Offside Trap Read online

  “Cerveza?” We all nodded. She disappeared and then quickly returned with three cans of Tecate, and a wooden box. She dropped the three beers on the plastic green table we sat at and opened the box. Inside was an assortment of cigars. The kid and I shook our heads. Ron twiddled his fingers in the air, and then selected one that was the width of a pickle. The woman smiled. The gold tooth was a nice touch. Ron popped the cigar in his shirt pocket.

  “For laters.”

  We all took a slug from our beers. They were icy cold. Cold beers, no view and an ID policy that consisted of being able to order beers en espanol. This was my kind of place.

  “So, kid,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Christian.”

  “You want to lose the hood, Christian? It’s hot out here.”

  “I’m good.”

  “There’s prison-quality cinderblock on all four sides. No one will see you. Your fashion cred is safe.”

  Christian pulled the hood back off his head. He needed a decent haircut, but he looked an okay kid.

  “So tell us about Jake.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “At the end.”

  Christian frowned, and then sipped his beer. “Okay, so he OD’ed.”

  “How?”

  “Took too much of something.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Pretend I don’t.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sipping and sliding his eyes to Ron.

  “Pretend I’m not an idiot,” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Pretend I’m not an idiot with a license to carry a concealed weapon.”

  He went to take another sip but stopped halfway to his mouth.

  “You have a gun?”

  “Let’s keep on point, Christian.” The truth was I did not have a gun on me. I did have a license to carry, however. My gun was in a safe in my office. I don’t like guns. I carry them as infrequently as possible. Despite what the NRA says, people don’t kill people. People with guns kill people. I can count the number of fistfight deaths I’ve seen on one finger.

  “Okay, so I don’t know, for sure. But I’m guessing it was Maxx.”

  “What’s that?” I played dumb and ignorant better than Olivier.

  “It’s meth, dude. A party drug. It’s all the rage.”

  “And Jake was a user?”

  “You don’t use Maxx. It’s a party drug.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you take it at parties.”

  “But it’s addictive.”

  “You drink beer?”

  “Even Ron here can’t drink enough beer in a sitting to OD.”

  “It’s true,” said Ron. “It takes years. Decades even.”

  “So was Jake a user?”

  Christian sucked on his beer.

  “Permit to carry, remember,” I said.

  “No. He wasn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You don’t know Jake, do you?”

  “I’m getting an impression.”

  “Jake would never do hard drugs.”

  “Why?”

  “Cause that stuff will kill your game. Jake was all about lacrosse, dude. Like, obsessive. He was a great player, but he was more than that. He lived it. He was a perfectionist. Trained like a dog. He’d never take something that would hurt his game. Never.”

  I took a sip of my beer. “So you said he’d never take a hard drug. What kind of drug would he take?”

  “Dude, you’re not listening. He wasn’t into drugs. He was all about performance.” There was that word again.

  “Some drugs enhance performance, don’t they, Christian?”

  His eyes went as wide as hubcaps. I’d have loved to have played him in poker. In ten years time, when he actually had some money.

  “Did Jake take any performance-enhancing drugs?”

  “What? No!” It was about as convincing as the acting in I dream of Jeannie.

  “Let me ask a completely different question than that. Have you ever taken performance enhancing drugs, Christian?”

  “What? No!”

  “Are you sure? And if you say ‘what, no,’ one more time I will exercise my right under Florida stand-your-ground laws and shoot you.”

  “What? No! I mean, hell. No. I mean don’t shoot me, dude please.” I put my hand on my hip.

  “Oh, no. Please, no. Seriously, Jake never used. Never. He sold the stuff but he never used.”

  I took my hand from my hip and sipped my beer.

  “Oh, man, please don’t turn me into the NCAA. My mom will kill me.”

  “I’m not going to tell your mom, Christian. Just tell me about the drugs.”

  He chugged the rest of his can of beer.

  “Is there another one going?” he said. Ron nodded and went into the bar.

  “You can’t tell anyone, okay?”

  “I’m a private investigator. This is privileged information.” I didn’t bother telling him there was no real PI privilege under Florida law, and if there was, he wasn’t my client so he wouldn’t be covered.

  “That’s true? Really? Okay. So Jake was the guy, you know. The leader. The captain. The best player. But he was a machine. He was like, driven. I think his old man messed him up good. But no one could keep up with him. Guys nearly died trying. We’re a Division II team at a Division II school. Jake, he was Division I. He would’ve been a star at Syracuse. Anywhere. We couldn’t keep up with him.”

  Ron returned with three fresh beers. Christian took a long slug. “It drove him a little nuts. He should have been at a better school, but he wouldn’t leave. So he found a way to be better. For us all to be better.”

  “Go on.”

  Another slug of beer. “PEDs, dude. Like you said. First it was guys who were DL. You know, disabled list.”

  “I know DL.”

  “So Jake, he turns up with this stuff to help them heal faster. Then guys are getting bounced, like they get run into and knocked down in the tackle. Jake comes in with something to make them stronger, bigger. Then most of us just can’t keep the pace, so he turns up with blood to improve our endurance. Blood, dude. Like a vampire.”

  “Where did he get this stuff?”

  “I don’t know. And please don’t shoot me, ’cause I’m serious. I don’t know.”

  “What about the coaches? What did they say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But you must’ve been swimming in drugs.”

  “No, dude. It was all on the QT. The quiet.”

  “I know QT.” The kid must have read Elmore Leonard for American lit.

  “Each player was tailored. Get just what he needed. Nothing more. Jake was serious about that. It wasn’t for fun. It was for the team.”

  “But you’re telling me the coaching staff knew nothing?”

  “Of course not. We were winning.”

  I nodded. I sipped my beer. Then I sipped again. Killing time. Avoiding the question I had to ask. I put my beer down.

  “So what about Director Rose? She didn’t know?”

  “You hear what I’m saying? Nobody knew. Nobody wanted to. We won a regional title last year. Never been done before at this school. This year, we’re going for the big one. NCAA.”

  “So how did you avoid detection? The USADA, the NCAA? You must have been tested.”

  “You think if they can’t catch Tour de France cyclists they’re going to catch Division II lacrosse? No one cares, dude. We’re not on TV. There’s no money. No one cares.”

  “The NCAA cares.”

  “You think? I don’t know, maybe they do. But I never been tested. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Never? Not once?”

  “Never.”

  “What did you take?”

  He sipped his beer and looked at Ron again.

  “Doesn’t leave this bar, Christian.”

  “HGH mainly. I was too small. Needed to bulk
up.”

  “I know that drug well. You know what that drug does to you?”

  “Nothing proven.”

  “You happy being the guinea pig?”

  He shrugged.

  “Here’s what I don’t get. You good enough to go pro?”

  Christian laughed.

  “What? You’re not?”

  “No. I’m not. But who’d want to?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? There is a pro league. I’ve seen it on ESPN 3 or something.”

  “Jake could make Major League Lacrosse. But you know what the best player in the league earns? The LeBron James, the Peyton Manning?”

  “No.”

  “About eighteen thousand a year. That’s one-eight. You earn more at Starbucks.”

  “Seriously? That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So why do it? Why train and work so hard? Why take drugs, for crying out loud?” I got it in major sports. The money in baseball, football, basketball. Huge sums of money made guys desperate. But I didn’t understand why anyone would do it for zero payoff. Christian sucked on his beer.

  “I’m serious, Christian. Why do drugs?”

  He put the beer down and looked me in the eyes for the first time since we’d arrived.

  “To win.” We looked at each other for a long moment. I understood but found it insane at the same time.

  “To win? Who taught you such a cockamamie idea?”

  “Director Rose,” he said. I felt my cheeks flush. Then a sound bellowed from Christian’s pocket. A screaming, humorless noise: Yo Fa Momma, Yo Fa Momma, Yo Fa Momma, Yo. He tussled with his trousers until he pulled the phone from his pocket. It was massive. Mobile phones had started huge, gotten tiny, and then gotten huge again.

  “This is Christian,” he said into the device that looked like the television set in my grandmother’s living room.

  “What? When?” He listened, and then, “Okay.” He hung up. He looked at the phone. He looked at Ron. He looked at me. Then he spoke.

  “Jake’s dead.”

  Chapter Twelve

  THE MEMORIAL SERVICE was held in the main quad of the college on Monday evening. Evidently Jake Turner had been a big man on campus because the quad was full of students. The previous days had seen a field’s worth of flowers, cards and notes left in tribute at the base of the bleachers where Jake had been found. Word was that President Millet wasn’t keen on the memorial service being held on campus grounds. What he was keen to do was distance the university from the words drugs and death. But there was no stopping a thousand college students with a single purpose of mind. Someone appropriated a lectern; someone delivered a microphone and outdoor speakers. And that was that. Social media took care of the rest.

  Millet didn’t appear, but wisely he didn’t shut the event down. A ring of security guys, no doubt all local PD, stood on the periphery of the crowd. Officer Steele was near the steps to the administration building. He was in uniform, his squarehead and sidearm serving to ensure no one got any ideas about turning the memorial into a protest against anything. The lectern had been placed at the base of the steps, right below President Millet’s office window. I wasn’t sure if that meant anything, and I wondered if he was up in his office, watching.

  A kid I didn’t recognize got up to the microphone and gave it the testing, one, two, which seemed out of place given the circumstances but served to turn every head in his direction. He started proceedings by talking about how terrible he felt and how everybody felt. He rambled on with that topic for longer than was necessary. I sat with my back against a palm tree, three quarters of the way across the quad. The kid lost his train of thought and stopped talking, and then he asked someone else to speak. Another kid, this one I remembered from the lacrosse match, took the podium and spoke of the team and the sorrow they felt but how it would unite them as a team to become stronger. Someone sitting within my earshot remarked that without Turner they were toast. A third person took the spotlight. A girl who looked like a cheerleader on her day off. She spoke about Jake. I was glad someone finally did. She talked of his commitment, his dedication to the team, to the school and to winning an NCAA title. She said they had taken him too young, and she’d miss him. Then she started crying. It wasn’t very convincing, but she gave it a shot.

  A procession of kids came and went from the microphone, saying pretty much the same thing. Sad, wrong, waste, miss him, tears. The tears increased until most everyone on the lawn was sniffing. I had to check myself to see if my heart had turned to stone. I wasn’t feeling it. I decided it wasn’t me. I’d cried before and I’d probably cry again. But teenage emotion was just so earnest and affected. It didn’t look real. Like they were trying to out-emotion each other, in case a reality TV crew happened along. Perhaps I was being harsh. But I didn’t think so.

  The speeches petered themselves out, and people began standing. The guy who had supplied the loudspeaker came and unplugged it. Perhaps he had a gig to get to. Students and a few staff stepped forward and deposited more flowers, cards, a lacrosse stick. An old basketball. I wasn’t sure about that one. Then the crowd slowly started drifting away, for a few quiet drinks and stories about a fallen friend, or to study, or to catch the latest American Idol. I noted that Jake’s parents had not made an appearance. Ron said they were still in town, waiting for the body to be released, which was due to happen the next morning. Funeral arrangements had been made in Massachusetts for Friday. A notice was in the Boston Globe. I understood why they hadn’t shown, why the funeral was in Boston. But I couldn’t help feeling they had missed something here that would have offered comfort once the raw harshness of events wore away. Not every kid gets a thousand self-interested college students to their memorial service.

  I watched Officer Steele watch the crowd disperse. His team was good. Their presence was obvious but understated. Very few uniforms but plenty of personnel. Enough show to deter trouble, not so much as to cause it. I stood and brushed my trousers off, and then wandered across the quad toward the gym parking lot where I had left my car. Officer Steele saw me and gave a small nod. I returned the favor and kept walking. The sun was offering a final burst across the horizon. The playing fields were dark and abandoned. Perhaps in honor of Jake. Perhaps Monday was a recovery day. I pulled my keys out and spun the ring around on my finger. Then I put the keys back in my pocket when I saw Angel sitting on the hood of my car.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ANGEL HAD BEEN crying. Not the limited tears I saw at the service. Her eyes were swollen, and her cheeks were red from the effort. She was a puffy-looking girl to begin with. Now she looked like she had an allergic reaction and might go into anaphylactic shock.

  “You okay?” I said. I had a zinger like that for almost every occasion. Angel rubbed her nose with her sweater sleeve. She looked at me with liquid eyes, and then looked away, at nothing in particular. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would match what I already said, so I stayed quiet. Angel took shallow breaths, like her lungs were in her throat. Then she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Her hair wasn’t in a ponytail, and it flapped around her face. Her red day pack was scrunched in her lap. She held it like it contained the map to King Solomon’s mines.

  “Take me somewhere,” she said.

  “Where do you need to go?”

  She snorted to herself. “Need? I don’t know. Take me to a bar.”

  I took her to Johnny Rockets. Burgers, fries, malts. And bright lighting. Of all the places in the world I was not taking an emotionally fragile, underage girl, a bar was at the top of the list. Bars pretty much were the list. I heard my assistant Lizzy in my head, telling me it was sexist to worry about that, having done the same thing with Jake’s former teammate, Christian. I heard myself tell Lizzy that when the Palm Beach Post started treating those two events as equal, then I would. I ordered two malted shakes.

  “Not quite what I was thinking,” said Angel.

  “You twenty-one?”

  “What
are you, my granddad?”

  “I was thinking more about the bartender checking ID.”

  “Yeah, ’cause that’s what they do.”

  “Drink your malted.”

  We sucked hard on straws that weren’t designed for the task. It was like sucking a football through two-inch PVC pipe.

  “Better?” I said.

  “A vodka would’ve been better.”

  “Only today. Not tomorrow.”

  She sucked on her straw. “You want to split some fries?”

  “Sure,” I said. “You want a burger or something?”

  She shook her head. “Vodka doesn’t add pounds. Burgers do.”

  I stood and ordered some fries. I waited at the counter for them. A guy in a paper hat and white apron cooked them up fresh. I watched Angel as I waited. She hunched over and sucked at her drink, like a child. I wondered how a child like that comes to be wanting vodka. I shook my head at the notion, and of what I was doing when I was at college. That, and more. I dropped the paper bowl of fries on the table. Angel gobbled a couple down. She waved at her mouth.

  “Hot,” she said, slurping at her drink.

  “You said you weren’t Jake’s girlfriend.”

  “I wasn’t,” she said, stuffing some more fries in her mouth.

  “You seemed pretty upset. More than most.”

  She looked at me with doe eyes for a moment, and then renewed her attack on the fries.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  She shook her head.

  “Why?” I said. “Because I’ve never been twenty? Never lost friends?”

  She glanced at me. “Okay. We were friends. Close. We spent time together. Hanging out. We never dated or anything.”

  “But you would’ve liked to.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s gone.”

  “It matters to you.”

  She stuffed more fries in, perhaps to avoid answering. I said nothing. She finished her mouthful and considered putting more in, but didn’t.

  “We were friends. Nothing more. But in some ways, there isn’t more. Having sex doesn’t make you know someone better.” From the mouths of babes.