A Scourge of Vipers (21 page)

“The state police are hunting Mario,” I said. “They think he's good for the Templeton and Romeo Alfano murders. If he keeps his mouth shut, I doubt they can make the Templeton charge stick. But Alfano? The cops aren't saying much about it, so I'm not so sure about that one.”

“Aw, fuck.”

“I thought you should hear this from me before it hits the paper.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mulligan.”

“The cops probably aren't the only ones looking for him, Whoosh,” I said. “The Jersey gambling interests must be pissed about Alfano, and you
know
they want their briefcase full of cash back.”

“Humpf.”

“If you're in touch with him, you ought to tell him to turn himself in.”

“He rang me up a couple days ago,” Zerilli said. “Asked me if I could float him a loan, and could I put him with a guy who could fix him up with a good phony ID.”

“He's got the two hundred grand he took when he shot Alfano,” I said. “What the hell does he need a loan for?”

“He swears he doesn't have it.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“The way he tells it, he bolted from the hotel room right after you and McCracken left. He claims Alfano was still breathing.”

“Believe that?”

“I don't know what the fuck to believe.”

“Did you give him money and help him with the fake ID?”

“He's my late brother's kid, Mulligan.”

“Any idea where he is?”

“No.”

“If you did, would you tell me?”

“You shittin' me? Fuck, no.”

I heard the bone snap in Shortstop's jaws. His eyes, narrow with suspicion, followed me as I rose from the chair and turned toward the door. And then he growled, the sound a low rumble in his throat.

 

33

Friday night, Joseph asked if he could tag along with me to the Saturday morning basketball tryouts.

“Why would you want to?” I asked.

“Ain't got nothin' better to do.”

Judging by the empties heaped next to the couch, I didn't think there was much chance he'd actually get up for it, but the next morning, he surprised me.

As we scrimmaged, he sat behind the bench in dark glasses and sipped from a Thermos. Inside was his homemade hangover remedy, a slurry of green tea, banana, raw eggs, and crushed vitamin B tablets.

Three seats away, a slim woman in tan shorts and a yellow tank top–draped well-muscled legs over a seat back and sipped coffee from a paper cup. Beside her, a little boy, maybe three years old, played a video game on a tablet. His mom reminded me a little of Yolanda. During a break in the action, I couldn't help but stare.

Jefferson, the former Hope High standout, gave me a nudge.

“Don't get your hopes up, grandpa. She's taken.”

“You sacrificed a lot for them, Keenan.”

“They're worth it, man,” he said. “You got no idea how lucky I am.”

Which made me like him a little more.

This morning, the coaches had put Jefferson and Benton, the flashy point guard, on the same team. Separately, each had more talent than the rest of us. Together, they were better than all the rest of us combined. Jefferson was in constant motion without the ball. Benton drove and dished. My team, which included Sears and Krueger, never had a chance.

Halfway through the game, we were down by eighteen. Sears, who'd drawn the assignment to cover Benton, started clutching and grabbing, giving the point guard the opportunity to show off his free-throw shooting. Krueger, assigned to guard Jefferson, seemed to have given up, doing little more than watching as the kid drilled long jumpers and blew by him to sky toward the rim. Each time Jefferson threw down a thunderous dunk, his wife let out a lonely cheer.

When the clutching and grabbing didn't work, Sears got rougher with Benton, shooting elbows into the point guard's ribs. I expected a fistfight as soon as Benton retaliated.

Instead it was Krueger who suddenly lost it, grabbing Jefferson by both shoulders and hurling him to the floor. The kid bounced up and they squared off, Krueger throwing a wild left that whizzed past Jefferson's ear. I jumped in, planted the flat of my hand against Krueger's chest, and shoved him backward. He knocked my hand away, tossed me aside as if I were an annoying child, and charged Jefferson.

Suddenly Joseph materialized between them. Krueger slammed into him and bounced off.

“You're gonna have to go through me,” Joseph said.

“Let him come,” Jefferson shouted. “I ain't scared of that bitch.”

Joseph ignored him and kept his eyes on Krueger.

My friend was a big guy by normal standards, but Krueger had him by five inches. The power forward smirked and threw a roundhouse left. The former bouncer blocked it with his right, pounded Krueger's midsection with a left hook, and finished him with a right cross to the jaw. Krueger folded like a bad poker hand and crumpled to the hardwood.

It took the coaches twenty seconds to revive him. When he came to, they grabbed him by the armpits and pulled him to his feet.

“You're done for today,” Coach Martin said. “Go take a shower and head on home.”

When the excitement was over, Martin asked me to work on jump shooting with Benton and Jefferson while he ran the remaining seven players through some drills at the other end of the court. I didn't ask, but I figured Martin saw things the way I did—that Benton and Jefferson were the real deal and that the rest of us were along for the ride.

I fetched a spare hoop I'd found in the locker room, laid it upside down on the sideline, and handed each player a basketball.

“Set them down inside the rim,” I said.

So they did. Both balls both fit snugly inside the iron.

“What does this tell you?” I asked.

“That a shot doesn't have to be perfect to go in,” Benton said.

“That's right,” I said. “A regulation basketball is a hair over nine inches in diameter, and the hoop is twice that size. That means you've got plenty of room for error. I like to keep that in mind. It gives me confidence. Helps me stay relaxed.”

Then I had them pick up the balls and get on their knees. I stood four feet in front of them and raised the rim over my head.

“If you toss the ball straight up at the hoop, what's going to happen?” I asked.

“Come on, man,” Jefferson said. “You think we're eight years old or somethin'. We know what's gonna happen.”

“So tell me.”

“It's going to hit the front rim and bounce the fuck off,” Jefferson said.

“Right,” I said, “so why do you do that?”

“I do?”

“Not exactly,” I said, “but your arc is inconsistent. Sometimes you don't get enough air under the ball. When your arc is shallow, the rim looks like a narrow oval from the ball's point of view. This makes the target smaller, increasing the likelihood that your shot will clang off the rim and bounce out. But when the arc is right, the ball rises above the rim and comes almost straight down, doubling or tripling the odds that the shot will go in.”

“We know this shit, grandpa,” Benton said.

“Sure,” I said. “Both of you do. But knowing and doing aren't the same thing.”

“Is my arc inconsistent, too?” Benton asked.

“No,” I said. “You've got that part down. Your problem is your release.”

“Oh, yeah? What's wrong with it?”

“Sometimes your right elbow flies out,” I said. “You need to practice keeping it tucked close to your head. And remember not to rush your shot. Always take a fraction of a second to get both feet squared to the basket.”

“When the defense is all over me, I don't have time for that.”

“That's what passes are for,” I said.

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

“Now just sit there for a few minutes and watch my form,” I said.

I dragged two carts full of basketballs over and started firing them up from twenty-five feet. Fourteen swished through the strings. Three others hit the back rim, bounced straight up, and came down through the hoop.

“Why did the shots that hit the rim go in?” I asked them.

“Because you put a lot of rotation on the ball,” Jefferson said.

“Do we need to work on that, too?” Benton asked.

“It's not a big issue for either of you,” I said, “but you could both be a bit more consistent.”

Together, we collected the loose balls and returned them to the carts.

“Okay,” I said. “Start shooting. And Benton?”

“Yeah?”

“Don't rush, okay?”

Forty minutes later, we were still at it.

“How long are we going to do this?” Jefferson asked.

“Until Coach tells us to stop,” I said. “You should both take a hundred jumpers every day. Pay attention to your form on every shot, and eventually muscle memory will take over. Then you won't have to think about arc or spin or whether you're square to the basket anymore.”

“A hundred shots
every
day?”

“Ray Allen's the best jump shooter in NBA history, guys, and he
still
does that.”

“If we do, think we'll get as good as Allen?” Benton asked.

“Don't talk crazy,” I said.

“As good as you, then?” Jefferson said.

“Of course not,” I said, and they both laughed. “As far as I can tell, the jump shot is the only flaw in your games. Work on that, and maybe, just maybe, you won't have to sling burgers anymore.”

*   *   *

After I showered and dressed, I called Yolanda from the locker room.

“How about dinner tonight?” I asked. “I've got something to celebrate.”

“Don't tell me you made the team!”

“Not that.”

“What, then?”

“The story you said I should write? It's leading the Sunday paper tomorrow.”

“Great. Hope I'm right about it getting the Providence cops to ease up on you.”

“So where shall we eat?”

At first, she didn't say anything. I wasn't sure if she was sorting through a mental checklist of restaurants or deciding on the best way to let me down.

“I do want to see you again,” she finally said, “but I'm not sure I'm ready yet. How about a rain check?”

“It's not raining, Yolanda. It's a beautiful spring day. But it would be more beautiful if I could spend some of it with you. Besides, if we wait, I probably won't be in a celebratory mood.”

“Why not?”

“Because once the story hits the streets, I'm probably going to get fired.”

“What? Why would they fire you for writing a page-one story?”

“I'll explain over dessert.”

*   *   *

The maître d' at Andino's seated us at a table for two with a view of Atwells Avenue, the main thoroughfare in the city's Italian district. Beside us was a pastel mural depicting the great little restaurant in a row of other eateries. I'd spruced up for the occasion, dragging a comb through my hair and donning a blue blazer over my Dustin Pedroia Red Sox T-shirt. Yolanda was sheathed in a low-cut, yellow silk dress designed by someone who knew how to make me lose my mind. She was still wearing the scales-of-justice pendant I'd given her. It fell in the valley between her breasts, as if I needed another reason to look
there.

“I've missed you,” I said.

“It's been less than a week.”

“The state I'm in, that feels like a long, long time.”

“Don't,” she said.

“I shouldn't tell you how I feel?”

She dropped her eyes to the table and drew a breath.

“At least wait till we have some wine.”

She ordered a bottle of something white and expensive to go with our meal, a snail salad appetizer and linguini in clam sauce for her, clams Giovanni and shrimp fra diavolo for me. When the first course arrived, she helped herself, as usual, to a morsel from my plate.

Yolanda steered the conversation to safer territory, her work and mine, so I filled her in on why my story was sure to cause trouble at the paper. One bottle of wine led to another, and by the time the waiter cleared our plates away, both of us were a little drunk.

As we sipped our after-dinner cappuccinos, she finally got around to talking about us. But not in the way I hoped.

“People are staring,” she said.

“At you?”

“At the two of us.”

“I haven't noticed. I've been concentrating on you.”

“I hate it,” she said.

“Hard to blame them, don't you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we were in Miami or New York City, nobody would look at us twice,” I said, “but in Providence, you and I are a sight.”

“I know
why
it happens,” she said. “But that doesn't make me comfortable with it.”

I tore my eyes away from her and took a look around. A couple of tables away, an elderly gentleman, dressed for dinner in a tailored black suit, was eating alone. He glanced at us, saw that I'd caught him looking, smiled warmly, and turned back to his pasta. To his right, two young people on a date were stealing furtive looks at us and whispering to each other. A few yards to our left, three men in suits, probably here for a business meeting, couldn't keep their eyes off Yolanda. Halfway across the room, a middle-aged couple dining with their three preteen children were staring with open hostility. Nobody else seemed to be paying us any attention.

“The old guy over there approves of us,” I said. “The young couple, the ones giggling now, are just curious. And the three businessmen to our right aren't looking at
us.
They're looking at you because you're beautiful.”

“What about the couple with the three kids?”

“They think we're an abomination.”

Yolanda turned in her seat and locked eyes with them. The woman averted her gaze, but her husband didn't look away. I pushed my chair back from the table, strolled over to where they were sitting, and loomed over them.