Offside Trap Read online

  “Bait and switch?” I said.

  Ron frowned. He wasn’t convinced. Neither was I. He could distract her all right, but Jake’s room was just down the hall from the desk, so he’d practically have to get her in the back room for me to sneak past unseen. We were assessing our options when the door to Jake’s room opened. A white lab coat came out. In the white lab coat was the gorgeous blonde we’d seen in the elevator the previous day. She stopped at the ward desk and signed some papers. She gave the nurse a cute but officious smile that was not returned. If the nurses thought the male doctors were overpaid and oversexed buffoons, then a stunning woman doctor was positively the spawn of Satan. I looked at Ron. Now he was grinning. I was about to speak when Ron pulled me back around the corner.

  “She’s coming,” he said. I looked back toward the elevators. Just beyond was a door marked fire stairs. We hit the stairs at pace and danced down two at a time. We broke out onto the floor we had come in on, where the lovely doctor had headed off to x-ray on our last visit. We watched the elevators. One was going up. The other down. It hit our floor and didn’t stop. There was only the ground floor below us, so we hit the concrete stairs for one more flight. The elevator was closing as we launched out of the staircase. We were in a large lobby area, like the entrance to a mid-range business hotel. I spotted our good doctor heading down a corridor. We followed, as casual as could be. Two guys clearly not hospital staff, not quite sick-looking enough to be patients, casually wandering the halls. If I had seen us from the outside I would have pegged us for serial killers.

  The doctor went into a cafeteria. It was the bland, industrial space that hospitals like to serve food in. In college I read somewhere that Hippocrates believed that fresh food was the greatest medicine. In hospitals it had to be a revenue generator with a shelf life that could outlast a nuclear winter. The doctor got in line.

  “I’m going in,” I said.

  “Bottle of Zinfandel says you crash and burn.”

  “Done.”

  “California Zinfandel. Not that rubbish you passed off last time.”

  “California. Done.”

  I joined the line behind the doctor. She had long hair that shone like a showroom Ferrari, and she smelled fantastic. I waited as we shuffled past prefab sandwiches and something resembling Jell-O, for the good doc to glance my way. She didn’t. I went to Plan B and bumped her with my hip. She looked at me. Like I’d just driven a monster truck over a baby.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Really.”

  “Too focused on these delicious-looking Caesar wraps.”

  “Aha.” She turned away. That’s the thing about stunningly beautiful people. They perfect the art of the dismissal. I guess they get accosted a lot. Not usually by me. I have a stunning girlfriend, one who is proficient with most types of firearms, and she had to ask me out. But perhaps that’s how it goes. I wouldn’t know. It’s not that I look like the hind end of a puffer fish. I’m fit and I look as normal as the next guy. But I wouldn’t know about people who look like fine art. I couldn’t do the hip bump again, so I went to plan C.

  “You’re a doctor, right?” It was as original as any movie with the number four at the end of the title, but I was under pressure.

  “You think?” she said over her shoulder.

  “I think you’re looking after a friend of mine.”

  “Yeah? Well, he’s in good hands.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more. “Yeah, Jake Turner.”

  “Aha.”

  “How is he?”

  “I believe he’s stable. Beyond that I don’t know. I haven’t done rounds yet.”

  She had me there. I could hardly call her out and say, that’s garbage, I just spotted you up there. I’d look like a peeping Tom.

  “What did he take? It’s so unlike him.”

  “I tell you what.” She turned and looked at me. I sucked a gulp of air against my will. It gave me hiccups. She was stunning. Like goddess-stunning. Both sides of her face were perfectly symmetrical.

  “You come up when visiting hours start in”—she looked at her watch—“two hours, and I’ll go through his chart with you.” She smiled a perfect smile and turned to the cashier.

  “Chamomile tea, please, Rhonda.”

  Rhonda handed over a tea bag and a stainless pot of hot water.

  “Seventy-five cents, darlin’.” The doctor handed over a dollar, got change and dropped the quarter in a bucket labeled Toys for Tots. I ordered a coffee and watched the good doctor saunter over to a table by the window and sit. I took my coffee and shuffled back to Ron. He was smiling like we were still driving on the freeway.

  “She’s a tough nut. We’re not going to get anywhere there.”

  “I was thinking I’d like to try something from Lodi. Ancient vine.”

  “Let’s not get delusions of grandeur here, pal. A California Zin is a California Zin.”

  “Double or nothing. My choice of bottle. Anything from Cali.”

  I looked at the doctor sipping her tea, and then back at Ron.

  “You don’t want to do that to yourself.”

  “Wait here.”

  I almost couldn’t watch. It was like reality television. A train wreck in the making. Ron ambled over and leaned his hands on the chair opposite her. She looked up. He spoke. She listened. He spoke again. She spoke. He spoke again. She brushed her hair back behind her ear. Then she smiled. She pointed to the chair opposite. Ron sat down. If I’d heard the story in a bar I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. I was fairly certain I hadn’t been exposed to any class A drugs that would make me hallucinate. Ron and the doctor chatted for a good ten minutes. She pulled a napkin out from a steel holder on the table and wrote something on it, and then pushed the napkin over to Ron. Then I finished my coffee. It was tepid and burned but I didn’t care. I watched Ron hand the napkin back to the doctor, and she wrote something more, before returning it to him. Ron finally stood up, shook hands, and walked away. I slipped back into the corridor so she didn’t see me standing there. Ron came around the corner, looking like the Cheshire cat. He slapped my back and kept walking.

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “I’m thinking Napa. Opus One.” He kept walking so I followed.

  “How, what?”

  “She says he overdosed on methamphetamine. A new designer drug doing the rounds.”

  “Do they know what the drug is?”

  “She said the street name was Maxx. With two x’s.”

  It was the same drug Angel had mentioned. Ron read off his napkin as we walked back to the car.

  “Also, she wrote down this. Y hydroxybutyric acid.”

  “Which is?”

  “She said was something to do with increased growth hormone. She said it was at an unusually elevated level in Jake’s body, but that it might be normal as we all produce it but some more than others.”

  We reached the car, and I looked across the roof at Ron.

  “Or he could have been taking human growth hormones to make him a better lacrosse player. But the question is, how did that lead to taking Maxx under the bleachers.”

  Chapter Ten

  I PULLED OUT of the hospital and headed toward the university campus. Ron was smiling but he wasn’t telling. I waited for him to fess up but nothing came. I caved as I pulled onto the road between the main campus and the playing fields.

  “You cannot leave me hanging like this,” I said.

  “Hanging?” Ron grinned.

  “How did you get anything out of the doctor.”

  “Shaughnessy.”

  “Doctor Shaughnessy.”

  “Doctor Morgan, actually. Her first name is Shaughnessy.”

  “Jeez, that’s a hell of a moniker to wear.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “Fair enough. So how?”

  “I saw her last night at the club. Turns out she’s taking sailing lessons.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope. So I
offered to take her out sometime with a group of us.”

  “You don’t own a yacht.”

  “Yachts are easy to find, my friend. Lots of old crusties in Palm Beach who like sipping Chardonnay on the deck of their boat, but hate the thought of yanking on a sheet. Want someone to do it for them.”

  I wasn’t all that keen on the sound of yanking on a sheet either, so I just shook my head and grinned at Ron sitting there talking about old crusties. He’d played me. I wasn’t sure what he wanted more—to see me make a fool of myself, or a bottle of good red wine. We passed a sign stuck in the grass near the fields, directing away teams to the parking lot near the gym. I followed it and took a spot in the shadow of Kim Rose’s office. I walked Ron down to see the bleachers where Jake Turner was found. He stepped under the shadow of the stand and looked around at nothing. When he came out he was quiet. We walked back along the sidewalk, by the road. We were headed for the sports fields. We didn’t get there. Not straight away. I didn’t see the black pickup roll up from behind. It pulled level with us, but on the opposite side of the road. The driver’s-side window came down. Officer Squarehead was at the wheel.

  “Quick word.” It didn’t come out like a question. Ron and I waited for a minivan hauling a cargo of away team players for some sort of sport, and then ambled across the road. Officer Squarehead put his flashers on and got out. He came around the front of his truck at a slow march. He wore Wranglers and a black T-shirt that rippled across his taut chest.

  “Officer Steele.”

  “Mr. Jones.”

  “I hadn’t pegged President Millet as a work on the weekends kind of guy.”

  “This isn’t about President Millet.”

  “Oh?”

  “Who’s this?” he said, looking at Ron.

  “This is my associate, Ron Bennett.”

  Ron offered his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Officer.”

  Steele remain standing ramrod straight. Ron dropped the hand.

  “What can we do for you, Roger?” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ramjet.”

  “What?”

  “The chin? Forget it. What’s up?”

  “I know you are investigating Jake Turner.”

  “You’re right on top of things, aren’t you.”

  “And President Millet says you’re working for the family.”

  “He does.”

  “But you and I both know that’s not the case.”

  “That so?”

  “I spoke with Jake’s father last night. He doesn’t think much of you.”

  “He doesn’t think much of anything not wrapped in Ivy.”

  “Says he didn’t hire you. Something about hell freezing over.”

  “I really didn’t give him credit for such a vivid turn of phrase.”

  “So who are you working for?”

  “That would be telling.”

  “Gotta ask. Don’t matter.”

  “This the bit where you tell me to keep the hell out of your investigation?”

  “No. This is where I tell you I want you on my investigation.”

  I hadn’t seen that coming. I traded surprised Muppet faces with Ron.

  “I thought you said on your investigation.”

  “These kids smell a cop at a thousand paces. After the Turner OD, lips are closing. We can’t get any momentum.”

  “You think I can?”

  “You’re not one of them, but you’re not one of us. They might open up to you.”

  “You really have donut.”

  “I’m a blink away from raiding every party in a twenty-block radius of this campus.”

  “President Millet won’t like that.”

  “I don’t work for President Millet. I work for the city.”

  “That why you’re on campus, out of uniform, on a Saturday?”

  “I do campus security. Most of the PD boys do. That’s got nothing to do with the investigation.”

  “I’m sure President Millet doesn’t see it that way.”

  Steele stood at ease and said nothing.

  “So I have to ask myself, why would I bother sharing anything? I have a client. I don’t work for the city and, as you point out, I sure as hell don’t work for Millet.”

  “Let’s try it this way,” said Steele. “You don’t share intel with me, I will tell President Millet and he will have me remove you from campus and have you charged with trespass if you return. Then your client, whoever that is, can read about the case in the newspaper.”

  I curled my lip and nodded my head. “Checkmate,” I said. “Let’s see what I can find out.”

  “Right,” said Steele. He chinked his chin to me, and then Ron. I thought he was about to salute. But he spun on his heel, marched around the massive grille of his pickup and slid in. The shocks groaned at his mass. He was one big, strong unit. The black truck peeled away and headed around the campus, obeying the 15 mph speed limit.

  Ron looked at me. “You always bring the best out in folks.”

  “I’m a people person. Let’s go watch some sports.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE PLAYING FIELDS were a mass of a human activity. There were teams in various sports, some warming up, some playing, some waiting to play. There were coaches and support staff and a handful of spectators. There were no bleachers or stands, just white lines on massive expanses of green. Everyone stood along the sidelines. It was my childhood writ large, minus the overcoats and scarves. It took a while to locate the match I wanted. I heard Coach McAllister before I saw him. That solid New York accent should have felt out of place in the mild morning sunshine, but didn’t. Ron and I ambled to the opposite sideline from McAllister. The away team sideline. I’d never watched a game of lacrosse before. It was fast and physical. Someone had once described it to me as being like field hockey with no regard for where you put your stick. I found it closer to rugby with weapons. There was more blood in the half we watched than in a season of college football. The premise seemed to be that goals were scored at either end, like soccer, with sticks like hockey, but the sticks had little nets at the end, which allowed players to pick up the ball and run with it, and then fling it with daunting power to a teammate or at the goal. And they flung their bodies at each other with blatant disregard for their health or lack of padding. I started to wonder if Jake Turner hadn’t wound up unconscious under the bleachers as a result of playing lacrosse.

  When the game finished the players were spent. Physical contact is way more draining than people imagine. In football there was a lot of contact but a lot of stoppages. There were also offensive and defensive teams, so there was recovery time. And while lacrosse was more random crashing than full-on tackles, the game was played at a continuity and pace that the average person couldn’t comprehend, let alone perform. I wondered how even athletes of this caliber could do it. At least unaided. The players shook hands. From what I could tell, the home team had won. There was no scoreboard. This was Division II lacrosse. In parts of Texas they have better facilities for Pop Warner football. The players gathered their stuff and ambled to a change shed to shower. They grabbed a variety of colored sports drinks from a plastic picnic table as they headed inside. Each player seemed to have his preferred bottle. Coach McAllister went into the shed, I guess to give a rah-rah speech and hand someone an MVP. He paid us no attention. I was okay with that. I was hoping to speak to one of the players.

  Ron and I milled about the abandoned sport drinks table. We watched from a distance a women’s soccer match. They all looked like girls to me. I looked for Angel but couldn’t see her, until I noticed a blond girl running from defense through the midfield. I was looking for a white uniform, but her match day kit was dark blue from head to toe. She had a low center of gravity and good ball control. Although she didn’t look Kim fit, she didn’t seem to drop off the pace at all.

  After a time the lacrosse players began wandering out in dribs and drabs. I wasn’t sure who was from which team. The
y were all now in civvies. Some wore letter jackets. Most did not. Then I saw the hoodie. Black. Hood up despite the warm day. Mopey face hiding underneath. The kid from the waiting area outside Jake’s hospital room. So he was a teammate. Ron and I approached as he walked away from the change rooms toward the main campus. He saw us coming but pretended he didn’t.

  “Hey,” I said. “I know you, don’t I?”

  “I doubt it,” mumbled the kid.

  “Sure I do. You’re the guy who let his buddy OD under the bleachers and then left him there to die.”

  The kid turned to me in a flash. “The hell I did.”

  “Then who did?”

  The kid frowned at me from inside his hood like the evil emperor from Star Wars.

  “You’re that guy. The one at the hospital.”

  “See, I told you we were acquainted.”

  “I can’t talk to you, man.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, seriously.” He began walking away.

  “You want to do it somewhere quiet, or you want me to drop in on every class you have for the rest of semester and call you out?”

  He stopped and looked at Ron.

  “Who’s the granddad?”

  “He’s with me. He’s cool.”

  The kid looked around. “This ain’t a quiet place.”

  “It’s your campus. You tell us where.”

  Where turned out to look like a tavern in a barrio. The building was exposed cinderblock. The front was open to the elements. Latino music and charred meats wafted out onto the street. We walked in, following the kid’s lead. In the back was a small lawn, surrounded on all sides by more gray cinderblock. The rush of the turnpike provided the backdrop to the Latin rhythms. A Latina with curves like the Monaco Grand Prix track came out to us.