A QUICK CALL TO THE hospital where they’d taken Ronnie informed me he was still being observed in the ER.
Outside I located his van and got going. The rain had finally quit, and the quiet, twenty-minute drive through the nighttime streets offered a welcome respite. At 2 A.M. even the inside of the emergency area seemed hushed.
A nurse with a diamond stud in her nose showed me where my cousin was sleeping and brought me up to speed. Apparently, the doctor was worried about a concussion and wanted Ronnie to remain at least until around mid-morning.
I couldn't quite bring myself to nudge him awake, so I waited, and in a few minutes an intern about eight inches taller than me came in and did it for me.
"Mr. Covington. Hi there. You okay? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"How many am I?" he replied. Fortunately, the woman wasn’t a prude.
"Don't stay long. He needs his rest," she addressed me over her shoulder.
"Is that what you call this?" the patient muttered.
“He’ll be out of here soon,” the intern told me as she tugged the curtain shut.
I eased around so Ronnie wouldn't be lying on his sore spot while we talked. Finding the push button that operated his bed, he raised himself until we were more or less eye to eye.
"Find out anything?" he asked, his concern showing through.
"Yes, but it’s not good," I all but whispered. The cubicle was bracketed by two walls and two curtains that rendered privacy a thin illusion. "It looks as if our guy got his hands on last week's negatives."
Ronnie swore. The negatives were sacred, the genesis of everything the company did. After they had been developed and printed, they were scarcely touched.
"Would the outtakes from the film still be around somewhere?" I asked. That Tim's killer had taken a considerable risk to steal the negatives meant he was worried about something that never made it into the special, which meant our best and perhaps only chance of identifying the murderer lay buried in the outtakes–if they still existed anywhere other than in the stolen film cans.
Ronnie thought aloud. "Dennis might still have the print he worked on."
"Who's Dennis?"
"The guy who edited that game."
"Can we call him?"
"Right now?"
"I'm not going to sleep until I know who has those outtakes. Are you?"
Ronnie blinked himself a little more awake. "Hand me the phone." A nice serviceable instrument of communication sat right there on the food tray at Ronnie's elbow, for informing relatives of your sudden indisposition, arranging for babysitters, alerting the media. Whatever.
Ronnie dialed and waited for his co-worker to wake up.
"Dennis," he said after the groggy answer. "It's Ronnie. Listen, I'm in the hospital emergency room...Nah, just a bump on the head...but I have to ask you something important...Do you still have the Tomcats/Hombres print from last week?"
My cousin's dark eyes fluttered. "You do?" Both our faces widened into foolish grins.
"That's a huge relief," Ronnie told the editor. "But now I've got to ask a big favor. First thing tomorrow do you think you can set up my cousin to look at it?...Yeah, Duffy's murder. Gin is...she's just onto something, okay?" More listening before the men said goodbye.
"Sorry," Ronnie apologized. "I just didn't know how to explain you."
I was bouncing in my chair. "Never mind. What did he say?"
"He said he used the AVID to edit last week's game, which means he erased the outtakes at the end of the day, but he held onto the print because he expected the cops to ask for it. You know, figuring there might be something there. But he also said in all the times he viewed that footage, he didn't notice anything unusual."
I thought I understood. The AVID allowed a film to be edited the way a computer processed words. You typed in commands and the sophisticated machine cut and pasted without actually using scissors or glue. The good stuff got saved while the unwanted footage was simply deleted. Owing to Dennis's foresight, his working print was still safely locked in his office. Otherwise the killer might have found and destroyed it.
"Is he really going to let me watch it?" I pressed. "On a Monday?" The busiest day of their week.
"Sure. He owes me a favor or two. Of course if I don't go in tomorrow, the shoe'll be on the other foot."
I smiled at his work ethic, one of the main ingredients to his success at NFL Films.
Ron yawned, and my eyes were drooping, too. We were both terrified that something else would go wrong before I could view the outtakes but there was only so much a person could hope to accomplish running on adrenaline. I got directions to Ron’s apartment and kissed his forehead by way of goodbye.
I slogged out into the post-rain mist and drove my cousin's van to my cousin's bed, where I treated myself to a solid six hours of sleep. Ronnie’s nurse had confessed that so far he hadn’t shown any signs of a concussion and, quite probably, could be picked up at ten. I did not want to be late.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER I ransomed Ronnie out of the hospital, we drove straight to NFL Films to descend upon his film editor. About forty years old, Dennis's fair complexion seemed reddened by an inner fire that dictated short sleeves even on December 15.
“How’s the head?” he asked Ronnie after introductions were made.
“Please,” he said. “The film cans? They’re the reason I got this lump.” He gestured toward the thick bandage on the back of his head.
With a sharp nod, Dennis proceeded to unlock his right-hand lower desk drawer and extract two beautiful blue fifteen-inch film canisters. Both Ronnie and I breathed with relief.
He immediately began to set the first reel onto an adjacent apparatus he called a flatbed, the predecessor to the more advanced AVID.
"Do you know what you're looking for?" he inquired.
"Know it when I see it," I replied.
The flatbed was a four foot wide, three foot deep tabletop supporting what looked like six record turntables, three left and three right. It had a viewing screen at the center of the back and control knobs for forward, backward, and slow motion that even I could operate. After Dennis finished threading the first reel of last week's print through pulleys, he leaned on his hands, the better to look me up and down.
"You sure you'll be okay here?" he asked. This was the one and only remaining print of all the shots by Ronnie and his partner. If it accidentally got damaged–by me–a potentially critical piece of evidence might be ruined.
I forced my eyes to hold steady.
"Just leave me with some coffee and I'm good for hours," I said with dubious conviction.
Dennis gave me half a frown and another nod then departed to his waiting AVID and this week's work. When I ran out of film, I was to find him so he could thread the second reel onto the flatbed for me. This was crunch time at NFL Films after all; and doing it himself was faster than teaching me how.
Ronnie, however, felt obligated to review the operation of the flatbed a couple more times.
"Enough already," I finally scolded. "You're making me a nervous wreck."
"It's just..."
"I know. The only print."
"No," Ronnie said, causing me to look at his face.
What I saw frayed my nerves even more. His concern had not been for the film at all; it had been for Doug and Michelle and their baby. My palms suddenly began to sweat, my heart raced, my eyes blinked and darted from Ronnie to the controls to the screen in front of me.
"Go get a shower or something, will you?" I finally dismissed him. "Or pull your game, or catch some sleep. Just get out of here. Okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he grumbled, grimacing as he drew himself up. Then he stroked my hair and trailed his fingers across my shoulder before he left.
When he was gone, I took a deep breath, wiped my eyes, and blew my nose.
Then I settled down to watch football with a greater concentration than ever before, greater even than when my Dad's team played for the state championship.
Maybe it was because this was about Doug and Michelle and Baby Jody, but my senses felt intensified, open to nuances that otherwise would have made no impression at all. I began to recognize which of Ronnie's shots were planned and which had capitalized on the luck of the moment–ground shots up past a wreath of huddled helmets to thin blue sky, or huffing runners twisting just out of reach for three more precious yards. I seemed to be inside Ronnie's head, doing his job.
With a flick of his eyes I saw Patrick Dionne's focus shift just before his muffed snap back to Doug.
The first time Doug took a helmet in the ribs I cried, "oof" out loud.
When Tim Duffy took over that first brief time, his posture telegraphed his joy and selfish intentions directly to me. His frustration, his pride, his aggressiveness were transparent, his mental calculations words in my ears.
But silent words, for neither Dennis nor Ronnie had thought to provide me with sound, probably because it was too impractical. Since the audio and video were recorded separately, I remembered Ronnie explaining that they had to be coordinated manually. This was facilitated by a "bloop lite" that marked both tapes with a beep and a flash, the modern version of the striped clapboard of old, "Take One," "Take Two," days. Luckily, the quiet seemed to aid my concentration.
I read volumes into the shot of Bobby Frye leaning his elbows on the edge of the owner's balcony box. Like a perplexed boy watching others enjoy his birthday party, he appeared to observe the distant action with a mixture of happiness and dismay. I had the impression every taste of success would be chewed into unrecognizable bits.
This version of the game included Walker Cross on the sideline right after his benching, his face both grave and haughty. He glared only at the ground, clearly angry, but at whom or what I couldn’t guess even though I re-ran the shot three times.
Shortly thereafter Tim Duffy crossed the camera's path during an Hombres' possession, but I noticed no exchange of any sort between the second-string quarterback and the receiver.
Plenty of shots showed Jack Laneer narrowing his eyes, shouting, folding his arms to await the outcome of a play. He may have been the general overseeing the battle, but since he couldn’t block or tackle or pass for his players he was also a helpless architect whose building often didn’t resemble the plan.
For three and a half solid hours I studied the marriage of athleticism and art. "You guys make us look great," Doug had complimented Ronnie and the other NFL cinematographers, and he was right. Even without the artistic refinements–the slow motion and the music, the color enhancements, the coach’s hollering, the player’s facial expressions and the fan’s delighted cheers–my appreciation for what Ronnie and his company did for professional football multiplied.
Unfortunately, I just couldn't see anything wrong.
Around two when Ronnie came in carrying a paper tray of hamburgers and Cokes, the back of my head throbbed and my eyes felt parched.
"How do you do this?" I asked. "It's hard work."
Ronnie’s smile was fleeting. "You find anything?" he asked.
I showed him my notes.
"Frye, candy store window?" he read with scorn. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Damned if I know."
"You got squat."
"I got squat," I admitted.
"Maybe in the second reel."
I sighed and bit into my hamburger, expecting it to be cold and dry. Instead it was warm and delicious, and I nearly choked.
We ate together in weary silence, then Ronnie set up the second reel.
Much later in the afternoon, toward the end of the game, I noticed Roger Prindel's response to something Tim Duffy said immediately after the final touchdown. During a congratulatory hug Tim accepted Prindel's joyous words, then said something in return that erased the offensive coordinator's smile. Duffy made one more quick remark, then walked away. The film covered the final kick and the game soon ended.
I shut off the machine and leaned back in my chair. Five hours of scrutinizing film and I’d learned nothing new. I rubbed my eyes and considered crying. The tears were there, ready to go, but I felt too overwhelmed and confused to bother. Maybe I’d seen something after all. Maybe I just needed a little time to digest it.
Ronnie was down the hall conferring with Dennis and another young man. My cousin looked grayer and weaker than when the paramedic hauled him off for x-rays.
When Dennis glanced my way, I said, "How about giving this guy a break?"
"Sure, sure," the editor agreed. “Didn’t realize the time. Go. Take care of yourself.” He clapped Ron on the shoulder, the one he fell on last night.
"Drive me to the train?" I suggested when Ronnie and I were alone in the hall. "Then you can go home and crash."
"Deal."
Outdoors it smelled like snow and the overcast sky had a portentous pink cast. When we’d shut ourselves into the van and reached for seatbelts, Ronnie finally addressed the big question. "Didn't find anything?" he guessed.
"If I saw it, it hasn't registered yet."
Ronnie grunted. He’d taken half the shots; he knew how many there were for me to digest.
At the station I leaned back in my door to say goodbye. Neither of us wanted to expend any more energy than necessary; we were that exhausted.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I really wanted to help.” Now tears did slip down my cheeks. I wiped them away with a sleeve.
"Don't worry about it," Ronnie reassured me.
"Not over yet," I said, but neither of us believed it.