Fourth Down and Out. Andrew Welsh-Huggins
to be called “Judge,” at least by me. I also knew she didn’t want to be bothered with the niceties of answering the door. The key was her idea.
“In here,” she said.
“Here,” I knew, meant her study, which is where I found her at her computer.
“Sometimes,” she said, without turning around at my entrance, “I am amazed how anyone made it through law school. I have never seen such weak, poorly constructed arguments in my life.”
“Motion sickness?” I said, repeating her inside joke.
“Now they’re asking to suppress another boxful of evidence. Like I haven’t bent over backward already to what are sketchy requests at best.”
“You’re so exacting,” I said as I leaned over and kissed her on the neck.
“Wait,” she said, a little stiffly.
Had this been a few hours earlier, at our usual Sunday morning time, I would have persisted. But now, according to the parameters of our relationship, she had the upper hand because I’d screwed things up by canceling. I retreated to her bedroom, an austere room of beige walls and white curtains and gray carpet, sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up a copy of Ohio Lawyer on her nightstand, and read until, about five minutes later, she joined me. Then, for the next thirty minutes, with the door shut and the shades drawn, the judge’s standoffish courtroom demeanor thawed into something close to affability. Afterward, I watched as she nonchalantly pulled her bathrobe back on without a word. She kissed me on the cheek, left the bedroom, and headed straight back to the study and likely the very same paragraph she’d been working on when I arrived.
I returned the kiss as I left.
“That was nice,” I said.
“I should find you in contempt of court,” she said.
“Your Honor’s indulgence is appreciated.”
As I got back into the Odyssey I remembered my partially eaten sandwich from Chef-O-Nette and realized how hungry I was. It was now approaching dinnertime, and my mood turned dark. If ours had been a normal relationship, I would have suggested to the judge—to Laura—that we get something to eat.
But ours was as far from a normal relationship as you could get in town. And so I glumly drove away.
Back in German Village, I stopped at Happy Dragon on Livingston for takeout Hunan beef. When I got home, despite my growling stomach, I emptied the dinner into a casserole dish and placed it in the oven on low heat. Then I dug a plastic bag out of a drawer, grabbed the leash, and took Hopalong, whose youthful golden lab friskiness had mellowed to amiable boredom in recent years, to Schiller Park. Not that I was counting, but I passed five different couples, three straight, two gay, enjoying each other’s company in public. I did the math, figuring out the last time I’d had a real date. It wasn’t pretty.
Back inside, I dumped my dinner onto a plate, cracked open a can of Black Label, and settled into my armchair. As I ate, I made some progress on Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, which I’d picked up at the library a couple days earlier. An empty plate and three chapters later, I set the book down and channel-surfed for a while until I settled on ESPN and some of the pro game highlights. A brief segue into college games focused on the upcoming Ohio State–Wisconsin matchup. The Buckeyes were a three-point favorite.
After dinner I left the plate in the sink and took Pete’s laptop out of the cardboard box. A Dell, newer model, with an Ohio State sticker on the upper left-hand corner. I powered it up, entered “Acooper” and the password “JarJarBinksMustDie,” and started looking. I’m no computer guru, but it wasn’t hard to find his handiwork, which he’d stored, rather charmingly, in a subfolder on the desktop named “JR” inside a subfolder named “Health Class” inside a folder named “Pete’s Homework.” I should have deleted the video then and there, but instead moved on to the video camera itself. I clicked through several options and took two accidental clips of my kitchen wall until I was satisfied the storage card was clear. The remaining question, whether he’d secretly stored the files elsewhere, on a flash drive or another computer or in the cloud, had to remain unanswered. I had no faith in taking him at his word, but lacking subpoena power, I had no way to do anything more about it.
It was a risky contest, since the one with the most to lose if Pete called my bluff about criminal charges was Ted Hamilton. And despite my best efforts, Hamilton was the lecherous equivalent of an uninsured driver. If Pete decided to, he could cause a very bad accident for him.
8
When my eyes opened at 5:30 Monday morning, I knew going back to sleep would be impossible. Once upon a time I could crash until noon without rolling over, but an untold number of on-field tackles and quite a few off-field ones in subsequent years had put an end to that. My joints acted as their own internal alarms.
After a single cup of coffee, black, and a look at the morning paper, I threw on my sweats, laced up my running shoes, grabbed the leash, and headed back to Schiller Park with Hopalong. After four laps around, or a little more than three miles, I’d worked up a decent sweat. When I got back I checked my cell phone and saw that I had three missed calls. I was starting to check voicemail when the phone rang again.
“This is Andy.”
“It’s Pete. Pete Freeley.”
“It’s not ready,” I said. “I told you it would be a couple days.”
“Didn’t you get my messages?”
“I was jogging. You should give it a try. You seem like you could use a little exercise.”
“I need to talk.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s 8:00. Why are you calling so early?”
“There’s been a mistake.”
“Tell me about it.”
“That’s not what I mean. The laptop—there’s something else on it. Something my dad needs. It’s got nothing to do with what we talked about. With Jennifer, or anything like that. But it’s really important.”
“What is it?”
“I have no idea. Files of some kind. He says it’s crucial he gets them back. He’s going crazy.”
“Can you be any more specific?”
“No—I don’t know what they are.”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“No,” he said, loudly. “He just said they were really, really important.”
“Do you know where on the computer they are?”
“Listen, could I just come and take it? Just for an hour. I promise I’ll bring it right back.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You have to help me, man. This is serious.”
“Don’t call me man. And it’s serious to Ted Hamilton, too.”
“It’s not like that. I’ve never seen my dad like this.”
“Listen carefully. I’m going to look at the computer, and I’m going to see what’s on there. And then I’m going to wipe it. And then I’ll call you back.”
“Please,” Pete Freeley said. “Don’t wipe it yet. Please. What’s the big deal? You’ve got the stuff. I’m just asking you to wait.”
“No promises,” I said. I waited, but there was no response. He’d hung up.
I lifted weights for a couple of minutes in my living room while I thought about what to do. Then I showered, dressed, ate three bowls of cereal and a banana, rinsed and washed my bowl, then sat back down in front of the laptop.
I started by searching Word documents, with zero results, unless you counted what looked like a dozen or more