The Final Play Read online

  He took another step inside. This section was well lit, the old fluorescent tubes hanging down from the vaulted ceiling blinking and popping with incandescent glee. From somewhere in the darkness there came the drip of water. North told himself there was nothing odd about that. Tunnels always leaked and made strange sounds as support beams and load-bearing walls held back the weight of the earth. He walked quickly forward and entered the prep and treatment rooms.

  Here the players would sit immersed in the whirlpool in near-boiling water or ice cubes, as needed, or lie on long tables for electromassages, cortisone injections, complex taping, and strapping and rigging of knees, ankles, shoulders, and other susceptible spots. As well as additional treatments designed to help erase or at least diminish the physical punishment that inevitably came from men of like weight, speed, strength, and determination colliding with each other week after week.

  This was all familiar ground for North, nothing to be unduly nervous about. He had expected to see a few of his teammates in there getting some extra sessions of tape, heat, or needle pricks, but the room was empty, the lights off. He left the familiar area and continued on down the tunnel, wondering where his scout, BJ, might be. Perhaps the old fellow had forgotten. Maybe North should turn back. Yet he kept going, placing his hand against the cold stone wall as he ventured to imagine what might have happened to Ruggles as he raced down this passageway.

  The dilemma was that no one North could find had seen Ruggles after he entered the tunnel. In those days everyone associated with the team was usually on the field during the game. Thus, Ruggles had almost certainly been alone in the tunnel, at least for a few minutes. The very strange thing was that Ruggles apparently had gone into the locker room because his street clothes—according to what North could determine from the sketchy facts available—had not been found in his locker.

  North well knew how long it took to shed football equipment. And the record showed that several people came into the tunnel about five minutes after Ruggles did, and they saw no one there. They would probably have been in there earlier, but absolute pandemonium had broken out on the field after Ruggles’s run, and the fact was most people hadn’t realized their hero had left the field at all. Most of them thought he was buried under a pile of his celebrating teammates in the end zone. It was only after the celebration died down that folks realized Ruggles wasn’t there. Yet still, five minutes to get off all his equipment, change into street clothes, and then leave undetected? And add to that the puzzling fact that Ruggles’s uniform, shoulder pads, helmet, and cleats had never been found. Why would he take those items with him? How could the most famous football player in town leave undetected wearing or carrying his own football uniform? None of it made any sense.

  The light was growing dimmer the farther in he went. Apparently, as BJ had indicated, the bulk of the underground guts of the place had never been lit. North stopped and stood there for a couple of minutes, the erratic thuds of his heartbeat growing louder. He half expected to see a black, floppy raven sailing toward him, cawing its message of doom and spreading its utter terror over its poor earthbound targets. The Fall of the House of North. It had an unsettling ring to it.

  A flash of light behind him made North turn. He held up one hand to block the blinding strobe confronting him.

  “That you?” called out a voice.

  “BJ?” said North. He dropped his hand but averted his gaze as the light grew closer.

  BJ walked up next to him, a powerful searchlight in hand. North noted curiously that the man was not limping and now needed no broom to steady him. Also, he did not seem so bent and physically wretched tonight. Though the man was a complete stranger, and could have been a fugitive killer on the run for all North knew, the young man let out a breath of relief to have a companion in here.

  BJ said apologetically, “Must’ve missed you. I was standing outside smoking a cig. Might’ve been late, too. Durn watch never keeps good time. Figured you might have come in here so’s I came in to find you. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. But let’s get going. I have an early lab tomorrow.”

  “You’re the boss. But stick close, easy to lose your way down here. Done it more’n once.”

  “Well, don’t do it tonight,” muttered North.

  They made a left at an intersection of two separate corridors, and then, after a short walk, hung a right. This new direction threw them into total darkness but for BJ’s light. Also, at this point the floor of the tunnel angled downward at about ten degrees. North found himself having to slow his pace lest he tumble forward into BJ and wipe out the elderly man and his all-important light with an “illegal” block in the back.

  “What’s down here?” asked North.

  BJ looked back and grinned. In the arc of the light his features, along with the discomforting glint of nicotine-stained and uneven teeth, seemed almost fiendish. It was the first time North had really seen the man’s teeth, and the impression was unnerving. The man seemed different somehow; North couldn’t quite make out exactly in what way. Was he growing taller? North was almost six foot three and a very solid 235 pounds. It must be an optical illusion, or his runaway imagination, thought North, for BJ seemed to be growing closer to him in weight and height.

  “You’ll see. Good shit.”

  They continued on. North crept ever closer to BJ even as his dense muscles tensed for some possible action, he wasn’t quite sure what. He also noticed that it was becoming harder to breathe down here. North was aware that at ever-increasing altitudes the thinning air made breathing very difficult. Obviously going down into the earth presented similar dilemmas as dirt, rock, confined spaces, and poor air flow combined to create comparable sorts of challenges. In fact, it could produce the lethal atmosphere of carbon dioxide buildup that had ended the life of John Milton Draven and company so long ago. North recalled that while the coal baron had perished in the Gloria No. 3 from lack of air, he also allegedly had ligature marks around his neck.

  The turns became so numerous that soon North was hopelessly lost, and thus totally dependent upon a man who was a complete stranger to him. He was just about to tell BJ that they should turn back, when he saw it. A door! The light was shining upon a door. BJ glanced back at him, grinned, and pointed to this portal of warped oak planks and rusted iron.

  “What is it?” North asked.

  “Like I told you. The good shit. No, make that great shit.”

  With astonishment, North watched as BJ pulled an ancient-looking key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock.

  North gripped the man’s arm. “Where’d you get that key?”

  “You spend a lot of time down here, you find stuff.” The man let out a cackle that fled down the tunnel, the sounds bouncing off all sides like bats in rabid seizure.

  BJ turned the key and pushed the door open. He held the light high as he entered. North hesitated for a moment, but then composed himself and followed BJ inside.

  North first observed that his companion’s light was not really needed here. There was natural light of some unknown origin, though this far under the earth the possibility of such intrinsic illumination was dubious at best. The room was fairly large, perhaps twenty feet square, with walls of quarried stone that appeared to be dry stacked, for North could not make out any mortar lines. The large rocks were as uniformly placed as concrete block and so tightly mitered that they matched the finest wood moldings North had ever seen. Skillful hands indeed had put together this place. Yet why waste such talent on a room that would never be used or even seen?

  “Where’s the light coming from?” asked North.

  BJ merely shrugged his shoulders. “Ain’t never been able to tell.”

  “Why build a room like this when no one will ever use it?”

  BJ shrugged again and grinned. “It’s a mystery all right.”

  “So where’s the ‘great shit,’ as you put it?”

  “Through there.”

  BJ pointed toward the f
ar corner of the room that a compass would have shown to be the northwestern side of the place. The light dimmed a bit there. Yet even North, whose eyesight was not the best without his glasses, which he had forgotten to bring tonight, could make out an opening in the rock, once it had been pointed out to him.

  “Where does that go?”

  “Show you. Lot better’n telling. Come on.”

  BJ started forward, yet North did not move. BJ looked back.

  “Come on, young feller.”

  “No,” North said. “Now we go back.”

  “Ain’t you want to see?”

  “Not tonight. Another time. I need to think about all this.”

  “You sure? Great shit,” BJ added, though his grin was less prominent now.

  “I’m very sure,” said North.

  They retraced their steps, North a foot or so behind BJ. From his pocket, North drew out the piece of chalk. As they walked down the passageways, North held the chalk against the walls and marked the trail all the way back.

  When they reached the outside once more, North drew in a long breath. A lover of astronomy all his life, to North the stars had never been a more welcome sight. He glanced at BJ, and the man had returned to his stooped, decrepit appearance. North thanked his guide, pressed a crisp twenty-dollar bill into the man’s hand, and walked off.

  BJ stared after him for a bit, the expression on his features a mixture of curiosity and disappointment, and then the man headed back into the tunnel.

  Chapter 6

  N​ORTH RETURNED TO THE tunnel underneath the stadium a few nights later, and this time he was not alone. Jimmy Swift did not look pleased to be there, yet North had easily countered every one of his teammate’s excuses for not coming with far more logical arguments of his own. When he had still refused, North had reminded him that he was the primary reason Swift now dwelled in the university’s record books, and didn’t that mean something? And didn’t Mighty Johns football players have to stick together in this tricky world where things could change faster than a fourth-quarter lead?

  And Swift had finally answered that they did indeed. Yet he did not look happy to be standing outside a tunnel that he would be forgiven for thinking went straight to Hell without offering a return ticket.

  North had done some more research. His findings had been interesting, although not totally illuminating. The man calling himself BJ was not employed by Draven University as a janitor or for any other purpose. North had looked for BJ all over campus, without success. He had waited by the tunnel opening at the stadium the previous night—concealed, of course—but the man had never appeared. North had talked to legitimate members of the janitorial staff, and none of them had heard of or seen any man resembling BJ.

  After learning all this, North wondered how close he had come to calamity that night. It had been an impetuous, foolish act and North was neither impetuous nor foolish.

  But that night I was, and I wonder why.

  North looked around to see if anyone was watching them. Yet it would have been difficult to make out someone in the darkness unless he had been standing out in the open, jumping up and down and screaming like a Draven varsity cheerleader. North took a deep breath, turned on his flashlight, as did Swift, and the two men headed inside the tunnel.

  At the time that Ruggles disappeared, no one believed that he would have kept jogging along with football in hand until he became hopelessly lost in the tunnels. Further, because his street clothes had been missing, the search efforts had focused—almost exclusively, North had ascertained—on an exit door in the locker room that led to a stairway heading out through the rear of the stadium and into the parking lot. However, as North had found out previously, this door was always kept locked to prevent thieves and vandals from coming in and stealing equipment and the players’ personal valuables. Ironically, Ruggles had been the cause of this new policy, because people had continually snuck in to take his jerseys and other equipment both as mementos, and for resale.

  Yet unless Ruggles had had a key, he could not have escaped this way. And there was no evidence North could unearth that showed the man ever had such a key. The problem was the few police reports available were inconclusive as to whether this door had been found unlocked or not or forced open. While the case had never officially been solved, the unofficial verdict was that Ruggles, despite his outward appearance as a superior young man, had gotten himself in trouble somehow. Perhaps with a girl, some had speculated, although there was never proof of such. But if that had been true, he conceivably could have taken the opportunity of his magical kickoff return to disappear and leave that sort of problem behind.

  “Maybe that’s why he was so damn determined to score,” observed one man North had spoken with. “’Cause he knew that was his only chance, eh? Damn shame. They had two more games left that season. Would’ve liked to have parked my butt in the seat and watched him. What a beautiful sight. I know they call baseball a thinking man’s game. But Ruggles made football as close to an art as it’s ever likely to come, eh?”

  North had agreed with the man on Ruggles’s artistry, but his very strong impression was that running away from a problem was far too simple an explanation for what had happened. He had never found anyone who could corroborate Ruggles’s being in desperate circumstances over money, a woman, or anything else. Indeed, he had a very promising professional football career ahead of him that, many speculated, could have ended in the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

  Two days ago, North had even ventured home to his father and asked him about Ruggles’s motivation to disappear. Peter North had been sitting in his leather chair behind his desk in his walnut-paneled study, sipping a cognac from a special stock he kept on hand for occasions both grand and private. His father drank a little too much to make up for the bad back he had “acquired” from his playing days. North wished his father would cut back on his alcoholic intake. He wished his father would cut back on many self-destructive tendencies, but he had voiced his opinion and his view had been rejected, and harshly so.

  His father had peered over the rim of the snifter, his eyes red, his skin pale, and his eyes weary.

  “It was a long time ago, son, so what do you hope to accomplish?”

  “The truth,” North had answered a little apprehensively. “I believe the truth is important.”

  The fact was his father made him nervous. He had never treated his son badly, yet Peter had not built his fortune on the basis of kind and generous qualities. He had accrued his wealth through discipline, patience, measured ruthlessness, and the ability to seize opportunity at the expense of all others without a jot of remorse or guilt. And yet wasn’t that, generally, the codex of the magnate?

  “It’s what scientists are always looking for,” North had added. “The truth.”

  Peter had eased out of his chair and stood in front of the fire smoldering in the hearth. Like North he was a big man, though seriously running to dough, with mutating wattles skimming along his neck and beginning to lay siege to the skin folds around his eyes. And yet Peter’s face still held vestiges of the rugged good looks that had won the heart of his second wife, North’s mother, and kept it until she had died four years before.

  “That’s science,” Peter had said. “We’re not dealing with chemical equations or mass times whatever. We’re dealing with human beings—one of my good friends, in fact.”

  “I thought that would make you want to learn what really happened to him. In fact, I’m doing this for you, Dad.”

  Peter had put a large hand on his son’s shoulder. “I had you when I was over forty, Merl. My first wife never could deliver on the kiddy thing. But your mother sure did, and now you’re all I’ve got left. But let me be clear: This is not something you have to do for me. This is all behind me now. I made my peace a long time ago with Herschel Ruggles and everything that went along with him.”

  As he had turned away, North asked one more question, one he had wanted to ask for many year
s, and yet the timing had never quite seemed right.

  “What did it feel like to play with Herschel Ruggles?”

  His father turned back, swished the cognac in his glass for a few moments as he eyed the dying embers in the fireplace. It seemed to North that his father was recalling every detail of his life, the residuary elements of which were now locked inside walnut-paneled rooms and vats of cognac.

  “It felt like you could never lose,” said Peter. He had eyed his only child with a baleful look. “Can you imagine what that must feel like?”

  “My imagination is not that good,” admitted North. “But I think I understand what you’re saying.”

  “Throughout my whole life, whenever I have been confronted by a problem that seemed insolvable, a mountain that could not be moved, where my very financial and even personal survival was at stake—and there have been more of those than I care to admit, Merl—I always thought: ‘What would Ruggles do?’ And when I answered that question I solved the problem.” He put a big arm around his son’s broad shoulders. “And I survived, son. That’s what it’s all about. Survival.”

  Chapter 7

  T​HAT MEETING WITH HIS FATHER was why North was so determined to do what had not yet been done even after forty years. Even though his father had told him he needn’t do so on his account, North was going to do his best to find out the fate of Herschel Ruggles. And tonight he and Swift were going to search the tunnels for possible clues as to the man’s disappearance.

  “Do you know what you’re doing, Merl?” asked Swift as they trudged along the dark passageway, his light beam flicking here and there over the rough surfaces of the walls and floor.

  “I almost always know what I’m doing.”

  “Gee, that’s almost comforting.”