Offside Trap Read online

  “You never thought about it?” Her face told me she wasn’t buying a word of it.

  “I’m not saying that. I thought about it. Like you say, I was in college, for crying out loud. But it never felt right.”

  “So why did you spend so much time together?”

  “We were both student-athletes. We appreciated how much effort that took. Games, practice, classes, study. We were both trying to succeed on all levels, and build sporting careers. We had a lot in common then.”

  “What about now?” She got up and cleared away the breakfast dishes.

  “Now, I don’t know what we have in common. There’s a big gap there. We’ve had lives since then. Both been pro athletes, and now we’re not. So everything we have in common, maybe it’s behind us.” I looked out toward the water. The sky was still bright and clear to the west, but the humidity was creeping up, foretelling of the activity offshore. “What exactly are you saying?” I said, looking back at her.

  “I’m saying that maybe you don’t know her like you once did. Maybe, and this is just maybe, she’s using your past relationship to get what she wants. And despite what she has pleaded, maybe her reasons are more self-serving.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I.” She ambled behind me and rubbed my shoulders. “I don’t want you to think I’m poisoning you against her, or saying your friendship wasn’t special. But you said it, there’s been a decade and a half of life since you knew her, and you’re an investigator. So maybe you should investigate those years. You aren’t the same person you were back then. Maybe she’s not either.”

  I sat at the counter while Danielle took a shower. I resolved that there were too many women in my life at the moment. Life was a complex patchwork on a good day. All these women were making it an unnavigable torrent. I further resolved that Danielle was a lot smarter than me and I must listen to her. I didn’t feel it in my best interest to let her know of this resolution, so I resolved to keep it to myself. Which led me to my final resolutions. First, that I needed to talk with Angel and mend fences if possible, for her sanity as well as the likelihood that I would need her assistance again. And second, I needed to know more about Kim Rose and the years I’d missed. Somewhere in those years lay the key to unlocking whatever the hell was going down on that campus.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THERE WAS AN accident on I-95 in Lake Worth, so I dropped Danielle at home and cut across to the turnpike. First stop was Angel’s dorm. I figured the best time to catch a college student in dorms was first thing in the morning. Especially one who had probably spent the night drowning her sorrows. I parked in the same slot I had a few hours previously. This time I backed in, and didn’t hit the fob. I didn’t fancy someone stealing my Mustang, but if Officer Steele or the donut patrol happened by I didn’t want to be fumbling around in making my getaway. I left the car and hit up Angel’s dorm. My knock was met with a resounding echo of silence. I hesitated a moment, and then turned to leave. As I did I saw a shadow shoot across the bottom of the door. I stopped and waited for the door to open. It didn’t. I knocked again, hard but with suitable restraint. No dice. Someone was inside, but they weren’t playing ball. I strode back down to the parking lot and looked to the east. The sky was bursting dark and gray, playtime over and the weather ready for business. I figured I had a couple of hours before the rains came. I walked over to the playing fields rather than drive. I thought I might catch Angel on the practice field, if it wasn’t her hiding in the dorm. I didn’t find her. I didn’t find anyone. The fields were vacant, open spaces waiting for something to happen. It seemed such a waste. I crossed over the speed hump toward the gym. The lot was half full. Gym junkies like to get their licks in early, even in college. I strode up the stairs and went into Kim’s office without knocking. I figured if the kid was doing something in the office that he shouldn’t have been, he needed the lesson. He wasn’t. He was behind his desk, wearing a fresh polo with a panther on the breast, playing solitaire or entering the launch codes or something equally mundane. He stared at the screen, his face as animated as white china. He looked up. I didn’t parade across to Kim’s office this time. I wasn’t in so much of a hurry. The kid looked up.

  “She’s not in.” He looked at Kim’s office door. “You wanna wait?”

  “You expect her?”

  “Not for a while. She’s in budget meetings over at admin.”

  “Sounds like a hoot.”

  “She won’t be in a good mood when she gets back.”

  “Just tell her I dropped by.”

  I skipped back down the stairs and headed across the campus. I called Ron and got his voicemail, so I left him a message asking him to do some sniffing around about Kim and President Millet. The clouds were gathering like dark phantoms, and I revised my early estimate of the dumping by noon. It was coming. The moisture in the air made the grass on the quad stand to attention. I wandered back toward my car. It seemed no one wanted to chat with me today. I considered giving Angel’s door another try. As I stepped past the Mustang I felt something amiss. One of those things your eye sees so quickly that your brain processes it as a feeling rather than a visual. I stepped back to the car and bent down. The door wasn’t closed all the way. It sat out an inch from the rest of the body, like a wrinkle. I stood and looked around me, about the parking lot. Nothing moved and I saw no one. I looked back at the door, and then I pulled it open. The seatbelt hadn’t collected fully in, and the buckle had fallen in the door well blocking the door from closing. Which was all reasonable and easily explained, except for one thing. It was the passenger side door. I ran my mental fingers through the filing cabinet in my brain until I was convinced that I had not driven all the way from Danielle’s home, along the turnpike, cruising at a breezy eighty, with a slightly ajar door. I was pretty sure the Mustang had a warning light or a buzzer or something for that. Regardless, it would have made a hell of a noise.

  I opened the door all the way and crouched. Lay my hand on the floor mat and looked under the seat. I had no idea what I was looking for. A bomb seemed way too James Bond for a sedate college campus, but it was the kind of thought that caught like wildfire on a hot summer day. Someone had been in my car. I had nothing worth stealing in it, other than the car itself. I opened the caddy between the seats and found tissues and a beer cozy from the Tiki Bar in Fort Pierce. I flipped down the sun visors and found nothing but a warning about the airbag. I half sat on the seat and pushed the button to drop the glove compartment open. Then I found something. Someone had left a little gift. I pulled a plastic bag out and held it up. It was full of Maxx tablets. There must have been five hundred or more. I glanced around the lot and gave myself a moment to process. I felt an undeniable urge to go to the bathroom.

  Then I moved. I jumped across the center console into the driver’s seat, pulling the passenger door closed as I did. I hit the gas before the first piston roared to life. Floored it and screamed out onto the road. I was thankful it was early Monday morning. Not much foot traffic, no one making their way to or from the playing fields. My tires gave a squeal as I spun into the gym parking lot. I hit my spot and lunged out. This time I slammed the door and hit the fob as I ran. Into the gym and up the stairs. Past Kim’s office. I recalled the women’s bathroom at the end of her corridor. I assumed there would be a men’s as well. I reached the end of the corridor and hit the fire escape. I was wrong, no men’s room. Probably at the other end of the building. Or on another floor. To hell with it, I decided, standing there with ten to life’s worth of class A drugs. Going into the ladies’ bathroom was certainly the lesser of two evils. I burst in.

  It looked pretty much like a mens’ room, just more stalls and fewer urinals. Dropping to the floor I saw no feet, so assumed I was alone. I lunged into a stall and tipped the bag of drugs into the bowl. I hit the lever and watched the pills circle around the bowl, mocking me, refusing to leave. Then they were sucked away. As the cistern refilled I tore the bag into piec
es and then I flushed them as well. When I was happy nothing was going to swim back out for an encore, I went to the sink and washed my hands like I was shooting for employee of the month at McDonald’s. Then I dried myself and looked in the mirror. I was sweating at the brow. My eyes looked hollow and dark. I needed some sleep, beer, and a vacation in Mexico. Not necessarily in that order. I sucked in a deep breath through the nose, held it, and out through the mouth. Then repeated it twice. My heart rate slowed. After splashing my face and wiping it, I wandered back downstairs.

  I wondered if I had overreacted. I had next to no explanation as to why or how the Maxx had been deposited in my car, but I felt good about not having it around should I run into Officer Steele. It was nothing more than gut instinct, but I recalled a three-two pitch when I was in college, playing for Miami at the College World Series in Omaha. My catcher had signaled twice for a slider, to a guy who would be expecting a slider but loved the inside fastball. I waved the catcher off a third time. He threw his hands up as if to say, hell it’s your career. Bases were loaded, the tying run on third, the leading run on second. I threw the heater. It was gut. The batter ate them for dinner so every man and his dog knew the safe pitch was the slider. My fastball hit the catcher’s mitt with a thud, and we went to the CWS final. Sometimes you go with your gut. My gut had also been hit out of the park on numerous occasions since. You win some, you lose some. I went with the Omaha memory.

  My gut was spot on. I stepped out into the purple light, the storm clouds swirling overhead. Officer Steele, this time the police officer version, was standing next to my car. His patrol unit, the Dodge Charger, was parked askew across the roadway. His rotund partner was leaning against the fender. He covered the part that said 911. And half of the rest of the car. I walked up to Steele. He looked awfully smug for a man with a square head.

  “Mr. Jones, I believe you are trespassing.”

  “You want to make a second mistake?”

  “Second mistake?” he said. His eyes narrowed.

  “You did choose that haircut, right?”

  “You’re under arrest. Harris, put the cuffs on.” The big guy pushed away from the fender and the car groaned.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “You’re not in your sexy little security uniform right now. You’re a cop today.”

  “That’s why I can place you under arrest.” The fat cop bobbled over to me. He walked like a buoy in rough seas. They were playing a game and playing it badly. Steele thought he knew what he was doing, but he was wrong. Too much time on an insular college campus had caused him to think that the real world wasn’t looking anymore. My old mentor, Lenny Cox, once told me that a university should be a tributary to society, not a sanctuary from it. He’d have laughed his red head off at these clowns. I put my hands out in front to accept the cuffs. At this point it didn’t matter that they were wrong and illegal in their approach. Resisting would have made things worse for me, not better. But I wasn’t letting Dumpy cuff me behind my back, which is exactly how he should have done it, if he weren’t sloppy. But he was. He clicked the cuffs around my outstretched wrists. I could hear him wheezing with the effort. I was certain I knew which of those two kept the patrol car spotless.

  “Get his keys,” said Steele.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I need to search your car.”

  “You must be joking,” I said. “First false arrest for a non-trespass, then you search my car, illegally.”

  “I can search a vehicle.”

  “Geez, did you start at the Academy yesterday? You don’t have probable cause.”

  “We have a credible witness.”

  “Let me guess, an anonymous tip-off.”

  “His keys.”

  The donut muncher fumbled in my chinos for my car keys. I winked at him. His expression didn’t change. He permanently looked like he been slapped and didn’t know why. He came out with my keys, and then waddled them over to his partner. Steele started in the front. Repeated what I’d done. Under seats, lifted floor mats, the center console. He checked the ashtray. It had an emergency fifty stuffed in it. He didn’t take the fifty, just pushed the tray closed. So he was a little bent but not completely dishonest. He rummaged around the rear, and then checked the trunk. His partner, Harris, perched the edge of his butt on the side of the passenger seat. It was like watching a circus elephant sit on a dining chair. He couldn’t twist his body around so he flipped the glove compartment open and stuffed his hand in. He wasn’t able to see from his angle, so he blindly lifted registration papers, the car’s manual and repair log, a notepad. I wished I had left a mousetrap in there. He fumbled about for a few seconds and then flipped the compartment shut. He levered himself up like a champagne cork out of a bottle. There was a wheeze but no pop.

  Steele came around from the trunk, avoiding eye contact with me. He could see his day, which had started with such promise, going down the gurgler like month-old buttermilk. He looked at Harris, who shrugged. Steele stood back at attention and surveyed the car. There were lots of places less obvious to hide drugs, but his intel source hadn’t said they’d be hidden. They were supposed to be easy to find. Some might have suggested I was poking the bear but I found myself smiling like I just won the grand prize in Powerball. I wondered if Steele would follow through on his trespass story, or give up altogether. The two of them stood looking at the car like tourists arriving in Key West expecting to find sandy beaches.

  “It’s in the glove compartment, you loser.” The yell came from the direction of the quad. We all turned and saw Angel.

  “Young lady, go back to your dorm,” said Steele.

  She crossed her arms in defiance.

  “This just keeps getting better for you, Steele.”

  He shot me the kind of look that a batter gave when I walked him by heaving a fastball into his forearm and we both knew I’d done it on purpose. Steele turned to his round partner.

  “Did you check the glove compartment?”

  “Yeah,” Harris said, uncertainty etched across his face. Steele didn’t buy it. I wouldn’t have either. He marched to the door and sat in the seat. He pulled everything out of the glove compartment and placed it all on his lap. He went through it methodically, checking the pockets in the owner’s manual. He found nothing and set aside the documents. Then he reached deep into the compartment. I figured he was looking for a secret stash or hidy-hole. He was disappointed. Steele sat up, ramrod straight, and looked out the windshield. I didn’t know if he was tossing around places I could have hidden the drugs he knew to have been planted there, or if he was playing through the demise of his career in his mind. He swiveled out and planted his feet, then stood to attention and marched over to me.

  “Let me see your hands,” he said. I knew where he was going with it. We both knew the drugs were gone, and we both knew I had gotten rid of them. He was hoping to find drug residue on my hands. He must have thought I’d worn my I’m with stupid T-shirt, the one with the arrow pointing up, under my shirt, if he figured I’d fall for that. I held up my hands. He didn’t touch them; rather he bent at the waist, putting his face right down to them, like he was Lord Squarehead introducing himself to the fair maiden with a kiss of the hand. But he didn’t kiss. He sniffed. Long and hard so his back rose up toward me. He wouldn’t have smelled fresher hands in a dentist’s office. He stood up and looked at me. His face was still impassive, like he was on the parade ground, but his eyes betrayed him. He was deeply unhappy.

  “I still have you on trespass,” he said.

  I laughed. I probably shouldn’t have, and I knew I really was poking the bear now, but when something is so moronically funny, it’s involuntary. All these guys needed was to bump into each other and they’d be the Keystone Kops. The laughing didn’t improve his mood. His eyes narrowed and his chest heaved, and I readied myself for a sucker punch to the guts.

  “Mr. Jones?” came the voice from behind me. Steele flicked his eyes over my shoulder. I glanced arou
nd. Kim Rose’s assistant stood behind me. I made a mental note to learn the kid’s name.

  “What do you want?” barked Steele.

  “Ms. Rose wanted to let Mr. Jones know she was running late for their meeting.”

  It was like the coyote had dropped an anvil on Steele’s head. The color, such as it was, washed from his face.

  “What are you talking about?” Steele said.

  “Mr. Jones has a meeting with the athletic director.”

  Steele frowned. “What for?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I just fill the calendar. I don’t sit in on the meetings.”

  A tsunami of thoughts must have crashed around inside Steele’s head. I knew the feeling. Those days when you just knew the gods were against you. When you pitched it to a guy who could never hit a curve and was batting .005 for the season, and you throw the perfect curve, on the outside half of the plate, tantalizing in its trajectory, then at the last, dipping, sinking like the Titanic, and your batter, with no clue and no hope, sneezes as he brings the bat forward, and head down, eyes closed, hands flailing wildly, makes perfect contact with the ball and sends it out of the park along the first base line. Yes, I’ve had days like that. So I knew the look on Steele’s face. Whether to barrel on, a small band of hardy souls in a battle against the mighty army, for a famous victory; or beat a hasty retreat, lick wounds and live to fight another day. He looked at Harris.

  “Let him go.” Harris bobbled forward and unlocked the cuffs. I had to give Steele his credit. He’d been beat, embarrassed and made to look like Millet’s pet corgi, but he still stood at attention, took my gaze and held it. When Harris was done I rubbed my wrists like I’d been cast in a dungeon for ten years, and Steele stepped forward.