“So they have to physically scan your phone?”
“Yes.”
“So whoever sent this message had access to your phone?”
“It looks like it.”
That cut down the suspect pool, possibly.
“And when do you not have your phone on you?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Never. I mean, on the court, of course, but that’s about it.”
“And when you’re on court, where do you leave it?”
“Usually in my locker. But it’s turned off, and you can’t get into it without my code.”
“You say usually in your locker. Where else might you leave it?”
“In my bag, maybe, like here. But that’s always courtside, and no one could get it without me seeing.”
“All right,” I said, thinking. “How did you text me this morning if you couldn’t close this app?”
“I used Coach Banks’s phone.”
“Who’s Coach Banks?”
“He’s the high school basketball coach. He’s the one who let me in here this morning.”
I nodded. “Why not the Boys and Girls Club?”
“It’s spring break. The club is busy looking after lots of kids, and this court is empty, because, well, it’s spring break.”
“And he lets you in on his week off?”
She shrugged. “He’s a good guy. He knows I’m training for the WNBA.”
“All right, why don’t you do your thing?”
“Miami,” she said. “I thought it was a prank. But I gotta tell you, I’m scared now. My dad . . .”
“Don’t worry, okay? I’m on it. I’m not going to let anything happen to your dad, or to you. So do your thing. I’m gonna do a quick roam around the grounds to make sure it’s secure. Okay?”
She sighed and said, “Okay.”
“Let me have your phone,” I said. “I just want to look at this SneakyChat thing.”
“Sure.” She handed me her phone and then pulled off her sweater. She wore a bright-green sleeveless workout shirt and track pants, and she started doing laps of the court.
I sat on the bottom bleacher and looked at her phone.
$100,000 will save your father.
I closed the message and looked at the app. There were contacts—a string of meaningless names like KittyCat97 and JimJimGirl. What was wrong with the names people had been given at birth was anyone’s guess. There was a link for messages, and I clicked it. There were six messages, including the threat. The others were all photos. This felt like the kind of app where I might find pictures of some moron’s genitals, but thankfully there were no such shots here. Three were of young women I didn’t know, one was of a beach that might have been Cocoa, one was of a milkshake, and the last was of a basketball featuring an autograph I couldn’t read.
I closed the app, and then opened it again. As Tania had said it would, the threat message was gone, as were three of the photos. I closed it again and then opened her regular text message app. There were lots of messages there, so clearly privacy was not everything. I looked through some of them. It was nosy as hell, but I was a private investigator, so it went with the territory. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular—just a sense of who communicated with Tania, and if there were any messages that stood out.
It was pointless. The messages may as well have been written in Chinese, because even though I could read them, I didn’t understand them at all. It was as if the English language had been pared down to the basics, and the vowels jettisoned off into space. There were lots of CU L8R and AFAF and IMHO. Merriam and Webster would be splitting infinitives in their graves. It wasn’t exactly the Enigma code but it wasn’t far off it. But I didn’t see anything overtly threatening, so I closed her phone down and dropped it into her bag.
Chapter Eleven
All the gym doors looked secure, so I walked out into the yard. This didn’t look like any school I had gone to. There was steel mesh on the windows and the perimeter fence meant there were no kids on the outside courts or the grass field during spring break. When I was a kid I had run drills on the fields at my high school most days during summer vacation. Not here. This was a medium-security education facility.
I did a loop of the campus. Everything was locked down and squared away but for a corner of the playground where it looked like some new climbing equipment was being installed. The area was ringed off by temporary fencing, and inside the fence the concrete pavement had been jackhammered up but not yet removed.
I wandered around to the one weak point, which was the gate where I had entered. I found that it had locked upon closing, which seemed secure enough. I also noticed something else, or rather, someone else.
L’nita from the shopping mall was doing what she seemed to do best: hanging around. She was leaning against the wire perimeter fence, chewing on gum like it was string bark. Her friend or acquaintance or accomplice, Keisha, was chewing equally hard on what I hoped was her own piece of gum.
The girls watched me walk across the yard toward the gate, and after I had tugged on it to make sure it was locked, I returned their gazes. I wondered what a couple of young women a good four or five years out of high school were doing hanging around, especially during spring break when nobody was here. Then I checked myself.
Somebody was here.
“Imagine seeing you here,” I said.
L’nita raised an eyebrow. “I tole you, this is our neighborhood. This is our old school.”
“I think the operative word is old. You don’t go here anymore.”
“Neither do you, but here you are.”
“I have a reason to be here,” I said. “You just seem to be loitering.”
L’nita shrugged. Keisha chewed.
I wondered about the kind of person who might send a threat to Tania via some kind of messaging app that was purpose-built for extortion. The message was encrypted, the sender unknown, and the evidence destroyed within the hour. Who needed an app like that? Sexual perverts and criminals seemed like the target market. Along with people who wanted to commit extortion, although I was confident L’nita wouldn’t call it that. People in protection rackets never did.
“You do know stalking is illegal, right?” I asked.
“I tole you, we here to protect our girl.”
“From who, exactly?”
“People like you.”
Keisha nodded definitively, as if this was the final word on the subject. She was wrong.
“And who am I?”
“A white guy.”
For a moment I said nothing. I wasn’t sure how that was relevant, until I realized that from my point of view, it wasn’t. But L’nita wasn’t looking at it from my point of view.
“So what?” I finally said, which was as lame a statement as I could have mustered.
L’nita bounced away from the fence and stepped over to face me at the gate. She looked younger up-close, as if the affected disinterest and her fashion choices aged her from a distance. She chewed her gum and looked me in the eye. She had a good stare.
“You ain’t so different. You just a guy looking to get his piece of the action. But because you a white guy, you think you just entitled to it. You see? You think Tania’s sisters got some kind of angle that ain’t right, but you got your own angle. Don’t you?”
I watched her for a minute. She was smarter than her penchant for loitering let on, even if I didn’t agree with her conclusion. It made me wonder what had happened to her that convinced her she wasn’t so smart.
“You know, it’s a big world out there,” I said. “You could be anything you want to be, if you worked at it instead of spending all your time hanging around schoolyards.”
L’nita laughed. Not a hearty laugh. More a cough of derision.
“Only a white dude would say that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You got all the advantages, man, so don’t be telling me that the world is all sunshine. It ain’t.”
“I didn
’t say the world was sunshine. I’m saying it’s full of opportunity, if you’re prepared to work for it.”
“You don’t know nothing.”
“One might make that argument. But you said it yourself. This is your neighborhood. This was your school. Exactly like Tania. She didn’t have anything you didn’t have, but she’s in the WNBA and you’re not.”
“She got the gifts from God. Simple as that.”
“She’s not in the WNBA because she’s got gifts. Plenty of people have talent and do nothing with it. She’s in the WNBA because, right now, she’s inside the gym of her old high school working at her game, and you’re out here chewing gum instead of working at your thing.”
“And what’s my thing?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t know you, I don’t know what you like, and I don’t know what you’re good at. But I do know you spend more time complaining about your lot than working at your thing.”
She shook her head and gave me a look that suggested she wasn’t buying my argument.
“You don’t know nothing.”
“You keep saying that, and you’re right, there’s plenty I don’t know. But there’s a thing or two I’ve learned here and there.”
“I bet your mamma and daddy paid for your military school or whatever you do, huh? They buy you a car when you turned sixteen?”
“My mom died when I was in middle school and my dad died when I was in college. And I went to my local high school, worked my backside off, and got a scholarship to pay for college.”
“Of course you did.”
“And so did the other guys on my college team. And many of them did it harder than I did, but they did it. And most of them were black.”
“You guys always got an answer.”
“No, I don’t. But if I don’t, I go looking for one. I don’t blame someone else for my lack of knowledge.” She broke eye contact, and I glanced to Keisha, who had stopped chewing, and then I returned to L’nita. I thought about what she would do with a hundred grand if she ever actually got it.
“If I gave you $10,000 right now, what would you do with it?”
This got L’nita’s attention. She suddenly lost interest in her feet.
“You gonna give me 10k?”
“I said what would you do with it if I did?”
She smiled. “I’d get me a nice makeover, get my nails done.”
“A $10,000 makeover?”
“Then I’d get me some wheels.”
“And then when it’s gone?”
“I’d get me some more.”
I nodded. If L’nita was the one extorting Tania, it was clear it would never be a one-time deal.
“What if you had to put the money into school?”
“I ain’t got time for school. I gotta live while I’m young.”
I nodded. It was a fair sentiment. Living while she was young was a fine idea, except when it was on someone else’s dime. That rarely worked out so well.
I looked at Keisha and then again at L’nita, and then I told them to have a nice morning, and I left them to their studious chewing.
Chapter Twelve
I pulled the heavy door open and stepped back into the gym, and the smell hit me all over again. Tania was toweling off, and then I heard the squeak of a wheel in need of oil, and a man pushed a wire cart full of basketballs to the center of the court. The balls were all shades of orange and brown and ranged from slightly used to damn near flat. He nodded at Tania as she jogged toward them, and he headed for the bleacher—until he changed course at the sight of me.
I walked along the sideline as Tania started taking shots from center-court. They were the kinds of shots supporters tried during halftime, to win a car or cash. Most people were lucky to even make the distance, and the better shots might have hit the backboard. Tania landed about 60 percent from the dead center of the court.
“She’s something, ain’t she?” said the man when he reached me. He was a high school coach, I could see. They have a look about them. He was older than me by a good few years, but his chest was still solid and his waist trim, and teaching outdoors had given life to his freckles, so that his skin was a sunbaked pink. He wore a polo and a ball cap, and all he needed was a whistle around his neck and he’d be ready for work.
He offered his meaty paw and I shook it.
“Ray Banks.”
“Miami Jones.”
“You the security?”
“I’m hoping she doesn’t need that.”
“Yeah.”
“How long you been here, Ray?”
“In Florida? Twenty-five years.”
“And at the school?”
“All that time. I came from Kansas to see the water, and I never left.”
“You must like it.”
“What’s not to like? I enjoy coaching the kids, I get summers off, and I can go to the beach every single day. What about you?”
“Came for college, went away for a few years to play ball, but I came back.”
“It’s like that.” He looked me over. “You played basketball?”
“No, baseball.”
That made him nod. “You got pitcher’s shoulders.”
“So they used to tell me. You must have seen some changes.”
“How so?”
“There’s a lot of bars on windows and security fencing.”
“Those are the times. It’s a good school, despite all that.”
“What are the kids like?”
He smiled. “They’re teenagers. They think they invented music and sex, and they think their parents are stupid as all hell and their teachers are a form of life that don’t exist outside of school hours. But you know, they mostly grow out of it like we did, and go on and lead good lives.”
“Any trouble?”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Drugs, gangs?”
He shrugged. “It’s a school. There’s some of that, it’s to be expected. But it ain’t like the movies. This ain’t inner-city New York, not that I know much about that. People around here aren’t rich, but they mostly work, and they mostly work hard. The cars in the parking lot aren’t fancy European things, but people do the best they can. Overall it’s a good place to live.”
“Many kids go to college?”
“We’re a bit above state average, if you count community college. There’s work around here, so lots of kids stay in the area, but some head for Jacksonville or Miami. Orlando’s not too far. A few go bad, like anywhere.”
He gestured for me to join him on the bleachers, and we sat and watched Tania sink buckets from an unreasonable distance.
“It’s good of you to open up for Tania on your time off.”
“Why not? I live local, and, you know, when you get a kid who’s really prepared to do the work, you gotta support it.”
I wished that was always the case. I knew from experience that I had also been the beneficiary of a high school coach who went way above and beyond for me. I suppose if they’re lucky, everyone has one of those teachers who impact them in ways they can’t even comprehend until years later. Dumb luck had recently allowed me the chance to thank the teacher who had helped me. I suspected many never heard the thanks, the connection with the students lost to time and life. But I suddenly hoped that they understood all the good they did. Those teachers were gold.
“She’s good,” I said.
Ray nodded. “She’s twenty-three now, and she was the best I ever seen when she was fourteen, boy or girl. Got us to the state finals three years running. Only time we’ve ever been. She could be anything, if she wants.”
“What do you mean, if she wants? She looks like she works plenty hard.”
“Oh, she does. She’s at home on the court. Trained harder than any student-athlete I’ve seen. Some nights I had to turn the lights out to get her to go home.” He laughed to himself. “Sometimes after I shut the lights off, she’d sink a couple of three-pointers in the dark, just because. She jus
t loves being out there.”
“So . . .”
“So she’s motivated a little different, I think. She never seemed worried about trophies. She liked winning just fine, but I never thought it was the point for her. Doing it the best she could, making her teammates the best they could be, that always seemed to be the point.”
“If she’s so good, why did she go to Miami?”
“You got something against the Hurricanes?”
“No, sir, I am one. They don’t call me Miami Jones for nothing. But I mean, for women’s basketball, there are more storied programs.”
“Oh, yeah, she got visits from all the big programs. UConn, Tennessee, Stanford, all of them.”
“But she chose Miami. Why?”
“I don’t really know. Her mom was all for UConn, I’ll tell you that. Huskies all the way. I think it must have killed her when Tania declared for Miami.”
“But you don’t know why? You were her coach for four years.”
“And I honestly can’t say. I actually thought Tennessee might have been the front runner. But why, I really don’t know. Maybe she just loves Florida. Can’t blame her for that.”
“No, I can’t,” I said. “It’s just that UM doesn’t have the national profile in women’s basketball, and if she was that good, she had to be thinking pro eventually . . .”
“Camille sure was. Like I say, she wasn’t happy. She blamed everyone: the Boys and Girls Club, Tania’s teammates, me. She still won’t talk to me, like I pushed Tania away from UConn.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No. I told Tania to follow her guts. Go to the school that she felt would bring out her best. She had to feel happy there. Camille thinks I muddied Tania’s thinking. She still holds a grudge on that one.”
“That was four years ago.”
“Five. The woman can hold a grudge with the best of them.”
“But Tania got number one draft pick anyway. Camille must be okay now.”
“That’s not my experience. She picked Tania up from training last time I let her in to use the gym, and she wouldn’t even wind the window down when I waved.” He shrugged. “But people are gonna do what they do, you know? I try not to lose sleep over it. Tomorrow’s another day in paradise, after all.”
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