A Perfect Shot

by Robin Yocum

  Meanwhile, eleven hundred miles away, Addie Mae Groat was torn between her love of Ronald Reynolds and, like Cara before her, her concern for her children.

  A week after his confession at his apartment, Ronald’s phone rang early one morning. The only person who knew his phone number was Addie Mae.

  He picked it up and said, “Hey, lover.”

  “Not on your best day, sunshine.”

  It was Kinnicki.

  “How’d you get this number? It’s unlisted.”

  “Uh-huh. Did you forget who I work for?”

  “Apparently, I did.”

  “I was just calling to see where you want me to ship the Buick.”

  “The Buick? I thought you were keeping it until this ordeal was over.”

  “I did. You are hereby relieved of duty. Antonelli is taking a plea.”

  “You’re kidding. Why would he do that?”

  “Once he and his lawyer listened to all the tapes, Mr. Antonelli was suddenly very cooperative. He gets life in prison, but no death penalty, in exchange for his complete cooperation on any federal investigations into mob activities here, in New York, and in Chicago.”

  There was a moment of silence on the phone.

  “So that’s it?” Ronald asked.

  “That’s it. You’re free to go live your life. Just so you know, Antonelli’s lawyers are convinced it was either you or Tony DeMarco who gave us the tapes. They think we’re hiding you both. For the record, you’re the only one we’ve been hiding, and it would certainly be in your best interests to stay hidden.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  On Saturday, September 21, 1996, Ronald Reynolds and Addie Mae Groat were married in a small church ceremony at the Netawaka United Methodist Church. Brooklynn Renée was the maid of honor; Logan Matthew was the best man. He adopted the kids and, as a gift to Addie Mae and her parents, took her last name. With the ill-gotten loot from the Troll, and his remaining savings from Fort Sam Houston, he and Addie Mae purchased a sporting goods and trophy store in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma—Groat’s Sporting Goods.

  Ron had a portion of their backyard blacktopped for a basketball court. Brooklynn developed into the best point guard in the area. Logan remained interested in his barrel racing and, to the amazement of his mother, also developed a passion for his father’s favorite sport. He loved playing games of H-O-R-S-E and one-on-one with his new dad.

  “We’ll play one-on-one, but you have to pretend to be someone,” Logan announced. “I’m Michael Jordan. Who are you?”

  Ron Groat took the ball and wiped at the sweat on his upper lip. “I’ll be Duke Ducheski.”

  Logan frowned. “Duke who?”

  “Ducheski. Duke Ducheski. Don’t tell me that you’ve never heard of the great Duke Ducheski?”

  Logan shook his head. “No. Who does he play for?”

  “Well, he’s retired now. But he used to play for the Mingo Indians.”

  “I’ve never heard of them, either.”

  The Duke of Mingo Junction grinned and bounced the ball to his son.

  EPILOGUE

  There were two enduring theories surrounding the disappearance of Duke Ducheski.

  Some believed he had been murdered by Tony DeMarco or the Antonelli family. The rationale ranged from Duke’s infidelity to Nina to the possibility that he was stealing from the Antonelli gambling operation.

  Others, the romantics, believed he vanished on his own accord or went into the witness-protection program to avoid being murdered by Tony DeMarco or the Antonellis.

  Late in the afternoon after Duke dropped off the tapes in my office, two agents from the FBI field office in Pittsburgh showed up to claim them. They were a humorless duo, and their only question was, “Is this all of them?” It was, I assured them. They left without ever asking if I had listened to the tapes or made copies, which I had. Thus, I knew that Duke was in deep with the FBI’s investigation of Pittsburgh’s most powerful mob boss. Duke intimated to me that he might be killed. If the guy I took those from ever finds out I’ve got ’em, jail would be a much-preferable option. Thus, it was a very likely possibility that he was dead.

  I had planned to cover the trial of Joseph Antonelli, hoping it might provide some clues to Duke’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, Antonelli accepted the government’s plea bargain and the evidence against him was secreted away. My Freedom of Information requests for investigative documentation were denied, as the information was deemed to be part of other, ongoing FBI investigations. This, I knew, was largely baloney, but it’s a difficult point to challenge. I spoke to Agent Kinnicki and the federal prosecutor, but neither would even admit to having ever heard the name Duke Ducheski.

  After nearly two decades of fruitless searches, I was finally convinced that he was dead. Most likely, I thought, Joseph Antonelli had learned that Tony DeMarco had secretly recorded him and that Duke had stolen the tapes, and both men were fed into a meat grinder or a blast furnace.

  Then, one day in early May 2014, I was reminded that sometimes, no matter how hard you work, there is no substitute for dumb luck.

  Let me back up a step.

  In the 1930s, my Grandmother Kaminski gave birth to triplets—all girls—Annabelle, Marabelle and Rosabelle. During a six-week stretch in the fall of 1952, each gave birth to first-born sons. Marabelle gave birth to me, Mitchell Malone, on October 7. Rosabelle gave birth to Nicholas Ducheski on October 30. Annabelle delivered Johnny Earl on November 21. Johnny was a phenomenal athlete who, after washing out of the minor leagues, decided to supplement his meager income by dealing cocaine. He was eventually caught and convicted and served a seven-year prison stint. After his release, Johnny recovered the nearly half-million dollars in illicit drug money he had stashed before being sentenced and moved to Texas to start his life over. He had cleaned up his act and was the owner of a successful excavation and construction business in the Fort Worth area.

  It was late in the afternoon when my cell phone rang and Johnny’s name and number appeared on my screen.

  “What’s up, cuz?” I asked.

  “Mitch, I swear to Jesus, I just saw Duke,” he said.

  “What? Our cousin, Duke?”

  “Well, how many goddamn Dukes do you know who would make me pick up the phone and call you? Yes, our cousin Duke.”

  “Where? Did you talk to him?”

  “No, dammit, I couldn’t. I was on a backhoe digging up Houston Street for a new sewer line in front of the Fort Worth Convention Center. He was on the other side of a chain-link fence walking into the convention center. I yelled at him, but it was too noisy for him to hear me.”

  “Maybe the guy heard you, but it wasn’t Duke.”

  “It was him, goddammit. I know my own cousin when I see him. After I got the backhoe back on the trailer, I sat in front of the convention center for a couple of hours to see if I could catch him coming back out, but no luck. I’m telling you, Mitch, it was Duke, bigger than life.”

  I called the convention center and learned that the American Association of Independent Sporting Goods Dealers had been hosting its annual conference at the convention center. It ended that afternoon. The next day, I called the association’s headquarters in Indianapolis and told the woman who answered the phone that I was the editor of the Ohio Valley Morning Journal—the truth—and that I was working on a series of stories on the challenges facing independent stores when competing against larger chains—a blatant lie—and I wanted to include the sporting goods industry. Would it be possible, I asked, to get the names of the association’s members, so I could interview store owners from a cross-section of the country? She obliged.

  She emailed me the list. It was broken down by state and contained the names of 1,207 members, the names of their stores, and some web addresses. That night, I started working through the list.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for. Obviously, I had hoped to find his name on the list, or a store called, “Duke’s Sporting Goods.” Neither appeared. I spent
hours working my way through the list, looking up websites and bios, hoping to find some little nugget that would give me a hint of where he might be. The entire search was dependent upon the veracity of Johnny’s supposed sighting, and that Duke was, indeed, a sporting goods dealer.

  It was, at best, a long shot.

  I had spent days hunched in front of my computer and had checked out more than eight hundred stores by the time I got to Oklahoma. I was almost resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going to find him on the list and would have to attend the association’s conference the following year in Anaheim for a firsthand look. Still, I soldiered on.

  The first listing in Oklahoma was for Groat’s Sporting Goods in Broken Arrow. As I did with all the websites, I looked for photos or bios of the owners, anything that might offer a clue. There was nothing on the Groat’s Sporting Goods website that would make me believe it was owned by my cousin. Just before I went to the next name on the list, I clicked on a tab that said: “Sports Camps.” Groat’s sponsored a host of sports camps for baseball, basketball, football, softball, and volleyball.

  My eye caught a line in the information on the basketball camps. It read: “While fundamentals are stressed at all ages, experienced players will learn more technical skills, such as cross-over moves, hesitation dribble, the wraparound, and how to jigger and trigger.”

  Jigger and trigger!

  It was him.

  The jigger and trigger was Duke’s signature move from his days with the Mingo Indians.

  Across the lane, three seconds, the jigger, behind his back, the trigger, from fifteen feet, the horn, the rim, it’s up and, in! It’s in!

  My heart sounded like a bass drum beating in my chest. My fingers shook so badly that I could not type for several minutes. It was him. It was Duke Ducheski. He was alive.

  Two days later, I left Pittsburgh International Airport on a flight to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I rented a car and drove to Groat’s Sporting Goods, which was located in a two-story, brick building in Broken Arrow. It was early in the afternoon on Saturday, May 24, 2014—twenty years to the day that Duke Ducheski left Mingo Junction. A cowbell on the front door announced my arrival; my cousin was at the counter, writing up an order for a woman and her son. As I ducked into an aisle, he said, “I’ll be with you in a minute, sir.”

  “Take your time,” I said.

  When the woman and her son left, he slipped a pencil behind an ear and started out from behind the counter. “What can I help you with?” he asked.

  I turned to face him; he froze, frowned. Behind the perplexed eyes and the furrowed brow, he frantically searched for my face in his memory. It took just a few seconds.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  “I’m a newspaper man. I’ve been called much worse,” I said.

  “Mitch?” he asked, as though still not quite sure.

  “Most people don’t have this much trouble recognizing their cousin.”

  We hugged and laughed and both got teary-eyed.

  I spent three days with my cousin, catching up on his life and learning the story you just read in this book. When I got back to Wheeling, I took a leave of absence to write it.

  I fudged on a few things here. His name isn’t Groat and he doesn’t live in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. I also changed the names of his wife and kids. He does own a retail store, and it may or may not be related to sporting goods. Joey Antonelli is in a supermax prison in Colorado, and I doubt he has the ability or the power to order a hit, but why take the chance?

  Duke said he has no intention of ever revealing his new identity or returning to Mingo Junction. He’s happy with his life and his family, which includes four grandchildren, and he doesn’t want either disrupted. He said to say hello to everyone in Mingo Junction, and thanks for the memories.

  When Mingo High School closed, the victim of consolidation, the trophy case was cleaned out and the school’s hardware ended up in a storage closet at city hall. Angel Angelli was able to secure Duke’s number 23 jersey, the state championship trophy, and the game ball. Behind the bar, next to a photo of Duke Ducheski launching his famous shot, Angel had a case built for the treasured items. The display is illuminated by three spotlights suspended from the ceiling.

  And there, the legend lives on.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is dedicated to Frances Kennedy, who recently left the Doe Coover Agency after many years as an administrative assistant. She is a lovely person with an equally lovely Irish lilt. Frances will always hold a special place in my heart. Years ago, when I was attempting to find an agent to help me make the switch from nonfiction to fiction, I sent a sample chapter of a novel to the Doe Coover Agency.

  Frances plucked my chapter from the slush pile, read it, liked it, and passed it along to Colleen Mohyde, who has been my agent ever since. I will always be grateful to Frances for her discovery and to Colleen for her belief in my writing, her advocacy, and her sweat.

  Thanks to my editor, Dan Mayer, who was phenomenal in combing through this manuscript and helping me work it into shape, and the rest of the team at Seventh Street Books, including my publicist, Jake Bonar; Vice President of Marketing Jill Maxick; and Senior Editor Jade Zora Scibilia, who has the most incredible eye for detail of any human being on the planet. It’s an honor to be part of Seventh Street’s talented stable of writers.

  Special thanks to my wife, Melissa, whose support for the hours I spend in front of a keyboard is unwavering and unconditional.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robin Yocum is the author of the critically acclaimed novels A Welcome Murder, A Brilliant Death, Favorite Sons, and The Essay. Favorite Sons was named the 2011 USA Book News’s Book of the Year for Mystery/Suspense. It was selected for the Choose to Read Ohio program for 2013–2014 and was a featured book of the 2012 Ohioana Book Festival. Yocum is also the author of Dead Before Deadline . . . and Other Tales from the Police Beat and Insured for Murder (with Catherine Candisky). He is the president of Yocum Communications, a public relations and marketing firm in Galena, Ohio. He is well known for his work as a crime and investigative reporter with the Columbus Dispatch from 1980 to 1991. He was the recipient of more than thirty local, state, and national journalism awards in categories ranging from investigative reporting to feature writing.