The Red Zone Read online

  "Chris, stop," Madison interrupted. "Let me talk. I hear you. I hear you."

  "I know what it means, Madison, and I--"

  "Chris! Listen to me," Madison pleaded. "I'll help."

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  "Madison," Pelo said quietly, "I'm sorry I had to ask you like this and put you on the spot. I won't forget this. I won't."

  Chapter 4

  Across the Gulf of Mexico, on a sultry Florida night, two NFL teams battled each other as well as the humidity The Florida Marauders were playing the New %rk Giants in a Thursday night game on cable TV The home team was ahead, but only by six, and the Giants were threatening to score. The West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium was an open arena with a grass field, so grass stains marked the players' uniforms along with the brilliant spattering of blood from numerous open wounds. The only players whose bodies weren't slippery and slick from sweat were the kickers. They huddled on the bench like a pair of penguin chicks next to the cold-air machine that blew a cool misty fog out of a single eight-inch flexible pipe.

  On the field, the Marauders' defense seemed to be losing its will. They had begun the current series of plays with the Giants backed right up to their own goal line and very little time in the game. But in every critical third-down situation, Dave Brown, the Giants' quarterback, came up with a big play. Everyone was tired at this point in the contest, and momentum was more important than even a roster of star players. The momentum belonged to the Giants. After a run that was stuffed for a loss, and a failed screen pass, again the Giants found themselves in third down with a long twelve to go. The goal line, however, was painfully close. They were on the seventeen-yard line: the red zone.

  In football, once the offense crosses the other teams twenty, it is called the red zone because every move, every penalty, every inch, every detail, is critical. In a game of violence, nowhere is the primal urge to attack and defend more clear. Here is where the lust for blood boils most clearly to the surface. Here is where the winners are separated from the losers, the weak from the strong. Mistakes in the red zone are known to cost people their jobs, their careers, and therefore their lives.

  Luther Zorn, the Marauders' inside linebacker and defensive captain, tapped into the violence within himself. He could do that, did do that, better than anyone in a critical situation. It made him a leader. It made him great. It made him dangerous. He popped himself in the forehead with the palm of his gloved hand, an old trick that flooded his system with adrenaline. He read the play hand-signaled in to him from the sideline and repeated it to his teammates before exhorting them.

  "Come on! This is EVERYTHING, right here! This is the FUCKING game! Somebody's got to make it HAPPEN!" he howled, then broke the huddle.

  The play called for Luther to take the tight end in man-toman coverage. That was fine, but if he sensed his man was going to stay in and help protect the quarterback by blocking, Luther intended to take matters into his own hands. He would go for the quarterback himself. If the tight end set up like he was blocking, then released into the pass pattern late, it would be an easy touchdown and the loss would be on Luther's head. If Luther guessed right, however, he could make a play that might win the game.

  He looked around him. The other linebackers on either side of him were lined up with their heads hanging low, sucking air into their lungs as if they'd just come up from a deep dive. The linemen in front of him were in three-point stances, their hamstrings hanging limp off their leg bones like water balloons. There was no electricity in anyone. Luther hit himself in the face one more time and glanced at the tight end. He was back on his heels. He'd stay in to block. Luther believed that sometimes in every game, as in life, someone had to step up and take a chance. Otherwise, you ended up just like everyone else, just like seaweed being washed along by the surf and the tides.

  The ball was snapped, and despite what he was supposed to do, Luther blitzed up through the middle of the line, an apparition passing through the scrum of bigger linemen locked in a frenzy of violence. Like a guard dog at the back door, the fullback was instantly on his feet. Luther leapt with inexplicable grace, belying his size and strength. Then he was down, landing on his feet in the grass quite near the quarterback, whose eyes were now filled with panic at the sight of Luther so close. Luther took a swat at the other player with his heavy arm and the ball spilled from the quarterbacks hands. A wave of players from both sides suddenly came crashing down around them both, swamping even Luther off his feet.

  But even as he fell, Luther instinctively searched for and found the wayward ball. He pulled it into his body and held on as if his life was in the balance. The roar of the crowd echoed in his ears with a deafening intensity. When he rose from the pile of bodies with the ball in his hands, the noise became louder still. The enemy's last-minute drive for the goal line was foiled. The Marauders' offense would ramble out and run down the clock. They had won. Luther would get to keep the game ball. It wouldn't be his first, but he had no way of knowing it would be his last.

  J n the locker room, Luther knelt with the rest of his teamnates to thank God for their victory. While one of his more religious counterparts droned on about the Glory of God and the forgiveness of sin, Luther thought about the serious transgressions he had committed in his own life. He had never given much thought to God. If in fact there was a God, Luther was certain that He hadn't given much thought to Luther. He learned that very early as a child growing up in the city With a mother who was white and an abusive father who was black, Luther could not remember a day when he didn't feel completely alone, except for his mother and his younger brother.

  Before he died, his father had been as great an enemy as Luther had ever known. Luther considered his early death a blessing. The only way he could ever figure that his mother had ended up with such a man was the mistake of his own conception. There were many things that haunted Luther, especially the way he had cowered while his father beat him and his younger brother. There was one particular incident that was so horrible, it repeated itself over and over in his dreams. Although there was nothing Luther could have done to protect his brother or his mother, it twisted his insides to think that he had never even tried. Then, mercifully, his father died of a gunshot wound, an unlucky bystander during a liquor store robbery.

  But even then there had been no shortage of enemies for Luther. His mother didn't have to live in the world that he was forced to endure, a world somewhere between the blacks and the whites. Luther suspected that being spared that final humiliation was the thing that allowed his mother to keep her faith. Despite rarely having even enough food to eat, she always talked about God. For his part, Luther had listened, and nodded, and said the right words. But after years of going hungry, and years of being beaten either by his own father or the older boys in the neighborhood for the simple mistake of having been born, Luther knew that his mother's God could, or would, do nothing for him.

  By the time Luther grew up and the neighborhood bullying ceased, it was too late. His mind was made up. Size and strength were his gods. He learned how to be tough and mean, and his own dominance allowed his younger brother to be spared much of the punishment from the neighborhood gangs. The only thing Luther regretted about his fathers early death was that he never had the opportunity to protect the two people he loved by using against his father the brutal force he had come to wield so effectively.

  But even though Luther became physically strong, he was never able to escape the scorn and derision from not only his peers, but neighbors, teachers, and even clergymen. Their abhorrence of him wasn't always obvious, but it was always there, and Luther knew it. He learned to act for himself and by himself and to advance toward the things he wanted in life with calculation and a disregard for others. In high school, he discovered football, a world where the color of his skin meant nothing at all. In that world, he could unleash his pent-up anger without being arrested.

  Without football, Luther knew his path in life would h
ave ended in prison. There was too much hatred inside him for it not to erupt. But with football acting as an emotional safety valve, Luther was able to function socially, to create and maintain the appearance of a pleasant and friendly young man. Even with football, though, he was sometimes pushed to a point where sanity was drowned out by his rage at having to pretend. The emotional turmoil created by carefully maintaining this outward appearance of calm and control was at times overwhelming. It had caused him to act erratically on occasion. Early on he was put into counseling, which had helped him. And, among other things, Luther was smart, so he did well in school. People who didnt know about his "problems" would marvel then, as they did now, at how such a model young man could play the game of football with such cold-blooded viciousness.

  When the prayer was over, Luther stripped to his waist, then turned to face the onslaught of cameras and microphones that swarmed around his locker. The questions came at him from all sides. He knew that the group of reporters were nothing but hyenas that would snap him up the moment he stumbled and his career started its inevitable downslide. But Luther knew how to play the game. He put on one of his most patient smiles and began to slowly and carefully sort out the questions one at a time.

  After the interviews, and a shower, Luther toweled off among the rapidly thinning crowd in the locker room. The equipment men were working like a busy colony of ants, tossing the last of the damp, stained jerseys into large canvas bins for cleaning. The jubilation of the win had already evaporated like a morning mist. The aches of torn and damaged body parts were settling in. Painkillers, splashed down with Gatorade, had yet to take effect. There was only one way to revive the excitement of the win and squeeze just a little more from it, like the pulp of an already juiced orange. Even though it was already late, Luther would join his teammates at a nightclub to rehash the game and further drown the nagging body aches with alcohol.

  "Where's it at?" Luther said, directing his question at Antone Ellison, a defensive back whose locker was next to Luther's.

  Antone was already dressed from head to toe in silk, alligator, and gold, and Luther could smell his distinctively thick cologne. Antone was one of the more anonymous members of the team, who rarely saw the playing field, a lifetime backup player who never fulfilled his college potential, but who nevertheless seemed to make the final cut year after year. Despite his skills on the field, he was the teams grand marshal off the field, the Marauders' unofficial social coordinator.

  An tone's face broke into a wide smile. "Everyone's goin' to the Hot Tin Roof," he said with the smoothness of a cocktail lounge entertainer, "an' I know you goin be with us, Luther. It ain't a real thang without the man, an you the man."

  Luther absorbed the information with a nod and slapped Ellison's suspended palm with an obligatory high-five before sitting down on his stool to dry off his feet. It was then that Luther noticed a small pink square of paper in the bottom of his locker. He scooped it into his palm and looked around furtively. Ellison had been hovering, but he looked away quickly and departed without another word. Luther opened his hand with the care of a small boy holding a butterfly and examined the note. It appeared to be a simple telephone message. Players had these pink slips deposited into their lockers routinely two or three times a week. Typically, the bigger the name of the player, the more phone messages he got. They were like fan mail.

  People called the Marauders' offices all the time, looking for some way to get in touch with guys like Luther, or Gary Morris, the team's quarterback, for any of a number of reasons. Most of them wanted something. The unusual thing about the message Luther held in his hand was that the office had closed long ago. The secretaries upstairs didn't work past five. There was no way a phone message should have appeared in Luther's locker on Thursday night, after a game. It hadn't been there before the game began. Luther was sure of that.

  Luther didn't know how the message had been delivered, but he did know why it was there. His heart raced, and a thrill not unlike the rush he had just experienced on the football field surged from the center of his body outward until he was flushed with excitement. He examined the note. It was written in her own hand. He knew she was somewhere in the building, and he wondered if she could have come into the locker room herself while he was in the shower to deliver it, or entrusted someone else to do it. Either way, the obvious risk she had taken to get the message to him made the thought of a rendezvous all the more exciting.

  Luther crumpled the note and held it tightly while he dressed. When he was finished, he stood and with his free hand began to carefully caress the hand holding the note. As he walked out of the locker room, he tossed the crumpled paper ball in the trash can, then made his way through the heavy double doors that led to the stadium tunnel and outside into the muggy warmth of the Florida night. He had no way of knowing that Antone Ellison would retrieve the crumpled message from the trash only a minute after he'd discarded it there.

  Chapter 5

  Luther pulled his black Dodge Viper into the north parking lot of MacCarther National Park and swung his car in a wide circle to illuminate the entire lot, making sure no one else was around. Satisfied, he pulled off of the blacktop onto an overgrown sandy track that led to the place where Sandy Kiffleman had parked her truck for the last time. Luther felt no need to pull the dark Viper into the undergrowth. Getting it out of plain view in the parking lot was enough to ensure that he would be safe from discovery.

  Luther absently rubbed his hands as he made his way from his car down the narrow path that led to the ocean. The breeze rushed in through his nostrils and filled his lungs. The smell of the ocean to him now was as reminiscent of sex as the smell of cheap perfume on a whore. Above, the night sky was clear, the stars sparkled, and a sliver of moon hung in the east over the hypnotic surf. As sore and tired as he was from the game, Luther began to jog along the beach toward Lost Tree Village.

  When he got to the private development, Luther slowed down so he could hear better. He removed a small canister from his pocket and gripped it tightly in his hand. The dogs, he knew, would come quietly. They would only begin to bark when they could see him. His scent, however, would bring them running. In fact, he hadn't gone more than a hundred feet before he was forced to drop to one knee and aim his Mace at a raving pair of rottweilers. The mist from his canister filled the air in front of him and the dogs sprang away from him as if they'd run into a rubber wall. Their shrieks of pain filled Luther with delight, and as they spun around madly tearing at their muzzles with their own paws, he approached them quickly and hit them point-blank with another shot of Mace. With the dogs trembling and whining in agony, Luther proceeded down the beach with a smirk.

  He felt a sense of smug satisfaction at the sight of a white mansion whose shape loomed above the trees lining the beach. He'd seen teammates come and go through his years as an NFL player, many of them ruining their lives with drugs or alcohol. He understood the thirst for a high. But drugs were child's play compared to the violence of football, and certainly to the kind of excitement he was feeling right now, the arousal of danger and imminent sex.

  Marble steps led up from the beach and through a bank of palm trees to a courtyard and swimming pool. The pool water was sapphire blue, illuminated by a set of lights below the surface. The white house with its ornate roofs and cornices rose up around this courtyard in a way that reminded Luther of a small but fine hotel.

  "Luther?" her voice came down from the balcony above and resonated throughout the courtyard. Luther felt the same electrical surge pass through his body that he felt when he'd first read her note earlier that night.

  He turned his gaze toward her. In the shimmering light from the pool he could make out her long tan figure, adorned in a white lace negligee. It was his favorite, and she knew it.

  He said nothing. He knew the way, and in a moment found himself standing there beside her in the warm damp night.

  "Luther," she said once more, her voice spilling desire.

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p; "You shouldn't have done this," he said to her, slipping his arms around the small of her back. "Someone could have seen you."

  "I had to have you," she told him quietly. "I needed you."

  "Where is he?" Luther asked.

  "Gone for the night," she said. "It's safe . . . Kiss me, Luther."

  She leaned up toward him as she spoke his name for the third time. It was the way she spoke that made it so perfect. Their lips locked instantly and voraciously and Luther felt her hands on him, tearing at his clothes, desperately searching for his flesh. Soon they were naked and entwined on the bed, like some eight-limbed being, moaning and heaving in the throes of certain death.

  In a private Gulfstream jet over the Atlantic Ocean, Evan Chase leaned back into the deep leather chair and entwined his fingers underneath his chin. His elbows rested comfortably on the armrests of the chair. A full glass of single malt scotch poured over crushed ice sat in a crystal glass on the small table beside him. He was a man with everything but good looks. Despite a deep tan, clear blue eyes, and an athletic physique that belied his age of forty-seven, his bulbous nose and a close-set pair of eyes made him unattractive to women who didn't know about his bank account. Chase, if nothing else, was wealthy. And wealth, he knew, was power.

  "We're talking about fifty million dollars, Evan," Martin Wilburn explained patiently "Even you can't pretend that it's not a temptation."

  "I didn't say it wasn't a temptation, Martin," he replied. "I've told you all along that it's a temptation. I've also told you all along that I wouldn't do it. Florida is my home. I'm not going to leave it for fifty million dollars or a hundred and fifty million dollars. I like it here."

  Evan smiled. He was having fun. If he didn't enjoy this banter, he would have stopped all the discussion months ago, when his partner had first proposed that he move the Marauders from South Florida to Memphis.

  Evan Chase had grown up in Florida, and it was where he'd made his name. After an All-America career as a swimmer at the University of Florida, Chase had gone on to win a silver medal in the 1972 Olympics. He parlayed that success and his education in finance into a successful real estate development company that specialized in residential subdivisions. Slowly and meticulously over the years he assembled a substantial real estate empire. In the mid-eighties, when his business was at its zenith, the Florida Marauders had come up for sale. It was the perfect continuation of a hometown success story After buying the team, everyone who was anyone in South Florida, from Palm Beach to Miami, knew who Evan Chase was on sight. Evan enjoyed this notoriety as much, if not more, than his substantial wealth, so moving the team wasn't even a consideration.