Boys of Blur Read Online Free PDF Page B

skipped the elevator and raced down the fire stairs two at a time, shoes flapping. He jogged through the lobby and banged through the glass doors into eye-watering sun. The day was already several shades past warm and he hadn’t even had breakfast.
    Blinking, Charlie threw his arm up across his forehead and focused on the shapes of three men beside a policecar. Mack was wearing sunglasses and an old Taper Terrapins polo shirt. His veined and knuckle-scarred hands were on his hips. One of the cops was black. Short and solid, he wore a flat-brimmed trooper’s hat. The other cop was white and even taller than Mack, though he hunched forward around a soft middle that teetered over his belt buckle. He was wearing a sun visor, jeans, mirrored sunglasses, and snakeskin boots. A fat red mustache reclined on his upper lip like an overweight caterpillar too tired to cocoon. On his right hand he wore two huge rings, and he was chewing gum.
    “Charlie Reynolds!” the man said. He glanced back at the other cop and pointed at Charlie. “Am I seein’ things? Don’t he look like Bobby Reynolds?”
    “Don’t he just,” the other cop said. He adjusted his belt and stared at Charlie.
    “I’ll say.” The tall cop and his mustache leaned forward. “Holy Mother of Mo, you look like your daddy!” He stuck out his right hand. Charlie shook it. The hair on the back of the man’s hand felt like old rug. His rings felt even bigger than they had looked. “I mean, you don’t have half the bull meat on you that your daddy had, and you don’t have his stringy hair, and you still need some inches on your bones, but all that can grow.” He dropped Charlie’s hand and straightened up, adjusting his belt. “What position you play? You got any speed?” He glanced back at the other cop and raised his eyebrows. “Bobby had
speed
.”
    “Speed,”
said the other cop.
    Mack stepped around behind Charlie and put his hands on his stepson’s shoulders.
    “Charlie, this tall talker is Sheriff Leroy Spitz, and that’s Deputy Hydrant Landry behind him. They wanted to ask you a couple questions.”
    “Ho now!” Sheriff Leroy Spitz tapped up his sun visor and peered down at Charlie over his sunglasses. “Prester Mack wants us to get down to business. I get the impression that he’d like us to move along, Charlie. You getting that impression, too?”
    “Hydrant?” Charlie asked, looking at the thick, shorter cop.
    “That’s right,” said Spitz. “His mama called him Steven, but we all called him Hydrant. I mean, look at him. He used to knock your stepdaddy there flat on his all-state backside just by standing there.”
    “Don’t know about that,” Mack said.
    “Sure,” Spitz said.
    “Sure,” grunted Hydrant.
    “Sure as I’m wearing rings,” Spitz said. He held up his hand and wiggled his ring-cuffed fingers. “Here’s the thing, Charlie.…” The sheriff dropped all the way into a crouch like he was talking to a little kid. Charlie stared down at him, confused and suddenly much too tall. The sheriff coughed, acted like he was stretching, and levered himself back up. “Thing is, Charlie, Hydrant and I playedball with your daddy. We whipped up on those Taper Terps and their Mack boys.”
    “Whipped ’em up,” Hydrant said.
    “And then we beat ’em on down.” Spitz grinned and adjusted his visor. “Beat those scrawny little rabbit runnin’ muck bunnies into fluff.”
    Charlie could feel Mack’s hands tighten slightly on his shoulders. “You did,” he said. “A school four times our size beat us down. Twice. My freshman year. My sophomore year. What happened the next two years?”
    Spitz laughed and waved off Mack’s question like a gnat.
    “Sure, you got a couple wins, too,” Spitz said. “But Bobby ran you out of the state. Hydrant, what did Bobby put on the Terps junior year? Two hunnies? Three?”
    Hydrant cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “Two hundred and seventy-four yards rushing.”
    Spitz