QB1 (9 page)

“You guys were close, Jerry, it has to hurt,”
Liz said as he held him in her arms, the baby between them. “Oh my
God, this baby is cute,” she said taking the baby from Jerry’s
arms. Liz knelt down to the toddler and said, “your sister is very
beautiful, JJ.”

“She has a vagina,” said JJ. We all laughed.
Leave it to a kid to sum things up.

Cochran, Roger and I left the woman and
children in the kitchen and went into a den. “Man, what a day,” he
said shaking his head. “This really, really sucks,” and wiped a
tear away.

“What’s going on with the team?” I asked
him.

“I would say, we’re stunned,” he said. “In
this league, you get used to seeing people come and go, but not
die! I couldn’t even talk to the press. What is there to say? The
leader of the team and my good friend is gone. Someone murdered
him? I can’t get my head around it.”

“I’m sorry for your loss man,” was all I
could think of to say.

He went around the small bar and pulled out a
beer handed one to me and a Coke to Roger. “I guess all there is
left to do is to get drunk,” he said shaking his head.

“Jerry, let me ask you something,” I said.
“You guys were friends; do you have any idea what Tony was up to
for the last month?”

“I don’t, Tom. He was pissed off about the
contract and he said he was going to get away for a few weeks. I
thought it was a good idea. I think he needed a change of scenery.
I’ll tell you this, something was really bothering him after the
Championship. I think he was more upset about Elizabeth than the
contract bullshit. He should have been the happiest guy in the
world but here he was moping around like a sick sow. I didn’t
understand it, the whole separation from Elizabeth thing. I asked
him, what’s wrong with you, how could you leave her?”

“What did he say?”

“He said they were having some issues but I
knew they weren’t. Penny talks to Elizabeth. He was having issues
and he wasn’t talking about it and he wasn’t himself.” He crushed
the beer can, got himself another, popped it open and said, “it was
like he was depressed or something. Anyway, one day he bugs out, we
don’t hear anything from him for a month and this morning he turns
up in his driveway murdered. What the fuck?” No one said anything.
The three of us just sat. We could hear the kids in the other
room.

“What are the prospects for the Team this
year?” I asked.

“Beats the shit out of me after today. Tony
got us there last year. I don’t have a lot of confidence in
Isackson. It’s tough enough without this kind of a distraction.” He
thought about it for a moment. “Maybe it’ll be motivation. Doesn’t
feel like it today.”

“I’m going over to see Isackson tonight,” I
said.

“Don’t tell him what I said. Not my best
day,” Cochran said.

“I’m thinking Tony would have wanted you guys
to suck it up and kick some ass,” I said. I handed him my business
card and told him to get in touch if he heard anything. The girls
were in the kitchen. Each had a child in their arms. I said, “We
need to push on, I’d like to talk to Paul Isackson.”

Penny and Liz looked at each other. Penny
said, “Say hello to Lydia for me.”

Liz grimaced and said, “I’ll wait in the
car.” The girls laughed. I had no idea what was going on there.
Everyone said their goodbyes with promises to meet up in a few
days. I told Jerry I would probably see him around the Team offices
until this thing got solved.

Once again we were on the road. Roger on the
computer. Liz staring out the window. We took 101 to Menlo Park.
Houses in this area were very expensive. We pulled up in front of a
big house on a quiet street. Liz said, “I’ll wait in the car.”

“You were serious back there,” I said.

“Yes, I’m not a big fan of Lydia Isackson,”
she said.

“Okay. We’ll try and make this quick.”

“Take your time, I could use a few winks,”
she said as she stretched on the long cabin seat. Roger and I went
up to the front door.

A Team security guard who I recognized from
yesterday came out of the dark and said, “Good evening Mr. Mullins,
Mr. Isackson is expecting you.” I thanked him and rang the
doorbell. It was answered by the most drop dead beautiful blond I
think I’ve ever seen.

“I’m Lydia Isackson, please come in.” I was a
little overwhelmed to be honest. She shook hands with both of us.
“I saw you on TV, Roger. You were great.” Even unflappable Roger
Goody was tongue tied. “Come this way, Paul is watching baseball.”
The house was right out of Architectural Digest. Every room was
perfect.

“You have a beautiful house, Mrs.
Isackson”

“Please call me Lydia and thank you, Tom.
Paul told me you were working with the team on the murder. It’s
such a shock,” she said, as we walked into the den where Paul
Isackson sat watching a baseball game on a huge LCD screen.

“I’ll say it was a shock,” said Paul. “We
went to bed last night thinking we were going to Miami and woke up
this morning and found out we were staying here.” He stood and
shook hands with Roger and me. “So how’s it going, did you guys
solve it yet?”

“At this point, the most important thing is
just making sure the team is secure,” I said. “That’s our first
priority.”

“Well, with security outside and an arsenal
inside, we feel secure,” said Isackson. Lydia sat next to her
husband. They were an attractive couple. “I’ve been a hunter and a
gun collector all my life, so heaven help the jihad motherfucker
that tries coming in after me and my family, right Babe?” he asked
his wife. She smiled and put a hand on his leg and he looked back
at the baseball game on the huge LCD screen.

“How is Elizabeth doing, Tom?” she asked. “I
feel so bad for her. I’d bet anything Tony and her were going to
get back together. I’ll bet that’s why he was there last
night.”

“She has been very upset,” I said. “This has
been a big shock for her. She’s going through the grieving
process.”

“We were very close. I just feel terrible
about all this,” Lydia said. “What are the plans for the
services?”

“That’s really still up in the air. They
haven’t even released the body,” I said. “I wanted to ask you,
Paul, if you may have heard where Tony has been for the last
month?”

“I really didn’t hear a thing,” he said. “I
have a private trainer so wasn’t around the offices much. We were
back in Utah before training camp started. I wasn’t talking to any
of the rest of the team. All I can do is my job. My job is to be in
shape and get ready to lead a team with my God given talents. We’ve
been praying a lot on this contract situation, and I can’t help but
see the hand of God in how this worked out.” I was stunned by the
last remark and couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Well, I hope it works out for you and the
Team and best of luck on the upcoming season,” I said and stood up
to go.

He and his wife stood and he said, “Thank you
and I’ll pray you find the murderer quickly so we can all get back
to football.”

“I’ll show you to the door,” said Lydia.
“Please give my condolences to Elizabeth if you see her. She’s in
our hearts and prayers.”

“I will,” I said, “and thank you for your
time.”

When we got to the car, Roger said, “She was
really beautiful.”

“And he’s a fucking idiot,” I said.

“Well that pretty much summarizes things,”
Elizabeth said.

“He thinks it’s the hand of God that had a
part in Tony’s death. God didn’t want him to go to Miami,” I
said.

“What did you think of her, Tom?” Liz
asked.

“The beautiful, doting wife. She said you and
she were close and wanted me to pass on her condolences if I saw
you.”

“We were close?” Liz said.
Were
is the
operative word here. We saw them socially a couple of times and I
sat with her during the games at the beginning of the season. We
went to a couple of charity functions together. As I got to know
her, I started to see what a back stabbing, nasty person she was.
She rarely had something good to say about anyone. She was just
mean. By the time of that fourth game, when Paul, then Jeff was
injured, I was dreading sitting by her at the games.” She sat
looking out the window as the car started to move. We had one more
stop tonight.

“You okay Liz?” I asked. “I want to go see
Matt Benson and then we’ll call it a night.” She nodded her head
and continued to stare out the window. The silent treatment; I knew
the silent treatment. The silent treatment usually meant one thing
when it came to me and women. I had fucked up somehow. “Anything
new, Roger?” I asked as he typed away on his computer.

“They may be close to finding Higgs
Boson.”

I looked over at Liz, “Higgs Boson?” She
shook her head. “Third baseman for the Devil Rays?” I asked.

Roger laughed. “Higgs Boson is the ‘God
Particle’ thought to be critical to forming the cosmos after the
Big Bang. Higgs Boson has only been theoretical up to now, but
they’ve been making big jumps forward in the science at the
LHC.”

“The LHC?”

“The Large Hadron Collider project in Geneva.
It’s a 15 mile looped tunnel that creates mini-Big Bangs by
smashing together particles. It’s only operating at half speed now
because it’s new, but in the next few years as they begin operating
it faster, at conditions that recreate the Big Bang, the scientists
are pretty sure they’re going to find it. You have to look for the
Higgs in the low mass region where many people think the Riggs
is.”

“Yea, I don’t think it’s there,” I said.

“Why not?” asked Roger.

“I think it’s in Milpitas.”

Roger ignored me. “They think they have just
detected the Top Quark-a massive, short lived particle. The Higgs
is a theoretical energy particle. This is exciting stuff, Mr.
Mullins. The more they raise the energy, the closer they get to the
conditions of the Big Bang. The more likely they are to find the
Higgs.”

“And why do we want to find this, Roge?”

“Because then we’ll know how the cosmos was
formed 10 billion years ago after the Big Bang. The Higgs gave mass
to the disparate matter spawned at that time.”

I thought about it for a moment. “What is the
practical application of knowing this stuff?”

“What’s the practical application of knowing
why an apple falls from a tree? It furthers our knowledge of all
life to know how and why we got here and the principles in which
the world operates.” He looked at me with the sarcastic look worthy
of the dumbass I am. “And, Anthony Reilly received a speeding
ticket in Los Gatos a month ago,” he said, “a 95 in a 45.”

“Find out who gave it to him,” I said. “Maybe
he told the cop where he was going to be for the next month.”

I looked at Liz still staring out the window.
I picked up the intercom and spoke to the driver, “Eddie, coffee,
Starbucks or something.” Jesus quickly found a place and I handed
Roger money and told him to get coffee for us. When the Roger
closed the door and walked off, I slipped beside Liz and said,
“Something I did?” She looked at me for a moment, smiled and rose
up and straddled me. Facing me now, she took my head in her hands
and kissed me hard in a long lingering kiss. It almost hurt it was
so hard. She put her hand inside my shirt and thrust her tongue
down my throat. Then after playing for awhile as she had me pinned
into the seat, she abruptly stopped and sat back down next to me
again as Roger opened the door and got back in with a bag of
food.

Liz was staring out the window again. As we
started to drive off, she said in a quiet voice, “I think I know
who killed Tony.”

Chapter 15

That fourth game of the season. The day that
Baltimore’s Dometrius Daniels, alias Dominent D, alias Mr. D, alias
DD, came to town. Three hundred and five pounds of mean speed and
muscle. You can make an argument that he is the best player in
football. He is certainly the dominant defensive football player in
football. With fourteen sacks of the quarterback last year, he’s a
player that you have to know where he is, all the time. He has to
be double teamed on every play.

On the Thursday prior to the Baltimore game,
Jeffery Chang, the San Francisco Pro bowl left tackle, pulled his
hamstring. Hamstring is that big muscle in the back of the thigh.
Chang limped off the field and in stepped rookie Clarence Pierce to
take Chang’s position in practice. Clarence Pierce was a 325 pound
fourth round draft pick out of Nebraska. A likable young man, he is
exactly what he appears to be: a big old farm boy. Someday,
Clarence may become a good lineman, but he was not prepared to take
on the best defensive player in football that Sunday.

The left tackle on the offensive line is
charged with protecting the quarterback’s blind side. Right handed
quarterbacks turn to their right to throw the ball. The right
defensive end, lined up against the left offensive tackle has an
advantage because he’s often charging to the quarterback, unseen by
him or not seen till the last second. DD Daniels has made a living
making crushing sacks on quarterbacks, who never saw him coming. If
Daniels doesn’t sack the quarterback, he’s disrupting plays with
his defensive pressure.

When DD heard that the San Francisco guard
was on the injury report, he wasted no time finding out all about
Chang’s replacement and was overjoyed to hear that it was a rookie.
DD would study all the information he could find on his opponent
including all his personal family history, because there was an
aspect of DD’s game that no one could measure up; that was talking
shit. He was absolutely relentless. He would use the opponent’s
wife, mother or grandmother and begin as soon as the game started
to describe to his opponent explicit recent sexual encounter he had
with that person. Usually, this involved an oral or anal rape of
that person in which the person begs for more. “You’ll never guess
where I was the day before yesterday, Clarence. I was in your
Mama’s ass. I was in there most of the morning while your Daddy was
out to work. You know what Clarence? You’re Mama doesn’t like Mr.
D’s big black dick in her ass. Oh no, she LOVES Mr. D’s big black
dick in her ass. I love when a woman knows what she wants. She
wanted Mr. D’s big black dick so far up her…..”