Marlene took a sip of a Piccini Chianti, which she claimed she'd opened early to use as a base for the sausage and peppers, as well as the marinara sauce. "You've been out of the office-or at least you better be or I'll wring your neck and then Murrow's. And Jaxon has apparently been tracking Lucy down in New Mexico and God knows what else. The fact that he's doing something for himself and his family doesn't make him a bad guy."
Karp sighed. Marlene ought to know. She'd been one of the founders of a private security consulting firm for VIPs. It had made her a lot of money, but it had also pulled her into a violent world. All of which got more violent when she turned her day job into volunteer night work, protecting battered women from the men who loved to hit them.
"Still, a call would have been polite," Karp harrumphed. "Especially as he's now flying my daughter about in black jets doing mysterious 'translations' for some private security firm. I don't like this at all."
Lucy had retired to her bedroom, where she was moping about, unable to reach her boyfriend, Ned. When Karp went back to give her a little fatherly advice about dealing with men by "giving them some space," he'd come under attack for allowing strange men to sleep in her room and leave their suitcases "where I'm tripping all over them." She'd then burst into tears.
Retreating in confusion, Karp had asked his wife what was the matter with his daughter. Lucy normally wasn't the sort to cry over some boy.
"You wouldn't understand," Marlene replied, giving him the "men are such morons when it comes to women" look before heading off to console her daughter.
Marlene had returned to the kitchen after placing the suitcases in the twins' bedroom; she announced they would be "camping" on the floor that night. After they arrived and heard about the new arrangement, O'Toole and Meyers had again volunteered to find a hotel, but she insisted that "unless you're allergic to pubescent boys and the smell of dirty socks stuffed under beds," they should spend the night in the boys' room.
"It's only a few days until Thanksgiving," she said. "You'd probably have a hard time finding anything decent, if you can find anything at all, at least without paying next month's salary."
"I don't have a salary next month," O'Toole pointed out.
"All the more reason to stay with us," Marlene replied, pouring two more glasses of Chianti and insisting that the men have a seat while she finished up preparations for dinner.
Two hours later, the adults pushed back from the table with satisfied groans coupled with compliments to the chef and praise for the second bottle of Chianti. The boys and Lucy had been more than happy to eat in their rooms "so that the adults could talk," but the conversation had mostly avoided O'Toole's legal issues until-after helping Marlene with the dishes-the men retired to the living room.
Karp, who'd brought out a legal notepad, quickly got to the point. "So, tell me about the hearing."
As he had the night before, O'Toole deferred to Meyers, who began by shaking his head and saying, "It was a procedural nightmare, a modern-day Star Chamber. Even the room was set up to intimidate anybody with the temerity to challenge the high and mighty American Collegiate Athletic Association: Big, empty white walls with no art, not even a sports poster, and blindingly bright fluorescent lights."
"Bring on the rubber hoses, eh?" Karp said.
"Exactly," Meyers replied. "We were told to sit on one side of a table long enough to seat twenty per side, and even then they kept us waiting fifteen minutes before anyone else appeared."
When they did arrive, the seven members of the hearing panel, their attorney, investigator, and the university's representatives-Huttington and Barnhill-all sat on the opposite side. "I was thinking, 'Now I know how a dying rabbit feels when the vultures start gathering,'" O'Toole said. "I would swear that even their chairs were taller so that they were looking down on me."
The panel was headed by a retired federal judge, George Figa. "He had a reputation in Boise for being strict but fair," Meyers noted. "So I felt pretty good about that, at least until later."
"I recognized one guy, too," O'Toole interjected. "You might remember him, Butch, J. C. Anderson. He was the head football coach at one of the Big Twelve universities for decades…retired, I think, in the eighties. He's got to be a hundred years old."
"I do remember Anderson," Karp said. "The man won two national titles, and God knows how many bowl games. But tell you what I remember most was hearing him give a talk once at a camp when I was still a high school basketball player. It was this great, impassioned speech telling us to remember that the real goal of participating in sports wasn't winning, or self-promotion, but the lessons it taught us for later in life about playing fair, following the rules, and sacrificing personal glory for the betterment of what he called 'the team we call our community.' I remember him saying, 'Do that and you're a champion in anybody's book and will go far long after you hang up the cleats.' I never forgot that speech."
"Well, he must have," Meyers said. "Because any hope we had for due process went out the window about as soon as the hearing began."
They'd known the basis of the ACAA case going in because Meyers had been sent the association's investigative file, which contained the complaint, the "evidence, such as it was," and copies of the witness deposition transcripts. "Though as you'll hear in a moment, those were somewhat less than complete," Meyers noted.
The ACAA had been represented by attorney Steve Zusskin. "What's he like?" Karp asked.
"Tall, distinguished-looking," Meyers replied, "wavy, silver hair with deep-set, dark eyes, great voice, almost sounds like he's singing when he talks. Apparently, he used to be a senior partner with a big firm in Boston before deciding to resettle in Idaho. He's about as good as it gets in our neck of the woods. Have to admit, I was a little intimidated."
The hearing began with Zusskin reviewing the accusations brought by Rufus Porter and the contents of the ACAA file by questioning his investigator, James Larkin, a former college football player.
"I nearly lost it and started laughing the first time Larkin started to talk," Meyers said. "The guy's probably six foot four and three hundred pounds, though a lot of it looked like blubber, but he has a voice like a twelve-year-old girl. It was really incongruous to listen to him talk in this high, shrill tone about how under his 'tough' questioning, he got Rufus Porter to 'confess' that he'd taken underage recruits to a party where he knew alcohol would be provided. But, of course, Porter claimed that he only did it at Mikey's suggestion and poor little Rufus felt, and here I'm quoting, 'that his place on the team depended on his doing what the coach asked.' Larkin also said that according to Porter, Mikey even gave him credit for alcohol from the baseball department's petty-cash fund."
The questioning was a real "dog and pony show," according to Meyers, "with Zusskin leading Larkin like a trainer with a St. Bernard at the Westminster Dog Show. For instance, Zusskin asked if women were paid to strip at the party and have sexual relations with the two recruits. Of course, Larkin agreed, and at his master's coaxing added that according to Porter, Mikey paid for it with his university credit card."
"Did they happen to bring up the rape charges brought against Rufus?" Marlene asked.
Meyers rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah. Zusskin made a big show of rustling through his papers and then asked Larkin if during the course of his investigation, he'd turned up allegations of Porter committing sexual assault at the party. Larkin said oh yes, it was that allegation that caused the removal of Porter from the basketball team so he gave it extra special attention. However, as he told the panel, the allegation turned out to be false."