picture, watching Kid's progress from a chubby teenager to a slightly older version with a few burgeoning muscles to posing with Bryan in their high school football uniforms. Their jerseys were cut off below their protective pads, revealing washboard stomachs. By this period in time, there was no trace of softness in either boy. Bryan was huge in the photo – he dwarfed Kid – but he, too, appeared to be all muscle. There was one fairly recent photo of Kid. Jack couldn't tell exactly when it was taken, maybe within the past year. Kid was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and he was smiling at the camera. The perfect physical specimen. The ail-American boy…
'He always wanted you to see this,' Bryan said. 'The Playhouse, that's what he used to call it.'
Jack turned away from the photos, turned to face Kid's sidekick. 'About the gym, Bryan. My offer's still on the table. If you want to go ahead and do it, I'll back you with half the money.'
Bryan stared at Jack, obviously surprised by his words, and quite moved. But he shook his head, a very slight gesture, from side to side, and looked sheepish. 'Naahhh,' he said. 'I don't have the smarts. You'd be throwin' your money away. Kid, he was the one with the knack. People wanted to be around him. He coulda made it work. But me… I'm just a brick wall with a limp.'
Dom's roar surprised them both. 'Hey, don't crap on yourself,' he growled. 'I hate that feelin' sorry for yourself shit.'
Bryan was instantly mortified that he'd said the wrong thing around Kid's great friends. He began stammering and apologizing, his face turned red with shame, and Dom immediately backed off.
'All I meant,' Dom said, his voice still gruff but a lot softer, 'is that you were a player. I remember. I know how fuckin' good you were. Sorry, I told myself I'd watch my mouth today.'
'No, no,' Bryan stammered. 'That's okay. I just, you know, I didn't mean to say anything that-'
Jack mercifully cut him off. He spoke quietly and soothingly. He found Bryan's embarrassment painful. The kid was too nice for his own good and he wanted to put him out of his misery as quickly as possible. 'Dom's right, Bryan. I mean, about you being a hell of a player. A sensational athlete. What happened? How come you didn't go on with it?'
Bryan calmed down a bit. The flush in his face was diminishing. 'All sorts of things happened,' he said. 'You know, I went to St. John's with Kid. Got a football scholarship. I was big then, I mean much bigger physically, maybe you remember, or you can tell from some of the photos.'
'I remember.'
'Christ, yes,' Dom added. 'You were huge.'
'Well, some of that was natural. You know, the weights and stuff, my diet. But when I was a sophomore in high school, Coach thought I had real potential, thought I could get a scholarship as an offensive lineman. But he said I was too little for a big-time college program. So he steered me toward the juice.'
'You mean steroids,' Jack said.
'Yeah. I knew they weren't good for me, and Kid was really against me takin' 'em; he kept tellin' me I was nuts to do it. I mean, he never put a bad thing in his body in his whole life, but, hey, what chance did I have to go to college, you know? I mean, I wasn't gonna get any academic scholarship. So, anyway, we both make the team' – Bryan suddenly stopped and again his face began to turn red. 'Am I talkin' too much? About me, I mean?'
'No,' Jack said. 'Not at all.'
'We want to hear it,' Dom added. 'Go ahead.'
Bryan hesitated but Jack nodded, a prod, really, so he went on. 'Well, Kid and me, it was funny, because in high school he was the one, you know, he was the star. But at St. J's, I don't think he had the desire. I mean, he was still a helluva quarterback but he wasn't gonna go pro or nothing. And somethin' kind of happened to him, I don't know what. He kinda lost interest, you know?'
'It was after that thing happened with that kid on the team, the halfback,' Jack said.
'That was horrible,' Bryan said, wincing at the memory.
'I remember how it affected Kid. He was devastated.'
'My memory's a little hazy,' Dom said, 'The guy got in an accident or somethin'?'
'He got hurt in practice,' Bryan said quietly. 'Harvey Wiggins. We were scrimmaging and he got hit. Hard. You could hear it, it was like breakin' a piece of chalk. Everybody could hear it. But Kid was right next to him when it happened. He said he could hear it most of all.'
'Harvey broke his neck, didn't he?'
'Yes, sir. Paralyzed.'
'Jesus,' Dom said. 'I forgot about that.'
'I guess that's what did it, 'cause after that the stuff we were doin' didn't seem so important to Kid. He never played the same, you know? Still, on a team the quarterback's the one. Gotta protect him at all costs. So I used to block like crazy for him, maybe so nothin' like what happened to Harvey could happen to him. I wouldn't let nobody touch Kid. My job was to keep him safe, so that's what I did. After my freshman year, there was some talk I could be a third-, maybe even second-team Ail-American. Not bad for Division 1 – AA. But in the last game of the season, I blew out my knee. ACL, really bad. And I don't think the surgeon did a great job. It just never rehabbed right. So, junior year, I didn't have a thing. I mean, I tried and all, but I couldn't move worth shit – sorry – I couldn't hardly move at all. So I got cut.'
'What happened then?'
Bryan looked confused. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean,' Jack said, 'with school.'
'Oh, hell, without football, what was I gonna do at school? I mean, maybe you noticed, but I ain't the brainiest guy in the world. And Kid left, you know, kinda ran away, really, didn't he, and I didn't really know no one at St. J's anyway. So I dropped out, worked at a few gyms, trained people, that kind of stuff. That's what I been doing. Until Kid came back and we started talking up our whole gym thing again. And then… well… and then this.' He waved his hand toward the room above them. 'This' meant the funeral. Kid's suicide.
'Why did Kid leave St. John's?' Jack asked. 'After that junior year?'
Bryan looked flustered. Jack thought he was not used to being asked questions. He seemed unsure of his ability to take the thoughts in his head and translate them for other people.
'I don't really know,' Bryan said, but he looked uncomfortable and Jack thought he knew more than he was telling.
'Did it have anything to do with what happened to Harvey?'
Bryan looked even more uncomfortable. Jack suspected he was not used to analyzing other people's actions. 'He was a restless guy,' Bryan said finally. 'The thing about Kid was, he was never satisfied with what he had. I mean, he had a cushy life at school. The star of the team, all the girls he wanted. But that wasn't enough. Hey, for me that woulda been more than enough. For almost anybody. But not him. I don't think he knew what he wanted… he just wanted more. So he left to go find it.'
'I wonder if that accident had anything to do with Kid becoming a physical therapist. If he felt responsible in some way.'
'I just don't know,' Bryan said.
'Why do you think he killed himself?' Jack said very softly.
'I don't know,' Bryan said miserably. 'And I've thought about it a lot. A lot. Sometimes I feel like I haven't thought about nothin' else since it happened. But I don't have a single idea in my head. All I know is he wasn't the only one who died. I swear to God, sometimes I think he took me with him.'
THIRTY-TWO
She'd seen it in the paper. The Daily News. Page fourteen. A small story in the lower right-hand corner. She was not surprised, of course. Although she mourned and she grieved. Not as much as she needed to, though. She hadn't had the time to mourn properly. For one thing, Joe had been with her the whole time, almost since the moment she'd gotten home that evening. It wouldn't do to let on too much to Joe. For another, she had things to do. Calls to make. Loose ends to take care of and details that had to be kept quiet. Still, she could not pretend to be
