Jump (42 page)

Ellis gave the spinning ball a little punch, and it bounced away toward the basket. “Not as much as I thought it would, even as much as Rich meant to me. You know what I was thinking on the plane? I was thinking that she just convicted Richie her own self. That one woman down in Virginia, she cut the guy’s deal off. Hannah Carey just didn’t stop there.”

DiMaggio said, “Is that why you brought me over here, to talk about her?”

“No,” Ellis said.

He stood and walked over to get the ball. He dribbled it a few times and made a spin move, then fell away from the basket and shot a soft jumper that whooshed through the net. He retrieved the ball and came over and stood in front of DiMaggio but did not sit down this time. A car made a right on Sixty-first, then backed up, and went up to Sixty-second and got on the F.D.R. going north there. Ellis said, “Remember the other time? When I told you I’d explain to you sometime why I left that day?”

Ellis said, “It wasn’t the test on the damn dress. That was just a damn coincidence.” He took a deep breath and said in a soft voice, “It was the day Dale found out he tested positive for the virus.”

DiMaggio sat there, the rain coming harder now. Not having to ask what virus.

“I just couldn’t deal with all of it no more. I couldn’t tell Richie, I couldn’t tell anybody. All the assholes in the world, it had to happen to Dale, who never hurt anybody …”

Ellis Adair’s face wet with the rain, DiMaggio not being able to tell if he was crying.

“I finally worked up the nerve, got tested myself. After all these years.”

DiMaggio knowing what was coming next.

Wanting to be wrong.

“I found out today,” Ellis Adair said.

DiMaggio leaned back, put his head back, let the rain hit his face.

Finally, DiMaggio said, “What do you do now?”

“Quit,” Ellis said. “Quit like Magic did, so they can’t run me out the way they done with him. I was thinking about playing one more game at the Garden, but what’s the point. You know? I made a real nice play tonight, down near the end? Went down the middle, and they all come up on me, and I stayed up there. Like I can? And finally I switched hands and spun it in left-handed, off the top of the board. I was thinking on that on the plane. Maybe that was as good a good-bye shot as any.”

“Anyway,” he said to DiMaggio. “You were decent to me when you found out about Dale ’n’ me. Not looking to score off me or whatever. Not wanting nothing. So I wanted you to know. Tell you myself.”

“Jesus, Ellis—”

“I’ll be all right. I knew I’d have to stop ball someday. Just never figured it’d be like this.”

DiMaggio thinking, There’s always one last victim.

Ellis said, “What do they always tell you? You play, you pay, right? You play, you pay. We just don’t none of us ever think it’s gonna apply to
us.
Do we?”

DiMaggio said, “Something like that.”

Ellis Adair tossed him the ball again. Smiling this sweet smile. “You want to play?” he said to DiMaggio.

Nothing important in my life ever gets done without the love and support of Taylor McKelvy Lupica.

And special thanks this time to Detective Tony Giunta, Westport (Conn.) Police Department.

FICTION

Limited Partner
Dead Air
Extra Credits

NONFICTION

Wait Till Next Year
(with William Goldman)
Shooting from the Lip
Reggie
(with Reggie Jackson)
Parcells: The Biggest Giant of Them All
(with Bill Parcells)

Mike Lupica is one of the best-known and widely read sports columnists in the United States. After working at the New York
Daily News
and
The National
, Lupica is now with
Newsday
, and his column is syndicated by the
Los Angeles Times.
He has also written the “Sporting Life” column in
Esquire
magazine since 1987, and is a regular on ESPN’s popular Sunday morning show
The Sports Reporters. Jump
is his fourth novel. The other three were Peter Finley mysteries. The first,
Dead Air
, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery, and became the CBS movie
Money, Power and Murder
, for which Lupica also wrote the teleplay. He lives with his wife, the former Taylor McKelvy, and their three sons in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Jupiter, Florida.