Hangman's Game (5 page)

Rizotti pulls his seat in closer to the table. I feel this room getting smaller.

“The two of you buddies?”

“We know each other professionally.”

“I understand that Sault and your agent were together at Stark's restaurant earlier tonight,” Rizotti says. “Were you there as well, Mr. Gallow?”

“I was.” If he knew about the fight, how would he not know I was there? Also, I told the other officers I had been at Stark's, and Rizotti has clearly been briefed.

“See, this is helpful already,” Rizotti say. “The hostess said Sault was there with two guys she didn't recognize. She had Cecil Wilson's name from the credit card receipt, but she had no idea who the third man was. Now we know it is you.”

He smiles smugly. It feels like Rizotti's only point in asking me these questions is to tell me that I can pass through a football haven like Stark's unrecognized.

“Mr. Gallow, I understand that Carson and Sault got into a disagreement before dinner,” Rizotti says. “Carson wanted Sault to eat at his table, and Mr. Sault refused.”

“Yes,” I say. “That's right.”

“Why didn't you tell that to anyone earlier?”

“Because I can't imagine it has anything to do with the shooting,” I say firmly. “If Jai felt like he needed to put Samuel in his place, he would have rubbed Bengay in his jockstrap, or taken a dump in his cleats. That's how you teach a rookie a lesson. You don't kill someone because they don't sit at your table.”

“You wouldn't do that, and neither would I,” Rizotti says, scratching his nostril. “But we're not talking about you and me here, are we? We're talking about Jai Carson. A world-class piece of shit.”

Not that Rizotti is rushing to judgment or anything. Although of course, Jai did have a colorful history with Philadelphia law enforcement.

Once Jai was arrested late at night for DWI, and explained to the officer that he needed to be written up quickly because his favorite strip club was about to close. Another time he had been cited for public indecency after attempting to stage an X-rated photo shoot on the
LOVE
statue near City Hall. Most incriminatingly, there was the time Jai was arrested outside a man's apartment, wearing only sweatpants and threatening him with a pistol. It was all about a woman Jai had been feeling proprietary about at that moment. To Jai's credit, the gun turned out to be a water pistol—which, strangely enough, was loaded—but it took the police who arrived at the scene awhile to figure that out. Jai was lucky he hadn't been shot.

“I understand that at the end of this argument Carson yelled ‘Fuck you' at Samuel,” Rizotti says.

“He yelled ‘Fuck me,' actually,” I say.

Rizotti is about to write this down but then he looks up at me. “That an important difference to you?”

“Jai says ‘Fuck me' all the time,” I continue. “It's not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal, and this is part of my point, Gallow,” Rizotti says, pointing his pen at me. “If people like you and I yelled curses in a crowded restaurant, it would be an exceptional event. We're civilized. But not this piece-of-shit teammate of yours.”

I wonder if Rizotti isn't giving himself a little too much credit. For being civilized, I mean.

“And I've watched JC, whatever he calls himself, for ten years now, and you can see it on the field. The guy's the most overrated linebacker in the league. He's more interested in playing to the cameras than doing what it takes to win. He's poison on that team. He's the reason we can't make the playoffs anymore.”

So somewhere along the line we have slipped into sports talk radio. I want to thank Rizotti for calling and tell him I will get to his question after the commercial break.

“I really don't think Jai did this,” I say.

“Do you think that, or do you know it?” Rizotti asks.

“It's what I believe,” I say.

“It's not what I believe,” he says.

He lets the room go quiet. I maintain my stillness, hands folded beneath the table, waiting him out.

“I understand you saw a bumper sticker on the shooter's car,” Rizotti says. “It had a quarter moon on it.”

“That's correct,” I say, and I brace myself, because I can feel a hit coming.

“You know what would have really helped us?” Rizotti sneers. “A license plate number. I thought you athletes are supposed to have great reflexes. How could you see the bumper sticker but not the license plate?”

“I wish I had seen that plate, believe me,” I say. “No one wishes it more than me.”

“Oh, someone wishes it more than you,” Rizotti sneers. “Me. Let's face it, punter. You made my job a lot harder. You fucked up.”

I search for a response, a way to be helpful.

“What if you had me hypnotized?” I ask. “Maybe we could recover the memory that way.”

“Please,” Rizotti says, pulling back. “Where did you get that bullshit idea, from some TV show?”

I did, actually.

“I'll need to look at your phone,” Rizotti says. “The time stamps on your texts will help us nail down the details of your story.”

I want to help, but I am not going to let this oaf thumb through my phone. First, if he really wanted the time of the shooting, he has my 911 call. Second, if my salacious messages to Jessica become part of the police record, they will inevitably go public—if not for the pure gossip value, then so I can become the scapegoat for an investigation going nowhere. I can hear it now: we don't know anything about the killer because the punter was too busy sexting another man's wife.

“I'd prefer to keep the contents of my phone private,” I say. “What's on it is personal and has nothing to do with the case.”

“I'd like to judge for myself what is relevant to the case,” Rizotti says. “You'd be surprised what possibilities people leave unconsidered.”

“I've been answering your questions because I want to help,” I say firmly. “But if I need to get a lawyer now, I will.”

“Anytime anyone holds something back from me,” Rizotti says, cocking his head back and smacking his lips, “I assume the worst. You're climbing right up my list of suspects, punter.”

“What?” I say. “I couldn't have been the shooter. I was standing right there on the sidewalk with Cecil when he was shot. Just ask him.”

“If Cecil Wilson dies,” says Rizotti, “I won't be able to ask him anything, will I?”

He somehow manages to look as if he has said something savvy and wise, rather than callous and hateful. I ball my fists.

“Let's assume you're right about Jai Carson,” Rizotti continues, with revolting casualness. “That raises one big question: how did this shooter know you were going to be at the stadium? At least Carson would have been able to follow you from the restaurant.”

It is a fair question.

“Maybe the shooter was already in that area, for some reason that has nothing to do with us,” I say. “Aren't there random killings in this city every day?” The crime news in Philadelphia can be astoundingly bleak—perhaps because the city's economy has been trending downward for a good century or two.

“A random shooting?” Rizotti says disbelievingly. “Is that the best you can do? Come on, punter. You're my lone eyewitness. Give me something better than that.”

I feel a deep despair—that I don't know more, and that I now must depend on this cretin to find justice for Cecil and Samuel. I have long held that one of the chief problems in this universe is that there are more positions of responsibility than there are people equipped to fill them. This detective seems to be a particularly painful example.

I push back my chair and rise from the table.

“If you want to ask me any more questions,” I say, “I'm going to need a lawyer. If not, I'm going home. It's been a long night.”

I move toward the door. Rizotti stands, but he doesn't try to stop me.

“One last question, Gallow, if you don't mind,” he says before I can turn the knob. “Ever consider the possibility that this shooter was after you? It's night, it is dark, you guys aren't that far apart. All three of you are big. And Sault is light-skinned for a black guy. From a distance someone could easily mistake Sault for you. Or your agent. Maybe they just shot the wrong guy and didn't even know it.”

I had not considered the possibility. But it couldn't be, could it? I am taller and leaner than Cecil. And Samuel, streamlined as his body was, still had eighty pounds on me. Even at night, you'd have to be blind …

“Nah, probably not,” Rizotti says, waving his hand dismissively. “After all, you are just the punter.”

 

CHAPTER 3

T
HERE ARE MOMENTS
when, if you are in the mood, you can look at the people around you and view them as a judgment on the state of your life at that point. It might be at a birthday dinner, or a New Year's Eve get-together, or finally, I suppose, your funeral, though I do not believe the dead can see such things. I am having that kind of moment now, as I emerge into the police station lobby and see my one-person welcoming party: Freddie Gladstone.

My friend looks sharp, at least. His long brown hair is styled and wavy, and he is wearing an apricot-colored designer T-shirt and beige linen pants. He looks as if he might have come from some all-night party. Five in the morning is often the shank of his evening.

Freddie is seated under the
WANTED
posters and has his body tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, studying the screen of his iPhone. He doesn't notice my approach.

“Hey, pal, what's going on?” I ask casually, standing on top of him.

“Oh, hey, Hangman,” Freddie says, not looking up. He calls me Hangman because my last name is Gallow and punts are measured by hang time, and why let an obvious pun sit on the shelf? “Check this out,” he says. He turns his iPhone toward me. It has a black-and-white image of a nude woman looking over her shoulder with an embarrassed grin on her face. “It's one of these deals where ordinary girls pose for a calendar to raise money for some charity.”

“What's the cause?” I ask. We should be talking about me, but at this point I welcome a distraction.

“Um … anal cancer, I'm pretty sure,” Freddie says. “That's why the girls are all photographed from behind. It's pretty good. Sometimes I like that whole amateur thing better. It's more transgressive in a way. But hey, how are you doing?”

Thanks for asking. I catch Freddie up on my evening. He listens in a rapt but calm way, and he is never more stoic than when I describe the shooting itself. It is only when I get to the police interrogation and mention that Rizotti implied that I might have been the shooter that he shows emotion.

“What a dick,” Freddie says, scowling

“It's understandable,” I demur. “He is trying to get me off balance. Just doing his job.”

“It still sucks,” Freddie says. “I should have been in there with you.”

“What would you have done?”

“A lawyer might have helped.”

“Right,” I say. “I forgot.”

“Fuck you.” Freddie has a law degree, but it is easy to lose sight of that fact, given that he has never put it to any use. Nominally he is a vice president of the Sentinels, but he was given that job because his dad, real-estate billionaire Arthur Gladstone, owns the team. Freddie attends front-office meetings at his pleasure, and it's not like when he goes off to Ibiza or Bali or Costa Rica on a vacation of undetermined length, anyone scrambles to cover for him.

In fact, the team employs two in-house lawyers, and Freddie is not one of them.

“Have you heard anything about Cecil?” I ask.

“He is still being operated on, is the last I heard from O'Dwyer,” Freddie says. Jim O'Dwyer is the team's longtime public relations chief. “That was about an hour ago, but he sounded positive.”

“A PR guy sounding positive,” I say. “Why am I not reassured?”

Freddie shrugs. “That's all I got.”

“Let's go to the hospital,” I say.

“O'Dwyer's information is pretty recent,” Freddie says. “He would let me know if … anything changed.”

“I should go anyway,” I say. “Even if it's a one-percent chance I get in, I want to try.”

“I'll give you a ride, Hangman,” Freddie says. “But I may leave you at the doorstep. Me and hospitals, you know.”

“That's fine. No worries.”

When Freddie was fourteen years old he watched his mother slowly die from something called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which attacks the brain, causing dementia, hallucinations, and loss of body control, before death. Freddie doesn't speak about the experience often, and when he does it is quickly and without detail, always cutting himself off with the refrain that it was “a long eight months.”

“When you go outside, be careful,” Freddie warns. “The vultures are in heavy swarm.”

I walk toward the door and see that predators have assembled in the predawn darkness: news vans, cameramen, and reporters, in a needy search for quotes and pictures and video.

“At least you look nice,” Freddie says, straightening my shirt collar. If only he had seen me in the jacket. “Follow my blocking. And remember, don't give them anything to work with. Don't look anyone in the eye, don't say anything. Just keep moving forward.”

With Freddie leading the way, we exit the police station. We keep our heads low and our eyes ahead toward Freddie's black BMW. Still, the crush comes, the scuffling for position, the thrusting of arms—the reporters exhibit the body language of a mob.

“Nick, what happened?”

“Are you okay?”

“Hey, Nick, look here!”

“Are you a suspect?”

“Who did it?” The last question comes from a particularly aggressive blond woman who steps in our path and momentarily blocks our movement.