Better Off Dead (A Cal Murphy Thriller Book 3) Read online

  Writing another award-winning story wasn’t the only objective derailed in Cal’s life at the moment. He longed to be in the same city with Kelly again, just a few months of dating like normal people to figure out if maybe she was the one. They had been through a lot together but they never could seem to land in the same place. He thought San Francisco would be the place when they were both offered jobs there—Cal at The Chronicle, Kelly as the assistant photo editor at the Associated Press bureau. Cal accepted the job and so did Kelly. But two days before Kelly was scheduled to move, a photo editor much senior than her requested a transfer to San Francisco to be with her ailing mother. Kelly wound up in Los Angeles instead. Cal settled for short plane trips and long weekends to see her.

  “Oh, I’ll be there all right. It’s not like there’s any big story for me to cover here. Unless, of course, you consider the resignation of Harold Weinholtz from his position as the president of the Bay Area Chess Club as the beginnings of some great investigative piece?”

  “Sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” Kelly chided. “I’ll pick you up from LAX on Wednesday night.”

  Cal exchanged goodbyes with Kelly and ended the call before letting his mind drift. He wanted to be with her, wherever that was. And as much as he liked San Francisco, Cal certainly wasn’t going to leave his heart there this weekend. It longed to be with a certain leggy brunette on some deserted beach in the South Pacific. Or this weekend—with her in L.A.

  A taxi horn blared, snapping Cal back to the present. He glanced up at the television hanging in the cafe to see a news report about another shocking suicide of a pro football player, this time the L.A. Stars’ Aaron Banks. These suicides were happening with such regularity that it barely moved anyone’s shock meter anymore. Another pro football player, another suicide. But this was an active player, who still possessed star power. Cal wondered what could have been that bad about Banks’ life that he had to end it. He checked his watch. It was noon and he began searching for the man he was meeting. Cal felt a sudden poke in his back.

  “Are you Cal?”

  “Yes,” Cal said as he began to turn around to greet the man. Then he stopped. The poke felt a little stiffer, digging further into Cal’s back.

  “Don’t turn around. It’s best that you can’t identify me—for both our sake.”

  Cal didn’t like this introduction. He almost walked away without uttering another word but decided it might be worth listening to the man’s kooky conspiracy. If anything, it would make for a good story at the next dinner party he attended. Cal was just too curious.

  “OK, fine,” Cal said resisting the urge to look at the man. “What is this big conspiracy you mentioned?”

  “Almost every player on the L.A. Stars is using PEDs and the lab I work for is covering it up. You’ll know I’m telling the truth when word leaks out that Aaron Banks was using, too.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  There was a long pause. “It’s complicated, but I’m tired of living a lie.”

  “But why me?” Cal demanded.

  He played to Cal’s ego. “I heard you were the best.”

  Cal liked this conspiracy’s potential but he needed something more than an accusation from a secretive whistleblower.

  “You got any proof?”

  Cal felt the poke in his back get a little stiffer.

  “Take this thumb drive. It contains PDFs of all the failed tests, but don’t leak these out until you have more evidence. It’ll come back to me and they’ll kill me.”

  Cal reached behind him to take the thumb drive from the informant’s hand.

  “Who will kill you?” Cal asked.

  The man said nothing. Cal waited a few more seconds before he turned around. There was nobody behind him. More patrons twisted and cavorted their bodies through the narrow openings in the shop jammed with lunchtime customers. Cal had no way of identifying the man now, but it didn’t matter if the evidence in his hand was legit.

  Cal glanced back up at the television and strained to listen to the news report on the television. When he couldn’t discern what the reporter was saying through the buzz of conversation, he squinted to read the white words crawling through the red stripe at the bottom of the screen:

  Sources: NFL was set to suspend deceased L.A. Stars’ running back Aaron Banks for failing a drug test.

  Cal caught himself smiling and then stopped. He hated the fact that his greatest fortune in life came at the hands of someone else’s misfortune. But he couldn’t help it. It was his job. Then Cal started smiling again.

  CHAPTER 3

  CHARLES ROBINSON STOOD UP and stretched before slumping back down into his executive leather chair. At 65 years old, he still didn’t appear to be a day over 50. At six-foot-one, Robinson flaunted his height, but not as much as his chiseled frame. He wore tight shirts that put his bulging muscles on display. With thick brown hair slicked back and a clean shaven face, Robinson thought he and his piercing blue eyes might find a home in Hollywood if this business venture failed.

  Robinson’s office contained all the decadent décor everyone expected the owner of an NFL team to have. Oak paneled walls. Plush leather couches and chairs. Framed jerseys and pictures of past and current NFL stars. A small Stars’ replica helmet on the corner of his desk. Then there was Robinson’s personalized touch of a lion’s head mounted on one of the walls. He shot the lion on a big game hunt in Zimbabwe several years ago and wasn’t going to let anyone forget about it or leave out the fact that he shot it from 250 yards away.

  He then spun around in his chair.

  In stark contrast to his office was the drab industrial park serving as a backdrop for the Stars’ outdated stadium. What was once a crown jewel among professional stadiums was now a clunker of a home field. The luxury boxes held no aesthetic value. The emissions that wafted over the field frequently served as a constant reminder that for all of Hollywood’s glitz and glamour, the only thing about this franchise that said “L.A.” was the team’s name. It stopped cold right there.

  But Robinson knew how to fix all of this. His ability to take a dog of a company and turn it into a champion was legendary. With the L.A. Stars, the answer was quite simple: win.

  Win and the money pours in. Win and people will do whatever you want them to. Win and you dictate the terms. But lose? Then you have nothing. For Robinson, nothing wasn’t an option.

  When Robinson bought the right to own and start the team five years ago, he figured just having a team in America’s largest city that had gone so long without one would be enough for a while. And it was. But after a while, expectations change. People begin expecting you to win. That’s what happened to all the other teams in L.A. before the Stars. They started losing and fans lost interest. Robinson understood this important piece of the city’s history along with this reality: this is SoCal and there are far better ways to spend your Sunday afternoon and your money than by watching a crummy team play in a rundown stadium on a crime-ridden part of town.

  Near the end of their fourth season in existence, the Stars were last in their division again. The local sports columnists questioned every move the coaches made. Local sports talk radio skewered the team’s play. The social media scene kept tabs on the players and tweeted photos of them out partying after losses. He fully expected the fans who attended to the final game of that season to show up with more torches and pitchforks than tickets.

  But this was L.A., where fortunes can rise and fall faster than a starlet enters and exits rehab. One week your movie is number one, the next week you are recorded making drunken slurs. It was a place where anyone can make a comeback, no matter how long you’ve been cast aside.

  Robinson put into motion a plan for a comeback of his own, the kind that would make people forget about the Stars’ losing ways. He wanted his team to be the talk of the town. Lakers? Clippers? Dodgers? Angels? Kings? Ducks? None of them would garner the media attention one juggernaut NFL team would. That was the goal
. All smart billionaires use their money to make more money. But like the brightest of billionaires, Robinson wanted to use the people’s money to make himself more money. He understood the quickest way to increase your wealth is to figure out a way to increase your reward without increasing your risk.

  For a man who made a vast fortune by creating a powerful media conglomerate, Robinson was both smart and brilliant. He knew that if the Stars were winning, interest in the team would soar ­and so would the advertising rates associated with anything that had to do with the team. C.R. Enterprises owned more than a dozen newspapers in California, eight of them in Southern California in and around Los Angeles. He also owned several radio stations, including the flagship station of the Stars and the city’s best sports talk station. Then there were his television stations. Even his specialty websites flourished. If you learned about anything that happened in Southern California, it was likely from some media arm of C.R. Enterprises.

  Robinson used his media influence to control the Stars’ narrative as best as he could. When the team struggled, the media relations personnel leaked information about injuries to star players. When there was dissention in the clubhouse, Robinson made sure there was some other story that overshadowed the locker room backbiting—even if the story was fabricated. He even planted “fans” to catch his star players helping the community. The media and fans had no idea how they were being manipulated. But Robinson knew his control could only last so long. He needed the Stars to morph into winners so he could get his new stadium. And morphing they were, leading the division by two games with five games left in the season. The playoffs were almost a lock.

  The intercom on Robinson’s desk phone beeped and his assistant notified him of the caller holding for him. It was Los Angeles city councilman Mel Moore.

  “Good morning, Mel. Are you going to join me in my box on Sunday?” Robinson asked.

  Mel sighed before speaking. “Look, Charles. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t want to give off the wrong impression.”

  “What? That you’re a fan of L.A.’s only pro football team?”

  “No, no. I just don’t want anyone to think you bought my vote.”

  Robinson smiled. “So, this means you’re voting to approve the new stadium at next week’s vote?”

  “Of course, Charles. I just don’t want to see this deal sabotaged by the media if they start sniffing around.”

  “Mel, are you forgetting that I am the media in this town? I understand your concern, but let’s not worry about that anymore. Nobody is going to write in any of my papers that your vote was bought. And we both know my papers are the only ones anybody in this town reads anyway.”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten that. Nor have I forgotten all those discounted ads you gave us during the election last year. That’s why I’m voting to approve. But let’s be wise about this, OK? I don’t care that you control the media, all it takes is one rogue reporter to blow the whole thing up in this day and age.”

  “OK, no box seats for you, but I will leave a pair of tickets for you at will call. See you next week at the hearing.”

  Robinson hung up the phone. He didn’t want to wait to hear Moore’s forthcoming protest. He had the confirmation he wanted. In less than a week, the Stars’ new stadium was about to be approved. Hollywood demanded nothing but extravagance. And both the princes and paupers of this town would pay for it.

  This news called for a private celebration—immediately. Robinson walked across his office to his bar and pulled out his finest scotch—a bottle of Glenfarclas 1955, reserved for the rarest of occasions. It was still unopened. In just under five years, Robinson achieved his goal of securing a new stadium for the Stars. That’s how he always did things. He set a goal and he achieved it. Then he would set another goal and achieve it, too. Robinson dwelt in the white collar world, but he possessed blue collar work habits. Do what it takes to get the job done every single day. Don’t let anyone stand in your way. Robinson had left tread marks all over anyone who dared to challenge him. Now it was time to take a moment and enjoy his Scotch before moving to his next most important objective, one that would make him more money than he ever imagined possible.

  CHAPTER 4

  CAL WHISTLED AS HE walked through the sports department, clutching the thumb drive he collected from his mysterious informant. He glanced at Hardman, who was spinning around in his chair to fire off a snarky comment.

  “Save it, Hardman,” Cal snapped. “You’ll regret it after I wrap up this award-winning story.”

  Hardman laughed. He couldn’t resist a good jab. “I knew there was more to that Bay Area Chess Club story. Kudos for landing something printable.”

  Cal turned and glared at him, offering no response. His mind was already on the story that had just been handed to him. All he had to do was put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  He sat down at his desk and inserted the thumb drive into his computer. He clicked on the drive’s folder and began opening a slew of PDFs. File after file consisted of failed drug tests. But there was one problem: all the names had been redacted. It was always the biggest problem for getting any requests filled through Freedom of Information Acts. They were like an endless game of fill-in-the-blank Mad Libs. The first time Cal received FOIA documents, he threw a tirade on the spot, demanding to get a copy without the names. Privacy concerns and poorly written requests allowed government agencies to hide the identities of most people. After spending a month trying to track down all empty blanks, Cal decided to scan the document and see if he could use Photoshop to decipher the names. It worked. He began employing his tactic to scoop other journalists on several breaking news stories. However, when a government worker figured out what Cal was doing, all government agencies nationwide switched to markers that left no discernable words—not even using genius computer programs.

  Cal immediately made two copies of the files, one to his computer’s hard drive and another to a thumb drive. He then called one of the staff photographers, Mike Gregory.

  “You busy?” Cal asked.

  “Not at the moment. What do you need?” Gregory replied.

  “I need a favor on a story I’m working on. I need your Photoshop wizardry on this one.”

  “OK, fill me in and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Cal hustled down one flight of stairs to the photo department. Mike’s desk was the first one in the vast cubicle farm.

  Cal held out the thumb drive and handed it to Gregory. “I need you to help me decipher the redacted names on this file.”

  “Oh, come on, Cal. I’m a photographer, not a miracle worker.”

  Cal was ready for the pushback. “This isn’t a Freedom of Information Act requested document. This was put together by a guy who I’m not sure knew what he was doing. He didn't use the magic pen, OK?”

  Gregory snatched the thumb drive from Cal and shot him a skeptical glance. He began opening the files.

  “What is this, Cal?”

  “I had an informant give this to me today. He said it was a bunch of failed drug tests from NFL players.”

  “Oh, wonderful. When are you guys just going to give up on the steroid witch hunt and just enjoy the juiced game like the rest of us?”

  Cal smiled. “Maybe when it’s legal to use the stuff? I don’t make the rules. But cheating always makes for a good scandalous story.”

  Gregory wasn’t amused. He said nothing but began a whirlwind of mouse movements and clicks. It took Gregory less than a minute to get the first name to come into focus: Isaiah Smith.

  “Isaiah Smith? Quarterback of the L.A. Stars?” Gregory asked.

  “That would be the one. Try another one.”

  A few clicks and keystrokes later and Aaron Banks’ name appeared on the screen.

  “Isn’t this the kid that killed himself this week?” Gregory asked.

  “Yep. That’s him. What’s the date on his?”

  “November 10th.”

  “Wow. That was just t
wo weeks ago.”

  Gregory went back to the first file. “Isaiah’s is dated November 10th as well.”

  “Yeah, and only Banks is being reported as having flunked a drug test. Do you think you can print out Banks’ form for me and clear the rest of these up when you get a chance and email them to me?”

  “You got it, Cal.”

  “Thanks. Later.”

  Cal waited a few seconds to grab Banks’ failed drug test form and head back upstairs to the sports department. He wasted no time knocking on his editor’s door.

  “Miles Kennedy” was the name painted on the glass door. Kennedy wasn’t an imposing editor, but he could be a bulldog when the situation required it. At five-foot-six, Kennedy wasn’t exactly the poster child for modern health. He scarfed down San Francisco’s greasiest cuisine nightly, washing it all down with at least several beers a night. If things got stressful around the office, Kennedy went for the bottle of bourbon hidden beneath his file folder.

  Cal was grateful for the time Kennedy had given him to adjust to the new work environment, but in the past few weeks, Cal started to feel the heat. He understood favoritism only lasted so long—­at some point, he needed to write a blockbuster story. Budget cuts were coming, dictating more layoffs. And Cal needed to come up big with a story—and soon.

  Kennedy motioned for Cal to enter his cramped office.

  “What you got, Cal?” Kennedy asked. “Anything I can lead with tomorrow?”

  “Maybe not tomorrow, but certainly something that could rock the sports world.”

  “Oh? Start talking. What’s the story?”

  “You know that Aaron Banks guy that just committed suicide?”

  “Yeah. He’s from the Bay area.”

  “Well, I just had a source give me this failed drug test. But he wasn’t the only one.”

  Cal launched into an explanation of the events that had transpired over the past two hours.

  Kennedy spoke cautiously. “So, you’ve got redacted files from an unknown, unidentifiable source and a hunch?”