Sudden Death Part 17

"Give me two hours," he says.

"You're a genius."

"No s.h.i.t, Sherlock."

Vince then proceeds to use up five minutes of the two hours making me swear repeatedly that he will get whatever story comes out of his labor, as well as any story that doesn't. I'm happy to do so. Vince's contacts are amazing, and if I'm going to need to learn anything in the media world, he is a person who can absolutely make it happen.

Two hours gives me just enough time to take Tara for a short tennis ball session in the park, as long as I drive there. I haven't thrown a ball with Tara in a while, but one of her twelve million great qualities is that she doesn't hold a grudge. Willie and Cash join us, which is fine with me: Though Tara doesn't have many dog friends, she has always liked Cash.

Cash is the more compet.i.tive of the two dogs; it's very important to him that he retrieve each thrown ball. Tara is more out for the fun of the game, though I toss the ball in her direction often enough that she gets her share.

Willie lets me do the throwing, and I note that his eyes are constantly sweeping the park, probably looking for one of Quintana's people. I'm just about to suggest that we leave when I hear Willie say, "Andy, get the dogs and get in the car."

We are near the Little League fields, and I see Willie looking off in the direction of what we called Dead Man's Curve when we rode bikes down it as kids. It's about three hundred yards away, and I can see a dark sedan navigating the curve, which will eventually lead to where we are. It is a cla.s.sically ominous-looking car.

I don't pause to ask questions, yelling for Tara and Cash to follow me. All three of us are in the backseat within seconds, and Willie follows along right behind us and gets in the driver's seat. He pulls out, quickly but without screeching the tires, and in moments we're driving in the security and anonymity of Route 4.

"Was that who I think it was?" I ask.

Willie looks at me in the rearview mirror and shrugs. "Don't know. But I didn't think we should wait around to find out."

"I can't run away every time I see a car," I say.

"What are you gonna do, stay and fight?" he asks. "They've got Uzis, you've got a tennis ball."

This is no way to live.

THE PHONE IS RINGING as I walk into the house. as I walk into the house.

"You want me to fax you the articles?" is Vince's replacement for a normal person's "h.e.l.lo."

"Fax them."

"I'll include the list of writers, but only one of them works for the Times. Times."

"What's his name?"

"George Karas."

George Karas has, over the last few years, become one of the more well-known sportswriters in the business. He's done this, as have others, by branching out past writing into television, becoming one of the pundits that are called on to give opinions about the games men play.

Karas would therefore certainly qualify as a "famous" sportswriter, someone Adam might well have bragged to his parents that he had spoken to. It gives me more hope that we're on the right track.

"How do I get to him?" I ask.

"He's waiting for your call," Vince says, and gives me Karas's direct phone number.

"Vince, this is great. I owe you big-time," I say.

"You got that right. That reminds me, I set up the meeting with Petrone."

"For when?"

"Eight o'clock tomorrow night. They'll pick you up in front of your office."

"Thanks, Vince. I really appreciate all of this."

Click.

Since Vince is no longer on the phone, I hang up my end and call Karas at the number Vince gave me, which turns out to be his cell phone. We're only ten seconds into our conversation when I catch another break: He's on his way home to Fort Lee and offers to meet me for a cup of coffee.

We meet at a diner on Route 4 in Paramus, and Karas is waiting at a table when I arrive. I recognize him because I watch all those idiotic sports panel shows that he's on. I introduce myself, then say, "I really appreciate your meeting me like this."

"Vince told me he'd cut my b.a.l.l.s off if I didn't talk to you," he says.

"He's a fun guy, isn't he?"

He nods. "A barrel of laughs. Does this meeting have something to do with the Schilling case? Vince wouldn't tell me."

His question is a little jarring on a personal note. I keep forgetting that the Schilling case, more than ever before, has at least made me nationally recognizable, if not a celebrity. The truth is that more people in this diner would know who I am than the "famous" sportswriter I'm having coffee with.

"It may. It depends on what you have to say. But I have to tell you that this is on background... off the record."

He's surprised by that. "Am I here as a journalist?"

"Partly," I say. "But I need a.s.surance that you won't use it as a journalist, at least for the time being."

He thinks for a few moments, then reluctantly nods. "Okay. Shoot."

"A man that was working for me as an investigator was murdered last week. His name was Adam Strickland. Did he contact you around that time?"

Karas's face clouds slightly as he searches for a connection to the name. It's disappointing, but that disappointment fades when I see the light go on in his eyes. "Yes... I think that was the name. My G.o.d, that was the young man that was murdered in your office?"

"Yes. You spoke to him?"

Karas is quiet for a few moments, either trying to remember the conversation or trying to deal with this close brush with someone's sudden death. "He didn't tell me he was working for you... he just said he was a private investigator. I a.s.sumed he was working for some tabloid rag..."

"Can you tell me specifically what he asked you?"

"He was interested in the days when I did some freelance work for a magazine called Inside Football. Inside Football. I put together a high school all-American team, and we ran it as a large spread." I put together a high school all-American team, and we ran it as a large spread."

"Is that the team that Kenny Schilling and Troy Preston were on?"

He nods. "Yes. That's what he was asking me about."

"What specifically did you tell him?"

He shrugs. "Really not much. I told him that we picked players from all over the country. It's not an exact science; these are high school kids, playing against all different levels of compet.i.tion. We looked at their size, their stats, how hard the big-time colleges were recruiting them, that kind of thing."

I nod; as a sports degenerate I know something about this stuff. Great high school basketball players are far easier to spot than their football counterparts. Kids that stand out in football in high school often can't even cut it on the college level.

"Did he ask you for a list of players that were there?"

He nods. "Yeah, I wasn't going to go to the trouble of finding it, but he seemed like a decent guy..."

"He was a very decent guy," I say.

"I could tell. Anyway, I keep good files, so I faxed it to him."

I'm now close to positive that we're on to something. The list was faxed to Adam, it was important to Adam, but it was nowhere to be found in his possessions. The killer almost certainly took it, and I don't know any drug gang killers that like football quite that much.

Karas tells me about the weekend the players spent in New York, and I ask him if he can recall anything unusual about it, especially anything concerning Schilling or Preston, but he cannot.

"I wasn't a chaperone, you know? There were around twenty-five guys, and most of them had never been to New York, so they weren't too interested in me telling them stories."

He thinks some more, then adds, "We rented out the two upstairs private rooms in an Italian restaurant that Sat.u.r.day night. I think it was on the Upper East Side. Divided it up, offense in one room, defense in the other. I must have been with the offense, because I remember Schilling being there."

He has nothing more to add, so he asks me a few questions about what this is about and how it relates to the trial. I deflect them, but promise he'll be the second to know, after Vince. Knowing Vince as he does, he understands.

I thank him for his help, and we both leave. He promises to fax me the list tonight, and I tell him the earlier the better.

That list could answer a lot of questions-and raise new ones. We're getting somewhere; I can feel it.

I go home and tell Laurie what I've learned, and I can see the excitement in her face as she hears it. It's not the look of a woman who wants to go to Findlay and plan a schedule for the school crossing guards, but I don't say anything like that. I don't want to blow it.

Laurie and I spend the next hour and a half watching the fax machine not ring. I take advantage of the time to think about the trial, which is weirdly running on a parallel track. When we learn more about the mysterious deaths, I'm going to have to find a way to bring those two tracks together. That's not going to be easy.

The fax machine finally rings, and it seems as if it takes a little over a week for the paper to come crawling out. It turns out there are two pages, and the first is a note from Karas. He writes that he's just remembered that at the Sat.u.r.day night party the offensive players asked him to leave the room for a brief time. They said they were going to have a "team meeting." He considered that a weird thing to request and feared that they had brought some drugs that they were going to use once he left. Not too long later they invited him back in, and to his relief he saw no evidence of drug use.

The second faxed page is the list of high school players who were brought to New York that weekend. Laurie and I compare it to the names of the deceased young men, and we make a stunning discovery.

Seven of the eight who died were members of the offense, the same group that included Kenny Schilling and Troy Preston. The same group that asked George Karas to leave the room so that they could have a team meeting.

Kenny Schilling was close enough geographically to have killed each of those people, though they were spread out across the country. Kenny played professionally, and he traveled extensively, and those young men died at times when Kenny was nearby. Darryl Anderson, the Asbury Park drowning victim, is not on the list.

But there is another name on that list, and if Kenny was there, he was there as well. I've been viewing him as a victim, and there's still a good chance of that, but I've just adjusted my view.

I am talking about Bobby Pollard, high school all-American, Giants trainer, friend of Kenny's.

Possible victim, possible serial killer.

MY CLIENT IS INNOCENT. I am almost positive of that now. It would be nice if I had known it sooner, since I might have been able to develop an effective strategy to defend him. A secondary but significant benefit would be that Cesar Quintana would not be h.e.l.l-bent on killing me. I am almost positive of that now. It would be nice if I had known it sooner, since I might have been able to develop an effective strategy to defend him. A secondary but significant benefit would be that Cesar Quintana would not be h.e.l.l-bent on killing me.

There are a few questions that need to be resolved before I can include Bobby Pollard on my list of legitimate suspects. The primary one is his injury: I'm not sure he is really paralyzed. If I'm wrong about that, I'm wrong about his possible guilt, because there's no way he could have committed these murders without mobility.

The key factor that applies to both Bobby and Kenny, the one that leads me to suspect Bobby, is their availability. Most of these deaths occurred while the Giants were in a nearby town for a game. Players are pretty busy during those trips, and I'm not sure they would have the time to plan and execute these camouflaged killings. I a.s.sume that trainers also have serious constraints on their time, but I'll have to check that out. But if Kenny was in the town, Bobby was there as well.

I call Kevin and Sam, give them each some a.s.signments, and ask them to come over tomorrow at noon. I'll be spending the morning at the jail, talking to Kenny.

I have a tough time sleeping tonight. There is so much to be done, and we have very little time and no real idea how to proceed. That's not a great combination.

I'm up early and leave for the jail by eight-thirty. Willie arrives just before I go, for the purpose of accompanying me. He seems to be relishing the role of bodyguard, and that's fine with me because my concern about Quintana is pretty much with me twenty-four hours a day.

We're at the jail by nine o'clock, and though I don't offer Willie the option of going inside with me, he makes it a point to decline just in case. Willie spent a lot of years in prison and is not about to enter one again, even if he's free to leave.

Kenny thinks I'm there to discuss the possibility of him testifying. It's something he has expressed a desire to do, but until now I've put off the discussion as premature. That hasn't changed.

"That's not what I want to talk about," I say. "Something important has come up."

If a person can look hopeful and cringe at the same time, Kenny pulls it off. He doesn't know whether this is going to be good or bad news, but he instinctively knows it will be important. "Talk to me," he says.

"I want you to think back to your senior year in high school, when that magazine made you an all-American and brought you to New York for the weekend."

He nods. "That's where I met Troy. I told you that."

"Can you think of anything unusual, memorable, that happened on that weekend?"

He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head and smiles. "Not unless you call drinking beer unusual."

"I'm thinking a little more unusual than that."

"Then I can't think of anything," he says.

"On that Sat.u.r.day night you went to a restaurant with the rest of the players. There was a sportswriter there, and you and the other members of the offense asked him to leave the room so you could have a team meeting. Do you remember that?"

Again he thinks for a while, searching his memory. That weekend seems not to be something that he has thought about in a long time and maybe never was terribly significant in his life. I'm finding I believe his reactions, now that I believe in his innocence. It's a feeling of substantial relief.

"It definitely rings a bell. Let me think about it for a minute," he says.

"Take your time."

He does, and after a short while he smiles slightly and nods. "I remember... we had it all figured out. We knew some of us would make it big in the pros someday and that some wouldn't. n.o.body thought they'd be the ones not to make it, but with injuries and stuff you never know."

"Right," I say, hoping to move him along.

"So we decided that the ones who did make it would get these huge bonuses, and we all agreed that they would take care of the guys who didn't. Like an insurance policy."

"So it was a pact?" I ask.

He grins. "Yeah. I told you we had a lot of beer."

"This pact... is that why you've taken care of Bobby Pollard all these years? Gotten him a job as your trainer?"

He shakes his head. "Of course not. I hadn't even remembered about that high school thing until you just asked. Bobby's a friend... and everything he dreamed about fell apart. So I helped him. But it wasn't charity, you know? He's a d.a.m.n good trainer."