"Anita Han didn't mentally screw Sophie up," I replied, chewing on a fry. "I just didn't know how to talk with Tabby about this. I mean, how do you tell your girlfriend that one of your former buddies was the guy who had turned her inside out and screwed with her heart and head, and oh by the way, he was the last person you were with before me?"
"Can I ask, how close were you and the Knave?" Mark asked.
"For a while there, we were part of the same crew," I said. "I mean, we worked game together, and I'll admit we talked a lot of shit about girls together. That continued until Vince got shot."
"Who was Vince?" Mark asked. "You haven't mentioned before."
"Vince was my best friend through junior high and high school. We lived in the Hall, and we started running together soon after I got there. He and I were buddies, and when Vince met Scott, we all became part of the same clique. Pressman had the money and the moves, Vince was the athlete, I was the smooth talker to get us out of trouble. There were a few other guys who kind of rotated in and out, we tended to run in a group of four or five most times. The other two, whoever they tended to be, were kind of the groupies."
"I understand. What happened to Vince?"
I sighed and ate the rest of my burger. "Vince was always the best athlete of the bunch. That kid could ball like nobody's business. Unfortunately, his grades were terrible, and after high school he was unable to qualify for a decent school. Still, he was able to talk his way through our Confed connections into a local juco that had a team. I did my best to keep Vince shielded, I wanted at least one of us to get out of the life."
"I can understand that," Mark said. "But I'm guessing others didn't?"
"No," I replied. "There were a couple of bookies who did action on the local sports, even at the juco level. When Vince started lighting up the scoreboards and getting attention from big name schools, they let things build, until the odds were greatly in their favor. Then they called in their marker."
"Did they want him to lose?"
I shook my head. "No, just point shaving. They wanted him to look like shit, basically. Just one game mind you, but it turned out that it was the night that three different D-1 coaches were coming in to look at him. It was Vince's best shot at a top flight program, and he knew it. If he did what the bookies said, he'd lose his shot at a scholarship. If he didn't, he'd be pissing off a whole lot of Confederation bookies."
"He didn't do what the bookies wanted," Mark said gravely. "I remember the name, actually. It was before my time, but I heard the name."
I felt tears spring to my eyes. "He went out there, and I swear afterwards he knew what he was doing. He knew he was finished either way, so he was going to show one time how damn good he was. That night, he was Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Lebron James all combined. Vince had forty four points by half time, and got even hotter in the second half. The final buzzer sounded, and he had a hundred and eight points, fifteen rebounds, ten assists, and five steals. It was the damndest thing I'd ever seen. Walking off the court, he flashed me a smile and a thumbs up, tears streaming down his face, utter exhaustion and exhilaration written on his face. It was the last time I'd ever see him conscious."
"They hit him in the locker room?" Mark asked. I nodded.
"They waited until the rest of the team had supposedly cleared out, and the coach was out talking to some of the Division I coaches who had come to visit. The first bullet took him into the leg, the second took him low in the spine."
"So they didn't kill him outright," Mark commented. "Paralyzed?"
I nodded, "If he'd woken up, yes. But the way he fell, he hit his head on the bench, cracking his skull. The doctors did what they could, but between the gunshot wounds and the hit to the head, he went into a coma. He died four days later."
Mark sighed and finished his sub. "That's when you started peeling away from the Confederation."
"And Scott," I said. "He never admitted it, but he was the only other person who knew that Vince wasn't going to go along with the plan. Of course afterwards he denied it, but after that, well, things changed. It took me three years to really drop out of the life, and move on somewhat. That was the catalyst though."
"I see. I'm guessing with all of this, you never thought of talking about it with Tabby," Mark commented, bringing things back to the initial conundrum, "and now you don't know how to broach the subject."
"Not after the last screwup I had," I replied. "I just don't know."
"Well, in any case, good luck with your date tonight. I'd say you need to talk about it tonight with her. Tell her the truth, see what happens. She's stronger than she thinks. That girl’s been through a lot and she keeps bouncing back.”
Chapter 8
Sophie