by Tim Green
Klunk.
The man collapsed in a pile.
Thane burst from his bedroom on crutches, wearing only boxer shorts. He flipped on the light and blinked. “What?”
Ty stepped out of the man’s loose grip, trembling. He held the bat out to Thane until his older brother took it.
The shape on the floor looked familiar to Ty, but the thick clothes and cap hid his identity. Thane nudged the man with his toe. The man lay still.
“Holy moly.” Thane set his crutches against the railing, bent down over the man, pulled off his cap, and rolled him onto his back.
Ty blinked and thought he might scream.
The sound caught in his throat and became a useless gurgle.
Thane looked up at Ty. “Uncle Gus?”
Chapter Twenty-seven
TY COULD ONLY NOD his head yes.
It was Uncle Gus. He looked thinner, and the bags under his eyes were darker than Ty remembered. His greasy hair had been cut and dyed a color somewhere between orange and yellow. A thin dribble of blood trickled down Uncle Gus’s mouth, and his nose twitched like a rabbit’s.
“Did I kill him?” Ty’s voice shook.
There was a part of Ty that despised Uncle Gus. His uncle was mean and greedy. He’d put Ty to work like a slave, scrubbing toilets and mopping kitchens in the grubbiest of places for his former cleaning business. Worst of all, Uncle Gus’s greed had put not only Thane’s career in danger, but also his health and well-being. Still, in the end, Uncle Gus had sided with the good guys and had put his own life at risk by agreeing to testify against the D’Amico mob.
Thane knelt down on his good knee and gently slapped Uncle Gus’s cheek. “You dinged him pretty good. I think he hit his face when he fell, but I think he’ll be okay.”
“He’s bleeding.”
“Just a little.”
The thin trickle of blood continued to flow from Uncle Gus’s nose.
“Uncle Gus,” Thane said, shaking him.
Uncle Gus’s eyes popped open. He grasped his ribs and groaned.
“What are you doing here?” Ty asked. “You’re supposed to be hiding.”
“I gave them the slip,” Uncle Gus said, sitting up, grinning, and dabbing at the blood on his upper lip.
“They had you in an armored car,” Ty said, remembering the newscast from that morning.
“Sure,” Uncle Gus said. “They were protecting me. They weren’t ready for me to give them the slip. It was easy. We were at Teterboro Airport, all ready to get onto a plane, and I asked to use the bathroom. They were covering the outside so no one could get in at me. I just went down the hall and out the back door. I ran out into the street and caught a cab dropping someone off. By the time they realized it, I was gone.”
Uncle Gus began to giggle and snort, then he winced and touched his nose again. “Ow. I had to see you, Tiger.”
“Me?” Thane poked a finger into his own chest. “Why?”
Uncle Gus licked his lips. “I kind of need a loan.”
“A loan?”
“Money.”
“Uncle Gus, you’re in a witness protection program,” Thane said. “The government pays for everything.”
“Not exactly everything.” Uncle Gus’s eyes shifted back and forth between Thane and Ty. “There are a few creature comforts they just don’t understand. I mean, TV isn’t TV unless you’ve got a big screen, and the games aren’t fun to watch if you can’t bet a little something on them.”
Thane gave Ty a look to signal his disgust and shook his head as if to say that some people never learned.
“I need some help, Tiger.” Uncle Gus began to whine. “Just till I can get things cranked up again. The jobs they get me? Ugh. Canning fish? Sorting mail? I need to get on my feet. I need some breathing room.”
“Do you want me to talk to the FBI people or the US Marshals?” Thane asked, taking up his crutches.
Uncle Gus staggered to his feet with Ty’s help, clutching his ribs and breathing heavy.
“No.” Uncle Gus’s face turned sullen. His lower lip stuck out. “I risk my life to save you and Ty, and I can’t get a loan?”
Ty wanted to scream out that if it weren’t for Uncle Gus and his gambling and his greed, no one’s life would have been at risk. He could tell by the look on Thane’s face that his older brother was actually thinking about giving him the money.
“I’ve got a little girl—your cousin, who treated Ty like a brother—who can’t even afford a new dress.” Uncle Gus clasped his hands. “Okay, forget about me, but can’t you help me out even a little for my family? I’m not talking about much.”
Ty looked at Thane and shook his head slightly back and forth. He seriously doubted Charlotte wanted a new dress that Uncle Gus couldn’t afford.
“How much?” Thane asked.
Uncle Gus licked his lips again. “Ten thousand, and I’m good for a long time.”
Thane’s mouth fell open. “Ten thousand?”
Chapter Twenty-eight
UNCLE GUS BLINKED AND spoke softly. “Tiger, how can you look at me like that? Your signing bonus was seven and a half million. That’s like me giving some bum a five-dollar bill for lunch. Ten thousand is nothing to you.”
Thane pressed his lips tight together, and his face turned color. “Ten thousand dollars is a lot to anyone, Uncle Gus. But I can help you.”
“You’ll be helping little Charlotte.” Uncle Gus nodded like a Sunday school teacher as he uttered his daughter’s name.
“Come on, Uncle Gus.” Thane led them all downstairs on his crutches. He slumped down at the desk in his office, took a checkbook out of the drawer, and wrote out a check for their uncle.
Uncle Gus examined the check and sniffed, wiping his eyes. “Made out to ‘cash.’ Perfect. My bank will make me wait a few days until it clears, but it’ll do for sure. It’s only a loan, my boy. I will pay it back.”
“No, Uncle Gus.” Thane struggled up on his crutches and patted Uncle Gus on the back. “You probably won’t, and I don’t want you to worry about it. I’m happy to help, but you can’t do this again. You’ve got to make this last and work at whatever job they get you.”
Uncle Gus stood straighter and stuffed the check into his pocket. “I’m ready to serve my country, even if it means my own hardship. You’ve done a good deed, son.”
The three of them moved through the great room and into the kitchen.
“Don’t you think the marshals are looking for you? Won’t they be mad?” Ty finally felt he could ask the questions that had been bugging him.
Uncle Gus broke out in a sly grin. “They look kind of stupid, not keeping me under guard. All I have to do is call, and they’ll be glad they got their package again. That’s all I am to those guys. Do you believe they wouldn’t even buy me a cigar? Me, the star witness. They’ll come get me and be glad if we stay quiet about it, the buffoons.”
“Won’t they be mad, though?” Ty asked, not wanting to say who he thought the real buffoon was.
“Mad? I’m the one who’s mad.” Uncle Gus jabbed a thumb into his big gut. “Can you believe they’re making us move again? Wait till I find out what that’s all about. You can bet I’ll raise some storm clouds over that one.”
Ty looked away for a moment, feeling guilty about the Facebook.
Uncle Gus patted the pocket where the check was and smiled. “But my trip to see you boys is going to help ease the pain, thanks to your big brother. We’ll have food on the table now, and clothes on our backs.”
Ty rolled his eyes.
“You don’t look too skinny to me,” Thane said, unable to keep from smiling.
Uncle Gus’s eyes got big and shiny, and he looked up at Thane. “You can’t imagine the food they expect us to eat. Chuck steaks. Hamburger! Nothing prime. You know I’ve always enjoyed a sirloin. If I’d known how shabbily we’d be treated, I have to say I . . . Well, of course I’d do it because I’m helping put those criminals where they belong.”
T
y shook his head in real disgust, not believing a word of it.
“Can I use your phone?” Uncle Gus asked.
“Right there next to the fridge,” Thane said.
“And, maybe a libation?” Uncle Gus reached tentatively for the fridge.
“Libation?” Ty looked at his older brother.
“A drink,” Thane said.
“Not just any drink,” Uncle Gus said.
“I don’t have any beer, Uncle Gus,” Thane said.
Uncle Gus’s shoulders slumped, and his hand dropped away from the fridge. “Game Day Light. You ever hear of that?”
“It’s the beer you can get at Seven-Eleven?” Thane said.
“I never thought I’d meet a beer I didn’t like,” Uncle Gus said. “It’s pathetic. I ask for beer and they give me that. I’m putting these ruthless killers behind bars, and they give me Game Day Light? My ribs are killing me.”
“Your nose stopped bleeding,” Thane said, angling his head for a view of Uncle Gus’s nose.
“Can I get some aspirin anyway?” Uncle Gus asked.
“Corner cupboard,” Thane said.
Uncle Gus took his aspirin and called the US Marshals. Ty heard shouting on the other end of the line. Then they all sat down on the couch with Uncle Gus to wait.
“You two go back to bed,” he said. “I wouldn’t have come here in the middle of the night like this if I had my old life.”
Uncle Gus sighed.
“I’m sorry it’s so bad, Uncle Gus,” Thane said.
Uncle Gus patted his pocket again. “You’ve lightened the load, Tiger. You’ve done a good deed.”
When the government car pulled into the driveway, Uncle Gus slouched out to meet the marshals. The two men—dressed in dark suits, with short haircuts—gestured wildly and raised their voices. Ty and Thane watched from the front door. Ty thought he heard them call Uncle Gus a fool.
“That’s a lot of money,” Ty said as the car pulled out of the driveway.
“I couldn’t not help him,” Thane said. “Especially after you walloped him. How did he get the code to turn off the alarm?”
“Could Charlotte have told him? She knows the code,” Ty said. “He must have tricked her. That’s all I can think of.”
“He is tricky.”
Ty bit his tongue in order not to criticize Thane for being tricked himself, out of a ten-thousand-dollar check.
“I mean, he gave the US Marshals the slip, right? Unbelievable.” Thane patted Ty on the head before returning his grip to the crutches. “Come on, let’s get back to bed.”
“I don’t know if I can even sleep.” Ty looked at his hands, which still trembled.
“Come on,” Thane said, thumping up the stairs. “Sleep in my room.”
“With your knee? No, I’ll be all right.”
“You can sleep on the floor. You won’t bump me there.”
Ty helped Thane get a couple of pillows under his knee and got him a drink so he could take some more pain pills. Thane’s throat bulged as he swallowed down the fat white pills. He handed the water glass back to Ty and asked for two more pillows. Ty went down the hall to his own room, taking some extra pillows from his bed as well as his own blankets. Thane looked grateful as Ty gently raised his leg and propped it on the pillows.
Exhaustion settled in on Ty, and he lay down on some blankets on the floor beside Thane’s bed. He listened as his brother shifted in the bed above him.
“You okay?”
“Aches a little is all,” Thane said, sounding groggy.
“You want more pillows?”
“No, you did good.”
Ty listened for more sounds of discomfort and after a minute thought his brother might have nodded off.
“Thane?”
“What’s up?”
“Do you think that’s the last we’ll ever see him?”
“Uncle Gus?”
“Yeah,” Ty said, rolling onto his side and looking out the window. The faint glow from a nearby streetlamp lit up little starbursts of ice frozen on the glass.
“I think Uncle Gus and all those other problems are over,” Thane said.
“For good, really?”
“Really.”
Ty felt a sudden chill because he knew without doubt that his brother was wrong.
Chapter Twenty-nine
DESPITE THE WINTER COLD, sun shone down through the gray clouds into Giants Stadium. The Raptors had cut through the competition all day long, but now, in the finals, they were down 30–35 to a team from Trenton. Only two seconds remained.
“Okay,” Mark Bavaro said, one arm draped around his son’s shoulders, the other around Ty’s as he leaned into the huddle. “They’re going to be in a deep zone, so they’ll be waiting for you, but we can do this. Just like we practiced it. Trips left scramble, sienna short, deep vertical. Got it?”
The steam of their coach’s breath drifted toward the sky. Everyone nodded.
The former Giants star started to leave the huddle, but pulled Ty aside before jogging off the field. “You’ve got the speed. All you have to do is make the catch, and we go to Miami. You can do it.”
Ty looked up into the former NFL player’s big, sleepy eyes and saw the fire inside that must have been part of what made him so great. For the past week and a half, Ty had admired the former player’s quiet intensity. Without ever yelling, Bavaro not only inspired the team, but there was also something a bit scary about him that made the players hang on every word he said and respect every instruction he gave. In many ways, Bavaro reminded Ty of his own brother. So when the former player said Ty could do it, Ty couldn’t help but believe.
David Bavaro winked at Ty and called the play again, breaking the huddle. The Raptors wore blood-red T-shirts over long-sleeved Under Armour shirts with matching knit caps to keep their ears from freezing off. Ty jogged to the line and studied the deep zone defense. The play called for the other three receivers to use up three of the deep defenders with decoy routes and for the running back to distract the underneath coverage on Ty’s side of the field. The intent was to isolate the deep man on Ty’s side of the field in a one-on-one situation so that Ty could use his speed to break free. There wasn’t really a second target for the quarterback to throw to. Ty had to get open if they were to win. It was all or nothing.
Ty took a deep breath, huffed into his cold hands, and looked up into the stands. Thane sat with a couple of the Jets players who’d come to watch and cheer. Thane gave Ty a thumbs-up. Ty nodded and wiggled his feet into the turf to get a good start. David Bavaro began the cadence, and the defense shifted. Ty realized that number twenty-two, Trenton’s best cornerback, had switched spots with a teammate to put himself on Ty’s quadrant of the field.
Twenty-two was taller and faster than his teammates. His best skills, however, were his reactions. When he’d covered Ty earlier in the contest, Ty noticed that twenty-two could read Ty’s eyes and hands and would only look back for the ball when Ty’s eyes and hands told him it was coming. This kind of advanced reaction gave twenty-two the best chance for an interception or to break up the pass, something he’d done plenty of so far in this game. Ty ignored the drop of doubt that plunked into his mind. He coiled his muscles and shot forward on the count. Ty didn’t see the other defenders, or his teammates. His focus was completely on twenty-two.
Ty tore straight down the field, and twenty-two started to back up. When Ty got even with him, twenty-two swiveled his hips and tried to match strides. David Bavaro launched the ball. Ty read its trajectory and threw out his hands to make the catch. Twenty-two read it perfectly. His hand extended with Ty’s and his head swung around to watch the pass.
The coverage was flawless.
Chapter Thirty
THE INSTANT TWENTY-TWO SPUN his head around to watch the pass, Ty dropped his own hands and put on a fresh surge of speed. With his hands down, and twenty-two’s up in the air, Ty pulled away from him. Twenty-two realized, too late, that the pass would fall well be
yond the spot where Ty had raised his hands to catch it. Twenty-two dropped his own hands and angled his head forward in a desperate attempt to catch up.
He was too late.
Ty was the faster man and was a step ahead. He extended his hands once again, stretching his fingers, with the ball falling fast. He felt the leather, squeezed with his fingers, and held on. Just as Ty secured the ball, twenty-two dove and swung a hand, clipping Ty’s foot. Ty spun and fell forward.
In the air, he tucked the ball under one arm and planted his free hand on the turf. His feet caught up. He replanted his hand, gaining balance. One more plant and he regained his feet, sprinting into the end zone. Ty turned to see twenty-two looking up at him from where he lay on the turf. Ty’s teammates jumped up and down, and David Bavaro sprinted the length of the field to hug him and hold him up in the air. Ty looked up into the stands to see his brother slapping high fives with his Jets teammates.
Mark Bavaro burst into the middle of the players and hugged both his son and Ty.
“We did it! We did it!” Bavaro screamed, and laughed wildly.
The teams shook hands, and Ray Anderson, the NFL’s executive vice president, presented the Raptors with a four-foot trophy, along with an invitation to the NFL’s Super Bowl 7-on-7 Tournament. A photographer from the Newark Star-Ledger snapped off pictures of the team and the trophy. Ty stayed in the back, unconcerned when someone’s shoulder blocked half his face from the shot.
Outside, Ty got another hug from his brother. Thane still limped, but the crutches were gone. In a way, the operation and the infection seemed like a distant dream.
“Man, you should have gotten up front in that picture,” Thane said. “You made the winning catch!”
“Nah,” Ty said. “I don’t care. The only person I care about seeing me is you, and you saw it firsthand.”
“What about your bodyguard, Agent Sutherland?” Thane asked. “He’d get a kick out of seeing you after carting you around for the tryouts and all that.”
