by Otto Penzler
Manny moved aside for an old lady who stepped in front of him, eyed him and whispered to her poodle. “I’ll just wait,” he said. He shifted from one foot to the other.
“You can’t stand there,” the receptionist told him. “This isn’t a waiting area.”
“Well.” Manny looked past her at the clock on the wall. “It’s eleven-thirty. What time does he come to work?”
“He usually gets in at nine o’clock.” She juggled a few calls, then said, “If you have his number, I would try him at home.”
Manny’s breath quickened. What if the Ear had taken off with all his winnings, his wedding band and his wife’s bracelet?
“I don’t have his number on me. Can you look it up?”
She answered after taking a phone message. “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t give out any private information.”
“This is an emergency.” Fear turned to anger, and his voice was getting louder. “Just give me the number and I’ll go.”
A security guard tapped Manny on the shoulder. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now, sir. Would you like me to show you the way?”
“All right. All right.” Manny stepped back. “I’m going.”
On the street in front of the Breaking News, taxis and limos splashed up and down the wet streets. People rushed past on the sidewalk, fumbling not to impale him or one another with the metal ends on their umbrellas.
Manny pulled the collar of his Knicks jacket over his head and ran into a covered stairwell by a deli. At the counter a guy who looked like a derelict sipped something steamy.
Manny sucked down the last drop of his mouthwash. He didn’t even have enough for a double espresso. He needed to get his winnings, but where the hell was Tony?
Tony wasn’t hard up for money. He’d been banking his vigorish all those years, and he always made good on his bets. Everyone trusted Tony.
Half an hour after standing in the chill, Manny slicked back his hair and went back to the Breaking News. His wet sneakers squeaked on the marble floor.
“No luck.” The receptionist looked up between calls. “Tony never came in.”
“Well, can you find out if he’s sick or something? Did he call someone? His boss or his secretary? I just need a little help here. Tony doesn’t answer his cell phone. He’s not at our usual haunts. He just up and disappeared.”
The receptionist squinted. “It’s only been a day, you know. Call tomorrow morning.”
“Hey.” A young redheaded guy stepped up to the reception desk. “You a friend of Tony’s?”
Manny nodded. “Who are you?”
“I work with him on the sports desk.” The guy frowned. “Did you try him at home?”
Manny shrugged. “I don’t have his number in the Bronx.”
“That’s ancient history, pal.” The copyboy shook his head. “Tony moved in with his mom near Riverside Park. She was taking care of him after they found his tumor.”
“What tumor?”
The guy backed up and lowered his palms like he was pushing down the trunk of a car. “You knew he had cancer, didn’t you?” The guy led Manny to the revolving door. He whispered and wrote on the back of his business card. “I’ll do you a favor if you call me when you find him. I need to collect on a debt.” He handed Manny the card. “Try this address. His mom will be able to help.”
Manny approached Tony’s modern high-rise as the security camera watched from its perch atop the intercom.
He rang the buzzer next to Tony’s last name.
“Yes?” A woman’s voice came through the box.
“Hey. I came to see Tony. Is he okay?”
“Who are you?”
“Manny. A friend of Tony’s from way back. He has something for me.”
“Oh, I know exactly what you mean.” She said, “I’ll be right down.”
A minute later she was standing in the doorway with him. Slim and petite, she was too darn sexy, Manny decided, to be anybody’s mother. “Pleasure to meet you.” He took her hand. “Are you Tony’s sister?”
“Oh, another charmer like my Tony.” She looked Manny up and down. “I’m his mother, of course. And I know he didn’t go to work today. I called the office.” She frowned. “Gee, your breath smells minty. Anyway, I called his girlfriend, but she said they broke up last week. Do you know his girl-friend Diana?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s just not like Tony to take off, especially what with the chemo appointment. This is the first one he’s missed after all this time.”
Manny’s heart thudded against his chest. “You mean you don’t know where he is?”
“The police won’t help because it hasn’t been twenty-four hours since he went missing, but he didn’t come home last night. I have a bad feeling, Manny.” She crossed her arms. “Tony didn’t call me this morning. Whenever he sleeps out, he always calls me in the morning.”
Manny felt his shoulders droop.
“I found this on his dresser. It’s got your name on it, see?” She held out a wooden cigar box.
Manny took the box and stepped back. “Thanks.” He wanted to rip into it, but if his winnings were in there, it was just too much cash to flash on the street.
Her eyes glistened with urgency. “You can come upstairs if you want to open it inside.” She shifted in place. “I’m dying to know if there’s anything in there about where he went, and my friend Sal told me I should look through everything, but I just—do you know Sal? He has been so nice lately, but since my Tony left this with your name on the package, I couldn’t open it and go rifling…” She stopped and smiled sweetly. “I just made coffee. Why don’t you come up?”
“Thanks.” Manny stowed the box under his arm and edged his way backward. “I’m running late, or I would.”
“Are you sure?”
Manny stepped onto the sidewalk. “I’ll call if I find Tony. I promise I will.”
Disappointed, she pursed her lips together. “Don’t forget. Maria Morelli. I’m in the book.”
He sprinted down the sidewalk, sneakers splashing in the rain.
Manny felt someone watching him before he turned and saw the man. Manny looked back. The guy was definitely tailing him. He was overweight with a silver front tooth, and Manny knew he could outrun him if he had to.
He cut through a public passage and came out on the next street. He looked behind him. Not only was the guy still there, but now Manny thought another guy was following. He wished he had his bike.
He tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.
The box clattered open. Its contents scattered on the ground.
Manny crawled on hands and knees in the pouring rain. He saw the wedding band and grabbed it. Then he scooped up five bundles of hundreds before he finally found the diamond bracelet.
The guy with the silver tooth stood over him, rain dripping down his face. “Those things are mine.”
“Who the hell are you?” Manny clutched the cash to his chest.
“The name is Sal, and this game is now over.” Sal flipped out a pocketknife and held it in front of him. “Tony could never pay his debts, see? I bet he didn’t tell you how I broke two of his fingers the last time he tried to be cute.” Sal knelt down and sat on his haunches. “Now, give me my money.”
“Hey.” Manny noticed the basketball decal on the handle. “That’s Tony’s knife. What the hell did you do to Tony?”
Sal’s shoulders rose in a kind of shrug. “Don’t worry about it.”
Manny took a deep breath and grabbed Sal’s wrist as he lunged at him with all the force he could muster. He wrenched Tony’s knife from Sal’s hand and kicked him in the groin.
“Shit!” Sal fell to the ground and grabbed his crotch.
“Tony would want me to have this.” He flashed the blade so it gleamed in the light. “Game over.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Sal sneered as he pushed himself up from the sidewalk, but Manny kicked his elbow out from under him and stashed the loot in his pockets.
/> “Don’t worry about it.” Holding the knife out in front of his hip, Manny jogged backward until he got some distance between them.
Sal waved a fist in the air. “You can’t hide from me, punk. I’ll find you, and you’ll end up like your friend.”
“Well…” Manny winked and shot him a nod. “We all gotta live by the odds.”
THE TASTE OF SILVER
Brendan DuBois
It was a Monday morning, a week after Labor Day, and most of the tourists had left the wooded shores of Walker’s Lake, leaving the wide blue waters quiet for a change. Glen Jackson stood on the rear steps of his summer cottage, looking down the long dirt driveway that eventually led out to Mill Street, the road in from town, a small village of about four hundred or so. He folded his lanky arms and waited, staring down at the empty dirt lane. To the right was a basketball court that he had installed here, over a decade ago, when they had bought the place. It had been a nice summer but now this warm season was down to mere hours. Marcia had gone home to Boston with their two granddaughters three days ago. She had wanted to stay but he was insistent: “No, I’ll be fine closing it up. You take the kids and have fun back home. I’ll be right along.”
And he wasn’t sure how women did it—was it genetic? trained into them by their mothers?—but she knew right from the start that he had been lying about something. But that special sense of hers also quickly determined that his fib wasn’t part of a plan to sneak in some beach bunny for the night. No, she knew him well enough to know that those wild days of his were gone, long gone, since he had exchanged vows with her more than twenty-five years ago. He grinned. Of course, not that there weren’t some good wild times to think over at three a.m., trying to get back to sleep…
He turned and looked out to the cove, where some of the cottage owners had already dragged in their docks and had put wooden shutters up over the windows, to protect them from the harsh winds and snows due in a couple of months. His own shutters were on the porch, ready to go, numbered for each spot on the windows. He really should have started putting up the shutters a few hours ago, but there was a finality to it that he hated. With each shutter going up, less light came into the cottage, until finally, at noon, he had to have every light inside blazing to see what was going on. And that marked the official end of summer, no matter what day was on the calendar. Out on the water a couple of fishermen hung on in their expensive bass boats, and he could hardly wait for them to leave so he could get everything done. Everything that had to be done to mark another year gone by.
Ugh. He went down the steps, picked up a basketball from the ground, the pebbled leather against his large palms bringing back muscle memories of the hundreds of thousands of times he had picked up a similar ball, from his neighborhood in Philly to the local high school to Temple U to the Olympic team and then six glorious years in the NBA, two championship rings to wear… He dribbled a few times, getting the feel of the court, and then just started working from one side to the next, ball going up, swish—nothing but net, thank you kindly—and just getting into the groove of hearing the slap of the ball in his hands, the whisper-clang as it went through the hoop, the solid thunk as it hit asphalt. He kept looking at the net as he went back and forth, back and forth, thinking of the different courts he had played on, from the cracked and stained asphalt, starting out as a kid, through all the polished wood in all the different arenas, right up to the famous parquet floor at the old Boston Garden. Downstairs in the basement at home in Boston he had lots of souvenirs, and one of his faves was a piece of the old parquet, doled out just before the idiots destroyed that creaky old shrine to the Celtics.
Another three-point shot. How sweet, even though the three-point rule hadn’t been in effect during his career. And, of course, this little half-court was probably the most pleasant one he had ever played on. It was framed by old pine trees, and through the underbrush one could make out the cool waters of Walker’s Lake. Boston was nice enough most times of the year, but when the sun grew higher in the sky and the air got thick and hot, there was nothing he loved more than just coming up here to the cool breezes and warm summer nights, Marcia and he growing older and older and—truth be told—happier and happier. He had been at this cottage once, years ago, during one of those “Fresh Air” experiences for city kids, back when he was twelve. He had made a vow then, during those special two weeks, that if he could, he would buy this place when he got older. Which he did. It was now a good life, one he never thought would end.
Boom. Another three-pointer. He grabbed the ball and as he was moving around for another shot, there was the sound of a car engine coming up his driveway. He waited, conscious of how heavily he was breathing, how his knees and wrists were complaining, and how damn old he was getting.
There. Visible past the saplings and brush. A dark blue car, coming up. He put the ball in the crook of his arm, hardly even thinking about it, as the car came into view.
A police cruiser.
He took a breath. Waited.
The cruiser came to a polite halt near his own vehicle, a silver Lexus SUV. It was the local police and he tried not to smile as the young officer stepped out, looking so polished and serious in his uniform. A guy like that, back in his old Philly neighborhood, would have lasted maybe ten minutes with his corner gang before being dumped back at the local station house, stripped naked except for his socks. The officer came up to him and nodded and said, “Mr. Jackson?”
“The same,” he said, wondering if this young pup even shaved more than three times a week.
“I’m Tom Colter, the police chief,” he said, actually holding out his hand, which Glen shook, all the while thinking, M’man, if you were in Philly like this, they’d even take your socks before dumping you back at your station house.
“Sure, I’ve seen you around town,” Glen said. “What can I do for you?”
The young chief looked embarrassed, like he was apologizing for interrupting his practice or some damn thing. “I’m investigating a missing person case.”
Glen moved the ball back into his hands, dribbled it a few times on the asphalt. “Really? Anybody I know?”
“Oh, I sure do think so,” he said. “Marcus Harrison. A teammate of yours, am I right?”
Glen said, “Yeah, a former teammate. He was up here a couple of days ago, stopping by. Shit. You say he’s missing?”
Colter said, “Yes. And you’re saying he was here?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, bouncing the ball back up and down. “Stayed for a day and a night. Last time I saw him, yesterday morning, I drove him back into town, at the Greyhound stop, by Frye’s General Store. You mean he never got back down to Queens?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Colter said. “You see, his wife was expecting him back yesterday evening, and he never showed up. And Greyhound is claiming that he never got on the bus when it stopped in town. So it looks like you might be the last one to see him.”
“Wow,” he said, bouncing the ball up and down some more and then suddenly stopping. “C’mon inside, I’ll get you something to drink. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“Gee, thanks,” the chief said, and Glen moved quick, turning his head so the kid couldn’t see him smile.
Glen didn’t bother offering anything alcoholic to the chief, so he poured them both glasses of lemonade and went into the dining room, which had great views from the windows that overlooked the lake. Nearby was the dock and moored to the dock was his light blue powerboat, with a gray canvas tarpaulin covering it. The fishermen were gone and there was now just a solitary sailboat, out on the south end of the lake, catching one last sail before wintering in some boathouse somewhere, and Colter said, “View must be nice once the leaves start changing.”
Glen sat down at the round oak dining room table, letting his long legs stretch out. “Sure, but we don’t come up that much during the fall. Summer’s our playtime, and when we get back to Boston, there’s plenty of work to
be done.”
“And what exactly do you do now, Mr. Jackson?” And with that, the polite young chief sat down, took out a little notebook and opened it up on the dining room table. “You haven’t played for the Celtics for a very long time, right?”
“Promise not to laugh?” he asked.
“Sure. Promise not to laugh.”
“Good. I give motivational speeches, that’s what I do.” He couldn’t help himself, he smiled at the chief, who was gracious enough to smile back. “You see, the thing is, once you’re out of basketball, what’s left? I didn’t have the voice for doing announcing work. I was okay in doing some advertising spots, but that kind of work didn’t last long. You see, things have changed since back when I was tossing the ball around. Back then, there weren’t the endorsements, the contracts, the TV work. Today’s guys can earn a couple of million by just showing up in the right sneakers. Wasn’t like that when I was their age.”
“So you give speeches?”
“Yep. About a dozen a year, on how to be better managers, better team players, work together for the same goal. That sort of thing. Not lots of money, but enough to make a living. Hey. Wanna hear a secret?”
The chief smiled but there was something in those eyes that said he liked hearing secrets very much. “Sure. Go right ahead.”
Glen said, “Truth is, most of the time, I’m just stealin’ their money. Companies get in trouble, they have morale problems, they tend to look outside for a solution. They don’t think about looking inside. So I come by and give ’em a nice pep talk, everything’s jazzed up for a week or so after I’m gone, and then the same lousy managers and overworked employees fall back into their ruts, while I’m waiting for their checks to clear.”
Colter didn’t write anything down, which was fine. Glen said, “Secret’s safe with you?”
“Sure is,” the chief said.
Glen said, “All right, enough about me. What do you want to know about Marcus?”
