Hide & Seek - James Patterson [20]
This, Will already knew. He just wasn't sure what it meant.
To be irresistible. Was that good, or was it very, very bad?
CHAPTER 19
ALLAN “SKIPPER” THOMAS appeared to be an ordinary fellow, a tradesman perhaps, but Will understood that Thomas was the most important man he had met in his entire life.
Thomas was in his early forties now, manager of the Hammersmith Rangers, but rumor had it he trained as hard as his players, and that he offered bonuses to any on the team who could go past him one-on-one. Rumor also had it that no bonus had ever been paid.
He and Will were sitting like proper gentlemen in the living room of his aunts' house. Eleanor and Vannie had tactfully gone out, leaving the men to talk football, as men so love to do.
“I've watched you play, Will,” Thomas said, playing everything close to the vest, as Will had expected he would.
“I'm honored to hear that, sir. I really am.” Like hell. Every club in London had sent scouts to see him play.
“You've got natural talent, no question about it. I could make you into a fine player, over time I could.”
Will watched Skipper Thomas calmly, the way Will did most everything. “I'm a fine player already, sir. You know it, or you wouldn't be here.”
“You're fifteen years old. Nobody is a player at that age, just a potential player.”
“I am,” Will said.
“And modest too,” Thomas laughed heartily.
“No, I'm not modest, sir. That would be false of me. But I am a goal scorer, sir. I have no particular sense of team, of anyone else on the field. I'm a loner, a striker pure and simple. I'm cut from the same cloth as Johan Cruyff, Pele, Gerd Müller. I'm the best at my age that England has ever seen. Fast as any pro, and stronger too. All the papers say so.”
Thomas smiled broadly at the audacity of this young Turk, but most of all, because he just might be right. “The local papers say so, Will.”
“And The Telegraph. And The Sun. Look, Mr. Skipper Thomas, why don't you just get on with it? You want me to play for you; I want to play for you. So cut through it. How much are you willing to pay, sir?”
“Come on, Will, dribble past me. If you think you can. You're the next Cruyff, isn't that right?”
Skipper Thomas and Will were the only ones who stayed on the pitch this late after practice. It was the same thing night after night, practice after practice. Thomas had never seen such maniacal desire in a player, even a young one. Will was indeed an incredible striker, a natural goal scorer.
“What'll you give me if I do? What's in it for me?”
“Twenty pounds,” Skipper said and spat.
Will laughed and walked away. He was bare-chested, shaking his long blond hair. “I wouldn't fuck your wife for twenty pounds.”
“All right. Fifty pounds. But you have to get right past me.”
Will turned back, took the challenge. Thomas tossed him the ball; Will trapped it with his feet. Real casuallike. Acting like a dumb, cocky little shit.
Skipper Thomas crouched, but stayed on the balls of his feet. “Whenever you're ready, son.”
He was ready now, and he wasn't anyone's son.
Will feinted left, quickly feinted right, headed directly at his coach and then, with fist toward the sky, middle finger raised in the universal gesture of contempt, glided past him as though Skipper Thomas's shoes were glued to the grass.
“Keep your money,” he said and laughed at the coach. “I won't need it where I'm going.”
Will played two years for the Rangers before his contract was bought by Liverpool, perennial champions of the English League's First Division, for one point five million pounds. He was already the biggest star in England. In his first year he was the League's leading scorer and was barely edged out as Footballer of the Year. He was nineteen years old.
The papers glowingly wrote about his “great inner fierceness,” his “uncanny ability to actually fly across the pitch.” “He can swoop like a golden eagle, then fly off to his natural aerie—the opposition's goal,”