by Otto Penzler
It wasn’t what I’d been told and it wasn’t what I’d said. Damon Rome hadn’t been killed because of what he didn’t do. He’d been killed because of what he did.
I didn’t sleep well that night. The next morning, I went back to the list I had of things I hadn’t done yet, people I hadn’t spoken to. Carefully, I started doing some of those things. I checked more gun registrations, went and talked to more doormen, more garage attendants, prowled the streets near Shots and near the Garden again. I talked to winos and losers and cold-eyed kids looking for the main chance. I was hoping to be wrong but I was right. That night I watched the game, and when it was close to finished—the Knicks again in the hole—I grabbed my jacket, headed to the Garden.
Once there, I didn’t go in; I set myself at the players’ door, the place where autograph hounds wait, missing the end of the game for a chance to get near their heroes.
About an hour after I got there the heroes started to come out. Powell, McCroy, the others who’d played. Nathaniel, with his cane, surrounded by the largest crowd. Because of what had happened to Rome, security was tight, but each player had the chance to sign autographs or refuse to, to talk to his fans or duck into a waiting limo. I watched them make their choices according to their nature, watched guys sign a few and then wave as they left, or scowl and walk right past their fans, while Nathaniel stayed and signed as long as there were fans who wanted him.
When the crowds thinned out I stepped forward. Not to speak to Nathaniel, who, with the famous smile, climbed into a white limo and was gone. The fans drifted away then, and the players’ door opened again, and I was left alone with the person I’d come to see.
Nora Day, six inches taller than I, pushed through the deserted doorway and strode quickly along the sidewalk. Dawdling and daydreaming were not part of her game; she’d been tall for a point guard but magically fast in sizing up situations, creating plays, making opportunities for her teammates where you’d swear none could be found.
She did that now: I was the situation, and she sized me up, fixed me with that icy glare as I stepped into her path. “What do you want?” she asked, but I was sure she already knew.
“Team’s not doing well,” I said. “Championship shot seems to be gone this year.”
“They never had one. Not without Nat.”
“That’s not true, is it? They had a damn good shot without him and that was the problem.”
Nora Day’s eyes flashed. “What the hell do you want?” she asked again.
“Were those Damon’s last words?” I said. “Did he say, ‘Nora, what the hell do you want?’ just before you shot him?”
She regarded me silently. When she finally answered, it was in a voice as cold as the winter night we stood in. “No. No, he said, This team’s mine. You and your gimp brother ought to be looking around for someplace else to play.’”
“And that’s it? You were afraid Damon would replace Nathaniel as the Knicks’ go-to guy?”
“Afraid?” From her height she looked down at me as she always had at the world. “No, I wasn’t afraid. New York loves Nat. When he comes back no one will remember Damon Rome ever existed.”
“Then why?”
Nora Day looked up at the darkened Garden, out at the empty street. “That ring is Nat’s,” she said. “For eight years we’ve been promising New York a championship. We’ll deliver.”
“You’ll deliver.” I nodded. “Not Damon Rome.”
“That ring is Nat’s,” she repeated.
“He’d have had one if they’d won this year. He’s a Knick, playing or not.”
“He wouldn’t have earned it. He wouldn’t have been the one to bring it home.”
“And New York would have known that. Everyone would have known the Knicks could do it without Nathaniel.”
Lights in the stairwells of the Garden began snapping off, now that the players and the fans were gone. I hunched into my jacket; a wind had come up. Nora Day said, “Everyone? You really think I care about everyone and what they know?”
I didn’t answer. A car rolled by; at the end of the block a drunk staggered, not sure where he was going. Nora said softly, “Nat would have known.”
“Would have known what? That other people can play the game, too? I got the feeling he knows that already. It doesn’t seem to bother him.”
“He would have known,” her words came slowly, “that he was expendable.”
I looked at her eyes. In my mind I saw those eyes, over the years, fixed on the weaknesses in the Knicks’ offense, the holes in their defense. I thought about how, over each season, those weaknesses had been covered and those holes filled by skills Nathaniel polished up.
“You were a great player,” I said. “A legend. But when you came out of school, you had nowhere to go.”
She stared at me steadily. A sheet of old newspaper brushed the sidewalk as it blew up to us, and then swirled past.
“Get out of my way,” Nora Day said. She cut around me, strode down the block.
I kept pace, said nothing, until finally, without slowing, she asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have nothing.”
“That’s not true. My fault, I didn’t check you out the first time around, but I did today: you have a permit for a Smith & Wesson .38. The one they found has no numbers, but still, where’s yours? Could you produce it if you had to?”
She wheeled on me, glaring.
“And your car,” I said. “Everyone in New York knows you don’t go up to the house in Connecticut during the season, but you went that night. So your doorman here wouldn’t see you come in late, right? But the car—you took it out of the garage right after the game. And then parked it on the street two blocks from here. The police can get your E-ZPass records. They’ll show what time you actually left New York.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“I have a witness. A kid who was considering jacking your car, until he saw you walking toward it. About two a.m.”
“It’s still nothing. All of this, it’s nothing.”
“That won’t take you far. The police can see what I saw, once they look. They’ll figure it out, too.”
I said that, but I wasn’t sure it was true, if I didn’t point them in the right direction. Nora Day’s face stretched into a cold smile. She turned, walked away without looking back. I stopped where I was, watched her stride, arrow-straight, down the empty sidewalk. I wondered what it felt like to know, absolutely know, what the right play was.
I never found out. At the diner the next morning I heard the news: in the middle of the night, on her way to her secluded Connecticut home, Nora Day’s SUV, running much too fast over a deserted stretch of highway, had jumped off the road, hit a tree, smashed like a tin can. Another tragedy for the Knicks, people said; my God, what are they, cursed? And it’s strange, said the guy at the counter next to me, I thought she stayed in the city during the season, only used the country place during the All-Star break, the summer, things like that. Yeah, said the waitress, pouring us both more coffee, and I read once she was a real careful driver. Nathaniel used to go nuts anytime they had to go someplace together, because of how slow and careful she took it, that’s what I read. Well, said the other guy, lucky they weren’t together last night. You can write off the Knicks this season, he said, but with Nathaniel healthy next year, they’ll be back. This’ll be hard on him, but he’s got the stuff. You think? said the waitress. I mean, she’s his sister. Well, sure he’ll miss her, the guy said, but he’ll find out he don’t need her, as a coach, I mean. They both looked at me, but I was busy with my coffee. From the cash register by the window, the owner nodded his agreement. Yeah, he said. Yeah, she was great. But she wasn’t indispensable.
IN THE ZONE
Justin Scott
Scottie Pippen elbowed him in the grill when the ref wasn’t looking, busted him so hard that Shorty felt tears swarming into his eyes like he was still a little kid playing
B-ball back in the projects.
“Wha’d you do that for?’ Shorty yelled, but the pack was already kickin’ downcourt and Pippen never heard. Must have been an accident. Scottie was his friend. Besides, who played for blood in a charity National Basketball Association All-Star Game at Madison Square Garden?
They were all his friends. All the stars. Chris Webber, Shaquille O’Neal, Karl Malone, Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett, John Stockton, Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell. The top of the top, the best of the best. ESPN called them the finest ten players ever in one game. Webber, O’Neal, Malone, Iverson, Garnett, Stockton, Houston, Pippen, and Shorty O’Tool, who had come a long, long way from hooping ratball in the hood.
Some guys bitched about wasting their downtime on charity. Said they needed the rest. Who wanted to tear his ACL or bust a finger for nothing? But their agents said do it, their business managers said do it, and their publicity guys said do it. Even Shorty’s mother said do it: take folks’ minds off the gambling thing.
Besides, All Stars got tons of TV face time; and dinner with the mayor; and lunch with the president. Then, down in Florida, the whole Disney World wide open for them and their folks. Just for playing for free for fifty million fans national and twenty thousand screaming in the Garden.
Loose ball! Shorty floated through the pack, scooped it like an orange in his huge hand. Too far out to shoot? Think so, Latrell? He faked right, like he was heading in. Think so, Chris? He faked right again, like he was fading back.
Psyched ’em out so far away,
Two by two, like Dr. J.
Sprewell and Webber were still guarding air when Shorty powered off the floor. Jumper. In!
Karl Malone banged him on the butt. “All right, kid!”
They called him kid—not because he was the littlest, not at seven feet two inches—but the youngest. Always the youngest. Always all-world game. Youngest varsity at Clinton, youngest starting center at St. John’s, youngest captain of the Knicks, youngest All-Star ever.
He took a pass from Karl, passed to Allen Iverson, drove toward the basket, and went up to meet Allen’s pass back to him. In!
“All right, kid!”
Youngest and dumbest. No denying Shorty O’Tool was newjack. The gamblers knew. They’d seen him coming.
What did people expect? Seeing his daddy gunned down, right before his eyes, when Shorty was ten years old. Try and forget, his mama always said. He did try. Playing hoops made it seem so long ago. But off the court, it still dragged him down. Off the court, bad memories stayed sharp as knives.
Dirty yellow Electra 225 ghetto sled rolling up. Driver doing a gangsta lean, low over the passenger seat. Shoulda known. Shoulda warned Daddy. But he was too busy boasting how the teacher said he was so good in school. Besides, the scarface in the Buick’s backseat wasn’t even wearing shades. No cap, no skully, nothing covering his face. Looked like just another permafried crackhead grinning big and laughing loud. And Shorty grins back at the man, thinking it’s a joke, never knowing it’s a hooptie ride, until the Tec-9 is pointing out the window.
Daddy holding his hand. Tec-9 sprays bayaka-bayaka. Still holding Shorty’s hand when the slugs thud into him, shaking his huge, hard body like kicks and punches. Still holding Shorty’s hand as he starts to fall.
The scarface sees Shorty’s seen him. Opens up again to spray the kid, too. Bayaka-bayaka. Slug plucks Shorty’s sleeve. Another sears his cheek. But Daddy’s pushing him down, falling on him hard and heavy, protecting him under his chest.
Bayaka-bayaka. Daddy twitching and shaking, taking the bullets until the thunderous boo-yaa of a Mossberg twelve-gauge slams him to pieces like an earthquake.
What’d you see? said the boys in blue.
Nothin’, he saw nothin’, says Shorty’s mother.
“Yes, I did! I saw him, Mama, I saw him.”
The cops get a lady with a computer and when Shorty tells her what he saw, damn! the scarface is staring from the screen like he was looking out his window.
Everybody sees them come home to Grandma’s in the police car. Grandma says, “Don’t you worry, child. You’ll be safe. God will protect you on angels’ wings.”
“Like they protected his daddy?” Mama cries, bent over the table, her face all wet.
Grandma puts him to sleep on her couch, hugs him close and explains. “Your mama’s very sad. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Don’t you listen to her. You listen to me and listen hard. God will protect you on angels’ wings.”
“Why didn’t angel wings protect Daddy?”
“Your daddy was a great big man. Too heavy to lift. Angels protect little boys, like you, who done no wrong.” She passes her hand over his eyes. “Sleep.”
That same night, when the boys in blue are still sitting outside the building in their car, a guy comes pounding Grandma’s door. “They gonna getcha! They gonna wetcha!”
Mama and Shorty bail out, run for it before the gangstas cap him for a witness. Hiding out in men’s apartments. Couldn’t go to family. The gangstas were waiting. They knew who’s Shorty’s grandma. They know his aunts. Ran all the way to the Bronx.
Scarface came to the Bronx.
Cops didn’t care. Court didn’t care. Social worker didn’t care. Maybe God cared. Maybe it was God who gave Shorty the eyes to scope their rusted old deuce-and-a-quarter in time to drag his mother down into the subway. C train. A train. All the way to Brooklyn.
L train. Caught sleeping on the late train. Cops dump them at the homeless shelter. Gangstas own the homeless shelter. PATH train over to Jersey City. Chilltown. Mama doing what she had to for any man who didn’t know them, just to give them a room to hide. Men who think she’s nothing but a skeegers giving sex for dope.
Finally there came a day when Shorty knew he couldn’t stand running anymore. And that very night, God sent a fire on angels’ wings, burned down a crack house and fried the gangsta who shot his father.
Like magic, all is well. Shorty and Mama go home. Shorty back to school, scared no more, back to B-ball—Clinton High, summer leagues. No more jumping at shadows. No more seeing Mama afraid.
Told the St. John’s scout that he believed in God and owed Him and His angels big-time. Full scholarship! Turned pro in his freshman year. Knicks. Champs. All-Stars.
Gamblers. Scarfaces following him around again. Just like when the gangstas shot his father, all those years ago. Wouldn’t believe how much you could lose before they said, Pay up. Pay up. Pay up or die. Pay up—hey, relax, kid. No die. Shave a point.
Shave a point? Shave a point. This was the NBA, not some peckerwood college league. Shave a point? You crazy.
Three points. One missed jumper, for chrissake, Shorty. White guy named Joey. What’s the big deal? One little shot off the rim. Wipes out a million bucks. You go home free, buy your mom another house.
He was newjack. Young and dumb. Maybe he shouldn’t have clocked the gambler. Couldn’t stop himself. All that stuff came up about his daddy and he just clocked him.
Blood bubbling from his lips, white boy screaming he’d have Shorty killed. Shorty laughing, “You gonna kill a twenty-million basketball star?” Busts Joey again. Feels so good he waxes the floor with him. Erased the past with the gambler’s face.
“I kill you,” Joey screams, spitting teeth. “You’re one dead nigger.”
Shorty laughs. He’s so far above this.
But damn if next day four hard-rock diesel dudes in a Lincoln Navigator don’t roll by the big house he bought his mama in Great Neck. Great Neck! Strong Island! Could not believe that he was looking over his shoulder again. Seemed so long ago.
But finally, today, all is well again. Things is dope. Because today Shorty’s playing with the All-Stars in Madison Square Garden. No way Joey Cascone is moving on Shorty in the Garden. No way dudes in a Navigator are popping him anywhere, anytime, nohow. Now Shorty’s rich. Now his manager hires security guys, guys with legal guns and headsets and earpieces watching his back. Used to be Secret
Service, said his manager. Watched the president’s back. Now they watch yours. You too valuable to get smoked. So chill. Gambler Joe’s ass is waxed, says Shorty’s agent. All you got to do is get in the zone. Hold on to the game. Everything’s cool. Just stay in your zone.
All is well, said his mama. Things is dope, at last.
Sprewell shot, missed. Shorty popped up for the rebound and the fans hollered as he wiped the glass.
Boom. Another elbow. Shaquille O’Neal’s, so hard it felt like he’d cracked a rib.
“What are you doin’?” Shorty gasped. “It’s the lousy All-Stars!”
He wrestled the ball from Shaq, thinking, I’ll send you back to school, nigga, front of the whole damn Garden. He went around him like Shaq’s dogs were nailed to the wooden floor.
Fast break!
Malone goes, “Gimme the rock!”
Shorty, Malone, Shorty, Iverson: pass, receive, pass, receive. Barrel down the lane. Up! And jam a deep, deep dunk!
The fans went wild. It felt like they’d shake down the Garden walls with their stompin’ and hollerin’. Folks had seen those elbows—even if the ref was blind. They were rooting for Shorty O’Tool, who could take a hit and keep playing.
But it was getting harder to stay in his zone. His ribs ached. His lips stung. He could taste blood. And here Latrell Sprewell came humming, like he was looking to bust him again. And the damn ref was looking the other way.
“What are you doing? Latrell?”
Latrell goes, point-blank, “Your mama’s a strawberry.”
“Oh yeah? Your mama’s a bag bride.”
“Your mama’s a buffer.”
“Your mama’s a skeegers.”
Then Shaq nailed him right to the floor:
“You wish you was taller,
