The light from a streetlamp outside shone on Pete's baldness. I watched his scowl and his shivers. He stomped over to us and shoved a finger in my face. “You bastards.” His face was close enough that I could confirm his reputation for dragon breath. “Paul Conlan was my ticket out of this hole. He's one of the ten top prospects in the country in football and basketball. I've had offers from two major colleges. If I could take the kid with me, they'd give me a job. Your fucking investigation threatened my whole future. I tried to protect the kid from any taint of scandal. You stupid shits. I didn't want murder. I want the good life like you've got.
“So I chased you around town. I covered for Paul when he came to me with all the drug stuff. He didn't know how involved I was at the time. Nothing I did worked. It got out of control.”
George said, “Enough bullshit. You've got a ledger I need. Give or you die, and I want the copies I presume you made.”
“How'd you know we had them?”
“We had a state police cop bought, too. He got to you too late because of the snow. We called him. He told us.”
I handed him the ledger. “The police have enough on you without this,” I said. “And one copy's in the mail.”
“We'll deal with that later. This is a start.” In the dim light, he glanced over the ledger. Finally, he said, “But the police will have a lot less when I destroy this.” George gave an ugly laugh. “We'll go to your house to check for more copies. We had a nice little operation. Ready to move into the big time. I think we'll burn your little bungalow with the two of you in it. A little revenge could be good for your growth as human beings.”
He motioned us toward the corner of the room near the door. We huddled exactly where he shouldn't have put us. Each classroom has an intercom button near the door. As we leaned together, I pressed my elbow against it. Being in the newest section of the school raised the odds on the damn thing actually working. I braced myself to spring at the moment of distraction when the intercom clicked on. Pete slowly opened the door. I pictured the office and heard the intercom buzz in my mind as I'd heard it a hundred times. I prayed Carolyn was still in the office.
“Hall's clear,” Pete said.
With the point of the gun, George urged us forward. The intercom clicked on. Carolyn's voice said, “Is someone there?”
George screamed as I yanked his gun arm up and rammed my knee into his nuts. Scott jumped Pete. Even with one arm encumbered by the cast, he subdued him in a moment.
Help arrived in the form of Carolyn and a phalanx of janitors. We didn't wait for the police to come and take them. Instead, we finished our journey to the gym. We found seats in the top row of the bleachers only because two freshmen were too polite or scared of a teacher to refuse to move. Scott remained unrecognized, the crowd being intent on the last minutes of the game. We watched an assistant coach try to ease the boys into a win. The game was against Joliet Central, a power in the state this year. Our side seemed disorganized. Without Jeff, the team was hurting, but Paul wasn't in top form, either. That was understandable given what had happened to him. In the last two minutes, however, they looked as if they'd pull it together. From a five-point deficit, they rallied.
The bleachers rocked with noise. The rafters echoed and reechoed the crowd's joy as the team pulled ahead by one, fell behind again, then ahead. The place was all noise, people, and light. However, in the last half minute, the team fell apart. First, one of our guys traveled. Then Paul muffed an easy inbounds
pass. Then another teammate threw the ball into the arms of an opponent. We lost by a bucket.
I sat with chin cupped in hand watching the chastened crowd exit. As the last fans trickled out, Becky entered the gym, saw us, and climbed up. As she ascended, the bleachers echoed with the stomps of her feet.
“I'm going to hate you forever,” she announced loudly from the step below us.
“We saved your life,” Scott said.
“Who cares? They didn't arrest me.”
“That's because I kept the ledger that implicates you. I intend to show it to the police.”
She started screaming. “I wish I'd killed you Tuesday night. Paul wrenched the wheel out of my hand at the last second. The bastard saved you. Now all he cares about is saving his precious career.” She snorted. “Poor innocent Paul. Wise old Becky had to fill him in on the way the world really works.” She lowered her voice to almost normal. “He broke up with me tonight. It's your fault.” She drew a deep breath. “I bet even with that ledger they won't do anything to me. Fuck you. You're bluffing.”
“Are you really that stupid?” I asked.
Scott stood up. His deep voice rumbled. “Leave before I throw you through the basketball hoop from here.”
She hesitated a second, recognized the genuine menace in his voice, and retreated. We got a few more choice obscenities shouted at us before she blasted out the doors.
I remained seated. Scott sat back down. Later, a few custodians swept the floor and still I sat. Scott put a hand on my shoulder. “You did your best,” he said. “Let's go home and forget it. The danger to us is over. My arm's starting to hurt, and you must still be stiff and sore from the other night.”
“I want to stay a little longer,” I said.
He let me alone, didn't ask questions. The custodians finished.
They looked up at where we sat. I gave a brief wave to one whom I recognized, but didn't speak to him. They doused the lights, leaving only red exit signs lit. That and light from the hallway flowing through the glass in the doors seeped in. The heat dissipated slowly. I looked through the squares of window twenty feet above. Light from a half-moon streamed in, forming soft patches of brightness near us. Still I sat. The locker-room noises faded. No sound came from the hallway.
We heard the handle of a door click.
A figure emerged from the boys' locker room. He carried a gym bag and moved slowly. We were out of the moonlight, in deepest shadows. The figure trudged across the darkened gym floor. He passed through a square of brightness, but I couldn't make out who it was.
He stopped directly below where we sat. He looked up, then began to ascend. Slow measured steps, each one seeming to take minutes, brought him to where we sat. Up the tiers he came, stopping three rows below us. He sat in a patch of moon-light, straddling the bleacher seat. He placed his gym bag on the seat between his knees.
He looked up. It was Paul Conlan. He wore faded blue jeans, white socks, gym shoes, and a white sweater. He placed his winter coat on his gym bag.
He sighed. He fiddled with the straps on the gym bag.
At last, he said, “I saw you guys up here at the end of the game.”
“Becky told us about you breaking up with her,” I said.
“She's a fucking bitch.” For a moment, he seemed to inflate with anger, then almost as quickly shrank back within himself. When he spoke, more teenage pathos filled his voice than I could imagine possible. “She laughed at me when she told me about how she ran everything. How she had people beaten up.
She laughed at Roger being dead. She said I was so naïve. I know nobody else liked her, but I loved her. We'd been going together since grade school. I knew she did stupid stuff, and I knew what I did was wrong, but I didn't know how rotten she was.” He pushed his gym bag a few feet down the bench. He made a fist, then rapped his knuckles softly on the polished wood.
“I'm sorry about Becky,” I said. And I found it was true. I felt sorry for the kid and her screwed-up life.
Minutes dragged by in silence. Finally, I said, “Tough game. Hard one to lose.”
“Thanks. We should have won.” Again silence ticked by.
“Everybody else gone?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was the last one out of the locker room.” He stared at the moonlight that streamed through the windows far and high above. “Mr. Mason?”
“Yeah?”
“I killed her.”
Perhaps my heart stopped. Certainly the world and time paused for me.
“I did have sex with her, but I lied. I didn't use protection. She came back Sunday night. Everybody was gone. She was hurt from her fight with Jeff. She told me she was pregnant, that I was the father. Something snapped in me.
“Becky constantly pressured me for more sex, to be more involved in drugs. Susan was free, easy, no hassle. With her, I felt calm. But the pressure was too much! My mom and dad constantly pushed me in sports. They wanted a sports hero for a son. Since I was eleven, it was always more, more, win, hurt the other guys. I hate them! I hate the pressure.
“Coach Montini made it worse. I was his ticket out of here. I don't know how many times he told me that. I was his first real pro prospect. Job opportunities would open up. He hated being a high school coach.”
He shoved his gym bag farther away. His voice stayed low,
almost clinical. “So when Susan told me she was pregnant, I couldn't take it. I could never marry her. She cried and whimpered. I held her while I seethed and my hatred grew. We did some coke and we began having sex. I was rough with her. “She ⦔ He paused. “She liked it. She begged for more. I don't know what came over me. I lost control. I killed her.”
He stopped and drew a deep breath. He didn't burst into tears. Moonlight shone on his damp blond hair. He continued in his soft voice. I could barely hear him.
“Poor Jeff. I'm sorry I got him in trouble. I wish I could have been the friend he wanted.” He paused a minute, then continued. “I always thought of myself as a normal guy. A good athlete. I like kids looking up to me, liking me. But then I always had to be that for everybody: kids, teachers, coaches, parents. It felt like the whole world was watching me every minute. I wanted to be a pro athlete, a star. But each new pressure was like another noose around my neck.”
“I understand,” Scott said.
Paul glanced at him. “Yeah, you would, Mr. Carpenter. I wished I'd met you sooner to talk about it. Anyway, I couldn't handle it. And now ⦔ He sighed deepest of all. “Now it's all useless.”
Â
Two nights later, we lay side by side next to Scott's Christmas tree. Christmas Eve at my younger brother's had been beautiful. Scott had sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace, all the little kids in their pajamas surrounding him, the littlest one sheltered in his lap. He had read story after story until they all fell asleep.
My family's that morning and afternoon had been a wonderful chaotic Christmas: yelling kids and parents, warm closeness. At five, the doorbell had rung.
Scott's sister had tracked us down. She and Scott had retired to my parents' bedroom and talked for two hours. They came out misty-eyed and arm in arm.
Yesterday morning, I'd talked with Frank Murphy. He said they'd gotten the whole story from Paul. He almost felt sorry for the kid. They'd arrested Becky and Eric. He told me I was right about Becky. She'd been more trouble than any three people with whom he'd ever dealt. Mysteriously, another ledger had turned up. He said, “You know, Tom, some of the people we talked to claim you threatened them with a ledger.”
“I lied,” I said. “There was an extra blank ledger in the stack. While we waited in the gas station, I made up names and figures and wrote them in. I mixed in some real stuff from the ledgers to make it look real. They bought my bluff.” We'd left the ledger book in the police station mailbox and called in an anonymous tip. I'd wiped my fingerprints off carefully. Frank had sounded unconvinced by my explanation, but he let it go.
With one finger, I slowly traced the outline of Scott's muscles on his chest and shoulders. We had only the tree lights on. Judy Collins sang “Who Knows Where the Time Goes.” I felt the same goose bumps I had when I first heard her sing that song.
“I'm glad my sister came,” Scott said. “She thinks Mom and Dad will come around.”
“That's great,” I said.
I rested my hand on his chest. It rose and fell with his breathing. The song ended. Silence filled the penthouse. I smelled the pine needles from the tree and the apple wood in the fireplace. Outdoors, the temperature, after a brief rise the day before, was on its way down to another record low. I watched snow swirl outside the windows. “We could be trapped here until the end of the next ice age,” I said.
“I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend the time with,” he said.
A few minutes before, we'd exchanged Christmas presents. For me, he'd gotten a signed first-edition set of Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings.
I'd spent nearly a year talking to his junior high and high school coaches and getting as many videos of his games put together as I could. Meg had proved invaluable in
helping to get tapes from his parents. I'd had copies made and sent the originals back. Some were nearly twenty-five years old. He nearly cried when he stuck it in the VCR and realized what it was.
I leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. I said, “I love you.”