CHAPTER 57
Murray awoke to screams. Vallie was standing in his door, hysterical. “He’s not moving! He’s not moving! Do something, Murray!”
He found a pair of gym shorts, pulled them on, and almost fell over. His head was splitting and his vision was blurred, but suddenly none of that mattered. He raced to the other bedroom where Vallie stood gawking at Sooley on the bed, partially covered by a sheet.
He was wearing gym shorts and nothing else, and he was as stiff as a board. Murray jumped on the bed and shook him vigorously while he pleaded with him to wake up. Tiff and Susan watched in horror as Murray tried everything to revive him. Finally, he stopped and backed away, and the four of them gawked at the lifeless figure.
“What did you give him?” Murray yelled at Vallie.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing. He was drinking and there was a little pot, but nothing. I swear, Murray, I gave him nothing and I didn’t see him take anything.”
He called the front desk and pleaded for a doctor and an ambulance. He called Reynard’s cell but there was no answer. “Get dressed,” he barked at the girls, and he pulled a sheet over his friend. He sat on the edge of the bed and started sobbing.
Two medics rushed in, followed by a man in a dark suit, security. As Vallie, Tiff, and Susan sat on the sofa and wiped their faces, and with Murray hovering, they checked him with a stethoscope and grimly shook their heads. A second man in a suit, the house detective, arrived and surveyed the situation. He began asking questions. None of them had given the deceased any drugs, they swore. The detective did not believe them. Murray assured him that his friend was not a drug user. Sure they had been drinking, and too much, and they had smoked pot, but nothing more serious. He did not believe them.
When Reynard finally arrived, he almost fainted when he realized what was happening.
The detective saw a pair of shorts in a chair and asked who owned them. Vallie said Sooley had worn them the night before. He went through the pockets and found a single pill. One look, and he said, “Ecstasy. Where did he get it?”
The four, and Reynard, were clueless. And no one believed them.
* * *
·?·?·
They wrestled his body onto a stretcher, one built for average people but not long enough for a man who stood six feet eight. They covered him with sheets and tucked them tight, but his bare feet dangled off the end.
“Don’t leave this room,” the detective growled as he followed the stretcher.
When they were gone, Reynard looked at Murray and said, “We have to make some calls. I’ll call Arnie. You call your mother. We have a PR guy who’ll prepare something. It’s gonna be awful.”
“It already is,” Vallie said, sniffing.
Murray’s thoughts were an incomprehensible mash of fear, blame, disbelief, dread, loss, and excuses. The only thing that was clear was that he could not imagine calling Miss Ida. He finally stood, wiped his cheeks again, walked to the other bedroom, with his phone, and closed the door.
* * *
·?·?·
Ida left her office in tears and drove home where Ernie was waiting. They were almost too stunned to speak, so they sat in their dark den with ESPN on mute, waiting for the news to break. At 12:02, a bulletin interrupted SportsCenter, and there was the smiling face of Samuel Sooleymon, his death in the Bahamas now confirmed. Age eighteen, dead from a possible overdose.
The news spread fast and their phones began buzzing.
Ecko Lam was in Juba, scouting talent for his summer Under 18 team and getting it ready for the showcase, when his wife called with the news. He went to a locker room and closed the door. Later, he sat his players down and told them that Sooley, their new national hero, was dead.
Lonnie Britt was in his car on a Milwaukee freeway when he took the call from Jason Grinnell. He barely managed to pull onto the shoulder where he sat for a long time and tried to collect his thoughts.
On campus, a group of students gathered in front of The Nest and sat on the front steps crying. It was a Sunday in June and the gym was locked. Other students drove by and joined them. Two more showed up with the first bouquet of flowers and a poster with Sooley’s smiling face in the middle of it. Handwritten above in bold letters were the words: “So Long Sooley. Love Always.” The crowd grew and before long a news van from a Durham station stopped with a crew sniffing for a story, but the students refused to say anything on camera.
After being released by the police, Reynard got his group together and most of them left Nassau as soon as possible. He and Murray stayed behind to do whatever one does with a dead body. On the flight home, the Gulfstream was as somber as a morgue.