Half Court Press

by A. J. Stewart

“Is it conceivable that if someone thought Tania was playing overseas as well, that a hundred grand might seem a realistic grab?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose. But she only just got drafted. Is she playing overseas?”

  “There’s interest from China.”

  Penny nodded. “There’s good money there, I hear.”

  “And what about endorsements?”

  “There weren’t many in my day. We were happy to get free gear. But yes, I know some of the girls these days do get deals. Of course, if you want the Nikes or the Under Armors, you’d want to be playing overseas.”

  “Why?”

  “Half their revenue comes from international markets, and all the growth is there. If a girl has both WNBA and an international presence, that makes her a global brand ambassador. They’ll pay more for that. Not LeBron money, but more.”

  “But she hasn’t played anywhere yet.”

  “Then if she has endorsements, they aren’t big time. Not yet.”

  The question I had then was: Who would know all this, and would it affect what they might try to extort?

  Penny and I drank our tequila as we watched night fall across Biscayne Bay. She was an interesting lady and more down-to-earth than her multimillion-dollar clientele might suggest.

  “Who owns this place?” I asked.

  “Venezuelan oil guy.”

  “I thought they were communists or something.”

  “The key phrase was oil guy.”

  I nodded.

  “His tequila?”

  “That’s mine. You said you were dropping by.”

  “I can’t go too hard. Danielle’s off tonight.”

  Penny frowned at me. “You’re sitting here with me and your fiancée is waiting at home?”

  “I don’t think she’ll be there yet.”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “I know, I know. What about you? I never asked if you were married or anything.”

  “Like I said, two lives on opposite sides of the world aren’t conducive.”

  “That was then.”

  “And now I’m sitting in a client’s penthouse drinking tequila with an ex-baseball player.”

  “How do you know I played baseball. It was football we talked about before.”

  “I asked around. Cassandra told me.”

  “You asked around?”

  “I’m careful about whom I associate with. I have very discerning clients.”

  She smiled at me and then turned to the lights of Key Biscayne, and as she did, the smile faded and something else replaced it. Something full of regret and sadness. Something that sucked the energy from me.

  “You okay to get home?” I asked her.

  The smile returned. “You bet. I’m two buildings down from here.”

  “Handy.”

  “Very.”

  Penny carried the shot glasses into the kitchen and left them for someone else to clean up. She put the top back on the bottle and handed it to me.

  “You take that home.”

  “I can’t take your tequila.”

  “Sure you can. It’s a thank you.”

  “I should be thanking you.”

  “I can’t imagine what for.”

  I wasn’t sure yet, either, but I had a hunch that there would be something in what I had learned from her that would prove more than useful.

  Chapter Nine

  Arriving back at Danielle’s apartment was like following a steak dinner with a bowl of oyster crackers. There was no view and the furnishings were as different from the penthouse’s as it was possible to get. I looked at the fridge and knew there would be no food in there, and I looked at the bed, unmade because I had left after Danielle, and I gave serious thought to finding a bar near the ballpark. In the end, I left the tequila on the counter and went for a walk.

  I didn’t call in anywhere, preferring the ambience of the streets. There were cars and people and music blaring, and smoke from street-side grills wafted across the neighborhood, and the hint of wood fires on the wind seemed to draw the humidity out of the air.

  The energy of the night served to pick me up some but not all the way. Danielle drifted in and out of my mind, as did the thought that she was out here somewhere in the Miami night, dealing with the worst that humanity could throw at each other.

  I pushed thoughts of her away and focused on the case. It wasn’t adding up. Someone was extorting Tania Bryson, threatening to harm her family members. That someone was close enough to her to get access, close enough to know where she lived, and, as I thought about it, close enough to know when Tania was likely to find a hand-delivered letter while her mother was away.

  But if what Penny Morgan had told me was accurate, a person that close would likely know that being drafted into the WNBA was not a path to riches. Although I tempered that idea with the thought that for many people a hundred bucks would be considered riches, at the same time, the letter had been explicit in its demand for $100,000—a significant sum in most company.

  I ran the suspects through my mind: Tania’s father, Draymond, with possible money troubles; her mother, Camille, overbearing but with no apparent motive; the old friend, L’nita, with a motive as old as time. Were there others at the club? Almost certainly. And then there were other school friends, or even college buddies who hadn’t made the grade. Motives could range from greed to jealousy, or anything in between.

  It still wasn’t adding up.

  I wandered over the river and into the Miami downtown. The buzz of Little Havana died away, enveloped by the tall office towers and shopping malls built like giant shoeboxes of commercialism. I wandered past advertising for brands I could have bought anywhere in the world. The traffic was pulsing angrily, not moving anywhere near as fast as any driver wanted to go, and the pedestrians strode without purpose, but clearly in a hurry, too busy to stop and look around and realize they were trapped in a glass-and-concrete prison.

  A better life was always two steps ahead.

  I wasn’t digging the mood that was developing, so I kept walking beyond the mirrored architecture and onto Bayfront Park. I walked under the elevated tracks of the Metromover and across the grass. It was dark but didn’t have any menace about it. I walked along the water, behind the amphitheater and on to the markets, and then alongside more chain restaurants and Miamarina. I stopped when I reached the road crossing the water out to Dodge Island, and I looked a while at the large arena on the other side of the traffic, where the men played their basketball, and where millions were earned.

  Tania Bryson would never play there. There was no women’s NBA team in Miami. I left the arena behind and retraced my steps, past the restaurants where consistency was everything and no smoke wafted, beyond the park and the Metromover and into the downtown, past the concrete and glass where all the people carried shopping bags full of stuff they were sure would make them complete.

  The farther I went, the faster I walked. I suddenly felt the need to get back to the apartment, to be there when Danielle got back from work. I hadn’t heard from her but I was sure I would. I watched a few cabs drive by and considered jumping in one, but always a second too late.

  I stopped at a grocery and picked up some corn chips, salsa, and a bottle of California sparkling wine. It wouldn’t be quite like Penny Morgan’s champagne, but neither was my wallet. A guy on the street corner sold bunches of flowers, and I bought a single rose, mainly because I didn’t think the vase in the apartment could hold anything more.

  By the time I got to the apartment I was sweating. I put the bubbles in the fridge and the salsa and chips on the table, and I replaced the dying flower on the counter with the fresh rose. Then I waited.

  I flicked the television on but didn’t find anything worth the brain cells so I turned it off. I still didn’t own a television at home, and I hadn’t found any motivation to buy one. I went to the bathroom and wiped down my face and then sat at the dining table again, and then I got a glass of water and sat down
once more.

  An hour later my phone rang, or to be more exact, it buzzed. I picked it up and read the text message from Danielle.

  Stuck on case, won’t be home until early tomorrow at best. Will call tomorrow. Love you.

  I looked around the room. I’d never served a prison sentence, but this apartment was giving me a sense of it. I made the bed, and then I put the salsa in the fridge with the bubbles. I picked up the tequila.

  Then I left.

  I got in my car and it practically directed itself onto I-95. I drove north, watching the freeway lights fly by, holding the SUV more or less on autopilot.

  Singer Island was quiet by the time I pulled onto Blue Heron. The stores were shuttered and I heard the distant hum of canned music and chatter from the restaurants near the beach.

  My house was dark. I opened the door and walked in and stood in the living room for a moment. The house had been renovated after a hurricane and lost a little of its seventies charm, but it was still essentially the same rancher it had been when it was built. I took a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth, and then I kept walking, out through the sliding door onto the patio.

  The lights from Riviera Beach twinkled across the Intracoastal and the palm trees swayed lazily in the darkness. I heard some music drifting in from one of the neighbor’s McMansions, some kind of show tune.

  I sat down on one of the loungers on the patio and opened the tequila. The view here was a hell of a lot better than the studio in Miami, yet it felt empty. I looked at the second lounger beside me where Danielle usually lay, and I took a long slug from the bottle. It was still smoother than any tequila I knew, so I took a second slug. I turned my eye from the empty lounge chair to the water and drank another shot, trying to wash away the thought that was washing across me like a tide.

  For the first time in a very long time, Singer Island didn’t feel like home.

  Chapter Ten

  The change of season came on with the morning, blue and bright and oppressively humid, like the moisture had been trucked in overnight. I woke up on the lounger where I had fallen asleep and took a slow breath to test the tenderness in my head. I discovered that I was foggy rather than in pain, and I turned to find the half-finished tequila bottle sitting on the table between the two loungers. I was thankful fatigue had set in before I could do too much damage.

  The kitchen was darker and cooler. I pulled out the blender to make a smoothie, and then opened the fridge and found all the fruit had gone bad. After tossing around my options I decided I needed something in my belly. I grabbed my keys from the counter and patted my pants to make sure my wallet was there. Neither action produced my phone, so I hunted around the kitchen and in the fridge, and then I searched under the lounger on the patio, which pulsed more blood into my head than was comfortable.

  I decided to try the car, and I was opening the door when the little thing started ringing. I sat in the SUV with the door open, warm air engulfing me, and looked at the screen. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello?”

  “Miami,” said Tania Bryson. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Been?” It took me a moment to recall exactly where I had been, and then a moment longer to consider why she was asking.

  “Did you get my texts?” she asked.

  “Texts?”

  “Yes, on your phone. I’ve been texting you.”

  I looked at my phone for no reason and then put it back to my ear.

  “I didn’t have it on me,” I said.

  “You didn’t have it on you?” She sounded like she had never heard of such lunacy. “How do people get in touch with you?”

  I thought about that for a moment. Most of the time people found me at Longboard Kelly’s, but I hadn’t been there in days, so maybe people didn’t find me at all. Maybe I wasn’t here anymore. Maybe Florida wasn’t what it was.

  “Well?” Tania said, interrupting my thoughts.

  “What?”

  “Did you read the texts?”

  “No, I’m talking to you.”

  “So read them.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what they say?”

  I heard her let out a sigh, as if dealing with an ignoramus like me was plain hard work.

  “I got another threat.”

  I paused for a moment. I was already in my car.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “At the school.”

  “School? What school?”

  “My high school.”

  I had plenty more questions but decided to ask them in person. I dashed back inside and threw some water on my face and changed into some khaki shorts and a shirt emblazoned with dozens of flamingos. I was heading across the bridge on Blue Heron within six minutes. My head felt fuzzy but it wasn’t pounding, which I was thankful for, but I still grabbed a coffee on the way just for good measure. What I really needed was a smoothie, or some vegetables. My mother had been right about that.

  I arrived at the high school and did a lap looking for a way in. There were high fences and locked gates, blocks of buildings that looked built for daily hurricanes, and exercise yards where the kids could stretch their legs and form into their little gangs when the whistle blew.

  I found Tania standing by an open pedestrian gate. I parked on the street next to a classic Buick and wandered over.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You told me to call, whatever it was.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I was going to call Detective Ronzoni, but I couldn’t get his number from Dad without him getting suspicious.”

  “It’s fine, really.”

  “Did you sleep last night?” she asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You’ve got leaves in your hair.”

  I felt my hair and picked a thin strip of foliage out of it. It looked like it had fallen from a palm. I did the thing you do when you get hit for a home run in an away game: I acted like it never happened.

  “What’s this about a threat?”

  “Come with me,” she said, and she ushered me into the grounds, closing the gate behind us.

  We walked through a breezeway lined with drinking fountains of questionable cleanliness toward a building that was cinderblock to the height of the trees, with a row of small windows around the top like decorations on a cake.

  Tania pushed the door open, and we stepped into the gym. The smell was unmistakable and sent me back through the years to my own high school. It was all there: The climbing ladders on the walls and the ropes hanging from the ceiling but tucked into the climbing ladders to keep them out of the way; stacks of wooden plyometric boxes lining the walls, ready to trip students forced to do the kind of standing jump they would never need to do in real life; the multipurpose court with lines shooting in all directions, such that it became impossible to discern where one sport ended and another began; and the whole thing overlaid by the aroma of sweat and unlaundered clothing and teenage hormones.

  There was a bleacher that ran along one side, ten rows high and the length of the court. There was a solitary bag sitting on it. Tania strode past the bag to the end of the bleachers, where she pulled her phone from an outlet.

  “Egads,” I teased. “You didn’t have your phone on you!”

  “Egads?” she asked. “Who says that?”

  “My father,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I had it plugged in. I couldn’t let it go dead.”

  “Goodness, no, what would you do?”

  “If it goes dead, I lose this.” She held up her phone for me to see. There was a message on the screen, just like the texts I get on my phone but presented in a different look.

  $100,000 will save your father.

  “Who sent this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s a blocked number?”

  “It’s not a number at all.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “
It’s not a text, it’s SneakyChat.”

  I frowned. “It’s what?”

  “SneakyChat.”

  My head may have involuntarily wobbled in confusion, because Tania said, “You do know SneakyChat, right?”

  “Let’s assume for a moment that I do not.”

  She shook her head and smiled like she was teaching her grandfather how to use the television remote.

  “It’s a messaging app,” she said.

  “Don’t you already have that on your phone?”

  “It’s not like that. SneakyChat is a group messaging app, and it’s more for photos, but you can send texts, too.”

  “I’ve gotten photos in my messages app,” I said.

  “Not like this,” she said. “This is encrypted. No one can read it. Not the cops, not the government, no one.”

  I figured a discussion about what the government could and couldn’t read would railroad our current purpose, so I let it go.

  “Except if they look at your phone.”

  “No, that’s the thing. It’s only on there for up to an hour after you open it. Then it automatically gets deleted.”

  “How long since this got sent?”

  “Last night,” she said. “That’s why I’ve been keeping my phone powered. It won’t delete until I close the app and open it again.”

  “Why would you want to delete your messages automatically?” I asked. “Are you a hit man on the side?”

  “No,” she laughed. “It’s privacy.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t understand it, but it felt like that was becoming a thing. I took out my own phone and snapped a picture of Tania’s screen so the message would be saved.

  “So you said there’s no number it was sent from.”

  “No. It’s a username, but this one is random letters and numbers, and I don’t know who it is.”

  “And anyone can message you on this thing?”

  “No, you have to be friended.”

  “And how do you do that?”

  She tapped her phone and then showed me the screen again. There was a black-and-white mess that looked like a Rorschach print.

  “It’s a code,” she said. “The other user has to scan it with their SneakyChat app in order to friend you. Then you can send each other stuff.”