Otto Penzler - Murder At the Foul Line

She did that now: I was the situation, and she sized me up, fixed me with that icy glare as I stepped into her path. “What do you want?” she asked, but I was sure she already knew.

“Team’s not doing well,” I said. “Championship shot seems to be gone this year.”

“They never had one. Not without Nat.”

“That’s not true, is it? They had a damn good shot without him and that was the problem.”

Nora Day’s eyes flashed. “What the hell do you want?” she asked again.

“Were those Damon’s last words?” I said. “Did he say, ‘Nora, what the hell do you want?’ just before you shot him?”

She regarded me silently. When she finally answered, it was in a voice as cold as the winter night we stood in. “No. No, he said, This team’s mine. You and your gimp brother ought to be looking around for someplace else to play.’”

“And that’s it? You were afraid Damon would replace Nathaniel as the Knicks’ go-to guy?”

“Afraid?” From her height she looked down at me as she always had at the world. “No, I wasn’t afraid . New York loves Nat. When he comes back no one will remember Damon Rome ever existed.”

“Then why?”

Nora Day looked up at the darkened Garden, out at the empty street. “That ring is Nat’s,” she said. “For eight years we’ve been promising New York a championship. We’ll deliver.”

“You’ll deliver.” I nodded. “Not Damon Rome.”

“That ring is Nat’s,” she repeated.

“He’d have had one if they’d won this year. He’s a Knick, playing or not.”

“He wouldn’t have earned it. He wouldn’t have been the one to bring it home.”

“And New York would have known that. Everyone would have known the Knicks could do it without Nathaniel.”

Lights in the stairwells of the Garden began snapping off, now that the players and the fans were gone. I hunched into my jacket; a wind had come up. Nora Day said, “Everyone? You really think I care about everyone and what they know?”

I didn’t answer. A car rolled by; at the end of the block a drunk staggered, not sure where he was going. Nora said softly, “Nat would have known.”

“Would have known what? That other people can play the game, too? I got the feeling he knows that already. It doesn’t seem to bother him.”

“He would have known,” her words came slowly, “that he was expendable.”

I looked at her eyes. In my mind I saw those eyes, over the years, fixed on the weaknesses in the Knicks’ offense, the holes in their defense. I thought about how, over each season, those weaknesses had been covered and those holes filled by skills Nathaniel polished up.

“You were a great player,” I said. “A legend. But when you came out of school, you had nowhere to go.”

She stared at me steadily. A sheet of old newspaper brushed the sidewalk as it blew up to us, and then swirled past.

“Get out of my way,” Nora Day said. She cut around me, strode down the block.

I kept pace, said nothing, until finally, without slowing, she asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have nothing.”

“That’s not true. My fault, I didn’t check you out the first time around, but I did today: you have a permit for a Smith & Wesson.38. The one they found has no numbers, but still, where’s yours? Could you produce it if you had to?”

She wheeled on me, glaring.

“And your car,” I said. “Everyone in New York knows you don’t go up to the house in Connecticut during the season, but you went that night. So your doorman here wouldn’t see you come in late, right? But the car-you took it out of the garage right after the game. And then parked it on the street two blocks from here. The police can get your E-ZPass records. They’ll show what time you actually left New York.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“I have a witness. A kid who was considering jacking your car, until he saw you walking toward it. About two a.m.”

“It’s still nothing. All of this, it’s nothing.”

“That won’t take you far. The police can see what I saw, once they look. They’ll figure it out, too.”

I said that, but I wasn’t sure it was true, if I didn’t point them in the right direction. Nora Day’s face stretched into a cold smile. She turned, walked away without looking back. I stopped where I was, watched her stride, arrow-straight, down the empty sidewalk. I wondered what it felt like to know, absolutely know, what the right play was.

I never found out. At the diner the next morning I heard the news: in the middle of the night, on her way to her secluded Connecticut home, Nora Day’s SUV, running much too fast over a deserted stretch of highway, had jumped off the road, hit a tree, smashed like a tin can. Another tragedy for the Knicks, people said; my God, what are they, cursed? And it’s strange, said the guy at the counter next to me, I thought she stayed in the city during the season, only used the country place during the All-Star break, the summer, things like that. Yeah, said the waitress, pouring us both more coffee, and I read once she was a real careful driver. Nathaniel used to go nuts anytime they had to go someplace together, because of how slow and careful she took it, that’s what I read. Well, said the other guy, lucky they weren’t together last night. You can write off the Knicks this season, he said, but with Nathaniel healthy next year, they’ll be back. This’ll be hard on him, but he’s got the stuff. You think? said the waitress. I mean, she’s his sister. Well, sure he’ll miss her, the guy said, but he’ll find out he don’t need her, as a coach, I mean. They both looked at me, but I was busy with my coffee. From the cash register by the window, the owner nodded his agreement. Yeah, he said. Yeah, she was great. But she wasn’t indispensable.

Scottie Pippen elbowed him in the grill when the ref wasn’t looking, busted him so hard that Shorty felt tears swarming into his eyes like he was still a little kid playing B-ball back in the projects.

“Wha’d you do that for?’ Shorty yelled, but the pack was already kickin’ downcourt and Pippen never heard. Must have been an accident. Scottie was his friend. Besides, who played for blood in a charity National Basketball Association All-Star Game at Madison Square Garden?

They were all his friends. All the stars. Chris Webber, Shaquille O’Neal, Karl Malone, Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett, John Stockton, Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell. The top of the top, the best of the best. ESPN called them the finest ten players ever in one game. Webber, O’Neal, Malone, Iverson, Garnett, Stockton, Houston, Pippen, and Shorty O’Tool, who had come a long, long way from hooping ratball in the hood.

Some guys bitched about wasting their downtime on charity. Said they needed the rest. Who wanted to tear his ACL or bust a finger for nothing? But their agents said do it, their business managers said do it, and their publicity guys said do it. Even Shorty’s mother said do it: take folks’ minds off the gambling thing.

Besides, All Stars got tons of TV face time; and dinner with the mayor; and lunch with the president. Then, down in Florida, the whole Disney World wide open for them and their folks. Just for playing for free for fifty million fans national and twenty thousand screaming in the Garden.

Loose ball! Shorty floated through the pack, scooped it like an orange in his huge hand. Too far out to shoot? Think so, Latrell? He faked right, like he was heading in. Think so, Chris? He faked right again, like he was fading back.

Psyched ’em out so far away,

Two by two, like Dr. J.

Sprewell and Webber were still guarding air when Shorty powered off the floor. Jumper. In!