Trust (21 page)

The man eased into the booth on Earl’s left. “So,” he said, “my name’s Ed. I’m in sales. Office systems. Communications, you know? What’s yours?”

“Don,” Earl said, offering his hand. They shook. He grinned. “I guess, you want the truth, sales’s what I’m in, too, but they don’t call it that. They call it something else.”

“Like what?” Ed said. He sipped his drink, but he sipped greedily, so that the level in the glass diminished almost as rapidly as it would have under showier drinking.

“I sell a college,” Earl said. “Well, I sell a piece of a college. The athletic department. The basketball team.”

“You sell tickets?” Ed said, looking puzzled.

Earl smiled. “In the end, yeah,” he said. “That’s the whole point of it. And I guess if they told me I hadda, I’d probably have to do that, too. I mean: stand behind the counter and sell the actual tickets for the game. But what I do, I’m doing now, ’s a combination of two
things. See, I used to play for the team myself. And I had, well, I figured the most I had was an outside shot, the pros, and what hell, I was young, and all idealistic, and JFK was up there getting everybody steamed up, so when I graduated, well, I made the noble choice. Didn’t even wait to see if I’d get drafted. Went right in the Peace Corps, the domestic version of it, and naturally when I came out, well, if I’d ever had a chance to play some ball for money, well, it was long gone by.”

“Was that that VISTA thing there?” Ed said. He finished his drink.

“VISTA?” Earl said.

“Yeah,” Ed said, “that Volunteers in Service to America thing there. Had a cousin was in that. Spent about two years or so down in Arizona someplace, teaching the Indians how to grow stuff off of rocks. I don’t know. Never made any sense to me. Kid from Metuchen, New Jersey, and they send her out the desert to teach Indians to farm?” He shook his head. “Course a lot of things the government does, makes no sense to me.” He finished his drink. “Anyway, was that it, VISTA? What’d they have you doing?”

“Oh,” Earl said, sipping his diluted vodka, “various things. I set up this skins ’n’ shirts basketball league for three little towns about thirty miles between them. What I was actually doing was spending maybe five, six hours a day, driving around from one the next. Coaching them, back in the car, and on to the next town. And I helped with some other stuff, too. Teaching junior high, mostly. And yeah, it was VISTA. I misunderstood you. I thought you said ‘Vassar’ or something. Not many people ever heard of it.”

Ed grinned. “Vassar,” he said. “Wouldn’t’ve liked going there, myself. Nothing but women around.”

Earl grinned back. “Me neither,” he said. He raised his glass and took another sip, looking at Ed over the rim.

The waiter appeared. “Can I get you something, Ed?” he said.

“Oh,” Ed said, “yeah please, Randy. Johnnie Red twice, straight up. No vegetables or nothing.” He looked at Earl’s array of glasses. “I’d offer you one,” he said, “but you’re drinking slow.”

“Hey,” Earl said, “I was here a good hour before you walked in. Beside, I can’t sleep on planes, and passing out don’t do it. I’ve got a long flight, ahead of me tonight. Got to pace myself.”

The waiter went away. “So,” Ed said, folding his arms on the table and gazing into Earl’s eyes, “you, ah, you think, well, what’d you accomplish out there, the VISTA thing, I mean? My cousin, I asked her that, and what she said was: ‘Nothin’.’ Not a goddamned thing. Just a total waste of time. Those kids have any talent? Stars I heard of since?”

“No, not a single one,” Earl said, “except for being farmers. There’s very few people, kids or big—one the things I do now when I’m out selling the college is I scout the high school players. Our team plays two nights a week, although of course I never see them, because I’m always a week ahead, scouting next week’s opposition. And that leaves me three nights or so, four if I’m on the road, when I go to the high school games, see we ought to keep close tabs on. Worth a look, I mean. Well, maybe a look, but very few people got talent. Not kids, not bigger people. Not in anything, really,
any line of work you name. In basketball what you almost always find is that the ones that
can
run, and
can
handle the ball, well, they got the reputation in the little towns they live, but that is all they’ve got. And it’s all they’re ever gonna get. Because the basic reason that they’ve got it’s usually their towns and schools’re
so
small and so tiny that not many kids’re playing. And they just happen to be that year the ones that are the best. Or the ones that can shoot, or play defense—same thing. The worst player on a tar court at some school with broken windows in the jungle up in Harlem could take on three of them at once and outscore them ten to two. And if they got the two, they’d be lucky. What they’re playing against, they
are
pretty good, but you stack them up against some kids can
really
play, which is what happens, college, they’re gonna eat their lunch for them. It’s just the way it is.

“And then,” Earl said, “now and then, let’s say that I get lucky and the kid turns out be great. A little rough around the edges, and he needs a lot of coaching, needs to work out with the weights and maybe grow a couple inches, but after all, he’s still a kid, he’s not finished growing yet. A good prospect, in other words. Not a real barn burner, but you don’t expect to find those on the kind of trips I make—basic prospecting, you know? In New Hampshire and Vermont. There isn’t that much gold out there, and you don’t expect to strike it. This is where you’re browsing, sort of, for your ‘pretty good’ kid, the one that you can look at and say ‘not a bad little player.’ But definitely worth approaching, worth taking a look at. So the way you do that’s generally by going to see his coach. Tell him who you
are, recruiting and you’d like to try this boy out on a little one-on-one.”

The waiter returned with Ed’s second double. Ed took it from his tray and drank half of it. He put the glass down and folded his arms on the table again, gazing at Earl’s face. “Oh,” he said, “I bet you could do that, all right. You’re in terrific shape. At least you sure look like you are.”

“Ahh,” Earl said, “My weight’s all right. But my muscle tone’s lousy. Being on the road so much, you can’t keep up a program. And my wind’s shot, too, if you decide to run me like these damned teenagers do.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Ed said.

Earl grinned. He patted Ed’s hand. “Now, now,” he said, “we barely met. Let’s get to know each other.”

Ed looked contrite. He drained his glass. He aspirated the whiskey. He began to cough violently, his face turning crimson.

“Here,” Earl said, handing him the extra-ice glass containing the half of his first drink and water from melted cubes. Ed took it and drank all of it. His coughing subsided. He held the glass in his left hand and studied it. “Whew,” he said, “was that vodka?”

“Oh, my God,” Earl said, “I thought I was giving you water. I meant to give you the water.”

Ed smiled. “Oh,” he said, “no harm done. I just wasn’t prepared.”

“You’re all right now, though,” Earl said.

Ed nodded. “Fine, fine,” he said. “Just let me get another drink.” He signaled to the waiter, who nodded understanding. He looked back at Earl. “Go on, go on, Don,” he said. “This is very interesting.”

“Well,” Earl said, “most coaches in most schools,
well, they like nothing better ’n some scout a well-known college drops in of an afternoon, oils ’em up a little. What a fine job they’re doing teaching kids the fundamentals—coaches love it when you say that: ‘Damn but that impresses me, way you teach the fundamentals. Very few guys do that now, and it’s the secret of the game’—and is there any chance that you could maybe get your gear on, try out this kid that’s his tall forward, put him through his paces on the give-and-go? Just the simple stuff. Might lead to something for the kid, and of course the coach is thinking: ‘And maybe that’s not all—maybe something for me, too, like a college assistant’s job.’

“But St. Stephen’s,” Earl said, “well, we got problems. Not fatal but no fun, either. Being well known doesn’t help you, if it’s for the wrong reason.”

“I don’t know anything about the place,” Ed said. “I mean, I’ve heard of it and all, living in New Jersey, and I know they have a team.” His eyes were bright, and his face remained deep crimson.

“I bet,” Earl said, “I bet if I asked you, you’d know what we’re famous for. But I won’t make you guess. We had some kids fix games.”

Ed opened his mouth wide. “I
do
remember that,” he said. “It was some years back—that right?”

“A few,” Earl said. “But the bad taste lingers on, at least in the sport itself.”

“I felt so sorry for those boys,” Ed said. “I have sons of my own, and of course, I know quite a few … Well, I know I’d be terribly upset if it happened to someone I knew. Didn’t some of them go to jail?”

“Three of them,” Earl said.

“Did you know them?” Ed said. “Were any of them your, you know, special friends of yours?”

“No,” Earl said. “Oh, I knew a couple of them. Slightly. The ones who were seniors during my freshman year. But not very well.” He sighed. “I still felt sorry for them, though. It seemed like, you know, that, well, they got hit awful hard for what wasn’t really very much. Not that big a thing. From the team’s point of view, I mean. We didn’t lose any of the games we played when they did that. Beat the spread. Or made sure we didn’t beat it. So what if some people won bets as a result?”

“Well …,” Ed said, his eyes moist and sweat appearing on his cheeks.

“I know, I know,” Earl said. He toyed with the glass. “They said it was all for protecting the integrity of the game. But people still bet afterwards on games, and they always will. Nobody punished them. And the bookies that made money on the games those kids were playing, they’re still making money on the games the new kids play. And don’t kid yourself the colleges and the universities aren’t making money on them too. You think the coaches, the assistants, the people behind the scenes that you never hear about, the people like me? You think we don’t get paid? We don’t get paid much, that’s for sure, but we do get paid. And when we go on vacation, or our doctors send us bills, those things get paid too. You think that money doesn’t come from the games that those kids play? And it’s lots of money, getting bigger every year, with the TV stuff and all. Why should it be just the people who actually do it, actually do the work, spend all the hours at practice, and really sweat their balls off? Why should they be
the only ones that don’t make any money? Doesn’t seem quite fair.”

He sighed again. “But that’s the way it is,” he said. He toyed with his first rocks glass. He picked it up and finished the drink. “It isn’t going to change. We just have to live with it, and so when I go into one of these jerkwater high schools, and ask if I can see some kid and work him out a little, well, if I was from UCLA, or Villanova, Indiana or DePaul, Duke or N.C. State? They’d fall all over me. But the minute that I tell them that I’m from St. Stephen’s, that’s when even if they have got someone reasonably good that might make our second team, I know I’m just wasting my time. It’s very discouraging. Just a waste of time.” He picked up his second drink and raised it to Ed. “Well,” he said, “bottoms up. Great way to spend your holiday, huh? Just jerking around.”

“It could be something more,” Ed said. “Will you come in the men’s with me?”

“You’ve got a plane to catch,” Earl said. “You said you had a plane.”

“The Shuttle,” Ed said. “The eleven o’clock Shuttle. All I have to do’s drop off the car at Hertz, and go and catch the plane. I’ll be cutting it close, sure, but I’d really like to, you know—it’s only ten fifteen. Just a little quickie, Don? At least one good thing this weekend that’s been so lonely for you?” He licked his lips and spread them in a sudden grin. “You know what we could do?” he said. “I know what we can do. Your plane, what time does your plane leave? Is it the last one for the Coast?”

“Eleven thirty,” Earl said. “Or eleven thirty-five. I haven’t got my ticket. It’s there for me at the desk.
This was a late change they made. Without telling me. The guy that was supposed to scout Loyola tomorrow afternoon and San Fran tomorrow night got sick, so he can’t go. So instead of me going to New Orleans Sunday night, and staying here the weekend with my sister and her kids, I have to fly out on short notice. Yeah, I do deserve a treat”

“Well,” Ed said, his eyes bright, “here’s what we can do. You drive and drop me off at Easter. That way I can make it easy. And then you drop off the car for me. I’ll give you all the paperwork, it’s all completely done. And just go and catch your plane. It won’t be as much time as I’d like to spend with you, won’t be time enough to hump. But you can let me blow you, Don. We’ve got time enough for that.”

After he saw Ed safely inside the Eastern terminal at Logan International Airport, Earl took the exit ramp and stopped the rental car at the airport gas station. He used the pay phone to call the Hertz twenty-four-hour number. Referring to the rental agreement, he identified himself as Edmund R. Cornell, the driver-customer of a dark green Pontiac Le Mans coupe, Massachusetts registration K76-333. “No, no,” he said, “no troubles at all. Car’s running fine in fact. It’s just that something came up, and my plans’ve changed, and I didn’t want you people to think I’d swiped the car. I’d like to return it instead of tonight sometime either Tuesday or Wednesday. Yes, still at the airport. Uh huh. Thanks very much.” He returned to the car and drove it out of the airport, taking the right fork leading to the Mystic River Bridge, marked “
NORTH SHORE N.H./MAINE.
”

At 7:30 on the Tuesday evening after Thanksgiving Donald Beale was still in his office. Oakes looked in. “Rough day?” he said. “You still up here and all?”

“Yeah,” Beale said. “God made gin for days like this.”

“Bank?” Oakes said.

Beale shook his head. “No,” he said, “the bank’s all right. We’re fine in that department. The line of credit I took, the one they didn’t want to give me but they did anyway, well, it turned out I didn’t need it after all. Detroit’s not shipping as many as they threatened to. So the payments I’ve already made’re out of whack as usual, but in
our
favor, for once. I ran into Mace Brookens at the Rotary today, told him I wasn’t sure I can afford to finance the bank like this. So no, nothing to do with the business. Just that about the middle of the afternoon, it was like things started to get a little bit out of whack, you know? Like when you dream about a funeral, the way Lincoln’s supposed to’ve done, and you keep going through this big house hearing people crying, and finally you come to the room where the
body’s laid out, and you look down in the casket, and it’s you. Well since it’s you that remembers the dream, you must be awake, and if you’re awake, and remembering, then you can’t possibly be dead. But it’s kind of upsetting, you know? It
has
to mean something. You almost want to
make
it mean something, even bad, if that’s what it’s going to take. I dunno. Feel like I’m losing my grip.”