Inside The Lines
Chapter Four: Don't Stop
"Don't stop in Northeast Lazaga… Ever,” muttered the girl who worked with the Lazaga State Tigers staff along with Zara Magyar, specifically in recruiting. While Zara had been brought onto the staff as a freshman and had immediately excelled in her role at helping the staff bring recruits in, the other girl was the one who had been doing this for slightly longer. Morgan Leth was a junior who had been doing the work of being one of the school’s recruiters since she was in her own freshman year, and she was well known by assistant coach Jasper Holst and the rest of his recruiting staff as the one that was one of the best in the business. If Morgan was telling her not to stop somewhere, it was probably wise to listen. After all, she had worked around these streets for years, and spent plenty of time with recruits from the area at their arenas and around their houses for visits.
“What's going to happen? It's not like I'm in a rush to stop here, but we're going to run out of gas if we keep going. And getting stranded is worse than stopping for gas-” Zara replied, before being cut off when Morgan put a hand in the air to tell her to shut up.
“What's going to happen is that we're going to get carjacked and lose a thousand dollars worth of ‘gifts’... The recruiting budget ain't getting any bigger, and the last thing we need is to have to head back to the school and tell Jasper that we just lost everything we're supposed to deliver to the one player that can turn our program around. Do you know how big it would be if we lose this car? You're looking at the difference between another season near the bottom, and one where we can play with the best,” Morgan said, sighing and glancing out of the window with her peripheral vision, trying not to look as they neared the gas station and neared a decision. “At this point, I don't even care about getting shot. I'm only worried about them taking the car and the stuff in the back.”
“Who would ‘them’ be in this case? The guys hanging around that corner, or the guys at the gas station?”
“The guys at the corner are fine, but those guys at the gas station… They're just waiting for someone from out of town to show up, to shake them down or take their money. Trust me, Zara. I've gotten plenty of players from here to consider coming to State, and there's a reason why I won't drive when I make visits to them. Even a lot of the players themselves won't drive around the northeast side, and some of them actually live here… If I were you, I'd risk hitting empty and-”
“That's so stupid. I'm not going to risk getting stranded, if it's so dangerous around here,” stated Zara, and then she turned and headed into the gas station, pulling up to the first pump that was open, despite the hard men by the station’s store eyeing up the car and trying to calculate what part of town Zara was from. “I'm just going to act like they aren't staring and fill the tank up as fast as I can. They won't jack the car while you're still in it.”
Before Morgan could reply, Zara jumped out of the car and went to the pump, swiping a card that Jasper had given her to pay with before waiting for the tank to start filling up and looking to the side, where the men were still watching and sizing her up. It was obvious that she wasn't from this part of town, and over here, that wasn't a good thing. Especially when she was clearly a university student who had a somewhat sheltered life, or at least one that wasn't particularly challenging. If anything, it told them that she wasn't going to be fighting back if they did anything. Nervously, she glanced back to the pump. The tank wasn't filling up as fast as she thought it would, and she flinched as the men started approaching. She was able to get a closer look at them now… The three of them were wearing green athletic jackets that Zara was pretty sure were gang affiliated, and she had no idea what she was actually going to do if they hassled her.
“Hey, you, where’re you from?” asked the first man, as the three took up position around her and made it clear that they were going to give her a hard time. “Downtown? The south side? The university?”
“I'm just a student that's passing through on some business,” Zara said, putting her hands in the air innocently. “I don't have any money… I mean, I don't have any cash. Or anything of value to you-”
The man that was behind her reached into the pockets of her sweatshirt and looked around for anything, before reaching into her back jeans pocket and pulling out her wallet. He looked through it, removed all of the cash, and then handed it back to her to let her keep the credit cards that wouldn't be of much use to gang members. “You're lying to us, eh? Let's get this over with. That's a nice car that you have there, a little old but still in nice condition, and we’ll offer you a deal. Hand the keys over, nobody gets hurt, and we all leave happy,” the first man said, and Zara froze.
As a college student from the good part of town who had never had to deal with this kind of thing, she didn't know what to think or say about that. “You can't take the car, it doesn't even belong to me, I'm going to get in trouble if I don't bring it back-”
“Yeah? You're going to be dead if you don't hand the keys over,” said the second man, reaching into his waistband and pulling out a small pistol that was easily concealable but still obviously able to pack a punch. “There's no need for trouble-”
Zara tried to climb back into the car and pull off, but the man behind her caught her before she could even take a full step, and he held her from behind and kept her from moving. The second man trained his pistol on her, and the first one pulled out a knife and looked around to see how many witnesses to a potential crime there were. “Your car or your life, the choice is yours,” he stated, glaring at her as his friend kept his pistol pointed at her chest. She was ready to give up now, and she started opening her mouth to speak and tell them that the keys were still in the ignition, when…
Bang! The second man dropped dead. Morgan stood on the other side of the car, a pistol of her own trained on the first man. “Back the fuck off!” she said, sharply, holding her pistol with both hands and slowly moving around the hood of the car to get closer. “We don't want trouble, we just want to get through town without getting our car jacked… Just take the money that you already took, and go. There's no need to put more bodies on the ground today.”
There was a standoff as the men and Morgan stared at each other and considered their next options. And then, the men dispersed and the third one let go of Zara, with the first one starting to head away like the incident hadn't happened. As soon as that happened, Morgan shoved Zara into the car and then climbed back into the passenger side, slamming the door behind her. “We’ll talk later… For now, just go. We need to get the hell out of here before the sirens come, or before anyone comes to check this chaos out.”
~
It's months later, and Zara Magyar is recounting the story of that day in Northeast Lazaga to two men who are sitting across the table from her, men who work for the RCAA. Even though it isn't even a full year later, a lot of things have changed. She's not with Lazaga State’s basketball program any longer, and it's not because of her own actions, but because she carried out the orders that she was given by the coaching staff. The delivery that she and Morgan Leth made to Alexandro del Carlo, the one that had taken them from the northeast side to the Port of East Endelos to the main island of Redvale and then the city of Maris, and that had eventually convinced him to choose the Tigers over his hometown teams, had become known by some people that had done their own digging into the recruitment of del Carlo, mainly angry Marisian fans that wanted him for their own teams.
The Mount Maris and Maris Tech message boards went crazy with speculation when del Carlo showed up with a new car, and that led to digging into the Tigers team that found connections with a man that was only known as Lupo, who showed up with the staff a few times and apparently was some kind of bag man who helped to bring recruits to the team by buying things for them on behalf of the school and going through sources that were harder for the RCAA to keep tabs on. But while that worked for smaller name recruits, it was hard to keep it under the radar when you gave a car to the top recruit from the biggest city in the country.
Because of her role in the recruitment of del Carlo, she was taking the most heat from the press and the fans. She was known as his primary recruiter, the one that visited him and talked with him all the time via text, building a friendship with him that would make him want to move to Lazaga and play for the Tigers. She was also linked to being the one to deliver the car to him, because of some internet detective work that had revealed pictures of the car outside of the student apartments where she lived. Social media posts had been her undoing, as Marisian fans tied together the one picture she'd posted where the car could be seen in the background with the public knowledge that she was a part of the recruiting staff, and the publicly available pictures of her hanging out with del Carlo in both Lazaga and in his home city.
The heat had led to the school making a business decision and cutting ties with her, and with Jasper Holst saying that she was no longer working with the school in any capacity. Morgan Leth, who had been more involved with Lupo and his RCAA violations than she had, wasn't named at all in the media reports or in the amateur investigations that were going on. It wasn't that Zara hated her school now, and it wasn't that she was trying to ruin the success they were building up with Alexandro… But she felt wronged, and that was why she had willingly come forward to the RCAA, offering to tell everything that had happened, from the beginning.
Lupo had told her to run from them, but she had run towards them instead. If she was going to go down for giving recruits things that the rules said they couldn't have, she was going to make sure that Morgan and Jasper and everyone else associated with this program went down in flames too. After all, she was just the scapegoat in this. “So,” started the first RCAA investigator. “You're telling us that Morgan Leth is not just behind multiple violations, but a murderer too.”
“Yes. Now, let's continue with this story… More specifically, let's continue to after we've dropped the car off in Maris, and Alexandro has committed to us. You'll find that the list of violations doesn't end with the car.”