Payback Time (15 page)

Or at least, Cascadia was running on fumes. Lincoln had about one pint of gas. They managed a touchdown in the first quarter, a field goal in the second, and another field goal in the third. Horst didn't make any great passes; Angel didn't play much, and when he was out there, he didn't make any great stops. I felt as though I were watching a practice game in August.

Halfway through the fourth quarter, with the score stuck at 13–0, a Lincoln drive stalled ... again. Kenstowicz punted and the Cascadia return man caught the ball, took one step, slipped, and went down on his own twenty. The Cascadia fans—or those who were awake—groaned.

I looked up at the clock: four minutes remained. I opened my laptop and starting composing my story for Chet the Jet, trying to think how I could add spice to what had been a bland game.

And that's when everyt hing changed. On first down, the Cascadia QB took the snap and pitched the ball to his tailback. The runner broke left, cut back, and he was clear.
He gained forty-eight yards before he was finally run out of bounds. Cascadia's students and parents—silent for so long—started shouting like madmen. On the very next play, Cascadia ran a pass play off a double reverse. The wide-out was alone on the ten-yard line when he caught the ball, and he walked in for the score.

After the extra point split the uprights, everybody in the stadium knew an onside kick was coming. McNulty had his
hands
team out there—receivers, running backs, even the quarterbacks. The Lincoln guys crowded up, alert. The Cascadia kicker approached the ball. He kicked the top half, and the ball tumbled forward, end over end.

Somebody—I couldn't tell who—came forward to field it, but the ball hit off his shoulder pads. A mad scramble followed, guys digging deep to make the play. There was a huge heap of arms and legs scrabbling for the ball. The refs blew their whistles furiously and started pulling players off the pile. In the stands everyone was silent, expectant. Finally, from the bottom of the pile, a player jumped up holding the ball aloft in triumph and prancing to the sideline like a thoroughbred ready to race.

He was wearing silver and black.

The Cascadia fans exploded. Sure, Lincoln led 13–7, but the Coyotes were in position to steal the game. One more touchdown and Cascadia would be headed to the state semifinal game while Lincoln would be going home.

McNulty didn't mess around with Clarke; he put Angel out there at middle linebacker. And the Coyote coach didn't mess around, either. He went for the knockout on first down. The quarterback lateraled to the halfback on what looked like a sweep play. Instead of trying to make the corner, the tailback drifted back from the line of scrimmage, his eyes downfield. Our cornerback had come up a couple of steps when he'd seen the pitchout, but now he was racing back. The Cascadia receiver was wide open—if the pass had been on the money he'd have scored easily—but halfbacks don't have the arms of quarterbacks. The ball hung in the air just a little; the wide-out had to wait a beat for it to come down, and that extra second gave our cornerback enough time to run him down and tackle him at the eight-yard line.

The Cascadia fans were hopping up and down and hugging one another. I looked up at the clock: three minutes remained. Plenty of time.

On first and goal, Cascadia ran their fullback up the gut for two yards before three guys tackled him. On the next play, the Coyotes' wide receiver ran a fade pattern into the corner of the end zone. It was a timing play, run far away from Angel, but the ball was overthrown. On third down, Cascadia tried a pass to their tailback in the flat. He caught the ball, but Angel and two other guys dropped him in his tracks for no gain.

Fourth down.

Cascadia called time-out. The players huddled around the coach. This was it, their last chance. The ref blew his whistle, and the team huddled at the fifteen. They broke the huddle and trotted to the line of scrimmage.

The quarterback leaned over center, tapped once, and the center snapped the ball. The QB rolled right; Angel streaked toward him on a blitz, but Cascadia had kept the fullback in to help block—Angel wasn't going to get to the quarterback.

I looked to the end zone. Half of Lincoln's defenders were playing zone, but the other half were playing man-to-man, leaving no one in the center of the field. Someone had blown the coverage. Was it Angel? The center had to be Angel's area. The Coyote tight end moved into the open space.

All the Cascadia QB had to do was lob the ball to him, but the pressure got him. He short-armed his pass, throwing it at the tight end's feet. The tight end was a big guy, and he reached down, trying to pick it off his shoe tops. For a moment I thought he had it, but the ball bounced off his fingertips, turning end over end in the air, almost as if in slow motion. The tight end was trying to gain control, but he kept bobbling the ball—and then our safety leveled him, and the football was on the ground, bounding harmlessly away.

Lincoln was headed to the Tacoma Dome, two wins away from being crowned state champion.

The Cascadia fans snarled their way down from the bleachers while the Lincoln fans stayed in their seats to cheer the team. I saw Kimi taking pictures of the players holding up their helmets and saluting the crowd. Horst was in the front, with Warner and Westwood at his side. Angel was far in the back, the only player still wearing his helmet.

The celebration lasted fifteen minutes. After the cheering ended and the players disappeared down the tunnel into the locker room, I walked out into the parking lot. Some drunken Cascadia guys were screaming and swearing as they ran around the parking lot, looking ridiculous yet scary in their Halloween masks. I kept my head down—no way I was making eye contact with any of them.

When I got to the Focus, the man next to me—a guy about my dad's age—had his trunk up and was pulling out his spare tire. "Did they get you?" he asked.

"What?" I said.

He motioned to the cars near us. About half a dozen of them had their trunks up. "Those Cascadia morons slashed a bunch of tires. They got me, and you've got a Lincoln parking sticker in your back window, so I thought they might have gotten you."

I walked behind the car. Sure enough, the back passenger tire was sitting on the rim.

"Flat?" the man called out.

"Yeah."

I opened the trunk, only to discover the spare tire was the wrong size. I carried it over to the man. "This won't work, will it? It looks tiny."

He shook his head. "In the old days, you got a real tire. Today all they give you are these miserable things." He pointed to the spare tire of his Honda Civic. "Mine's the same. That thing will work. You can limp home with it, but don't try to go on the freeway. Thirty-five miles an hour, maybe forty, tops. Do you know how to change a tire?"

"I've never done it," I admitted, "but I can figure it out."

"I'll help you when I'm done with mine."

The man finished changing his flat just as I got my tire off the wheel. He talked me through the rest. When I finally had the tiny spare mounted, he wished me luck. "Remember—slow."

I eased the Focus out onto the main road and then crawled along in the right lane like a ninety-year-old woman. Sometimes I'd give it a little extra gas, but whenever the speedometer inched much above forty, the Focus shook so wildly that I thought the doors would fall off. It took me nearly twice as long to get home as it had taken me to get to the game.

Up in my room, I whipped out the one hundred words for Chet the Jet in ten minutes. Angel hadn't been the story, so I didn't feel bad about leaving him out. Kimi had e-mailed me a great photo of the dropped pass at the end of the game. Thirty minutes after I'd sat down at the computer, I hit the
Send
button. The next
Lincoln Light
was weeks away, so I could put off my articles for it. I got in bed, flicked off the light, and fell asleep.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
I had a message from Chet the Jet.
Great article. Didn't change a single word.

The world is a crazy place. If somebody had told me six months earlier that a professional newspaper reporter would call something I wrote
great,
I'd have sworn that it would be the happiest moment of my life. Now it had happened, and all I felt was depressed.

After I ate a bowl of oatmeal, I drove down to the Ballard Locks to run. I used a bench by the roses to stretch, and then jogged to the fish ladder, up the steep hill, and across the footbridge toward the Magnolia neighborhood.

When I run, my eyes are open, though I don't really
see
anything. But that day, as I looked down into the ravine from the footbridge, I stopped in my tracks. What my eyes were telling my brain didn't make sense. Half in and half out of the creek that runs through the steep ravine was a great blue heron, dead. Somebody had impaled it with a stick.

I glanced around, uncertain what to do. Finally I started running again, but I'd only gone a few yards when I pictured the little kids who cross the bridge with their moms and dads. They'd see what I'd seen.

When I reached the Magnolia side of the bridge, I slowly worked my way down the slick, steep bank. The creek below was more like a river, swollen by Seattle's autumn rains and running fast. I didn't want to lose my footing.

After about ten minutes, I made it. I inched my way along the bank of the creek toward the dead bird. Just as I reached it, another heron came streaking low over the creek, nearly skimming my head as it swooped, and landed on a branch nearby.

I was determined to give the dead bird some sort of burial, but the live heron almost scared me away. I'd seen herons wading along the shores of Puget Sound. When they saw something to eat, they hit their prey with the speed of a striking rattlesnake. I'd read somewhere that their beaks were as sharp as ice picks.

Flies swarmed around the spot where the bird had been speared; dragonflies darted back and forth above it. The filmy eyes stared at me accusingly, as if I'd killed it.

It was too gross to touch, so I grabbed the stick and pulled, hoping to yank the bird out of the water. It was much lighter than I expected, and with a few tugs I was able to move it under some nearby blackberry bushes. After that, I laid some fallen Douglas fir branches and some morning glory vines on top of it.

The other heron watched as I covered the dead bird with branches and leaves. It wasn't exactly a proper burial, but it was better than leaving it out in the open. When I was satisfied that no little kid could see the bird from the bridge, I stopped. The live heron eyed me for a long moment, then suddenly flapped his huge wings and flew out of the ravine toward Shilshole Bay. My eyes followed him until he disappeared, and then I slowly worked my way back up to the bridge. I slipped a couple of times, scraping my stomach and arms. For a panicky moment I thought I'd never get back up, but I did.

I cleaned myself off a little and then took my normal run through Magnolia. Instead of thinking about Angel or Kimi, the whole way I kept wondering why anyone would kill such a beautiful bird. Maybe that's why the flash came to me just before I got back to the car. Maybe your best ideas come when you don't try.

It was his clothes: the Eagles cap, the Eagles jersey, and especially the Allen Iverson jersey. That wasn't a Nuggets or a Pistons jersey; it was a Sixers jersey. All the sports stuff Angel wore was Philadelphia stuff. Kimi and I hadn't found a single trace of him in Houston because Angel Marichal was from Philadelphia.

It had been right in front of us the first time we'd seen him.

I
CALLED
K
IMI
as soon as I got home. I told her to try Philadelphia area codes with the phone number and explained why.

After I cut the connection, I paced my room, wondering how many area codes Philadelphia had. It couldn't be that many. And Angel was a city kid—he wouldn't be from some suburb. If I was right, Kimi would be calling back ... soon. I looked at my watch. How much time had gone by?
Come on,
I thought.
Come on.

The phone rang. "Aramingo High School in North Philadelphia."

"Did you talk to somebody? What did they say?"

"It's the weekend, Mitch. All I got was voice mail. But it's a high school."

We talked for a few more minutes. She wanted to know what questions I was going to ask when I called Aramingo High on Monday. "I haven't really thought of that," I admitted.

"Well, you'd better start."

I said goodbye, closed my phone, and then just sat, doing nothing. I was on the verge of uncovering a real story—my first real story. I enjoyed the feeling for a full five minutes, and then I got to work. I had to dot all my
i's
and cross all my i's. Close wasn't good enough; I had to
nail
the story.

First I needed to establish that Angel had been a student at Aramingo High. I used Google to pull up the school's website. I clicked on the demographic tab first, just to get a feel for the place. Right away I could tell Aramingo was tough. The free lunch rate was 90 percent, more than double Lincoln High's. Judging from the number of suspensions, there must have been a fight every day. In my three years at Lincoln I'd never heard of a teacher getting hit by a kid. Fourteen teachers had been assaulted at Aramingo.

I printed the demographic report and then returned to the home page. It took a while, but I finally found a link to athletics. It was hit-and-miss for most sports, but somebody had posted the results of the football games. They were good—7–2 so far this year, 6–3 the year before, 8–2 the year before that. I kept searching for a link to photos, but there were no pictures of players, and there wasn't a roster, either. The football team looked like the best thing about Aramingo, but nobody seemed to care.

I checked the
Philadelphia Inquirer's
sports pages next. I typed
Angel Marichal
into the search box and got nothing. I double-clicked
Archives,
figuring maybe his history was somewhere hidden in there. A page popped up asking for a credit card number. I leaned back in my chair and stared at the screen. My mother would let me use her card, but I wasn't ready to ask yet. First I needed to talk to somebody at Aramingo High, and I'd have to wait until Monday morning to do that.