'Damn you, Bobby! Get out of here!'
'Don't make me leave. My head hurts. I'm dizzy.'
'Is that a cheap plot for sympathy?'
'No, it's true.' He felt faint and sick to his stomach. He didn't know if it was from being boxed on the ears an hour earlier or falling on his sword just now.
'I don't care! Leave!' She scooped up a glass from a tray on a chest of drawers and hurled it at him. Her aim was high and to the left, and the glass crashed into a framed print of white herons legging it through an Everglades slough. If Craig Stringer threw the football as inaccurately on Sunday, Bobby had a chance to win the bet.
'I'm leaving,' Bobby said, hopping out of bed, his temples throbbing. 'But someday, you'll see I'm right. I've been right about everything.'
'Sure I've got one. It's a perfect 20–20.'
— Duane Thomas, former Dallas Cowboys running back, when asked about his IQ
33
Friday, February 3
Craig Stringer backpedaled while scanning the field in front of him. His right hand cocked behind his ear, he whipped the arm forward. The ball rocketed toward the sidelines, an apparently errant pass. Suddenly, Nightlife Jackson who had been streaking upfield from his wide receiver position, planted a foot in the turf and cut hard toward the sidelines without losing any of his sprinter's speed. He turned his body back toward the quarterback and raised his arms and the ball was there in a tight spiral, settling into his hands. He had run to the spot where the ball was supposed to be, had cut and turned at the correct millisecond in time, and there it was. Craig Stringer had thrown the perfect pass at the precise moment to the exact spot.
'Timing!' boomed Martin Kingsley. 'All life is timing.'
'And practice,' Coach Chet Krause added. 'We've run that play about a thousand times since two-a-days in August.'
Several reporters stood around the sidelines, searching for news angles, as the Mustangs went about their drills. Kingsley had declared the first thirty minutes of practice open to the press. Then, the pesky reporters would be shooed away, and the team would work on new plays and formations. At the moment, Kingsley was a happy man. He was on the verge of his greatest triumph. He could feel the Commissioner's Trophy in his hands, could imagine himself being doused with champagne in the locker room, being interviewed live, his face appearing in hundreds of millions of homes around the world, the President calling to congratulate him. The victory would clean up several other loose ends. He'd win the bet, pay off that maniac Tyler, and go home a hero, taking Scott along. Christine would marry Craig Stringer and would forget all about her ex-husband. By the end of the game on Sunday, Gallagher would be a broken man. No career, no wife, no child.
Busted, disgusted, and can't be trusted.
Kingsley still hadn't decided whether to let LaBarca use him as chum on a deep-sea fishing trip. Maybe just a thorough thrashing to whip the piss and vinegar out of him would do. Revenge is a sweet meat, indeed.
He'd spotted Gallagher earlier, hanging out with Murray Kravetz, the local sportscaster with the bad toupee. At first, it aggravated Kingsley that his ex-son-in-law was here, but on second thought, to hell with it. Let the prick see the Mustangs juggernaut up close. Let him get trampled in the hooves of the stampede.
On the field, the offense continued to work on its passing game. Craig Stringer hit the tight end over the middle after pumping once as if he were throwing long. On the next play, he went deep, hitting Jackson in mid- stride for a thirty-yard gain.
'Stringer looks sharp,' one of the reporters said.
'Sharp?' Kingsley replied. 'Hell, he's a saber honed to a fine edge. He's a polished diamond, a laser beam. I'd bet you he gets three hundred yards passing, at least, but the Commissioner won't let me bet.'
The reporters chuckled. Kingsley had seen Stringer in the locker room, and his future-son-law hadn't looked so good up close. Red-rimmed eyes and a leaden look as if he'd been up all night. Kingsley just hoped he wasn't popping pills again. But the QB was practicing great all week, and today, he was drilling the passes through defenders' arms outstretched arms right into the receivers' hands.
'How about a prediction?' someone else asked.
'I'd tell you what I think, but then Denver would be putting the clippings up on the locker room wall. I learned a long time ago to save my breath for breathing and not to put my jaw in a sling because I was apt to step on it.'
'What about reports that Skarcynski has a sore arm?'
'I don't know anything about it,' Kingsley said, shrugging. What else could he say?
He doesn't have a sore arm. He's so scared shitless, his asshole puckers up when he throws the ball.
'We want to beat their best with our best,' Kingsley said, trying to sound sincere. 'I'm sure when that whistle blows, Skarcynski will forget all about what ails him. Do you remember the time Jack Youngblood played with a broken leg? Just taped a couple of aspirin to it and played a whale of a game.'
He was on a roll, basking in the light of a tropical winter day. Everything he had worked so hard to accomplish was about to come to fruition.
You got them? You got them on video?' Bobby couldn't believe it was true. His night had been such a disaster. Did Shari Blossom rescue him? 'What'd you do, Murray, hide in the closet?'
'Not exactly,' Murray Kravetz said. 'I was on the balcony most of the night. A triple feature fuckfest with two intermissions.'
Bobby's heart was hammering like a hummingbird's. This could be what he needed. Even sleepless, Craig Stringer was a helluva quarterback. But how would he be after Christine lowered the boom? Bobby couldn't wait to show her the tape and prove he'd been right.
Just look at your sensitive, horse-loving Casanova now.
There's no way she'd tolerate the bum's infidelity. She'd toss the ring back at him, and he'd see his meal ticket float away. A two-bagger, a way to foul up the Mustangs and get Christine back, too.
'How did you get it? Did they leave the lights on?' Bobby asked.
'Nah. Stringer made her turn out the lights.'
'Do you have a low light camera?' Suddenly, he was worried. Murray was not adept at getting his facts straight or doing his homework. If he had been, he wouldn't be stuck on the weekend slot at a local station for twenty years.
'Hey, this ain't the CIA,' Kravetz said, self-consciously adjusting his toupee. He wore a Madras sport jacket that went out of fashion long before several of the Mustangs were born and he kept an unlit cigar in his mouth. 'I was lucky to have one of the station's camera's overnight. The tape's a little dark. To tell the truth, it's very dark, but you can tell there's some serious screwing going on, I mean, you can hear Stringer shouting 'Hallelujah' and Shari says his name, but the video looks like a couple of black cats at the bottom of a coal mine.'
'I've got to see it,' Bobby said.
Okay, so maybe Kravetz wouldn't get the Oscar for best cinematography. But with the audio-Shari and Stringer had distinctive accents-Christine would get the drift.
Practice was over, and the players were giving impromptu interviews, so the press room was empty when Bobby tried to hustle Christine inside.
She pulled away from him. 'What do you want?'
He figured he had five minutes to convince her, five minutes to change his life. 'Bear with me, Chrissy, please. There's something you've got to see.'
She regarded him suspiciously. 'What is it?'
She was wearing a long, A-line dark skirt that emphasized her height and a short-sleeve jersey. Her Super
