Payback Time (7 page)

She pursed her lips. "Mitch, if I'm right, if Angel is a cop, this could be a huge break for both of us. As he does his drug investigation, we investigate him. I get pictures; you write up how he gains the trust of the drug users. When the arrests come, we'll scoop everyone. The
Seattle Times
will run our story: 'Inside the Drug Bust at Lincoln High.' Both of our names will be on the front page. Think how much that would help our college applications."

I
HELPED WITH MY PARENTS'
afternoon deliveries, came home, ate dinner, and figured the day was done. Then, around eight thirty, my cell phone rang. Kimi was on the line. "You said you know where Angel lives. Let's go take some pictures."

"Now?"

"Why not?"

"What if he sees us? And what if it really was a gun?"

"You can park down the block. I'll use a telephoto lens; he won't notice anything. Anyway, cops don't shoot people for sitting in a car."

Five minutes later, I pulled up in front of Kimi's house. She hurried down her walkway, wearing shorts and a pink top, camera bag slung over her shoulder, her father at the door watching.

I drove across the Ballard Bridge, wound past Fishermen's Terminal, and made a right onto Commodore Way. I turned left on Elmore Street, drove one hundred feet up the block, pulled to the curb, and stopped. I flicked off the headlights but kept the engine idling. "There," I said, pointing up the block and across the street. "The one with the bars on the windows."

Kimi started snapping pictures of the ramshackle house.

"Isn't it too dark?" I asked.

"The twilight will give the photos a mysterious look. I can use Photoshop to brighten the images if I need to."

With every click of the camera, the whole undertaking felt increasingly dangerous, but Kimi kept snapping away. At last she put the lens cap on the camera and stuck the camera back into its case. I was about to speed off when she leaned forward, her brow furrowed, and nodded toward the house. "Wait. Do you notice something odd about the iron bars on the windows and doors?"

I looked. "Not really."

"The paint is peeling; the porch looks like it could crumble away, but the bars are brand new. And see how fancy they are? My dad recently had security bars put over the windows on our house. Wrought iron like that costs money." She turned to me. "I bet there's a top-notch security system in place."

"And all that means?"

"The ramshackle house is a cover. If you look quickly, it seems like one thing; look harder, and it's something else. The same with Angel."

That moment the front door opened and the older guy, wearing his Seahawks sweatshirt, stepped onto the porch. He looked down the block opposite from us, and then he turned and stared at the Focus. "Get down," I ordered, and we both slunk down in the seat.

For a long moment, we stayed down. Then a new dread came over me. The Focus's engine was running. Had the guy heard it? What if he was walking toward the car right at this moment? What if he had a gun in his hand?

I inched my head up until I was able to see. The guy was coming toward us, and fast. I didn't wait to see what he wanted. I threw the Focus into drive and peeled out of there. "Stay down!" I barked at Kimi. As I tore past the guy, I put my hand up by the side of my face so he couldn't see me. At the end of the block I made a hard left and then raced through the side streets of lower Magnolia until I reached Dravus Street, which I followed down to Elliott Avenue. Neither Kimi nor I said a word until I pulled up in front of her house and killed the engine.

"My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it," she said.

"Mine, too."

I looked at her, and for no reason we both started to laugh.

Her porch light flicked on. "I better get inside," she said, the laughter subsiding as quickly as it had come, and she was out the door and up the walkway.

I headed toward my home, but turned north on Thirty-second and drove up to Sunset Hill Park instead. I parked, walked to the chain-link fence, and looked out over Puget Sound. Two ferries glided on the water, their lights twinkling in the black.

I tried to make sense of what had happened. I'd completely panicked, that I knew for sure. But everything else was murky. Had the guy really been coming toward us? Or was he just going for a walk?

I stared at Puget Sound for a while, my mind rolling like the waves, and then drove home. All night I kept waking up, then falling back asleep. I'd finally fallen into a deep sleep when my cell phone rang. It was eight in the morning, and it was summer, yet Alyssa was wide awake. "How are your football stories going?" she asked. "I'd like two, you know. A preview, and then a story about the game against Mater Dei on Saturday. Oh, and a volleyball preview, too."

"I'll have them all by next week," I said, my mind foggy.

"If you did the previews early, we could get the pages ready for publication. I want to have the September issue out as soon as possible, maybe even the first day."

"I'll get it to you as soon as I can, Alyssa."

 

The volleyball preview was done, but the football preview was causing me nothing but trouble. For a solid hour I worked on it. I must have tried fifteen different hooks, but none worked. I'd write a few paragraphs only to have my ideas dwindle away. The whole time I was wasting my effort on those useless paragraphs, I could feel an imp sitting on my shoulder. "
Horst! Horst!
" the rascal kept whispering in my ear. "
Write about Horst!
" Finally I gave in, and once I focused on Horst, the article wrote itself.

T
HE HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL SEASON
in Seattle opens every year with the Seattle Challenge. Powerhouse teams from California fly up to square off against the best Puget Sound teams at Qwest Field, the Seahawks stadium. Because of Horst's growing reputation, Lincoln High had been invited, and we were matched against Mater Dei, a football factory from Southern California.

The morning of the game, my mom stopped me as I headed out the door for my run/walk. "You look slimmer, Dan." I grimaced, because I hate it when anyone says anything about my body, but she persisted. "Really, there's a change."

"You look taller, too," my dad called out. "I told you you'd grow."

I drove to the Locks, but before starting my run, I looked at my face in the rearview mirror. Were they right? Or did I still look like Wilbur from
Charlotte's Web,
which is how Heather Lowry had described me in eighth grade. I could still picture her: blond, curly-haired, with her wicked smile.

I stepped out of the car, not sure that my face looked thinner, not sure that my legs were longer, but hopeful. Then I went for my run. Each day I was running more and walking less; I could actually imagine a day when I'd run the whole way.

When I finished, I returned home and showered. I was done working—school was starting soon, and my parents gave me the last week of summer off—but having nothing to do made me restless. I cleaned my closet and straightened up my desk. At three I called Kimi and asked if she needed a ride, but she was going with Marianne and Rachel, which is what I'd expected.

 

Kickoff was at seven thirty, so I left at six thirty. As I drove, I kept changing channels on the radio. I was glad I didn't have any junk food in the car, because when I'm nervous, I eat. A mile from the stadium I panicked, certain I'd left my press pass at home on the kitchen table. I pulled my wallet out and rifled through it, my eyes darting back and forth from the road to the contents until I discovered the pass behind my driver's license.

I found a parking spot four blocks south of the stadium. I showed my pass at the press gate, and the usher waved me through. As I shoved the pass back into my wallet, I spotted Chet the Jet and my shoulders slumped. "Don't look so happy to see me," he said, smiling wryly. "And relax. This will be my only Lincoln game. You'll get plenty of chances to be my stringer."

I managed a weak smile. "I don't mind that you're here."

He shook his head. "We both know the score. Since I'm here, you get no byline. It's good to be greedy for a byline—greed is a quality every top-notch reporter has in abundance. And I'm sure there's room for fifty bucks in your wallet."

He moved toward the press box. I could have followed him; my press pass would have gotten me inside. Mr. Dewey had told us that the press box at Qwest had computer terminals and free food, but he'd also said that behind the one-inch pane of glass, reporters never cheered, no matter how exciting the play on the field. "Cheering is considered unprofessional," Dewey had said, "like an undertaker telling jokes at a funeral."

I worked my way to section 109, right on the fifty-yard line. I'd have to sit toward the top, in the shaded area, to see the words I typed on my laptop. I started trudging up the stairs, but had gone only a few steps when Britt Lind stepped out into the aisle, smiled, and said hello.

Britt is Horst's girlfriend. Green eyes, sandy blond hair, a body that Noah Webster could use to illustrate the word
voluptuous.
I looked left; I looked right. I looked behind me. Was Britt Lind talking to me?

"Hi, Britt," I said.

Her gaze fell on my laptop case, and I understood. "You're the sportswriter this year, right?" She flashed another smile. "Make sure you get down the great things Horst does."

"If Horst does great things, I'll write them down."

She tossed her head back like a thoroughbred before the Kentucky Derby. "Oh, he'll do great things. He always does. He's great at everything."

I nodded, and then climbed ten rows and settled into my seat.

Q
WEST
F
IELD HOLDS 65,000 PEOPLE.
About 10,000 were at the game—a big crowd for a high school football game in Seattle, but the size of the stadium made the crowd seem small. I scanned the sidelines with my binoculars until I found Kimi. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the word
Mustangs
running down both sleeves. She paced up and down the sideline, snapping shot after shot.

Mater Dei has one of the great high school football programs in the country. A slew of NFL players have come from there, including two Heisman Trophy winners. But Lincoln had a chance. The newspapers in Southern California were predicting a down year for the Monarchs—too many freshmen at too many key positions. Playing in front of a hostile crowd more than a thousand miles from home, those kids would be scared.

The Lincoln band played the national anthem. The crowd cheeered, and then I sat down, opened my laptop, and stared at the blank screen. McNulty had told me that I had to focus on Horst, and I'd said I would, but McNulty wasn't leaning over my shoulder now. I could write what I wanted, and Alyssa would print what I wrote. If Angel played the way I knew he could, then his name would appear prominently in my article.

We won the coin toss. Blake Stein took the kickoff and plowed straight upfield to the thirty-five. Lincoln's offense stormed onto the field, guys pounding one another's shoulder pads and hopping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes.

Horst was sensational on the opening drive, marching Lincoln right down the field. Ten yards on a toss sweep; twelve on a screen pass; eight on a simple in. The scoring play came on a bomb down the sideline to a streaking Coby Eliot—a gorgeous touchdown pass to end a perfect drive. It all happened so fast, I had trouble keeping up with my notes.

After the kickoff Mater Dei's offense took the field, but McNulty had his defense huddle around him. Finally they broke and hustled to the line of scrimmage. The program said Angel Marichal was wearing forty-four. I had my binoculars on the players, searching for him. Where would McNulty put him? Defensive end ... linebacker ... strong safety? A guy with Angel's size and speed could play almost anywhere.

I hunted, and then hunted some more; he wasn't on the field. I turned my binoculars to the sidelines. Still I had trouble finding him. Finally I spotted him at the far end of the bench, sitting off by himself, ten yards from anyone.

It made no sense. There'd been two weeks of practice. McNulty wanted to win, and he wanted to win badly. Even if Angel didn't star during drills, his size, speed, and strength should have gotten him a starting spot somewhere on the defense. And why was Angel putting a wall between himself and his teammates?

I looked down on the field for Kimi. Every once in a while she'd train her camera on Angel and snap a few photos before turning back to the action on the field. What did she make of it?

I wanted to puzzle it out, or at least try to, but I had a game to cover. My eyes went back to the field. McNulty had pushed eight defenders up close, daring Mater Dei to pass. The Monarchs' coach didn't run the risk, running two dive plays that moved the ball to the twenty-one. On third and four, McNulty blitzed Darren Clarke, the middle linebacker. The Mater Dei quarterback—a sophomore named Hunter Ford—sailed his pass over his receiver's head and into the arms of one of our safeties, who returned the interception to the fifteen-yard line before he was forced out of bounds.

About ninety-nine percent of the crowd were Lincoln fans, and they were up cheering as Horst took his position under center. He dropped back as if to pass, but then tucked the ball under his arm and raced upfield on a quarterback draw. At the five he straight-armed a Monarch linebacker to the ground. Two guys hit him near the goal line, but he carried both of them into the end zone. Touchdown Lincoln.

The Lincoln players in the end zone were jumping around. So were the players on the sideline: jumping and pounding on one another, flirting with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty by spilling onto the field. All except Angel. He had his helmet raised high, and he was shaking it, but he didn't join any of the clumps of celebrating players.

Mater Dei fought back. On their next possession, the Monarchs drove the ball the length of the field. They'd have scored a touchdown if their receiver hadn't dropped a pass in the end zone. As it was, their field goal kicker split the uprights from thirty yards, cutting the lead to 13–3.