And Allison? She’ll pay a heavy price for fucking with other people’s lives.
43
Allison
The day after Luke and I had our blowout, I drive to the Grace Park Recreational Center, where Luke rents a gym three nights a week for private lessons. Right after his suspension, some of the more intense parents in the area, looking to gain an edge for their children’s youth baseball careers, started reaching out to him. The accusations against him aside, the opportunity for individual coaching with a guy of Luke’s pedigree was too good to pass up.
I know he starts at 4 p.m., basically the first full hour after school, and he operates in fifty-minute increments, so I stop by at 4:45 p.m., just a few minutes before the end of his first lesson. Ten minutes will be more than enough time.
I find Luke inside, working with a kid who can’t be more than twelve, showing him the finer points of playing first base while his father looks on. “Your feet are lined up perfectly,” he says to the boy. “You showed him a target. Great. But don’t stretch out before the infielder’s thrown the ball. You don’t know where that ball’s gonna go until it leaves his hand. If you’ve committed straight forward and he throws it wide right or left, you won’t be able to adjust. Wait until you see the path of the ball,thenstretch for it. John, throw him a ball to one side.”
The dad, standing at what would be the shortstop position, tosses the ball to the boy’s right. The boy adjusts, then stretches out to catch the ball.
“Perfect!” says Luke. “That’s how you do it!”
The lesson ends. Luke bumps fists with the father and son.
I walk over to him. It’s time for a different kind of lesson.
“I made it clear that we were done,” he says, grabbing a bottle of water from his bag. “We can stop pretending we’re one big happy family.”
“Don’t talk like that, Luke.”
“Don’t tell me how to talk.”
“Y’know, it took me a while to figure out why you did what you did. Allow yourself to be arrested? Risk your career? And more importantly, lose the chance to win the College World Series this year?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s not interested in a conversation.
“You wanted to leave Mortimer and do your whole save-another-struggling-team thing, but you couldn’t figure out how,” I say. “At least, you couldn’t figure out how to do it and hand the reins to Alan. My planting that bag in Trinity’s trunk was a gift to you. All you had to do was time it so that, when the cops pulled you over, it was too late for anyone but Alan to coach Mortimer this season.”
“That’s a fascinating theory,” he says.
“And those cute little ploys of yours. Claiming you wanted to ‘plead guilty.’ Saying you weresurethat Finley was behind all this.” I wink. “What, you were testing me?”
“That’s exactly what I was doing,” he says, his face blooming red. “I was giving you the chance to do the right thing and admit what you did. And you failed miserably.”
“Luke, I was never going to let you be convicted. No matter what it took. And I’ll remind you, the target was Trinity, not you. And need I remind youwhyI targeted her—”
“She isn’t sleeping with Fin. They’re working on the documentary together. That’s it.” He rolls his eyes, releases a loud sigh. “Anything else? It’s beengreatcatching up.”
“One more thing,” I say. “Some advice.”
He turns and stands face-to-face with me. “Oh, yeah? And what might that be?”
“I’m concerned about your defense, Luke. Your story? It’s…not going to work.”
“No?” His face has colored again, though I suspect it’s anger, not concern.
“It will hurt me, which is important to you, I know. But it’s going to hurt you, too.”
“How’s that?”
“Think about what happened,” I say. “You found out I had planted those pills in the car using Trinity’s bag. So you switched out her bag for mine, put the pills in my bag, and stuffed it back in the trunk, just like I did.”
“And? So?”
“So? Luke, that story makes you guilty of the very crime you’re charged with. You knowingly possessed those prescription pills. You knew they were in there when you were driving. Youputthem in there yourself.”
