This was the house I’d bought with Justine.
Talk about memories that can haunt you. I still saw Justine in this room, her dark hair fanned out on the white pillow, looking at me with love in her eyes. And you know what? I looked back at her the same way.
I showered and dressed in chinos and a blue oxford shirt, and then the phone started ringing again. I took the damned thing to the dining table I used as a desk and opened it.
“You’re dead,” said the mechanical voice.
“Not yet,” I said.
I made very strong coffee, then spent the next hour and a half making phone calls, confirming appointments.
By the time I met Del Rio at Santa Monica Airport, it was almost ten.
Time to fly.
Chapter 22
We boarded a Cessna Skyhawk SP, a spiffy and reliable single-engine aircraft, and Del Rio took his place beside me. Just like old times.
I looked at Rick. He looked back, our thoughts on the same track: Afghanistan, our friends who’d been killed in the helicopter, the fact that Del Rio had jump-started my heart and I owed him my life.
I wondered if he could tell me more about what happened that last day in Gardez. I’d gotten a medal for carrying Danny Young out of that burning helicopter. But I couldn’t ignore the nagging dreams. Was my mind doing a head-fake: protecting me from an unbearable memory and at the same time prodding me to remember?
“Rick, that last day in Gardez?”
“The helicopter? Why, Jack?”
“Tell me about it again.”
“I’ve told you everything I can remember.”
“It still isn’t clear for me. Something is missing, something I’m forgetting.”
Del Rio sighed. “We were moving troops to Kandahar. It was night. You were the section leader and I was copilot. We couldn’t see some raghead with his ground-to-air missile in the back of a truck. No one saw him. We took a hit to the belly. Nobody’s fault, Jack.
“You brought the Phrog down,” Del Rio said. “The bird was burning from the inside out-remember that? I got out the side door, and you went through the back. Guys from the dash two were running all over the field. I started looking for you. I found you with Danny Young in your arms. Always the hero, Jack, always the stand-up guy. Then the mortar hit.”
“I see snapshots, not the whole movie.”
“You were dead, that’s why. I pounded on your chest until you came back. That’s all I’ve got for you.”
The pictures just didn’t flow in consecutive order and wouldn’t make a whole. I saw the crash. I remembered running with Danny Young over my shoulder. I woke up.
Something was missing.
What didn’t I know? What else had happened on that battlefield?
I was still staring at Del Rio. He grinned at me. “Sweetheart. You gonna tell me you love me?”
“I do, asshole. I do love you.”
Del Rio laughed like hell and pulled his sunglasses down from the top of his cap. I busied myself with the checklist.
I got clearance from the tower, advanced the throttle, and taxied the Cessna down the runway. Gave it some right rudder to keep it rolling along the center line. When the airspeed indicator read sixty, I came back a touch on the yoke and the plane gently lifted, practically flew itself into the blue and sunny skies over Los Angeles.
Smooth as cream.
For the next hundred minutes I flew the plane as if it were a part of my body. Flying is procedure, procedure, procedure, and I knew it all by heart. I listened to the radio chatter in my headset, and it erased my tormenting thoughts.
I forgot the dream and lost myself in the wonder of flight.
Chapter 23
Just after noon, we landed at Metropolitan Airport on San Francisco Bay.
We rented a car and hit some heavy traffic on the Harbor Bay Parkway, arriving at the Oakland Raiders’ practice field half an hour late for our appointment with Fred.
I gave my card to the security guard at the main gate, and Del Rio and I were waved through to the natural- grass practice field where professional football players were running pass patterns and pursuit drills. On the far end, two placekickers took turns booting field goal tries from the forty-yard line.
Fred was standing on the sideline at midfield and came over to greet us. I introduced Del Rio, saying that he would be working with me on the case.
My uncle waved in a few of the Raiders’ high-profile players-Brancusi, Lipscomb, and tailback Muhammed Ruggins-guys who were earning millions a year. Jeez, were they big. We talked about the upcoming game with Seattle and then turned our attention to the Raiders’ talented quarterback Jermayne Jarvis, who was out there taking snaps.
I said, “I can’t get over his timing on those square outs. It’s like he knows precisely when the receiver will turn.”
Fred said, “You did good at Brown, Jack. You could throw it on a rope. You’re better off that you didn’t try and go pro, though.”
I couldn’t have. I didn’t have the size for it, or probably the arm. Plus the Ivy League isn’t exactly the Big Ten or the SEC.
I saw a light go on behind Fred’s eyes. “So, Jack, maybe you and Rick want to toss the ball around with some of my guys?”
I protested, said, “Are you crazy? I thought you cared about me.” But Del Rio looked like a kid who’d just won a video store sweepstakes.
He and I went out to the field and took turns running ten-yard crossing patterns as Jermayne Jarvis fired strikes at us.
Having warmed up, I found myself getting into it. But as I reached for one of Jarvis’s precision darts, I ran into Del Rio, knocking us both down. Fred trotted over, put his hands on his knees, and while laughing at me, said, “That was beautiful, Jack. Poetry in motion. Now I’ve got something to show you that’s not so funny.”
We walked off the field through a long concrete hallway and a series of locked doors until we got to Fred’s office. He opened a locked cabinet and took out a banker’s box full of what he said were DVDs of the past twenty- eight months of NFL games.
“I flagged those eleven games that raised real questions. Check them out, and let’s compare notes.”
Then he told me where I should start looking for the crooks who were threatening to shut down professional football.
“I’ve never asked you for anything before, Jack, but this time I’m asking. I need your help.”
Chapter 24
It was dark when I got back to my house. A waxing moon spotlighted the roof, which was just visible over the high steel-reinforced gate.
