Murder At the Foul Line

FEAR OF FAILURE by Parnell Hall

He was tall, black, and dead. A bad combination. And for an ex-Celtics fan, one that conjured up images of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. I say ex-fan because it was about then that I stopped following the team, when Bird, McHale, and Parish retired, to be replaced by a crop of young players I did not know who did not win.

Since then I’ve followed the Knicks, an interesting exercise, to be sure, recalling just the sort of heartbreak I’d grown used to from years of watching the Red Sox. A disappointing but interesting team, the Knicks: I was in Madison Square Garden when Starks made the dunk, and watched on TV that seventh game of the Finals when he threw up brick after brick. I listen now, in the post-Ewing era, when people in the elevator of my Upper West Side apartment building maintain that while they like Marcus Camby, he’s a forward, not a center, and what are the Knicks going to do now? And I realize after twenty years I am finally assimilated.

I am a New Yorker.

But I was talking about the boy.

And here I have to be careful. A word I shouldn’t use for an African American. Just as I shouldn’t use girl to refer to a young woman. But it was hard not to think of him as a boy.

He was only eighteen.

Grant Jackson was six foot ten, 280 pounds, all muscle. He collapsed and died during a preseason practice of the varsity basketball team of Cedar Park College, a small Brooklyn school with big aspirations. Without Grant the team had rarely posted a winning season. This year they had hoped to reach the NIT playoffs.

That would not happen.

It was up to me to find out why.

“No, it isn’t,” Richard Rosenberg insisted. He got up from his desk, hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, and strutted back and forth as if he were making an argument in front of a jury.

Richard Rosenberg was the negligence lawyer I work for. A little man, with an inexhaustible source of nervous energy, he loved beating opposing attorneys down. With none in sight, he was happy to pick on me.

“ Stanley,” he said, “I don’t know how to impress this on you. Your job is not to find out why this happened. Your job is simply to record the fact it did. Take down the information. Have the mother sign the necessary release forms. That’s the reason you’re there. To get her to sign the retainer. So see that she does.”

“What about the father?”

“If he’s there, sign him. It’s the mother who called. I think it’s a single mother. I certainly hope so.”

“Richard.”

“Well, I’ll get a bigger settlement. A poor woman, raising her children alone. Trust me, there won’t be a dry eye in court.”

“I’m sure there won’t. Pardon me, Richard, but just who do you intend to sue?”

“I don’t know. The school, the coach, the EMS, the doctors, the hospital. That’s not your problem, that’s my problem. Just sign the kid up. There’s always someone to sue. Now, get going before Jacoby and Meyers gets wind of this and aces me out.”

Grant’s mother lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant in one of those housing projects I always dread and always seem to get. Steel outer doors with smashed locks and windows, dimly lit lobbies, and odd/even elevators, at least one of which was never working, invariably the one I wanted. In this case it was the odd, a sure thing, since the Jacksons lived on seven. I rode up to eight in the company of a young man in a do-rag wearing half the gold in Fort Knox, who looked as if he’d like to mug me if it weren’t for the nagging suspicion I might be a cop. I walked down a stairwell that reeked of urine and stale marijuana, then tried to find apartment J, not an easy task since the letters had fallen off half the doors. Eventually I located apartment F and counted down. I rang the bell, heard nothing, tried knocking on the door.

It was opened by a young black man with the word hostile tattooed on his forehead.

“You the lawyer?” he demanded.

A moment of truth.

Richard Rosenberg’s TV advertising, besides promising “free consultation” and “no fee unless recovery,” boldly proclaims, “We will come to your house.”

He wouldn’t, of course. He would send me. I would come walking in in a suit and tie, saying, “Hi, I’m from the lawyer’s office,” and if people wanted to assume I was an attorney, that was just fine, and it didn’t really hurt anybody, since a lawyer couldn’t do any more than I could at that juncture anyway. But I never lied to the client, I never claimed to be a lawyer, and if directly asked, I would explain that I was actually the investigator hired by the lawyer.

Only, this didn’t seem to be that time. The gentleman, whoever he was, was not the client, and it occurred to me it was probably not wise to get into a philosophical conversation with him. So I tried a simple deflection. “Hi,” I said, “I’m Stanley Hastings. I’m here to see Mrs. Jackson. I believe she called Rosenberg and Stone.”

While that did not appear to please him, it worked. He turned, hollered, “Hey, Ma, is the lawyer,” and walked off, giving me the choice of standing there like a jerk or trailing along behind.

I followed him into a living room where a large black woman sat on a couch bouncing a baby boy on her knee. In a playpen in the corner, a baby girl was chewing on a Miss Piggy doll. A third small child was building a tower on the rug.

The room reeked of poverty. The furniture could have been gathered off the street. Only the children’s toys looked new. And the baby’s diapers were fresh Pampers. Clearly all money was spent on the kids.

“Mrs. Jackson?” I said.

She looked up at me with big brown eyes. Hurt, pained, yet still polite. “Yes?”

“I’m Mr. Hastings from the lawyer’s office.”

“Oh, yes. Come, sit down.”

She patted the couch next to her, which would have been my first choice. For one thing, she had to sign papers. For another, I wouldn’t have to look at her, see her grief.

I sat down, put my briefcase on the coffee table, snapped it open, took out a fact sheet.

“All right, Mrs. Jackson,” I said. “Your son’s name was Grant?”

“That’s right.”

“Grant Jackson?”

“Yes.”

I filled his name in the blank. Grant Jackson, though dead, was still the client. His mother was filing suit in his behalf. I put down his particulars, then hers.

As Richard had surmised, Grant’s father had left the family picture years ago. I inquired of the brothers and sisters, all of whom would benefit in the event of a successful suit. There were nine, ranging in age from the baby on her knee to the young man who had opened the door, whose name turned out to be Lincoln. Indeed, the chronological list of Mrs. Jackson’s children mapped a cultural evolution, from Grant and Lincoln to Jamal and Rasheed.

The preliminaries out of the way, I took a breath. “All right,” I said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Mrs. Jackson snuffled once, bounced the baby automatically. “Grant was at practice. He always at practice. He work him hard. Too hard.”

“Who worked him hard?”

“Coach Tom.”

“Who’s Coach Tom?”

“The coach.”

“What’s his name?”

“Coach Tom.”

I didn’t want to get impatient with a woman in her grief, but I wasn’t making much headway. “Does Coach Tom have another name?”

“Suppose. But everyone call him Coach Tom.”

“He was Grant’s basketball coach?”

“Yes, and he work him too hard.”

“Ma, take it easy,” Lincoln warned. He was prowling the room as if suspicious I might be trying to rip his mother off.

She pierced him with her eyes. “Easy? I should take it easy? My boy. My poor boy.”

“Grant collapsed during practice?”

“That’s right. He had a bad heart. No, not a bad heart. A weak heart. And Coach Tom knew. That’s the thing. Coach Tom knew.”

“Grant had a heart condition?”

“Yes, he did.”

“He’d been to the doctor for this?”

“Tha’s right. Said he had arrhythmia. Not bad if he careful. If he don’t play ball.”

“Not what he say,” Lincoln contradicted. “He don’t say don’t play ball. He just say take it easy.”

“Same thing. Shouldn’t have played. I tell him that. I tell him don’t play. Grant, he don’t listen.”

“Did your son play ball before? In high school?”

“Course he did. Course we don’t know. We don’t know nothin’ wrong. Till the physical. The college physical. Doctor find out what the pediatrician miss.” Her voice quivered in outrage. “Can you believe that? Pediatrician see him every year, don’t know a thing.”

“What’s the pediatrician’s name?” I asked. It occurred to me Richard was right, there were a lot of people to sue.

She gave me the information and I wrote it down.

“So what’d the doctor say? The one who found the arrhythmia?”

“The doctor say he can play. He got a heart condition, but he can play. He just gotta take it easy. How you take it easy playin’ ball? I tell him, Grant, don’t do it. I tell him no. My boy, he got a big heart.” She broke down. “Oh, why I say that? But it’s true. He had a plan. Can’t talk him out of it. Gonna be a star, claim hardship, jump to the NBA. Signin’ bonus, get us outta here. I tell him no, but he won’t hear. He won’t hear.”

A sob racked her body, and her eyes filled with tears.

It was a relief when my beeper went off. It startled the baby, made him cry, snapped his mother back to the present.

“Wha’s that?” she said.

“Sorry. It’s the office, paging me. I have to call in.”

“Phone’s inna kitchen. Lincoln, show the man.”

I got up, followed Lincoln Jackson into a kitchen where cockroaches scurried about in plain sight. I picked up the receiver of the wall phone, punched in the office number.

“Rosenberg and Stone,” came the voice of Wendy/Janet.

Wendy and Janet were Richard’s switchboard girls. They had identical voices, so I never knew which I was talking to.

“It’s Stanley. What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“Grant Jackson ’s apartment, signing up the mother.”

“Forget it,” Wendy/Janet said. “I got a case for you in Queens.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“A case in Queens. The guy’s waiting for you. Head out there now.”

“I’m just getting started here.” I lowered my voice. “She hasn’t signed the retainer vet.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re dropping the case.”

I blinked again. “Why?”

“I don’t know, but Richard said to send you out to Queens.”

I groaned. Besides a voice, Wendy and Janet shared an intelligence. Between them, they had the I.Q. of a fireplug. I had learned from bitter experience any fact they gave me was apt to be wrong.

This had to be one of them.

“I’ll have to hear it from Richard,” I said.

“Very well,” Wendy/Janet said acidly, taking my request for the rebuke it was, and put me on hold.

Moments later Richard Rosenberg came on the line. “ Stanley. Why are you giving the girls a hard time? Take down the information and get out to Queens.”

“I’m not done here.”

“Yes, you are. We’re dropping the case.”

“How come?”

“It’ll be on the evening news. A friend of mine leaked me the autopsy report. Grant Jackson died of a drug overdose.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all. Pretty stupid, huh? A guy with a weak heart shouldn’t be messing around with cocaine.”

I looked up, saw Lincoln standing there staring at me.

“You wanna run that by me again, Richard?”

“Of course,” Richard said sarcastically. “God forbid you should merely follow instructions without making me justify my decisions. The point is, Grant Jackson with a bad ticker made the rather unwise career choice of mainlining a rather large dose of rather pure coke. Under the circumstances, the number of people I can sue has dropped from everybody and his brother to one, the guy who sold him the drugs. Whom I would suspect of being unlikely to be found. So I’m dropping the case. So wrap it up and get out to Queens. Hang on, I’ll transfer you back, you can get the address.”

Wendy/Janet came back on the line and gave me the info. A Frederick Tucker of Forest Hills had tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and broken his leg, giving him a cause of action against the City of New York. I took down the details, told Wendy/Janet I’d get right on it.

I didn’t.

I figured a guy with a broken leg wasn’t going anywhere. Frederick Tucker could wait. First I finished signing up Mrs. Jackson.

“That’s awful,” Alice said as we watched the report on the evening news.

“It certainly is,” I told her.

“So there’s no case, but you signed it up anyway? Just so you wouldn’t have to tell the woman Richard had turned her down?”

“That’s right.”

“As a humane gesture, to spare her feelings?”

“No,” I said. “As a cowardly gesture, not wanting to be the one to tell her.”

“Instead you spent a half hour filling out forms.”

“Fifteen minutes. No big deal.”

“So the woman’s signed up?”

“Yes, she is.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she’ll have to get a note from Rosenberg and Stone, telling her we’re no longer handling the case.”

“I don’t think so.”

I looked at Alice. She was lying on the bed propped up on her elbow. She looked bright, attractive, alluring, fetching, radiant.

I was in trouble.

I took the zapper, flicked the TV on mute. Leaned back in the overstuffed chair. “ Alice, what am I missing here?”

“You told me all about this woman and her umpteen children and her squalid apartment. Her dead son wanted to get her out of there. She wants to get out of there. That’s why she wants to sue. You know the reason that won’t work. You knew it, but you signed her up anyway.”

“I told you why.”

“Yeah, but I know you. You’re a nice guy. You see this woman with her kids, and you wanna help her. You figure maybe there’s a loophole even Richard doesn’t know. You figure there’s gotta be a way.”

I’m not entirely sure I figured all that. As I grow older and more cynical, any resemblance between me and a knight in shining armor is entirely coincidental and not to be inferred. If asked for an objective self-evaluation, I would have said I chickened out. Being a devout coward.

Of course that goes double for my wife. Don’t get me wrong-I don’t mean she’s a coward-I mean when confronted with her, that’s what I become. Anyway, faced with Alice ’s placid assurance that my motivation was clearly to help the woman, I found myself, as I usually do when dealing with my wife, ill equipped to contradict her. In short, helping the woman had become the coward’s way out.

Cedar Park was a small college nestled within a single city block. Its facilities consisted of a series a crumbling stone buildings, all of the same vintage and architectural design. Clearly no wealthy graduate was springing for a new theater or science lab.

The gymnasium turned out to be on the fourth floor of the history building. I determined this by going in what appeared to be the administration building and looking in vain for any sort of office, then going back outside and asking some students, who were leery of me, making me for a cop. Eventually I got the right building, found the stairs. Halfway up the last flight, I was rewarded by the sound of a bouncing basketball.

The Cedar Park College basketball court was small, as I’d expected, but surprisingly well maintained. The parquet floor gleamed. The keys and three-point lines had been stenciled on with care. The wooden backboards were freshly painted white. The orange rims were new, as were the white and blue nets.

The court was about three-quarters of the length of a regulation floor. There were no bleachers for fans, just a single row of benches along the narrow side walls, which might have led me to believe this was just a practice gym, were it not for the score clock on the wall. The clock looked older than me, which cast doubts as to whether it actually worked. Taken together, a pair of depressing thoughts.

There were ten men on the court, playing a practice game. Five wore red pullover jerseys, five did not. All were black. Most were lithe and thin. Some were tall. Some were broad. All had moves. None were dominant.

Watching the action was a wizened old black man with horn-rimmed glasses, a whistle in his mouth, and a perpetual frown. As I watched, he blew the whistle, stopped action, strode onto the court.

“No, no, no!” he complained, shaking his head. He addressed a lanky young man with an open mouth and a who, me? expression. “ Clyde, what was that play? That was a pick-an’-roll. You pick, but you din’t roll. Floyd got the ball, two defenders on him, nowhere to go. All you do is bring another man to cover Floyd. Now, is that helpful? Is that useful? Is that what you were tryin’ to do?”

Players from both teams grinned and snickered while Clyde shuffled his feet and muttered, “No.”

“No,” the man with the whistle said. “Tha’s right, Clyde. Good answer. So we learnin’ here. So the next time you pick an’ roll, you roll.”

Play started up again.

I moved around the court, approached the man. “Coach Tom?”

He spoke without looking or taking the whistle out of his mouth. “Yes?”

“I’m here about Grant Jackson.”

He exhaled hard enough to blow the whistle slightly. Heads turned on the court, but he waved it off. “Play on.” He turned to me, aggrieved. “What about him? Not bad enough I lose my star player, I gotta answer questions too?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It must be hard. But it’s harder for his family. For their sake, could you help me out?”

Coach Tom squinted up his eyes and turned his back on the action on the court. “Just what you mean?”

I was treading a fine line here, what with Richard rejecting the case. “I’m trying to help out Grant’s mom. See if there’s any insurance money to be had. It’s probably a long shot, but the woman had ten kids. If you can see a way to help me out.”

“How could I do that?”

“I understand Grant collapsed during a practice. Was that up here?”

“Course it here. You think we got some other gym we use for games? This here’s it. Always has been, probably always will. ‘Specially now.”

“You mean without Grant?”

“Made a difference, that he did. Expectations were high.”

“Justifiably so?”

He squinted. “Wha’s that?”

“Did you think Grant would have made a difference?”

“Yes, he would. How much is hard to say, but he certainly would.” He jerked his thumb. “These are good boys, but without him they just another team.”

“How will they do?”

“Same as usual. Not too good, not too bad. Couple of schools we always beat, couple always beat us. Bunch inna middle. Same thing every year.”

“How long have you coached this team?”

“Twenty-six years now.”

“Ever had a player like Grant?”

“I had good players. But like Grant? No, not like Grant. Damn shame.”

“How did it happen?”

“We havin’ a scrimmage, just like this. He goes up for a rebound. Come down holdin’ his side. I thought he got elbowed. By the guy in front. I’m giving him what-for ’bout boxin’ out, he fall down on the floor.”

“Any chance he did take an elbow to the ribs, something might have hurt his heart?”

“Sure there is. But that’s not what killed him. Not accordin’ to the TV.”

“That surprised you?”

“What?”

“That he was taking drugs?”

“Yes and no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Coach Tom scratched his nose. “You gotta understand. I seen ’em come, I seen ’ em go. All types of kid. I never seen a kid as good as Grant. But I seen kids like him. I know how they think.”

“And how is that?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

He tapped his glasses. “You can see it in their eyes. The fear. The fear of failure. They got all the goods they need to succeed, and they afraid it’s not enough. They scared to death to get out there, have to prove themselves.” He shrugged. “So they turn to junk. You think Grant the first star player I had took to drugs? What planet you live on?”

“Grant was a special case. He had a heart problem. He knew drugs could kill him.”

“Drugs could kill anybody. Sometimes do. They still take ’em. Kid got the fear, like Grant, he not thinkin’ that. He don’t care. I’m not sayin’ he tryin’ to kill himself. But it’s not a deterrent, you know what I mean? Grant decide to take a toot, stuff don’t agree with him, there you go. Shame, but there you be.”

Coach Tom watched the action up and down the court. “Bounce-pass, Larry. Bounce-pass.”

“Grant never used drugs before?”

“How should I know?”

“I don’t know. The college have a drug policy?”

“Sure they do. Make me run drug tests.” He snorted. “What a joke. Guys pee in a cup. Big deal. Pass the cup around. Guy who’s not high pees for ’em all.”

“You don’t supervise ’em?”

He gave me the evil eye. “You like to hold that cup? They say test ’em, I test ’em. They don’t like it, jus’ too damn bad.”

“So Grant passed his drug screen?”

“That he did. Did he pass it on his own, I couldn’t say.”

“If he was gettin’ high, who was giving it to him?”

He gave me another look. “How the hell should I know?”

I shrugged. “You strike me as a man don’t miss much. I bet you could tell me the most likely source on your team for coke or grass.”

“Oh, you think so?” Coach Tom blew the whistle. “No, tha’s a turnover. You can palm the ball all you want, no one care anymore, but you carry it like that, you gonna get called. Red ball onna side.” He turned back to me. “You talk a good game. You start talkin’ to my boys about drugs, they’re gonna think you a cop, no matter what cover story you give. You don’t need that, and neither do I. And you ain’t a cop. You got no authority to do it, so you don’t.”

He stuck his finger in my face. “So lemme put it ‘nother way. How will knowing where Grant got his drugs help you get some insurance money for his mom? Riddle me that.”

I couldn’t.

MacAullif smiled when I walked in the door.

I stopped, blinked, wondered if I was in the wrong office.

“Hi, how you doin’?” MacAullif said.

I looked at him suspiciously. “Just fine. How are you?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

I was concerned. If things couldn’t be better, something was definitely wrong. Under normal circumstances Sergeant MacAullif treated my entrance into his office as an intrusion on his valuable time. If he was pleased to see me, the world was out of whack.

“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “I’m wondering if you have time to discuss a case.”

“As long as you can be calm.”

“Calm?”

“Yes. And don’t get riled up. And don’t get me riled up. Do you think you can do that?”

“Why would I get you riled up?”

“Because you always do,” MacAullif flared, and immediately pulled back.

“Jeez, MacAullif,” I said. “You mind telling me why you’re trying so hard to keep calm?”

MacAullif exhaled through his teeth. He sounded like a steam locomotive. “Blood pressure. I got high blood pressure. I had my physical, the doc says it’s dangerously high. Gotta avoid stress. Gotta avoid tension. Tough assignment, the work I do, but there are ways and there are ways. The main way, Doc says, is don’t take it personally. It may be a homicide, but it’s just a job. You handle it and move on. So the bottom line is, while I’d much prefer you didn’t bring me any more stress, I’m not gonna let it bother me if you do. So how about it, can you handle this on your own?”

“I could use some help.”

A frown crossed MacAullif’s face, was instantly replaced by a smile. “Of course,” he said. “Pray tell me what you want. So I may help you with it before getting back to the three homicides I am coordinating. Among five detectives, as one is out with the flu.” He considered. “I said that very calmly. I should get points for that.”

“You should get points just for saying among. Most cops would say between.”

MacAullif gave me an utterly baffled look. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your calm. I was just wondering if you had anything on the Grant Jackson case.”

MacAullif frowned. “What made you wonder that?”

“The mother called Rosenberg and Stone.”

“Indeed,” MacAullif said. He didn’t sound happy. “Well, it happens to have crossed my desk. It is not one of the three homicides I mentioned. It is in addition to the three homicides I mentioned. It is a closed case I was hoping to clear, for, as I say, manpower is short.”

MacAullif took a cigar from his desk, began twirling it through his fingers, a nervous habit he had when thinking something out. “The Grant Jackson case is rather straightforward. A kid with a bad heart shoots a lethal dose of coke. It’s a no-brainer. It’s a slam dunk. The type of case you pray for with a case overload. Just this morning I was quite thrilled at the prospect of having chalked it up and not having to deal with it again.”

“I’m not asking you to deal with it. I’m just wondering if you could discuss it.”

MacAullif took a breath, then smiled what had to be the most forced smile this side of the Mona Lisa. It occurred to me if he were working any harder at being relaxed, his jaw might crack. “Of course,” he said.

“You get anything from the autopsy report?”

“Just what I said. Kid OD’d. Shame, but it happens all the time.”

“The kid a user?”

“No, he wasn’t. Not according to the M.E. No track marks. He might have snorted before, but he never shot. And for good reason. Guy with a heart condition mainlinin’ got to be suicidal.”

“Think it was?”

“What?”

“Suicide?”

MacAullif’s face contorted in what could only be preparation for a barrage of sarcasm. He re-collected himself, composed his features. One could almost hear him reciting a mantra. “I would think you could rule out suicide. Suicides kill themselves. They don’t get high and go play ball.”

“What do you think of the theory he was trying to get himself up for practice?”

“I don’t like it, but I’d take it over suicide.”

“What do you think of the theory someone did him in?”

He raised one finger. “That theory I don’t like at all. That theory takes the Grant Jackson case out of my inactive file and places it in my pending file. That theory gives me four homicides and five detectives. You do the math.”

“I see your point.”

“Do you? Tell me something. Why are you pushing this?”

“If the kid OD’d, the mother doesn’t get a dime.”

MacAullif squinted at me sideways. “Richard kicked the case?”

“I was signing up the mother when we got the report that-”

“Richard kicked the case?”

“When we found out that the kid OD’d and-”

“Richard kicked the case?”

“You’re getting all worked up.”

He took a deep breath, blew it out slowly. “I’m not getting all worked up. I’m fine. Let me know if I understand you correctly. You came in to bother me about a case you are not even working on?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t working on it.”

“Is anyone paying you to work on it?”

“No.”

“Well, how delightful.” MacAullif spread his arms. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Actually there is.”

“I might have known. Pray what might that be?”

“Well, I know you scrutinized this case carefully before you decided it wasn’t worth your notice. I imagine you checked out where Grant might have copped the cocaine. Did that investigation bear fruit?”

“Oh, sure,” MacAullif said. “We had people linin’ up claimin’ to be the dope dealer who sold him his last toot. Would you like a list of names?”

“Good, MacAullif. You’re getting better at calm sarcasm. Actually I was wondering if you pulled the rap sheets on his friends, family, and teammates.”

MacAullif had.

Of the gentlemen in question, there were two with prior drug busts.

One was Larry White, one of Grant Jackson’s teammates.

The other was brother Lincoln.

Lincoln Jackson met me at a small coffee shop near the project in Bed-Stuy. He had no reason not to. As far as he knew, I was still working for his mother. He slid into the booth, propped his elbows up on the faded Formica table, and demanded, “Why we meetin’ here? Why not up there?”

“Don’t you want coffee?”

“I don’ want coffee. I want to know what’s going on.”

“I want to talk with you. I didn’t want to disturb your mom.”

“She interested.”

“I know she is. I wanted you to be able to talk freely.”

He glared at me suspiciously. “ ’Bout what?”

“I think you know ’bout what.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t ‘preciate this.” He turned, yelled to the waitress. “Hey, we get some coffee here?”

I didn’t remind him he didn’t want coffee. “Your brother died of an overdose. I bet the cops wanted to know where he got it.”

He muttered something about the integrity of the police force in general and one detective in particular. The waitress shoved a cup of coffee in front of him. He didn’t notice. He looked at me as if I were a cockroach he was about to step on. “They talk to me ’cause I got a prior. Is that stupid or what? That I’d give my own brother junk when I know he got a weak heart.”

“You knew that?”

“Course I did. Grant don’t want to tell, can’t hide nothin’. Face like a road map. He come back from the doctor, we all knew somethin’s wrong.”

“You dealin’ coke?”

His face twisted into a snarl. “I jus’ tol’ you, wasn’t me.”

“Yeah, but if it was in the house, Grant could have got his hands on it. Say if he wanted a boost, to play better.”

Lincoln snorted. “Play better? Tha’s a good one. You never seen him play. Grant didn’t need to play better. Grant was the best.”

“That bother you?”

“What?”

“That your brother was the star and not you?”

Lincoln took a sip of coffee. Like MacAullif, he seemed to be composing himself, holding himself in, framing a moderate response. “Do I wanna be Grant, sure I wanna be Grant, but I ain’t, Grant’s Grant, so I’m glad of that. When I find out who did give him dope, that sucker in trouble.” He jabbed a finger in my face. “You hear me? You hear what I say?”

“I hear you,” I said.

I’m not sure I believed him.

Larry White was suspicious. “You a cop?”

“No, I’m not.”

“You sure?”

“I think I’d know.”

“If you a cop, you gotta say.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“If you a cop, I ask you direct, you gotta say. Tha’s the law. You don’ say, you can’t bust me anyhow, don’ matter what I do.”

“I don’t wanna bust you.”

His eyes widened. “You a cop? Then you can’t bust me, even if I whip out a ki-lo, ask you if you wanna buy.”

“Is that right?”

“Truth. Leroy say so.”

“Savvy guy.”

“Damn right. He been aroun’. He done time.”

I blinked in despair over a generation that regarded a jail sentence as a qualification, had to remind myself I liked Robin Hood as a boy.

“Now we got that out of the way, you mind answering a few questions?”

“You make it quick. I gotta get to class.”

I knew that. I had located the administration building, looked up his schedule, and ambushed him coming out of math. He’d been easy to spot. He was the one who had to duck to get out the door.

“You were there when Grant Jackson collapsed?”

“Course I was. Durin’ practice.”

“What did you see?”

A girl with a Cedar Park College sweatshirt put her book bag in one of the metal lockers lining the hallway. She flashed us a look as she went by.

Larry White frowned. “Hey, man,” he said. “Maybe you can’t bust me, but she think I’m talkin’ to a cop.”

“That bad for business?”

He frowned. “Hey! What you mean?”

“Lemme speed things along for you, Larry,” I said. “I pulled your record. You got drug busts. I don’t give a damn, except how it relates to Grant. If Grant got coke from you, I gotta know.”

He shook his head. “No way!”

“And if Grant got works from you, I gotta know.”

His head kept shaking. “No way!”

“The medical examiner says Grant was a virgin, never shot before. If he wanted to shoot coke, he wouldn’t have the equipment. He’d have to get a hypodermic. I’m wondering if he got it from you.”

“No way! Christ, man, you say you not a cop, then you come on like this. I ain’ talkin’ to you. I get my lawyer.”

“That would be a very bad move.”

“You ain’ seen my lawyer.”

“No, I haven’t, but that’s not the point. Let me say it one more time. I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator trying to get insurance money for Grant’s mom. You talk to me, that’s as far as it goes. You tell me what I need to know, and that’s that. No one hassles you.

“If, instead, you go and get your lawyer, you got trouble. Then I got no right to ask you questions, ’cause I’m not a cop. So then I gotta get a cop. And I gotta tell the cop that you won’t answer questions. Then the cop will ask you, and your lawyer will advise you, and the whole thing will be out of my hands. But you’ll be happy. At least you’ll be dealing with a routine you know.

“If you wanna do that, fine. If you don’t wanna do that, you got another choice. You talk to me, and I go away. And no one asks you any more questions. Sounds like a pretty good deal. Particularly since you know even if I were a cop, nothing you say could hurt you anyway. So come on, let’s do this. I don’t wanna make you late for class.”

Larry frowned, glanced at his watch. It was a gold Rolex. If the obvious display of riches embarrassed him any, he didn’t show it. “You got two minutes.”

“Did Grant Jackson ever do drugs?”

“No way.”

“If he had, would you know it?”

Grudgingly. “Suppose.”

“Is there any chance he got the stuff from anyone else on the team?”

“No way.”

“If it wasn’t you, it was no one?”

“Hey, look-”

“No offense meant.”

“Is that so?” His nostrils flared. He bent down in my face. “Now, see here. I don’ do drugs. No one on the team do drugs. You got that? We got drug screens. Wit’ a no-tolerance policy. You flunk one, you done. A guy was usin’, he be on the bench.”

“I thought you had a designated pisser.”

He started to flare up, then smiled. “Tha’s good. Gotta use that.”

“Feel free. The point is, you guys know how to fake drug tests. So don’t give me the everybody’s clean. Coach Tom knows better than that.”

Larry’s eyes narrowed. “He rat me out?”

“Not at all. He just suggested you guys were in the habit of sharing urine samples when somebody was high.”

He banged the door shut on a metal locker. Not violently, just absently, casually. Still, I felt the hall shake. “That so bogus, man. That happen two, three times, big deal. Not like somebody hidin’ a lifestyle, know what I mean. Junkie got a problem, junkie don’ get by. But there ain’ no junkie. There be a junkie, he be on the bench. Coach Tom nail his ass.”

“How, if he keeps faking the urine sample?”

“Yeah, but they do blood test too.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and there ain’ no way to fake that. A needle in your arm, ain’ no way to go borrowin’ no blood.”

“If you were friends with the nurse, and she mislabeled a test tube or two?”

He shook his head. “Ain’ no nurse. Coach Tom do it hisself. And, trus’ me, he ain’ gonna mislabel nothin’.”

“Not even to protect his star?”

“’Specially then. Few years back, he give a drug test, two guys flunk. Both starters, one a high scorer. An’ he sat ’ em down. Din ’ let ’ em play. Championship year.”

“Championship?”

“Coulda been. Only, Coach Tom sat his stars.”

“How long?”

“Month. Missed the NIT playoffs.”

“He sat ’em for a whole month?”

“Tha’s the rule. You fail a blood test, you sit till you pass a blood test. And he don’t give ’em more’n once a month. Tha’s a fact. Blood test, I mean. Pee cup happen alla time.”

I frowned. I didn’t like what I was hearing. “Let me be sure I understand this. The urine test happens all the time, but you can fake ’em. However, once a month you get a blood test that there’s no way to fake. And Coach Tom gives it. So if Grant was doing cocaine, Coach Tom would know. On account of the blood test.”

“That’s right.”

“When’s the last time you had one?”

I found Coach Tom in the gym, working on the parquet floor. He had removed about a three-foot-square section of boards and was cleaning and sanding them. He didn’t look up when I came in, just continued to inspect the groove on the side of a board. I wasn’t even sure if he knew I was there.

He did.

“Buckles,” he said. “Wood floor’s a sweet thing, but the wood swells and the floor buckles. Forms an air pocket, makes a little bump. You gotta take it up, put it back down. Don’t know how many hundred times I done this, one spot or another.”

“You want to talk about Grant Jackson?”

“I’d rather talk about my floor.”

I figured that was true. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s some things I need to know.”

“And I suppose they’re so all-fired important you gotta ask. Boy’s dead, can’t you leave it be?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I understand you gave blood tests, as well as urine. Tests that were impossible to fake.”

“Oh, you understand that, do you?”

“You did it yourself. You were in complete control. If someone tampered with someone’s blood sample, you were the only one who could have done it.”

“Never happened.”

“No, I don’t suppose it did. In fact, it’s legend. You sittin’ down your star players when you had a shot at the NIT.”

“Ain’ nothin’ to it,” Coach Tom said. “Rule’s a rule.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. I set my briefcase down on the parquet floor, snapped it open, took out a sheaf of papers. “And I know you’re a stickler for playing by the rules.” I thrust the papers on the floor in front of him. “You know what these are? They’re lab reports. Going back the last ten years. Lab reports on the blood samples you had processed.”

“So?”

“There’s none for the day Grant Jackson died. According to the players on the team, you took blood that day.”

“What if I did?”

“According to the lab, you never turned it in.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t. With Grant collapsin’, it would be easy to forget.”

“You’re saying you forgot to turn it in?”

“If that’s what the lab says, must be.”

“Then where are those samples now?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“If you didn’t turn ’em in, you must still have ’em.”

“So?”

“So let’s go take a look.”

“Let’s not. What’s with you? First you say you’re workin’ for the mother, then you come around you want blood. What’s the deal?”

“If you have a vial of blood you took from Grant Jackson on the day he collapsed, that would be rather valuable evidence.”

“Well, I don’t.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t think you did.” I picked up the papers, flipped through. “February 3, 1994. Drug screen for Harold Wilks and Alan Powers. Positive for cocaine. You sat them both, in spite of the fact you had a great team that year, with a shot at makin’ the NIT. It’s legend. All the players know it. Gives you a terrific hold over them.”

“That’s not why I did it.”

“Yeah, I know.” After a pause I added, “I’m probably the only one who does.”

He looked up at me from his seat on the floor. “What you mean?”

“This drug test in ’94 that sat your stars. According to the lab reports, it was three weeks after the last test. Only three weeks, when you always give four. A sudden, surprise test that netted two of your biggest stars. And knocked you out of the NIT.”

He may not have heard me. He bent over, fitted a board back into the floor.

“See, you talk a good game, Coach Tom. That’s what bothered me. You talk too good a game. The bit about fear of failure. That was pretty damn good. That sounded plausible. It took a while for me to figure out that if it sounded that good, it probably wasn’t. And, sure enough, that’s the case. Fear of failure wasn’t the problem. It was fear of success.

“It happened first in ’94, when a team got a little too good, went a little too far. Gonna get in the playoffs, get some national exposure. Get the alumni all excited. Raise money. Hire a name coach. Build a new gym.

“I’m not sure which scared you more. Someone trying to replace you, or the thought of losing this.

“Grant Jackson, same thing, only worse. He’s not just a great player, he’s a marquee player. He’s the type of player gets your team in the papers and on TV. And this gym isn’t set up for TV, is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. You’re very comfortable in your little gym, with a.500 team. It’s not just a job, it’s your whole life. Which Grant Jackson threatened to destroy.” I referred to the sheets. “Which is why, once again, we have a blood test a little early. It’s not on these sheets, but according to the guys on the team, it was the same day Grant Jackson died. Three weeks since the last one. A week early, just like before.”

I shook my head. “A blood test that never got to the lab, where the blood disappeared.” I lowered my voice. “It must have been a tough thing to do. But I’m sure you thought you had no choice.

“So there you are, with a needle in Grant’s arm, taking blood. Filling test tubes. Easy to switch; instead of an empty tube, a full hypodermic you squeeze back in. For a boy with a heart condition, a lethal dose of coke. Because Grant Jackson didn’t do drugs. Under any circumstances. Even before he knew about the heart condition. There was no way he would fall for a setup, like the coke you planted on your boys in ’94. That they found in their locker and couldn’t resist. And why would they? The drug screen wasn’t due for another week. Surely it would be out of their system by then.”

He frowned, looked up at me. There were tears running down his cheeks. “Why you doin’ this?”

I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t say “It’s my job,” because it wasn’t. And I couldn’t bear to say something clunky and holier-than-thou like “Because it’s right.”

I turned and motioned to the door, where Sergeant MacAullif was waiting. He came in, introduced himself to Coach Tom, and delivered what had to be the calmest Miranda warning in the history of the NYPD.

Richard was dumbfounded. “Grant Jackson’s a homicide?”

“That’s right.”

“His coach killed him because he would have made the team too famous and cost him his job?”

“That’s a bit of an oversimplification.”

“But he’s under arrest?”

“That he is.”

“Which makes it a brand-new ball game.” Richard rubbed his hands together. “Suddenly everyone’s liable again. The coach, the college, the doctors. Maybe even the police.”

“Let’s not go overboard,” I said. I could envision MacAullif’s blood pressure if he got named as a defendant.

“You signed this woman up. Even though I told you not to.”

“I admit I exceeded my authority.”

“Yes, you did, and it couldn’t have worked out better. You’re even entitled to the hundred-and-fifty-dollar initiative bonus for bringing me a new case.”

“Two hundred and fifty.”

“What?”

“It went up to two hundred and fifty last year.”

“Are you sure?”

“That kid, Patrick, who worked here for a month, brought you a case and wouldn’t give it to you for less.”

“That was a special case.”

“Oh, come on. You’re trying to justify paying a kid out of college more than the investigator who’s worked for you for years?”

Richard paused, considered, probably realized the number of cases I brought him could be counted on the fingers of one hand. “Of course not, Stanley,” he said magnanimously. “Two hundred and fifty bucks it is. And a damn fine job.” He riffled through the fact sheet I’d given him. “The woman has nine dependents, no husband, lives on welfare, has no other visible means of support. Cruelly deprived of her only source of income. The insurance companies are going to fall all over themselves trying to settle this.”

I figured that was probably true. Richard’s reputation as a fearsome litigator was well known. Opposing counsel were used to throwing large sums of money at him to keep him out of court.

“So,” Richard said, “you get your bonus, I get a nice case, and a woman with nine dependents gets some much-needed relief. All in all, it couldn’t be better.”

I sighed.

I was thinking of Coach Tom, down on his hands and knees, meticulously, lovingly replacing the boards of his parquet floor.

“Yeah,” I said flatly. “Couldn’t be better.”