Murder at the Foul Line (37 page)

Wing gulped some coffee. “Would have been a public service.”

“You didn’t like him?”

“You read the papers?”

“I understand he was disruptive.”

“He was fucking uncoachable. He was a goddamn time bomb that kept going off.”

“The price of a shot at the championship?”

“Screw that. I’ll tell you something. Papers this morning are screaming without Rome we got no chance this year. I say with
him we never had one. These guys”—he waved his coffee cup to indicate the men around us; one or two of them turned their heads—“they
make a fuck of a lot more money than I do but they know who’s boss. Even Nathaniel and that head-case sister of his know.
Rome never knew. He thought he was paid the big bucks because he could think, not because he could shoot and rebound and mow
guys down. He was pissing the other guys off and this team would have shaken itself apart before the playoffs if he kept on.
I didn’t want him, I won’t miss him, and I don’t want you fucking with anybody’s head.”

Wing’s famous glower burned through me. “If I didn’t know better,” I said, “I’d think that was a motive.”

“To kill him? Are you crazy?”

Wing’s voice had gotten louder and a couple of Knicks turned their heads to see what was up with their coach and this stranger.

“Can you tell me where you were last night?”

He gave me the red-faced, unbelieving stare I’d seen him give refs when the call went against the Knicks. “Where
I
was? I was at the Garden until two o’clock in the fucking morning, going over game tapes, is where I fucking was.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Douglas and Pontillo”—two of the assistant coaches—“left around midnight. You can’t be serious?”

“No one saw you after that?”

“I got home about three. My wife and kids were asleep. I can’t believe I’m even talking to you about this.”

“I appreciate it, Coach,” I said. “My job is to make sure Tony Manelli doesn’t get nailed for something he didn’t do. I’m
going to keep at it. But,” I added, “I’m a Knicks fan. Have been for years.”

Dan Wing’s glare made it clear that he’d have benched me now and traded me tomorrow, if only he could. He stalked away. A
couple of players stared at me. I tried a cucumber sandwich myself, decided the bread was too soft. I checked the room again,
in case someone new had arrived while I was talking to Wing.

Someone had, and he stood out even more than I did. As white as I was, as old as Randall Lee, balding and chubby, he glanced
at his watch when Maria told him the widow was resting and not to be disturbed. I thought he might turn and leave, but he
narrowed his eyes, peered around the room, headed for the coffee urn. I waited for him to arrive.

“Sam Landau?”

He gave me a once-over, stirred sugar into his coffee and said, “Who wants to know?” When I told him, he said, “What’s to
investigate? I hear Tony did it.”

“Tony’s been arrested for it. There’s a difference.”

“Not to me. Yesterday I had ten percent of Fort Knox. Today I got ten percent of bubkes. You know what’s bubkes?”

“Chickpeas?”

Landau snorted. “Only looks like chickpeas. It’s goat turds. Listen, Tony wants to tell his story, have him call me.” Landau
handed me his card.

Just what Tony wants, I thought, but I pocketed the card. “Can I ask you about dinner last night?”

“The cops already asked me. New York’s Finest.”

“Just to clear a few things up.”

Landau picked some cookies for his saucer. “Why not? Go ahead, ask.”

“Who was there?”

By now I knew the litany, but I waited to hear it. “Lee. Nathaniel. McCroy. That pretty little girl.” Landau pointed people
out one by one with a chocolate biscotti, then dipped it in his coffee.

“Anyone seem unhappy to you? Any tension?”

Landau bit off the biscotti’s dripping end. “Damon stole Nathaniel’s headlines. McCroy stole Damon’s girl. Lee was out a pile
of dough and Damon said yeah, yeah, he’d get around to it. Sound like a happy party to you?”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You and Damon stayed after everyone else left, to talk. About what?”

“Business.”

“I hear business wasn’t so good.”

“You hear that where?”

“From a little bird.”

“I fucking hate birds. You know what’s the trouble with birds? They shit all over.”

“Business was fine?”

He sighed. “You any good?”

“As an investigator? Fair.”

“Should I bother to lie to you?”

“It would save time if you didn’t.”

“Okay, then. Business stank. We just inked a deal, Nike, terrific, I’m talking multiyear, multo dinero. Suddenly, Damon’s
telling me Adidas makes a better shoe. Springier, he tells me, more bounce to the ounce, who the hell knows?”

“Well, if it’s better—”

“Better? Shoe? Nothing to do with the shoe! Look at these feet.” He waved his biscotti around again, this time at the gleaming
loafers and wingtips holding down the carpet. “Guys that size, feet that size, they custom-make the shoe. Damon wants more
bounce, more grip, he wants the thing to squeal like a pig or sing like a canary, Nike’ll put it in for him. Had nothing to
do with the shoe. It was extortion.”

“He was holding Nike up?”

“Goddamn right. Add a few million or I sign with Adidas.”

“Didn’t he have a contract?”

“Oh, sure, he had a contract. But you’re Nike, you don’t want to be on the short end of a news story that the great Damon
Rome wants out of an endorsement deal because he doesn’t like your fucking shoe.”

“So it would have worked?”

“Yeah, for him.”

“Not for you? Ten percent of a few more million doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It would have fucked me over, is what it would have done for me. I got other clients, you know. I represent major players,
all sports. Who’s gonna sign a deal with any of my guys, Damon pulls this shit? No point in negotiating with Landau, he can’t
control his clients: it would be everywhere.”

“And last night you tried to talk him out of it?”

“Right.”

“And?”

Sam Landau gave me a long look. “You ever pee in the ocean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Made you feel better, right? But it didn’t matter a damn to the ocean.”

I asked Landau the same question I’d been asking everyone else: where he was when Damon Rome died.

“On my way home.”

“You and he left Shots together?”

“Are you kidding? I was so pissed I got up and stomped out. Small satisfaction but you get ’em where you can.”

“Anyone see you on your way home?”

“How the hell do I know? I drove, probably not.”

“Where was your car?”

“Right there. Garage around the block.”

Landau ate a few more cookies and I asked a few more questions. His answers put him right where I’d been hired to put people,
right where I’d been able to put the others. He had a reason to be furious with Damon Rome and no alibi for the time of his
death. He didn’t give any more than a philosophical shrug to the implications of my questions, but he didn’t seem sorry to
see me walk away either.

Nathaniel Day hadn’t stirred from the white sofa, nor had his sister, but the seat next to Nathaniel was empty. I went over,
offered my hand.

“Bill Smith,” I said. “I’m investigating Damon Rome’s death. I’d like to ask you a few questions. But first I want to tell
you what a big fan I am of yours.” I turned to Nora Day. “And of yours. I watched you play in college.”

Ice in her voice, Nora Day said, “Long time ago.”

Nathaniel Day was not a handsome man, but his wide smile and crooked nose had dominated the sports pages, and occasionally
the front pages, of New York’s newspapers for so long that it was hard not to think of him as someone I knew, could just sit
down and chat with, talk plays and ball handling, ask for tips on my hook shot. Nathaniel’s nose had been broken, famously,
in a high school tournament game he’d refused to come out of. He’d claimed it didn’t hurt, was just a bump. Then, because
he was afraid a doctor would forbid him to play, he put off seeing one until the tournament was over. The first time New York
had seen that wide smile was two weeks later, when Nathaniel Day, a sophomore at Christ the King and already a star, waved
the trophy over his head.

He gave me a smaller version of that smile now, offered the seat on the sofa beside him. His sister gave me a cold look, one
that: said easygoing friendliness was not a coin with much value in her realm. I was familiar with that look, too, had seen
it on TV, as Nora Day followed the games.

I sat, shifted to face the two of them. Nora Day, her voice as chilly as her look, said, “I thought I heard they arrested
Tony Manelli this morning.”

“I’m working for his lawyer. We think they have the wrong man.”

“Why?” She sipped her coffee. She was darker skinned than her brother, and better looking, but even seated, her height and
her don’t-mess-with-me eyes created the sense of more space around her, perhaps, than there actually was.

“For one thing, he says he didn’t do it.”

She gave a scornful laugh. “Do people often say they did?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes they find they didn’t count on the guilt.”

“Well,” she said, “maybe Tony doesn’t feel guilty.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s not. Can I ask you some questions?”

Nora sipped more coffee, didn’t answer.

Nathaniel said, “Don’t mind her.” He grinned good-naturedly, a younger brother who’d known, and shrugged off, his older sister’s
moodiness all his life. “What do you want to
know?” Nora rolled her eyes, an older sister who’d known, and been short-tempered with, her younger brother’s affability since
he was a baby.

“You went to dinner with Damon last night?”

“Sure.”

“And you,” I said to Nora, “didn’t?”

She turned her icy gaze on me, said, “I don’t go out after the games.”

I nodded, said to Nathaniel, “Luke McCroy and Holly March were there? And Randall Lee and Sam Landau?”

“That’s right.”

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“Did Damon have a new security detail?”

“No. He said bad enough a guy tried to beat your time, you didn’t have to pay him for it.”

“What happened after dinner?”

“After? I went home kind of early. Had to put my damn leg up. Holly left, and Luke, just before me. Randall Lee was long gone.”

“Anyone see you after you left?”

Nora cut into her brother’s answer. “Wait—what are you saying?”

“My job is to find out what happened last night,” I said.

“You cannot—can
not
—be saying Nat may have shot Damon?”

“No,” I said. “I’m asking if anyone saw him after he left. Did you?”

“Me?”

“Don’t you have apartments in the same building? Did you see him coming home?”

“I didn’t stay in New York last night,” Nora admitted grudgingly. “I went to Connecticut, to my house. But there’s no way
Nat—”

“Come on, calm down, Nora. It’s the man’s job,” Nathaniel said soothingly. Nora, her glare fixed on me, didn’t seem soothed.
Nathaniel turned to me. “I took a cab, went straight to my place,” he said.

“You take down the cab number, keep the receipt, anything like that?”

“No. But you want to, I’ll bet you could find the driver. I’m a little hard to miss.” He gave me the grin again.

I had to grin back. “That’s true. Okay, tell me more about dinner. Was anyone acting strange? Upset, on edge?”

Nathaniel shook his head cheerfully. “Only me.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nat!” Nora snapped.

“Hey, it’s true.”

“Why were you?” I said.

Nathaniel lifted his aluminum cane, pointed to his immobile leg. “Sometimes I get pissed off.”

“Must be frustrating,” I agreed.

“Frustrating?” Nora Day looked at me as if I’d told her that water was wet or fire could burn. “He’s out for the season,”
she explained carefully, as though I must not have known that or I’d never have said anything so patronizing and dumb.

“It’s not that bad,” said Nathaniel calmly. “I’ll be back next year. Could’ve been worse, could’ve been serious. Just sometimes
I get pissed off.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw you fling a chair the other night.”

Nathaniel’s smile turned abashed. “When Shawan missed that alley-oop?”

“You’d have made it.”

“That’s why I threw the chair. Told him I was sorry, later. Wasn’t him. He said he knew that. Nice guy, Shawan.”

“What about Damon? I hear he wasn’t a nice guy.”

“Damon was okay. He was just young. He just needed to understand what it is about a team.”

“Meaning what?”

“My brother,” Nora Day said between clenched teeth, “thinks it’s his job to make Knicks out of jackasses.”

“I’m sorry?”

Nathaniel said, “Some young guys, they come into the league, they think it’s all about them. Damon was a great player. So
far he was carrying us, nobody even missed me.”

“That’s just wrong, Nat!” His sister’s coffee cup rattled as she put it down. “You’re the man. You’re the one they need!”

“I think she’s right,” I said. “Everyone’s waiting for you to come back.”

“Well, thank you.” He grinned again, and Nora looked at me as though, in a move that had caught her completely off guard,
I’d finally said something intelligent. “But what I mean,” Nathaniel went on, “Damon loved the spotlight. If he kept on the
way he started, hogging and hotdogging, team was going to fall apart, right around the playoffs. I wanted to make him see
that.”

“Did he?”

“He was coming around. I was working on him for a while. He was getting better.”

“I just talked to Coach Wing. He doesn’t think so. He said Damon was ruining the team.”

“Great coach, Coach Wing. Guess he can be a little blind sometimes, though. Damon was coming along. You saw that, right?”
He turned to Nora.

“Damon,” she said, “was a nasty, selfish, ball-hogging child. That’s all he was.”

Nathaniel turned back to me, winked. “Coming along.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “Anything else you can tell me?”