Otto Penzler - Murder At the Foul Line

Coach begins to perk up toward the end. I’m giving him an out and he knows it. Sure, Menands is a minimum security prison, but it’s still a prison. Assaults among the populace are uncommon, but they happen. Murders are quite rare, but they also happen. I mean, if a murder occurs in the dining hall, do you blame the cook?

When Buchanan finally dismisses me, I plant a seed. “Coach, we’re gonna play a makeup game, right? This is for the championship and we were tied.”

I’m back in living unit 8, locked down, me and the rest of the starting five. Hafez Islam, our starting two-guard, is busting my balls, which I don’t need. Hafez is a prison-converted Black Muslim, the only one at Menands, which has a majority-white population. I’ve never seen him when he wasn’t angry about something, and from time to time (when that anger was directed at me) I was tempted to slap his mouth shut. Unfortunately, our stay at Menands depends as much on our nonviolent behavior off the court as on our game-day ferocity. Which meant that I mostly have to eat it.

“I know you up to somethin’, Bubba,” he tells me. “You coulda took that rebound, only you tipped it out. What’s up wit’ that? You fuckin’ wit’ us?”

“What I’m up to is none of your Allah-damned business, Hafez. In fact, you’re disrespecting me by asking the question.” I pause long enough to let the message hit home. “And you better think about something else. If Warden Brook decides that we had anything to do with Spooky gettin’ capped, he’s gonna ship us back where we came from. In your case, if I remember right, that was Green Haven.”

I gather my troops for a team meeting and explain that there had to be five hundred people watching us when Spooky was killed. “You all are just feeling guilty because you’re criminals and you expect to be accused of any crime that takes place in the neighborhood. I want you to put that kinda thinking out to your minds because a week from today we’re most likely gonna be playing a makeup game. And this game, my brothers, we’d best not lose. Understand what I’m tellin’ ya? We cop the trophy, Warden Brook ain’t gonna send us nowhere. But if we lose, we’ll be on the bus before we take a shower.”

Somber nods, sober looks. Now we’re all on the same page.

At eight o’clock, before I have a chance to meet with my surviving partners, Roger “Road” Miller and Hong “Tiny” Lee, I’m called to the office of Warden Odell Brook. Brook was a Notre Dame shooting guard who’d been drafted in the second round by the Detroit Pistons, only to blow out his knee in a schoolyard game before he signed a contract.

“You start that fight, Bubba?”

It was the same question Deputy Buchanan had asked, but this time I put a different spin on it. “I had a bad game, Warden. Real bad. And the moron was in my face from the opening tip.”

“I saw that,” Brook admits. “He was disrespecting you big-time.”

“And I didn’t answer back, right? Even though I was tossing up bricks. Even though he was goin’ right by me.”

“Yeah, fine. You were an angel.” He waves a long blunt finger in my direction. “But that rebound, Bubba. You coulda taken it down. You know that.”

I nod agreement, then feed him the line I should have fed Hafez Islam and which I’d made up on the way to the warden’s office. “It was late in the game and we were tied. I wanted to start a fast break, see if we could get some numbers on the other end.”

“Bubba, there was nobody within ten feet of that tip-out.”

“What can I say, Warden? I mean, nothin’ went right for me the whole game. Somehow I thought Spooky was there. I thought I saw him.”

“You’re so full of shit it’s leaking out of your ears. I can smell it, Bubba. It’s stinkin’ up my office.”

Ever the humble convict, I lower my head before disagreeing. “Swear on my mother, Warden. When I saw the tip go out of bounds I flipped out. Like, it’s the championship game and I’ve been fucking up and now I fucked up the worst of all.” I raise my eyes, meet his gaze. “You know what I’m sayin’ here because you been there, too. I took it out on the moron, all my frustration, everything he said.” I ball my fists, don the most fearsome scowl in my repertoire. “I wanted to kill him, Warden. I wanted to put the motherfucker down. ”

I’m six inches taller than Warden Brook’s six-three, and, at 270, eighty pounds heavier. Still, he’s unimpressed by my ferocity. “You gonna have a bad game next week, Bubba? You gonna tip the ball to a phantom teammate?”

“Does that mean we’re playing?”

“If Spooky…” He pauses, starts again. “If the incident had nothing to do with the basketball game, I don’t see why we should punish the players and the fans. It doesn’t make sense.” He contemplates his hands for a moment. “As for the fight… well, you say he threw the first punch and he says you did. The officials didn’t see what happened and neither did anyone else who counts. I think the league’s gonna be inclined to call it a wash.”

So far, the conversation’s gone pretty much the way I expected. Menands is populated mainly by white-collar crooks: lawyers who raided a client’s trust fund, bankers who robbed their own banks, doctors who plundered Medicaid, boiler room operators who hung around a little too long. These are folks with money; they love to bet on sports and the persistent rumor is that the cons making book in the yard pay off to a certain deputy warden who pays off to Warden Brook. I don’t know if the rumor’s true, but when I finally respond, I’m definitely hoping.

“If you’re worried about the game, Warden, there’s something you might wanna try. You know, to help the team along.”

“And what would that be?”

“Well, you could put a little bug in the ears of the officials. I’m not talkin’ about high pressure here. I’m talkin’ about very low-key so it doesn’t get around.”

“Bubba, you wanna make your point.”

“Okay, Warden.” I lean a little closer, drop my voice. “The way it looks right now, what with all the bad attitude out there, the first hard foul next week and somebody’s gonna go off. Unless the officials take control of the game in the first two minutes. Unless they call a few touch fouls, a few offensive fouls. Unless they send a clear message.” I lean back. “Later on, the refs wanna let us play, that’ll be great.”

Though Warden Brook says, “Bubba, you don’t have a redeeming bone in your body,” his smile, as I read it, is purely admiring.

It’s after midnight when I’m finally hunkered down with Road Miller and Tiny Lee in the day area of our housing unit. There’s a forty-watt bulb over the door, enough light for the three o’clock count, but not enough for me to read the messages in my partners’ eyes.

“Talk to me,” I tell Road. “Tell me what’s on your mind. ’Cause I know you been thinkin’ about it all night.”

Roger “Road” Miller is our starting power forward. He’s a little too light for the position, especially on the defensive end, but he can elevate on the jumper and he rolls to the basket with determination. I’ve always wondered if Road’s mother deliberately named him after a white country singer. Road is ebony-skinned and proud of his heritage, but he’d once admitted to me that his nickname was derived from the Roger Miller hit “King of the Road.”

“Freddie is what’s on my mind,” he tells me. “As in Freddie fucked us.”

Freddie Morrow is the team drudge. He does everything from stacking the equipment to washing our dirty uniforms. I knew when I recruited him that he was the weak link in the chain, but I had no other way to get the coke out of the locker room.