Change gave him the facts. Farnsworth looked ready to vomit. “Oh man-no, no, don’t tell me that!” He pounded the table. “God, this is just sickening!”

McCain said, “What do you know about it, sir?”

Farnsworth grabbed a wad of tissues from a Kleenex box and slapped at his own face. “Goddammit! As soon as I got the report, I called up the parents and told them there was no way that the school would permit him to play basketball.”

“You spoke to Ellen Van Beest?” Dorothy asked.

“No, no,” Farnsworth said, “I talked to the old man- Leon.”

“Leo,” Dorothy corrected.

“Yeah. Right. Leo knew his kid shouldn’t play. Leo himself was in the game a few years before me.” Farnsworth’s eyes clouded, shot back somewhere into his past.

Dorothy said, “So you spoke to Leo.”

“I told him we needed to talk. He said the mother was busy working, so he’d come in. I told him Julius needed to be looked at by a specialist. He said he’d take care of it right away. I had no reason to doubt him. After all, it was his son, right?”

Farnsworth muttered under his breath.

“Soon after, he pulled the kid out of school. Said he was going to homeschool him while his medical problems were being tended to, some kind of operation. I thought that made a lot of sense. Julius was no dummy, but we didn’t accept him on the basis of his test scores. So maybe a homeschool situation would be the best solution if he was going to be laid up.”

“And Leo took the X-rays with him,” said Dorothy.

Farnsworth nodded. “So he could get a second opinion. That made sense, too, right?”

The Coach cursed under his breath. “About three, four months later, I saw Julius playing for St. Paul’s at the intramural games. My first thought was he must’ve had one hell of a surgeon. I was brooding over the fact that he didn’t come back to Lancaster. Then, after mulling it over, I still thought that it was weird for Julius to be playing any kind of contact sport so soon after a major operation. Not that it was any of my business, but I called him up.”

“Who?”

“Julius,” Farnsworth said. “I think secretly I entertained hopes he’d come back to Lancaster if I sweet-talked him. The kid was as cold as ice. He said his medical problem was taken care of. Thank you. Good-bye.”

He licked his lips. “Something was off. I called the old man and he cussed me out left and right, said if I interfered in his son’s business, he’d make trouble for me. He said if I told anyone about anything, I’d be breaching confidentiality and he’d own my kids and my house.” He threw up his hands. “It wasn’t like the boy didn’t know.”

Dorothy said, “You didn’t think of calling up his mother?”

“I thought the boy was living with his old man. I thought that if I told the mother and the old man had custody, he’d make good on his promise and slap me with a lawsuit.” Tears welled up in Farnsworth’s eyes. “I didn’t think about it too hard because Leo was Julius’s father.”

He pounded the table again. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking that Leo had his son’s best interest at heart,” Dorothy said.

Farnsworth nodded, grateful for the out.

“You were thinking that no father would intentionally put his son in harm’s way.”

“Correct. That’s it to a T.”

“You were thinking that if Julius was playing, he must have been strong enough to play.”

“Yes, yes, exactly!”

“You were thinking all the right things,” Dorothy said. “Unfortunately, your conclusion was still wrong.”

17

Two-thirty in the afternoon and already Leo Van Beest was deep into alcoholic memories.

Back to the days when he’d been a Ferrari. For a while, the ride had been fast, wild, dangerously thrilling.

Now two detectives were standing over him and the dream was gone and Leo was feeling mighty sorry for himself.

His house was a one-bedroom, shingle-front dump, unkempt and unloved with dirty ice for a front yard. A rusted green Mercedes diesel sedan sat in the sunken driveway.

Inside, threadbare carpeting covered the floor, and bedsheets draped the windows. There were crusted dishes in the sink, and rumpled clothing and wrinkled papers were scattered everywhere. A rotten smell permeated the stifling front room. The walls were yellowed, hung with black-and-white photos from Leo’s European glory days. The old man was dressed in torn sweats, drinking from a coffee mug, staring into the cup. A boozy steam wafted up from the rim and misted his face.

“I wouldn’t have done it, ”cept that’s what Julius wanted.“

Dorothy said, “Parents are supposed to talk children out of bad decisions, Mr. Van Beest.”

Leo looked up from his drink. Red eyes struggled to focus on Dorothy’s face. He was sitting, but Dorothy was standing. No way she was going to touch that couch. Who knew what he had done on it?

“You think it was a bad decision, huh?” The old man sipped his drink. “I supposed to talk my son out of being someone big… someone famous. So he can do back-breaking labor for the rest of his days?”

“There were other options,” McCain said.

Leo smiled, then laughed. “Oh, yeah. Other options. Like college. Like Julius was some kind of smarty.” He laughed again, but it was mirthless. “That boy was born to move-born to run and jump and be a star. He was a racehorse, not an old plow horse. Julius was a giant! He was big and strong and coordinated and had a talent that was given to God’s creatures once in a lifetime. That boy was a giant even with the giants. And I supposed to tell him he can’t do it?”

He shook his head no, then he looked up again.

“You wanna know what the boy said to me? He said, ”Pops, I’d rather be a shooting star than no star at all. You gotta keep this a secret. You gotta not tell Mama, no matter what! You gotta be a man about this, Pops. And you gotta let me be a man.“”

“That your definition of being a man?” McCain said. “Knowing every time your son went on the basketball court, he could drop dead?”

“And a cop don’t look death in the eye every time he answers a call?”

“That’s a cheap shot,” Dorothy said.

“No, you don’t understand!” Leo said forcefully. He jabbed his finger up in the air. “You’re a cop, that’s your job. Julius was a basketball player. That was his job! And I be damned if I wasn’t gonna let him live out his dream.”

“His dream or your dream?” Dorothy said.

“Don’t matter now,” Leo snarled at her. “Because now it’s nobody’s dream.”

No one spoke.

“I know what you all is thinking: that I killed my son by lettin‘ him play. Bullshit! Better he die a quick death than a slow painful one, you know what I’m saying?”

“No, I don’t know what you’re saying, sir,” Dorothy said. “But that’s irrelevant. If Julius had died in high school, I would have arrested you-for endangering the life of your child, maybe even for murder. But Julius died three years after he reached his majority. He knew his situation and he knew it was dangerous. At some point, it was his responsibility.”

Leo nodded in agreement. “You’re right about that, lady. The boy wanted to play no matter what.”

“That’s why he brought in X-rays of your chest instead of his,” McCain said.

Leo didn’t answer.

“Those were your X-rays, weren’t they?” Dorothy said.

“My boy asked me to help him and I did,” Leo said.

Dorothy’s hands tightened into fists. He just didn’t get it.

McCain said, “You helped your son nail his own coffin, Mr. Van Beest. But like Detective Breton said, in the end it was Julius’s decision.”

“So what happens now?” said Leo.

“Legally, you’re off the hook,” Dorothy said. “But morally…” She didn’t finish the sentence. “We’re going now. If you want to contact us about anything, I can be reached at this number.” She handed him her card.