Hangman's Game (26 page)

“‘Booty Call'?” Too Big chimes in from across the table. “That way, whenever we needed to punt, we could say, ‘Time for Booty Call!'”

“That's it, man!” Cheat Sheet says, clapping his hands and then pointing at me. “You're Booty Call!”

“How about Hangman,” I say, before a consensus forms among this star chamber that I must, absolutely, for all eternity, be known as Booty Call. I explain about how punts have hang time, and hangmen work in gallows. And my last name is Gallow, as Jai has recently learned.

“That's no fun, man,” cries Cheat Sheet, holding his empty glass. “Booty Call!”

“I like Hangman,” I say.

Jai rubs his chin. “You really think you're badass enough to pull off Hangman?”

“You think I'm closer to pulling off Booty Call?” I ask drily.

“It should be Booty Call,” Jai says. “But we'll try Hangman, see how it handles.” He holds out his fist, and I bump it.

Jai has a porterhouse steak in front of him, which has been cut into chunks for family-style dining. The meat is already halfway gone. Jai sets the plate in front of me. The steak, cooked rare, is seeping blood.

“Eat up, Hangman,” Jai says.

“I don't eat red meat,” I say. “I'll order some fish.”

“You want to be a hangman and you don't eat meat?” Jai says, laughing.

“I read this health tip a few years ago,” I say. “The fewer legs an animal has, the better it is for you.”

Jai motioned for Qadra to swing a plate of smoked bratwurst our way.

“Here you go, Hangman,” Jai says. “Sausage don't have no legs.” He lets the line hang there a good couple of seconds before he follows it up with a wink. Thank goodness.

And here is Melody joining the party, in her snug pink top and black skirt, greeting me with a salacious smile and playfully bumping my shoulder with her hip. I had liked her in part because she seemed so uncomplicated, as easy to read as the name on a candy wrapper. Now I look at her and wonder what she really used to be in her Winking Oyster days—prostitute, drug dealer, pimp?

“Well, well,” she says. “Look who's back. Camp over?”

“Two more days,” I say.

“Let me guess,” she says. “You'd like a tonic water. Lemon, right?”

“Lime this time,” I say.

“I like that you're so unpredictable,” she says. “And can I assume all these steaks and sausages on the table are not part of your diet?”

I glance quickly at the menu. “I'll have a Caesar salad with lobster claws. Dressing on the side. Light dressing, if you have it.”

“Natch,” she says. And she is off.

“Now hold on a second, Hangman, I got a question for you,” Jai says. “You been talking about this diet rule, the fewer legs the better. Don't lobsters have more legs than…”

“Oh, shit,” says Cheat Sheet.

The pastor is looking toward the restaurant entrance, where Rizotti has just walked in, wearing a particularly ugly and ill-fitting brown suit. He is flanked by another man in a suit, and six uniformed officers.

The unit marches directly to our table.

“Hello, Gallow,” Rizotti says as they assemble before us. “Surprised to see you and JC here out together. You told me that you and this piece of shit here weren't exactly pals.”

His phrasing implies that I am the one who has called Jai a piece of shit. I wonder if he has learned that maneuver in a finishing school for pricks.

“The past few days,” I say, “have brought my teammates and I together.”

“You're either one of the most forgiving souls I've come across in ages,” Rizotti say, “or one of the dumbest.”

The detective turns to Jai. “You are under arrest for the murder of Samuel Sault,” he says. He then reads the Miranda warning, keeping on with his recitation even as Jai shoots up from his chair.

Two officers come behind to place Jai in handcuffs. Jai complies, even as his eyes burn. “I'm being framed,” he shouts, neck muscles straining, as he is marched out of the restaurant. “These bitches are framing me.”

The officers also cuff Cheat Sheet, who goes more peaceably, as befitting a man of God.

I stand up from the table and Rizotti steps close enough to me that I can smell the smoke on his breath. “Is this really your first time out to dinner with Carson?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“I bet he invited you, right?” he asks smugly.

“He did,” I say uneasily. I am discomforted that any assumption of Rizotti's might prove correct.

“Not that you'll ever thank me for it, punter,” Rizotti says, with a sickening grin. “But I bet I just saved your life.”

 

CHAPTER 19

I
T IS SUNRISE
on the second day of minicamp. I would normally be up by now, preparing to win the day. Instead, I pick my phone off my nightstand, sink back under my comforter, and set about reading the bad news.

The police searched Jai's car in the Stark's parking lot and found a rifle in the back. The serial number had been filed off, but preliminary ballistics tests showed that it was the same rifle that was fired at Samuel and Cecil. The police have it now: the damning physical object on which all their suspicions can be hung.

When Rizotti said that he had “saved my life,” he was implying that Jai had brought the rifle to Stark's because he intended to use it on me—which made no sense. I have been trying to protect Jai rather than incriminate him. Still, I think back to the workout at his house, and how Jai had the guys throw me into the pool with that weight vest on, and wonder if it was more than just pure dopiness. I imagine a headline: “Punter Dies in Freak Hazing Accident.” Subhead: “Carson: ‘I Never Even Touched Him!'”

But I remain convinced that Jai is being railroaded—if not by the police, then by someone else. That rifle had to have been planted, because if it is the murder weapon, then Jai would have to be an insane idiot to drive around with the central piece of evidence against him shoved in the trunk of his car.

The problem for Jai is that “insane idiot” is pretty much the jury pool's perception of him.

Cheat Sheet had been charged, too. According to an anonymous police source, the hope is that he or Jai will turn on the other in exchange for a plea deal. “Sooner or later, one of these two pieces of s— is going to wise up,” the source said.

The stories about Jai's arrest, I could not help but notice, do not mention my name at all.

I suppose that Jai's arrest is going to keep Cecil's name out of the news as well. A story speculating that he was the intended shooting target is now effectively obsolete.

Especially since, judging from the comments I am seeing online, any sense that Jai is innocent until proven guilty has disappeared from the conversation, and people are spewing forth with gleeful hatred. They are enjoying this too damn much.

It is nearly seven o'clock. I would usually be making oatmeal right now, but I just stare up at the whiteness of the Jefferson ceiling. The more I think about it, the more I realize that someone at Stark's has to be involved in this somehow. The shooting took place after we left the restaurant. The gun must have been planted while Jai and I were dining there. That feels like more than a coincidence.

I would bet Melody knows something, too. She is an operator. She's been in Philadelphia a year, and already she walks into shops and is handed things for free as if she's the Godfather. I told her we would get together after camp, but now I wonder if I should wait that long.

But for now, off to work, where Jai's arrest has surprisingly little effect on the Sentinels. Or at least, that's what Jerry Tanner, our masterful commander, wants the world to believe. At six o'clock he had sent out a team-wide text:

Reminder: Camp today at 9 a.m. sharp! No comments to media about non-football matters. No distractions!

The clown didn't even deign to mention Jai's name in his message.

Many of the guys show up at the facility wearing their
JC INNOCENCE PROJECT
T-shirts, a scene that is duly recorded by the television cameras. But players ignore the questions shouted across the parking lot fence, and once they're inside the facility, those shirts are put away, as is the topic of the arrest. A group of offensive linemen talk with loud and sarcastic enthusiasm about the weather, as if there were nothing more important going on.
Sunshine, no wind, what a perfect day for a practice! Great opportunity to get better!
The guys put on their pads—pissed, but ready to work as instructed.

Usually if Tanner breezes through the locker room at this time of day, he says little more than
Let's work hard today!
or some other vacuous exhortation. Today, though, he steps to the center and calls for attention. He has told us not to talk about Jai, but from the somberness of his eyes he looks ready to break his own command.

“I know there's a lot of reasons to be distracted today,” he says, posture crisp but his voice a little hoarse, and his eyes not meeting anyone's in particular. “But we need to keep going about our business. All of us have worked too hard to get here. If we fall behind this week, we will pay for it when the season begins. And then we'll be in an even worse place than we are now. We'll be failures, and no one will care about our excuses. You know why so many people fail? It's because it's so easy to do. It's so damn easy.” He says that last line a notch quieter on the dial. “There's only one way for us to get through this, and that's together.”

Unless you get cut. Then you're on your own, and good luck with that.

To cap off his speech, Tanner announces the schedule for the day, and it includes no punting whatsoever. In the
A.M.
session the kickoff units are practicing, and in the afternoon the only special teams phase getting work is the field goal unit—and Tanner prefers to use his quarterbacks as holders, so I will have nothing to do with that.

I do not even need to be here today.

I am able to make myself useful, at least, in the morning drills. While Woodward heads out to Field 3 to kick more practice balls, I offer myself up as an extra arm, to throw to tight ends or running backs or even linebackers when the quarterbacks are off doing their own drills. I have served in this function before, and I know the coaches appreciate it. Also, I don't mind showing that I still have quarterback skills, on the off chance that one of these days they might notice that, hey, the punter throws a pretty good ball, doesn't he?

Beyond that, working with the position players this morning has another upside. If Woodward is punting by himself while I am working with the rest of the team, that will only accentuate his feeling that he is an outsider and that maybe he doesn't belong here.

After the morning session, Woodward and I are at our locker room stalls, just a few feet apart. He is sitting on a stool, head down, mouth tight, forearms resting on his legs. He wanted to kick today even more than I did, to erase the memory of that mental gaffe on his last punt. He could feel his three days slipping away.

“C'mon, Woodman,” I say, throwing a scrap of athletic tape at his sullen mug. “Let me buy you some lunch.”

“Sure,” he says. “Thanks.” He comes along quietly. We eat in the cafeteria, which looks a lot like a standard college dining hall, except that all the diners are large males in shorts and T-shirts, and most are millionaires.

I load my plate with grilled chicken and steamed broccoli. Woodward selects a few slices of roast beef and a baked potato. Roast beef and potatoes happened to be my mother's standard Sunday night dinner, before I took my father's dietary restrictions a step further and cut out red meat.

We find a quiet spot at the end of a long table. There Woodward lets it all pour out.

“I don't know what happened yesterday,” he begins. “My focus was good all morning. Every practice kick, I was hitting all my marks. And then that last kick, I just spaced out for half a second. Spaced out? How does that happen, that you prepare for months and months, and then the moment comes and your brain takes a shit?”

His eyes show red in the corners. He has lost sleep over this. In his anguish he seems more genuine.

“The human mind,” I say. “It's a tricky thing.”

“Mine isn't,” he says. “At least, it didn't used to be.”

“Sometimes it's funny,” I say. “People do the absolute thing they should not do. Look at all the people who still smoke cigarettes, for instance.” Other examples: an agent who bets on football, or a coach who sleeps with the nineteen-year-old sister of one of his players. Or, for that matter, a father who has a couple of drinks and speeds his car down a winding road. Or a drive-by shooter who kills a twenty-one-year-old and becomes a murderer, when there had to have been a better way. “You ever figure out why, you should let them know.”

“I'll tell them about it when we're all down at the unemployment office together,” Woodward says with a forced laugh.

“I don't know how it works in Kansas, Woodward,” I say jokingly. “But around here, if you want to collect unemployment, you have to have a job first.” Woodward's eyes flash hurt. “Don't sweat it,” I add quickly. “I've been to enough camps to tell you this: you've got the goods, and you're doing just fine.”

Woodward looks unconvinced as he gazes out the cafeteria window toward the practice fields. “Tomorrow,” he says, “I'm going to do better than fine.”

*   *   *

After lunch, it is back out onto the field. I watch the offense and defense go at each other in eleven-on-eleven drills. The guys are practicing goal-line situations, the offensive and defensive players crash into each other in close-quarters combat. The hits are thunderous.

After fifteen minutes of this, a horn sounds, and then the offense and defense switch positions. Now the offense has the ball on its own one-yard line, needing to advance the ball out to avoid a safety and, at the very least, get some room for the punter.