“I need your help, Jason. I’ve been suspended from the team, the National Soccer Hall of Fame has removed my uniform from its exhibit, and three companies have cancelled my endorsements. At the rate I’m going, I’ll have to borrow money to pay my attorney. I need you to investigate who’s behind this, who’s coaching her. She doesn’t have any family.”
According to Marble’s lawyer, Lindsey Stillwell works at a twenty-four-hour diner called the Wagon Wheel. The night after Marble’s visit, I park my van outside a piercing parlor and walk over to the diner. An ageing Asian janitor, seated at the counter, leafs through a leftover newspaper, while a teenage boy and girl share a sundae in a corner booth.
I take a table by the window. A few minutes later, Lindsey approaches. She’s aged since the photo taken at Sidewinder. She’s taller now and her black mascara clashes with her pale complexion, like a pencil sketch in which the artist has inked in only the eyes.
“Know what you want?”
I think of a few things that aren’t on the menu. “Two eggs, over easy, and a coffee.”
When she brings my coffee, I ask if she has a cell phone. “You need to make a call?”
“No, I was expecting one and I’m not sure this thing is working.” I hold up my phone. “I was wondering if you could call my number.”
She shrugs, pulls a phone from her pocket, and keys in my number as I recite it.
Seconds later my phone rings. “Hello.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks.”
Our eyes meet as we hang up.
I’m halfway through my coffee when she returns with my eggs. As soon as I’ve finished eating, I leave her a generous tip and head back to my van. I remove my cell-phone interceptor from the glove compartment, look up Lindsey’s number on my cell-phone log, and key it into the interceptor. It will now pick up any calls Lindsey makes or receives within a ten-mile radius.
On my way home, I cruise past Lindsey’s home address. What I’d assumed was an apartment number turns out to be a room number at the Sandstorm Motel. The parking lot looks like someone has taken a sledgehammer to it. A battered marquee advertises Rooms by the Month. So this is where Lindsey lives, or rather, sleeps. My guess is that life is something she’s still looking forward to.
The next day I set up shop in a parking garage five blocks from the Sandstorm. The protection it offers from the midday sun is worth the four bucks a day, which I’ll charge to Marble anyway. Late in the afternoon, my palm-size interceptor picks up its first call.
I press Record as Lindsey answers. “Hello.”
“How’s the diary coming?” A man. White. Middle-aged.
“I just have a couple of entries to go.”
“I talked to Behind the Scenes. They’ve scheduled your interview for next week, but they want to see the diary first. If Marble touched you outside your shirt, your story’s worth fifty thousand. If he put his hand inside your shirt, it jumps to seventy-five. If he unzipped your jeans...”
“He didn’t.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“The point is, I found you sleeping in Mission Park, surrounded by winos and crack addicts. You looked twenty years older than the girl who visited Sidewinder.”
“So this is about paying you back.”
“It’s about us helping each other. Marble is sure to settle out of court. Do you think he really cared about you or any of those other kids he invited to his ranch? It was all a publicity stunt. And if he’d cared enough to pay his staff a decent wage, I wouldn’t have hocked his damn balls.”
Gardner.
“When do you need the diary?”
“By Sunday. I want to read it before I turn it over to Behind the Scenes.”
I pop open a Coke. So do I.
The following day I stuff my Beretta, my camera, my wallet, and my phone interceptor into my pockets, grab a basket of towels, and drive over to the Laundromat facing the Sandstorm. Breathing in a haze of detergent, I throw my towels into a machine and take a seat by the grimy front window.
I’m running my towels through a third wash cycle when Lindsey, wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts, steps out of the motel. I watch her head down the street, a small leather bag swinging from her shoulder.
As soon as she’s out of sight, I cross the street and enter the Sandstorm. The desk clerk is on the phone, talking ninety miles an hour about her husband who arrived home at two that morning. She ignores me as I cross the lobby, enter the musty hallway, and board the elevator which groans in protest as it carries me to the second floor.
It takes me less than a minute to pick Lindsey’s lock. I take in the neatly made bed, the People magazine, and the pastel bras and panties hanging over the radiator.
In a bureau drawer, beneath a couple of tank tops, I find a clothbound book. Its entries, dated three years ago, describe Lindsey’s stay at Sidewinder. The evenings spent playing video games and eating popcorn and watching DVDs on Marble’s large-screen TV. Marble barbequing burgers. Bats swooping down at dusk to sip water from the pool.
I flip forward to the most recent entry.
Late last night I slipped out the back door and followed a dirt path towards the creek. I’d almost reached the water when I heard someone behind me. It was Marble.
I told him I couldn’t sleep. I told him how, in my foster home, I share a room with three girls, how one of them throws up in our bathroom after every meal, how there are no locks on any of the doors, and how the boys sometimes steal peeks at us when we’re showering. Looking out at the wide, empty desert, I told him, “I’d give anything not to go back there.”
“Maybe we can work something out,” he said.
He took my hand and helped me down the bank. Then he asked, “Have you ever been alone with a boy? I mean, really alone?”
The writing ends here. I use the TV remote control and my phone interceptor to hold open the diary’s facing pages so that I can photograph them.
I’ve shot three pairs of pages when my interceptor picks up a call. I glance out the window to see Lindsey standing in the parking lot, her phone pressed to her ear.
A man answers. “Hello.”
“There’s someone in my room.”
“Where are you?”
“Outside the motel.”
“I’m on South Main. Keep an eye on the entrance; I’ll be right there.”
I shove my camera and interceptor into my pocket, hurry past the elevator to the stairwell, and take the stairs two at a time. The warped door at the bottom won’t budge. I slam my shoulder against it. On the third blow, it bursts open. I race down the hall and duck out the emergency exit, setting off an alarm.
A ten-foot brick wall separates the back of the Sandstorm from the upscale houses behind it. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounds the lumberyard to my left. My only hope is the alley running behind the strip shopping center to my right. I race towards it. As I reach the corner of the motel, I nearly collide with Gardner. He stumbles as I swerve past him, regains his footing, and tackles me from behind. He twists my left arm behind my back as he slams me against the ground. The asphalt burns a skid mark across my cheek.