Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (18 page)

“Court date?” he yelps. “No no. I’m not—What about that fag—that guy? Does he get a court date?”

“Sir,” the otter says, pulling out a citation book, “you’re not under arrest, but I strongly suggest you remain silent.”

The vixen pulls out a similar book and starts filling out a ticket. “I have to write you up as well,” she says, “because I’m sure if you press charges, he’s going to. But I have your statements and I don’t think you need to worry much. So where are you staying, and for how long?”

“The Intercontinental,” I say, and give her my drivers license, pointing to the Hilltown address. “This isn’t current, though. I moved to Chevali a month…month and a half ago. I don’t drive much there, so I haven’t gotten it changed.”

“Huh. Okay, give me your current address, and get that updated as soon as you get back.”

“Yes, sir. Ma’am.”

She raises an eyebrow. “‘Ma’am’ is fine.”

I grin. “Okay, ma’am.” She writes down the info as I give it to her.

“This is bullshit!” the wolf yells.

“And on behalf of the city of Boliat,” the vixen says, “allow me to apologize for our citizenry. We’re not all violent bigots.”

She shoots a look at the wolf that would shut me up even in one of my activist rants. But the wolf doesn’t get the hint. “Violent? Me? No, I’m not like that, it was just that he grabbed me—”

“I’m sure we’ll sort all that out,” the vixen says. “In the meantime, you’re going to come down to the station, and Mister Farrel, once you get home and cleaned up, we’d appreciate it if you could come down and give a formal statement as well.”

“Of course.”

I get directions to the police station (which is in walking distance of the stadium and the hotel) and go back to my room to clean up. I text Dev when I get back to my room, but he doesn’t answer immediately, so I call the hotel’s laundry service to clean my jeans and briefs and then hop in the shower. When I get out, he’s texted that the team is still celebrating. There’s also a text from Gena asking if I’m free.

Shit. I completely forgot about Fisher, what with being attacked by drunken homophobes. I call her, and the first thing she tells me is, “Fisher’s fine.”

“Good. What happened?”

“Concussion. So I guess he’s not ‘fine,’ but…” She laughs, shakily.

“Could have been a lot worse.” The fact that he walked off the field meant it probably wasn’t a spinal injury. But there are all kinds of head trauma he could’ve gotten.

“God, yes.”

“Is he going to be able to play in the championship game?”

She makes a noise, kind of a catch in her throat. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. They say he’s day to day, but…I don’t want him to play.”

“Is he still taking the, uh…”

“I don’t know. I didn’t find any in our luggage, but I can’t search his locker. Did you look it up?”

“I sent a couple e-mails out to friends of mine on the Dragons, but…honestly, I don’t know if they’ll know anything. Or if they do, I don’t know that they’ll tell me. I have one other source I can try, but this stuff—it all happens behind doors, in closed rooms, you know?”

“I know.” Her voice is small. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“I’ll help,” I say. “I’ll do what I can. Where are you guys now?”

“He’s still in the locker room. I’m in a restaurant next to the stadium.”

“Do you want company?”

“If you have time.”

“Sure.” I grab some clothes out of my bag. “I just have to go do this thing at the police station.”

“All right,” Gena says, and then, “Wait. Police station?”

“I’ll tell you about it later. Give me an hour? Text me if you leave.”

So I go down to the police station and I file an official complaint. I give them contact information again for the court date. “Probably in a month,” the otter tells me, the same one who photographed me. He holds up the signed statement. “And again, sorry for your experience here. I’d wish your team luck in the championship, but…” He gestures around at the Boxers pennants, pictures, and framed newspaper with the headline screaming “KO’D” from the Boxers’ championship in ’06.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I hope I have reason to come back to your town soon.”

“But good luck to you,” he says. “And Miski.”

I thank him and leave with a little more wag in my still-damp tail. If I don’t think too much about being assaulted for being gay, if I focus on the fact that everyone was sympathetic and the asshole is being punished, then I feel a lot better about things. I remember Dev’s interception and Strike grabbing the ball on the onside kick, and that lifts my spirits still more. The day has been really up and down, and it’s barely late afternoon. In fact, by the time I spot Gena in the restaurant and sit down across from her, the second half of the other playoff game has already started.

Gena follows my gaze to the TV. “I guess we’ll be going to Crystal City,” she says.

The score’s Crystal City 14, Peco 0. “It’s a long game,” I say, “but yeah. Sabretooths don’t give up second-half leads. Pity.”

“Would we have had a home championship game if Peco won? We finished with a better record.”

I shake my head. “I think as a division champ they get home-field over a wild-card team. That last Hellentown game…if we’d won that. But it’s a moot point anyway, unless a miracle happens in the second half.”

“Two scores down isn’t really ‘miracle’ territory.”

“Against the Sabretooths, I think it might be.” I order a Diet Coke from the waiter when he comes by, and then ask about Fisher.

“I only talked to him for about ten minutes,” Gena tells me. “He was in the training room and they wanted to run a few more tests on him. I guess he was dizzy…having trouble remembering things…” She stops talking and swallows, staring past my muzzle. She’s larger than I am, but her frame seems unsteady, about to collapse in on itself. Her small black ears flatten, her large paws turn her gleaming silver fork over and over without looking at it, and the shoulders of her white jacket—nicer than the Firebirds warmup she was wearing at the game—bow inward.

We both know what the end of this road looks like. I’ve never had to deal with this kind of personal tragedy, when you might partly lose someone. Like Fisher is becoming a different person, one who still loves his wife and kids, but might forget things about them. Things they’ve done together, things about their lives. Their names.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” I say.

I don’t think it was particularly helpful, nor insightful, but Gena draws a breath and her shoulders straighten, her ears come up a little, and she braces herself as she reaches for the glass in front of her. It smells of fruit and tequila. “Are your grandparents living?”

“Only my mother’s mother, but she…doesn’t stay in touch.”

“Fisher’s father had Alzheimer’s. It was…hard.”

I bite my lip. “My father’s grandfather did too. I don’t know much about it.”

The waiter brings a plate of stuffed mushrooms just then, and Gena smiles. “I’m not hungry, but I thought you might be. And I think I should eat something.”

The mushrooms smell of mushroom, strongly, and then cheese and a faint whiff of crab. I usually don’t like mushrooms all that much on their own, but I take one so as not to be rude. It’s greasy and cheesy, but, I realize, I haven’t eaten at all since the greasy, cheesy sausage sandwich I had just after halftime of the game, and I am hungry.

“How long ago was that?” I ask. “Fisher’s father, I mean.”

“Oh. Three years ago, he passed.” Gena picks up one of the mushrooms on her fork and holds it in front of her muzzle, looking at it. Cheese oozes down the side. “The boys didn’t quite get what was going on, until it was very close to the end and he couldn’t really talk anymore.”

Again I feel a tightness in my chest, a sympathetic grief that I’m not quite sure how to handle. It’s not mine to dismiss or confront, and I don’t know how to offer comfort any more than I already have. “Where are the boys?”

“At the stadium. They wanted to wait for their father and maybe see some of the other players.” She smiles. “I’m sorry to be dumping all of this on you. But I don’t really know the other wives that well.”

I don’t either, of course, except maybe Angela. “I’m already looking into the drugs,” I say. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”

“Dev’s close to Fisher, though. If Fisher would listen to anyone…”

That seems like a pretty big “if,” from what I know of Fisher, but I don’t comment on it. “I’ll talk to Dev about it, yeah.”

“About Fisher playing in the championship?”

“I meant about the drugs.” I rub the side of my muzzle. “You don’t want him to play in the championship.”

“Well…” She sets down the mushroom without eating it. “Would you? If it were Dev?”

I think about that and I get a chill which raises my hackles. “No. But if he thought he could still play…I don’t know how I could stop him.”

“I don’t know what to do about Fisher, either. Maybe together we can figure out something.”

“I’ll enlist Dev, for sure. Once he sobers up.”

She smiles faintly. “At least Fisher’s not out drinking tonight.”

“Has that gotten worse, too?” I eat another mushroom, since she’s not going to.

“Not worse, but…I think in combination with the drugs, maybe. It just seems like the alcohol affects him differently now. He gets sleepy right away, or he gets maudlin.”

“At least it doesn’t make him even angrier.”

“No. Not usually.” She takes another sip of her drink and sighs. One paw covers her phone, sitting on the table. “I wish he’d call.”

The TV distracts me; Peco scores a touchdown, and then Crystal City blocks the extra point. It’s 14-6. I get that little football-related spark in my chest when something exciting might be about to happen, and that makes my tail wag, but I suppress it because of what we’re talking about.

Gena fills the silence. “So what was this ‘police station thing’?”

“Oh…” I wave a paw. “I was around when this guy got arrested. They just wanted me to come down for some routine paperwork.”

It’s all true, just not the whole truth, and Gena’s eyes narrow. “I’ve got two high-schoolers who bullshit me on a daily basis,” she says.

“I’m not one of your cubs.” She raises an eyebrow. “Really,” I say. “It was nothing.”

“So it happened right after we left you? What did he get arrested for?”

“Fighting. That’s all.”

I eat the last mushroom, but that doesn’t stop her from shaking her head. “All right, well. If I don’t read about it in the papers, then I guess it really is—”

Her phone rings, beneath her paw. She jumps and then picks it up. “Hi, honey.”

Fisher’s voice comes faintly through the speaker. I can hear it, but not what he’s saying. Whatever it is, it melts the tension from Gena’s face. Her whiskers and ears come up, and she smiles. “That’s great,” she says. “I’ll be right over and we can meet the boys—” He talks again, and she listens, the smile fading. “Well, I know, but…yes, okay. I guess I’ll see you tonight, then.”

She sets the phone down and stares at it while the waiter clears the empty mushroom plate and asks if we’d like anything else. “No,” she says. “Wait. Another one of these.” She taps her half-consumed margarita.

“Another plate of the mushrooms,” I say, “and some house bread.” When he leaves, I glare at Gena. “You’re going to eat the mushrooms this time.”

“I’m fine,” she says.

“Hey,” I say. “I take care of a tiger who doesn’t always eat right, too.”

She glares back and then laughs. “All right. You got me.”

“So Fisher didn’t want to come back to the hotel right away?”

“He said it was important to go celebrate with the team. He promised he wouldn’t drink anything. They told him it was dangerous with the concussion.”

“I’m surprised they released him.”

“Someone’s walking over to the bar with him, and then I’ll pick him up when the party winds down.”

“If it winds down,” I say. “Might go pretty late.”

She drains a quarter of her drink. “Then I’ll go get him. Anyway.” She forces a bright smile. “Other than that, how are things with you?”

I catch her up on my life while we watch the end of the playoff game. It’s nice to be able to say frankly that I’m worried about the phone interview with the guy from Yerba who might or might not be homophobic, and Gena transfers a lot of her anxiety to me. “They can’t not hire you for that, right?” she asks, and I have to explain about people finding other reasons to hide the real one. I don’t tell her about the Vince King lawsuit because I feel lost there and I don’t know what I can say, but we do talk about Mother for a little. She has a good perspective on it, being a mother herself, and she agrees with Father that I should apologize and take the first step. Mother, she thinks, probably feels just as bad as I do, if not worse. I still have trouble buying that, but hearing it from yet another source helps.

The conversation sounds dull, but it’s more exciting than the game turns out to be. After the brief spurt of life, Peco can’t make anything happen. Crystal City smothers them for the rest of the game, their two coyote linebackers seemingly everywhere at once, their defensive line stopping Peco’s offensive line cold when it doesn’t crush them outright. I get absorbed in watching some of their plays on offense, because this is what Dev’s going to be facing next week.

They don’t have the fireworks on offense that they do on defense, but they’re plenty good. They put another touchdown on the board after an interception leaves them at the Fraters’ five-yard line, and then add on a field goal.

Gena eats almost all of the plate of mushrooms, and we split the bread. When the game ends with the Sabretooths celebrating on the field, we signal for our bill. I look at the delirious locker room, the guys patting each other on the back, and I wonder if that’s how it was in the Chevali locker room this afternoon. They’re still out at the bar, probably getting trashed, and I’d be the last to say they don’t deserve it. I just kind of wish I’d been able to be part of it. Still, it’s nice to see that celebration. Gives me a warm, waggy feeling when I think about Dev and his teammates celebrating, and I get even more of a wag to my (now dry) tail when they post up the graphic for the championship and there’s the Firebirds logo, right there beside the Sabretooths. It’s almost a surreal moment, like I’m going to pinch myself and find out that I’ve been dreaming. Even Gena gets a big smile, and we talk for a bit about what those two championships Fisher won with the Rocs were like.