Murder at the Foul Line (34 page)

“It’s for you.”

“What is it?”

“Open it, Ronnie.”

It finally occurred to me what it was, and when it did, tears filled my eyes. To this day, I can’t say whether they were tears
of pride that he was my grandfather, tears of mourning because he was going to die soon, or tears of fear because of all I
would have to do in my lifetime to feel worthy of him. Probably a combination of all three.

“Go ahead, Ronnie. It won’t bite.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t be a
putz
. Open it.”

“No.”

“You’re telling me you can’t even open it?”

I opened it. I unfolded the cloth and there it was. A wallet, a brown rectangle of leather, remarkably well preserved.

“Go ahead, Ronnie. Take a look.”

Gingerly, I flipped the wallet open and took out the folded papers, one by one, soft with age. A Pennsylvania driver’s license
describing Irving Levchuck as five foot ten, with brown eyes. A membership card to something called the Miracle Club. A Blue
Cross card signed by Levchuck in faded blue fountain pen ink. A business card that read: “Detective Lieutenant John McGuire,
Homicide, Philadelphia Police Department,” with a phone number. A folded piece of vellum on which Levchuck had written a series
of initials in blue fountain pen ink followed by phone numbers. A hundred-dollar bill tightly folded into quarters. Four business
cards that read: “Irving M. Levchuck, Accountant,” with a phone number.

A killer’s wallet, given to me by the killer’s killer, who happened to be my grandfather. My father’s father, who loved my
father and me, but who also loved his “boys,” the long stream of brilliant Jewish basketball players for whom he would do
anything. And had.

“So that someone should know,” he said.

“Jesus, Grandpa.” I looked down at the wire photo of Levchuck lying in the South Philadelphia alley, then at the wallet that
had been taken from his pocket, then at Sidney. “You?”

He just looked at me.

“The gun you took from Al?” I said.

Sidney didn’t say anything.

“What do you want me to do with this, Sidney?”

“That’s
your
business, Ronnie. Whatever you want.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Then he coughed lightly into his fist, took a sip of water, and said, “We won that series in seven, Ronnie. We won that last
game with a cute little play we had, springing Al loose in the corner coming off a double pick by Gumbiner and Morris. Fine
got Al the ball right where he liked it and he turned and let go one of his high-arcing sons-of-bitches and put that game
away for us. You should’ve been there.”

S. J. Rozan

I
’d been following the Knicks all season, but I didn’t see Damon Rome’s last game. I was down at Shorty’s that December evening,
with a beer and a bunch of guys who, like me, could have been drinking at home, where the liquor’s free and the TV tuned to
whatever you want. But the liquor’s the excuse, not the reason. And at Shorty’s, the TV over the bar is on so the silent drinkers
have something to keep their minds off whatever brought them here alone, and the ones who want to talk to each other have
something to talk about.

It was late in the football season, still plenty of time left for basketball, so the TV was tuned to the Giants and the talk
was interceptions, rushing, bad knees and bowl chances. Close to halftime, waiting for a commercial to pass, someone ordered
another Rolling Rock and brought up the Knicks, how hot they were, and other guys, working on their own beers, shook their
heads over it. Who’d have thought? The Knicks unstoppable heading for the playoffs, a real shot this year at taking it all,
in a season when Nathaniel Day played only ten games.

It was that new kid, Rome, one guy said, nobody liked him
but everybody knew it, damn punk, ball hog, head case, but shit, he could play. Knicks should have grabbed him up when he
came into the league two years ago, they’d have their rings by now. Grabbed up an asshole like him, what are you, crazy? said
someone else. What they’re paying him, they could have gotten three veterans, guys who want to play ball more than they want
to see their name in the papers. A third guy said, Ah, Rome’s just the spark plug anyway, he just embarrassed them, they’ve
been riding Nathaniel’s coattails for too long and now he’s hurt they’ve all got to step up, play the game for a change. Nathaniel,
by him being so good he might actually be bad for the Knicks, anyone ever thought of that?

But you can’t knock Nathaniel Day in a bar in New York without half a dozen guys telling you you’re full of shit. Day’s the
franchise, one guy said, and another said he’ll be back next year and the Knicks can’t go anywhere without him, watch, they’ll
fold in the playoffs. The anti-Nathaniel guy downed a handful of peanuts and said, Hell, they been folding in the playoffs
for eight years
with
him, and come on, a guy who’s coached by his sister?

But the sister thing didn’t fly. Everyone knew it was Nora Day, five years older than Nathaniel and barely three inches shorter,
who’d gotten him through Christ the King as an All-American, through Seton Hall as the most draftable center in the college
game, through his first, stunning season with the Knicks, when he was unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year. From then on,
Nora had sat courtside, with a shrewd eye to what was missing from the Knicks’ game and how she could coach Nathaniel to provide
it: rebounding, foul shooting, the fade-away jumper that made him as big a threat from the outside as the inside. She made
him indispensable and she made
him the franchise; the coaches organized the offense around him and he did the work, pre- and postgame practices, offseason
conditioning, weight training, whatever it took, with his sister his personal coach. And, one of the pro-Nathaniel forces
said,
and
you know he wouldn’t have without her pushing him all the time. Natural talent like that, but too nice a guy for his own
good, you see it all the time. No killer instinct, that guy.
I
had that kind of skills, catch me helping other teams’ players back up, after I knocked ’em on their ass.
You
had any skills at
all
, another guy said, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now on
your
ass. Yeah, well, you watch, the guy without skills said, she’ll have him in rehab the minute the cast comes off, he’ll be
better than ever next season.

That was the way of it and everyone knew it: Nathaniel was who he was because Nora was who she was, and Nathaniel was the
first to say so. Nathaniel could afford to be a nice guy, easygoing, because Nora was driven. Nora didn’t take vacations,
Nora didn’t spend time in the country until the off-season—though Nathaniel had bought her a house, because she liked gardens—and
as far as anyone knew, Nora didn’t date. Nora had a full-time, overtime, all-the-time job, and that was Nathaniel.

The other thing everyone knew was that Nora Day would have been twice the player Nathaniel was if there’d been a woman’s pro
game when she left college. But there wasn’t and hey, one of the beer drinkers said, that’s how it goes, too bad for her,
but guess Nathaniel and the Knicks lucked out, huh?

The anti-Nathaniel guy just shook his head and drank his beer. Still, someone said, be something if the Knicks finally got
their rings in a season with Nathaniel on the bench. Yeah, well, you got that right, someone else said. It’s a damn shame,
almost,
and a worse shame we were gonna have to be grateful to a trash-talking, cornrowed, skirt-chasing asshole like Damon Rome.
And another guy said, Yeah, but he’s
our
asshole now. Everyone laughed, and the commercial ended, and the Giants snapped the ball.

I didn’t see the Knicks game and I didn’t hear who won, and I didn’t hear until I hit the diner for breakfast the next morning
that after the game was over, after the fans had all filed out and the players had left and the Garden was deserted and silent,
someone who was not grateful had stepped in front of Damon Rome on an empty New York street and put a bullet through Damon
Rome’s heart.

I read about it in the papers and talked about it with the other guys at the diner counter as I drank my coffee, with the
waitress as I ordered eggs and, as I paid my check at the register, with the owner, a Greek who’d first learned English from
baseball radio broadcasts forty years ago. I talked about it, but I didn’t get into it until, on the street on my way home,
my cell phone rang.

“Smith.” I stopped in the cold, clear light, moved closer to a building to get out of the way.

“Tony Manelli, man. How you doing?”

It had been maybe a year since I’d heard from Tony Manelli, longer since I’d seen him, but that didn’t mean anything. Young,
sharply muscled, an ex-marine, Tony had worked for me years back. He was working investigation because he needed the state
license, but his goal was protection; I’d worked both and gave him what help I could. In the years since, our paths sometimes
crossed, more often didn’t, but the few times I’d needed someone to fill out a security detail I’d hired Tony and had no reason
to complain.

Right now, on this bright December morning, his voice sounded strange to me: tight, strained. “Hey, Tony, long time,” I said.
“I’m okay, what’s up with you?”

“I’m in trouble,” Tony said.

Twenty minutes later I was giving my name to a receptionist who gave me back a practiced, impersonal smile, and a minute after
that, I was being led through the high-rise maze of a Midtown law firm to a partner’s glassed-in office. The paralegal who’d
brought me closed the door and retired with the gravity of a butler.

Tony and his lawyer, a dark, quick man named John Sutton, both stood when I came in, shook my hand, thanked me for coming.
Tony was blond and broad-shouldered and usually looked better than this: his face was ashen under his skier’s tan, the skin
around his eyes tight, like a man trying hard to focus because he didn’t understand what he was seeing. Tony was shorter than
I and Sutton was shorter than both of us, jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled up, ready for some serious work here. He pressed
a button on his desk, asked someone to bring us coffee, and I found out what the work was about.

“Damon Rome,” Tony said. He leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, uncrossed it right away. “You heard
about it?”

“I heard. Everybody in New York heard.”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Well, until last week, I did his security.”

I glanced from Tony to Sutton. “You’re not saying you think that makes you responsible?”

“Christ, no.” Tony shook his head, sounded despairing, as though I’d missed the point entirely, might be no use after all.

Sutton leaned forward on his big glass desk. “Tony’s about to be arrested for Damon Rome’s murder.”

A young woman came in with a coffee beaker, mugs, cream
and sugar. She left them on a space Sutton cleared on his desk. We each took our coffee, did what we wanted to it, sat back
again.

“Did you kill him?” I asked Tony.

“I don’t want—,” Sutton began.

But Tony said, “Jesus, John,” and then to me, “No. Goddammit. No. Good enough?”

“If it’s true. If you did, I’d want to know why.”

“I didn’t. He was a fucking asshole. But you’ve had this gig. Sometimes you work for assholes.”

“So what do they have, then?”

“All circumstantial,” Sutton said promptly. “None of it any good. They just need an arrest, fast.”

“If none of it were any good,” I said evenly, “you wouldn’t have called me.”

“Hey, John,” Tony said wearily. “Save the speeches for the jury, okay? Bill’s on our side. I think?”

I nodded. “Tell me.”

Sutton leaned back in his desk chair, leaving it to Tony but ready to jump in and protect him from his own mistakes, if he
made any.

“He fired me,” Tony said.

“Why?”

“I was fooling around with his wife.”

Yvonne Rome: a former model who, in the months since Damon Rome had been with the Knicks, had burst like fireworks upon New
York’s black-tie charity scene. You’d see her photo two or three times a week on the society pages, at parties and galas,
on the arm of her famous husband or, if he’d had a game, flashing her wide smile at whichever of his close friends had gallantly
escorted her.

I said, “That was stupid.”

“Tell me about it.” Tony rubbed his eyes. “But sometimes… you know?”

I let that go. “What happened?”

“A week ago, in that bar he owns, Shots? After the game.”

“That’s where he was leaving last night, when he was killed.”

“Yeah. It’s mostly where he goes.”

“Okay. So a week ago…?”

“Yvonne came to meet him, like sometimes she does. He was waiting. Turned out he was setting me and her up.”

“How’d he know?”

“I guess we weren’t real careful.”

“Both of you weren’t? Or one of you was and the other screwed up?”

Tony shrugged. I read: he’d been careful, Yvonne Rome had screwed up.

“Go on.”

“He started in on us as soon as she got there. Man, that s.o.b. knew words I never heard.”

“What did you do?”

“Told him to calm down. Stood there and took it as long as I could. Whole freakin’ bar was watching. Ended up, four other
guys had to keep me and Damon from punching each other’s lights out.”

“You threaten to kill him?”

“We threatened to kill each other.”

“And he ended up dead first.”

Sutton, at his desk, nodded. Tony said, “Yeah. Damon said, he ever saw me and Yvonne together again, he’d waste us both. I
said, he laid a hand on her, he was a dead man. He fired my ass, told me to beat it out of the bar. I asked her to come, but
she stayed. Next day, Seattle comes to the Garden, she’s not there.”

“Where was she?”

“Lenox Hill, getting her arm set. Broken in three places.”

“Did you mean it? That you’d kill him?”

“When I said it. If I’d known about Yvonne, maybe I would have. But I didn’t.”