Murder At the Foul Line

IN THE ZONE by 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,

you wish you was a bailer.”

Hard to remember he was playing Madison Square Garden instead of ratball, cold hoopin’ it on busted asphalt.

“Shorteeeeeee!”

The ref was blowing his whistle. Manager was calling time.

“Your mama’s calling,” mocked Shaq. “She back at the fence again, going, ‘Shorteee, Shorteee, Shorteee.’”

Shorty O’Tool screwed his eyes shut and tried with all his might to get back in his zone. But when he listened for the fans it was the trucks and buses on Ninth Avenue that filled his ears. When he opened his eyes the rippling sea of fans in the bleachers had hardened into the housing project walls. Down at his feet, hoping for Nikes on gleaming hardwood, he found tattered sneakers on cracked asphalt.

Shorty walked slowly to the chain-link fence that separated the narrow playground from Ninth Avenue. His mother was standing stiff and scared with the social worker. And there was absolutely no denying that he was still only ten years old and tired to death of running.

The social worker was all his fault. He’d begged and begged his mother could he go to school. No one knew them in this neighborhood. It was safe-the project was surrounded by rich people in fancy houses with iron garden gates and bushes and Christmas wreaths hung on the doors.

School was safe, he pleaded. They’d never look for him in a school with rich kids. Finally his mother relented. And damn if in two days there isn’t a social worker all over his mother bitchin’ that the teacher says Shorty is “depressed.”

The social worker came at him with questions, right through the playground fence. He stared at his sneakers. Water running along the sidewalk smelled of fish from the wholesaler next door. He spoke when he had to.

Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. Yes ma’am. No ma’am.

She kept humming at him. “How often do you see your father?”

Shorty looked carefully at his mother. She stuck a tissue through the chain-link fence and dabbed a drop of blood from his lip. Her eyes were dead, a silent warning. Running so long, they could say what they were thinking with a look. “Don’t tell. Don’t trust her. Don’t trust no one.”

He hung his head. “No, lady. He don’t come ’round no more.”

“When did you last see him?”

Again his mother’s warning.

“I don’t remember.”

“Last year,” said his mother.

“Yeah. Christmas. He came by.” This was lies. It was making his father sound like he hadn’t held his hand when they walked down the street. Like he didn’t come home almost every night. Like they didn’t watch B-ball on TV. Like his father wasn’t gonna take him to a Knicks game the day they shot him. Like he couldn’t buy two tickets to Madison Square Garden.

“Go back to your game,” said the social worker. “I have to talk to your mother.”

Like his mother would hear her, while she was twirling her head looking everywhere to make sure they were okay.

Round ball! Coming at him. Hustling downcourt, the Garden a wall of hollering faces. Shorty O’Tool, fast break down the lane. Takes it to the rack.

Shaq yells, “Your daddy was a zoomer.”

“You lying. You don’t even know my daddy.”

“My cuz at Queensbridge tole me.”

Home. The Queensbridge project. Shorty wanted to give up and die. No way to get away. Seemed like everybody knew somebody somewhere. He looked over at the fence. The social worker was talking. His mother’s head was ducked down like a turtle. But she was watching the street.

“Cuz tole me your daddy was a zoomer.”

“My daddy never sold fake rock.”

“How you know that?” said Shaq.

“Mama told me he was a thoroughbred.”

“Thoroughbred?” Shaq laughed in his face.

Shorty’s shoulders sagged even as he forced himself to step close to the taller boy. “I’ll bust you in the grill, Shaq. My mama don’t lie.”

“Why you callin’ me Shaq? My name’s Junior.”

“Knuckle up!”

Junior Brown laughed again. “Knuckle up? Who you kidding, Shorty? You can’t scrap a lick.”

“I can’t care how big you are, Junior. Knuckle up. My mama don’t lie.”

“Oh yeah? Well, tell me this, before I clean your clock. If your daddy was a thoroughbred that sold good dope, how come he got popped?”

Shorty couldn’t speak. It was like the wind got kicked out of him. And suddenly he needed help so bad he could cry. He looked around.

The ref was curled up under a broken bench, hugging an empty bottle of Colt 45. He looked at the other kids, looked for a friend. But he was newjack, and they didn’t know him. They were scoping his tears and gasfacing him, waiting to watch Junior Brown wax his ass. Junior stood a head taller. He had fists all knuckly, sharp-edged like crushed beer cans.

“My mama don’t lie,” Shorty said. Trembling, he raised his fists.

A big kid rolled up. Twelve years old, too old for B-ball with the little guys. He had a smooth round face and a kind smile. He’d had his head shaved for lice, bald as Michael Jordan. “Yo, Junior, give the little guy a break. All of you. Just play ball and chill.”

All the kids stared at him. Nobody moved. Till Michael Jordan lifted Junior Brown off the court by his shirt and said in his face, “Get out there and hoop!”

Junior, Lester, Enrique, and Shawn ran onto the court. Shorty hung back, trying to see where his mother had gone. Michael Jordan nudged him, whispered, “Go on, get out there. I got my eye on you. Me and Magic Johnson are starting a new squad. All-Star All-Stars.

“The best of the rest.

They dream on my team.”

“All right!”

Shorty pulled the game back around him like putting on a coat. Fans were hollering, getting wild. Up in the project walls, the windows were melting into a cheering blur. Roaring, louder than the bus and the fish trucks.

Round ball! Coming at him, fills his hands like his hands and basketballs were made in the same factory, like computers shaped them to fit, like he was born to jump.

Missed. Rim ball. Shorty’s there for the rebound, drives around Shaq, takes Scottie Pippen to the rack. Up and… Dunk!

Can’t hear himself think over the cheering. “Shorty!” they’re hollering. “Shorrr-tee! Shorrr-tee!”

He waves up at the stands and sees twenty thousand fans going wild. All but one. One’s just staring.

“Mama!” He looks for his mother. She’s watching the other way.

One out of twenty thousand is still as ice. Watching, tracking him, tracking Shorty O’Tool like he’s a cat and Shorty’s a rat. A face so still that all the other faces seem to dissolve and blend into one thin sheet of cloth, like curtains blowing from an open window.

Shaquille O’Neal yells, “Look out. Where he going?”

The big Lincoln Navigator is circling the court, rolling right through the stands. People are running and screaming. It bounces over the guardrail onto the court. “Run, Shorty! Run!” Shaq throws an arm over his shoulder, screaming, “Run, run.” But Shorty is frozen to the floor. It’s not possible. This can’t be happening. Right here in the Garden.

“Shorty! Run!”

His mother screams. He sees her on the edge of the court, clawing the chain-link fence, screaming, “Run, run,” so hard that she doesn’t see another scarface creeping up behind her.

The fans throw themselves under the broken benches, yelling, “Gun! Gun! Gun!”

The ref sinks into the body of the drunk again. Shorty’s friends the All-Stars-Shaq and Webber and Houston and Pippen-scatter with Junior, Lester, Enrique, and Shawn. And Madison Square Garden goes dark as a busted TV as the big Navigator turns into a rusty yellow deuce-and-a-quarter Buick filled with the gangstas who killed his father.

“Run, Shorty, run.”

“Mama!”

When at last Shorty runs he runs toward his mother. He hears the Tec-9 going buyaka-buyaka.

Just like when they capped Daddy. The bullets hit like punches, knock his eighty pounds through the air, smash the air out of his chest. The asphalt’s jumping at his face.

But suddenly the fans are going crazy, screaming, lifting him with their cheers. He’s flying, rising over the court, over the garden, searching for that open place.

Something happening behind the chain-link fence. Frantic, desperate motion. Then the boo-yaa, boo-yaa thunder of the twelve-gauge Mossberg pump. Then cops all over, running, shooting.

The boys in blue too late for you.

Too late for us.

But his mother is rising, too. She’s coming with him. The court’s wide open. He sees his shot.

Gimme the rock.

Shaq to Magic to Michael Jordan.

To Shorty.

Jumper.

In!