Otto Penzler - Murder At the Foul Line

“What are you doing? Latrell?”

Latrell goes, point-blank, “Your mama’s a strawberry.”

“Oh yeah? Your mama’s a bag bride.”

“Your mama’s a buffer.”

“Your mama’s a skeegers.”

Then Shaq nailed him right to the floor:

“You wish you was taller,

you wish you was a bailer.”

Hard to remember he was playing Madison Square Garden instead of ratball, cold hoopin’ it on busted asphalt.

“ Shorteeeeeee! ”

The ref was blowing his whistle. Manager was calling time.

“Your mama’s calling,” mocked Shaq. “She back at the fence again, going, ‘Shorteee, Shorteee, Shorteee.’”

Shorty O’Tool screwed his eyes shut and tried with all his might to get back in his zone. But when he listened for the fans it was the trucks and buses on Ninth Avenue that filled his ears. When he opened his eyes the rippling sea of fans in the bleachers had hardened into the housing project walls. Down at his feet, hoping for Nikes on gleaming hardwood, he found tattered sneakers on cracked asphalt.

Shorty walked slowly to the chain-link fence that separated the narrow playground from Ninth Avenue. His mother was standing stiff and scared with the social worker. And there was absolutely no denying that he was still only ten years old and tired to death of running.

The social worker was all his fault. He’d begged and begged his mother could he go to school. No one knew them in this neighborhood. It was safe-the project was surrounded by rich people in fancy houses with iron garden gates and bushes and Christmas wreaths hung on the doors.

School was safe, he pleaded. They’d never look for him in a school with rich kids. Finally his mother relented. And damn if in two days there isn’t a social worker all over his mother bitchin’ that the teacher says Shorty is “depressed.”

The social worker came at him with questions, right through the playground fence. He stared at his sneakers. Water running along the sidewalk smelled of fish from the wholesaler next door. He spoke when he had to.

Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. Yes ma’am. No ma’am.

She kept humming at him. “How often do you see your father?”

Shorty looked carefully at his mother. She stuck a tissue through the chain-link fence and dabbed a drop of blood from his lip. Her eyes were dead, a silent warning. Running so long, they could say what they were thinking with a look. “Don’t tell. Don’t trust her. Don’t trust no one.”

He hung his head. “No, lady. He don’t come ’round no more.”

“When did you last see him?”

Again his mother’s warning.

“I don’t remember.”

“Last year,” said his mother.

“Yeah. Christmas. He came by.” This was lies. It was making his father sound like he hadn’t held his hand when they walked down the street. Like he didn’t come home almost every night. Like they didn’t watch B-ball on TV. Like his father wasn’t gonna take him to a Knicks game the day they shot him. Like he couldn’t buy two tickets to Madison Square Garden.

“Go back to your game,” said the social worker. “I have to talk to your mother.”

Like his mother would hear her, while she was twirling her head looking everywhere to make sure they were okay.

Round ball! Coming at him. Hustling downcourt, the Garden a wall of hollering faces. Shorty O’Tool, fast break down the lane. Takes it to the rack.

Shaq yells, “Your daddy was a zoomer.”

“You lying. You don’t even know my daddy.”

“My cuz at Queensbridge tole me.”

Home. The Queensbridge project. Shorty wanted to give up and die. No way to get away. Seemed like everybody knew somebody somewhere. He looked over at the fence. The social worker was talking. His mother’s head was ducked down like a turtle. But she was watching the street.

“Cuz tole me your daddy was a zoomer.”

“My daddy never sold fake rock.”

“How you know that?” said Shaq.

“Mama told me he was a thoroughbred.”

“Thoroughbred?” Shaq laughed in his face.

Shorty’s shoulders sagged even as he forced himself to step close to the taller boy. “I’ll bust you in the grill, Shaq. My mama don’t lie.”

“Why you callin’ me Shaq? My name’s Junior.”

“Knuckle up!”

Junior Brown laughed again. “Knuckle up? Who you kidding, Shorty? You can’t scrap a lick.”

“I can’t care how big you are, Junior. Knuckle up. My mama don’t lie.”

“Oh yeah? Well, tell me this, before I clean your clock. If your daddy was a thoroughbred that sold good dope, how come he got popped?”

Shorty couldn’t speak. It was like the wind got kicked out of him. And suddenly he needed help so bad he could cry. He looked around.

The ref was curled up under a broken bench, hugging an empty bottle of Colt 45. He looked at the other kids, looked for a friend. But he was newjack, and they didn’t know him. They were scoping his tears and gasfacing him, waiting to watch Junior Brown wax his ass. Junior stood a head taller. He had fists all knuckly, sharp-edged like crushed beer cans.

“My mama don’t lie,” Shorty said. Trembling, he raised his fists.

A big kid rolled up. Twelve years old, too old for B-ball with the little guys. He had a smooth round face and a kind smile. He’d had his head shaved for lice, bald as Michael Jordan. “Yo, Junior, give the little guy a break. All of you. Just play ball and chill.”

All the kids stared at him. Nobody moved. Till Michael Jordan lifted Junior Brown off the court by his shirt and said in his face, “ Get out there and hoop! ”

Junior, Lester, Enrique, and Shawn ran onto the court. Shorty hung back, trying to see where his mother had gone. Michael Jordan nudged him, whispered, “Go on, get out there. I got my eye on you. Me and Magic Johnson are starting a new squad. All-Star All-Stars.

“The best of the rest.

They dream on my team.”

“All right!”

Shorty pulled the game back around him like putting on a coat. Fans were hollering, getting wild. Up in the project walls, the windows were melting into a cheering blur. Roaring, louder than the bus and the fish trucks.

Round ball! Coming at him, fills his hands like his hands and basketballs were made in the same factory, like computers shaped them to fit, like he was born to jump .

Missed. Rim ball. Shorty’s there for the rebound, drives around Shaq, takes Scottie Pippen to the rack. Up and… Dunk!

Can’t hear himself think over the cheering. “Shorty!” they’re hollering. “Shorrr-tee! Shorrr-tee!”

He waves up at the stands and sees twenty thousand fans going wild. All but one. One’s just staring.

“Mama!” He looks for his mother. She’s watching the other way.

One out of twenty thousand is still as ice. Watching, tracking him, tracking Shorty O’Tool like he’s a cat and Shorty’s a rat. A face so still that all the other faces seem to dissolve and blend into one thin sheet of cloth, like curtains blowing from an open window.

Shaquille O’Neal yells, “Look out. Where he going?”

The big Lincoln Navigator is circling the court, rolling right through the stands. People are running and screaming. It bounces over the guardrail onto the court. “Run, Shorty! Run!” Shaq throws an arm over his shoulder, screaming, “Run, run.” But Shorty is frozen to the floor. It’s not possible. This can’t be happening. Right here in the Garden.

“Shorty! Run!”

His mother screams. He sees her on the edge of the court, clawing the chain-link fence, screaming, “Run, run,” so hard that she doesn’t see another scarface creeping up behind her.