We’re at the jail by nine o’clock, and though I don’t offer Willie the option of going inside with me, he makes it a point to decline just in case. Willie spent a lot of years in prison and is not about to enter one again, even if he’s free to leave.
Kenny thinks I’m there to discuss the possibility of him testifying. It’s something he has expressed a desire to do, but until now I’ve put off the discussion as premature. That hasn’t changed.
“That’s not what I want to talk about,” I say. “Something important has come up.”
If a person can look hopeful and cringe at the same time, Kenny pulls it off. He doesn’t know whether this is going to be good or bad news, but he instinctively knows it will be important. “Talk to me,” he says.
“I want you to think back to your senior year in high school, when that magazine made you an all-American and brought you to New York for the weekend.”
He nods. “That’s where I met Troy. I told you that.”
“Can you think of anything unusual, memorable, that happened on that weekend?”
He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head and smiles. “Not unless you call drinking beer unusual.”
“I’m thinking a little more unusual than that.”
“Then I can’t think of anything,” he says.
“On that Saturday night you went to a restaurant with the rest of the players. There was a sportswriter there, and you and the other members of the offense asked him to leave the room so you could have a team meeting. Do you remember that?”
Again he thinks for a while, searching his memory. That weekend seems not to be something that he has thought about in a long time and maybe never was terribly significant in his life. I’m finding I believe his reactions, now that I believe in his innocence. It’s a feeling of substantial relief.
“It definitely rings a bell. Let me think about it for a minute,” he says.
“Take your time.”
He does, and after a short while he smiles slightly and nods. “I remember… we had it all figured out. We knew some of us would make it big in the pros someday and that some wouldn’t. Nobody thought they’d be the ones not to make it, but with injuries and stuff you never know.”
“Right,” I say, hoping to move him along.
“So we decided that the ones who did make it would get these huge bonuses, and we all agreed that they would take care of the guys who didn’t. Like an insurance policy.”
“So it was a pact?” I ask.
He grins. “Yeah. I told you we had a lot of beer.”
“This pact… is that why you’ve taken care of Bobby Pollard all these years? Gotten him a job as your trainer?”
He shakes his head. “Of course not. I hadn’t even remembered about that high school thing until you just asked. Bobby’s a friend… and everything he dreamed about fell apart. So I helped him. But it wasn’t charity, you know? He’s a damn good trainer.”
“Could anyone in that room have taken that pact seriously? Could Bobby?”
His head shake is firm. “No way… once the beer wore off… no way. Come on… we were kids. Why are you asking me this stuff?”
“Remember those guys I asked you about… the ones that had died? They were all there that night. They were all members of the offense on the Inside Football high school all-American team.” I take out the list and show it to him, along with the list of the deceased.
“Goddamn,” he says, and then he says it again, and again. “You’re sure about this?”
I nod. “And I’m also sure that you were in the general area at the time of each death. You and Bobby Pollard.” I’m not yet positive that what I’m saying about Pollard is true, but I have no doubt that the facts will come out that way.
“You think Bobby killed these people?” he asks.
“Somebody did, and he’s as good a bet as any. And he may have killed a young man who was working for me as well, when that young man discovered the truth.”
“It just doesn’t seem possible. Why would he kill them? Because they didn’t give him part of their bonuses? Some of these guys didn’t even get drafted by the NFL.”
It’s a good point, and one of the things I’m going to have to figure out. “How good a player was Bobby?” I ask.