by Mike Lupica
Did Houghton and all the rest of them think they’d heard it all before?
Randy Houghton said, “You’ve still got an hour. You want to do something on this? I know it’s not much, but my feeling is, people eat up any kind of news on this like they’re eating peanuts.”
Marty had thought about it the minute he read the bulletin lead from AP. Only the thought of cranking something out on deadline exhausted him. Marty thought: In the old days, sure. Shit, in the old days if he couldn’t find a place to write he’d call somebody on the desk and dictate if it meant making the edition.
Now … what? What was the word they would have used for him back home? Pasao. Said of something old. Worn out.
“Let me make one call,” he said to Randy Houghton.
“If you can do it we want it,” he said. “We’ll go with this at the top of the show and push the Flashdance—”
“Flashdance?”
“—topless dancers to segment three. But we gotta know. Barry will open with the straight news, then throw it to you.” He vaguely held up the format he was holding in his hand. “If you don’t think you have time …”
“Ten minutes,” Marty said. Houghton left. Marty got out his wallet and found the number in Fulton Richie Collins had given to him. Were the Knicks still up there? Jesus, he couldn’t keep track of anything anymore. He knew they were breaking camp soon, the regular season started either next week or the week after. Marty just couldn’t remember.
“Estoy pasao,” he said out loud. He could feel himself start to sweat through his blue oxford television shirt. It always happened in here, the closer and closer he got to airtime.
Collins picked up on the first ring. “Fresh?” he said.
“Perez.”
“Well, now. My day is fucking complete.”
“And I thought we were buddies now. You’re not glad to hear from me?”
“Today,” Richie Collins said, “is not the day to dick around with me.”
“Why? I just got the release on the dress. I thought you’d be throwing yourself a party.”
Richie said, “I got the call from the cops about a half hour ago myself. Acting like they were doing me a favor. They ever showed up in Jersey City, the cops over there would look at them like they were wearing tights.”
Marty said, “You ought to be looking at the big picture here, if you ask me.”
“Who asked you?” Richie said.
“Listen, it could’ve been your love juice there on the dress.”
“Still wouldn’t have proved anything.”
“It’s like fingerprints.”
Richie Collins said, “Just stickier.”
“Now they can’t even prove the two of you had sex with her.”
Collins wouldn’t bite. “You trying to get me to say something here, Perez? I told you I’m not in the mood.”
Marty said, “What’s your friend Ellis have to say about all this? I go on the air in a little while, I could use a quote.”
“Ellis says nothing.”
“You haven’t talked about this? You expect me to believe that? He doesn’t take a leak without clearing it with you first, that’s what you told me.”
There was a pause, and Marty flashed on the dial tone coming next, thinking Collins had hung up on him. Marty looked at his watch. Six-twenty. If he was going to do something with this he was going to have to do it off the top of his head. Which meant without TelePrompTer.
Marty said, “Hey?” And Richie said, “I’m gonna tell you something.”
“If you are, do it now. I’m under a little pressure here.”
“Jesus,” Richie said. “I love it when you bastards talk about pressure. Or rip us a new asshole for not handling pressure the way you think we should. And you know what? You have no idea. You ever had to stand out there in front of everybody and make one free throw? Those big balls of yours you like to talk about? They’d shrivel up the size of cherry pits.”
Marty said, “Listen, I didn’t mean it that way—”
Richie Collins cut him off. “Fresh is gone, Perez.”
“When you say gone—”
“When I say it, I mean it’s going to be announced by the team at practice tomorrow. The Knicks’re going to say he’s left the team for personal reasons. But the truth is, they have no goddamn idea where he is.”
“And you don’t?”
“I don’t,” Richie Collins said and then added, “have shit.”
There was a makeup mirror in front of Marty, a makeup mirror with white lightbulbs up and down the sides and running across the top, the glare of it so harsh he didn’t like looking at himself in it, made him look so old. Marty looked now and saw Randy Houghton behind him in the doorway, trying to get his attention. Pointing to his watch.
Marty smiled. He held up one finger with his free hand and said into the phone, “So what you’re basically telling me is that Ellis Adair has disappeared?”
It wasn’t for Collins’s benefit, it was for Houghton’s. The cutting-edge boy who thought he ran Marty’s life.
Richie Collins said, “Are you hard of hearing, Perez? Yeah, Sherlock, I’m telling you Ellis is out of here.”
Marty said, “Tell me.”
“I wrecked my ankle about a half hour before practice ended and was over having it X-rayed. At Fulton College, you have to go next door. When I got back, Ellis was gone. I talked to Boyzie Mays. One of our guards? He said Ellis was all upset about something in the parking lot. Said he heard him talking about the test in the parking lot before he got into his car and got out of there. We usually come together, but today we took separate cars, I was supposed to go to a signing, over in Fairfield.”
“When you say test,” Perez said, “you mean the DNA test?”
“Got to be.”
“But why would that make him go nutso? It was good news.”
“You’re the guy with all the answers,” Richie Collins said. “Why don’t you tell me something for a change?”
Marty said, “Nobody but me knows he’s gone?”
“So far.”
“I gotta get this on the air,” Marty said. Then, as an afterthought: “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Collins said.
Marty hung up the phone, took his cigar out of the ashtray in front of him, took his time relighting it, knowing Houghton was still there in the doorway.
The cutting-edge boy couldn’t wait anymore. “Did I hear you correctly?” he said. “Ellis Adair is gone?”
Marty said, “He’s gone, kid. But I’m here.”
22
Ted Salter, Frank Crittendon, Richie Collins and DiMaggio sat in the Knicks locker room on the fifth floor of the Garden, court level, the other end of the hall from Salter’s private screening room. Salter and Collins looked like they wanted to be anywhere except here, with each other. DiMaggio figured it was just another day at the office for Frank Crittendon, his office being wherever Salter told him it was.
The Knicks had announced in the morning they were breaking camp at Fulton College a day early. Before they did, they issued a release that said Ellis Adair had left the team for personal reasons, even though DiMaggio wondered what the point of that was since Marty Perez had broadcast the whole thing over television the night before. The release said that Adair’s absence from the team was unrelated to what were described as “recent off-court developments.” Crittendon was quoted as saying he fully expected Adair to be with the team for the start of the regular season in two weeks, the first Saturday in November.
It was all bullshit, DiMaggio knew that. When he got to the Garden he found out that even Richie Collins had no idea where Ellis Adair was.
Collins had been the last to show up, wearing a hooded Knicks sweatshirt and jeans. Only his white sneakers looked new. He hadn’t shaved yet, and his eyes were bloodshot. DiMaggio knew the look, from all the clubhouses and locker rooms like this one. A catcher who’d played behind him one time in the low minors, Franklin Rooseve
lt Jarrett, DiMaggio never forgot him, out of the Robert Taylor projects in Chicago, over near Comiskey Park, used to talk about “misbehavin’ situations.” Richie Collins had come from a misbehavin’ situation, DiMaggio was sure of it.
Maybe he went out and got laid to take the edge off of Ellis making a run for it.
Collins also looked scared. Why not? Ellis was gone. Maybe Donnie Fuchs, agent and lawyer, was on his way, but he sure wasn’t there yet. Ted Salter, the one who signed the checks, was into it now. Richie Collins, for the first time, didn’t look so project tough.
“Does he have to be here?” Collins said when he saw DiMaggio.
“Sit down, Richie,” Salter said. “Next time we throw a party, we’ll let you draw up the guest list.” He sipped some coffee out of a plastic cup. “Maybe you’ll even find a way to show up on time.”
Richie Collins, a little whiny, said, “Mr. Salter—”
“Jesus, sit down, will you?”
Collins sat down in front of his own locker. Maybe it was force of habit. He looked like he wanted to get all the way inside, just hide in there until all this was over. Salter was across from him, in front of Adair’s locker. Maybe it was for effect. Crittendon was next to him, in a folding chair.
DiMaggio said, “Where’s Ellis?”
Collins turned his head toward DiMaggio, as if he wanted to move right in and say something smart. But he stopped himself, making a little calming motion with his hands, like he was telling himself he was in enough trouble already.
“I told Frank first thing. I told Mr. Salter last night, when he called and told me to be here.” Collins shook his head and said, “I have no idea where he is.”
“Has he ever done anything like this before?” DiMaggio said. “In all the years you’ve known him?”
Collins said, “You mean disappear during a rape investigation? Shit, yeah. He can’t stop himself.”
It almost made DiMaggio smile. Collins not being able to stop himself.
“Richie,” Ted Salter said. “Listen to me because I’m going to tell you this one time, and then we’ll all move on here. This situation we have here, this is not a situation where you want to come in with an attitude. I am tired of you. I am tired of your problems. I am tired of your problems being my problems. When Mr. DiMaggio asks you a question, it is the same as me asking you a question or Frank asking you a question. I cannot force you to talk about what did or did not happen with this woman. Your legal rights are your legal rights. I’m not going to piss all over them, as much as I would like to, believe me. Because I know the minute I do, you tell your lawyer and he calls the Players Association and then I’m up to my eyeballs in grievances.” He closed his eyes. “I get a migraine just thinking about it. But Ellis disappearing, that is not a legal problem. It is a goddamn fucking team problem. Which you are going to help solve in any way you can. Are we clear on that?”
Collins looked down and mumbled something that no one could hear, so Salter repeated, “Are we clear?”
“We’re clear,” Collins said.
All along, DiMaggio had wondered if anybody had any real juice with these bastards. Crittendon didn’t. The curly-haired dude coach, Gary Lenz, clearly didn’t. The players seemed to go through all of it, life and ball, like they were bulletproof. But not this afternoon. Not in here. DiMaggio had the feeling that if Salter told Richie Collins to bark like a dog, Collins would bark like a dog.
Salter said, “I believe Mr. DiMaggio asked if Ellis had ever done anything like this before.”
“Ellis isn’t the type for something like this. Ellis was never carefree. You understand? Never impulsive. He didn’t do anything—how would you put it?—spontaneous. Whether he was feeling fucked-up or not. Even when we were kids. The only place Ellis ever takes any chances is up in the air, when he’s got a ball in his hands.”
Richie Collins said, “It’s why he was made for basketball, and not just ’cause he has such a talent for it. Ellis likes the regularless of it, or whatnot. Practice at this time, playing that time. Bus will be at five-fifteen. Bus leaves forty-five minutes after the game. He’s very deep into that shit.”
DiMaggio just watched him go, impressed. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t stupid.
“Let me tell you something about Fresh Adair,” Collins said. “Him alone and the two of us together. If it wasn’t me, it would have been somebody else. He likes to be told. He wants to be told.”
“You’re saying you’re worried,” DiMaggio said.
Collins looked straight at him. “Fuck yes.”
Salter said to Collins, “Why’d he go? Frank talked to Boyzie this morning. Why’d the DNA test set him off?”
“He’s been acting even more squirrelly than usual the last few days,” Collins said. “If it hadn’t been for my ankle, I would’ve been with him.” He looked around at all of them, as if trying to make them understand how important that was, had always been, Collins being with Ellis Adair. “But I wasn’t with him, and he snapped out on us.”
DiMaggio watched him, fascinated, not recognizing this Richie Collins, wondering whether these were real feelings or whether this was another pose to get him over with Salter.
Collins put it to Salter now: “We’ve got to find him. Maybe nobody outside of me understands this, or could ever, but Ellis Adair hasn’t got any talent for fending for himself.”
“Where does he have places besides the city?” DiMaggio said. “Weekend homes or whatnot?” Jesus, he was starting to sound like them.
“We got condos, right next door to one another, at the Polo Club in Boca. But he isn’t there, I checked already, with the guy takes care of them for us. Ellis couldn’t show up there without the guy, Eddie, knowing.”
DiMaggio said, “I thought I read that he’s got some place out in California, too.”
“No, he just stays at La Costa. Out in the desert? I checked there, too. They haven’t seen him.”
“Ellis likes warm places,” DiMaggio said.
“Ellis likes anyplace he can golf,” Collins said. “You believe that shit? Ellis Adair, out of the projects?” Collins smiled. “All he wants to do when he goes out there is put on a pair of green slacks and go play goddamn golf. Play golf or go ride that blue bike of his.”
DiMaggio said, “A bike?” He tried to see the Ellis Adair he’d watched in practice, the one who could fly, riding around on some bicycle.
Collins nodded. “Remember that movie with the kids on the bicycles? Breaking Away? Came out a long time ago. Me and Ellis saw it once when we were kids. And one of the kids in it, I forget which one, had this blue bike. Or Ellis decided it was blue, afterward, I can’t even remember anymore. He said to me when he came out, ‘One of these days, I’m gonna get me a blue bike, and I’m gonna ride until I come to some place like in that movie, with trees and green grass and everybody smiling at everybody else.’ I told him, ‘You want to end up in Indiana?’ But he didn’t care where it was, as long as it wasn’t the projects. Finally, when we were in high school, some guy came over from the city, wanted Ellis ‘n’ me to play on his summer team. And he says to Ellis, ‘What’s it gonna take?’ Meaning money. But Ellis says, ‘A blue bike.’ I pulled him aside and said, ‘Fresh, we got a chance to score here.’ But he didn’t want to hear anything like that. He wanted his blue bike. Which he got.” Collins smiled in this sad way. “Which got fucking stolen about a week later. Ellis wouldn’t talk about it. I said, ‘You can get another bike.’ He said, ‘Won’t be that bike.’ Then a few months ago, all this time later, he shows up with one just like it. I went looking for it last night. I don’t know where Ellis went, like I told you, but wherever he did, he took that goddamn bike with him.”
DiMaggio said, “Let me ask you something: Does he have any relatives left in Jersey City?”
“His Aunt Mary was the last one, but she died a couple of years ago.”
“He ever go back?”
Collins shook his head no. “The last time I can remember us being
over there was Ellis’s rookie year. Aunt Mary’s birthday. She was the one who ended up raising him after his mother died. Ellis’d end up moving her down to Hilton Head, a nice house he built for her with some of his signing money. But the house wasn’t ready yet, so Ellis rented her this house over on Garfield Avenue. That’s where the party was.”
Richie Collins smiled again. “Funny what you remember? Aunt Mary said she wanted us to stay the night, which we did. We went to bed. About three o’clock in the morning, you know what wakes me up? Bounce of a ball. I look out the window. There’s a court down the hill from the back of Aunt Mary’s rented house. And there’s Ellis, in his gym shorts and the sneakers he wore over, shooting around, looking happy as happy could be. I go down there and say, ‘What the hell you doing out here in the middle of the night?’ Three o’clock in the morning it was. You know what he says? He smiles at me and goes, ‘Rich, maybe things wasn’t so bad here.’ ”
DiMaggio said, “I think I want to take a ride over there.”
Collins said, “Take the Holland Tunnel.”
Maybe it was a reflex, DiMaggio thought, Richie Collins snapping back into being a punk this quickly.
“I want to take a ride over there with you.”
“Right.”
Salter leaned forward, but DiMaggio held up a hand. “Let me explain something to you, Richie,” he said. “You’re going to help me out on this sooner or later. Because sooner or later you’re going to figure out there’s no percentage for you in not helping me. You’re going to figure out, all by yourself, like a big boy, just how shitty this is all starting to look, especially for Ellis. You don’t know where he is? Well, okay, then nobody does. But if he’s not in Florida and he’s not in California, maybe the best place to start is at the beginning.”
Collins said, “It’s going to be a waste of time is all I’m trying to tell you. Just ’cause Ellis shot some baskets over at Garfield one night doesn’t mean he’d go over there to disappear himself.”
“Humor me,” DiMaggio said. “Wasting time is pretty much all I’ve been doing since I got to town.” He turned to Frank Crittendon. “You said Gary Lenz decided to move practice into the Garden?”
