Payback Time (18 page)

Lakes 7, Lincoln 3.

All year the center part of the field had been off-limits whenever Angel had been playing at middle linebacker. His focus had been 100 percent. But now his head was on a swivel, looking this way between every play. And so was mine. My eyes kept going around and around the stadium, trying to figure out what was going on.

Football is intense. If your mind isn't in the game, your body's going to take a beating. And that's what happened to Angel. Lakes took the attack right up the gut, knocking him back, pushing him around, and eating up the clock.

They did everything right except put up points. That was because of John Kenstowicz. Horst wasn't getting much going against the Lakes defense, but Kenstowicz was having the punting game of his life, booming one high spiral after another, and our special teams were special, pinning Lakes deep in their own territory after every one of Kenstowicz's punts.

Force a team without speed to go eighty or ninety yards, make them use a dozen plays, and chances are something will go wrong. On one drive the Lakes quarterback botched a handoff to Wang in the red zone. The ball rolled along the line of scrimmage until one of our linemen fell on it. On another, a Lakes receiver had a pass hit him in the chest and carom to a Lincoln cornerback for a drive-killing interception. Lakes totally dominated the game, but when the clock ran to 00:00 ending the second quarter, their lead was just 7–3.

I
WATCHED
A
NGEL
as he ran off the field at halftime. The rest of the guys on both teams ran with their heads facing forward, but his eyes were still searching the stands. He couldn't play if his mind was somewhere else, which meant Lincoln couldn't win. At least that's how I saw it.

When the teams returned for the second half, Coach McNulty pulled Angel to the side. There was no yelling, no argument. Even from far away I could tell that. McNulty put his hands on Angel's shoulder pads and looked straight into his eyes as he spoke. There was something almost gentle about McNulty, a word I never thought I'd use to describe him.

Whatever McNulty said worked, because during that first defensive series Angel looked like Angel. On first and second down, he clogged the middle, assisting on two tackles. On third and six, he destroyed the blocking scheme on a screen pass, dropping Wang for no gain.

Once Angel focused on the game, I did the same. I'd almost nailed the big story, the story of Angel cheating. In the meantime, I had the small stories to write, too. Chet the Jet was up in the press box, so I wouldn't be writing a recap for the
Seattle Times.
But another
Lincoln Light
would be coming out before the Christmas break. My article on this game and the next—if there was a next—would be read by every student and teacher in the school, and most parents. I blocked out all of Kimi's questions and concentrated on the game.

Neither team scored in the third quarter, but that doesn't mean nothing happened. The offenses struggled, not because they were bad, but because the defenses were good. Some of the hits were so hard, I could hear them way up where I was sitting. Three guys—two from Lakes and one from Lincoln—had to be helped off the field. My bet was that all three had concussions.

The defenses were so fierce, it seemed impossible that either team would ever score. Then, midway through the fourth, Lakes caught a break. Lincoln had the ball, third and one, near midfield. Warner took the handoff and plunged into the line. The Lakes defensive line stopped him cold, but Warner slipped to the left, legs driving, giving everything he had to get that first down. A Lakes safety smacked down on the ball with his fist and it popped loose. Somebody kicked it, and a Lakes lineman had it jump right into his hands. He rumbled downfield for forty yards before he was tackled from behind at the Lincoln twelve-yard line.

The Tacoma Dome exploded. Lakes fans roared for the clinching touchdown; Lincoln fans exhorted their defense to hold. Lakes sent Wang off left tackle for three, then off right tackle for three more. On third and four, the quarterback faked to Wang and then ran a bootleg right that nearly fooled Angel. When they unpiled and measured, Lakes was inches short.

Fourth down.

The Lakes fans were up screaming: "
Go! Go! Go!
"

The Lakes coach sent in two tight ends. Lincoln's linemen dug deep, the linebackers filled the gaps. Just before the snap, Angel shot his gap, his timing perfect. As Wang took the handoff, Angel drove into him, knocking him back for a loss of two. Angel raised his hands as he raced off the field, followed by the rest of the defense, all of them jumping and hitting one another out of sheer joy.

It was an incredible goal-line stand, but it wouldn't mean a thing unless the offense could score. Under the shadow of his own goal line, Horst looked over his shoulder to make sure Warner was positioned correctly. He took the snap, turned, and a second later Warner hit off right tackle where he was stopped after a two-yard gain. Or at least that's what I thought.

And it was what Lakes's defense thought, too.

But Horst hadn't handed off. He had the ball on his hip, and he had Coby Eliot running down the sideline five yards clear of any defender.

Horst laid the pass out into the center of the field, a long, high, gorgeous spiral. Eliot had to slow just a bit to take the ball in, and that's what kept him from racing untouched to the end zone, but the play still gained over sixty yards.

The Lakes guys were stunned; Horst hurried his team to the line before they could recover. He ran the next play without a huddle, a simple pitch to Warner. Lincoln had run a similar play earlier and had gained next to nothing, but this time Warner cut back and bulled his way down to the fifteen before he was finally brought down.

Two plays and nearly eighty yards. Again Horst hustled the team to the line, where he again went with a quick snap. He dropped back, looked to pass, and then tucked the ball under his arm and took off on a delayed quarterback draw. The Lakes guys were so confused that only the outside linebacker knew what was happening. At the five Horst gave him a hip, spinning him around so completely that the guy actually toppled over.

Touchdown Lincoln!

Ninety-six yards in three plays.

Lincoln was less than two minutes from victory.

Kenstowicz boomed the kickoff down into the right corner. The Lakes returner muffed it, picked it up, took a step, and that's when Angel and about four other guys hit him. Somehow he held on to the football, but Lakes was backed up on their own ten-yard line with a little over a minute and one time-out.

The Lakes fans rose to their feet, screaming "Go Lancers!" so loud that the words rocked back and forth inside the T-Dome. Lincoln went into a prevent defense, and Lakes moved the ball upfield. Only they moved too slowly. They had no gamebreakers, and with every five- or eight-yard gain, twenty to thirty seconds ticked off the clock. Lakes was at their own forty-five, out of time-outs, with nine seconds left. Their quarterback didn't have the arm strength to heave a Hail Mary pass anywhere near the end zone, so they tried the hook-and-ladder play. For a second, it looked as if it might work, but only for a second. When the Lakes receiver was forced out of bounds shy of the thirty the scoreboard clock read 00:00.

Lincoln was headed to the state championship game.

T
HE
L
AKES FANS FILED OUT QUICKLY,
but like every other Lincoln fan, I stayed in my seat as the team milled around in front of the stands, the band playing and the cheerleaders leading yells and doing flips. Finally McNulty herded the team off the field, which was the signal for everyone else to leave.

As I made my way out of the arena, Lincoln kids started screaming, wild, loud rock-concert screams of pure joy that echoed in the stairwells. It was mainly guys who were screaming, but the electricity was everywhere. Parents and kids, A-students and near dropouts, rich and poor—you could feel the adrenaline rush. Out in the parking lot, car horns blared.

Instead of leaving the Tacoma Dome, I headed over to Gate G-1, the gate where the players exited. Now that the game was over, the fever had left me. And my mind switched right back on. Was Kimi right? Had we missed something?

G-1 opened up to a brightly lit runway with high concrete walls on both sides that funneled players and coaches to the parking lot. I waited at the end of the runway, hoping to see Angel. Players trickled out in groups of three or four, some laughing, most quiet. I saw Horst and Westwood, Price and Blake Stein. Then the door stayed closed for three or four minutes. The temperature was dropping fast; the forecast had been for snow or freezing rain—unusual for Seattle in November. I was about to return to my car when the door opened a final time and Angel and Coach McNulty emerged. They walked about ten feet and stopped and faced each other. They spoke quietly, both of them so intent that neither saw me, although I couldn't have been more than fifty feet away. For a moment I thought of confronting them, right then and there, but instead I slipped back into the darkness of the parking lot. The championship game was a week away; I had time.

I returned to my car, quickly made my way out of the nearly empty lot, and was soon back onto I-5 driving to Seattle. I turned on the CD player, but it was all noise. After a few miles, I flicked it off and listened to the silence.

After forty minutes, I reached Seattle. From the freeway I had another fifteen minutes of driving before I was upstairs in my room. I flicked the TV on and then clicked from stupid station to stupid station. I was watching golf when my cell rang.

"Did McNulty call?" It was Kimi.

"No, but he will."

"You'll tell me when he does, won't you? You won't do anything without me?"

"We're partners," I said.

"I know. I'm just nervous."

"So am I."

There was a long pause. "I hope you won't be mad that I'm telling you this," she finally said, "but when Rachel saw you today, she said she wasn't sure it was you. She said you didn't look overweight at all."

Can you be proud and ashamed at the same time? Because that's how I felt. "Mitch, are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here." I paused. "I'm really tired, Kimi. I think I'm going to call it a night."

T
HE FORECAST WAS ON TARGET.
When I woke up at six on Sunday morning, two inches of pure white snow covered streets and rooftops, lawns and sidewalks. I drove slowly down empty streets to the Ballard Locks and took my normal run, veering off at Elmore so I could see Angel's house. The snow made everything eerily quiet.

Angel's place looked more like a fortress than ever, and it wasn't just because of the iron bars over every window. From under the eaves, spotlights, ineffective in the morning light, shone pointlessly in every direction. I could feel a security system, imagine motion detectors, multiple dead bolts on the front and back doors.

As I ran back to the Locks, I searched for some missing piece of the puzzle. Back in August, Horst had told me he wasn't afraid of anything. Would Angel say that? I didn't think so. But what was he afraid of? When I reached the bridge, I peered into the ravine. The heron's nests stood out, snow-covered, in the bare trees.

Back at the car, I checked my cell phone: one new voice message. I hit the button, waited for the robot voice to finish, and then heard McNulty's voice. "Call me."

I took a deep breath before hitting redial. McNulty picked up on the first ring. "We have to talk. Face-to-face."

"Okay. How about Peet's?"

"No, not Peet's. Hattie's Hat at ten. See you there."

Before my grandfather died, he'd take me to Hattie's Hat for a hamburger when he visited. He liked it because they served the same food, cooked the same way, every time. Bacon and eggs, hash browns, white toast, and coffee from a percolator. "The menu hasn't changed in one hundred years," he used to say. Probably some of the waitresses have been there one hundred years, too. McNulty wanted to meet on his ground.

I called Kimi. "Can you pick me up?" she asked.

The hours crawled that morning, but finally it was time. Kimi was standing in front of her house, picking at her nails. It can be tough finding parking near Hattie's Hat, but a pickup truck was pulling out of a spot as I turned the corner onto Ballard Avenue.

 

There's been no smoking allowed in restaurants in Seattle for at least ten years, but so much smoke had oozed into the walls of Hattie's Hat in its first ninety years that the place still reeked of Marlboros. I looked around and spotted McNulty sipping coffee in a booth in the back. Angel wasn't with him.

Kimi and I walked over and slid in across the table from him. A gray-haired waitress with her hair in a bun came by. "Coffee?"

I nodded and she poured me a cup.

"What kind of tea do you have?" Kimi asked.

"Regular tea, sweetie," she said.

"Okay, I'll take that."

"Anything to eat?"

I looked to Kimi, and she gave her head a slight shake. "Maybe later," I said.

After the waitress had hurried off to get Kimi's tea, I put on my best reporter's face and faced McNulty. "Before we start, I want it understood that everything is on the record."

He screwed up his face. "What?"

"On the record. Whatever you say I can use in a story."

McNulty shook his head. "Oh, kid, you are so lost."

"You can insult me all you want," I said, trying to talk myself into a confidence I didn't feel. "It doesn't matter. I've got Angel's history from the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
He played four years at Aramingo High. And he was a quarterback, just like we said the first day when you pretended you didn't know him. But you knew all about his past because you had pulled his records. You knew he wasn't eligible, but you played him anyway because you want to win so badly you're willing to cheat. Those are the facts, and after the
Seattle Times
prints my article, Lincoln will forfeit every game, the title game will be canceled, and you'll lose your job."