Lincoln snorted. “Play better? Tha’s a good one. You never seen him play. Grant didn’t need to play better. Grant was the best.”
“That bother you?”
“What?”
“That your brother was the star and not you?”
Lincoln took a sip of coffee. Like MacAullif, he seemed to be composing himself, holding himself in, framing a moderate response. “Do I wanna be Grant, sure I wanna be Grant, but I ain’t, Grant’s Grant, so I’m glad of that. When I find out who did give him dope, that sucker in trouble.” He jabbed a finger in my face. “You hear me? You hear what I say?”
“I hear you,” I said.
I’m not sure I believed him.
Larry White was suspicious. “You a cop?”
“No, I’m not.”
“You sure?”
“I think I’d know.”
“If you a cop, you gotta say.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“If you a cop, I ask you direct, you gotta say. Tha’s the law. You don’ say, you can’t bust me anyhow, don’ matter what I do.”
“I don’t wanna bust you.”
His eyes widened. “You a cop? Then you can’t bust me, even if I whip out a ki-lo, ask you if you wanna buy.”
“Is that right?”
“Truth. Leroy say so.”
“Savvy guy.”
“Damn right. He been aroun’. He done time.”
I blinked in despair over a generation that regarded a jail sentence as a qualification, had to remind myself I liked Robin Hood as a boy.
“Now we got that out of the way, you mind answering a few questions?”
“You make it quick. I gotta get to class.”
I knew that. I had located the administration building, looked up his schedule, and ambushed him coming out of math. He’d been easy to spot. He was the one who had to duck to get out the door.
“You were there when Grant Jackson collapsed?”
“Course I was. Durin’ practice.”
“What did you see?”
A girl with a Cedar Park College sweatshirt put her book bag in one of the metal lockers lining the hallway. She flashed us a look as she went by.
Larry White frowned. “Hey, man,” he said. “Maybe you can’t bust me, but she think I’m talkin’ to a cop.”
“That bad for business?”
He frowned. “Hey! What you mean?”
“Lemme speed things along for you, Larry,” I said. “I pulled your record. You got drug busts. I don’t give a damn, except how it relates to Grant. If Grant got coke from you, I gotta know.”
He shook his head. “No way!”
“And if Grant got works from you, I gotta know.”
His head kept shaking. “No way!”
“The medical examiner says Grant was a virgin, never shot before. If he wanted to shoot coke, he wouldn’t have the equipment. He’d have to get a hypodermic. I’m wondering if he got it from you.”
“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 wanna do that, fine. If you don’t wanna do that, you got another choice. You talk to me, and I go away. And no one asks you any more questions. Sounds like a pretty good deal. Particularly since you know even if I were a cop, nothing you say could hurt you anyway. So come on, let’s do this. I don’t wanna make you late for class.”
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’ gonna mislabel nothin’.”
“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?”