The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(71)

By then I’d shown them all the home page of Wolf.com.

“He didn’t use,” we all heard now, and we saw Amanda McGee, hands on hips, like she was ready to fight all of us, standing in the doorway to the trainer’s room. “I believe my husband. I believe somebody did this to him and set him up.”

Billy McGee had told her the same version of things he had told us when he’d finally sat up in the car. He’d gone to dinner at Z & Y Bistro with Matt Daley, his old college tight end. He’d had nothing stronger to drink than seltzer water. They both ordered coffee when they finished dinner. Billy went to the men’s room, came back, finished his coffee, paid the check.

He said when they got outside and into the air, he felt the world start to spin. Matt Daley, he said, tried to catch him, but Billy said he hit the sidewalk hard, just managing to break his fall with his right hand.

He didn’t know who’d beaten him up. Said he had no idea what happened to Matt Daley.

As we drove to the stadium, Billy had reached into his pocket and found that somehow his car keys were still in there.

“What about my car?”

Ryan had taken the keys from him and said he’d take care of it.

I was sitting on one of the long couches in the middle of our locker room. Amanda came over and sat down next to me.

“Do you believe him?” she said. “I need to know if you believe him. Billy and I both do.”

“I do believe him,” I said.

“You’re not just saying that.”

“You don’t know her well enough yet,” Cantor said. “She doesn’t just say stuff to say it.”

“Billy says that the only thing that makes sense is that somebody paid Matt to set him up,” she said. “But who would do something like that to my husband?”

“Somebody who wanted to get at me,” I said. “It’s a big club, growing all the time.”

Dr. Barnes went back in to check on Billy.

“You need to go somewhere tonight,” Ryan Morrissey said. “Somewhere out of town where the league and the media can’t find Billy and you. If you need clothes, buy them tomorrow. Drive all the way to Oregon if you want to; I don’t care. Check in under your maiden name and somehow smuggle Billy into the room even if you have to throw a bag over his head while you’re getting him in there.”

I told Amanda that Ryan was right. I gave her the name of an inn near Napa that had cottages instead of rooms, a place I’d stayed once with Ted Skyler. She could leave Billy in the car while she checked in, then get him into one of the cottages. I told her I would make the reservation.

Billy came out of the trainer’s room then, walking slowly, hunched over, helped to his locker by Ron Barnes, who reached down and got him one of the pairs of sneakers in there as well as a Warriors sweatshirt hanging on a hook.

Then Billy walked on his own over to Ryan and me. Cantor stood off to the side.

“You gotta know, I wouldn’t do this to either one of you,” Billy McGee said. “Not after what you did for me.”

“I can’t describe to you how much I want that to be true,” Ryan said.

Amanda stood. Billy put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Cantor looked out into the hallway and said there was no one in sight.

Amanda and Billy left. Ryan said he’d Uber back to Jackson Street and get Billy’s car and drive it to the stadium tomorrow. Cantor drove me back to Causwells to pick up mine. I thanked him for everything he’d done. He said he really hadn’t done very much except drive.

“You did a lot,” I said.

“Then you’re welcome.”

“I think you’ve pretty much locked up Wolves Fan of the Week,” I said, then kissed him quickly on the cheek and drove home.

When I was finally back inside the house, I saw the note somebody had slid underneath the front door.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING





Eighty-Five



BY SATURDAY MORNING, Billy and Amanda McGee were still hiding out at the inn in Napa. It was the quarterback for my Hunters Point team who didn’t show up for our game against St. Joseph’s.

Chris Tinelli’s mom, Barbara, had called to give me the news, telling me that Chris had been mugged the night before as he walked home from All Good Pizza.

“My son didn’t even have twenty dollars in his wallet!” she said.

“Did they hurt him?”

“Not they,” she said, spitting the words out in anger. “One man. He punched Chris in the ribs and then in the face and took his money and tossed his wallet on top of him and ran off.”

Barbara Tinelli paused and said, “Who would do such a thing?”

I didn’t tell Chris Tinelli’s mom about the note that had been slid under my door. I hadn’t told anybody about the note yet, not even Ben Cantor or Ryan Morrissey. I was more concerned, in the moment, with riding out the fever-dream, day-after coverage on Billy McGee, especially now that no one could locate him. It all made the various feeding frenzies I’d encountered since I’d taken over the team look like speed bumps by comparison.

The fact that he was in hiding, and that both Ryan and I had made ourselves spectacularly unavailable to the media, only dialed everything up—exponentially.

Wolf.com broke their morning end-of-the-world headline: