Nap let the band holding his dreadlocks they were sky blue today loose. He shook his head and they whipped around like they were insect antennas. "It'll work, Zee. The way she's put it together, we take his money, put the feds onto him, and Chekka goes running too." He stopped, putting a hand on each of my shoulders, his face close to mine.

"I got no choice on this, man. These business talks of his are going to escalate, you dig? Bodies gonna start droppin', and I don't intend it to be me or Danny" He showed his gums and teeth. "Plus, I got an inside straight that's a thriller-diller." He threw back his head and laughed. We started walking again.

"This is my time, Nap," I said, excited. "I been lookin' good out there, man. My shit is back and I'm not going to fuck it up this go-round. I can't, this is my last chance, you know that. Stadanko don't give a fuck we bopped his cousin's boys. What's-his-face, the one that was grubbin' while they were working you over, said it was just business. No harm, no foul in our world, right?"

"You trying to convince me or yourself, Zee?"

I felt like running away from him and this whole crazy thing sucking me in. "You gonna bust this move during the season?"

"Best time to do it, home. Stadanko does want a winner, he'll be into the games. That's the best time to hit him."

"Fuck." Even if I wasn't involved, Stadanko was naturally gonna think I had a hand in this mess. And Nap knew I sure wasn't gonna call him up and tell him about this foolishness. At least I hope he believed that.

"You gonna have the club knee-deep in Danny's Victoria Avenue Rolling Daltons? That ain't good for pullin' in the public."

"Only temporarily," he said coldly.

"I'm out of this, Nap, you understand?" I yelled. "I'm the fuck out of this and y'all on your own on this shit."

"That's a mistake, Zee," he said calmly.

I stomped off, my hands and arms in the air like I could wave it all away "You and Wilma do what you're gonna do, I'll do what's right for me. We don't know each other, dig?"

I booked from the Seven Souls Clinic in a hurry. Zooming along the Hollywood Freeway, I couldn't shake the feeling that no matter how fast I drove, I'd never get far enough away.

Chapter 8

Three weeks later I was in top shape and had passed every goddamn random drug test they used to trap me. The first one that afternoon during the walk-on period had me worried. But not having tried too much of Wilma's crank that past night, and burning it off in my system, was the smartest thing I could have done. Plus I'd drank lots of water and taken a whole mess of vitamin C for absorption, and some B-2 to make sure my urine was yellow. Them lab motherfuckahs get suspicious if your pee is too clear. The water helps dilute the shit in your system along with sweating it off. Good thing crank burns off cleaner than boo.

The physical was another matter.

The fibula had been giving me a little trouble, but it worked great the day I had to get on the treadmill. In the old days teams had one pill roller and maybe his assistant. If you and he were on the same wavelength, certain things could be forgiven. Especially if you were a multi-million dollar stroker and were bringin' in the ducats, including his salary bumps.

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.