoded, armed guards downstairs, so yeah, it’s secure.”

  I nodded. “You guys seem serious.”

  “She likes me,” shrugged Ron.

  “Lots of ladies like you, Ron.”

  “This one more than most.”

  “And you?”

  “Ditto.”

  I turned to Ron. He was flushed red, even more than normal. Ron was the kind of guy who wore his heart on his sleeve, and worry was not a cloth that suited him.

  “What do we do?” he said.

  “Way I see it, two options. One, we do what he wants. We walk away. Leave the whole thing to the PBSO and wash our hands of it. Upside, we’re all theoretically safe, and the pros are still on it. Downside . . .”

  “Two kids are dead, and he’ll probably get away with it. They are calling Jake an accident, and they have nothing to go on for Angela.”

  “Option two, we go forward. Straight into the lion’s den.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Walking away is a smart option, Ron. Taking Montgomery on won’t bring Jake or Angela back.”

  Ron turned from the rail and faced me. His eyes were moist.

  “Miami, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.”

  I stared back at the ocean. It was a good point well made. But it unsettled me. I had promised Danielle I would stay out of it and let Burke investigate. And I wasn’t even sure I could take Montgomery down. And taking him down was the only option. He’d proven that half measures would lead to carnage.

  “I promised Danielle I’d let the sheriff’s office do their thing.”

  “And how is their thing going?” said Ron.

  “Good question. Let’s find out.”

  “You gonna call the detective?”

  “Burke? No, he’ll want to know why I’m asking.”

  I took out my phone and called the medical examiner’s office, waited on the line for a silent minute, then I heard a voice.

  “Lorraine,” she said. It was odd for a law enforcement professional to use her first name, but maybe she got tired of telling the whole catch-it/cat shit story.

  “This is Miami Jones.”

  “Ah, Miami. How goes it this fine Florida day?”

  “Wondered if you had an update on the Angela Cassidy case?”

  “Not much one for small talk are you, Jones? Well, I’m afraid there’s not much good news. Cause of death and injuries suffered were confirmed as I outlined at the scene. No DNA. Only physical evidence is a boot print near the body.”

  “Can you match it?”

  “You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you. But the guy who found the body wore the exact same size and model boot.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish. He swears he didn’t go within ten feet of the body, and I’m inclined to believe him, but it makes the boot print more or less inadmissible without further evidence, which we don’t have. Burke’s keeping the file open, for now at least, but your guy—Montgomery was it? He has an alibi, as does his bodyguard. So does the guy who found the body, as it happens.”

  “So it’s cold?”

  “Cooling, rapidly. Sorry I don’t have anything better for you.”

  “Not your fault. You just read the tea leaves you’re given. It’s not like you can make evidence appear.”

  I thanked Lorraine and she rang off. I put the phone to my chin and looked at Ron.

  “They’ve got nothing have they?” he said.

  I shook my head and gazed into the middle distance.

  “But you’ve got something haven’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “We have to go off reservation,” said Ron.

  I nodded again, and then pulled my sight back into focus.

  “We can’t tell Danielle,” I said.

  “We can’t tell anyone. Just tell me what you want from me.”

  “Get Cassandra protected.”

  “Done. The family has a chalet in Vail. I’ll take her to the airport myself.”

  I reached into my satchel and pulled out a shot glass in a plastic bag. The glass I had taken from The Breakers after my little chat with Montgomery.

  “What’s that?” said Ron.

  “Alexander Montgomery’s fingerprints.”

  “A plant?” said Ron. “But what will you plant? It can’t be any old stuff, not to stick.”

  “No, it needs to be his stuff.”

  “How do we pull that off?”

  “I know a way.” I pushed myself away from the rail and turned to the apartment. Ron walked me to the elevator.

  “You get her taken care of, you hear?”

  “What about you? You can’t pull this off alone.”

  I shook my head. “I know some cops in Miami-Dade.”

  Ron nodded.

  “How well?”

  “They were in Desert Storm with Lenny.”

  Ron nodded. “Good.”

  We hit the ground floor and walked out of the dark lobby into gathering clouds. The winds were picking up, suggesting a storm.

  “I appreciate this,” said Ron.

  I shrugged. “Let’s not kid ourselves we’re doing a good thing here.”

  “After thirty years dealing with the dark side of our society, I’m not so sure.”

  We didn’t shake hands. Ron turned and walked back into the apartment building. I wandered down to Worth Avenue, wondering how much a cab was going to nail me for a ride out west of the turnpike. I had to visit Sally. I needed to borrow a car.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  FORTUNATELY THE CAB ride was a short one. I called Sally as I walked, and he directed me to a small used car dealership just south of Clear Lake. As I got out of the taxi a young guy in an Adidas tracksuit wandered out from a small shed at the back of the lot. He dropped a set of keys in my hand and pointed me to an old rust-red Dodge Caravan. The minivan didn’t cruise the freeway like my Mustang, and it handled like a wet cat on an ice pond, but it did offer one thing my Mustang didn’t. It was invisible. Which proved to be a bonus as I sat on the fringe of the university campus watching the early evening comings and goings of the students. I was as confident that Officer Steele would miss the Caravan as I was he would have picked up the Mustang within five minutes of my arrival. The building I was watching was a small apartment block set to the side of the main residential halls on the edge of campus. It was smaller and newer than the other blocks, like it had been an afterthought. Which I suspected it was. The university had seen the opportunity to cash in on the thousands of international students who desperately wanted to spend their parents’ hard-earned money on four years of partying in the United States. A concrete and shell mosaic sign that read International House sat before a cluster of palm trees.

  I was working on a plan: if I wanted to find a queen bee, I wouldn’t spend all my time looking for a beehive—I’d just go to the flower garden and follow
the worker bees home. Joseph, or Jo Jo, as he had called himself when he was selling drugs, might be a hard guy to find. I wasn’t even sure he was a student. But he had told me his brutish-looking bodyguard, Carlos, was an exchange student from Haiti. So I put two and two together and came up with an evening sitting in a twenty-year-old family van, watching teens wandering in from class or out to dinner or drinks or study at the library. Too young to know what they didn’t know, full of promise and hope and the belief that they would determine their lives, not the other way round. I had felt like that once, and for a time, when I played baseball and had a hope of making The Show, it was true. But then, as it does, life enveloped me. And although I could have chosen other paths, even gone into coaching and maybe made it to the Bigs as a pitching coach, I knew it was time on that part of my life, and I embarked upon this part. And despite everything, I had few regrets. I enjoyed my friends, my job and where I did it, and I had the eye of the most wonderful woman in the world. And I had reached the age where I knew that was enough. My trip down memory lane made me pick up my phone and make a call. A late dinner, since I was in the area, since we had stuff to discuss.

  I was starting to flag, wishing I had brought a coffee or a bag of pretzels along, when I saw the giant pink-gummed, yellow-toothed Haitian duck out from the front entrance of the apartments. He set off on foot away from the campus, and I felt conspicuous following in a car, even a minivan, so I jumped out and took off after him. He lumbered along for five minutes, until he got to a single-family home with three cars in the front yard. All recent models, all domestic. It was the Trans Am that caught my eye. It wasn’t five minutes before Carlos came lumbering out after Jo Jo. Joseph wore a pink polo with a yellow cable knit tied across his shoulders. He carried a day pack in his hand, which he tossed onto the back seat of the Trans Am. He slipped into the car and Carlos folded himself into the passenger seat. I pushed in behind a palm and watched them scream out of the driveway and tear off into the night. Two salesmen, out to serve their clientele. They wouldn’t be back for hours, maybe even dawn. But I knew what I needed to know. I ambled back to my car, careful not to get picked up by the campus cops. Maybe they knew about Rinti’s men beating me up and figured I wouldn’t be back, but either way I didn’t see anything of concern.

  I got back to the Caravan and headed east to Fort Lauderdale. I pulled into a gravel parking lot off one of the canals. They called Fort Lauderdale the Venice of the Southeast, mostly because they were morons and had never set foot in Italy. But as contrived as Lauderdale’s canals were, they made for a pleasant spot to sit and enjoy a frosty beer and some stone crab. Chip’s Place served both, in an old Florida environment of plastic tablecloths and bug screens. I only eat stone crab in season, starting in the late fall, but I drink beer all year round. I was sipping a Yuengling from a frosty mug when Kim Rose walked in. She must have known the place because she was dressed down, in a plain blue T-shirt and blue jeans. She ordered a beer, and I ordered another and some smoked fish dip.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said, clinking glasses.

  “How you doing?”

  “It’s been a tough few days. Police, counselors for the students. Everyone’s pretty shaken up over Angela.” She shook her head. “Such a waste.”

  Our server arrived, and I ordered the stone crab and Kim the dolphinfish. When the server bounded away a melancholy look swept over Kim’s face.

  “I blame myself,” she said. “I could’ve done more.”

  It was the thing people say in such circumstances, a throwaway line. Absolution in a sentence.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “There are bad people in the world. And the university isn’t a walled garden. Sometimes those people get in.”

  She half-smiled and sipped her beer. “Thanks, Miami. I appreciate it. I don’t have anyone there I can talk to, you know. Confide in.”

  “Don’t mention it. But I must warn you, it isn’t going to get any easier in the short term.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you weren’t responsible for Angel’s death. But there are things you are responsible for.”

  She frowned. “Such as?”

  “Such as the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs in your sports teams.”

  “That’s just not true. There may be isolated cases, but—“

  I put my palm up to her. “Don’t, Kim. We go way back. I know you. And you know me. So you know I wouldn’t leave a stone unturned on this, and I wouldn’t be saying it based on hearsay. Jake Turner sold PEDs. He sold them to his teammates to make them better, because they couldn’t keep up with him. You turned a blind eye because that’s what you do. You wouldn’t take PEDs yourself, or at least you never had to, but you tolerate others who do in the name of the team. I have student-athletes, I have coaches. They all admit it. In private at least.”

  Kim put her beer down. She couldn’t have drunk it anyway, because her mouth was open like the entrance to a mine.

  “I thought you were on my side. But Millet’s got to you.”

  “Save the histrionics, Kim. Millet’s a pretentious fool, and you were right about him. He wants you gone, and the athletics program with you. But that’s not happening. He’s going down.”

  “Good. That’s good. With him gone, we can really do some things.”

  “Kim, you’re not listening. Millet might be on his way out, but that’s about him, not you. Look, we’re old friends, and I care about you. That’s why I’m here. I think you need to reconsider whether the college path is for you.”

  “You don’t think I can do this job? Of all the people.”

  “Kim, I don’t think—I know. I know you can do anything you set your mind to. You could be an AD—hell, you could run programs at any school. Florida, USC, Notre Dame. You could do it.”

  “But?”

  “But, you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. You’re focused and driven and determined, and you’re the biggest believer in the concept of team this side of Pete Carroll, but that’s not enough.”

  “Not enough?”

  “No. These kids aren’t your teammates—they’re your students. They’re not yet adults, despite what we all think when we get our driver’s licenses. See, you owe them a greater duty of care. And for all your strengths, you just don’t get that. You’re like Joe Paterno. He was a great coach and a good man, but he forgot that first and foremost he was a guardian. Parents trusted their children to him. He owed them a duty of care beyond his understanding of the job profile. As do you.”

  Kim moved her lips like she wanted to respond but no words came out. She was saved by the arrival of our food. Chip had the stone crab shipped over from the Gulf, fresh off his cousin’s boat, or so he claimed. Regardless it was sensational. I’m no animal rights activist, but there’s something karmically good about eating a crab that doesn’t have to die to give up its delicious bounty. I’m sure losing your claw is no picnic, but it beats being boiled alive in a pot with a handful of Old Bay seasoning. Kim ate her dolphinfish with a fork and without enthusiasm. We ate most of our meal in silence, until Kim put her fork down and looked at me.

  “Do you think people can change?” she said.

  “I think people do. But if you’re asking can you take this knowledge on board and run a better athletics program, then I’d say no. There is a culture here, and it’s not a good one. A clean sweep is needed, and if necessary I’ll be holding the broom.”

  She glared at me with shark-eyed focus.

  “Look, I’m not perfect, far from it,” I said. “I told you about my PED use. I got lucky. In a system full of people turning blind eyes, I was guided by someone who was prepared to face his responsibilities and help me see the error of my ways.” I leaned back in my chair and held Kim’s gaze.

  “Maybe you need some time under the wing of someone like that. I don’t know, maybe your skills will be better utilized at the pro level, where at least the athletes are adults and theoretic
ally old enough to make decisions for themselves. And there are a lot of good pro teams out there that care about running a clean program. I’m sure you could help them out. Maybe they could help you too.”

  She blinked but didn’t take her eyes off me. I could see the cogs ticking over. Her brain, which was capable of seeing gaps open on a soccer field well before the opposition ever did, churning over the options.

  “With your so-called rampant drug use on my resume? I won’t even get an interview.”

  “Right now there’s nothing on your resume. And there doesn’t have to be.”

  We didn’t order dessert or coffee, and I paid the check as Kim stood, looking out over the dark canal outside. We wandered out into the parking lot. The night was cool, and gravel crunched underfoot. I walked Kim to her car and she fumbled for her keys, unlocked the door, and then turned to me.

  “This is not going to beat me, Miami.”

  “I would be awfully disappointed if it did.”

  I smiled and leaned in and kissed her cheek. Then she got in her car and drove away. I watched the taillights turn out of the lot, and I shivered. I had the coldest sensation that we would never see each other again. I ambled to the minivan and turned the engine over. Sometimes people are like the Roman Coliseum, permanent fixtures in an ever-changing world. And sometimes, people are like the fuel modules on the Saturn V rockets. For a time, they are crucial. Life-defining even. But then they fall away, their job done, their role played. And the rocket flies on.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I WOKE EARLY to a quacking noise coming from my phone. I hit the screen, and the duck stopped and I rubbed my face awake. I had set my phone’s alarm because there was no alarm clock in the room. Perhaps there never was, or perhaps the last guest had made off with it. I wouldn’t have trusted it even if it were there. My expectations are not high when I pay nineteen dollars for a motel room. I had left Chip’s Place with every intention of spending the night reclined back as far as possible in the seats of the Dodge Caravan. But after I passed under I-95 I hit a motel with a lit sign offering free HBO and clean sheets, and the certainty that Jo Jo and Carlos would not return until daybreak, or resurface for hours after that, piqued my interest in a motel that would actually proclaim clean sheets as a selling point rather than a bare necessity of business.