Since it was a weekday, not a turnaround day, the traffic was light on the island’s main drag, and he covered the remaining miles to his cottage in the blink of an eye. He was careful not to speed, though, because if there was anything the Brunswick County Sheriff’s deputies loved doing, it was ticketing speeders, folks who would never come back to contest the charge six weeks later, long after the vacation had ended and they were knee deep in the routine of their everyday lives.
#
The house was one of the older ones, a gray, weather-beaten A-frame, right on the beach, built in the 1960s by Adam’s grandfather, Donald Fisher, plank by plank. He had died when Adam was five, leaving the house to Adam’s father. And because Jack Fisher, a computer scientist by trade, was nothing if not thrifty, Adam had spent many summer vacations and spring breaks and Christmases here as a kid, so many that he began to resent the place, because would it have killed his dad to take him to Disney World or Hawaii or California just one time? Jack Fisher was a difficult man who’d never recovered from the sudden death of Adam’s mother, and he used the house as a drinking oasis, a place for him to escape the disappointment that was his life. He brought Adam here because he could let him run on the beach while he sat in a rickety old rocking chair on the deck, drinking can after can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
As he got older, Adam grew to appreciate Holden more, and when he got his driver’s license, he started coming down here on his own and taking care of the place, which was fine by the senior Fisher. Adam taught himself some simple renovations, looked to the neighbors for help when he got stuck on something, and slowly but surely made the place a wellspring of happy memories rather than a cesspool of sour ones.
After turning on the water main at the front of the house and a quick exterior inspection, Adam let himself in, finding the house to be in relatively good shape, if not a little musty. He went from room to room, checking window seals, looking for yellow stains in the ceiling, the telltale sign of water damage, finding none. A few bulbs had burned out since he’d last been here, but otherwise, the place just needed a good airing out.
It took three trips to unload the Explorer, but an hour later, the truck was empty, the supply closet and the pantry fully stocked. The approaching thunderheads had dissolved, leaving behind a checkered sky of clouds and sun. Adam stretched out on one of the weather-beaten Adirondack chairs on the back deck, looking out over the ocean, a cold beer in his hand, a portable cooler stocked with a six-pack next to him. He’d brought a paperback out here with him, the latest Dennis Lehane, but he was content to watch the ocean and the sunbathers dotting the beach like brightly colored hermit crabs scampering across the sand.
He stayed out on the deck all evening, drinking his beer, slapping at the lazy mosquitoes droning around him. For the first time in nearly a year, Patient A seemed very far away.
CHAPTER THREE
“It’s over, Freddie,” Richie Matas said. “You understand what I’m saying, right?”
Freddie Briggs was seated on the ridiculous rattan couch in their sunroom, barely aware of his wife Susan’s hand at his back, caressing him, trying to calm him down. The room was bright with sunlight, streaming in from the huge plate-glass windows.
“No one will touch you after the positive test,” said Richie, his longtime agent, a founding partner of Elite Sports Worldwide and the one who’d been lucky enough to snag Freddie as he was coming out of college a decade ago. “It’s over.”
Richie paused and then said it again, like a mob hitman putting another bullet in his victim’s head to make sure the job had been done. Then Freddie was up off the couch, prowling like a mountain lion, a scary enough vibe emanating from him to encourage his ever-pacing agent to take a seat next to Susan.
“Freddie,” Susan was saying, “it’s gonna be OK. We’re gonna figure this out.”
“Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that shit?” Richie asked. “They got tests we can’t keep up with. Did you know you what it was when you took it? We’ll file an appeal.”
Freddie ignored him, not wanting to discuss it in front of Susan, even though he knew she knew about it. It was one of those things shared between a husband and wife without being shared, disapproved of in non-verbal ways. She hadn’t asked about the hypodermic needle or the vial because as any good lawyer would tell you, you never asked the question you didn’t want the answer to. Freddie, his hands clenching into fists and unclenching again, peered out the plate-glass window overlooking the backyard, sloping down toward the lake about a hundred yards distant. To the right was Susan’s vegetable garden, in full bloom now, exploding in reds and greens and yellows. Beyond that, the acre of land made possible by an NFL career that appeared to have reached its end.
“Those assholes. Those assholes!”
He never thought he’d be the guy to get busted, but there he was, thirty-two years old, trying to make it back from his second reconstructive knee surgery (on the same knee, no less) in three years. He wanted to tell Richie and Susan that the trainer he’d hooked up with in February had told him that they didn’t test for that substance, which helped him recover from workouts faster, but the truth was that the guy had said that they couldn’t test for it. And Freddie just wanted to believe him so badly because the only thing that was going to get him another chance with the league was to make his body as hard and fast and strong as it had ever been. Then they’d pulled him for a random urine screen two weeks ago, just before the camps were about to open, just before he expected to get a call from Richie telling him that it was going to be Chicago or Houston or maybe New York that wanted to bring in the great Freddie Briggs to shore up a defensive line.
And Matas had called, this morning, in fact, saying he was in Smyrna meeting a potential client and that they needed to talk. When he got to the house, there was no indication that there was anything wrong even though he was pacing because he was always pacing. No clue he was planning to tell his most famous client the news he didn’t want to hear, the professional athlete’s equivalent of finding out the mass was malignant and that there wasn’t anything else that could be done.
Freddie picked up an empty rattan chair and swung it around like an Olympic hammer before launching it through the sliding door. The door exploded like a starburst, shards and splinters of glass blowing out onto the composite deck.
“Freddie!”
He left them there, the sunroom silent but for the tinkling of the broken glass, back through the galley kitchen, the office, and through the family room, past his girls Caroline and Heather, sitting on the couch, watching Tangled, oblivious to what was going on around them in that way that kids were. He stopped at the front door, his hand on the knob, and debated just sitting with them as they watched their movie, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe in here.
He climbed into his truck and drove off. He rolled past the huge homes in the subdivision, occupied by doctors and bankers who were good enough neighbors and had long ago gotten used to the idea of the NFL star next door. He wasn’t sure where he was going, only sure that he couldn’t be inside his house anymore, in front of Richie, in front of Susan, who would be so disappointed in him for cheating because she told him many years ago that she hoped he never thought he would need to do that.
Near the center of town, he turned down Walker Street and into the gravel parking lot of The Ugly Duckling, wedging his mammoth SUV next to a Ford F-150 with the naked-lady mudflaps, super close, almost hoping its owner would give him a hard time for parking so close to his beloved pickup, because it had been a while since Freddie had been in a good fight.
Freddie stamped across the dusty gravel parking lot and burst through the front door, feeling every bit the cliché of a man seeking to drown his sorrows in drink. His size and presence always drew stares, even from people who’d known him for years. He strode up to the long oak bar and asked Sal, the proprietor, for the Wild Turkey. Sal, who had known Freddie since he started patronizing the bar in high school, when he was
already bigger, faster, and stronger than every man in Smyrna and could hold his booze better than the gin-blossomest drunk in the place, poured the shot without comment and left the bottle at Freddie’s side.
Freddie drained two shots without blinking an eye, thinking back to his first day at the NFL scouting combines, when he’d left the scouts gasping for air with his 40-yard-dash time. It was legendary, adding to the ever-growing mythos of Freddie Briggs, the greatest defensive lineman in a generation.
He glanced around the bar before knocking back his third shot, still feeling like that teenager who’d snuck in here, too young to drink, even though he was a grown man now, married, father of two girls. The Ugly Duckling had been a Smyrna institution since opening its doors in 1985, making its home in the low-slung building with the giant plastic chick on the roof, keeping its little ducky eye on the town. Someone tried stealing it at least once a year.
As was often the case at happy hour, the bar was crowded with regulars, and people normally left him alone, especially lately, with his recent struggles documented in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This he had never quite gotten used to, and he wondered how regular people would react if their performance and career struggles were publicly documented on a regular basis.
Struggle. Something unimaginable three years ago, but rapidly becoming part of his everyday, part of his routine. Someone was telling him he couldn’t do something, and there was nothing he could do about it. For all his physical gifts, for all his intellect, a combination of brains and brawn that made NFL scouts drool starting his freshman year at LSU and led some sports commentators to call him the next step in human evolution, it was his body that had finally failed him, leaving him washed up at thirty-two.
Six straight years he had made the Pro Bowl, the unquestioned captain and coach of the Atlanta Falcons defense, no matter who bore the title of defensive coordinator. Then on the first Sunday of his seventh season, rushing the Arizona Cardinals quarterback on a sellout blitz, the slow and overmatched left tackle had lost his balance and rolled into Freddie’s right knee, planted firmly into the turf, tearing three ligaments and ripping the meniscus clean off. A year of rehabilitation followed, but he’d lost a step, probably more like three steps, in his return season. He blew out the knee again in the year’s last game, and that was the end of that. The Falcons cut him, brutally and unceremoniously, a Hall of Fame career now in question. After another year of rehab, he signed on with New England as a backup lineman, but the knee wouldn’t cooperate, and the Patriots cut him as well.
It was early August now, training camps in full swing, and he’d spent the last six months in the weight room, running five miles each day, desperate for one more chance to prove he was as good now as he had been during those six magical seasons with the Falcons. He had the skills, the veteran wiliness, and while he wasn’t twenty-two anymore, a body that was more than up for the task. But now this positive test, and the four-game suspension that would follow had all but ended his career at the ripe old age of thirty-two. He wondered if it had hit ESPN or Yahoo! Sports yet; if not, it would soon, and then they would call him a cheater. The pride of Smyrna, nothing but a cheater.
He threw back the next shot, his head telling him he should stop now and scoot back home, where Richie and Susan were undoubtedly huddled together, trying to come up with a plan to soften the landing, make him understand that his football days had been numbered from the moment he’d pulled on a jersey for the Smyrna SkyChiefs in the pee-wee league he’d run roughshod over to the point that the other parents demanded to see a birth certificate because no way was that kid five years old. They would tell him a pro football career had a half-life, that there was life after football and he should be thankful he was leaving the game with nothing worse than a couple of bum knees.
He took a deep breath, slightly buzzed now, fully aware of the cliché he’d become – the ex-jock unable to let go of his glory, marinating his sorrows at the local watering hole. The reality was he didn’t even need to be here to get drunk; he had a fully stocked bar in their media room, where he’d studied game film. But he couldn’t be at the house anymore. Just being inside its walls was suffocating him, as if the oxygen had been sucked clean out of the house.
Freddie became aware of a presence beside him, another bar patron perched atop the cracked vinyl covering the ancient barstool, rotated just so, his right elbow propped up on the bar. From the corner of his eye, Briggs took in his new neighbor, and his heart sank. It was just not going to be his day.
It was Randy Ferguson, Campbell High School’s ex-assistant football coach. He’d lost his job a year ago, after he’d been found in the back of his van with a cigar box full of weed and a fifteen-year-old cheerleader in an inappropriate stage of undress. Ferguson had been another one of Smyrna’s shining football stars, not the wunderkind Briggs had been, but Division I material nonetheless, an outside chance to make it to the NFL as an offensive lineman. That dream had ended when he’d fractured two vertebrae in his neck during his sophomore season at Alabama, and Ferguson had never quite made his peace with that.
His hand was wrapped around a bottle of Coors Light, sweating condensation, the droplets catching the light from the bar just so. He was taller than Briggs and heavier, although Ferguson’s current mass owed more to beer, pizza and cheese fries. Over the years, he’d developed a reputation as a bit of a brawler, but the fights always went one of two ways; he either knocked his opponent down with one swipe of his meaty mitt, or the brawls degenerated into a slow dance to nowhere.
“So, Freddie,” Ferguson said, “how’s the comeback going?”
Freddie rubbed his eye slowly, cursing his luck. If there had been a list of Fucking People He Didn’t Feel Like Dealing With, Randy Ferguson would have been near the top of it. And he’d have to just sit here and take it because getting up and walking out would be just what Randy Ferguson would want; it would signify that Ferguson had won some battle in the eternal war between the two men, a war waged exclusively in Ferguson’s head. Freddie and Ferguson had passed each other on the ladder to success, and Ferguson had never forgotten it.
“Fine,” Freddie said. He poured another shot and threw it back.
“Been seeing you out running,” Ferguson said. “Yeah, putting in the miles. But lemme ask you this – ain’t training camps already started?”
Ferguson was drunk, talking loudly, his cheeks flushed, and his southern accent even more pronounced than usual. The volume was due in part to the booze, but it was intentional on a certain level, because Ferguson wanted nothing more than for Briggs to crash and burn, for his star to burn out, and he wouldn’t have to hear about Freddie Briggs anymore.
Another shot. Freddie’s head started to swim a little bit. He hadn’t touched alcohol in six months, and it was hitting him harder and faster than he’d expected. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, scanning the crowd in the mirror mounted behind the rows of bottles standing a vigilant watch. Every single person was watching the confrontation unfolding in front of them; all knew there was no love lost between the two local legends.
“You know they’ve started,” Freddie said. No point in dancing around the issue. Maybe he’d take the wind out of Ferguson’s sails, and the loser could get back to drinking himself to death or selling meth to underage girls or whatever it was he did all day.
“But I thought this was the big comeback year,” Ferguson said, his observation coated with ice and snark. “Hometown hero makes good!”
“Go fuck yourself,” Freddie said, his own voice booming. He poured another shot and held the glass up to Ferguson. “Cheers.”
“Go fuck yourself?” he repeated.
Ferguson spun around to face the crowd, his beefy arms spread out theatrically; beer sloshed over the lip of his glass, splashing Freddie’s arm.
“Everyone hear that?” Ferguson said. “Smyrna’s golden boy has forgotten his manners!”
He turned back to face Freddie, close enough for
Freddie to feel Ferguson’s beer-soaked breath breaking across his face like a fetid tropical wind.
“Is that it?” Ferguson asked. “Have you forgotten your manners?”
“Not today, Randy,” Freddie said, turning back away from his tormentor.
“Oh, I think today is a perfect day for it,” Ferguson said, poking two meaty fingers into Freddie’s shoulder. “A perfect day to teach you some fuckin’ manners.”
Freddie refused to look at the man, focusing his gaze on the beer taps in front of him, trying to ignore the growing heat in his belly.
“You listening to me, fuckstick?” Randy said, another poke in Freddie’s shoulder, this one more forceful. “Or are you Hall-of-Fame types too good for us regular folk?”
Freddie’s right hand, palm open, exploded into Ferguson’s sternum, knocking the drunk man off balance. Ferguson toppled over and hit the floor with a huge crash; the floor shook like a minor earthquake had hit the place.
The big man climbed back to his feet, more quickly than Briggs had anticipated, and, perhaps emboldened by the day’s consumption of beer, rushed Freddie’s right flank like an angry bull rhino. Ferguson connected solidly, and this time, both men sailed to the ground in a heap. Freddie landed first, his left arm extended as Ferguson’s mass drove him to the floor. The men rolled around, their arms and legs entwined like giant sequoias tangled together. They crashed into small two-top tables, sending pitchers of beer and glasses to the floor, where they shattered in a tinkling symphony.
The heat in Freddie’s belly exploded, like leaking natural gas catching a spark. He could feel the big man tiring; as big as Ferguson was, he was woefully out of shape. His rabbit punches grew exponentially weaker, and Freddie could feel him gasping huge lungfuls of air. Freddie wrapped his good arm around Ferguson’s midsection and flipped him over like a side of beef; then he leapt astride Ferguson’s midsection and delivered a right cross to the man’s face, his big fist slamming down like a pile driver. The punch crashed into Ferguson’s nose, squashing it like an overripe tomato. Ferguson grunted as a tincture of blood bloomed outwards from his face, holding its shape, a crimson rose, for an instant, before raining down on his shirt in a messy splatter.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 3
