Betrayal

Well, he was going to find out.

Putting a twenty-dollar bill in the bar's gutter, he again emptied his glass like a man dying of thirst. When he stood up, the dizziness he'd invented for his teammates came and whopped him upside the head for real. He stood leaning against the bar for a few seconds, getting his bearings, surprised at how tipsy he'd become-he'd only had four or five beers during his games and then the five shots of scotch in the bar. Or were they all doubles? He took a step or two and had to grab the back of a nearby chair at one of the tables for support.

This wouldn't do.

He wasn't about to approach Tara as a stumbling and slurring drunk. He didn't want to make it easy for her to dismiss him out of hand as a common nuisance. He would pick another time, when he was sober. Looking down at her and her friends one last time, he concentrated on his walking and made it to the front door without mishap, then down the steps and out to his CR-V in the darkness at the back of the lot.

Settling into the front seat, he locked the car doors and fastened his seat belt, lowered the backrest nearly to horizontal, leaned all the way back, and closed his eyes.

Evan heard the reports from heavy rifles, bullets pinging now off the asphalt all around him. He was screaming at Alan and Marshawn. 'Get down! Get down! Take cover!'

The barrage continued, a steady staccato as the car was hit and hit again. He turned to look and the second car behind him now was a twisted wreck, the bodies of two more of his men bleeding out onto the street where they'd been thrown from the force of the blast. And then suddenly he was aware that it was dark and that the beam from Nolan's headlamp was on him, blinding him as he tried to get his Humvee moving from his position up on the roof of it. His hands up in front of his face, he yelled down to the driver. 'Kill that light! Now!'

More bullets raked the car, but as the muffled sound filtered into his consciousness, it became more of a repeated thudding, a knocking. When he opened his eyes, the light was still in his face, but this time he recognized it for what it was-a flashlight outside the car. Still shaking from the fear and immediacy of the dream, he took another second or two before he knocked on his own driver's window, then held his hand up to block the light. He could see enough in the pool of the streetlight above them to make out a couple of uniforms.

Cops. His brethren.

He rolled down the window halfway. 'Hey, guys, what's going on?' He shot a glance at his watch. It was three thirty-five.

The officer with the flashlight moved back a step or two. 'Could you please show us your driver's license and registration, sir?'

'Well, sure. I, uh…' He reached for the door handle and pulled it to open the door.

But the near officer outside slammed it back closed, spoke through the half-open window. 'Please stay in your vehicle. License and registration, please. Where've you been, buddy?'

Evan stopped digging for his wallet for a moment and sat back, closed his eyes, tried to remember. 'Trinity Lanes,' he said at last. The view of a suburban street out his car's windshield had him disoriented. 'I was bowling.'

'And drinking.'

'It would appear so.'

'Which leads to the question of how you got here.' But as he opened Evan's wallet, the officer would have had a hard time missing the badge. 'Holy Christ,' he said with disgust, and flashed it at his partner, handing him the ID. Then, back to the car, he said, 'You know how you got here from the lanes? Somebody must have driven you, right?'

Evan just looked at him.

'Cause you wouldn't have tried to drive in the state you're in, would you?'

But then the second cop butted in. 'You're Evan Scholler?'

This one he could answer. 'Yeah.'

Number two said to his partner. 'The guy from Iraq.' Then, to Evan, 'Am I right, pal?'

'Right.'

'You don't have your gun on you, do you?'

'Nope. In the glovebox.'

The first cop shook his head in frustration, then said, 'You want to get out now, you can.' He pulled open the door. 'Smells like a distillery in there, pal.'

'Not surprised,' Evan replied.

'You might want to open the windows, let it air out for the next time you're driving,' the first cop said. 'So, for the record,' he continued, 'do you remember who drove you over here?'

By now, Evan knew where he'd gotten to and where he'd parked, although the piece of the puzzle concerning the actual drive over was a complete blank. 'My girlfriend.' He pointed to the apartment building across the way. 'She lives right up there. We had a fight and she left me in the car to sleep it off.'

'That's a good story,' the first cop said. 'You want to lock up here and go up there now, we'll stick around till you get in.'

Evan leaned back against his car. He swayed slightly from side to side. 'We're not living together. She won't let me in. I've got to get back to my place.'

The second cop handed the wallet back to Evan. 'How you gonna do that?'

Evan took a beat deciding whether or not he should laugh; he decided against it. 'Good question,' he said. 'Excellent question.' He looked from one of them to the other. 'I guess I'll walk. It's not that far. Thanks, guys. Sorry for the hassle.'

He'd gone about five steps, none of them very steady, when one of them spoke from behind him. 'Scholler. Maybe you want to lock up your car.'

Stopping, he turned back to them.

The first cop said, 'It'd be a bad idea to pretend to walk until we pulled out and then come back and try to drive.'

'Yeah,' Evan said. 'That'd be dumb.'

'Where's your place?' the second cop asked.

'Just up by the college,' Evan said.

The second cop said to his partner, 'Not that far. Only about four miles, all uphill.'

The one with the flashlight said, 'Get in the squad car with me and he'll follow us to your place in your wheels. You barf in my car, you clean it up.'

'Got it,' Evan said.

12

Evan was at his parents' home for a Sunday dinner that had become a more or less regular event since he had come back out to California. Once Daylight Saving Time arrived every year, Jim Scholler barbecued almost every night, and on this warm evening in late May he'd grilled chicken, which they'd eaten with fresh spring asparagus, a loaf of sourdough bread, and Eileen's 'famous' tomato-potato salad with cilantro and red onions. Now, still long before true dusk, they were sitting outside, in the Schollers' large backyard in the long shadows cast by their mini- orchard of plum, fig, lemon, orange, and apricot trees.

Over their last glasses of cheap white wine, and with Evan now reemployed with the police department, ensconced in his new apartment, and with the immediate physical danger from his head wound behind them, at long last Eileen had mustered the courage to ask Evan about his love life.

He dredged up a chuckle. 'What love life?'

'You're not seeing anybody at all?'

'That's not been at the top of my priorities, Mom. I'm not really looking.'

His father cleared his throat. 'What about Tara?'

'What about her?' The answer came out more harshly than he'd intended. 'Didn't I mention that she never