Football Champ (15 page)

“
THIS
,”
NATHAN SAID, SLINGING
a backpack off his shoulders and removing a video camera. “Tate thought her dad had one of those Dictaphones, but we couldn’t find it. We thought the whole thing was a bust, but then I said, ‘Hey, what about a video camera,’ and she said—”

“Great idea,” Tate said, beaming at Nathan.

Nathan grinned and nodded proudly.

“What are you two talking about?” Troy asked.

“I made an appointment with Gumble,” Tate said.

“Why?” Troy asked, tightening his grip on the handlebars of his bike.

“To make sure he’d be at his place,” Tate said. “But instead of me, you walk in and start grilling him.”

“Grilling?” Troy said.

“You know,” Tate said, “‘Hey, Gumble, you think you
can get away with this? You know you’re lying.’ That kind of stuff.”

“And I’m supposed to videotape him answering me?” Troy asked. “Like, ‘Hey, Gumble, you don’t mind if I tape this for national TV, do you?’”

“The camera stays in the backpack,” Tate said. “We turn it on before he goes in.”

“You won’t see it, but it’ll record your voices,” Nathan said, “and we’ll be able to
hear
it.”

Troy studied them for a minute, then said, “Okay. I get it. But the whole thing with this camera in the bag while I grill him? I don’t know. What if he gets suspicious?”

“Maybe we could wait outside the door and record what he says from there?” Nathan said.

Troy chewed on his lower lip. “The door’s too thick, I think.”

“Come on,” Tate said. “We can talk on our way. The appointment is for four. We’ve got to ride.”

They mounted their bikes and set off down the road, keeping to the shoulder and taking a back route where the traffic wasn’t as heavy. As Troy rode, his mind began to twist with discomfort at the thought of just walking in and grilling Gumble. By the time they cruised into the shopping center where Gumble’s office was, Troy felt ready to throw up.

They rode their bikes around back, past the big green Dumpsters used by Fantastic Fitness and over a sea of
broken glass, cigarette butts, and crushed beer cans. At the far corner, they stopped next to another pair of Dumpsters, and a foul smell wafted down at them. They got off their bikes anyway. Tate peered around the corner of the brick building.

“That must be where he keeps his car,” she said.

Troy looked and saw a small BMW convertible next to an unmarked metal door halfway toward the front of the building. Tate held her backpack out to Troy. He took the pack while Tate removed the camera, switched it on, and activating the recorder, then zipped it back up inside. His heart began to race at the thought of Gumble’s cold, knowing eyes looking right through the backpack and seeing the recorder.

“Get going,” she said. “There’s only twenty minutes on the tape.”

Troy shouldered the pack, took a step around the corner, then stopped.

“Wait,” he said, shedding the backpack and switching off the recorder.

“It’s four o’clock now,” Tate said, looking at her watch. “You have to go.”

“I just don’t think I can walk in there with this thing and start asking questions without him wondering what’s in the bag,” Troy said.

“What are you, scared?” Nathan asked.

“No. I’m nervous,” Troy said. “This guy gives me the creeps. His eyes. It’s like he can see what you’re
thinking. We’re only going to get one shot at this, and I just don’t want to blow it.”

“Just keep cool,” Nathan said. “He won’t notice.”

“But if he can’t keep cool,” Tate said, “there’s no sense pretending he can.”

Then an idea popped into Troy’s head. He snapped his fingers and said, “I got it. Keep cool. Yes. We
can
do this.”

“
YOU CAN KEEP COOL
?”
Tate asked.

“No, but when I went into Gumble’s office with Seth, it was freezing in there,” Troy said. “The guy wears a sweater, it’s so cold.”

“What are you saying?” Nathan asked. “You can keep cool or you can’t. It’s cold in there. The buzzing in your brain must be back pretty bad.”

“My brain’s fine. It’s cold because of these huge AC vents,” Troy said. “They take the air through the whole building, so they’re huge. The one in Gumble’s office is big enough for a kid to fit in. The vent is right over his desk. You guys could take the camera and get up in there and get the whole thing with Gumble, both audio and video. He’ll never know.”

“We can’t just get into the vent,” Tate said, puckering her lips.

Troy looked up at the roof and took a couple steps back. He pointed to the Dumpster.

“Why not? We could climb up on top of the Dumpster and I could help boost you guys up,” Troy said. “Gumble’s office is in the back corner of the building, almost right under that unit.”

“But we can’t just crawl inside the AC vent,” Tate said.

“Actually,” Nathan said, staring up at it and narrowing his eyes, “we could.”

“
WE COULD
?”
TATE ASKED
.

Nathan looked at her and nodded.

“Yeah?” Tate said, raising one eyebrow. “Okay, Einstein, how?”

“My dad works for We Cool It,” Nathan said.

“So?” Tate said, stamping her foot impatiently.

“You remember when we did that Take Your Children to Work Day thing at school, where we had to go with our mom or dad and write a report on what they do?” Nathan asked.

“Sure,” Tate said.

“Well,” Nathan said, “me and my dad spent the day up on a roof like this, working on a big AC unit on the blink. One of the things they thought it might have been was all this sheetrock dust that got into the vents
and was jamming up the electronics, so I had to crawl in there with my dad and clean the whole thing out.”

“We don’t have any tools,” Tate said.

“Don’t need them,” Nathan said. “There should be a panel for the main duct, so you can just loosen a screw or two or even just turn a lever and you’re inside. It’s easy. You won’t believe how big it is in there.”

“It’ll be dark,” Tate said.

Nathan pointed to the light clamped onto the stem of his handlebars and said, “This thing comes right off. We can use it.”

Troy didn’t wait. He handed the backpack to Nathan, turned, and climbed up the side of the nearest Dumpster, eyeing the distance to the lip of the roof. Nathan unclipped the light from his bike and added it to the pack before pulling it on over his shoulders. Then he and Tate followed Troy until the three of them stood atop the thick metal cover.

Nathan pinched his nose. “Man, this stinks!”

“It’s about to get worse,” Troy said, working his fingers under the far lip of the second Dumpster’s metal cover.

“Don’t do that!” Nathan said as Troy raised the cover, exposing a pile of rotten filth.

Troy twisted his face and blinked at the harsh stink, wondering what could have made a smell so bad. But he balanced his feet on the edge and kept raising the lid, pushing it up hand over hand and doubling it back
until it fell open. The lid clunked against the brick wall three-quarters of the way up toward the roof.

“It’s like a dead skunk,” Tate said, waving her hand in front of her nose and squinting her eyes from atop the first Dumpster.

“It’s like pig barf,” Nathan said, covering his face with both hands.

“We can use it to climb up to the roof,” Troy said, peering into the open metal container and seeing a mound of broken trash bags whose spilled contents included empty cans, crushed milk cartons, old takeout boxes, baby diapers, and moldy pieces of rotten fruit, all in a soup of green slime.

Troy turned when he heard Nathan make a weird animal noise. Nathan doubled over and lost his lunch in a huge splat on the Dumpster’s plate-metal cover.

“Oh my God,” Tate said, pinching her nose and turning away.

“You okay?” Troy asked Nathan.

“Much better now,” Nathan said, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

Troy shook his head and patted his hand against the metal ribbing on the underside of the second Dumpster’s lid and said, “Well, come on then.”

Carefully, Troy scaled the underside of the lid. When he reached the top, he wedged his toes into the narrow foothold between the lid and the brick wall and reached back to help Tate. She scrambled up like a lemur, and
with Troy giving her a boost, in less than a minute she was looking back down at them from the roof.

“Aw, man,” Nathan said as he begin to climb one-handed so that he could use his free hand to cover his nose.

“You’d better use two hands,” Troy said, reaching down so he could grab Nathan’s wrist and help pull him up.

“Uh-uh,” Nathan said, shaking his head, the words garbled by his hand. “I’m not upchucking again.”

“I’m telling you,” Troy said.

It was at that moment Nathan’s foot slipped. His eyes went wide as salad plates, and he grasped for Troy with both hands.

TROY STRAINED TO PULL
Nathan up, horrified at the thought of his friend falling into the rotten mess below. By the look on his face, he could see that Nathan was even more horrified, but once Troy had him going in the right direction, Nathan scrambled up the lid as fast as Tate had.

The two of them peered down at Troy while he made his way back to the first Dumpster, carefully sidestepping Nathan’s puke. Troy pinched his nose and signaled okay. Then the two of them disappeared from Troy’s sight. After a couple minutes, they reappeared, both giving him a thumbs-up.

“He got it,” Tate said. “He knew right where to go. And it is huge in here. Go ahead. You get in there and give it to that Gumble.”

“You sure you guys are okay?” Troy asked. “The video camera, all that?”

Nathan reached over his shoulder and patted the backpack. “We’re cool.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be right there,” Tate said. “But get going now. The stink from that Dumpster is pretty bad up here, and I think it’s only a matter of time before it’s going to get into the vents.”

“You got it,” Troy said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt.

His two friends disappeared and Troy climbed down, glad to be away from the stench of the Dumpsters but wishing he could trade places with them, safe up in the vent while he’d be face-to-face with a guy he knew must be evil to the bone. He walked along the building, past the BMW, and around the front corner to the mostly empty storefronts of the brand-new shopping center.

As he reached for the glass door in the front of Gumble’s office, a heavy middle-aged woman on crutches appeared, struggling through the inner door. She wore no cast on her leg, but her face was twisted in pain.

“Thank you, honey,” she said as Troy held the outer door for her. “You’re a gentleman.”

“You’re welcome,” Troy said. “Uh, did you hear anything in the AC vent when you were in there?”

The woman looked at him as if he’d asked her if she’d like to take a trip to the moon.

“No,” she said, drawing the word out long and low.

“Thanks,” Troy said, and headed inside. He walked carefully down the long hallway, put his ear to the door, and listened for a minute before taking one final deep breath and walking into Gumble’s office.

Gumble stood over a long box covering the top of his desk, packing away his skeleton. He wore the same lab coat, but this time with a red cardigan sweater over his crisp white T-shirt. His face looked even more like the color of a carrot than Troy remembered. The bleached-blond hair on his head contrasted sharply with the brown filaments sprouting from his neck and arms. After tucking the left arm of the skeleton into the box, Gumble looked up.

He stared for a minute with his cold blue eyes, processing who Troy was, before he pointed a finger and asked, “What are
you
doing here?”

TROY’S EYES DARTED TO
the air vent above Gumble’s desk. He could see nothing behind the grate except empty blackness until he moved his head to one side and spotted the tiny power light from the video camera. Troy knew it was showtime.

“I want to know why you lied about Seth,” Troy said, stepping toward the desk and pointing right back at the shady doctor. “Seth never used steroids!”

“Where is Seth?” Gumble asked, his eyes searching the doorway behind Troy.

“Not here,” Troy said. “You’re ruining his career and I want to know why.”

“You got a brass bottom, you know that, kid?” Gumble said, returning his glare to Troy. “Who do you think
you are, barging in here like this? I got an appointment coming in.”

“That was my friend who called you,” Troy said, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m your appointment.”

“I ought to send your mother a bill for this,” Gumble said. “You know that?”

“You ought to tell the truth is what you ought to do.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Seth is a good person,” Troy said. “He never did anything wrong except trust you. So you did lie, didn’t you?”

Gumble looked around and snorted. “Yeah, I lied. So what? You see this?”

Gumble wagged his head around, and Troy saw the skeleton wasn’t the only thing that had been boxed up.

“Seth Halloway isn’t the only one in hot water,” Gumble said. “It wasn’t my idea to smear him with dirt, but Peele gave me time to get out of town if I went along with it.”

Troy gave him a puzzled look.

“I’m out of here, kid,” Gumble said. “Peele dug a little too deep into my past, found out I lost my license back in Ohio, then Nevada, before I came here.”

“You’re not even a doctor?” Troy said.

“Sure I am, kid,” Gumble said with a crooked smile. “Once a doctor, always a doctor. So I bought myself a free pass by turning Seth in for juicing.”

“Juicing?” Troy said.

“Steroids.”

“But you didn’t give him steroids,” Troy said.

Gumble rolled his hands over, palms up, fingers splayed out wide. “I’m sure he did them sometime, kid. What’s the difference if I say he did them now?”

“You don’t know that,” Troy said.

“A lot of professional athletes do,” Gumble said.

“Well, Seth doesn’t and never has, except for an injury,” Troy said. “You lied.”

“Well, too bad for him,” Gumble said. “What can I say? Crap happens, kid. You’ll learn.”

“Peele asked you to lie?” Troy said. “That’s what you’re saying?”

“Of course he did,” Gumble said. “He made me lie. I got nothing against Seth Halloway, kid, but it’s every man for himself. Halloway’s got more money than Bill Gates, playing in the NFL all these years. He’s near the end, anyway. He doesn’t need it, but I do. I can’t afford any more trouble following me around like a dog. I’m sorry, kid. I’m not a bad guy.”

“Oh yes you are,” Troy said.

A distant banging noise sounded in the vent. Troy thought of his friends, but the sudden blast of air-conditioning told him the noise had come from the AC unit itself. But what came out of the vent next was worse than a noise.

Gumble froze and sniffed the air before crumpling his face.

“What the heck is that smell?” Gumble said, and turned to stare up at the vent, where the light on Nathan’s camera glowed like the red eye of a small rodent.