Blood Ties (42 page)

“Tell me about bulking up,” I said, leaving the rest of it for later. “Lifting, conditioning, training?”

“Worked five years after the army in a place like this, upstate New York. Hey, I had a lot of sports to learn.”

I gestured at the picture, its back to me now. “And you were a skinny little guy.”

Something dark flicked across his face, but it passed. “Ancient history,” he said.

“So maybe you needed some help bulking up.”

“Everyone needs help. The army was great for that. Helpful guys, no worries about pain or long-term damage, sissy shit. Just ‘Get up, Dalton, unless you're dead!' Helped a lot.”

“Chemical help, too?” I asked.

“Like?”

“Steroids?”

“Well, now, you have to be really careful with steroids,” Hamlin said, his face taking on a mock earnestness, a fake concern that chilled my spine. “You have to really know what you're doing. Especially if you're a kid.” He smiled again. “Could fuck up your life.”

“But you know what you're doing.”

“I know all kinds of shit.”

“And you tell the kids.”

“They're here for their education.”

“You tell them, for example, where they can get steroids.”

“I don't have to. They know.”

“What do they know? That they can get them here?”

“Here? Back off, Jack. No fucking way. Nothing illegal goes on at Hamlin's. Kid comes here with a can of beer, he's out on his ass. My goal is to stay out of trouble and stay in business. I'm building men here, and I love my work.”

I was aching for a cigarette, but I didn't do anything about it. I couldn't tell what kind of an edge Hamlin was on, and I didn't want to push him. “So if the camp were searched right now, we wouldn't find any drugs?”

“Give me a break. We don't strip-search them. Some kid has a few pills in his wallet, vitamins, this and that, I guess I wouldn't know about it. But they don't get them here. Besides, what's the big deal? They want to be big. They work like sons of bitches, two-a-day practices, weights, homework until three in morning because they were in the gym until midnight, and their parents tell them how proud they are. Why shouldn't they get a little help from modern science?”

“Where do they get them?”

“What?”

“The steroids, Hamlin. Where do they get them?”

“Oh, here, there, who knows?”

I said, “I need to know.”

“Well, I'm sure sorry I can't help you.”

“There's a big problem.” Lydia spoke up in a cool and steady voice, fixing Hamlin's attention. “A girl is dead, and other people may die, unless we unravel what's going on. Where the boys in Warrenstown get their steroids is one of the questions we've got to have answers to.”

“These people who're going to die,” Hamlin said, his voice easy, his smile wide and suddenly venomous, “are they in Warrenstown?”

Coach Hamlin, furious and vindictive on the field; Nick Dalton, aka Tom Hamlin, mild-mannered and reasonable in his office.

Well, I thought, whatever works.

I was around the desk before Hamlin could stand up. I yanked him out of his chair, slammed him against a file cabinet. The trophies crowding the top rattled and one fell to the floor as Hamlin's head hit the steel.

His eyes flew wide. “What the fuck is your problem?” He tried to grab for me, but though he'd built his muscles and changed his life what he'd become was a bully, and bullies are bad fighters. I danced back; he grasped air. I shouldered in again, this time smashing him against the cabinet's hard edge. He yelped. I took him by the shoulders and shoved him face down on his desk. Twisting his arm behind him, I shouted, “Where?” My shout and the sounds of rattling, crashing, pounding, brought Barboni to the door.

“Hey!” He charged in, but Lydia was up with a yell to distract him and a sweep of her leg to pull his feet out from under him. She sent him sprawling.

“Fuck!” Hamlin growled. “Jesus fuck, what's the big deal?” I let up some on his arm but kept him pressed to the desk. “Any Warrenstown boy could tell you where they get them, what the fuck are you beating on me for?”

“They could,” I said, “but they won't. You will.”

“Yeah, all right. Jesus.” I let him up. He stood rubbing his shoulder. “Well, why not? Can't hurt me, and probably won't hurt my business, either. Of course, if you say you heard it here, I'll say you're a liar.”

“Where?”

Hamlin smiled, that smile that was wide and warm in the photograph on his desk, dead and cold in here. “It's almost funny, now I think about it. It's the only difference between him and me anymore, really. Besides him thinking that what we both do, the way we build men, is a
good
thing. The only other difference between us, now, is that Coach Ryder deals steroids to the kids, and I don't.”

twenty-five

I called Sullivan from my cell phone while Lydia and I stood in the wind in Hamlin's parking lot, Barboni watching us through the wire glass of the locked double doors.

“It's Smith,” I said.

“I'm busy.”

“You'll be busier. Did you know Coach Ryder is the guy dealing steroids to your football team?”

Silence; then, “If I knew that, you think I'd be sitting around with my thumb up my ass?”

“It's Warrenstown.”

“You can't—”

“No,” I said, “I'm sorry. Anyway, you know now.”

“Yeah, well, now, Smith, right
now
, I'm kind of occupied. I'm looking for a couple of kids with guns.”

“Take a break, go arrest the coach.”

“On what evidence?”

“Nick Dalton's.”

“What?”

“He's been under your noses for fifteen years.” I told Sullivan about Hamlin, about his camp and his reasons.

“I don't believe this,” he said when I was through.

“Worry about it later. Arrest the coach.”

“On the word of a suspect's uncle about the word of a nut? Listen, this guy may not be Dalton, Smith. He may be some loony who heard the story, met Dalton in the army maybe—”

“And decided to devote his life to being Dalton's avenging angel?”

“Or his evening to pulling some PI's chain.”

“That's crap. But even if it were true, he could still be right about Ryder. Pick him up.”

“I can't do that.”

“Why, because he's fucking St. Coach in Warrenstown and they'd hand you your ass on a platter? Christ, Sullivan, then pick up a kid. Any kid. One of those guys with the thick necks—Randy Macpherson, maybe. Or try my pal Morgan Reed. You have the answer, they'll break down and confirm it for you.”

“Look,” he said. “I'll look into this. If it's true, I'll build a case and when it's ready I'll arrest him. But right now—”

“No, Sullivan, now. Because if the steroids and the ecstasy were coming from the same place, Ryder may know something about Tory Wesley's death, and if he does, he may know something about where those boys are.”

“The steroids and the ecstasy—that's
your
theory, Smith. I didn't buy it then, and if it's the coach, no way. Ryder handing out steroids, yeah, okay. Make them big, give them an edge. But party drugs, I don't think so. This is a coach who benches them, he finds them smoking, drinking coffee.”

“Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's bullshit,” I said. “But you say you're looking for those boys: What else do you have?”

A very long pause. The wind blew harder, colder; the stars and the moon had disappeared above a heavy weight of clouds. “Tomorrow,” Sullivan said, “is the game at Hamlin's. Last time the seniors will ever play, most of them. Whole town goes out there to say good-bye to this year's heroes, see if
St. Coach
can beat them with what he's got for next year. You want me to pick him up for questioning, on the hearsay evidence of a nut. Smith, only way I could pick up Ryder before this game would be if he had some kid's blood dripping from his teeth.”

“I think he does.”

“
You
think.” Another silence; then, “I'll call you.” The phone went dead.

I folded it, put it in my pocket. From another pocket I slipped a cigarette. “Where to?” I asked Lydia.

“Excuse me? Your case, your car, your bright ideas. This, by the way, was a prizewinner.”

“Yeah,” I said, striking a match. “I want a trophy.”

Lydia looked at me long and hard. The wind was messing with her hair; she ran her hand through it, and said, “Home.”

“What?”

“You're exhausted. And I am, too,” she added, overriding my objection. “Let's get away from this place, go have dinner, maybe get some sleep. The police are working on this, in high gear. Give them a chance. Unless you come up with another bright idea—”

“—or you do; it may be my case but I'm not proprietary about it. You're welcome to have bright ideas, too.”

“Thank you, this
is
mine. Let's go home.”

The wind pushed her hair across her forehead again, and this time I smoothed it for her. “You know,” I said, “if this were your case and your nephew and I said let's go home, you'd break my kneecap.”

“Undoubtedly.”

I looked into her eyes as the wind turned again, whipped across us from the other direction. I wanted to be with Lydia someplace else, on a broad empty field like this but someplace where the wind was still and the air was warm and sweet and the sky was covered with stars. I brushed her hair back one more time although it didn't need it, felt its silkiness under my fingertips. I thought I smelled the freesia scent she so often wears, though in the wind, in the cold, that wasn't likely.

“Okay,” I said. “Home.”

We had brought both cars so we each drove alone, along a highway much less crowded, going into the city at night, than it had been leaving it at rush hour. I didn't know what Lydia was doing in her car: maybe she had the radio on and she was catching up on the news, or she'd found some local college station where they played freshly burned CDs by garage bands from around the neighborhood; or maybe she was on the phone, talking to her mother, or a brother or a cousin, checking in with her family, sharing her day. I usually drive with music, but now my speakers were silent, the CDs stacked in the holder between the seats. I had the window open, and I felt the cold push of the wind, the damp heaviness in the air. I tried not to think, just to drive, beating the traffic around me but not by much, pulling into the right lane occasionally for drivers—usually young men—whose need for speed was greater than mine.

I was almost to the tunnel when my cell phone rang. I slipped it out, thinking it might be Lydia, and flipped it open. “Smith.”

“Linus Kwong, dude. He's back.”

“Back?” The wind roared into the car; I pressed the button, sent the window up, so I could hear. “What do you mean?”

“Premador, dude! I've been, like, scanning his chat rooms and message boards. You know, in case. And just now, I found a post. From, like, today.”

“When today?”

“No way to tell.”

“What does it say?”

“Basically: Yo, and remember, you knew me first.”

“First?”

“He says he's about to be famous. His name's gonna be everywhere, he says.”

“When? When is that going to happen?”

“Doesn't say. That's all of it, dude. You dudes knew me first, remember that when I'm famous.”

“He doesn't say what he's going to do that's going to make him famous?”

“No. You got a clue what it's about?”

“Maybe. Linus, can you get in touch with him?”

“I already posted to that board, but he didn't answer yet. It could have been hours ago, he may not even be online on anymore.”

“You can't tell? You can't talk to him?”

“It's a board, dude, not a chat room.”

“What does that mean?”

“It's not real time,” he said, sounding a little suspicious, as though this must be a trick question because the answer was so obvious. “You post your message, it comes up later. You could be signed off or somewhere else, by then.”

“But there are places you can talk in real time?”

“Yeah, sure. He has rooms he goes to. I've been scanning, but he's not around.”

“Is there a way to find out where he, uh, posted from?”

“You mean, physically?”

“Yes. I mean, where he is.”

“Sometimes. But you gotta go through the service, though. I mean, it's not something I can do.” He sounded embarrassed at this admission.

“Who can?”

Even more uncomfortable: “Cops can,” and I remembered why Linus was so available, this semester, for this kind of work.

“What information do they need?”

“They need his screen name and the URL of the board. They got to find the administrator, somebody at the service provider and maybe if they're using a remailer—”

“Linus, you could be speaking to me in Chinese. I'm going to give your number to a cop I know.”

“Oh, hey, dude—”

“It's okay, Linus. Just tell him whatever it is you were just telling me. Tell him everything you know about Premador, the Web sites he goes to, everything. You won't get in any trouble.”

“I—”

“You wanted me to stop this guy,” I said. “If he's about to be famous, I don't think it's for anything good.”