out.”
“Such language from an anthropologist.”
She sighed and hugged me around my waist. She was exactly a foot shorter than me, which made hugging easy, and kissing difficult.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
“I think you’re frustrated and angry and that you need to do this.”
“Not to mention I might just make a hell of a fullback.”
“Is he the one who throws the ball?”
We had gone over this precisely one hundred and two times.
“No, but close.”
She snuggled closer, burying her sharp chin deep into my side. It tickled. If I wasn’t so tough I would have laughed.
“Just don’t get yourself hurt.”
“I don’t plan to, but these things have a way of taking you by surprise.”
“So are you really that good?” she asked, looking up at me.
“I’m going to find out.”
She looked away. “If you make the team, things will change.”
I hugged her tighter. “I know.”
4.
I was in a conference room at the Orange County jail in Santa Ana, accompanied by Charley Brown’s assistant, Mary Cho. We were alone, waiting for Derrick Booker to make his grand appearance. Mary was Chinese and petite and pretty. She wore a blue power suit, with the hem just above her knees. She sat next to me, and from our close proximity I had a clear view of her knees. Nice knees. Cho was probably still a law student. Probably worked out a whole lot. Seemed a little uptight, but nothing a little alcohol couldn’t fix. Was probably a little tigress in bed. She wasn’t much of a talker and seemed immune to my considerable charm. Probably because she had caught me looking at her knees.
The heavy door with the wire window opened and Derrick was shown into the conference room by two strapping wardens. He was left alone with us, the wardens waiting just outside the door. The kid himself was manacled and hogtied. Should he make a run for it, Pope John Paul II himself could have caught him from behind.
Mary Cho sprang to life, brightening considerably, leaning forward and gesturing to a chair opposite us.
“Derrick, thanks for meeting us,” she said.
He shrugged, raising his cuffed hands slightly. “As if I had anything better to do.”
Which is what I would have said. I stifled a grin. I suspected grins were illegal in the Orange County jail. Derrick sounded white, although he tried to hide that fact with a lot of swaggering showmanship. In fact, he sounded white and rich, with a slightly arrogant lilt to his voice. He was good looking, with strong features and light brown eyes. He was tall and built like an athlete.
“I have someone here who wants to speak with you,” said Cho.
“Who? Whitey?”
I raised my hand. “That would be me.”
Derrick’s father owned lots of real estate across southern California, and Derrick himself had grown up filthy rich. He was about as far from the ghetto as you could get. Yet here he was, sounding as if he had lived the mean streets all his life. As if he had grown up in poverty, rather than experiencing the best Orange County had to offer, which is considerable. I suspected here in prison he was in survival mode, where being a wealthy black kid is as bad as being a wealthy white kid. Except that he had the jargon wrong and a few years out of date, and he still sounded upper class, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
“My name’s Jim Knighthorse.”
“Hey, I know you, man!”
“Who doesn’t?” I said. “And those who don’t, should.”
He smiled, showing a row of perfect white teeth. “How’s your leg? Saw you bust it up against Miami. Hell, I wanted to throw up.”
“I did throw up. You play?”
“Yeah. Running back.”
“You any good?” I asked.
“School is full of whities, what do you think?”
I shrugged. “Some whities can run.”
He grinned again. “Yeah, no shit. You could run, bro. Dad says wasn’t for your leg you’d be in the pros.”
“Still might.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“What about the leg?” he asked.
“We’ll see about the leg,” I said.
We were silent. Derrick was losing the ghetto speak. His eyes had brightened considerably with the football talk. We looked at each other. Down to business.
“You do her, Derrick?”
“Do her?”
“He means kill her, Derrick,” said Cho. “He’s asking if you killed Amanda Peterson.”
“Thank you, assistant Cho,” I said, smiling at her. She looked away quickly. Clearly she didn’t trust herself around me. I looked back at Derrick. “You kill her, Derrick?”
“Hell, no.”
His arms flexed. Bulbous veins stood out against his forearms, disappearing up the short sleeves of his white prison attire. I could see those arms carrying a football.
“Why should anyone believe you?” I asked.
“Give a fuck what anyone believes.”
“They found the knife in your car, Derrick. Her blood was on the knife. It adds up.”
He was trying for hostile bad-ass, but he was just a kid, and eventually his emotions won out. They rippled across his expressive face, brief glimpses into his psyche: disbelief, rage, frustration. But most of all I saw sorrow. Deep sorrow.
“Because… ” He stopped, swallowed, looked away. “Because we were going to get married.”
“Married?”
“Uh huh.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“How old was she?”
“The same.”
“Anyone know about the marriage?” I asked.
He laughed hollowly. “Hell, no. Her dad hates me, and I’m sure he doesn’t think much of me now.”
“I wouldn’t imagine he does,” I said. “You have any theories who might have killed her?”
He hesitated. “No.”
“Was she seeing anyone else?”
“No.”
“You were exclusive?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
