The Cut (16 page)

“The opposite-side tight end could even run a post pattern,” Reese went on, “going up about ten yards, then cutting out.…”

*   *   *

Through the dorm window two hours later, Daimon Foster watched the full moon in the night sky. He lay on the cot, hands folded across his chest, with his cell phone between his fingers. His roommate, Howard Jenner, another undrafted player who was hoping to nab a spot on special teams, was snoring softly on the other side of the room. Foster barely knew him.

Everyone else was asleep now, as it was almost midnight. He knew damn well he should be asleep, too. Adequate rest was essential during training camp, and the last thing he wanted to do was take unnecessary risks with his future. But he couldn't help it—he couldn't turn his mind off now. Not after the call from Alicia.

O'Leary ended their meeting just before eleven. He told all four of them that they were doing great, that he was pleased with their progress. Foster believed him—he seemed like a very decent man, very honest and straightforward. Daimon thought he was slightly ahead of the other two, Hamilton and Reese. Maxwell apparently was going to make the team regardless. He had two years left on his contract and knew what he was doing. The Giants wanted to replace T. J. Brookman, and Daimon had begun to believe he just might be the one they'd choose. He was by far the fastest of the three. Since he was the youngest and in the best physical shape, he had greater speed and quickness. He didn't have the distraction of Reese's rebuilt knee, nor the weight of Hamilton's years. He was just as smart as they were, too. Smarter, maybe. True, they had more experience. But what was experience except knowledge? He would learn in time. He had good studying habits, he was observant, and he had plenty of native intelligence.
Anything they can do, I can do better
. This had become his new motto.

When he first arrived, he was scared of his competition. Hamilton and Reese had already been there, knew their way around. He figured he was the long shot. Then he got on the field and began studying them, looking for places where he could outdo them—and he found many. Hamilton sometimes seemed winded. He didn't have the endurance of a young man. He compensated for it with excellent hands and remarkable knowledge of the playbook. He also knew every defender's trick imaginable, and he overcame them with a few of his own. But Daimon watched and learned.
Let the guy show off,
he thought several times in the relentless August heat.
The more he shows them, the more he shows me
. And Reese had lost a step or two since his glory days. Foster sensed the knee still worried him. Maybe it really was fully healed and fully functional, but Reese didn't seem to think so. Physical scars and mental scars were two different things. When the former healed, the latter often lingered. Maybe all Reese needed was for someone to walk up to him and say, “You're doing fine. Don't worry about the knee. It's working just the way it's supposed to.” If so, Daimon sure as hell wasn't going to give it to him. Perhaps that was a cold way of looking at it, but that was how he believed he had to be now. There was too much at stake here. Far, far too much.…

That damn phone call.

He tried to talk to Alicia every night before he went to sleep. A few times he was just too tired and couldn't even bring himself to unfold the phone. Once he even dozed off in midconversation. On this night, though, he was feeling pretty good. Two great practice sessions in which he'd made several solid plays, some words of encouragement from Coach Greenwood plus a few teammates who'd barely noticed him during his first few days of camp, and then the meeting with O'Leary. He was walking two inches off the ground as he headed back to his room. He couldn't wait to give Alicia the news.

But something was wrong; he could hear it in her voice. She was excited for him, but it was forced. She was distracted, upset. He knew her too well now. They weren't married, weren't even engaged, yet she was an open book to him.

“What's up?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, I know you better than that.” He was trying to keep his voice low, trying not to wake the snoring Jenner. “What's happened?”

She told him—two break-ins on their street in the last week. One woman was viciously beaten; an elderly woman, no less. Her house had been ransacked, all her silver and jewelry stolen. She'd been taken to the hospital, and Alicia hadn't heard any more. There was yellow tape around the house. The police were looking into it. They had no leads yet. Bunch of kids, someone said. A gang, most likely, but there were many in the area. There had been a spree of murders, too. All prostitutes. Some were comparing it to the famed Jack the Ripper killings of 1888 in London. Again, the police had no clues. The same kids? Maybe. Then again, there were a lot of loonies who came to the casinos for a few days, did their thing, and left. Could've been anyone. Atlantic City was a transient's mecca, as all casino towns must be. Solving crimes in such an environment was a near impossibility. Could it actually be getting worse? What happened to the civic improvements that were advertised by the politicians when the casino owners began building their glittering towers? What happened to the feel-good promises of a greater, happier, healthier Atlantic City? A place to have children, build a home, and receive your slice of the American dream? What happened to all of that?

Daimon's blood boiled as she spoke, his temperature rising with every grisly detail. The urge to run to his car and zoom down the New York Thruway itched like maggots under his skin. Alicia was a strong individual, but even she lost her composure a few times. She hitched and sobbed, struggling to keep her voice low so as not to disturb Daimon's mother. They were helpless down there. Helpless to defend themselves. A gang? Hell, even one punk would have no trouble taking the two of them. If they were willing to attack some old lady, what chance did Alicia have? She was a natural beauty, rarely wore makeup and didn't need to. Daimon was sure they'd seen her around the neighborhood, sure someone had tabbed her as a future target. Sometimes he wondered if he was the only reason they hadn't made a move yet. He was a big guy, and he had a few friends who were also big—and straight, and didn't like those little bastards any more than he did. They feared some form of retribution. But what if word got out that he wasn't around now? What if they noticed his car hadn't been in the driveway?
What if they already noticed and made their plans?
It could happen any day now—any minute.

His mind swirled with the grim possibilities, the images so stark and clear that he was more awake than ever. The break-in, the screaming, the beating and possible rape. His heart pounded, his tongue was dry. He couldn't sleep, even though he was exhausted in every way. He wanted to be down there, protecting both of them. It was the police's job, of course, but they couldn't be relied upon to do shit. They didn't waste their time on that side of town. Not while the zillionaires on the other side were paying their salaries in one way or another. The only two people in the world he truly loved were goddamn sitting ducks.

It was the discipline that kept him here—the discipline, and the beyond-his-years wisdom that made him realize the true answer to all these problems lay in this place at this time. If he earned a spot on the roster, he'd never have to worry about this kind of thing
ever again
. If he didn't, he be back down there in hell right alongside them. Going down there now would only provide a temporary solution to the problem. Making the team, however, would pay dividends forever. But the strength required to stay the course was like none he'd ever known. Meanwhile, he—
they,
really—would have to continue playing the odds and hope the numbers fell in their favor. Because that's all it really was—mathematics. Every time the sun sank into the west, the wheels began to spin and the cards began to fly in Atlantic City, and a very different form of gambling began, where the winners claimed their prizes in the shadows and the losers lost more than their money. So far they had been lucky. But Foster knew as well as anyone that luck ran out eventually.

He found his playbook and dragged his weary body into the bathroom.

15

“How has Krueger
been doing at fullback?” Gray asked, unscrewing the cap from his bottled water and taking a sip. He then set it down in the only bare spot left on the table, which was covered with a variety of spiral notebooks, looseleaf sheets, and open copies of both the offensive and defensive playbooks.

“Coming along pretty well,” said Tony D'Angelo, who was in his seventh year as the Giants' running backs coach. D'Angelo, with his baggy eyes and carefully trimmed silver mustache, was a quiet type, competent and utterly reliable. No pretensions, no delusions of grandeur. Most important to Alan Gray, he had never expressed any interest in being a head coach in the NFL, so Gray decided to keep him around when he took over the team.

“He looked pretty sluggish to me,” Gray said. “I saw him drop two handoffs last week.”

D'Angelo wasn't the least bit fazed. “He has some possession issues, no doubt. I'm not going to deny that. But he is also very quick, very tough, and very competitive. If I can get him past his fumbling problem, he can be first-rate.”

Gray ran a hand over his hair, then twiddled his pencil. “All right, keep me updated. What else on offense? How about receivers?”

Camp had been in session for just over one week, and this was the first day that Alan Gray had assembled the coaching staff to review the team's progress. Because of this, it was also the first day that he gave the players off. Most of them slept late to let their bodies heal, then fled into the town of Albany to hit the bars and restaurants. Hamilton and Reese chose to stay in their dorm rooms and study their playbooks. Daimon Foster wanted to do likewise, but instead hopped into his ancient Honda and zipped down to Atlantic City to make sure everything was all right. He brought the playbook with him anyway, which technically was a violation of team rules.

“Bowen is not the same guy we saw in the combines,” Greenwood said. “He seems slower than he was, and he sure as hell can't take a hit.”

“Another guy who pulled it all together in Indy,” added Kevin Jefferson, the team's receivers coach, “so he could get into a training camp. Another weight-room warrior. Knows how to look good just long enough to take the next step.”

“But on game day,” Greenwood went on, “he won't contribute much. I guarantee it.”

Gray, with his elbows on the table and his hands bunched together, adopted an air of profound introspection. He was playing God with this young man's future, so it was his dire responsibility to carefully consider all options before making a call. But it was all a façade—complete and utter bullshit. And everyone in the room knew it. They were so used to it by now, however, that no one displayed the slightest hint of dissension. Alan Gray knew as much about evaluating an offense as he did about bioengineering, and his capacity for compassion wouldn't register on a jeweler's scale.

“Okay, let's cut him,” he said gravely, as if the responsibility of making the decision hurt him deep down. “Have the Turk take care of it.”

Don Blumenthal had been a busy man already, which was fairly unusual within the first week or so of an NFL training camp. The heads typically started rolling around the third week, after the first preseason game. But Alan Gray considered himself a quick study, and he was, in truth, uniquely gifted at estimating what went on in the hearts and minds of others. Throughout his life, more than a few people had accused him of a certain degree of paranoia, but he knew better—that “paranoia” was in fact a finely honed instinct, almost a sixth sense. He knew within days which guys in camp were on the weak side of the spectrum, which eight or nine definitely had no shot at making the team. Sometimes it was due to a lack of physical talent, but that was rare; the combines, plus four years of college performance and piles of statistics, gave a pretty clear picture of a young man's physical abilities. Most of the time it was mental shortcomings—too easily distracted, unable to maintain consistency, bad attitude, not motivated enough, only here for the glory and the fame, only looking for a big payoff, etc. He had been in the league long enough to know a loser when he saw one, and he didn't want to waste time on losers. So it became a characteristic of Alan Gray's training camps that a handful of guys were out the door when other teams were just getting started with the paring process.

He twiddled his pencil some more and said, “Okay, I think that about covers everything, right? We've got to prep for the first preseason game this Saturday.” He gathered his books and papers into a neat stack and began to rise. “See you all back here after lunch, when we—”

“Hang on, Coach,” Dale Greenwood said. Jim O'Leary sat on his left. “We didn't go over the tight ends.”

Gray froze halfway up. He looked like he was waiting for a doctor to do a prostate exam.

“It'll only take a minute.”

The coach settled back into his seat. “Okay, tell me about the tight ends.”

“Well, strange as it might sound, we're having trouble figuring out which of the three new guys is the best.”

Gray had taken his defensive playbook back out and was absently flipping through the pages, but this made him stop and look up. “What's that?”

“Hamilton, Reese, and Foster,” Greenwood said, “they're pretty damn good.”

“All three?”

“Yeah. They ran the gassers faster than T. J.,” Greenwood told him.

“They
all
did?”

“Yeah. Not by much, but they did. Even Hamilton.”

O'Leary: “Reese hasn't dropped a ball yet.”

Greenwood: “Hamilton knows the whole playbook already. I think they all do.”