Payback Time (22 page)

"They close at eight. Why don't you go tomorrow?"

"I'll make it."

 

It was five to eight when I reached Big 5 Sporting Goods. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"Can I help you?" The clerk was just a couple of years older than I was, and I sensed he was afraid I'd hang around past closing time.

"I need a hunting knife," I said, acting as if I'd bought dozens of them. "A good one."

He tilted his head, surprised, but he didn't say anything.

I followed him to the camping section. He stopped, took out some keys, opened a cabinet, reached in, and pulled out a shiny knife with a six-inch blade. "This one is stainless steel, is comfortable in the hand, has excellent safety features, and comes with a nylon belt sheath. It's normally forty dollars, but it's on sale for twenty-five. It's a good all-around knife."

"How about the blade? Is it sharp?"

"It'll cut whatever needs cutting."

I paid, returned to the Focus, and opened the trunk. I lifted up the carpet and put the knife into the black pouch where the jack was kept. Then I closed the trunk and drove home.

S
ATURDAY.

Championship Saturday.

It was all going to end.

Around noon Kimi called. "Can you give me a ride to the game?"

"I thought you were going with Marianne and Rachel."

"I want to get there early to take photos during warm-ups," she said. "Besides, we started this together; we should finish it together."

I picked her up at five thirty. On the drive to Tacoma she asked whether I thought Lincoln would win. Neither of us cared all that much, but it was a way to keep from thinking about the black Civic.

I'd done my research that morning, mainly to make the hours go quicker. Lincoln was playing Ferris High from Spokane. Since Ferris was from eastern Washington, nobody in Seattle knew much about them. I rattled on to Kimi about Ferris's star running back, Micah Pengilly and how he was headed to Oklahoma, which meant he had to be special. "Adrian Peterson went there," I said, and then realized Kimi had no idea who Adrian Peterson was.

Somewhere past Sea-Tac airport we both fell quiet. I thought she might pull out her iPod; instead she stared out the window. No snow, no rain—just gray and dreary. I paid the parking guy ten dollars and followed the orange cones to the North area and parked in section A, row 8, space 32. There were maybe fifty cars there—parents of players, probably. I looked at my watch—we were ninety minutes early. "I think I'll just walk around for a bit," I said. "You go on in."

"I'm not stupid, Mitch," she said, irritated. "You're looking for the Civic. I'll help."

Neither of us expected to find it, and we didn't. Those guys wouldn't try anything before the game. All the traffic in all the lanes was coming in—they'd be trapped. But after the game, they could go with the flow of traffic, hit the freeway, and be sixty miles away in sixty minutes.

I walked Kimi to the photographers' entrance. "Why don't you watch with me from field level tonight?" she said.

I shook my head. "I wish I could, but I need to be higher up to see the plays and get the numbers right."

She nodded and went inside. Instead of going up to the press entrance on the one hundred level, I headed back to the parking lot.

T
HINK THE WAY GANGS THINK.
That's what Kimi's dad had said. I went to the players' gate and looked around. If I were driving the black Civic, where would I park? What would I do?

I scanned the area until I spotted the perfect place: the fence directly across from the players' gate. The Civic could back up against it and wait. From there, the driver could see the players come down the brightly lit chute toward the parking lot without being seen. When he spotted Angel, he could fly down the lane, make a quick right turn, and stop. A passenger in the car could stick a gun out the window, fire, and then the car would be gone, out of the parking lot and onto I-5. Once the Civic reached the freeway it could head toward Portland or Gig Harbor or Mount Rainier or back to Seattle.

I walked out to the fence. The overhead lighting in the parking lot dwindled to nothing before I reached it. The ground was littered with cups and candy bar wrappers that had blown up against the fence.

I looked back to the players' gate, and I was more certain than ever that this would be where they'd settle. I walked along the fence, kicking glass and garbage out of the way, thinking how stupid I'd been not to bring gloves, and wondering whether, if it finally came to it, I'd have the guts to do what had to be done.

After I'd walked a hundred yards along the fence, I headed back to the T-Dome and found the regular press gate. As I showed the usher my pass, I remembered how awkward I'd felt using it the first time; now it was second nature. I found a seat that was high enough to see everything, but not so high that the players looked like ants.

I looked around me. Cops and security guys were visible throughout the stadium. Coach McNulty had been right. Nobody would be stupid enough to try anything during the game. If an attack came, it would come afterward in the confusion and blackness of the parking lot.

But that was three hours away. I had a football game to cover for the
Lincoln Light,
the most important football game in the history of Lincoln High. Win or lose, students, teachers, and parents would keep the newspaper their whole lives. Over time, my words would become their memories. I opened a new Word document on my laptop, and typed:
Championship Game: Lincoln Mustangs
vs.
Ferris Saxons.

B
EFORE THE TEAMS TOOK THE FIELD,
the bands competed. Ferris played a loud, fast "Johnny B. Goode" that Lincoln matched with "Twist and Shout." After that it was "Proud Mary" vs. "Crocodile Rock" and then "Running on Empty" vs. "YMCA." As the songs rolled on, more and more people filed in, and the tension built.

At eight o'clock, the PA announcer introduced the teams. A roar went up for every Lincoln player, but for Horst Diamond the roar was nuclear. Fewer of Ferris's fans had made the long drive from Spokane so they couldn't match Lincoln's volume, but when the name Micah Pengilly was announced, the cheers nearly equaled those for Horst. After the introductions came "The Star-Spangled Banner" followed by the coin toss. Finally it was game time.

We won the coin toss, which meant we would get the ball first. Forty-four—Angel—trotted onto the field, and as he did I felt my throat tighten. "Let him win," I whispered.

Ferris's kickoff was high and deep. Stein, the return man, muffed it, then picked it up and advanced almost to the thirty before being smacked down. And now it was Horst running onto the field, and I found myself wanting him to win, too, which is when I knew I was getting way too soft and I needed to get back to being a reporter.

Horst came out passing, using the whole field and all his receivers. He gained nine yards on a slant to the tight end, twenty-four on a post pattern to a wide-out, twelve on a pass into the flat. Before Ferris could get set, Horst hurried the team to the line, faked a handoff to Shawn Warner, and gained another eleven on a naked bootleg. Ferris was reeling, and Horst didn't give them a chance to breathe. From the shotgun he threw a bomb down the sideline for Lenny Westwood, who was streaking toward the end zone. Westwood went up for the ball with a Ferris defender right with him. For an instant they both had it, but then the Ferris guy took the ball away, just outmuscled Westwood. Around me, everyone groaned in disbelief, while on the other side of the dome Ferris's fans screamed for joy.

I typed a one-sentence description of the play, got the Ferris guy's number so I could find his name later, and then looked down at the field to see our defense racing onto the field. Would it be Clarke at middle linebacker? No—there was Angel Marichal, right in the middle, right where he'd belonged all year. McNulty wasn't hiding him anymore.

Ferris had lived by pounding the ball right at defenses, so that's what McNulty was expecting. He had Angel crowding the line, bird-dogging Micah Pengilly. But on first down Ferris's quarterback faked a handoff to Pengilly and hit a little quick screen in the flat that went for twelve. Ferris's second play was a carbon copy of the first—another dump-off pass for another first down. Angel backed off the line to protect against the pass and—boom—Pengilly sliced through the defense for twenty-one yards. Worse, the guy who finally hauled him down drew a facemask penalty.

Now, deep in our territory, Ferris did pound the ball. The PA announcer sounded like a broken record:
Micah Pengilly for seven yards; Micah Pengilly for six yards; Micah Pengilly into the end zone for a touchdown.

As Pengilly celebrated with his teammates along their sideline, I typed furiously, trying to capture in words what I'd just seen. At no time in the season had a team cut through the Lincoln defense quite the way Ferris had. Play after play I kept thinking:
This time Angel will do something.
But the Ferris offensive line had pushed our guys around as if they were a JV team. Ferris was likely to score, and score often.

For Lincoln to have a chance, Horst needed to put up points, and on the second possession he came out firing again. He threw an incompletion on first down, but then clicked on two straight bullets to his old friend Lenny Westwood. After that, Shawn Warner busted up the gut for thirteen yards. Next it was an end-around for thirty-four. After each play, Horst pushed the tempo, never letting Ferris get set. And they weren't set on the last play of the drive—a feathery pass to Westwood, who took it in at the five and waltzed into the end zone.

Ferris 7, Lincoln 7.

Pengilly was the deep man on kickoff (did the guy do everything?) and he took the ball out to the forty. I was expecting another long march the length of the field. Why not? Both offenses seemed way ahead of the defenses. But on this drive, our linemen held their ground against the O-line of Ferris. Angel stuffed Pengilly after a gain of two yards on first down and actually dropped him for a loss on second down. That made third down an obvious passing down. Angel blitzed, the Ferris QB hurried his throw, and the ball sailed out of bounds. Ferris had to kick—the first punt of the game—and the Lincoln fans around me cheered in appreciation.

Stein took the short kick and brought it back to the Lincoln forty, and out came Horst again. If you'd been living in outer space, and you showed up at the game, and someone said, "Who do you think the best player out there is?" you'd have pointed to Horst and said, "He is." He was so calm, as if the game were in slow motion, yet somehow he was playing faster than anyone. First play: nineteen yards on an out pattern. Second play: quarterback draw for nine. Third play: screen pass to Warner for fourteen more. Fourth play: another pass to Westwood, with an unnecessary roughness penalty tacked on at the end, bringing the ball to the Ferris four. It took Warner three tries, but on the last play of the first quarter he punched the ball in.

Lincoln 14, Ferris 7.

All through the first quarter, nearly everything had clicked for both offenses. In the second, nothing did. The defenses didn't stop the offenses—Angel was still struggling because of the strength of the Ferris offensive line. The offenses stopped themselves with penalties or dropped passes or botched plays. What had been a crisply played game turned into a sloppy mess.

With less than two minutes left before halftime, Horst hit Shawn Warner on a screen pass. Warner needed two yards for the first, and if he'd just plunged straight ahead, he'd have had them. Instead he stopped, doubled back, then doubled back again, and was finally dropped for a seventeen-yard loss. McNulty went berserk on the sideline, slamming his clipboard to the ground. A first down would have meant Lincoln could have run out the clock. Now McNulty had no choice but to punt.

It was a good punt—too good. Pengilly had to back up ten yards to catch it, but that gave him ten yards of open field. He broke right, reversed, and came back left, picking up a wall of blockers. Kenstowicz, the punter, had the last shot to stop him, which was no shot at all. Pengilly gave him a little stutter step and then blew right by him. Sixty-four yards and a touchdown. McNulty glared at Warner and then flung his clipboard to the ground again. At the half the score was Ferris 14, Lincoln 14.

The Lincoln band marched onto the field as the players headed to the locker room. I wanted to stay right where I was, but I had to go out to the parking lot. "If you leave you can't come back," an usher said as I approached the exit where he was stationed.

"I've got a press pass," I said, flashing my badge.

He looked confused for a moment, and then shrugged. "All right, I guess that makes it different. It's raining out there, though."

"That's okay. I'm burning up."

And I was. My face was on fire and I felt myself sweating. Would the Civic be there? I stepped outside. The rain felt good on my face, and so did the cold. I looked out toward the back fence of the half-filled South lot. Was that a car? I stared long and hard, but it was too dark to know for sure.

I
T WAS STRANGE HEADING BACK
into the Tacoma Dome for the second half. All the banners, all the cheers, all the excited voices—it didn't seem possible that the world of color and light inside the dome was the same world that might be hiding a black Civic in a dark parking lot by a battered fence.

I returned to my seat, opened my laptop, and looked onto the field. The players from both teams were jumping up and down on the sidelines, pumping themselves up for the second half, butting helmets the same way rams butt horns.

Ferris had the first possession of the second half. They came out doing what had gotten them to the finals—putting the ball in Micah Pengilly's hands. First it was a screen pass for a dozen yards; then a toss sweep for six more followed by a quick-hitter up the middle for yet another first down. Angel was getting more than his share of tackles, but none of them were in the backfield for losses, or even at the line of scrimmage. The Ferris guys were again dominating the game up-front, pushing the Lincoln guys around.