Chapter Five

Chapter Five of Darwin's Theories.

Chapter 5

After his meeting with Nova, Darwin cancelled his 9 PM class that night citing illness. After he said that he'd look into it for her, he handed Nova her jacket and she kissed him on the cheek, thanking him for his help. He said he'll call her if he found anything out, but she said to just call her twice and hang up and she'll meet him during his next office hours. His office door whoomped close and Darwin went back to his seat. He took a can of Coke out of his mini-fridge, poured out an amount into his garbage can, and dumped a shooter of scotch into it. After a few sips, he leaned back in his chair, put his feet up, and looked over at Groucho hanging across from him. I should have just been a hobo con man like Groucho always was in the movies; just wandering in and out of people's lives with a “who gives a s**t?” attitude. Instead, he was stuck in an office at a university that hated him with opaque ex-girlfriends seeking his help and teaching his increasingly thick-headed students.

At that moment, his most thick-headed of students, figuratively and otherwise, Tommy--the boy who didn't know what a Board of Trustees or a crank was--came through his office door later that afternoon after Darwin had had a few scotch and Cokes and just before he was about to leave for the day.

"Professor Darwin? I'm sorry, I don't mean to disturb you."

"No, please, come in. Today's been disturbing enough already." Darwin took his feet off the desk, turned off the music, and put the alcohol-infused soda down.

"Well, it's not really about class," said Tommy as he put down his backpack. He was a beefy young man who played for the Wilson football team (The Screaming Eagles) with short blonde hair and the manner of a less-charming refrigerator. He was a nice kid but a terrible student. This was his third year at Wilson University and, based on his GPA, was looking at a 5-year plan for a BA.

"I'm not a counselor, Tommy, but I'll be happy to listen," said Darwin, hoping he didn't stink of booze or was slurring his words.

"It's not really a problem for counselors, Professor. It's not even something I want anyone to find out about."

Hoo boy, thought Darwin, why do they come to me? Then he remembered the joke "PI" sign he hung outside of his office. Oh yeah. That.

"What's the trouble?" asked Darwin, waiting to hear about dorm room hijinks and dramatic love triangles and drunken fights at the frathouse and other all-American college events.

"I think there's a major drug ring running out of in the athletics department."

Darwin closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them Tommy would be gone and he would be staring at Groucho inviting him along an ocean liner for a night at the opera. Instead, he saw the 250-pound towheaded goofball from his EN-312 class.

"Why would you think there's a drug ring running out of the athletics department?" asked Darwin, not wanting to hear the answer.

"Well, a lot of the guys on the team are taking steroids and painkillers, and I know they don't have the money for that kind of stuff since they're all on scholarship and none of them work."

"Sure. Good deductive reasoning. But that doesn't really prove anything."

"Oh, and I found this in my coach's office," said Tommy, pulling out of his backpack a large bag of pills labeled "1000 OXYS/40 MG" in black marker on one side. He raised it up for inspection like it was a meatloaf that just came out of the oven. Darwin's eyes widened. "So, yeah. That's, like, evidence or something, right?"

Darwin suddenly stood up. This was an insane amount of illegal drugs. In his office. Being held by a student. He looked at Tommy, who looked up at Darwin a little worried as so many students had before while sitting across from him in his office while anticipating an answer that would reassure them. Only those looks were usually cast toward him over a bad grade or having not understood a lecture. Darwin thought of the best response he could for this new development, something to reassure the boy.

"Holy f**k," said Darwin.

This was not the answer Tommy was expecting. He frowned and lowered the gigantic bag of drugs with a face like a puppy that was being scolded but didn't know why.

"I'm sorry, Tommy. I didn't mean to curse. Why don't we just get that out of your hands. I'd hate for you to get into any trouble." Darwin put his hands out and Tommy placed the bag into them carefully. Holy potatoes, this is a lot of drugs, thought Darwin as he turned back to his desk. Instead of immediately calling the police and leaving his office as though a bomb had been placed in it, like he normally would do under an unusual circumstance like this, instead he placed the football-sized bag of pills on his desk and sat back down. He could see that Tommy was nervous, maybe even scared, about all of this.

"Do you take steroids or painkillers, Tommy?" asked Darwin.

"Heck no!" he said. "I don't take drugs unless a doctor gives them to me. I was going into coach Trunk's office to get his playbook for practice like he asked me to and when I was looking for it in the drawers in his desk I saw this. So I picked it up and was going to tell him about it but thought wait a minute, this was in his office so he already knows about it. But these aren't in bottles or from a doctor or anything, and I know a lot of guys on the team take this kind of stuff, so I kind of put two and two together. I panicked and put it in my backpack, went to practice, and after that I came right here because I knew it was your office hours."

Darwin's mind reeled. A coach at the university was giving his players drugs. This was another scandal at the university that now, just by his dopey student coming into his office looking for help, he was involved in. Tommy sat there with his hands folded staring blankly at Darwin.

"Tommy, I want you to listen to me very carefully," said Darwin. "Go back to your room and go about your business as usual. You never saw this bag and you never came to me with it. I'll hide this until I can figure out what's going on. But Tommy: do not say a word about this to anybody. Not your parents, not your fellow players, not other teachers, nobody." Darwin paused and thought for a moment. "Why did you come to me with this?"

"Because from your detective story in class, you seem like the kind of guy that would do something about this. The right thing, you know?"

Darwin nodded.

"OK, Tommy. Leave this with me. It'll take a little time, but I'll figure out what's going on and sort this mess out. Go back to your life as a college student. Go eat the crappy food at the student union and drink too much beer tonight and watch Animal House or something."

Tommy smiled and looked like he was going to cry.

"Thanks, Professor Darwin! Gee, I knew I could trust you!" He got up from the chair, excited. It looked like he was going to go over and hug Darwin so Darwin put his hand out for a handshake before that happened. Tommy engulfed Darwin's hand in both of his meaty paws and shook vigorously. Darwin had wished he could have offered him his good arm since this kind of action hurt his wound considerably. Darwin still grinned through the pain while his large and surprisingly innocent student picked up his now-empty backpack while thanking Darwin over and over. The door whoomped shut.

Darwin sat back down. He stared at the gigantic bag of twenty years in jail sitting on his desk. He thought about how nice it will be when Thanksgiving break came up next week and he wouldn't have to be in the office for at least a few days. Then he took the bag, stuffed it into his satchel, making it bulge like a large bag of pills was inside of it, got his coat on, and left his office.

He locked the office door behind him and walked next door through the science building entrance. It was 5:30 and only half of the classrooms were occupied. He walked up to the second floor and began peering into the labs. He tried every empty lab door until he came across one that was unlocked, Room 237. Darwin kept the lights off and stood on top of a stool. He took the bag of pills out of his satchel, lifted a panel from the drop ceiling, and shoved them upwards. The panel dropped shut and Darwin got down from the stool and exited the room, heading towards the direction of his car in the teacher's parking lot.

That night at home in his apartment, Darwin sat at his desk with a notebook, trying to figure out what was going on. In just a few short hours he had two major dilemmas dropped onto him, one by invitation and the other thrust upon him. He pushed out Nova’s case from his mind and focused on Tommy’s. That amount of pills could only mean that there was something major happening in the athletics department; after searching the internet, he found that the street value of that bag would be somewhere between $25,000 to $40,000. His lizard brain told him to retrieve those pills, find a fence, and take off next semester for an extended vacation in the Caribbean with the profit, but he quickly stepped on that gecko of an idea. Besides, he would most likely be murdered for that by a much more experienced drug dealer instead--which is to say, every drug dealer on the planet.

He also thought of how Tommy had said that it was both painkillers and steroids that the coaches were supplying the players. Where were they getting the money for this? Darwin wondered if it was another embezzlement scheme like the Atherton Affair was. Or maybe that’s where the alma mater donations were going towards. The Screaming Eagles were doing well this season, after all; they may even win a title or bowl or something--Darwin didn’t know anything about football but figured it was like what a pennant was to baseball. He would start snooping around Coach Trunk’s business first thing tomorrow and try to suss him out.

Turning his attention to Nova’s problems, Darwin wondered why she would pay the first blackmail amount of $5000 and then follow it up with another unspecified payment in something that she wouldn’t tell him about--something that would make him think less of her. Was it sex? He couldn’t imagine that or else she would know who her blackmailer was and then Darwin wouldn’t be needed. A chill swept over him, not just because he left the window open but from a deeply disquieting sense that he might not have known Nova as well as he thought, or else he had misjudged her.

It wouldn’t be the first time this had happened to him with a woman he got involved in. While a shockingly prescient man in many ways--from anticipating shifting trends in literature, politics, popular culture, and in general being able to figure out what was going on around him before everybody else--Darwin’s heart was an idiot. Maybe it was the soft side of him that drew him to education, or the obtuse part of him that drew him into higher education, but he had a blind spot when it came to women and romance. That’s what left him married and divorced within a year from a woman who--by the kindest of outside estimates--seemed better suited to end up with a biker than a college English professor. Maybe he was drawn to the same type of women that drew him to his profession: he thought that he could improve them over time like he did his students. Only romantic relationships don’t end after a semester and there wasn’t any empirical method to judge the progress between them. He once suggested to a woman he was dating that they write essays about what they thought about their relationship to each other. She responded by dumping him later that evening via essay.

That night, Darwin’s heart was too mixed up to think any worse about Nova. She had been the nicest relationship he’d had in a long time after drifting from woman to woman without establishing a true connection. The few months they were together that year were the happiest he’d been since his divorce, and at now he wished that she had left him as a fond memory instead of a present mystery.  

Even though he didn’t have classes to teach on Tuesdays, Darwin was on campus by 10 AM the next morning. In the chilly November air, he stood at the top of the bleachers watching football practice as the gigantic young men on the field bashed into each other while Coach Trunk yelled incomprehensible directions. Darwin wondered if the players could even hear what he was saying through their helmets and being thirty yards away from the coach or if they just guessed at what they should be doing at any given moment. Judging by how red the coach’s face was getting and the increasing number of obscenities he was peppering into his directions, Darwin thought the latter.

He could see Tommy upfield doing high sprints and wearing his jersey, the number 23, with his last name SKALETSKI embroidered on the back. He was from Wisconsin and came all the way to New Jersey because Wilson University was the only school that would give him an athletics scholarship without caring about his scholastic ability. Darwin thought that he would probably be happier if he just stayed in the Midwest, got married at 18, worked as a welder and had a load of kids.

At the bottom of the bleachers, he could see a young woman watching the practice. Darwin walked down to her.

“Annie? You never struck me as a sports fan.”

His perspicacious young student was just as surprised to see him there as he was her.

“Professor Darwin! I could say the same about you. I’m here doing a story for the paper. The Eagles are up for a division title at the homecoming game is this weekend.”

Darwin feigned like he understood what a division title was and remembered that he was expected to show his face that Saturday at homecoming to meet and greet students’ parents and alumni.

“That’s what I came here for: I wanted to ask Coach Trunk about access to the big game. I’d like to stand on the sidelines during it and watch it up-close.”

Annie snorted. “Fat chance. Oh, sorry, professor. I meant to say, Coach Trunk doesn’t let people on the sidelines anymore. He says it distracts the players too much.”

Just then, Coach Trunk let loose a string of obscenities along with several filthy conjunctions that Darwin was sure he just invented that made Darwin instinctively cover Annie’s ears. She laughed.

“I’ve been covering the team all semester, Professor Darwin, I’m used to the coach’s colorful language at this point.”

“I should cover my own ears, then. Is Trunk always like this?”

Annie hemmed. “As long as I’ve been going to games and practices. But he seems angrier than usual today.”

After losing tens of thousands of dollars of drugs, why wouldn’t he be? thought Darwin. On the field, Tommy waved at Darwin, and to his surprise, Annie waved back, smiling. Darwin gave a slight half-wave.

“I didn’t know you and Tommy were friends,” said Darwin.

“Oh, well...he’s very nice. I’ve been helping him with some of his classwork. This college stuff doesn’t come to him naturally, but he has a good heart.” Darwin could see that Annie was slightly blushing while talking about Tommy. Opposites attract, I suppose, he thought and then realized how much he hated that old adage and how it had failed him so often in life.

“Say Annie, have you heard anything about the athletes at this school taking drugs?”

“Nothing specific. I just assume most players take one drug or another. They take a lot of physical punishment out there,” she said just as a player was smashed to the ground by two of his teammates. “But I don’t really know any of the players personally; I just write up the games.”

“Who would you say takes the most hits on the team?”

“Probably the defensive tackle. That’s him over there,” Annie said, pointing to what looked to Darwin like a cement wall that had somehow come to life. “Steve “Mad Dog” Brennan. Last game he took down nine running backs.”

“How did he do that?”

“By throwing his body at them as hard as he could. He slams into the ground and gets back up like it was nothing. It’s really kind of amazing,” said Annie, and Darwin was surprised at seeing this side of the articulate and fastidious young lady that regularly used phrases like “morphosyntax” and “substantive adjective” in the papers she handed in finding enjoyment in this brutal sport. However, the way she was gazing at the young men on the field, Darwin supposed she had varied interests that wouldn’t be evident in an English class. In fact, he noticed that she didn’t even have a notepad in her hands; she was just watching the practice.

Darwin watched as “Mad Dog” Brennan stumbled over to the coach on the sidelines and talked to him. Coach Trunk shook his head and put his hand on Mad Dog’s shoulder and sent him back out on the field. The coach looked up and down the field with his arms crossed chewing on a toothpick and Darwin swore he could see steam coming out of his ears.

“Although this is fascinating, Annie, I have you take my leave of you.”

“Uh-huh,” she said without taking her eyes off of the players.

“I’m going to the hospital to see if I can figure out what the hell’s wrong with me.”

“Have fun,” said Annie in a far-off voice. On the field, Mad Dog pulverized another player.