Jump (2 page)

“I thought I mentioned that before. Collins fell asleep.”

“And the other—”

“He went out.”

“When?”

“I heard a door at some point, I just can’t remember when exactly—”

“And you went to your car then?”

“Yes.”

“You were able to drive back to the city.”

“After a while.”

“After a while?”

“I sat in my car awhile. I don’t know for how long. Then I realized my keys were inside. They must’ve fallen out of my purse.”

“So you went back inside to get them?”

“Yes. Hoping he was still asleep.”

“Was he?”

“Collins wasn’t.”

“Where was Mr. Collins?”

“He was in the living room, drinking a beer, watching some kind of pornographic movie on television.” Hannah cleared her throat. “He was watching this movie, naked, and masturbating.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

Hannah said, “He looked up at me, smiling, and said, ‘You want some more?’ I just backed away from him, started to scream—”

“Did Mr. Collins do anything to stop you from leaving after you found your keys?”

“No. He just told me to relax, I was going to wake up his neighbors.”

“Did he say anything else to you?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say, Miss Carey?”

“He said I’d been such a good sport up until then, why was I trying to spoil a perfect evening.”

“Anything else?”

“He said, ‘Why couldn’t you moan like that when I asked you to?’ ”

Ellis Adair had to slow up as he crossed the half-court line. A couple of minutes to go in practice now, everybody tired, tongues hanging out like dogs. Everybody except him. Ellis never got tired.

Jordan told him one time, right before he up and retired, “I’m already starting to feel it, Fresh. Fans might not know yet, other players might not know. But I know, babe. End of games especially. I tell my legs to do something, you know what they say sometimes? ‘Fuck you, Michael,’ that’s what they say.”

He said it would happen to Ellis, too, it happened to everybody eventually, then Ellis’d be looking for the door. It just hadn’t happened yet. Couple of minutes to go in practice, in a game, didn’t matter, Ellis was what he’d always been.

Fresh.

Ellis “Fresh” Adair.

Freshest boy out there, like fresh was cruise control for him, all the way back to Jersey City, to the playground at the Booker T. Washington projects. He smiled now to himself, seeing himself, all legs then, legs and big jug ears, getting up there so high he felt like he
could see the big city there across the river, like he could reach over and touch it. Palm it in his right hand as easy as he could palm a basketball.

Ellis kept going down the right side, feeling the play come to him.

Richie had the ball in the middle, and A.J. was on the left and there were two of them from the Blue Team, scrubs, Boyzie and Riordan, waiting for them at the foul line. Ellis could see Richie looking left the whole time, leaning that way even off the dribble, tilting everything toward A.J., like he was trying to tilt the whole damn court. Now Boyzie went that way, too, and as he did, Richie showed him his left hand, his left hand out anyway, like he was making a shovel pass. Then Riordan committed, dumb shit, going with the pass. Only there wasn’t a pass, there was nothing in Richie’s left hand, the ball was in his right hand, and now Richie was lobbing the ball toward the basket, even as he kept looking at A. J. Fine.

Ellis flew. Feeling himself smile as he did. The pictures of himself he liked best always caught him smiling.

Fresh boy.

They always wanted to know what it felt like, being able to fly that way, the way he could and Jordan could, and a few others in the past, David Thompson and Doctor J, they had flown. And Ellis would look at them, tell them how it felt, tell them it felt very, very fresh.

Richie always said, you get a good line, stay with it.

They gave him the nickname in the projects, even before he got into Lincoln High and everybody started to come around, because it was close enough to Fresh Air, and Fresh Air was close enough to Air Jordan.

Now in the gym at Fulton College, third day of training camp, everybody’s legs shot, fucked-up, except his, he was up there again, taking the ball with his left hand, moving it over to his right. Ellis held it over his head now, the way he always did before his cleanest dunk, the one that was so smooth, Richie called it his Fred Astaire.

Who, Richie said, was some dead dancer.

Showtime now, anyways.

Ellis covered his eyes with his left hand.

He could hear Richie, from down below, saying, “Give to me, baby. Give it to me hard.”

The basket was right there now, shit, right under his chin. Ellis hesitated. He was always amazed when he watched himself on the news, how fast everything seemed to go, up there, doing his deal, then down. When he did it on the court, it all seemed to last much longer, slow motion almost, like he was floating on top of the whole thing, like the noise and the other players and the games were some cloud, and Ellis was even above that.

Ellis pulled his hand away from his eyes.

Only he didn’t dunk.

Just dropped the ball in. Like he was putting a quarter in the meter.

They all screamed now at Fulton College.

“I demand a refund!” Richie yelled.

Ellis came limping up to him now, all hunched over like the old rummies and pipeheads back at Booker T. Washington, head bobbing all over the place, giving Richie that wheezy old voice.

“Jes’ an ol’ man, tryin’ to get by, legs shot, cain’t get up no way no mo’,” Ellis said, going into this fake rheumy cough now.

Gary Lenz, the coach, blew his whistle. He was a pushy dude from the Lower East Side, in his second year now with the Knicks. He had started out at Iona, then moved up to St. John’s, now he was in the big leagues, just thirty-two years old, looking twenty-two. He had all this curly red hair and wore snappy double-breasted suits. Richie said he looked like he’d grown up sleeping with Bugsy Siegel’s picture under his pillow. Who was another dead guy, a gangster, who Richie’d read up on in a book even before there was a movie about him Richie dragged him to see, with Warren Beatty in it.

Richie had seen more movies than Ellis, and read more books.

Gary Lenz was saying now, “Ellis doesn’t want to dunk, I don’t want to coach anymore today.”

Ellis was over with Lenz now. Ellis, at six feet eight inches and change, was nearly a foot taller than the little dude coach. Ellis ran his hand through Lenz’s curls. He knew Lenz hated that.

“Aren’t you always telling me to fill the moment with surprise, Gary? Shit, that’s what you say in your new coaching video, nineteen ninety-five plus tax, available at video stores everywhere.”

Lenz grabbed his crotch.

“Surprise this,” he said, and walked toward the locker room. They all knew the real reason he was cutting practice short, even on the third day of camp; he had to go shoot some BMW commercial in the city. Gary Lenz didn’t have as many endorsements as Ellis. Shit, no one did. But Gary was doing pretty good for a midget who never got off the bench at Boston College when it was his turn to fucking play.

The gym emptied out fast. Ellis stayed. He took a ball out of the rack and motioned for one of the Fulton kids who ball-boyed during camp to come with him. Ellis shot a hundred free throws after every practice, everybody knew that. So he was always the last one out. He looked up at the windows above the court. Gary would have the windows taped up if this were the regular season, but it was the first week of training camp, so he didn’t mind if people came and watched practice. Ellis waved at the kids watching him. The reporters were already in the locker room, wanting to get out of there as soon as they could, the New York guys pissed they had to drive up to Connecticut to watch fast-break drills. The kids, though, they just wanted to see Ellis, they’d stay up there until he shot all hundred free throws. They’d watch him as long as he was out there.

Ellis couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been watched this way.

He made the first ten shots in a row, lost in the routine, when he noticed Frank Crittendon standing next to the ball boy.

Crittendon said, “You got a minute?”

He was the general manager of the Knicks. Crittendon hadn’t been around the first two days of camp, so this was the first time Ellis saw he’d gotten even fatter during the summer. He was wearing this faded pink polo shirt that rode up out of his pants, and now when he threw a little bounce pass to Ellis at the line, you could see about half his fat white belly.

Could you get whiter as you got older? Frank Crittendon looked to Ellis sometimes like he’d been washed too many times, something like that, until he was just all washed out.

“This can’t wait until I finish, Frank?”

Crittendon said, almost apologizing, “It’s kind of important, Ellis.” Ellis heard him tell the ball boy to run along, he needed to have a private conversation with Mr. Adair, and motioned Ellis over to the
side of the court, where there were still a couple of folding chairs set up. Crittendon sat down. Ellis stretched out on the rubber mat in front of the chairs, started doing some light stomach curls.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush,” he said.

Ellis smiled.

“That’s a shame, Frank. Nobody ever beat around a bush better than you.”

“I just got a call from a Detective Hyland. Fulton police.”

“He the crossing guard?” Ellis came up, hands behind his head, held the curl. “Or the one who sets up for the bingo games?”

Crittendon took off the clear glasses he’d always worn and rubbed his eyes. He’d just turned sixty years old, they’d had a birthday cake for him last spring one night before the last Knicks-Bulls game at the Garden, but Frank Crittendon looked older than sixty because of the drinking. Richie always said the only thing you wondered about with him was what time of day the boy got started.

“A woman showed up today at the police station and has made, um, an accusation of rape.”

Ellis said, “Rape.”

“She’s accused you and Richie of raping her.”

Ellis sat up, stayed up, just a little bit out of breath. There was a towel next to the mat. He wiped his face with it.

“Bullshit,” he said.

“That’s not what she says.”

“What else she say, besides rape?”

“She says that during training camp last year, at your house over there at Fulton Crest, you and Richie raped her.”

Ellis lay back down now, staring at the ceiling, wishing Richie was there.

Trying to act cool, like he was in charge of the general situation.

“Bullshit,” he said.

Frank Crittendon pulled a pipe from out of his slacks, stuck it in his mouth, unlit.

“Her name is Hannah Carey. Do you know her?”

Richie had always said you don’t volunteer shit to the man, whoever the man was. Richie was white, but didn’t think that way.

“I don’t know.”

“She sure seems to know you.”

“Everybody knows me.”

Frank Crittendon stood up, pipe in his teeth, looking like some little Fulton professor out of uniform.

“I just want you to be aware of the situation, Ellis.”

“If it’s a situation, it’s a bullshit situation.” Now Ellis stood.

Ellis said, “You read the papers, Frank?”

“Of course.”

“I read ’em, too. Not that I’d ever tell a fucking sportswriter that. Know what I find out, the more I read? I find out I can’t keep count anymore of the women coming forward, saying that this athlete raped them, that athlete raped them. The beauty-contest girl from Rhode Island stepped forward and got Mike Tyson and now they’re all doing it.”

Crittendon looked around. Ellis had noticed it before, Frank Crittendon went through life scared of his own shadow, like he was afraid somebody was listening to every single word he said, ready to hear the one bad thing that was going to cost him his job. Or his house.

Ellis said, “Know what Richie says? He says all of a sudden rape ain’t a crime, it’s a career.”

Crittendon said, “You’re saying it didn’t happen.”

Ellis said, “How long have I played for you?”

“Five years.”

“Feel like you know me pretty well?”

This part was bullshit. No one knew Ellis, except for Richie, and not even him half the time. Even Richie didn’t know everything.

“I like to think so.”

“Let me turn it around. Ask you the question: You think I have to force somebody to have sex with me?”

Crittendon shook his head.

Ellis said, “Shit, half the time I got to force them
not
to.” Which was the truth.

He walked toward the door. He’d shoot two hundred free throws tomorrow, get back up to speed. He left Frank Crittendon standing there, like he was waiting for the whole gym to fall down on him.

Ellis turned at the door, trying to act cool on this shit, wondering if Richie had left yet. Richie would know what to do.

“Frank,” Ellis said, “don’t bother me with this again. You feel the urge, you know the drill.”

“Call your agent.”

Ellis said, “There you go.”

The little bastard from the
Chronicle
show, WCBS, said on the phone, “The best we can do for the time being is once a week. Which means the same deal as before, we pay you by the appearance.”

Coño
, Marty thought. Shit, damn, and fuck.

Marty Perez, sitting in his office at the
Daily News
, said, “We talked all summer about three. I come on full-time eventually and give up the column once and for all, if the money’s right.”

The little bastard’s name was Randy Houghton. Marty could never remember whether he was a Houghton from Houghton Mifflin, the publishing company, or not. He was from Boston, Marty knew that. Three years out of Harvard, twenty-five years old, already producing his own tabloid show.
Chronicle
had caught on in New York, even started beating
Wheel of Fortune
in its time slot. Now they were talking about taking it national, moving it up in weight class, putting it into the next gear, primed to go up against all the others:
Inside Edition, Hard Copy, A Current Affair.