The new thing was a roomful of these sports medicine types, women too. They had their machines, their electronic scopes, and their charts and graphs and clipboards telling me how and what a muscle should do and when. They'd X-rayed my leg and hip from different angles, slapping electrodes on different parts of my leg when they'd done it.
Their results only told Coach Cannon what he must have learned from the Barcelona Dragons' medical exam.
"Zelmont, this tendon strain on your hip is exacerbated by contact, and you know that." Cannon scratched at his chest with one of his big hairy hands.
"Stress on the abdominal musculature too," I said, having memorized the words. "The ligaments are strained in my thigh and the fibula has bone chips. I know all that, coach. Your docs told you all that too. But there are days I'm duckin' and dodgin' like ten years ago. You seen me out there, you know."
Me and Cannon were standing near the locker room. From inside I could hear the sounds of the men getting dressed for practice. "They say if you keep this up, osteoarthritis will surely be the result before you're fifty, Zelmont."
"That's more than fifteen years away, man. You want to bring a Super Bowl trophy back to this city after damn near twenty years, or you want to be a missionary? I'm a grown man, I know what's what."
Stadanko, who'd been around each day but I had avoided, came around a corner. His old lady was with him. He was dressed in casual clothes, expensive Mezlan loafers on his feet. Ysanya had on a colorful poncho, white jeans, and cowboy boots. She'd done her hair different than the last time I'd seen her at the party. Now it was brown and orange shag cut with streaks of purple. I guess Pablo had advised her she could tune in Venus that way.
"Zelmont's damaged goods, Don?" Stadanko didn't bother to look in my direction.
"He ain't no kid, and he's got battle injuries."
"He blew off our number three draft pick yesterday in practice."
"You looked real good, Zelmont."
"Thank you, ma'am."
Stadanko jingled some coins in his pocket, still only looking at Cannon.
"He did look good," the coach said grudgingly. "But we have to consider how productive he can be in the long term." Cannon folded his beefy arms, touching his glasses like he always did as if they were ready to fall off.
"Long term doesn't always apply to everybody." He kept jingling.
Was Stadanko trying to play me? Get me thinking he means something else?
Ysanya smiled at me. "Well, I'm sure Zelmont hopes to have a good year, make enough to maybe retire, huh, Zelmont?"
"I just want to play." Damn, what cornball bullshit.
Cannon looked at me sideways behind his glasses. "He says he's ready, he's clean, and he's on time."
"Then what more can we expect?" Stadanko spread his arms wide, grinning with no feeling behind the smile. "I'll leave you to your tasks, coach." He split, his old lady sauntering along, humming to herself. Maybe she was getting signals from them planets after all.
Cannon pointed toward the locker room. "Get busy, lucky boy."
"Sure you right."
Walking into the locker room, who but coach's grown son Tommy breezed past me. He had that look that told me he'd come up short again at the racetrack.
"Hey, you're back, huh?" He stopped and glanced back at me, blinking.
"Can't keep a God-fearing man like me down."
He laughed real loud and went on to look for his dad and a loan.
Later that day I got a call from Martin Lowe, which didn't surprise me much. He was the junior flip to the big dick boys in the sports agents firm which said not more than a year ago I wasn't worth their effort to rep. We had a late lunch at a restaurant near the water in Redondo Beach, not too far from Wilma's office.
"Uh-huh, no… I'm on that now, I kid you not. Yeah, this is like done already." He snapped his cell phone shut, moving his runner's shoulders inside his baby soft leather coat. "Hey, what you gonna have, Zee?" Lowe couldn't have been more than twenty-six. He was tanned and wore a ring on each index finger. One had a black stone, the other a red one.
Usually if a cat don't know me, I don't dig 'em talking to me like we're familiar. But I needed his young sure self, so I nixed the comeback. "Somethin' light, want to be hustlin' when I hit the field on Saturday for the exhibition against the Browns."
"Natch." His phone buzzed again, and he clicked it open like Captain Kirk getting a message from the Enterprise. He jabbered some more, then clicked off, lifting his shoulders. We finally ordered and got down to it.
"You know you're coming out of a rough patch there, Zee." Lowe had some of his imported mineral water. "The money isn't like it would be in the old days. And there's the salary caps, the free agent finagling and so forth."
"What you figure your 15 percent comes to?" I crossed my legs.
He chuckled in his throat. "Stadanko will go seven small this year. And if you perform the way we know you will, then two large next year will not be crazy to consider. Plus, I have a couple of possible endorsers considering."
Considering I don't get busted with anything up my nose or my zipper down when the video is rolling. "I was hoping we could do better."
The waiter brought our salads. "Zee, you were making minimum wage with the Dragons. This isn't bad." He pierced a cherry tomato with his fork.
No it wasn't. Seven hundred grand would keep a lot of shit from rainin' down on me. But I was expected to complain and he was expected to promise me all kinds of perks. We ate and did the back and forth what if I asked for this, maybe he could get that.
Afterward, we shook hands. He would get a contract to me tomorrow. And he picked up the tab. That hadn't happened in a long time.
I wondered what Wilma would say if I dropped in on her at the office, but good sense told me not to do that. No reason making it seem like I wanted anything to do with their scam when all I really wanted was another taste of that educated trim of hers. Better to get my mind on straight and keep it there.
I pulled into my driveway and Fahrar parked right behind me. I knew it was him before he got out of his tired Toronado. The half-Landau top was old and cracked like alligator skin, and the tires were mismatched like his eyes. Damn car must have been more than twenty-five years old.
I can't believe they let you drive that piece of crap. Don't the LAPD have standards?"
"My lieutenant likes us to blend in." He came out to the car wearing his hat. His light-colored eye looked wet. "You've been all the rage on the sports radio this morning."
"What is it, Fahrar? You gonna keep your weak-ass Columbo routine goin' until I break down and cry like a bitch? You ain't got shit and you never will. Know why? You ain't competent, that's why."
"Big word for you to use, isn't it, Zelmont?"
I shoulda popped him upside the head with the equipment bag I was holding. But that's what the little punk wanted. He was gonna keep needlin' me until he had an excuse to haul me in. "What you got, cop?"
Fahrar shoved his hat down on his head. He pulled in his lips, then said, "I got a murdered girl slaughtered by a thrill killer. A young woman who only wanted what all of us want, Raines, a chance, one goddamn chance, for a piece of that silver hope. You've had hope to spare and shat on it each time."
I threw down my bag. "That it, Fahrar? You the Spectre, that white ghost with the green gloves in the comic books? You been sent to deal justice, officer? Or is it something more, Fahrar? You get a look under Davida's dress when she was on the slab and can't get it out of your fantasies?''
He rushed me, pushing me back against a post of the carport. "Stop it, stop talking like that."
"Or what, cop?" I backhanded his hat off. "What you gonna do?" I looked down at him, his hands latched onto the front of my clothes. "Go on, get bad, chump." We were both pumped, our chests rising and falling. "You want to be the superhero, don't you?''