Life's Work (20 page)

"I don't get it," I said to Bluerock. "Why would a guy as big and strong as Parks jeopardize his health just to add a few more pounds of muscle?"

"For the same reason he snorted coke," Otto said. "To improve his game." Bluerock gave me a cagey look. "You remember Fred, the guy we saw at the bowling alley?"

I nodded.

"Well, he does Dianabol, too. All of Dr. Walt's boychiks do. It's their little secret. It's what makes them a group -that and the bullshit philosophies of their guru, which are mostly centered around steroids, anyway. Only Freddy and most of the others like him take the shit because they were born weak, because without the drugs they'd just be ordinary oversize guys, pushing cargo around on some loading dock. They aren't true athletes -they're little guys in big guys' bodies. They got no heart, and they know it. They feel it in their muscles, like a lack of strength."

"And Parks?"

"He's the genuine article," Bluerock said. "He's got all the natural gifts and the fiercest heart of any man I've ever met. Bill would die to protect a friend."

"It sounds like he was doing his best to die all by himself."

"Maybe so," Bluerock conceded. "But consider this. They polled a bunch of Olympic athletes-world-class competitors before the Games. They asked them whether they would be willing to take a toxic drug, a drug that was guaranteed to kill them in a couple of years, if they knew that taking the drug would guarantee them a gold medal. You know how many of the athletes said they'd take it?" He didn't wait for me to answer. "Almost every goddamn one. That's Bill, sport. That's the way he thought about it."

I went over to the desk and took out the capsule I'd found in Parks's desk. "Is this Dianabol?" I said, handing it to Bluerock.

He shook his head. "No. They've got an oral dose, but this isn't it." He gave the pill back to me. "I don't know what that is."

"Well, Bill was taking a shitload of it before he freaked out," I said. "There were about a hundred of these in the desk in his room, alongside a picture of his mom and a couple of pamphlets announcing the end of the world and how to cope with it."

For the first time since I'd met him, Otto Bluerock looked genuinely pained. "The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said sadly. "He didn't say a thing to me."

He hadn't said a thing to anyone, I said to myself. That was the problem. Of course, I hadn't talked to jewel yet. Or to the Reverend Dice. I'd get around to talking to both of them later that day. At the moment, however, I was thinking about Bill himself.

Something that Bluerock said had struck a chord. Not the steroid business, which I didn't think was connected up to anything except Bill's potential for self-destruction, but the part about his fierceness of heart -his tendency to sacrifice for his friends. I'd recognized that side of him too. It was what had kept him loyal to Kaplan and to C.W. It was what had kept him from testifying before a grand jury. It was what made his decision to cop out at the last moment, to play ball with Clayton after refusing to compromise for better than five months, so damn strange. Clayton had claimed that the Cougars had pushed Parks into the decision, and if I didn't know that they hadn't I might have bought the story. After all, a man like Parks would have felt a certain amount of loyalty to his team. But if you took the Cougars out of the picture, Bill's sudden change of heart was completely out of character, and damn suspicious. Or so it seemed to me. Just as suspicious as the fact that he'd supposedly been prevented from appearing before the grand jury because he'd discovered C.W.'s treachery.

I asked Bluerock what he thought of Clayton's story, and he came to the same conclusion.

"Bill wouldn't have sold anybody out to protect himself."

"Not even if it meant giving up football?" I said.

Otto shook his head with disgust. "He wouldn't have been giving up football, man, he'd have been giving up playing a game on Sundays. That's all. I told you before, to a guy like Bill it was all football. You don't stop being yourself just 'cause you're not dressed in pads and standing on Astroturf."

"That's too pure, Blue," I said. "We're not talking about a saint here."

"Then look at it like this, Harry. What would testifying have gotten him? A suspended sentence? Hell, he probably would have gotten a suspended sentence anyway. Or been shocked out in six months. It's the first-string rule, man. Cops are fans too. So are DA's."

"They put Mercury Morris away," I said.

"He was a dealer, for chrissake. Bill was caught with some flake. The point is, whether he got a suspended sentence or six months or five years, he wouldn't have been worth shit to himself if he sold out his friends."

"Kaplan was no friend," I said.

Bluerock grunted. "You know that, and I know that. But Bill didn't know that. He's been training with the guy for the last three years. Kaplan's his agent, for chrissake! He's got the deposit on his fucking brains! And he's got the keys to the juice dispenser. Sure, Bill knows that he won't go to jail if he makes a deal with Clayton. So what? The league suspends him automatically, whether he cops out or not. He has to go through mandatory rehabilitation after the suspension. And at the end of it, the Cougars are going to trade him away or release him on waivers, or if he's lucky, sign him for peanuts. Wherever he lands in the league, he's going to wind up with a drug rep. And Walt Kaplan's going to break his legs, or hire somebody to do it. You know Walt's reputation, Harry. You don't screw him and come away laughing. And if all that isn't enough, what about Bill, sport? His sense of himself? What happens to it? To his fucking life's work that Petrie's always talking about?"

"He messed that up a long time ago, Blue," I said.

"Look, what's the point of arguing about it?" he said angrily. His face turned red and bunched up like a fist. For just a moment I thought he was going to lose control the way he had in that Bloomington bar. But he caught himself, and with a visible effort, pulled back.

"We gotta work together, sport," he said after a moment. "Otherwise, we're going nowhere."

"We've also got to be honest, Blue," I said.

"Christ, you're relentless," he said. "You ever do any coaching?" He laughed wearily. "Okay, sport. You've got the ball. Run with it."
 
 

The first person I wanted to talk to was the Reverend Carl Dice, C.W.'s father confessor. If Bill had changed his mind about testifying before the grand jury, I figured Dice would have heard why. And if, as Bluerock and I suspected, Bill hadn't changed his mind at the last moment, Dice might be able to supply us with a reason for Clayton's lies. Clayton's motives were really at the heart of the case -at least, as far as the Cougars were concerned. But until I heard something definitive from George about the in-house investigation, I'd have to settle for what I could piece together from other sources.

I found Dice's address in the phone book and talked Bluerock into paying him a visit. But not before arguing again with Otto, who had handed me the ball but hadn't quite let go. It was his idea that we should pay Walt Kaplan a visit first. According to Otto, Bill himself was the person we needed to talk to. And since Walt had a vested interest in keeping tabs on him, Bluerock figured that the Professor would know where Bill was hiding, or have a good idea where he could be run to ground. When I asked Blue how he planned on getting Kaplan to cooperate with us, he had a simple solution.

"Beat the shit out of him," he said.

I eyed Otto for a long moment, hoping he was joking. But there was no humor in his voice, or in his look. He jerked at the lobster-bib lapels of his Hawaiian shirt, made his bulldog face into an expectant mask, and tapped his left foot impatiently, as if he were awaiting a response to a reasonable suggestion.

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You think we should march into that club -all two of us- and take on Walt, Mickey, and the rest of the gang."

"Yeah, that's about it," Bluerock said cheerfully, as if he'd liked the way I'd put it. "Take 'em by surprise."

"Christ, where'd you learn tactics, Otto -the playing fields of Warner Bros.? This isn't Little Caesar. This is real life."

"In other words, you're going to pussy out," he said.

"Yeah," I said, and immediately started to feel like a sixteen-year-old kid again. "For the time being," I added defensively.

"Okay. You're the detective."

"I am the detective," I said.

"Sure," Otto agreed.

But as we walked out the door of the apartment, I heard him whisper, "Pussy," under his breath.
 
 

Carl Dice lived on a pleasant, sunlit street in Delhi, a fashionable neighborhood on the west side of town. The street, Bradford Avenue, ran west off Rapid Run, curling up to the great forested ridge above the Ohio and plateauing in a long stretch of four-bedroom ranch houses overlooking the river. Dice's house was located at the cul-de-sac at the end of Bradford. As I pulled up in the Reverend's driveway, a springer spaniel came bounding through a railed fence to the right of the house, nose down, tongue lolling as if he were chasing a rabbit. He stopped cold beside my car door and sat down on the tarmac, a happy look on his long, sloppy face.

"Maybe I'd better stay by the car," Otto said. "Guard it, in case he attacks."

"Fuck you," I said.

We got out, and the spaniel leapt back to its feet, gamboling beside us as we walked up to Dice's front door.

It was a large, immaculately kept ranch house, with several waxy green magnolias in the yard and a cement carport to the side. There was a silver Audi 5000S sitting in the port, with a bumper sticker, "Honk If You Love Jesus", plastered on its Teutonic rear end. I went up to the door, with Bluerock and the spaniel trailing behind me, and knocked. A short, extremely clean-cut man in his mid-thirties answered. One glance at him and I knew he had to be Reverend Dice. Like most evangelists, he looked as if he'd been dressed by his mother, and he had an air of beatitude about him, as if he were his mother. He was wearing a plaid shirt that still held the folds it had had on the store shelf and spotless tan slacks with a crease running down each leg that could give you a paper cut. He had a child's small white teeth and wide round eyes. There was even something childlike about his expression. Nobody over eight ever looked that happy just to answer the door.

"Yay-yass?" he said, like a cartoon granny.

"Reverend Dice?" I said.

"Yay-yass," he said again, as if all were forgiven.

I could feel Bluerock bristling behind me. Even the spaniel took a step back, as if he'd come upon something too sweet for his palate.

I dug a business card out of my wallet and handed it to Dice. "I'd like to talk to you about one of your parishioners."

"I've no parish, friend," Dice said in a mellifluous voice that was scented slightly with the garlic he'd had for lunch, and with the mouth spray that he'd used to cover it up. "The Lord's work requires no church. No, nor license, either." He raised a scriptural finger. "Although, it would be a blessing to have a permanent sanctuary, a place of prayer and retreat. And if the Lord sees fit to grant me that gift, I would not say nay."

From the look of him, I had the feeling he wouldn't say nay to anything that turned a buck. He had a couple of gold rings the size of brass apples on his fingers, and it was clear from what I could see of the house that the price of his furniture had come out of the collection plate before the money for his place of prayer and retreat.

"Would you mind giving me a few minutes of your time?" I asked.

"Well," he said, glancing at his Rolex, "I do have a prayer meeting in half an hour."

"I'm sure the Cougars would appreciate it."

"The Cougars?" he said with curiosity. "You are working for the Cougars?"

I nodded.

"Then perhaps I can spare a moment. Come right in," he said, waving his arm. "Mi casa es su casa, as our friends south of the border like to say."

As I started through the door, Bluerock caught me by the arm.

"I think I'll skip this one, sport," he said. "I gotta weak stomach."

"All right," I said. "I shouldn't be too long."

I walked into Dice's plush home, and Bluerock went back to the car, the dog wandering after him.

"Your friend has something wrong with his stomach?" Dice said.

"Too much for lunch," I said.

"He is a Cougar, is he not?"

"He is," I said.

"I thought I recognized him. You know, I am a close personal friend of many of the players on the team."

From what I'd heard he was a closer friend to the wives of the players. His wimpy, childish manner wouldn't have gone over well with most of the athletes I'd known. In fact, I could hardly believe that a man like Parks would have given him the time of day.

Dice led me down a short hall to his living room. There was a long picture window on the far wall, looking out on a magnificent view of the river and of the Kentucky shore. A squared off, buff-white conversation pit was situated in front of the picture window, with teak bookshelves on either side of it and an ivory Oriental carpet on the floor. There were no books on the shelves. They were filled instead with religious artifacts -statuettes, manger scenes, pamphlets. Dice plucked one of the pamphlets from the shelves as we passed the bookcases and handed it to me. It was the same pamphlet I'd found in Parks's desk, the one announcing the end of the world.