Overkill(3)

He came out from behind the bar, replaced his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, and avoided making direct eye contact with anyone. He and Rebecca had walked away from their brief but tumultuous marriage without looking back. But it seemed that nobody else was willing to let it go.

She’d reverted to using her maiden name, but their names were still linked, and rarely was one of them mentioned in the media without a reference being made to the other, like it or not. He didn’t like it. In fact, he hated it like hell because her current reputation was an ongoing embarrassment to him. But there it was: the price of fame.

Even though he had to dig deep to find any emotion beyond indifference toward her, he had never wished her ill. “Unresponsive” didn’t sound good at all. He wandered back toward the pool, trying to remember where he’d deposited his date-of-the-week, trying to remember her name.

He finally spotted her chatting up a slender, hairless Euro type in a Speedo, who was half reclined on the chaise next to hers, which Zach had vacated not twenty minutes earlier.

As he wended his way around other sunbathers toward them, his cell phone rang. He was often razzed about never being without it. It was an extension of his hand.

Recognizing an Atlanta area code, he figured it was a news outlet who’d bribed his number out of somebody. Likely they would want a sound bite from him regarding Rebecca and what was certain to be today’s lead story.

In his mind, he formed something appropriate to say, something to which no one could take exception, something conveying concern but disconnection. He thumbed on his phone.

“This is Zach.”

Within thirty seconds, he wished he’d never answered that call.





It took him almost twelve hours to get from the hotel swimming pool on Grand Cayman to the hospital in Atlanta.

He didn’t feel too bad about abandoning his date; she and the Speedo seemed to be hitting it off. He told her to enjoy the rest of her stay and to charge everything to his credit card the hotel had on file. He tipped the concierge three hundred bucks to get him a seat on the next flight to the States and to book ground transportation at both ends.

The car that had been arranged to meet him at ATL was an innocuous black sedan. After the mandatory greeting, the driver, who’d already been told which building of the medical complex where Zach was to be dropped, sensed his passenger’s disinclination to chat during the drive from the airport.

Zach had braced himself for a chaotic scene, but there was even more pandemonium than he’d anticipated. It was escalated by his arrival. As soon as he was seen getting out of the car, the media throng waiting outside the main entrance converged on him with the impetus of a tidal wave, or more like a school of sharks that had smelled fresh blood.

“Zach, when did you hear?”

“Was it a drug overdose?”

“Was she depressed over her recent breakup with—”

The female reporter shouted a name that sounded foreign and like it didn’t have any vowels. Zach kept his head down and didn’t even deign to say “no comment” to the barrage of questions. He plowed through the reporters and videographers until, through the glass doors of the entrance, he spotted Bing.

Ned “Bing” Bingham had coached him at Clemson. The bond they’d forged there had grown even stronger when Zach went pro. Now retired, Bing was still his go-to person whenever the shit hit the fan.

He saw Bing bark an order to the uniformed men guarding the door. Like most people did when Bing barked an order, the officers hopped to. They opened the door for Zach and he squeezed through, leaving the news throng outside disappointed, but all the more frenzied.

His showing up here had added considerable spice to the story, catapulted it into the stratosphere of the sensational. Ordinarily he took the media’s insatiable appetite for buzz in stride. But these circumstances weren’t ordinary, and he resented like hell the intrusion, not only into his privacy, but into that of Rebecca and her parents.

He thanked the officers who’d allowed him in, then went over to his friend and mentor. “You’re a welcome sight, Bing.”

“Not you. You look like hell.”

“Feel like it. An administrator of something or other here at the hospital called, said I had to get here ASAP.”

Bing nodded glumly. “Fourth floor.”

He motioned Zach toward the bank of elevators. As they strode across the lobby, Zach was aware of people blatantly holding up their phones, cameras trained on him. Every move, every expression, anything he said or did would be orbiting in cyberspace within seconds.

He and Bing got into the elevator alone. When the doors closed, he said, “Thanks for coming.”

Bing frowned, although his face was so leathered and creased, it was hard to distinguish one expression from another. “I texted you to expect me.”

“I saw, but my phone was blowing up, so I stopped even looking. I’m damn glad you’re here.”

“You’re in a shit show. Where else would I be?”

His familiar gruffness was comforting. “Do you know what happened?”

Bing shook his head. “Either nobody knows yet, or they aren’t saying.”

“Who’s Clarke?”

“Eban, son of Sid. Bigwig locally. Big rich on anybody’s list. Eban was with Rebecca in that bedroom when she lost consciousness.”