Brian Mcgrory - The Nominee

He handed me the ball in silence. Not much of a talker, Mike. I took it and raced left, stutter-stepped, and faked a baseline drive. He, of course, completely went for the fake, but when I reversed into the middle, he stuck his leg out and I sprawled across the court, the ball bouncing vacantly toward the shadows of the building. Rather than apologize or offer to help me up, he trotted after the ball.

“Foul,” I said when he got back. He gave me a disgusted look, then contemptuously bounced me the ball.

Just as I was about to dribble, a glint caught the corner of my eye, and I whirled around to my left to see that Baker had roamed from half-court to courtside, and was slowly walking toward me with a metal object in his mouth that was shimmering in the floodlight.

As he got closer, I saw what it was: a leather holster holding a silvery revolver, with the barrel sticking out of one side of his muzzle and the handle out of the other. Mike hadn’t noticed yet. Baker’s tail was wagging hard, like he was proud to show me what he had just found.

“Your gun loaded?” I asked, my voice low and even, not wanting to set off any panic.

He looked at Baker and saw what I was talking about. “Fucking dog.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “Tell me if the fucking gun is loaded, and tell me fast.”

Granted, it’s not normal for me, or for that matter, anyone I know, to threaten a stranger in the remote dark of lonely night, let alone a stranger who’s packing what appears to be a Colt.45, even if that Colt.45 happens to be temporarily in the custody of my dog. But the potential for harm to Baker overcame any fear, and I was about to put my fist through this guy’s greasy nose if I didn’t get an answer fast.

“It’s not.”

I knelt down and beckoned the dog to me. “Drop it, Baker,” I said, and he nuzzled against my knee, proudly looked at me and released the gun. “Good boy. Thank you.”

I had done a story on the gun industry once, and had learned how to load a weapon, so I checked and realized that Mike was, in fact, lying, and that this gun held a magazine clip filled with.45 caliber bullets.

I gingerly pulled it out and placed the magazine in my sweatpants pocket. I leaned down and picked up the basketball. I dropped the gun on the asphalt pavement, the clank echoing off the nearby brick of the schoolhouse.

“Game’s over,” I announced as I turned and walked away, Baker at my side.

It was about twenty strides to the gate that led to the side street that would bring me to safety, and each step felt like Neil Armstrong plodding across the moon, only I think Neil felt more secure up there in his spacesuit than I did in the North End of Boston in my sweatsuit.

I heard him say — or maybe it was spit — the word “asshole,” so I turned and looked back at him to make sure he wasn’t loading his weapon. It was then that he flashed me a look of hatred that I didn’t yet understand but wouldn’t soon forget.

When we hit the street, Baker and I broke out into a healthy jog. The problem was, we didn’t yet understand what we were running from.

Monday, April 23

THERE WAS SOMETHING INTRINSICALLY nice about the roar of the jet engines, the clouds whisking past beneath us, the slight twitches of the plane as it sliced through the sunlit sky at breakneck speed with a precise destination in mind. Nicer still was my sense — right or wrong — that I was helping my newspaper and its founding family grab hold of its own destiny. When I am a reporter, asking questions, negotiating answers, probing lies and seeking truths, I am most at home with myself, even amid the most tumultuous times. Perhaps a psychotherapist would have a field day with that, but such was not my concern right now.

Time was. My flight was scheduled to be on the ground at tenA.M. I figured it would take about an hour to disembark, rent a car, and find the home of retired Boston homicide detective Hank Sweeney in a backwater town called Marshton. I was hoping to be back at the airport for a 1:20P.M. flight back to Logan. Missing the plane meant missing hours of valuable reporting and writing time the next day on the Randolph story, not to mention being there to help Paul at his time of greatest need. It wasn’t an option.

By the way, I don’t know of a nice way to say this, so I’ll be direct: I hate Florida. Well, I don’t mean to say I hate Florida as in,I hate Florida. I actually like Florida from the perspective of another state, what with the Everglades and all those nice, active retirees and the weather that’s warm even when it’s cold enough in Boston to freeze a tennis ball inside a golden retriever’s mouth. I just hate what the state represents — the last stop before death, the constant sense of ailment, a place with so little history catering to people who have almost nothing but. Perhaps depressing is the right word.

But not today. Today it meant rejuvenation, action, and most important, today it might reveal answers to some pretty important questions. That, of course, all depended on Hank Sweeney, or perhaps my ability — never to be underestimated, mind you — to make Mr. Sweeney dependable.

The drive from the airport due west to Marshton in my standard-issue red Pontiac Grand-Am took me past the usual array of Taco Bells, Napa auto parts stores, trailer parks, and then there were the retirement communities with names like Sleepy Hollow and Shady Elms. They could have been cemeteries, these senior complexes, a thought that made me depressed all over again. I decided then that if I ever reached old age, I would retire to some temperate college town in Texas or California, wear nothing but plaid shirts and checked pants, and spend my dying days leering at young co-eds who would think me either cute or harmless — or on my best days, both.

I didn’t find the drive particularly interesting, but I wondered if the gentleman behind me did. I wondered that because he had been following me in a white Cavalier ever since I left the West Palm Beach airport. He’d drift back a few cars, then catch up, fall back, get close, just like in the occasional action movie. But to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Jack Flynn, you’re no Bruce Willis.

I was cruising along a particularly desolate stretch of the divided road that ran ramrod straight due west from the airport when I first noticed the tail. According to Rand McNally, I was about fifteen miles outside of Marshton. I tried to think about what Bob Woodward might do in this situation. He’d probably tell his chauffeur to slow down, so I slowed down. I noticed in the rearview mirror that the Cavalier, directly behind me now, slowed down as well.

Next, Woodward would probably tell his driver to speed up, so I sped up, and sure enough, the Cavalier did as well. I slowed down, he slowed down. This was fun, as long as we remained in separate cars about thirty yards apart with no one-sided gunplay involved, which I couldn’t guarantee would be the case.

Truth is, the road out here was not what you’d call congested, which wasn’t good, because what I really wanted were people, under the theory that crimes were less likely to be committed in front of witnesses, mob hits in crowded steakhouses with names like Sparks being the obvious exception.

Looking back, not in my rearview mirror but in life, I can’t provide an adequate explanation for my actions of the next few minutes, though an offer of temporary insanity might well fit the bill. It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but hell, neither was going into the newspaper biz, what with the chronically low pay, the long hours, the high divorce rates, the lack of public esteem. But sometimes you follow your gut or your heart and you do these things anyway. And sometimes, goddammit, things turn out all right.