Jump

by Mike Lupica

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, leaning back himself, taking a spot next to DiMaggio. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Was he sick?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “When did you talk to him last?”

  “Yesterday. He was asking how you were doing on your deal, wondering if there was any chance Ellis might turn up before the game.”

  “He seemed fine?”

  “He seemed like Frank. A little tired. A little worried about everything. A little scared that because everything had gotten so out of hand I might blame him. Or the Fukiko guys might tell me to blame him.”

  Salter said, “I didn’t tell you this at the coffee shop, not in so many words. But I don’t care anymore about Hannah Carey. I don’t care what happened with her and Collins because it’s starting to sound to me like they deserved each other. I mean, sonofabitch, she’s turned this into a career, hasn’t she?”

  DiMaggio said, “And your company was going to be in business with her before I told you what I told you this morning.”

  “This all started because I was looking out for the company, pal.”

  “Is that your defense? Pal.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “I’m asking,” DiMaggio said.

  Salter started back toward 804, turned around. “See the thing is, this wasn’t ever supposed to be about somebody like Frank. It was supposed to be about them. Even when Collins got it, it was still about them, whatever had happened with the three of them. But not Frank. Frank Crittendon was decent. I forgot that myself sometimes. I wasn’t very nice to him sometimes. I’m a bad boy. Bad shit happens to me I say, Okay, that comes with the territory, let’s play two. But not Frank, goddamnit!” He was shouting at the end. “Goddammit!”

  “Let’s get out of here,” DiMaggio said.

  They waited for the elevator, and DiMaggio said to him, “You don’t know this had anything to do with the rape or Richie.”

  “Then why do I have that feeling?”

  There was no answer for that one because DiMaggio had the same feeling about Frank Crittendon, not picking up on his three wake-up calls.

  They look at me like I’m nothing, he’d said.

  What was it about this investigation? What was it about all these invisible people?

  The Brit manager took them out the service entrance. DiMaggio wanted to wait around, see if Hyland showed up, but he was afraid Salter was going to snap, so he stayed with him. They came out between Park and Madison on Sixtieth, away from the press.

  “I need to talk to Ellis. If we play the game, I want to tell him how to play it tonight,” Salter said.

  “You might not?”

  “I need to talk to my Japs before I talk to Ellis.”

  “Here’s the number, call him.” DiMaggio took his notebook out, wrote Dale Larson’s number. Salter said, “Where is this?” And DiMaggio said, “Where he is.”

  Salter said, “What are you doing right now?”

  “Waiting for the Fulton cops to show up. They’re going to want to talk to Ellis, too.”

  They had started walking toward Madison. Salter stopped suddenly and said, “What’d I do with the car?” Panicking like somebody who’d lost his car keys or his wallet.

  “You told him to wait where he dropped us off, on Sixty-second.”

  “I’ll circle around, call Ellis from the car. Maybe the cops can wait, talk to him tomorrow, after the game.”

  “Today.”

  Salter said, “And why is that?”

  DiMaggio said, “Because everything you say you don’t care about anymore, they don’t have that luxury.”

  DiMaggio left him there, walked back toward the Regency. He came around on Park and saw that the crowd had gotten even bigger. More vans. More reporters. More onlookers.

  He thought, They should sell tickets.

  DiMaggio saw Marty Perez maybe a few seconds before Perez, standing in the street, at the back of the crowd, turned his head and saw him. He had some kind of old briefcase in his hand and was wearing an old New York Giants baseball cap.

  Perez came walking over. “I was looking for you,” he said. “I called the hotel, you weren’t there, I figured you’d be here.”

  DiMaggio said to Perez, “I found out something early in my career with guys like you, Marty. You’re never looking for me to help me.”

  “Today’s different, maybe.”

  “How so?”

  “I couldn’t decide who I should tell. And then I decided on you. All the people who are in this, from the start, you’re the only one without an angle.”

  “There’s the financial angle, Marty. I’m very expensive.”

  “It’s always more than money with you, even when you played ball. You always wanted to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Whatever.”

  “So what is it that you want to tell me and not anybody else?”

  “I know who killed that poor bastard.”

  “Richie Collins?”

  Perez jerked a thumb back over his shoulder at the scene in front of the Regency. “Crittendon,” he said.

  “Somebody killed him?”

  “Me,” Marty Perez said.

  Back at the Sherry, Perez asked DiMaggio if there was any rum.

  DiMaggio went over to the bar; other than Scotch, he never paid much attention to how they stocked it. Now he saw that they had just about everything, including a new bottle of Bacardi. Marty said that would do him fine. DiMaggio poured some over ice and brought it over to where Perez was sitting with his briefcase, an old satchel, really, in his lap. Perez had taken the Giants cap off, set it on the coffee table. “You hate guys like me more than you ever did, don’t you?” Perez said. “It’s gotten worse since you played ball.”

  DiMaggio said, “To tell you the truth, Marty, hate would make you more important in my life than you are. Hate requires some effort.”

  “But if you didn’t have to—?”

  “I’d never talk to you.” It came out impatient. DiMaggio looked at him and said, “You said you killed Frank Crittendon, what the hell is that supposed to mean exactly?”

  Perez took a big hit of the Bacardi, kept the glass right there, took another, and emptied the glass. Then he held the glass out to DiMaggio, meaning another. When DiMaggio came back, Perez told him about Richie and the high school girl and finding out it was Crittendon’s daughter and how he decided to go for the old man instead of the girl.

  “Why not the kid?” DiMaggio said.

  “Because she’s a kid.”

  “And you have standards.”

  “You’re being sarcastic,” Marty Perez said dully, “but, yeah, even I have lines I won’t cross, whether you want to believe that or not.” He drank more rum. DiMaggio wondered when the last time was he’d slept or if he just looked this old and used up all the time. When Perez put his glass down, DiMaggio saw he had the shakes. “Or so I like to tell myself,” he said.

  He told DiMaggio about waiting for Crittendon in front of the Regency, how Crittendon hadn’t even acted surprised. In the elevator going up to Room 804, Marty told Crittendon this was about Kelly and Crittendon had answered, “I know, I know,” just as he had on the street.

  DiMaggio said, “Doing this to a high school girl’s father, this was on the acceptable side of your line, though.”

  “What do you want from me?” Perez said. “It’s a big story. Big stories are what I do. I had this part of it to myself. That’s the game.” The old Marty Perez looked at DiMaggio for a moment and said, “But what you do is pure.”

  “It was his daughter, Marty.”

  Perez said, “They’re always somebody’s daughter.” He squeezed the sides of the satchel and said, “I needed it, okay?” Nearly whispering, Marty Perez said, “I needed it.”

  They went up to Crittendon’s room and the crew set up. Maybe if Crittendon had thought it through, Marty Perez said, he would have told them all to get lost, just to buy himself some time.
Get his story straight. Or come up with the one that worked. But Crittendon just sat there, very calm, while they set up. Perez said he almost seemed relieved. Crittendon asked how he got proof about Kelly Crittendon’s affair with Collins. Perez said all that mattered was he had it.

  They did the interview.

  DiMaggio said, “You’ve got the tape, of course.”

  Perez patted the bag and said, “With me.”

  “Are we going to look at it?”

  “In a minute. I’ve cued it up to the part you need to see.”

  Crittendon admitted that his daughter had had a relationship with Richie Collins. Perez asked him if it was a sexual relationship and Crittendon just repeated that it was a relationship. He said he found out about it. The family was considering filing statutory rape charges against Collins when Collins was murdered.

  Perez said, “Then Crittendon broke down.”

  “And now you think it was you who pushed him over the edge?”

  “No,” Perez said. “Just listen to me, will you? It was what came next. After I told him what else I knew.”

  He reached into his bag and took out the cassette and went over and put it in the VCR sitting on top of DiMaggio’s television. Then hit Play with one of his stubby fingers.

  There was Frank Crittendon’s face.

  Same face, DiMaggio thought. But it was as if something had happened to every part of it, as if Frank Crittendon had been in a fight, a bad fight, and the eyes were wrong and the mouth was set wrong. DiMaggio looked at the picture and couldn’t tell where Perez was sitting, so he couldn’t tell whether Crittendon’s eyes were unfocused or if he just didn’t know where to look.

  He heard Perez’s voice, trying to be helpful.

  “There’s a little bit more to it, though, isn’t there, Frank?”

  Crittendon shifted in his chair. They were shooting him from the waist up here. Same preppy clothes. Blue shirt with the roll to the collar. Bow tie. Hair brushed straight forward, like he was some sad, pasty-faced Napoleon.

  Christ, DiMaggio thought.

  Crittendon: “What do you mean? I told you everything. Haven’t I told you enough—?”

  “Everything, Frank?”

  The camera guy closed in. Crittendon’s eyes were all over the place now.

  Crittendon: “Richie. My Kelly …”

  He started to get jammed up. Perez had said he broke down once. DiMaggio thought he was ready to go again.

  Crittendon: “Jesus, she’s just a kid.”

  Looking off to the side, pleading.

  Crittendon: “Is it all right if I say ‘Jesus’?”

  Frank Crittendon trying to be a gentleman to the end.

  You could hear Perez say, “Sure.”

  Crittendon: “Where were we?”

  Perez hadn’t moved from the television set. He just stood there, dead eyes watching what DiMaggio was watching, listening to himself say, “You were at Richie Collins’s house in Fulton the night he was murdered, weren’t you, Frank? Isn’t that the part you left out?”

  Crittendon (smiling now): “No, I was not. That’s crazy.”

  He looked around again, as if his eyes were on scan, looking for a way out.

  For help.

  Looking for help with none coming.

  Crittendon: “Why would I go over there?”

  On the tape, Perez, trying to be friendly, said, “You tell me.”

  Crittendon: “I wasn’t there.”

  “I’ve got a witness, Frank. Got a real good one.”

  Crittendon’s face smiled suddenly, the mouth going crooked, the whole puffy face turning into a grotesque clown’s mask.

  Crittendon: “NO!”

  Next to the set, Marty Perez spilled some of his drink, as if the whole room had suddenly shifted underneath him.

  Crittendon: “I did not kill him.”

  The camera stayed tight.

  Crittendon (almost whispering): “He was already dead when I got there.”

  Perez started to say something on the tape, DiMaggio couldn’t make it out, but Crittendon didn’t seem to notice.

  Crittendon: “I was nothing to people like Richie Collins. You have to know that. You know that, don’t you? They think you’re nothing, too. His coach, he had to at least listen to him, whether he liked him or not. Ted Salter, he’s the big boss, the money man. But me? Collins … all of them … looked at me like I was some old errand boy. Looked at me with such contempt. And all these years, all these punks … I had put up with it, with this shit from these shit people … thinking they run the goddamn world …”

  Not worrying about language anymore.

  Language or anything.

  Crittendon: “Basketball had been my whole life. It was a sport of precision. It had belonged to gentlemen once, to civilized people who didn’t think the money was an entitlement. Not these smug, sneering punks. And now one of them had … had my daughter. And I knew. So I went there. Yes. I went there because I wanted to tell him to his face what scum he was. I wanted to know why he had singled me out, my family … my Kelly. This scum. I knew he was up there. He’d said something to the coach at practice. About a date in Fulton. Bragging. Saying they all came back to him sooner or later … so I went there. The door was open. I had rung the bell, I was going to leave, then the door blew open a little. I went in. I called out, asking if anybody was there … and then I heard the voices from the bedroom and I went in, and there was this vile movie, this dirty movie … and there he was … blood everywhere … the knife still in him … I touched him … he was dead. He was dead, and I still wanted to hurt him. I was crazy in that moment with wanting to hurt him … so I grabbed the knife by the handle … not even thinking … about putting my hands on it … and I twisted it into him … like I was screwing him … giving it to him …”

  Crittendon was nodding eagerly, looking right into the camera now. Earnest. As if to say, Doesn’t it all make perfect sense?

  Pleased with himself.

  Crittendon: “I thought to myself, Frank, you really know how to hurt a guy. Isn’t that funny?”

  Frank Crittendon started to laugh.

  Marty Perez, crying, reached over and hit Stop.

  36

  She came out of the Vertical Club when she said she’d come out, about five-thirty in the afternoon. Not wading into the media sharks this time. Just a clear Saturday in New York, the sun emptied out of the afternoon, New York looking like some hazy black-and-white photograph.

  Hannah Carey had a purple nylon bag slung over her shoulder. She wore faded jeans with one knee ripped out, a baggy hooded sweatshirt, a black baseball cap with *?!@ sewn over the bill. DiMaggio had seen the caps in the city and up at Fulton College and had no idea if there was some hidden message or a cutting-edge reference.

  Or if this was just kids putting FUCK on a baseball hat, the word right out there for the world like a headlight.

  One way or the other, he was behind the curve again.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Mr. Second Opinion,” Hannah Carey said. “I was glad you called.”

  DiMaggio said, “I wanted to say good-bye in person.”

  “Good-bye?” Hannah smiled. “We just barely said hello.”

  DiMaggio jerked a head toward First Avenue.

  “You’re not too tired to take a walk?”

  “I’m all showered and tingly and ready to go.”

  “The last time I was that way was minor-league ball,” he said. “You want me to carry your bag?”

  She shook her head. “The tingly one should carry.”

  They walked toward First Avenue.

  “You’re really leaving, even with the—”

  “Richie Collins’s murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes,” he said. At the corner, he turned south on First and she turned with him. “We could go over and sit there on Sutton, where we went after Antolotti’s.”

  She said fine. He could see where her hair was still wet
under the baseball cap. DiMaggio said, “You’re sure you’re not cold?”

  “Like ’em and leave ’em DiMaggio,” she said. “I’m fine, really.”

  If they walked a block east, he could show her the basketball court where he caught up with Ellis. He said, “My job is pretty much done here. The murder investigation, yeah, I’d like to know how it comes out, but that’s the cops’ business. The Knicks asked me to find out what happened last October with you and Richie and Ellis Adair. And now I feel like I pretty much have, and so I’m on my way back to Florida. Tomorrow probably.”

  They went underneath the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, got to Fifty-eighth, and Hannah Carey said, “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “About?”

  “About last year.”

  “Pretty sure,” DiMaggio said. “I just want to tie up a few loose ends before I go. See what happened, it’s a little different from the way it came out.” DiMaggio took her arm as they crossed First at Fifty-seventh and said, “Here and there.”

  Hannah took her arm back without making a big show of it. “The police know what happened. It took me a long time to remember.”

  They walked in silence toward Sutton on the long avenue block, DiMaggio aware of the silence between them, of the traffic noises behind them on First, and off in the distance somewhere, way off to the west, the sound of a fire engine.

  “It’s so terrible about Frank Crittendon,” he said.

  Having waited as long as he could.

  “Frank?”

  “Crittendon. General manager of the Knicks. You haven’t heard?”

  “No.”

  “He killed himself this morning at the Regency Hotel. Sleeping pills. It turns out he was at Richie Collins’s house in Fulton the night he was murdered. He says he didn’t kill him, but the cops already did a check on his fingerprints, and it turns out they’re his prints on the knife that killed Richie.”

  DiMaggio turned and saw that Hannah had stopped. She had a hand over her mouth. If she was acting now, she should never have gotten out of the business. She slowly pulled the hand away from her mouth. He had noticed at Antolotti’s that night, sometimes Hannah Carey looked past you, a little to the right or a little to the left. He had taken this course once, at Palm Beach Junior College, on neurolinguistics, all about interviewing techniques and how people, visualizing things, would actually look in one direction when they were telling the truth, another direction when they were lying.