The Man Offside Read online

  I was face-to-face with a pair of shaggy gray eyebrows, a long nose showing a slight hump in its bridge and a lot of blackheads, and a wizened mouth that seemed about to say either “Hell no” or “Fuck you.” The guy looked like Rumpelstiltskin. At least I’d always thought so.

  “Let’s see,” he said. “Don’t I remember you?” He snapped gnarled fingers. “Bannion, that’s it. Rick Bannion, used to be one of the football he-men. How’s life among the common folk?”

  I breathed slowly in order to keep my anger from building. Cracking wise with this solid citizen had cost me five years out of my life, once upon a time. I said politely, “Afternoon, Mr. Aycock.”

  A round-shouldered man a couple of inches shorter than I was, he was wearing a pale blue suit. He shifted a bulging satchel from one hand to the other and cocked his head to one side. “You wouldn’t be on your way to see Fred Cassel now, would you?” he said.

  I had the feeling that I ought to lie to him, but was a little afraid to. I said lamely, “Oh, do you know Mr. Cassel?”

  “It would figure,” he said. “Going to talk about your old buddy, aren’t you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You beg my pardon? Look, Bannion, let’s don’t bullshit each other. Seeing what kind of witnesses that Fred’s going to call makes me feel better about my own case. We’re going to bust your friend Brendy but good. Really strap it on him.”

  I straightened. Aycock actually flinched, as though he was afraid that I was going to throw a punch at him. I said, “Well, if it’s that cut and dried, maybe they’d better just do away with any trial.” I’d had just about enough.

  All of a sudden Aycock’s expression changed. He showed me his version of a sympathetic smile, which looked neither reassuring nor particularly cheerful. He said, “You know, Bannion, in a way it’s a shame about you washed-out jockstraps. Get used to life in the fast lane, screwing all those cheerleaders, hey? Then one day the bubble bursts and you can’t cope, isn’t that it?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. I couldn’t think of anything cute enough to say. Visible past Aycock, two young guys in business suits went down the hall and made a left through swinging glass doors marked “CASSEL AND GRIMES, ATTORNEYS.” In the reception area inside, a brunette was seated at a half-moon-shaped desk, pressing flashing buttons and routing calls.

  Aycock said, “You’re going to do what you want no matter what I say. But maybe you should think about coming over to our side and testifying. I’ll bet you know some things we’d like to know, and we help folks with the good sense to help us.” He produced a business card from his breast pocket and handed it to me. “I carry a lot of weight with the parole commission, son,” he said.

  I read the address and phone number of the U.S. attorney’s office, in the Earle Cabell Federal Building on Commerce Street. There was an ash receptacle filled with white sand by the elevator. I retreated, deliberately poked the card down in the sand, and faced Aycock. “You haven’t been keeping up with me, Mr. Aycock. I’m off parole, as of last September. You people don’t have any hold on me anymore.”

  His eyes narrowed. He stepped briskly around me and pressed the down button. “Don’t bet on it, my boy,” he said. “Don’t you bet one fucking nickel on it.”

  Fred Cassel looked like a well-dressed English lit teacher. He was around my height, six-two, and about fifty pounds lighter than I was, with mouse-colored hair receding from a smooth unwrinkled forehead. He wore a navy Brooks Brothers suit with a plum-colored silk bandanna in its breast pocket. Black-rimmed, I’m-smart glasses rode the bridge of his slim nose above a clipped rectangular mustache, sort of like Hitler’s. I folded my sport coat across my lap so that the J.C. Penney’s label didn’t show and crossed my legs.

  “I don’t like the way that ball bounced,” he said. “Jesus Christ, what a time for Aycock to come calling.” He was standing before a rolling aluminum server parked in front of his window. The heavy velvet drapes were parted. I was seated on the visitor’s side of his desk in a cushioned leather armchair. Seconds ago he’d handed me steaming coffee in a Styrofoam cup. Mine was black. He plunked a second sugar cube into his own and added powdered cream.

  “I still don’t know what this is all about,” I said. “So I don’t know if I should like the way that ball bounced or not, Mr. Cassel.”

  He carried his coffee around behind his desk and sat down in a high-backed swivel chair. The desk was the size of an eight-seater hot tub. “Dispense with the formalities,” he said. “Call me Fred.”

  “All right, Fred. I still don’t know what this is all about.”

  He removed a file folder from his top drawer and popped it open. “Did you ever see such a pile of shit in your life?” He indicated two cardboard shoeboxes stacked on the carpet in a corner.

  “I don’t guess I have,” I said. “What are they?”

  “They’re Aycock’s excuse for coming by. It’s supposed to be copies of the government’s evidence against Jack Brendy. Aycock brought them so I wouldn’t ask for discovery in pretrial motions, but I’m not even going to look inside the boxes. It’ll be the evidence that Aycock wants me to see, nothing more. Fuck ‘em, I’m asking for discovery anyhow. Asshole must think Fred Cassel just got off the boat from the old country.”

  I sipped at the coffee. It wasn’t quite cool enough to drink, so I set it down. “I still don’t know what this is all about, Fred.” Maybe the third time would be the charm.

  “What did Aycock ask you?” he said, scratching his chin. He was reading from a yellow-ruled piece of paper that he’d taken from the file.

  “He didn’t ask me anything. In a roundabout way he told me he wanted me to be a federal witness.”

  “He would. So Aycock was the prosecutor on your case, huh? Small world. One thing that’s good, he thinks you’re up here because you’re going to be a witness for the defense. Good, let’s keep it that way.”

  “What am I going to be? What’s this all about, Fred?” I was determined to be persistent.

  “Did Mrs. Brendy give you any money?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s just a down payment. Bannion, how would you like to make ...” He paused and looked straight at me. “Twenty thousand dollars?”

  “The last time somebody asked me a question like that, I wound up going to prison,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I know. Did five on a ten. Most of it behind the wall in El Reno. The last year or so in the country club, out in Big Spring. You wouldn’t talk, you know, cooperate with them?”

  I didn’t think that question required an answer, so I uncrossed and recrossed my legs.

  “I like your style, Bannion. There’s too many folks running around spilling their guts to those people. Give me a hundred guys that’ll keep their mouths shut and I’ll rule the world.”

  “You’ve been reading too many novels, Fred. Being a stand-up guy doesn’t pay too well. Take it from me.”

  That drew a small chuckle from him. “But as far as your conversation with Aycock went, he doesn’t really know what you’re doing up here?”

  “No, and neither do I.” I squinted to read the name of Cassel’s law school in the black-framed diploma on the wall behind him. University of Oklahoma. Boomer Sooner.

  He arched an eyebrow. “My sources say you’re well connected. That you know a lot of, well, fringe society people.”

  “Now, Fred. What kind of question is that to ask a guy who did five years in the federal joint and makes his living working for bookies and bail bondsmen? Yeah, I know a few people. So what?”

  “And you’re known around as a stand-up guy,” he said.

  “We’ve already been over that. Yeah, I guess so. Stand-up Stan. But those references don’t qualify me for American Express. Quit farting around, what do you want from me?”

  He regarded me with the same look a man reserves for a horse turd in the middle of a narrow road; he can’t squeeze around the damn thing and can’t run over
it without getting shit on his tires. Cassel said, “How about Herman Moore, street name Skeezix? Full-time drug dealer, part-time snitch. Lovely fellow.”

  “It doesn’t ring a bell,” I said. “I don’t run with the druggies. I could have run across him, I don’t know.”

  Cassel shut the folder and laid it carefully on his desk. “Jack Brendy’s got a bond hearing on Thursday. Mrs. Brendy’s probably told you. Aycock’s going to try to get the judge to hold Jack without bond, which brings us to Mr. Skeezix. He’s the guy that set Jack up with the feds, and he’s going to be their witness at the hearing. The only one, the only guy who dealt directly with Jack. Our problem’s pretty simple. The only way I can get bail for my client is if this Skeezix doesn’t testify.”

  I hooked an arm over my chair back. “I’d go slower if I were you, Fred. If you’re proposing what I think you are, you can get in some pretty hot tamales. Not to mention me.”

  Cassel got up and sat on one corner of his desk, gazing out the window. The view wasn’t so hot: a couple of factory smokestacks, beyond them some office buildings along Harry Hines Boulevard. Cassel said, “Bannion, I’ve had you checked. I can trust you. You might turn me down, but you won’t do any tattling. It’s going to take two guys, as I see it. You’ve got an old roomie around town, from up at El Reno.”

  I gave a low whistle. “Bodie Breaux. You been doing a lot of homework, paisano.”

  “You don’t beat the feds playing honest injun,” he said. “You should know that from experience.”

  “Yep. Experience and more experience. And I don’t like the idea of going through it again.”

  “Then you’re not interested?” he said.

  “In twenty thousand dollars? I didn’t say that. I just didn’t say that I liked the idea.”

  “There’s more to it,” he said.

  “I’m not surprised,” I said.

  “If we make a deal and it goes sour, then it’s your baby. One hundred percent. Nothing comes back on me, nothing comes back on Jack Brendy.” Cassel turned his face away from the window and looked at me. “After all, twenty thousand dollars ain’t exactly peanuts. It’s got to buy us some protection.”

  My throat was dry, even dryer than it had been when Donna offered me the envelope. I fished a Pall Mall from a crumpled pack and lit it with a Bic lighter. I don’t smoke that much. I didn’t see an ashtray in the office, and didn’t know whether Cassel was a no-smoking nut or not. Right then I didn’t care. I dragged smoke into my lungs and blew it at the ceiling.

  “Tell you what, Fred,” I said. “Let’s make it thirty thousand.”

  3

  Prisoners in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center live in a fishbowl. There aren’t any bars. One wall of each cell is inch-thick transparent plastic and the lights are always on. It’s a clean, modern jail, with fully automated control centers on each floor where guards sit and throw levers that open and close sliding doors and cause the lights to brighten and dim. Dallas County thoughtfully located the center on Trinity River lowland acreage a mile or so west of downtown, away from the tumult and the hubbub. It’s a quiet neighborhood. The people inside Lew Sterrett don’t like it there.

  I stood in the sign-in line behind a black woman who weighed close to three hundred pounds, and who was wearing a faded print dress. She had a little boy by the hand. He looked to be around Jacqueline Brendy’s age, and as his mother signed the register he stuck out his tongue at me. In a few years he’d probably be sticking knives in people. After the kid and his mom had moved on, I stepped up to the counter, entered Jack’s name and cell-block number on the register, and scribbled out my signature.

  The registration deputy was a pudgy kid in a light blue short-sleeve uniform shirt with the county emblem high on his bicep. The emblem was a gold shield encircled clockwise by the words “INTEGRITY” and “DEPENDABILITY.” He spun the register around to where he could read it and said, “You used to play for the Cowboys.”

  I shuffled my feet. “That was a ways back. You must be a real fan. Not too many folks remember offensive linemen.”

  “When I was a kid I could call off the roster and give you everybody’s number,” he said. “I played hookey the year you guys played the ‘Niners for the NFC Championship. You had the best team, man, what, three interceptions? Still would have won the game if ...” His gaze lowered.

  “If I hadn’t jumped offside on third and goal?” I said quickly. “Yeah, I had my head stuck up my ass.” He remembered me, all right. It was all that anybody remembered about my football if they remembered it at all. And his look said that he remembered my prison stretch as well. That didn’t surprise me; I was a lot more famous for going to jail than for anything I’d ever done playing football. I glanced at the register. “You clearing me for takeoff?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I’m not supposed to, if you’re on parole. Unless you’re immediate family, that’s different.”

  He was speaking too loudly, and I was getting some funny glances from the people in line behind me. I leaned over the counter and said in a low voice, “My time’s up. Last year I got a full release if you want to check it.”

  The deputy looked me over, then snorted. “Naw. No reason to, we take everybody’s word. Truth is, half the people coming down here are on parole. You want the eighth floor.” He wrote something on a pad, tore off the top sheet, and gave it to me. “Give this to the guard. Go on, sit on one of those chairs over there, you got ten minutes to wait. I got to tell my brother-in-law you were down here, I’ll get one up on him.”

  I went over to where fifty or sixty people waited, picked out a plastic chair, and sat in it. The fat black woman was directly across the aisle and was now holding the kid in her lap. He didn’t look as though he belonged in anybody’s lap. A folded newspaper, a Times Herald, lay on an empty seat a couple of places down from me. I picked the paper up and spent the next ten minutes reading about Jack.

  This was the first evening edition I’d seen in three or four days that didn’t have Jack featured on the front page, but he still took up three columns beginning at the top of page two. Most of the story was about the bond hearing. There were quotes about Jack, from Fred Cassel and also from Norman Aycock. If the defense lawyer and prosecutor hadn’t been quoted in the same article, I’d have never known they were both talking about the same guy.

  There was a round clock on the wall at the end of the room, between twin elevator doors. At seven on the dot, the pudgy registration deputy came around the counter and told us that if we were visiting one of the lower six floors to take the car on the left, and that everybody else should pile onto the other car. Then he pressed a button on the wall and both elevator doors slid open. He operated the car on the left while a young Mexican deputy—a girl with shoulder-length hair who could have stood some dieting—drove the elevator that I was to ride. Each car held twenty people. I went up to the eighth floor in the second load.

  Visitors in the Lew Sterrett Justice Center sit in a booth. There’s a low counter to lean on, and beyond the counter is a thick plastic window. Prisoners come from the innards of the jail into a huge bullpen, look hopefully around, then take seats in front of the windows, and peer into the booths at the visitors. Prisoners and visitors converse over phones, and sitting in the confines of the booth makes the visitor feel as though he’s switched roles with the prisoner. I set a ballpoint pen and a ruled pad up on the counter, lit my first Pall Mall of the evening, and inhaled as I watched Jack enter the bullpen. Even in a tan county-issue jumpsuit, and in spite of the extra pounds he’s acquired over the years, Jack’s slightly pigeon-toed athlete’s walk stood out. He spotted me, grinned and waved, then came over to my window, and sat down. We picked up our respective phones.

  “Hiya,” Jack said. “Man, you’ve lost weight. How do you do it?”

  “I jog most days,” I said, “and I can’t afford to eat much. I’ll go two-twenty.”

  “Jesus Christ. You played at what, two-sixty?”

&nbs
p; “Seventy, one year. Remember? Fined me a hundred a day until I knocked off ten pounds.”

  We laughed at that one, a short, strained laugh. I hadn’t had a close look at Jack in a while. His jowls were beginning to sag and his thick black hair was going to salt-and-pepper. I suspected he’d gained about as much weight as I had lost, which would put him around two-fifty. Some blood vessels had ruptured beneath the skin around his nose. Booze. Jack couldn’t be over forty, but Jesus. That would make Donna what, thirty? Thirty-one?

  He said, “Donna come downtown to see you?”

  He’d phrased the question that way on purpose. I decided to lie. “Yeah. We had a long talk.”

  “They’re putting the jacket on me, Ricky-boy. It’s a pure frame. I swear to God.” Jack had played college ball at East Carolina. He’d lost most of the accent, but not all of it.

  “How pure of a frame?” I said.

  “Huh? How . . . ?”

  “Jack. The feds frame everybody to one degree or another. That doesn’t mean they’re locking up a bunch of Simon Pures. So you’ll know, I’ve got one rule. I don’t work for anybody who bullshits me. If you’ve been running some dope, so what? So have ten thousand other guys. I don’t give a fuck. But if you lie to me and I find out about it, I’ll quit you cold.” I gave him a smile that I hoped was reassuring. “So between a running back and a washed-up old tackle. What’s the deal, you selling a little cocaine? Smuggling it, what?”

  While Jack took a few seconds to decide whether or not to level with me, I glanced beyond him around the bullpen. Six or seven other inmates were talking to people who were in booths identical to mine. The inmates all wore jumpsuits like Jack’s, with “COUNTY JAIL” stenciled between the shoulder blades in bold black letters. Finally Jack set his jaw and said, “Well, yeah. A few times, but only when business wasn’t too good. Not this deal, though. Sure, yeah, I went for the deal, but the feds set me up from the word go. Fuck, I come to find out it was even their money financing the coke.”