by Mike Lupica
“Nope. Hyland’s just left with an open investigation on Richie’s murder. But he knows it’s an investigation going nowhere.”
She gently took his hand and kissed it.
Ellen said, “But Hannah lied about having an alibi.”
“Hannah turned out to be a rather unreliable narrator, let’s face it. And lying about her alibi doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t give them probable cause, it doesn’t give them sufficient reason to arrest her, or even issue a warrant. They had no physical evidence with her, any more than they had physical evidence with the rape. She got crazy and killed Richie, I’m convinced of that. Then she got lucky with Frank Crittendon. He got crazy and killed himself.”
Ellen said, “I can’t believe she doesn’t have to talk to the cops.”
“Hyland was talking about the O. J. Simpson thing one day, and how that first day after they found the bodies, O.J. went in and voluntarily talked to the cops without a lawyer present. Hyland said, ‘You know how many times in the history of the world that has helped a suspect? Never.’ Only idiots talk to the cops when they don’t have to.”
DiMaggio sighed. “This thing began with the basketball players not talking to the cops about rape and ends with the rape victim not talking to the cops about killing one of the players.”
“How do you feel about all this?” she said.
“Which?”
“That she gets away with it.”
“I don’t know.” He got out of bed. “You want one more brandy? I think I might have one. At my age, you need help getting to sleep.”
She winked at him, said, “After the brandy helps you, I’ll help the brandy.”
He came back with one glass for both of them.
“Why did you have to know?” she said.
“Because I did. Marty Perez was right about something. I have to know.”
He sipped the brandy, handed it to her. “I don’t think I ever asked you,” Ellen said, “but why do you think Marty Perez helped you?”
“He really felt like he killed Frank Crittendon. And he wanted to work off some of the guilt. If somebody deserved to be a victim here, it was Richie Collins, not Frank.”
“All you ended up with are victims.”
“I know,” DiMaggio said.
“Hannah was just the first one.”
“Now she gets away with murder.”
Ellen said, “And you want to feel worse about that than you do.”
DiMaggio said, “Remember what I told you about my mother?”
The sheets had fallen off her. Ellen was one of those people who were perfectly relaxed naked. She had her head propped up on one elbow. She said, “Yes.”
“I told you how I went after the guy?”
She nodded.
“I could’ve killed that guy.”
Ellen Harper took the glass out of his hand then and helped the brandy, and they slept until two o’clock in the morning, when there was one last phone call, this one from Ellis Adair.
The cab dropped him off at the corner of Sixty-first and First. DiMaggio walked over from there to wake up a little more. When he got to the playground, the blue bike was where it had been the first time, leaning against the fence.
Ellis Adair was on the court, wearing most of his disguise, just not the beard this time, shooting layups, one after another, in a light rain. DiMaggio, dressed in sweats himself because Ellis had told him to, walked over to him and said, “Hey.”
Adair flipped him the ball, not too hard. DiMaggio caught it. Maybe it was Ellen. Or the brandy. Or still being half asleep. The ball didn’t hurt. He flipped a little set shot at the basket and missed everything. Ellis laughed and then sang “Air balllllllll” in a deep voice, the way they did in an arena when somebody shot one.
DiMaggio said, “I’m out of practice.” Ellis gave him the ball again, and DiMaggio shot another one up there, this one bouncing off the back rim. He said, “Didn’t you guys have a game tonight?”
Ellis Adair said, “Boston. We won. Then we flew right out after the game, our private plane. Landed at La Guardia about one. I needed to get out. I played in worse conditions than this.”
DiMaggio said, “Dale back?”
“Tomorrow. I wasn’t even sure you’d still be in town.”
“I keep saying I’m going to leave, but I don’t leave. I met someone.”
Ellis nodded at the bench, and they went over and sat down. He still had the ball. He spun it on the tip of his fingers the way the Globetrotters did, smiling as he did, making it look ridiculously easy.
Looking ridiculously young and happy doing it.
“She did it, didn’t she? That’s what Mr. Salter said anyhow.”
“She did it.”
“And she’s gonna walk.”
“Yes.”
DiMaggio said, “Let me ask you something somebody just asked me: Does that bother you?”
Ellis gave the spinning ball a little punch, and it bounced away toward the basket. “Not as much as I thought it would, even as much as Rich meant to me. You know what I was thinking on the plane? I was thinking that she just convicted Richie her own self. That one woman down in Virginia, she cut the guy’s deal off. Hannah Carey just didn’t stop there.”
DiMaggio said, “Is that why you brought me over here, to talk about her?”
“No,” Ellis said.
He stood and walked over to get the ball. He dribbled it a few times and made a spin move, then fell away from the basket and shot a soft jumper that whooshed through the net. He retrieved the ball and came over and stood in front of DiMaggio but did not sit down this time. A car made a right on Sixty-first, then backed up, and went up to Sixty-second and got on the F.D.R. going north there. Ellis said, “Remember the other time? When I told you I’d explain to you sometime why I left that day?”
Ellis said, “It wasn’t the test on the damn dress. That was just a damn coincidence.” He took a deep breath and said in a soft voice, “It was the day Dale found out he tested positive for the virus.”
DiMaggio sat there, the rain coming harder now. Not having to ask what virus.
“I just couldn’t deal with all of it no more. I couldn’t tell Richie, I couldn’t tell anybody. All the assholes in the world, it had to happen to Dale, who never hurt anybody …”
Ellis Adair’s face wet with the rain, DiMaggio not being able to tell if he was crying.
“I finally worked up the nerve, got tested myself. After all these years.”
DiMaggio knowing what was coming next.
Wanting to be wrong.
“I found out today,” Ellis Adair said.
DiMaggio leaned back, put his head back, let the rain hit his face.
Finally, DiMaggio said, “What do you do now?”
“Quit,” Ellis said. “Quit like Magic did, so they can’t run me out the way they done with him. I was thinking about playing one more game at the Garden, but what’s the point. You know? I made a real nice play tonight, down near the end? Went down the middle, and they all come up on me, and I stayed up there. Like I can? And finally I switched hands and spun it in left-handed, off the top of the board. I was thinking on that on the plane. Maybe that was as good a good-bye shot as any.”
“Anyway,” he said to DiMaggio. “You were decent to me when you found out about Dale ’n’ me. Not looking to score off me or whatever. Not wanting nothing. So I wanted you to know. Tell you myself.”
“Jesus, Ellis—”
“I’ll be all right. I knew I’d have to stop ball someday. Just never figured it’d be like this.”
DiMaggio thinking, There’s always one last victim.
Ellis said, “What do they always tell you? You play, you pay, right? You play, you pay. We just don’t none of us ever think it’s gonna apply to us. Do we?”
DiMaggio said, “Something like that.”
Ellis Adair tossed him the ball again. Smiling this sweet smile. “You want to play?” he said to DiMaggio.
T
his book is for
William Goldman
and Pete Hamill
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nothing important in my life ever gets done without the love and support of Taylor McKelvy Lupica.
And special thanks this time to Detective Tony Giunta, Westport (Conn.) Police Department.
ALSO BY MIKE LUPICA
FICTION
Limited Partner
Dead Air
Extra Credits
NONFICTION
Wait Till Next Year (with William Goldman)
Shooting from the Lip
Reggie (with Reggie Jackson)
Parcells: The Biggest Giant of Them All (with Bill Parcells)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Lupica is one of the best-known and widely read sports columnists in the United States. After working at the New York Daily News and The National, Lupica is now with Newsday, and his column is syndicated by the Los Angeles Times. He has also written the “Sporting Life” column in Esquire magazine since 1987, and is a regular on ESPN’s popular Sunday morning show The Sports Reporters. Jump is his fourth novel. The other three were Peter Finley mysteries. The first, Dead Air, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Mystery, and became the CBS movie Money, Power and Murder, for which Lupica also wrote the teleplay. He lives with his wife, the former Taylor McKelvy, and their three sons in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Jupiter, Florida.
