Jump

by Mike Lupica

  DiMaggio asked him why.

  Ellis: “ ’Cause if I took one of them home, did my deal right in front of him, it would get him offa me for a while, not be asking me where I was last night, where’d I go? Asking me if I had some strange I hadn’t told him about. It was like I had this clock inside my head. The kind they always said I had on the court? Okay, Fresh, been a while since you made Richie happy by jumping some strange, better get out there tonight. Be the Ellis he wanted me to be. The Ellis he never wondered if I wasn’t, he was so wrapped up in his own head about the way he wanted things to be. How they was supposed to look. He knew I wasn’t pussy-crazy like him. But, hell, no one was. He wanted me to be Ellis the stud. So I was, at least enough to get him off my back.”

  Ellis finally suggested he and Hannah go back to the house so they didn’t have to sit in Mulligan’s all night. Maybe Hannah would change her mind back there. Or do them both. Ellis drove her car, Richie drove the Jeep, following them.

  Hannah never asked where Richie was, and Ellis didn’t say.

  Ellis: “She was real drunk by then. She started to fool around with me, trying to get me all turned on. Then she started crying, telling me all about A.J., how she knew he loved her, he’d always loved her, how could he fuck her over this way. How maybe he’d get all jealous when he found out she’d gone off with me. I just wanted to get her back to the house and turn her over to Richie and get her out of my face.”

  Richie was standing in the living room when they walked in. Hannah said something like, “What’re you doing here?”

  Ellis: “She still didn’t seem too happy to see Richie there. But then Richie made her a drink and put some music on. I went into the kitchen and got a glass of water. Richie came in and said, ‘You done with her?’ Thinking something had happened in the car. I told him I couldn’t get another hard-on if I tried. Richie said, ‘Okay, but if you change your mind, you know where to find us.’ ”

  Ellis went to bed. He said the next thing he heard was Hannah Carey screaming from the living room.

  Ellis: “I got up and put my sweats on, got my bike, let myself out the back way, decided to go for a ride. I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep until she was gone. See, there was always a lot of yelling with Richie and it’d got to where I couldn’t tell the difference, whether they was having a good time or not.”

  When he got back, Richie was asleep in front of the television, some porno movie playing, and Hannah Carey was gone.

  DiMaggio said to Ellis, “So he did rape her, and then she got out of there like she said.”

  Ellis said, “Or they had theirselves a real nice time and Richie fell asleep and she went home. Don’t give me no she-said. I read some of those stories, too. About how she tried to leave and I jumped out of the front-hall closet on her, raped her in the hallway. She told the police or somebody a lot of lies. Jump on her out of a closet. Shit.”

  “All this time, you never asked Richie?”

  “We talked all around it till this one night. And alls he said was, ‘Fresh, wasn’t no big deal.’ Then he gave me a look he’d give me sometimes, and said, ‘Fresh, you think your man Rich, he ever has to force these bitches?’ Then I asked him about that yell I heard out of her, even knowing what he was gonna say.”

  “Which was?”

  “Which was, ‘Aren’t they s’posed to yell?’ ”

  Ellis said he never thought about Hannah Carey again until Frank Crittendon came to the gym that day at Fulton College and told him that he and Richie were being accused of rape. Right from the start, Donnie Fuchs told them not to sweat, there wasn’t going to be a case. Richie would tell Ellis the same thing, all the time, saying most people were just going to think she was copycatting all the other bitches, the one with Mike Tyson and the one who cried rape that time with the Mets in Florida.

  Ride it out, Richie kept telling Ellis.

  DiMaggio said, “And it didn’t bother you that she charged both of you, not just Richie, even though you were innocent?”

  “I just figured it was part of it,” Ellis said. “Part of being Fresh Adair. You don’t get it? All just part of being me. People are always threatening to sue me, or all the ones like me. She just went ahead and followed through. You know Joe Montana, right? The quarterback? I was at a dinner with him one time? Joe Montana told me he was in training camp this time, backing out of the lot in his car, and then he hears yelling and stops because this guy, he’s lying behind the back wheels. Wanting to get fucking run over. So he can sue. Just part of the deal. It don’t matter whether you like it, don’t like it. I can’t remember a time when somebody didn’t want a piece of me. Starting with Rich.”

  Ellis turned to DiMaggio now, looking like some young, handsome high school kid in his ratty thrift-shop clothes. Maybe looking like the scared project kid Richie Collins had always described to DiMaggio.

  “Now you tell me, DiMaggio,” he said. “You tell me something. Where you goin’ with all this, even if it’s my word against yours when we get way down to it? You gonna sell this to the papers? Or to Inside Affair or whatever the fuck that show is? What’s your angle? What piece of Ellis Adair are you looking for?”

  “I’m almost there,” DiMaggio said.

  “Where?”

  “To that other room with Richie and Hannah.” DiMaggio stood and stretched and shook his hands loose as he did. He’d been squeezing them, trying to quiet them down, while Ellis had been talking about the night a year ago in Fulton, and that was a bad idea, always.

  Ellis said, “How you gonna get her to tell?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “And what do I do?” Ellis said.

  DiMaggio looked down at him in the hazy light, night being filtered through this hour into morning, morning coming fast now, like it was coming across the river from Queens, the first commuter of the day. It was there in his face, in his tone.

  Ellis really wanted to know what to do.

  He had always wanted somebody to tell him, Richie or a coach or an agent.

  Dale Larson.

  “Go back to Dale’s,” DiMaggio said. “Wait for me to call. But you know what I really think you should do? Think about showing up tomorrow night and playing some ball.”

  “How come you didn’t ask about Dale and me?” Ellis Adair said.

  “I’m a little unusual, even for this line of work. I still think there’s stuff that’s your own business.”

  Ellis got up and stuffed the basketball back in his bag, then walked over with DiMaggio to the blue bike. DiMaggio said, “Who do you think killed Richie?”

  “I been thinking a lot on that. Thinking on it until my head hurts, and then I stop. Wondering whether it was some husband. Or boyfriend who found out about Richie and his girl. Or some young girl’s old man. Or some girl herself.” He threw a long leg gracefully over the seat. “You know what I decided? It was just somebody Richie fucked once too often. Or fucked with.”

  Ellis Adair, looking like a kid, said, “I don’t have much time here, on account of the city’ll be waking up soon.” He smiled. “You want to shoot around a little? Play winners-out. I’ll spot you six baskets, game of seven.”

  DiMaggio said, “Another time.” He said to Ellis, “It really could be anybody with Richie.”

  Ellis said, “All the way back to Jersey City.”

  35

  DiMaggio and Ted Salter were at a coffee shop on Fifty-eighth, around the corner from the Sherry and right across the street from FAO Schwarz. Salter had said to beep him if it was ever an emergency. DiMaggio beeped him at six-thirty Saturday morning, told him he’d found Ellis. Salter wanted to know where he was, and DiMaggio told him it wasn’t important. “Excuse me?” Salter had said, “It isn’t goddamn important?”

  “Trust me,” DiMaggio had said on the phone.

  Now it was nine o’clock. Salter wore some flashy warm-ups, mostly navy-blue but with a lot of green-and-white lightning bolts slashing all over the place and a rooster where DiM
aggio expected to find the polo pony. Salter’s hair was slicked back, wetter-looking than usual, DiMaggio couldn’t tell anymore whether guys had just gotten out of the shower, or just wanted it to look that way.

  All Salter really wanted to know was if Ellis was going to play the opening game that night, tip-off at seven-thirty at the Garden.

  DiMaggio told him Ellis would be there.

  “Where’s he been?”

  “Shacked up.”

  “No kidding. Well, it’s always a great settler-down in times of turmoil, right?”

  Then DiMaggio told him everything he knew so far about what happened that night with Hannah, Ellis, Richie, and A. J. Fine.

  “So you’re telling me he’s innocent?” Salter said. “Yessss!” he said, smiling, making a fist and throwing a short punch into the space between them.

  “No,” DiMaggio said. “That’s not what I’m telling you.” It was like DiMaggio had thrown a punch right back at him. He saw Salter slump, shrinking back into the expensive warm-ups.

  “Could you please tell me what you are telling me then?”

  DiMaggio said, “I think Ellis could pass a lie detector test that everything happened the way he says it did. I think he’s convinced himself. But that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.” DiMaggio leaned closer to Salter, lowered his voice. “Because I think Richie Collins did rape her. And Ellis was there. And Ellis didn’t do a thing to help her. And if that comes out, Ellis doesn’t look much better than if he had done it himself.”

  Salter rubbed his eyes as if they were on fire. “But that doesn’t have to come out?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Because we still don’t think they can make the rape charges stick?”

  “I told you from the start that I didn’t think they could. I told you I thought they did it, and it wouldn’t matter in the end, at least in the eyes of the law, because I thought the case was impossible to make. You wanted me on this anyway. You wanted to know everything. And I feel like I’m almost there. When I’m all done, you want to ask me about guilty and innocent and who the real victims are, ask me then.”

  “You have no idea how unhappy my Japanese bosses are with this,” he said. “With me.”

  “Explain to me how this is your fault, exactly.”

  “Because it goddamn well has to be somebody’s fault, that’s why. Because, as you might imagine, they got into the sports business for the goodfuckingwill of it all. And now, in less than a month, they get a rape charge against a couple of their basketball players. Then one of the players, the most famous player in the goddamn world, disappears. And the other one gets himself killed.”

  “But you get Ellis back now.”

  “It’s a start,” Salter said. “That’s why I need him in uniform tonight.”

  “After he talks to the cops,” DiMaggio said.

  “Fine, fine, after he talks to the cops. But I need him in uniform. I need an emotional scene at the Garden. I need for him to do the moment-of-silence deal for Richie. I had to have some time alone, he can say. I couldn’t cope with everything that has been happening. I felt wounded. But I’m still the same Fresh Adair you’ve always known. And I know Richie would have wanted me to be here.” Salter waved a hand and said, “Etcetera, etcetera.”

  Salter said, “It doesn’t get me out of the woods, but it does get the Japs, and the public relations police, off my ass for a couple of days.”

  “I’m sorry I won’t be there to witness all this honest and heartfelt emotion,” DiMaggio said.

  “Hey,” Salter said, “you want to come? I could put you at courtside next to Spike and his wife.”

  The idea of fixing everything with a couple of comp tickets seemed to brighten Salter’s whole mood.

  DiMaggio said, “I’m still working until you tell me otherwise. Ellis only got me into the house. I’m still not in that room with Richie and Hannah. That’s why you called me in the first place, remember? I thought you wanted to know.”

  “You’re right,” Salter said. “I did. But you want to know what I’ve decided? I’ve got enough problems with these assholes when they’re alive to start worrying about them dead.”

  The coffee shop, even on a Saturday, was starting to fill up. Outside the window, a homeless guy, black, baseball cap turned around on his head, looked in. For a moment, DiMaggio thought it was Ellis, hunched over, still wearing his disguise.

  Still trying to be invisible.

  Out for one more ride, or walk, before he had to go back to being Fresh Adair tonight.

  Salter said, “So you’re going to stick around?”

  “I want to take one more run at Hannah Carey.”

  Salter’s beeper went off then. He slapped at his pocket like he was slapping at a bug, and went outside to the pay phone on the street. Smiling as he punched out the number.

  Starting to feel like he might be in charge again.

  Then Salter sagged suddenly at the phone, like someone had hit him behind the knees. He reached up with his free hand to grab one of the glass walls shielding the phone, trying to steady himself.

  DiMaggio threw money on the table and went out in time to hear Salter say, “I’m only a few blocks, I’ll be right over.”

  He tried to hang up the phone with a shaking hand, missed, then slammed it in. Salter turned around, jumped when he saw DiMaggio right behind him.

  “Frank Crittendon killed himself,” Salter said.

  They’d found Crittendon in his room at the Regency. When DiMaggio and Salter got there, they were already behind the first wave of media. There were vans from Channel 2 and Channel 7; a kid carrying a minicam that had NY 1 on the side was making a broken-field run across Park Avenue, dodging cars, horns blasting at him from both sides of the divider. DiMaggio was used to it by now, no gap between the event and the coverage, as if it had all become one smooth merge.

  There were print guys on the sidewalk, too, DiMaggio was starting to recognize the bastards from some of the other scenes. The car horns kept going because the vans already had traffic starting to back up in front of the Regency. And pedestrians, regular people out for a walk on Saturday morning, were starting to form a crowd on both sides of the hotel’s revolving-door entrance.

  The people didn’t know what the action was, just that there was action.

  Part of the scene.

  Salter grabbed DiMaggio and pulled him through the crowd. “If we don’t put our heads down, we’ll never get in there.” A cop was in front of the revolving door with the doorman, asking people to show their room keys. But Len Boyle, one of Salter’s PR guys from the Garden, was with them. “This is Mr. Salter,” Boyle said to the cop, like he was announcing that the cavalry had arrived.

  Boyle walked with them toward the bank of elevators on the left side of the front lobby.

  Salter said, “Does the team know?”

  “Gary’s been calling them in their rooms,” Boyle said.

  “They’re still here then?”

  Boyle, a big, handsome kid with red hair and a lot of freckles, said, “The shootaround at the Garden isn’t till ten.”

  Salter jabbed at the elevator button. Without looking at Boyle, not raising his voice, he said, “Tell Gary to cancel the shootaround. And tell him no interviews now, or before the game. Anybody I see on the news tonight, before I talk to them, is a fucking dead man.” The elevator doors opened, and Salter said, “You stay here and work the press as best you can.” The doors started to close, and Salter stuck a hand out. “Where is he by the way?”

  Boyle said, “Eight-o-four.”

  The cop in charge was named Stanton. He had a crew cut and sleepy eyes and looked too young to be homicide. He looked like he could have been one of the reporters from downstairs, wearing a blazer and blue jeans and cowboy boots, sucking hard on a cigarette in the hall.

  Salter introduced himself to Stanton.

  Stanton shook his hand, said, “I’ve been expecting you.” Then nodded at DiMaggio and said, “Wh
o’s he?”

  DiMaggio said, “I’m with the band.”

  Stanton, deadpan, said, “Crime-scene wise guys. My favorite.”

  Salter said, “His name is DiMaggio. He’s been working on the rape investigation for the Garden.”

  Stanton was the wise guy. “How’s that going so far?” he said to DiMaggio.

  Over Stanton’s shoulder, the door to 804 was open and the crime-scene people seemed to be finishing up, and Stanton said, “I’ll bumper-sticker this for you?”

  Salter said, “Fine.”

  Crittendon had left a six o’clock wake-up call. Then a backup for six-fifteen and a third for six-thirty. Salter nodded. “Frank was careful,” he said. The switchboard got no answer on any of them. The assistant manager, a Brit named Whitaker, knew Crittendon, knew he liked to have an early breakfast by himself in the Regency’s restaurant, a big power-breakfast place, alone with the papers. Whitaker sent a bellman up to knock on the door. Still no answer. Whitaker went up and let himself into Room 804 and found him in bed, the bottle of Seconal on the nightstand next to him, empty.

  “Note?” Salter said.

  Stanton shook his head.

  “Family?”

  “Notified. On their way. And I put in a call to the Fulton cops. I don’t know if this has anything to do with the Richie Collins case up there. But they got a right.”

  Stanton said, “Whitaker, the assistant manager, he says Crittendon was a good guy.”

  In a dead voice Salter said, “Yes.”

  A short guy, a little overweight, came past them carrying what looked to be an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag. DiMaggio figured it must be the medical examiner. He reminded DiMaggio, the way he was built, of Frank Crittendon.

  DiMaggio walked down the hall, away from 804, and flashed on his first conversation with Crittendon, up in Fulton.

  They look at me like I’m garbage, he’d said.

  Salter finished with the cops and came down to where DiMaggio leaned against a wall. He didn’t look like the corporate tiger anymore, clapping his hands in the coffee shop, ready to go out and bite the world in the ass.