“But I didn’t.”
“Where’d you go after you say you left the yacht club?” Cantor said.
After yousayyou left.
“I went home. And stayed home all night. I told you that.”
“No other lady to back that up?”
“I try to pace myself,” Thomas said. “You know how it goes. All play and no work.”
He shifted slightly in his chair in the stands and took a closer look. Cantor hadn’t changed expression. He’d never changed his tone. They could have been talking about last Sunday’s game or next Sunday’s.
“Maybe the reason he didn’t see me leave,” Thomas said, “is because I left my car on the other side of the club. If I’d known my father was going to end up dead in the water, I would have done a better job getting myself an alibi.”
Cantor just sat there, feet up on the railing in front of him, squinting slightly because of the sun but keeping his cop eyes on Thomas.
“Come on. You don’t really think I snuck on that boat and did him.”
“Just processing new information as it comes in.”
Cantor got up then and headed up the aisle. Then he held up a hand, as if stopping himself, and walked back down the aisle to where Thomas was still in his seat.
“One more question, buddy.”
Thomas was getting tired of Cantor trying to trip him up, but he wasn’t going to show him that. Or show annoyance.
“What can you possibly ask me at this point about my sister that you haven’t asked me already?”
“It’s about your mother,” Cantor said.
Thirty-Six
I HAD GONEto Hunters Point for practice after Thomas and Cantor had left my office.
Cantor couldn’t have been in my office for more than a minute. But I’d gotten the same feeling I’d gotten before when he was in my presence—a certain attraction to the cool vibe he gave off, almost like he was playing a part. But I was wary of him at the same time. As if he had something on me. Or Thomas. Or all of us.
As if he was just waiting for one of us to make a mistake.
But once I was on the field with my high school players, I was back at my safe place, practicing them even harder than usual, almost as if I was more worried about losing my edge than I was about them losing theirs. And we could all see the work paying off, could see that they were playing better than they thought they would when they found out they were going to have a woman coaching them.
The best part of it was that the kids hadn’t lost a game yet.
No,I thought.
That isn’t quite right.
The very best part of it was that every afternoon of the school week, and then on Saturday afternoon, I got to remember what football was like without constant drama. It was what my whole life used to be like without constant drama.
When I left school after practice, I went straight home, thinking this would be another night when I ate dinner alone. Occasionally my neighbor and friend Rashida would invite me over. But most times I would cook for one or lean on Uber Eats and look at Ryan Morrissey’s game plan, the draft reports, or the grades the assistant coaches were giving the Wolves players week by week, sometimes even from practice to practice.
But on this night, on the spur of the moment, I decided to surprise my mother—maybe have an early dinner with her, act like a better daughter to her than the mother she’d been to me. I didn’t know whose side she was on right now, mine or Danny and Jack’s. Probably theirs. But I knew from experience that it was better to have her on mine, if I could somehow get her there.
Maybe I’d even splurge and take her to Venticello, on Taylor Street, my favorite Italian restaurant in the neighborhood.
It was six thirty by the time I made it across town to the big, complicated, unhappy home in which I had grown up. I had just pulled around the corner of Sacramento and Jones, hoping to find a parking space in front of the house, knowing that the garage would have my mother’s car in it as well as the housekeeper’s.
I was making my way slowly up Jones when I saw our front door open and John Gallo walk out.