Страница 26 из 72
“No way! Christ, man, you say you not a cop, then you come on like this. I ain’ talkin’ to you. I get my lawyer.”
“That would be a very bad move.”
“You ain’ seen my lawyer.”
“No, I haven’t, but that’s not the point. Let me say it one more time. I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator trying to get insurance money for Grant’s mom. You talk to me, that’s as far as it goes. You tell me what I need to know, and that’s that. No one hassles you.
“If, instead, you go and get your lawyer, you got trouble. Then I got no right to ask you questions, ’cause I’m not a cop. So then I gotta get a cop. And I gotta tell the cop that you won’t answer questions. Then the cop will ask you, and your lawyer will advise you, and the whole thing will be out of my hands. But you’ll be happy. At least you’ll be dealing with a routine you know.
“If you wa
Larry frowned, glanced at his watch. It was a gold Rolex. If the obvious display of riches embarrassed him any, he didn’t show it. “You got two minutes.”
“Did Grant Jackson ever do drugs?”
“No way.”
“If he had, would you know it?”
Grudgingly. “Suppose.”
“Is there any chance he got the stuff from anyone else on the team?”
“No way.”
“If it wasn’t you, it was no one?”
“Hey, look-”
“No offense meant.”
“Is that so?” His nostrils flared. He bent down in my face. “Now, see here. I don’ do drugs. No one on the team do drugs. You got that? We got drug screens. Wit’ a no-tolerance policy. You flunk one, you done. A guy was usin’, he be on the bench.”
“I thought you had a designated pisser.”
He started to flare up, then smiled. “Tha’s good. Gotta use that.”
“Feel free. The point is, you guys know how to fake drug tests. So don’t give me the everybody’s clean. Coach Tom knows better than that.”
Larry’s eyes narrowed. “He rat me out?”
“Not at all. He just suggested you guys were in the habit of sharing urine samples when somebody was high.”
He banged the door shut on a metal locker. Not violently, just absently, casually. Still, I felt the hall shake. “That so bogus, man. That happen two, three times, big deal. Not like somebody hidin’ a lifestyle, know what I mean. Junkie got a problem, junkie don’ get by. But there ain’ no junkie. There be a junkie, he be on the bench. Coach Tom nail his ass.”
“How, if he keeps faking the urine sample?”
“Yeah, but they do blood test too.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, and there ain’ no way to fake that. A needle in your arm, ain’ no way to go borrowin’ no blood.”
“If you were friends with the nurse, and she mislabeled a test tube or two?”
He shook his head. “Ain’ no nurse. Coach Tom do it hisself. And, trus’ me, he ain’ go
“Not even to protect his star?”
“’Specially then. Few years back, he give a drug test, two guys flunk. Both starters, one a high scorer. An’ he sat ’ em down. Din ’ let ’ em play. Championship year.”
“Championship?”
“Coulda been. Only, Coach Tom sat his stars.”
“How long?”
“Month. Missed the NIT playoffs.”
“He sat ’em for a whole month?”
“Tha’s the rule. You fail a blood test, you sit till you pass a blood test. And he don’t give ’em more’n once a month. Tha’s a fact. Blood test, I mean. Pee cup happen alla time.”
I frowned. I didn’t like what I was hearing. “Let me be sure I understand this. The urine test happens all the time, but you can fake ’em. However, once a month you get a blood test that there’s no way to fake. And Coach Tom gives it. So if Grant was doing cocaine, Coach Tom would know. On account of the blood test.”
“That’s right.”
“When’s the last time you had one?”
I found Coach Tom in the gym, working on the parquet floor. He had removed about a three-foot-square section of boards and was cleaning and sanding them. He didn’t look up when I came in, just continued to inspect the groove on the side of a board. I wasn’t even sure if he knew I was there.
He did.
“Buckles,” he said. “Wood floor’s a sweet thing, but the wood swells and the floor buckles. Forms an air pocket, makes a little bump. You gotta take it up, put it back down. Don’t know how many hundred times I done this, one spot or another.”
“You want to talk about Grant Jackson?”
“I’d rather talk about my floor.”
I figured that was true. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s some things I need to know.”
“And I suppose they’re so all-fired important you gotta ask. Boy’s dead, can’t you leave it be?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I understand you gave blood tests, as well as urine. Tests that were impossible to fake.”
“Oh, you understand that, do you?”
“You did it yourself. You were in complete control. If someone tampered with someone’s blood sample, you were the only one who could have done it.”
“Never happened.”
“No, I don’t suppose it did. In fact, it’s legend. You sittin’ down your star players when you had a shot at the NIT.”
“Ain’ nothin’ to it,” Coach Tom said. “Rule’s a rule.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. I set my briefcase down on the parquet floor, snapped it open, took out a sheaf of papers. “And I know you’re a stickler for playing by the rules.” I thrust the papers on the floor in front of him. “You know what these are? They’re lab reports. Going back the last ten years. Lab reports on the blood samples you had processed.”
“So?”
“There’s none for the day Grant Jackson died. According to the players on the team, you took blood that day.”
“What if I did?”
“According to the lab, you never turned it in.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t. With Grant collapsin’, it would be easy to forget.”
“You’re saying you forgot to turn it in?”
“If that’s what the lab says, must be.”
“Then where are those samples now?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“If you didn’t turn ’em in, you must still have ’em.”
“So?”
“So let’s go take a look.”
“Let’s not. What’s with you? First you say you’re workin’ for the mother, then you come around you want blood. What’s the deal?”
“If you have a vial of blood you took from Grant Jackson on the day he collapsed, that would be rather valuable evidence.”
“Well, I don’t.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t think you did.” I picked up the papers, flipped through. “February 3, 1994. Drug screen for Harold Wilks and Alan Powers. Positive for cocaine. You sat them both, in spite of the fact you had a great team that year, with a shot at makin’ the NIT. It’s legend. All the players know it. Gives you a terrific hold over them.”
“That’s not why I did it.”
“Yeah, I know.” After a pause I added, “I’m probably the only one who does.”
He looked up at me from his seat on the floor. “What you mean?”
“This drug test in ’94 that sat your stars. According to the lab reports, it was three weeks after the last test. Only three weeks, when you always give four. A sudden, surprise test that netted two of your biggest stars. And knocked you out of the NIT.”
He may not have heard me. He bent over, fitted a board back into the floor.
“See, you talk a good game, Coach Tom. That’s what bothered me. You talk too good a game. The bit about fear of failure. That was pretty damn good. That sounded plausible. It took a while for me to figure out that if it sounded that good, it probably wasn’t. And, sure enough, that’s the case. Fear of failure wasn’t the problem. It was fear of success.