Hangman's Game Page 4

  “I understand that at the end of this argument Carson yelled ‘Fuck you’ at Samuel,” Rizotti says.

  “He yelled ‘Fuck me,’ actually,” I say.

  Rizotti is about to write this down but then he looks up at me. “That an important difference to you?”

  “Jai says ‘Fuck me’ all the time,” I continue. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal, and this is part of my point, Gallow,” Rizotti says, pointing his pen at me. “If people like you and I yelled curses in a crowded restaurant, it would be an exceptional event. We’re civilized. But not this piece-of-shit teammate of yours.”

  I wonder if Rizotti isn’t giving himself a little too much credit. For being civilized, I mean.

  “And I’ve watched JC, whatever he calls himself, for ten years now, and you can see it on the field. The guy’s the most overrated linebacker in the league. He’s more interested in playing to the cameras than doing what it takes to win. He’s poison on that team. He’s the reason we can’t make the playoffs anymore.”

  So somewhere along the line we have slipped into sports talk radio. I want to thank Rizotti for calling and tell him I will get to his question after the commercial break.

  “I really don’t think Jai did this,” I say.

  “Do you think that, or do you know it?” Rizotti asks.

  “It’s what I believe,” I say.

  “It’s not what I believe,” he says.

  He lets the room go quiet. I maintain my stillness, hands folded beneath the table, waiting him out.

  “I understand you saw a bumper sticker on the shooter’s car,” Rizotti says. “It had a quarter moon on it.”

  “That’s correct,” I say, and I brace myself, because I can feel a hit coming.

  “You know what would have really helped us?” Rizotti sneers. “A license plate number. I thought you athletes are supposed to have great reflexes. How could you see the bumper sticker but not the license plate?”

  “I wish I had seen that plate, believe me,” I say. “No one wishes it more than me.”

  “Oh, someone wishes it more than you,” Rizotti sneers. “Me. Let’s face it, punter. You made my job a lot harder. You fucked up.”

  I search for a response, a way to be helpful.

  “What if you had me hypnotized?” I ask. “Maybe we could recover the memory that way.”

  “Please,” Rizotti says, pulling back. “Where did you get that bullshit idea, from some TV show?”

  I did, actually.

  “I’ll need to look at your phone,” Rizotti says. “The time stamps on your texts will help us nail down the details of your story.”

  I want to help, but I am not going to let this oaf thumb through my phone. First, if he really wanted the time of the shooting, he has my 911 call. Second, if my salacious messages to Jessica become part of the police record, they will inevitably go public—if not for the pure gossip value, then so I can become the scapegoat for an investigation going nowhere. I can hear it now: we don’t know anything about the killer because the punter was too busy sexting another man’s wife.

  “I’d prefer to keep the contents of my phone private,” I say. “What’s on it is personal and has nothing to do with the case.”

  “I’d like to judge for myself what is relevant to the case,” Rizotti says. “You’d be surprised what possibilities people leave unconsidered.”

  “I’ve been answering your questions because I want to help,” I say firmly. “But if I need to get a lawyer now, I will.”

  “Anytime anyone holds something back from me,” Rizotti says, cocking his head back and smacking his lips, “I assume the worst. You’re climbing right up my list of suspects, punter.”

  “What?” I say. “I couldn’t have been the shooter. I was standing right there on the sidewalk with Cecil when he was shot. Just ask him.”

  “If Cecil Wilson dies,” says Rizotti, “I won’t be able to ask him anything, will I?”

  He somehow manages to look as if he has said something savvy and wise, rather than callous and hateful. I ball my fists.

  “Let’s assume you’re right about Jai Carson,” Rizotti continues, with revolting casualness. “That raises one big question: how did this shooter know you were going to be at the stadium? At least Carson would have been able to follow you from the restaurant.”

  It is a fair question.

  “Maybe the shooter was already in that area, for some reason that has nothing to do with us,” I say. “Aren’t there random killings in this city every day?” The crime news in Philadelphia can be astoundingly bleak—perhaps because the city’s economy has been trending downward for a good century or two.

  “A random shooting?” Rizotti says disbelievingly. “Is that the best you can do? Come on, punter. You’re my lone eyewitness. Give me something better than that.”

  I feel a deep despair—that I don’t know more, and that I now must depend on this cretin to find justice for Cecil and Samuel. I have long held that one of the chief problems in this universe is that there are more positions of responsibility than there are people equipped to fill them. This detective seems to be a particularly painful example.

  I push back my chair and rise from the table.

  “If you want to ask me any more questions,” I say, “I’m going to need a lawyer. If not, I’m going home. It’s been a long night.”

  I move toward the door. Rizotti stands, but he doesn’t try to stop me.

  “One last question, Gallow, if you don’t mind,” he says before I can turn the knob. “Ever consider the possibility that this shooter was after you? It’s night, it is dark, you guys aren’t that far apart. All three of you are big. And Sault is light-skinned for a black guy. From a distance someone could easily mistake Sault for you. Or your agent. Maybe they just shot the wrong guy and didn’t even know it.”

  I had not considered the possibility. But it couldn’t be, could it? I am taller and leaner than Cecil. And Samuel, streamlined as his body was, still had eighty pounds on me. Even at night, you’d have to be blind …

  “Nah, probably not,” Rizotti says, waving his hand dismissively. “After all, you are just the punter.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THERE ARE MOMENTS when, if you are in the mood, you can look at the people around you and view them as a judgment on the state of your life at that point. It might be at a birthday dinner, or a New Year’s Eve get-together, or finally, I suppose, your funeral, though I do not believe the dead can see such things. I am having that kind of moment now, as I emerge into the police station lobby and see my one-person welcoming party: Freddie Gladstone.

  My friend looks sharp, at least. His long brown hair is styled and wavy, and he is wearing an apricot-colored designer T-shirt and beige linen pants. He looks as if he might have come from some all-night party. Five in the morning is often the shank of his evening.

  Freddie is seated under the WANTED posters and has his body tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, studying the screen of his iPhone. He doesn’t notice my approach.

  “Hey, pal, what’s going on?” I ask casually, standing on top of him.

  “Oh, hey, Hangman,” Freddie says, not looking up. He calls me Hangman because my last name is Gallow and punts are measured by hang time, and why let an obvious pun sit on the shelf? “Check this out,” he says. He turns his iPhone toward me. It has a black-and-white image of a nude woman looking over her shoulder with an embarrassed grin on her face. “It’s one of these deals where ordinary girls pose for a calendar to raise money for some charity.”

  “What’s the cause?” I ask. We should be talking about me, but at this point I welcome a distraction.

  “Um … anal cancer, I’m pretty sure,” Freddie says. “That’s why the girls are all photographed from behind. It’s pretty good. Sometimes I like that whole amateur thing better. It’s more transgressive in a way. But hey, how are you doing?”

  Thanks for asking. I catch Freddie up on my evening. He liste
ns in a rapt but calm way, and he is never more stoic than when I describe the shooting itself. It is only when I get to the police interrogation and mention that Rizotti implied that I might have been the shooter that he shows emotion.

  “What a dick,” Freddie says, scowling

  “It’s understandable,” I demur. “He is trying to get me off balance. Just doing his job.”

  “It still sucks,” Freddie says. “I should have been in there with you.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “A lawyer might have helped.”

  “Right,” I say. “I forgot.”

  “Fuck you.” Freddie has a law degree, but it is easy to lose sight of that fact, given that he has never put it to any use. Nominally he is a vice president of the Sentinels, but he was given that job because his dad, real-estate billionaire Arthur Gladstone, owns the team. Freddie attends front-office meetings at his pleasure, and it’s not like when he goes off to Ibiza or Bali or Costa Rica on a vacation of undetermined length, anyone scrambles to cover for him.

  In fact, the team employs two in-house lawyers, and Freddie is not one of them.

  “Have you heard anything about Cecil?” I ask.

  “He is still being operated on, is the last I heard from O’Dwyer,” Freddie says. Jim O’Dwyer is the team’s longtime public relations chief. “That was about an hour ago, but he sounded positive.”

  “A PR guy sounding positive,” I say. “Why am I not reassured?”

  Freddie shrugs. “That’s all I got.”

  “Let’s go to the hospital,” I say.

  “O’Dwyer’s information is pretty recent,” Freddie says. “He would let me know if … anything changed.”

  “I should go anyway,” I say. “Even if it’s a one-percent chance I get in, I want to try.”

  “I’ll give you a ride, Hangman,” Freddie says. “But I may leave you at the doorstep. Me and hospitals, you know.”

  “That’s fine. No worries.”

  When Freddie was fourteen years old he watched his mother slowly die from something called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which attacks the brain, causing dementia, hallucinations, and loss of body control, before death. Freddie doesn’t speak about the experience often, and when he does it is quickly and without detail, always cutting himself off with the refrain that it was “a long eight months.”

  “When you go outside, be careful,” Freddie warns. “The vultures are in heavy swarm.”

  I walk toward the door and see that predators have assembled in the predawn darkness: news vans, cameramen, and reporters, in a needy search for quotes and pictures and video.

  “At least you look nice,” Freddie says, straightening my shirt collar. If only he had seen me in the jacket. “Follow my blocking. And remember, don’t give them anything to work with. Don’t look anyone in the eye, don’t say anything. Just keep moving forward.”

  With Freddie leading the way, we exit the police station. We keep our heads low and our eyes ahead toward Freddie’s black BMW. Still, the crush comes, the scuffling for position, the thrusting of arms—the reporters exhibit the body language of a mob.

  “Nick, what happened?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Hey, Nick, look here!”

  “Are you a suspect?”

  “Who did it?” The last question comes from a particularly aggressive blond woman who steps in our path and momentarily blocks our movement.

  “Your mom did it,” Freddie snaps at her. “They’re looking at her pimp as an accomplice.”

  Who wouldn’t want this man as their legal counsel?

  We squeeze through to Freddie’s car, shutters clicking all the while. I feel a momentary sense of relief when the doors shut, but then I see the cameramen fan out in front of us, forming a barrier as they aim their lenses through the windshield.

  “C’mon!” Freddie screams, honking the horn before we have even moved. Freddie is generally an easygoing guy, but he is prone to bursts of temper when he doesn’t get his way—simply because, unlike most people, he has little practice at it. He can be particularly prone to road rage, and I have seen him lose it in a ten-second traffic jam.

  He begins inching the car forward, his knuckles whitening as his grip on the wheel tightens, but the camera guys remain rooted to the ground. Samuel’s killing is going to be a huge story. They must come home with footage.

  “Easy, Freddie,” I say. “It’s been a rough night already.”

  He slaps the leather steering wheel in disgust. “Look at them! They’re just standing there!”

  “Easy, pal…”

  Then, as if by magic, the flock disperses on its own. Or rather, it flies off and reconstitutes by the station house door.

  And I see what has caused the cameramen to reorder their priorities. The star attraction has arrived.

  Jai Carson, wearing the same blue tracksuit he had on at Stark’s, is being escorted into the station by four uniformed officers. Bingo. This is the shot the camera guys needed, the one that will lead the morning newscast, and SportsCenter, and maybe even CNN. Hell, one day they might be able to license this footage to documentary filmmakers.

  Freddie and I have been cleared to go.

  CHAPTER 4

  FREDDIE DROPS ME off at the hospital, where they tell me that Cecil is out of surgery and in serious but stable condition; I can’t see him, but he is now sedated and asleep. Which sounds like a great way to be; I have been up for nearly twenty-four hours. I text Cecil’s wife, Vicki, but I receive no response. I hope she is in transit from Ohio.

  Feeling like last night has finally stopped happening, I take a taxi home.

  I arrive at the Jefferson at 6:50 in the morning. I plop on my sofa—the Jefferson’s sofa, technically, since all the furniture has come with the place. I look at my texts. No answer yet from Vicki. Nothing from my mother, still. She must be squirreled away with Aaron at his cabin. Perhaps they are awake but still in bed, listening to the birds chirp. I have only met Aaron maybe a dozen times, at breakfasts or lunches, so I can’t claim to be an expert on the man. But what little I know about his biography explains why he clings to his cabin and its remove from civilization. Aaron was once a police officer but he quit the force after suffering some kind of breakdown. Now he teaches criminal justice courses. My dad, when he was alive, liked to trumpet Aaron’s career change as proof of his essential weakness. “Those who can’t do, teach,” said my dad, who coached high school football and taught gym during the school day.

  I scroll back through my texts and come to an unread series of messages from Jessica, sent just after the shooting. She was describing for me, in barely veiled innuendo, the progress of her masturbation, until at long last she noticed I wasn’t responding. After I failed to acknowledge her Where are you? she sent a final note that read, I’ll assume you’re in post-ejaculatory slumber. ’Night. She has no idea about the shooting. Typical of Jessica—she is quick to notice any ripple in her pond, but she can be oblivious to the broader tides.

  The morning is bringing a fresh rush of text messages. Among the most recent is one from the Sentinels coach, Jerry Tanner. It is rare that he communicates with me directly; usually if I receive a text from him it is part of a blast to all the players about a change in practice schedule, or some hoary coaching aphorism he feels impelled to share.

  Here’s what my head coach has to say to me on this morning of tragedy:

  If you are going to be at the facility today, stop in and see me. I’ll be here all day.

  I would have preferred inspirational blather. Or at least semantic honesty. If you are going to be at the facility today. I know an order when I see it.

  * * *

  I nap for three hours, on purpose. I’ve read that the most effective sleep comes in three-hour blocks because that interval matches a cycle of our brain rhythms. I shower, consider my breakfast options, and realize that I am in no mood to eat anything, and drive to the Sentinels’ practice facility, telling myself it will be
good to see people. I arrive a little after 11:00 A.M. The facility is near the stadium, just a couple of minutes down the street from it. The stadium looms tall as I approach from the highway; it is unsettling to return to this area so soon. As I pass I see two police cars still at the crime scene. But I cruise on, following the route to the Sentinels facility no differently than I have a hundred times before. Consider it a testament to the power of muscle memory.

  The main doorway of our training complex is twenty feet high and shaped like a football. The players do not walk through the football; that honor goes to visitors and business employees. Players park in a private, fenced-off lot to the side and enter through a nondescript metal door we open with a key card. TV crews are set up along the border of the player’s lot, and my arrival inspires a stirring of activity. Man walks from car to building: film to play every ten minutes, until something better comes along.

  Before going up to see Tanner, I first visit Eleanor Cordero, the team’s assistant public relations director. Tanner has apparently spread word that I will be coming in; Eleanor sent me a message asking that I stop by her office as soon as possible.

  It is an easy choice as to which person to visit first. Cordero is a sprightly woman in her mid-twenties, with wide, gentle eyes and wavy brown hair that flies back as if she has just had a door opened in her face. She giggles easily and carries herself with an air of coy haplessness that allows her skill and efficiency to sneak up on people. I know Cordero just a little bit; she often accompanies groups of players on visits to children’s wards and such places that make for positive news stories. I volunteer for these trips, even though they can be deflating for me. One of the great joys of being a football player is seeing bedridden children light up simply because we walk into the room. But then when we fan out to talk with the children one-on-one, I often see my specific kid sag at the shoulders when he learns he is stuck with the punter, and he scans the room looking for players he has actually heard of. This is when Eleanor swoops to the rescue. “Nick is one of the best punters in the game,” she will say. “He’s the reason the other team has to go so far to score. We’d be in big trouble without him.” A few admiring words from her is usually enough to get the kid excited again.