Head On: A Novel of the Near Future (Lock In #2)(10)
The door to the room burst open and a man walked in. He was the suit who had tried to give me his empty glass back in the skybox.
“I’ve met most of you before but for those I’ve not, I’m MacKenzie Stodden, head of NAHL franchisee relations,” he said, once he’d gotten to the lectern set up near the far wall of the room. “And to begin I want to thank you for being with us here today at what is now one of most successful pre-season games ever.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” one of the would-be investors asked. He was not Japanese or, I suspected, German. He sounded like he was from Jersey. “You just had a player die on the goddamned field.”
“In the final moments of the game,” Stodden said. “Prior to that moment, the game had the highest real-time and streaming numbers we’ve seen for a pre-season game, and the highest number of Haden view purchases by a significant percentage.”
“And then your player fucking died,” Jersey said.
“Yes,” Stodden said. “A tragic accident which everyone in the league feels shocked and deeply saddened about.” He said this in a tone of voice that registered neither shock nor sadness. I recognized the tone as one you would get out of a salesman of some really high-end product, trying to close a deal. Which I suppose was exactly what he was. “Duane Chapman was admired and respected across the league, and in the league’s season opener this Friday night in Boston, we’ll be doing a special pre-game segment to honor him and his career. But neither I nor the league want this accident to overshadow the investment proposition Hilketa offers to you as potential franchisees, both here and in the international leagues we plan to create.”
“How did the player die?” someone asked, in what sounded to me like a Russian accent.
“The medical examiner in Philadelphia will be examining Chapman tonight,” Stodden said.
“That’s not an answer. You must already know.”
“It would be irresponsible for me to speculate.”
“And it would be irresponsible for me, or anyone else here, to invest in a league that will not share information.”
Stodden sighed. “Look,” he said. “This is not something we want to see in the press, but Duane and his wife were having trouble and he had taken to . . . well, I guess ‘self-medicating’ is the euphemism that we would want to use, here. It had begun to affect his performance in pre-season practices. He was given a warning, and we thought it was working. We may have been wrong.”
“There’s a difference between being high, and dying during a game,” Jersey said.
“I’m saying it’s possible that his usage affected his physical well-being long-term, and we saw the results of that today.”
“So the problem is him, not the league,” someone else said, and it was impossible to tell whether the statement was meant to be sincere or sarcastic.
“The league has been in business for over a decade,” Stodden said. “In all that time, with all the equipment and training that we use, and with all the product partnerships that we have, we’ve never had a player die. We’re confident that, as tragic as Duane’s death is, this is literally a glitch. An anomaly. And something you, as franchisees, will not need to concern yourself with as we move forward with expansion plans.”
“You want us just to forget it ever happened,” the Russian said.
“Of course not,” Stodden said. “We want you to have confidence that the league will investigate this tragedy and take steps to ensure it can’t happen again. We’ll come out of it quickly, both stronger and better.”
“What happened to Duane Chapman’s feed?” I asked.
“Pardon me?” Stodden peered over to me and seemed momentarily confused at the appearance of a threep in the midst of his investors.
“The players have a data feed with their physical stats that streams through the entire course of the game, including heart rate and brain activity,” I said. “When Chapman’s threep was carried off the field, his data feed disappeared. Just his, no one else’s.”
“You’re . . . you’re from catering,” Stodden said, recognizing me, sort of.
“Actually, I’m from the FBI,” I said, and suddenly every head in the room locked on to me. “And I’d really like to know what happened to that data feed.”
“That was one way to get their attention,” Vann said to me. The two of us were standing around in a now deserted private skybox, waiting for a league representative to come talk to us. I had caught her up on recent events. “I was just threatening peons to get higher up the chain of command here, but what you did works too.”
“I think it’s interesting that this Stodden character could simultaneously say they didn’t know why Chapman died and also blame him for his own death,” I said.
“You said his job was franchisee relations, right?” Vann asked. I nodded. “Then it’s not his job to tell the truth. It’s his job to keep the money from bolting.”
“I think I ruined that plan,” I said.
“Yes, well,” Vann said. “Now you know why we finally have someone important coming to talk to us.”
The door to the skybox opened and a man and a woman walked into the room. The woman came up to Vann, smiling, hand extended. “Agent Vann. I’m Coretta Barber, NAHL associate vice president for publicity.” Vann shook her hand, and Barber came over to me to shake hands as well. “Agent Shane. And this is Oliver Medina, general counsel for the league. Shall we sit?” She motioned to a small, round bar table. We sat.