Page 114 of The House of Wolves

“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?”

“Notthey,” 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 hewasin 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:

SHOW US (THE) MONEY

Right before I’d gotten into my car for the short ride to school, Megan Callahan had called from her office at theTribune.

“I’m assuming you know where your quarterback is,” she said.

“On or off the record?”

“I work for you, remember?” she said.

“I do know where he is. And I know somebody worked awfully hard to set him up the other night. And couldn’t wait to get that picture over to my brother Jack, pretty much at record speed.”

“Can you guys prove he was set up?” she said.

“Not yet. It turns out that the guy we think drugged him has made a sudden unplanned trip to Europe.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to shoot a girl the guy’s name,” she said.

“Rather shoothim,if you want to know the truth.”

“Are you of the opinion that Billy McGee is going to play on Sunday?” Megan said.

“To be determined.”

“May I at least quote you on that?”

“Knock yourself out.”

By noon I was getting ready to coach my high school team. It was just one more day in what felt like an endless number of them by now. But it was a day when I was happy to have the kids around me, almost like a force field, even though we were missing our starting quarterback.

St. Joseph’s was undefeated, same as we were. Now we’d be trying to hand them their first loss of the season and avoid one of our own with our backup quarterback, a sophomore named Noah Glynn, who happened to be one of my favorite players on the team.

Noah wasn’t even as tall as I was. But the little guy could scramble like a champion and had a much bigger arm than it looked like he should have at five feet six inches. And even with as much talent as he had, and even knowing he was a lock to be next year’s starter once Chris Tinelli graduated, I loved Noah’s heart most of all. And I knew he was going to need the whole package—scrambling, arm, heart—to give us a chance in the game we were about to play.