receivers was John Coltraine, but everyone called him The Jazz. A tall, thin, baby-faced narcotics cop named Johnny Davis played tight end on offense and free safety on D. John Corkery, night watch commander at the 16th precinct and the only guy with the team besides me who wasn’t attached to Narco, Vice, or CAC, was the coach. A third of the Johns had brothers in the same squad, so John Pasquale played tight end and his brother Vic was a wide receiver. John Vreeman set up at left guard while his brother Mel crouched at right. John Lawn was supposedly a pretty good quarterback but took a lot of razzing for favoring passes to his brother Mike.
All in all, I gave up trying to put names to faces after ten minutes and decided to call everyone John until I was corrected.
The rest of the players on the DoRights, as they called themselves, had other names, but they all shared a similar look, no matter what their size or color. It was the cop look, the way they had of carrying themselves that was loose and wary at the same time, the hard caution in their eyes even when they were laughing, the sense you got from all of them that you could go from being their friend to their enemy in a split second. It didn’t matter which way to them, it was your choice, but once the decision was made they would act accordingly and immediately.
I’ve known a lot of cops, hung out with them, drank with them, considered a few to be my friends. But even when one was your friend, it was a different kind of friendship than you had with civilians. I never felt completely at ease with a cop, completely sure I knew what one was thinking. Cops always hold something back, except occasionally, I assume, around other cops.
Broussard clapped his hand on my shoulder and introduced me around to the team. I got several handshakes, some smiles and curt nods, one “Nice fucking job on Corwin Earle, Mr. Kenzie,” and then we all huddled around John Corkery as he gave us the game plan.
It wasn’t much of a plan. Basically it had to do with what a pack of prima-donna pussies the guys in Homicide and Robbery were, and how we had to play this game for Poole, whose only chance to make it out of ICU alive, apparently, was if we stomped the shit out of the other team. Lose, and Poole’s death would be on our conscience.
While Corkery talked, I looked across the field at the other team. Oscar caught my eye and waved happily, a shit-eating grin on his face the size of the Merrimack Valley. Devin saw me looking and smiled, too, nudged a rabid-looking monster with the scrunched features of a Pekinese, and pointed across the field at me. The monster nodded. The rest of the Homicide and Robbery guys didn’t look quite as big as our team, but they looked smarter, and quick, and had a leanness to them that spoke more of gristle than delicacy.
“Hundred bucks to the first guy knocks one of them out of the game,” Corkery said, and clapped his hands together. “Kill the motherfuckers.”
That must have been it for the Rockne-like inspiration, because the team came off its haunches and banged fists and clapped hands.
“Where are the helmets?” I said to Broussard.
One of the Johns was passing as I said it, and he clapped Broussard’s back and said, “Fucking guy’s hilarious, Broussard. Where’d you find him?”
“No helmets,” I said.
Broussard nodded. “It’s a touch game,” he said. “No hard contact.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Sure.”
Homicide-Robbery, or the HurtYous as they called themselves, won the coin toss and elected to receive. Our kicker drove them back to their eleven, and as we lined up, Broussard pointed to a slim black guy on the HurtYous and said, “Jimmy Paxton. He’s your guy. Stick to him like a tumor.”
The HurtYous’ center snapped the ball and the quarterback dropped back three steps, fired the ball over my head, and hit Jimmy Paxton on the twenty-five. I had no idea how Paxton got past me, never mind to the twenty- five, but I made an awkward lunge that tapped his ankles at the twenty-nine, and the teams moved upfield to the line of scrimmage.
“I said like a tumor,” Broussard said. “Did you get that part?”
I looked across at him and saw a hard fury in his eyes. Then he smiled, and I realized how far he’d probably gotten on that smile his whole life. It was that good, that boyish and American and pure.
“I’ll see if I can adjust,” I said.
The HurtYous broke their huddle, and I saw Devin on the sideline exchange a nod with Jimmy Paxton.
“They’re going to come right back at me again,” I said to Broussard.
John Pasquale, the cornerback, said, “Might want to improve then, huh?”
The HurtYous snapped the ball and Jimmy Paxton streaked down the sideline and I streaked with him. His eyes flickered and he extended his back and said, “’Bye, white boy,” and I went up with him, spun my body around and extended my right arm, whacked at the air, hit pigskin instead, and swatted the ball out of bounds.
Jimmy Paxton and I came down together in a heap, banged off the ground, and I knew it was the first of many impacts that would probably keep me in bed all through tomorrow.
I got up first and reached down for Paxton. “I thought you were going somewhere.”
He smiled and took the hand. “Keep talking, white boy. You’re getting winded already.”
We walked back down the sidelines toward the line of scrimmage and I said, “Just so you don’t have to keep calling me white boy, and I don’t have to start calling you black boy, start a race riot at Harvard, I’m Patrick.”
He slapped my hand. “Jimmy Paxton.”
“Nice to meet you, Jimmy.”
Devin ran the next play at me again, and once again I swatted the ball out of Jimmy Paxton’s waiting hands.
“Fucking mean bunch you’re with, Patrick,” Jimmy Paxton said, as we started the long walk back to scrimmage.
I nodded. “They think you guys are pussies.”
Jimmy nodded. “We might not be pussies, but we ain’t cowboys like those crazy fuckers. Narco, Vice, and CAC.” He whistled. “First ones through the door because they love the jizz.”
“The jizz?”
“The action, the orgasm. Forget the foreplay with those boys. They go right to the fucking. Know what I mean?”
The next play, Oscar lined up at fullback and leveled three guys at the snap, and the running back ran through a hole the size of my backyard. But one of the Johns-Pasquale or Vreeman, I had lost track-grabbed the ball carrier’s arm on the thirty-six, and the HurtYous decided to punt.
The rain came five minutes later and the rest of the first half was a sloppy grind-it-out Marty Schottenheimer-Bill Parcells kind of game. Slogging and slipping and tripping through the mud, neither team made much progress. As running back, I gained about twelve yards on four carries, and as a safety I got burned twice by Jimmy Paxton, but I broke up another potential bomb and otherwise stuck to him so tight the quarterback chose other receivers.
Near the end of the half, the score was tied at zero but we were threatening. Down in the HurtYous’ red zone, on a second and two with twenty seconds left, the DoRights ran an option and John Lawn tossed the ball to me and I saw a gaping hole and nothing but green beyond, did a little spin around a linebacker, stepped into the hole, tucked the ball under my arm, put my head down, and then Oscar loomed out of nowhere, his breath steaming through the cold rain, and hit me so hard I felt like I’d stepped into the path of a 747.
By the time I got off my back, the clock had run out and the hard rain splattered mud up off the field into my cheek. Oscar reached down with one of those porterhouses he calls hands and lifted me to my feet, chuckling softly under his breath.
“You gonna puke?”
“Thinking about it,” I said.
He whacked me on the back in what I guess was a friendly show of camaraderie that almost sent me into a face plant in the mud.
“Nice bid,” he said, and walked off toward his bench.
“What happened to touch football?” I said to Remy on the sidelines, as the DoRights opened a cooler full of beer and soda.
“Soon as someone does what Sergeant Lee just did, the gloves come off.”
