The Strangler

5

Michael, on the front porch. He paced. He hunched inside his winter coat, dragged on a cigarette, picked at the spongy floorboards with his toe. The planks were rotting, flaking apart. What a fucking dump. Whole place was falling apart. It was amazing how quickly a house began to disintegrate, how opportunistic the rot and damp were. One good stomp and he could crack any of these boards.

The screen door creaked and Ricky’s head extended horizontally out of the door frame. “Supper.”

“Be in in a minute.”

Ricky’s head retracted into the house, the screen door slammed, then the door snicked shut behind it.

But a few seconds later Ricky’s head was out again. “She says now.”

“Tell her in a minute.”

“I told her. She says ‘in a minute’ isn’t ‘now.’”

“I know ‘in a minute’ isn’t ‘now.’ That’s why I said ‘in a minute, ’because that’s when I’m coming in: in a minute. Jesus.”

Ricky came out onto the porch, shut the door behind him. “The fuck are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”

Michael held up the cigarette.

“So come inside and smoke it. It’s freezing.”

“You seen this?” Michael nudged a long splinter in one of the floorboards with the toe of his penny loafer. He worked it back and forth until it flaked off. “Look at this.”

“I know. It’s a fuckin’ mess. We’ll fix it in the spring maybe. Come on, let’s go. It’s cold, I’m hungry.”

Michael scowled.

“What’s a matter, Mikey? You got a headache?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“You’ve got a puss on.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You do. I’m looking right at it. Puss.”

“I don’t have a puss.”

“You do. I’ll be in in a minute. ”

“Fuck you, Rick.”

“Fuck you, Rick.”

Ricky smirked. The same charmed, blithe, princely grin he’d been deploying since the day he was born, four years after Michael. Ricky had smirked before he even had teeth, as if he knew, even as an infant, that he was no ordinary child.

The gloom Michael was feeling lifted a little, enough that he could shake his head and say “fuck you” again, warmer this time, fuck you meaning stick around.

“Let me bum one of those, Mikey.”

Michael dug the pack of Larks from his pocket, and Ricky lit up using the end of Michael’s cigarette.

“Jesus, would you look at this,” Michael said.

The brothers peered through the window into the dining room, where an enormous red-faced man was taking his place at the head of the table. Brendan Conroy settled back in his chair, made various adjustments to his fork and knife, then shared an inaudible uproarious laugh with Joe Daley, who sat at his left hand.

“Honestly,” Michael said, “I think I’m going to hang myself.”

“Don’t like your new daddy?”

“What ever happened to waiting a decent interval?”

“Dad’s dead a year. How long do you want him to wait?”

“Longer.” Michael considered. “A lot longer.”

Ricky turned away. He took a deep, contented pull on his cigarette and gazed out at the street, at the unbroken line of little houses, all looking drab in the winter twilight. December in Savin Hill. Cars were parked nose-to-tail up and down the street. Soon there would be fights over who owned those spots; around here, shoveling a parking spot was tantamount to buying it for the season. Christmas lights were beginning to appear. Across the street the Daughertys had already put up their five ludicrous plastic reindeer, which were lit from the inside. There had used to be six. Joe had broken one in high school when he came home drunk one night and tried to ride it. The next day Joe Senior had made Joe march across the street and apologize for riding Mr. Daugherty’s reindeer. What he ought to have apologized for was riding Mr. Daugherty’s daughters, which Joe did with the same gleeful droit du seigneur he exercised over all the neighborhood girls. Even Eileen Daugherty, the youngest of the three, took her turn-in Joe’s car, if Ricky was remembering right. That last coupling precipitated a brawl between Joe and Michael, because Michael had loved Eileen ever since kindergarten. He’d imagined that Eileen had somehow defied her genes and was not like that, until Joe set Michael straight, explaining that his conquest of the Daugherty sisters was really a sort of territorial obligation, like Manifest Destiny, and he’d needed Eileen to complete the hat trick, and anyway she had been a screamer. All of which had led Michael to throw himself at Joe, despite Joe’s size, because he couldn’t stop loving Eileen Daugherty even after she had offered herself up to Joe for the ritual goring. Maybe Michael loved her even now, deep down, the memory of her at least. He was that kind of kid. What ever happened to Eileen? Ricky turned back to his brother, “Hey, what ever happened to-?”

But Michael was still engrossed in what was behind the window, a fresher outrage. “Would you look at this? Look at Joe! What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

Inside, Joe Daley and Brendan Conroy were holding up their glasses of pale beer, laughing.

“Look at him, with his head up Conroy’s ass. He’s like a tapeworm.”

“Conroy could use a tapeworm.”

“Really, Rick, the whole thing, it’s just-Doesn’t this bother you?”

“Not really. Hey, what ever happened to Eileen from across the street? You ever hear about her?”

“No.” Michael did not glance away from the window.

Joe’s wife, Kat, came out onto the porch. “Are you guys coming in or you want your supper out here?”

“Michael’s mad.”

“I’m not mad-”

“He thinks Mum’s going to lose her virginity-”

“I didn’t say-”

“-to Brendan.”

Kat thought it over. “Well,” she concluded, “she’ll probably wait till after dinner anyways.”

“There, see?” Ricky smiled. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Come on. In.” Kat herded them inside with a dish towel, and in they went. There was something about Kat-Kathleen-that suggested she wasn’t taking any shit. She was just Joe’s type, big and hippy and good-looking and stolid, and the Daley boys as a rule did not fuck with her.

Michael went in first, wearing a sour-mouthed pucker. Ricky gave him a playful biff on the back of the head, and Kat rubbed his shoulder, both gestures intended to cheer him up.

The house smelled of garlic, and the girls were bustling from the kitchen to the table with a few last things.

Amy sped past: “Hey, Michael. Thought we’d lost you.”

Little Joe passed without a word. Joe’s son, Little Joe, was thirteen and had taken over the title “Little Joe” from his father, who had been Little Joe to his own father’s Big Joe. The Daleys did not believe in Juniors and III’s and IV’s; too Yankee. So each succeeding Joe got a new middle name. The current Little Joe was Joseph Patrick. At the moment he was sulking, Michael had no idea about what.

Margaret Daley, the materfamilias, tweaked Michael about a “disappearing act,” which tipped his mood downward again. Over the years Michael had evolved an exquisite sensitivity to his mother’s voice, so that he could detect the slightest reprimand or disapproval. Margaret was well aware of this sensitivity-Michael was her most finely calibrated son, the quickest to take offense and the slowest to forgive-but Margaret simply did not know how to speak without setting him off, without triggering one of those little sensors, and so she could not help but resent him for being thin-skinned and fragile, though in this respect he reminded her of Joe Senior, another man she’d never quite known, even after sleeping in the same bed with him for thirty-some-odd years. She saw Michael’s face fall when she mentioned his disappearing act. She regretted the comment for a moment, then decided not to regret it. Let him regret it. He was the one who should regret it. Margaret would regret only that Michael might spoil their Sunday dinner with his sulking.

Michael stood behind a seat in the middle of the table, feeling awkward, a guest in the house where he had grown up.

“Sit down.” Conroy grinned. “You’re making me nervous.”

“Yeah, sit down, Michael. What is this?”

Michael looked at Joe, who continued to regard him with a quizzical, supercilious expression that said What is this? Joe was imitating Conroy; that was the insufferable part. Well, Michael sighed, dinner would only last an hour or two. The sooner it started, the sooner it would end. He could already see himself at home looking back on it.

Michael took his place and the others filled in around him. Margaret at the head, opposite Conroy, in the same chair she’d occupied forever. Ricky at the corner opposite Joe, as far from Joe as he could get, to minimize the fighting. Kat positioned herself next to Joe, where she could keep a stern eye on him. Michael liked Kat and liked Joe for liking her. God bless her, Kat would take a bullet for Joe or put one in him, as the occasion required.

But opposite Michael was his favorite, Amy Ryan, whose cool redheaded presence was the best part of these Sunday dinners. Amy was Ricky’s girlfriend, and Michael harbored an illicit, quasi-romantic affection for her. Amy was wry, Amy was brave, Amy was funny, Amy was lovely, Amy was hip, Amy was profane, Amy was smart-her merits jostled for attention and it would have been impossible for Michael to name the one or two he liked best. Tonight she was wearing a white oxford shirt that may or may not have been Ricky’s, which struck Michael as a poignant gesture. She wore Ricky’s shirt as other girls had worn his varsity jacket once. There was a little of the bachelor’s yearning in Michael’s feelings for Amy. She made him question his instinct for solitude.

The group was still unfolding their napkins when Amy mentioned, “So, Brendan, I hear Alvan Byron is going to take over the Strangler case.” She spent a few seconds surveying the dishes on the table in a nonchalant way-noodles and gravy and garlic bread-as if the answer would not make a bit of difference to her.

But Amy Ryan was a reporter, one of only two women on the staff of the Observer, and Brendan Conroy wasn’t falling for any of her career-girl tricks. “Are we on the record or off?”

“Oh, Brendan, come on. Listen to you. We’re just talking. Alright, you tell me, on or off?”

“Off.”

“Okay, off. Remember that, Margaret,” Amy said, “we’re off the record.”

“Who could forget it?” the older woman drawled.

Conroy folded his arms. “Alright, then, here it is. Alvan Byron will not take over the Strangler case for the simple reason that he could not solve the Strangler case. He hasn’t got the people or the resources or the know-how.”

“He’s got Michael,” Ricky said.

“And we’ve got Joe.”

“Exactly.”

“Ricky-y-y,” his mother growled.

Michael forked a tangle of spaghetti onto his plate and, head down, he mixed red sauce into it with extraordinary care.

Conroy turned back to Amy. “Let me tell you something, girly-girl, before you go dancing off and write some story about the great Alvan Byron. Your Mr. Byron is not a cop, has never been, will never be a cop. What Alvan Byron knows about police work would fit on the head of a pin, with room for a few dancing angels.”

Ricky: “The great Conroy has spoken.”

Amy: “He is the Attorney General, Brendan. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“No. See, you don’t understand. Byron’s the Attorney General-that’s just the problem. You don’t go to a dentist for a broken leg, and you don’t send a lawyer to do a cop’s work. I look at the Attorney General’s office and do you know what I see? A law firm. Yankees and goo-goos and Hebrews, and the one lonely Irishman named Daley, and the whole place run by a colored fellow.” He smiled at his witticism. “Whole outfit is upside down.”

“And you,” Michael said, “have got thirteen dead women.”

Ricky: “Plus Joe, don’t forget. Thirteen dead women-and Joe.”

Conroy held Michael’s gaze. “We’ll find him.”

Kat said, “Better find him fast. I don’t sleep at night, with Joe off working and this lunatic running around. I feel like he’s hiding in the closet somewhere, and if I fall asleep…”

“We’ll catch him. Don’t you worry. It’ll all be over soon.”

“Brendan,” Ricky said, “no offense, but Mike’d catch your strangler before Joe gets through his first dozen doughnuts.”

Joe waved his knife.

“Well.” Amy sighed. “I’m just telling you what I hear, Brendan. Byron is going to take the Strangler case. Bet on it.”

“I’ll take that bet, girly. It’s Boston PD’s case. I can’t imagine why on earth we would ever give it up.”

“If Byron says you’re out,” Michael said, “you’re out.”

“That’s what you think.”

“That’s the way it is. He’s the A.G., he’s got statewide jurisdiction. If he wants the Strangler case, he can just take it.”

“See, now that just shows how little you know, smart guy. I’m sure you’re right about the legalities. But there’s what’s legal and there’s what’s practical, and Byron can’t solve that case without BPD’s support. Doesn’t matter what’s in your law books. This is the real world. And in the real world you can’t solve a homicide without homicide detectives. Byron doesn’t have them; we do.”

“Yeah, Mikey,” Ricky said, “you’ve been spending too much time with your Hebrews and goo-goos.”

“And your coloreds,” Joe added.

“And Yankees,” said Amy.

Michael: “Well, maybe you’re right, Brendan. You don’t need any help. It’s, what, a year and a half? And what have you got? Thirteen dead girls and not one arrest. City’s scared half to death. Hell of a job.”

“Michael,” Margaret cautioned, “that’s enough.”

Michael shook his head. He was not sure how he’d got into this position. He did not care much about the Strangler or Alvan Byron. He simply felt an irresistible urge to contradict Brendan Conroy. Something about Conroy’s voice, that sententious tone of his, brought out the worst in Michael.

Conroy seemed willing to let the whole thing pass. He would not grant Michael the satisfaction of goading him into a reaction. “We’ll catch him,” he repeated without any real conviction. “You wait and see.”

“So,” Amy cut in, “you still want that bet, Brendan?”

“That Byron won’t butt in? Sure. I just hate to take your money, girly-girl. How’s two bits, can you afford that? They pay you enough at that fish wrapper?”

“Doesn’t matter. I won’t be paying it.”

Conroy grinned and raised his glass to Amy. “I like your style.”

Michael rolled his eyes.

Joe saw Michael’s eye-rolling and misinterpreted it. “It’s easy to make fun from the cheap seats, Mikey.”

“I didn’t say anything to you, Joe.”

“I’m a cop, too.”

“I wasn’t talking about you, Joe. Just let it alone.”

“Yeah, you were. You were talking about cops. I’m a cop.”

“Your dad was a cop, too,” Conroy threw in.

“Let’s leave him out of it,” Michael said.

“I was just saying-”

“Leave him out.”

“Sorry, Michael. I didn’t mean anything.”

“He didn’t mean anything,” Joe seconded.

From the police reports, Michael had formed an image of his father’s death: In an alley in East Boston, his heart pierced by a bullet, Joe Senior had shimmered down to the ground, hands pinned to his sides. That was the image Michael saw now, and it made him venomous.

“Brendan, you might have let that chair cool off before you sat down in it.”

“Michael!” Margaret’s tone was more astonished than angry.

Conroy was unruffled. “I see.” He simply had not understood and now everything was clear. “Maybe I should go.”

“So go,” Michael said.

Joe pounded the table with the butt of his fist.

Conroy dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come. Margaret, ladies, thank you for all this. Excuse me.”

“Brendan,” Margaret instructed, “you sit down. This is my house, you’re my guest. It’s enough of this.” Mother Daley could be magnificently huffy. Her late husband had called her Princess Margaret. The three boys, more accurately, called her Queen Margaret.

“No, Margaret. Maybe Michael’s right, it’s too soon.”

“Michael is not right.”

“Some other time. I don’t want to spoil this beautiful meal.”

“Brendan! You sit down. Michael is going to apologize.”

Ricky said, “What’s he got to apologize? He didn’t do anything.”

“Mind your own business, you.”

Brendan Conroy smiled gallantly. All the arguing was pointless. There was no swaying him from a grand gesture. “Some other time,” he repeated. He excused himself, got his coat, and left.

The seven Daleys listened as Conroy started his car and drove off.

A moment of silence.

“Michael,” Ricky said, “let me have those noodles.”

For as long as the Daley boys could remember, there had been a basket attached to the phone pole in front of the house. They had gone through a few of them. Winters killed the steel hoops and especially the flimsy backboards from Lechmere’s, and every few years Joe Senior would swap in a new set, adjusting it slightly up or down the pole to avoid the holes left by the big lag screws he used. The current model, which had lasted the longest, had a faded, undersized fan-shaped aluminum backboard. It was hung a few inches too high and seemed to rise even higher as you got closer to the curb, where the pavement dipped. The boys thought of this hoop and the pavement in front of it as their private court. Even now, with the Daley boys all long gone from the house, there were neighbors who did not park in front of the basket, out of old habit, as if it were a fire hydrant. Occasionally a new neighbor or visitor or other interloper, ignorant of the local etiquette, would leave his car under the hoop, and the boys took it as a sign of the decline of their city. Back in the day, no one would dream of parking there because, as a general rule, you did not fuck with the Daleys, particularly Joe, and in any case there was always a game going on there.

These games were a deadly serious business. A Code Napoleon of unspoken rules governed play. One must never take the feet out from under a player near the basket lest he land on his back on the curbstone, as Jimmy Reilly once did. The Daleys’ ball was never to be used in a game at which no Daley was present, even if the ball was sitting right there in the yard. All parked cars were inbounds. But the sidewalk was out-of-bounds, to discourage smaller players from running behind the basket and using the pole to rub off a defender, a strategy deemed so chickenshit that Joe forbid it outright. These were technicalities, though. The real secret knowledge of these games-their whole purpose-was the hierarchy of the boys involved. There were a dozen local boys who regularly played, mostly Irish, all linked through school or St. Margaret’s parish, and every one of them knew precisely where he ranked from number one to number twelve. There was no allowance for age or size. Nor did it matter who you were. Michael Daley never rose above the middle of the pack, even on his home court; Leo Madden, though his father was in and out of Deer Island and his mother weighed three bills, was a rebounding machine and therefore he was completely respected here. Prestige to the winners, shame to the losers. All of it real and perfectly quantifiable and precious as money in the lives of boys, and men.

So, when the three brothers drifted out to play after dinner under the streetlight, the women gathered at the windows to watch. They arranged themselves at the living-room windows, which looked across the porch and over a shallow yard to the street. Margaret and Kat stood together at one window, Amy at the other. The younger women wore similar expressions, sharp, bemused, scornful. Queen Margaret had the same sharp smirk, but there was bleary concern in her eyes. She could not completely share in the womanly skepticism of boys’ games, knowing that, however it turned out, one of her boys would lose. She felt Kat’s arm curled around her lower back; that helped a little.

“Margaret,” Kat said, “you should have had one more. Two against one, it’s not fair.”

“Fair to who?”

“True.” Kat considered the problem. “You know, Ricky should let them win, just once.”

Margaret emitted a skeptical sniff. Cigarette smoke piped out of her nostrils.

“Amy, why don’t you talk to him? Ricky’s got to let Joe win sometime.” Kat gave Amy a sidelong look. “Come on, Aim, you could find a way to convince him, couldn’t you?”

Amy raised two fingers, scissored her cigarette between them, and removed the cigarette with a flourish. “Ladies, let me assure you, I could lie down in my altogether on a bed of roses and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. Ricky’d cut off his right arm before he’d let Joe win.”

“Well,” Kat sighed, “if Joe beats him then, it’ll be fair and square.”

“He’s got to win sometime, right? I mean, if they play enough times?”

Amy: “I just hope Joe doesn’t kill him, after that fiasco.”

Margaret: “If he’s going to kill anyone, it’ll be poor Michael. I don’t know what’s got into him. Michael’s crazy lately.”

“Don’t worry, Mum, Joe won’t kill him. Maybe just, you know, shake him around a little.”

“Well, that’s a comfort, dear.”

Outside, Michael was hopping up and down to stay warm.

“I don’t know what Michael’s got against poor Brendan, I really don’t.”

Amy: “I do.”

Kat: “Margaret, maybe you should enter a convent.”

“I’m not entering any convents.”

“Still got some wild oats to sow?”

Margaret turned to face the two younger women. “Now why should that be so funny?”

Kat made a face at Amy: eyebrows raised, impressed smile, Wow!

Amy: “Nothing’s funny. So, Mum, is Brendan…?”

Kat covered her ears. “Oh, stop! Ick.”

“Brendan is-”

“Stop, stop, stop!”

“I didn’t know you girls were so squeamish.”

Amy said, “I’m not squeamish.”

Kat watched Joe as he stood waiting for a rebound, arms up. “Amy, you want to make this interesting?”

“Sure.”

“Six points okay?”

“Sure, whatever.”

“Margaret, how about you? Michael’s feeling feisty tonight. Care to put a little cash down on the middle son?”

“You want me to bet against my own sons?”

“Only one of them.”

Margaret shook her head.

“Go on, Mum,” Amy urged, “it’s just for fun.”

“We’ll never tell,” Kat added. “Promise.”

“No, thanks, dear.”

“Take Joe,” Kat pleaded. “The poor thing.”

Margaret considered it. “I’ll put a nickel on Ricky.”

“Oh!” Kat yelped. “You’re a horrible mother.”

Through the window they could hear the brothers ragging each other as the game got going. Joe and Michael were a team, as usual, and at the start they exploited their two-to-one advantage by spreading out, forcing Ricky to cover one or the other, then passing to the free man for easy shots. Michael was a careful player, a lurker. He liked to slide into open spaces for unmolested set shots. At times he moved out of the lighted area altogether, and the women had to squint to find him in the darkness. Joe’s game was all muscle. He moved like a bear chasing a butterfly, but his size ensured he would always have the best position under the basket. Together they made a decent inside-outside combination. As their lead climbed, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, Joe’s taunting got louder and louder. Amy was right: Joe was pissed about the way Brendan Conroy had been treated, and, though Michael had been Conroy’s main tormenter, Joe directed his anger at Ricky. There was a tacit understanding that Michael was somehow disengaged from the grander struggle between Joe and Ricky. So if Joe was angry, it seemed perfectly natural for him to target Ricky, not Michael. The insults from Joe were all variations on a theme: “Come on, Mary…Does your husband play?…What, are you afraid of a little contact?…Pussy…”

And then, in an instant, the game changed. Michael put up one of his little jumpers, the kind he knocked down over and over, but this time the shot was flat. It caught the back rim and rebounded high, out into the street, away from the hoop where Joe was hanging. Ricky snagged it in the air.

“Shit!” Kat hissed.

A little smiled wriggled across Amy’s lips.

What happened next happened very quickly. Ricky bounced the ball once with his left hand, once with his right. Michael swiped at it, and Ricky avoided him by threading the ball between his own legs, from back to front, which left Michael behind him and out of the play. Joe took a step toward him, like a palace guard blocking a gate. Ricky paused for an instant to eye him up. He slow-dribbled the ball low and to his right, extending it a few

inches toward Joe, who finally took the bait, leaning then stepping toward the ball, a reluctant irresistible stuttery step. But it was enough. Ricky crossed the ball over to his left hand, and he was behind Joe. He laid the ball in: 6-1.

Kat groaned, “ Mmm. It’s not fair. The way Ricky shows off!”

“He’s not showing off.”

“Oh, Amy!”

“Alright,” Amy allowed, “maybe a little.”

But Amy could not take her eyes off him. Because he was showing off for her. And because he was beautiful. His game was jazzy and gliding and fast, she thought, but more than anything it was beautiful. The way he moved. The way the ball moved with him, the way it yo-yoed back to his hand. The way he spun, his body in flight. Amy had not known Ricky when he was a high-school hero-when he was Tricky Ricky Daley, point guard and captain at Boston English, All-Scholastic, All-Everything; when he’d been offered a scholarship to Holy Cross, alma mater of the great Cousy himself-and she was glad for that. She did not want to think of Ricky as one of those arrested men who were such stars in high school or college that everything after was tinged with anticlimax and nostalgia. She did not want to define him by what he had been. And she particularly did not want to define him as a jock because he wasn’t, not anymore. Anyway, Ricky never talked about it. For a long time after they’d met, Amy had had no idea the man she was dating had a glorious past, until she’d finally met his family and Margaret had shown her a book of clippings. In fact, for Amy the defining moment of Ricky’s basketball career was the way it had ended, the way he’d thrown it all away in a romantic, stupid gesture. He’d got himself pinched with a car-trunkful of Mighty Mac parkas that had “fallen off a truck,” as the saying went. That was the end of Holy Cross and basketball and Tricky Ricky Daley, and good riddance. It was all so clumsy-so un-Ricky-like-it seemed like a setup. Amy saw something heroic in the whole episode. Ricky had been true to some obscure, prickly, self-destructive impulse that no one, not Amy, probably not Ricky himself, could quite understand. He just had not felt like being Tricky Ricky anymore, so he had stopped. And yet Amy could not deny that she loved him more-at least she loved him differently, saw him differently-when she watched him play. She thought she understood in some intuitive, inarticulable way what made Ricky do the things he did. It was something about doing the opposite of what everyone else wanted him to do. My Lord, how could she not love such a beautiful, wasteful man?

Ricky spun and tricky-dribbled and flew by his brothers. His hair flopped over his forehead, grew damp and drippy. He did not say much; his virtuosity was not news to anyone.

But Joe grew more incensed with each basket. His feet got sluggish and he was reduced to pawing Ricky as he rushed past, or elbowing him, or hip-checking him.

None of it mattered. Ricky scored with leaners and fades and baby hooks, and at 19-6 Joe finally exploded. He pushed Ricky hard into the chainlink fence behind the hoop.

“Nineteen,” Ricky said as he lay on the sidewalk. “Hey, Mike, wanna switch teams?”

“Hey, Ricky,” Joe said, “blow me.”

“Oh, that’s good, Joe. ‘Blow me.’ That’s clever.”

Joe gave Ricky the finger and held it there.

“Some brother you turn out to be, Joe.” Ricky got to his feet. “First you take Conroy’s side against Michael, now this. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

Joe took a step toward him. “You want to say that again?”

“Oh, come on, Joe, be a good loser. You’ve had plenty of practice.” Ricky jogged out to the street and tossed the ball to Michael for the customary check.

“You ready, Joe?” Michael asked.

Joe growled that he was, and Michael lobbed Ricky the ball.

Ricky eyed Joe again. He could end it by shooting from out here, over Michael, but he wanted Joe to know he was going to victimize him . Joe would not have the excuse that his teammate had let him down. Ricky jab-stepped left and with one of his whirling-dervish spins he put Michael behind him. He pulled up to shoot a little bunny directly in Joe’s face. Joe waved at the shot then gave Ricky a hard shove on the left side of his chest, which sent him sprawling once more on the street.

“Jesus, Joe!” Michael shouted.

“Just play defense, Michael. It’s like I’m the only one working out here. You play like a fuckin’ homo.”

Michael offered Ricky a hand and pulled him up.

“Twenty,” Ricky said.

“I’m out,” Michael said. “This is bullshit.” He stalked back toward the house.

“Go ahead, leave,” Joe called after him. “I’ll fuckin’ do it myself. Fuckin’ homo.”

Ricky tossed the ball to Joe. “Check.”

“The fuck are you laughing at?”

“I just thought you’d want to know what I’m gonna do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“How I’m going to win. It’s gonna be a jump shot, right from here, right over you. Just so you know.”

Joe’s brow crumpled. Was it a trick? Or just more showing off? It would be just like Ricky to promise a jump shot then race by Joe, just to make him look foolish. Then again…

Joe flipped the ball back. “Check.”

Ricky stab-stepped to his right, a long, convincing lunge with the ball whipping far ahead of him, almost behind Joe, and despite what Ricky had said, Joe reacted, couldn’t help himself-he stepped back. Just one fatal fucking step. Ricky pulled back and shot over him. Joe’s chin dropped even before the shot hit.

“Game,” Ricky said.

Joe glared.

Ricky might have left it there. But the sight of Joe with that seething expression, that muscle twitching in his cheek-Joe looked like he might actually burst-seemed funny to him. Ricky watched Joe watching him, and because it was the only thing he could think of at the moment, Ricky finally blurted, “Boo!”

Joe took off after him.

“Oh, good gracious,” Margaret moaned, from the window. An image flashed in her mind: the two boys rolling on the sidewalk, punching, arms flailing, hugging each other close so neither could extend his arm and land a solid shot. They had been, what, eleven and sixteen? And determined to kill each other if she hadn’t rushed out and pulled them apart. And why? Over a basketball game. Good gracious!

Ricky was sprinting back toward the house now. He leaped up onto the ten-foot chainlink fence that separated the Daleys’ driveway from the neighbor’s. Joe jumped too, but too late. Ricky scrambled up and over the fence and dropped down on the other side. Behind the diamond-mesh he grinned and panted, looking straight at Joe. “Where’s a cop when you need one?” he said.

Amy covered her smile with her hand, as if it was impolite to laugh at the whole thing.

“Oh, Joe.” Kat sighed. “Well, girls, we couldn’t all bet on Ricky now, could we?”