Harlan Coben - Shelter

I froze.

“Mickey?” It was Tyrell. He had the ball and was heading downcourt. He looked at me, puzzled. “Come on, man.”

I jogged after him, moving down to the low post. The score was 5-4, our lead. We play first team to ten by ones. No one calls fouls-you just dealt with the contact and gave it back. I wanted to walk off the court right then and there, but you just didn’t do that in pickup games. I glanced back over by the fence. The man was still wearing the aviator sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I had no doubt where he was looking.

Directly at me.

I set up on the post and called for the ball. The guy covering me was six-eight and burly. We jockeyed for position, but I knew I had to end this game quickly, before the man from Bat Lady’s house disappeared. I became a man possessed. I got the ball and drove down the middle, tossing up a baby hook over the front rim and in.

The man from Bat Lady’s house watched in silence.

I turned it up a gear, scoring the next three baskets. Three minutes later, with my team up 9-4 now, Tyrell hit me on the left block. I pump-faked, spun to my left, and nailed a fade-away banker over the outstretched hand of a guy who was nearly seven feet tall. The crowd went “ooo” when the ball fell through the hoop. Game over. Tyrell offered me a fist bump and I took it on the run.

“Some shot,” Tyrell said.

“Some pass,” I countered, heading off the court.

“Hey,” Tyrell said, “where you going?”

“I got to sit this one out,” I said.

“You kidding? It’s last game. We got a chance of sweeping.”

He knew something had to be wrong. I never sat out.

The man from Bat Lady’s house stood with the crowd behind the fence. When he saw me coming, he started to slide back and away. I didn’t want to call out, not yet anyway, so I picked up my pace. Because of the fence, I had to circle around to get to him.

Tyrell came running up behind me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’ll be right back.”

I didn’t want to break into a sprint. That would look too weird, so instead I did one of those fast-walk things. When I got around the fence, the homeless guys surrounded me, offering me high fives, encouragement, and of course, advice:

“You need to work on your left, man…”

“The drop step. Use that, see, and go baseline…”

“You gotta stick your butt out more on the box out. Like this…”

It was hard to rush through without being overtly rude, but now the man from Bat Lady’s house was almost to the street corner, moving unhurriedly but somehow fast.

I didn’t want to lose him.

“Wait!” I shouted.

He kept walking. I called out to him again. He stopped, turned, and for a second, I thought I saw the hint of a smile on his face. The heck with it. I pulled away from my wino fan base and dashed toward him. Heads turned from the suddenness of my movement. In the corner of my eye, I saw Tyrell’s father notice what was going on and follow me.

The man from Bat Lady’s house was across the street now, but I was closing the gap pretty quickly. I was maybe thirty, forty yards away from him when the black car with the tinted windows pulled up next to him.

“Stop!”

But I wasn’t going to make it. The man paused and gave me half a nod, as if to say, Nice try . Then he slid into the passenger seat and before I could do anything, the car sped out of sight.

I didn’t bother to take down the license plate. I already had it.

Tyrell’s father, Mr. Waters, caught up. He looked at me with concern. “You okay, Mickey?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

He wasn’t buying it. “Do you want to tell me what that was about, son?”

Tyrell was there too now, standing next to his father. The two of them looked at me, together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and I hated myself for feeling such envy. I was grateful to this man for worrying about me, but I couldn’t help but wish it were my own father standing here, concerned about my welfare.

“I just thought I recognized him, that’s all,” I said.

Tyrell’s father still wasn’t buying.

Tyrell said, “We still got one more game to play.”

I thought about my mother heading back home after therapy, making the spaghetti and meatballs. I could almost smell the garlic bread. “It’s getting late,” I said. “I have to catch the bus back.”

“I can drive you,” Tyrell’s father said.

“Thank you, Mr. Waters, but I can’t ask you to go out of your way like that.”

“It’s no trouble. I got a case in Kasselton anyway. It’ll be nice to have the company.”

We lost the last game, in part because I was so distracted. When it was over, we all high-fived or fist-bumped good game. Mr. Waters waited for us. I took the backseat, Tyrell sat up front. He dropped Tyrell off at the two-family house they shared with Mr. Waters’s sister and her two sons on Pomona Avenue, a tree-lined street in Newark’s Weequahic section.

“You going to come down tomorrow?” Tyrell asked me.

I had been blocking on it, but now I remembered that Mom, Myron, and I were flying out in the morning to visit my father’s grave in Los Angeles. It was a trip I didn’t want to make; it was a trip I really needed to make.

“Not tomorrow, no,” I said.

“Too bad,” Tyrell said. “Fun games today.”

“Yeah. Thanks for picking me.”

“I just pick to win,” he said with a smile.

Before he got out, Tyrell leaned over and kissed his father good-bye on the cheek. I felt another pang. Mr. Waters told his son to make sure he did his homework. Tyrell said, “Yes, Dad,” in an exasperated tone I remember using myself in better days. I moved up to the front passenger seat.

“So,” Mr. Waters said to me as we hit Interstate 80, “what was with that bald guy in the black car?”

I didn’t even know where to start. I didn’t want to lie, but didn’t know how to explain it. I couldn’t tell him I’d broken into a house or any of that.

Finally I said, “He may be following me.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“No idea at all?”

“None,” I said.

Mr. Waters mulled that over. “You know that I’m a county investigator, right, Mickey?”

“Yes, sir. Is that like a cop?”

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” he said. “And I was standing next to that guy the whole time you were playing. I’d never seen him down here before. He barely moved, you know? The whole time, he just stood there in that suit. Didn’t cheer. Didn’t call out. He never said a word. And he never took his eyes off you.”

I wondered how he could tell that, what with the sunglasses and all, but I knew what he meant. We fell into silence for a moment or two. Then he said something that surprised me. “So while you guys played that last game, I took the liberty of running the guy’s license plate.”

“You mean on that black car?”

“Yes.”

I sat perfectly still.

“It didn’t come up in the system,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s classified.”

“You mean like it’s diplomatic or something?”

“Or something,” he said.

I tried to put it together but nothing was coming to me. “So what does that mean exactly?”

We pulled up to Myron’s house. He coasted to a stop and then turned to me. “The truth? I don’t know, Mickey. But it doesn’t sound good. Just please be careful, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

Mr. Waters reached into his wallet. “If you see that bald guy again, don’t go chasing him. You call me, understand?”

He handed me his card. It read JOSHUA WATERS, ESSEX COUNTY INVESTIGATOR. There was a phone number on the bottom. I thanked him and got out of the car. He pulled out and I waved good-bye. As I trudged up the walk, I thought maybe I smelled garlic but that could have been my imagination.