Half Court Press

by A. J. Stewart

  I nodded. Coach Banks reminded me of Ron that way—they were both poster boys for Florida. They loved everything about it, and even though I had recently been feeling the exact opposite, I resolved not to take what I had for granted.

  We watched Tania finish shooting, and Coach stood up and helped her collect the balls and return them to the cart. I felt like a bit of a third wheel, so I helped too, and then Coach and I sat down again.

  “So what do you think of the troubles she’s having?” I asked.

  “Troubles?”

  “The messages?”

  “Ahh. I don’t know much about it. She keeps these things close to her chest, but I guess she’s worried, since you’re here.”

  “I was asked to look into it by a local cop who knows her dad.”

  “Draymond.”

  “Yeah. What do you know of him?”

  “Not much. Camille was always the one at the school. I know they’re divorced, and I got the sense Draymond went absent for a while, but I can tell you Tania thinks the world of him.”

  “She does?”

  “Oh, yeah. Never a bad word. Daddies and their daughters are like that.”

  “You got kids, Coach?”

  “I do. Two girls. Both at college now. Oklahoma and Tulane.”

  “You miss them?”

  He looked at me. “You don’t have kids.”

  It wasn’t a question but I answered anyway. “No. How do you know that?”

  “’Cause a father wouldn’t ask that question. He’d already know.”

  “Of course.”

  “Hardest two days of my life, when my girls drove away to college.”

  He turned his focus to the court, but I got the sense he was a long way away.

  I sat quietly for a moment, not wanting to break into Coach’s thoughts. I was waiting when he came back.

  “So, do you think there’s cause for concern?” he asked.

  “With Tania? I’m not sure. Three threats now, so there’s reason to be alarmed, but my guts are telling me something doesn’t add up.”

  “Like what?”

  “When I know that, I’ll know all I need to know.”

  Coach nodded and we turned our attention back to the athlete on the floor, working herself into a lather. But I don’t think either of us was totally focused. I got the sense that Coach Banks was thinking about his own girls.

  I know I was thinking about mine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After Tania was done, Coach Banks pushed the cart full of basketballs away. I was tired just from watching her, but I was also reminded that I hadn’t been for a run in a good while.

  “You need a ride?” I asked her.

  “That would be nice, thanks.”

  After Coach locked up the equipment, we walked out together and he locked the gym. Then he unlocked the gate to the parking lot. He had a key ring like a warden’s.

  I looked around and saw no sign of L’nita or Keisha. They weren’t even fully committed to loitering.

  Tania told Coach Banks that I was giving her a ride, and he waved and drove off in the classic Buick.

  We got in my SUV, and before I turned the key, I noted that Tania was frowning at the dashboard.

  “You okay?”

  She sighed. “I’m worried.”

  “About the threats?”

  “About my dad. I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Someone thinks you do. Why would anyone think that?”

  Tania shrugged. “I don’t know. People think the WNBA is big money because the NBA is big money. But it’s not. The NBA is all big checks and bling, but most of the girls in the WNBA have trouble paying a mortgage.”

  “I know,” I said. “But someone thinks different. So we might assume it’s someone who doesn’t know the real situation, which, to be honest, is most people. But it also suggests someone who doesn’t know you very well. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you’ve been splurging, spending money.”

  “Money? What money?”

  “Did you get an upfront? Like a signing bonus or something?”

  “No. I start getting paid once I turn up for preseason camp.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I’m telling you, this is not the NBA. Coach Banks probably makes more than most WNBA players.”

  I didn’t have a problem with teachers earning as much as the athletes they helped produce, but I suspected in this case the scales were tipping in the wrong direction.

  I started the car and pulled away.

  “What about overseas?” I asked.

  “What about it?”

  “I hear there’s good money in Europe or Asia.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You don’t know about what? The money being good or the idea of playing overseas?”

  “I haven’t even made it to the WNBA yet.”

  “That doesn’t answer the question. I heard you could have played overseas last year if you had declared for the draft.”

  “You think I should have gotten the money so I could pay off this blackmailer?”

  “No, I’m not saying that.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  The fact was, I didn’t really know what I was saying. I was fishing without a bait.

  After a few minutes of silence, Tania said, “None of this helps my dad. He’s the one being threatened, not me.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So maybe we should be worrying about him.”

  We drove the rest of the way in our thoughts. I pulled up to the gate at Crescent Lakes, and the security guard stuck his jowls out the window of his little gatehouse and asked what my business was. Tania leaned over me and waved at him.

  “Just dropping me off,” she said with the beaming smile.

  “Oh, Miss Bryson, didn’t see you. Come on through.” He hit a button and the boom gate shuddered up and I drove into the estate. The gardeners were attacking a section of houses near the front of the community like a plague of locusts. I drove around the neat streets until I arrived near Camille’s house. They all looked the same to me, the different pastel shades blending into one, so I had to ask Tania to confirm where we were stopping.

  I pulled into the driveway and she got out. I followed.

  “You’re coming in?”

  “I shouldn’t?”

  “You’re worried about someone getting inside?”

  “Not really, not with Dudley Do-Right at the front gate. No, I was hoping to chat with your mom.”

  “A chat,” said Tania, shaking her head.

  She led me in and called out to her mother, “Miami Jones is here.” Then she turned to me. “Grab a seat in the living room. I’m going to take a shower.”

  The young woman who walked out from the kitchen was not Camille Hamilton. She wasn’t like any of the clan that I had met to date. They were all long and lean. This woman was a whole other genetic line. She was short and round and wore a midriff top that proudly showed off the rolls of blubber that she carried around her trunk. Danielle had told me I wasn’t supposed to think such things, let alone say them. She said it was fat shaming. I figured if I stopped running, kept drinking, and got fat as a result, you couldn’t shame me about it—that was all on me.

  Below the rolls of flesh sat a blue Miami Dolphins fanny pack, the sort of thing you saw around the waists of Midwest soccer moms at the Orlando theme parks, full of all sorts of generic family equipment like cameras and phones and Band-Aids and sunscreen.

  “Who are you?” she asked with a voice that was halfway between raspy and wheezy.

  “Miami Jones,” I said. “And you are?”

  “Rami,” she said. I nodded as she cracked open a Coke and took a long drink. “What are you doing here?”

  “Bringing Tania home.”

  “Tania’s home?” Rami looked over my shoulder.

  “Taking a shower.”

  “Well, you can g
o.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. “So you’re Tania’s cousin?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “How you know about me?”

  “Camille mentioned you were visiting.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I’m visiting.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Fort Lauderdale.”

  “And what brings you up to Palm Beach Gardens?”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Or maybe it’s Riviera Beach, I don’t really know, either.”

  “I tole you, I’m visiting family. What’s your excuse?”

  “I don’t need an excuse.” I thought about whether to mention the threats against Tania, but went another way.

  “I’m here to support Tania.”

  “You sure as hell ain’t family.”

  “No, better. I’m a professional. How long are you visiting for, Rami.”

  She shrugged, which came out more like an upper-body wobble. “As long as it takes.”

  “As long as what takes?”

  “As long as Tania needs me.”

  “Why would she need you at all?”

  “Because she needs family around her. Because she doesn’t always do what’s best for her.”

  “And you know what’s best for her?”

  She nodded, defiantly.

  “I haven’t seen you at any of her training sessions,” I said.

  “I have other things to do.”

  “Like work? What do you do?”

  “I tole you, I look after Tania.”

  “Camille pays you to do this?”

  “Not yet, but she knows when Tania goes away she’s going to need someone to look out for her.”

  I changed my mind about mentioning the threats. I figured a minder really needed to know.

  “What do you think about the threats?”

  She pinched her nose. “What threats?”

  “The threats against Tania.”

  She pinched her nose even further, so her eyes seemed to get closer together.

  “Someone’s threatened Tania?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Who?” she asked. “I’ll take them out.”

  “You’ll take them out?”

  “I’ll pound them until blood comes out of every hole in their body.”

  “O-kay. Well, we don’t know who it is yet.”

  “Don’t know? She didn’t see them?”

  “The threats weren’t made in person.”

  She frowned like this didn’t make sense.

  “You see anyone strange around?” I asked.

  “Apart from you?”

  “Apart from me.”

  “There’s all kinds of lowlifes hanging around now.”

  I left the irony alone. “Anyone in particular?”

  She shook her head. “Some a those people hanging around that club she goes to.”

  “The Boys and Girls Club?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t like the club?”

  “No.”

  I was going to remark that getting out onto a basketball court might do her some good, but I heard Danielle’s voice in my head.

  “I gotta check on Tania,” she said.

  “In the shower?”

  She shot me a look as if this was the dumbest suggestion she had ever heard, and she ambled off down the hallway.

  I wandered into the living room but didn’t sit. The furniture didn’t look like the kind of stuff people sat on. I walked over to the sliding door and looked out across the lake, so-called, at the house on the other side. For a second I thought the developer might have just put a mirror in the middle of the lake, but I waved and no one waved back.

  “What are you doing?” asked Camille.

  I spun around.

  “Who are you waving at?”

  “My reflection,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “To make sure I still exist.”

  She frowned like I was speaking Tagalog.

  “What do you want?”

  “I was just bringing Tania home from the high school.”

  “You could have let her out in the driveway.”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Why?”

  I raised an eyebrow. Ronzoni was right; she was hard work. I decided small talk was getting me nowhere.

  “I just met your niece, Rami.”

  “Okay.”

  “She seems very concerned for Tania’s welfare.”

  “We’re all concerned for Tania’s welfare.”

  “Rami and Tania close?”

  “They’re cousins, not sisters.”

  “And she’s staying with you?”

  “She’s my sister’s girl. She’s just visiting.”

  I wasn’t sure visiting was just what she was doing, but I let it go, because it wasn’t Rami that I wanted to discuss.

  “Why did Tania choose to go to University of Miami?”

  Her face dropped into a frown on a frown, the likes of which I’d only ever seen on a pug.

  “You’ll really have to ask her that.”

  “I did. Now I’m asking you.”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

  “Neither do I, but I’m going to keep asking questions until someone tells me something useful, and then I’ll know who’s doing this. So, you weren’t keen on Miami?”

  “It could have killed her career.”

  “It’s not that bad a program.”

  “It’s not a top school.”

  “You wanted her to go to UConn?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Around. Is it wrong?”

  She paced into the kitchen and poured herself some water from a bottle. She didn’t offer me any, which was a shame, because my tequila head was starting to ache.

  “You think I’m some kind of tiger mom, don’t you?”

  “Why would I think that?”

  “For wanting her to go to school all the way in Connecticut.”

  “I don’t really have an opinion on that. I came all the way to Florida for school.”

  “From where?”

  “Connecticut.”

  “You clearly didn’t play basketball.”

  I didn’t know if this was a comment on my race, my gender, or my height, so I left it alone.

  “Nope,” I said. “I played football and baseball.”

  Camille raised an eyebrow. “Scholarship?” she asked.

  “Yep. Full ride.”

  The frown seemed to ease, as if knowing that I had once been a student-athlete somehow made me a better person.

  “Why did you go to college so far from home?” she asked.

  “Honestly? At the time, I wanted to be as far away from New England as I could get.”

  “So you just chose the farthest program?”

  “I chose a good program, especially for baseball. A College World Series-winning program, actually.”

  “You won the College World Series?”

  “We did. But honestly, if that quality of program had been in New Haven, I wouldn’t have gone. Getting away was more important to me back then. I loved Florida, I loved the weather, I loved the fact that people really wanted to be here. Maybe Tania loved it, too.”

  “You don’t turn down the most successful women’s college basketball program because of the weather.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the weather.”

  She sipped her water. “It wasn’t. It was her father.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He talked her into staying in Florida, just to spite me.”

  “You really think that?”

  “You don’t know them,” she said, wandering back into the living room. She didn’t sit, either. “Thick as thieves they were. He didn’t even live here. He wasn’t even around half the time. He didn’t raise her. I did that. I took her to all her training, her games. He just bought her ice cream on the weekends he could be bothered to show up.”

/>   “Is that why she isn’t eager to play overseas?”

  “Did he say that?”

  “No.”

  “Did she?”

  “No.”

  Camille shook her head. “We should have been there last year. We should be there right now.”

  “Where?”

  “Europe. That’s where the money is. Kressic had the contract in his hand. A pro team from Europe wanted her before she was even drafted here. Do you know how often that happens?”

  “No.”

  “Not often. But she wouldn’t sign it. Said she wanted to finish college.”

  “You don’t think she should have earned her degree?”

  “I think college is always there. They don’t take the credits away. She could have gone back and finished later. But her basketball career is now.”

  She sipped her water and her eyes glazed over like she was thinking about things far away or long ago. I gave her a moment and then I broke in.

  “Tania got another threat,” I said.

  “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “It’s Draymond.”

  “The threat mentioned harm to him again. Do you really think he would threaten to harm himself?”

  “It’s thrown you off the scent, hasn’t it?”

  It was a good point and one I’d have to look into.

  “Why would he extort money off his daughter if they’re thick as thieves? Wouldn’t she lend it to him if she had it?”

  “Sure she would, but then I would know, and he couldn’t live with that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s nobody, that’s why. He had the potential to be somebody, once upon a time, but he chose to become a nobody. I’ve worked my tail off to provide for Tania and to help her make the most of her talent, and he couldn’t care at all. He’s just doing this restaurant thing to prove me wrong. He’s never committed to anything. Never been prepared to put everything on the line for what he wanted.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily add up to blackmail.”

  “It does if you need money to pay franchise fees on your chicken joint and you don’t have it.”

  I waited for her to go on but she didn’t, so I thanked her for her time and told her to let Tania know I would be in touch. I got in my SUV and pointed it at an island, just not my island.

  I needed to visit Palm Beach.