Half Court Press

by A. J. Stewart

  “But I do. I worry about the threats.”

  “I’ve got that. That’s in my control. You don’t have to decline opportunities to play because you don’t want to leave him.”

  “Don’t want to leave him? You think I’m not signing in China because of leaving my dad?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s okay. I miss my dad, too, and I might have tried to stay near him if he had made it sober the way yours has.”

  “He’s done great, and I’ll miss him, but he’s not stopping me from going.”

  “I know about the homesickness. I know you could have gone to UConn.”

  “I like Florida.”

  “Me, too, but that ain’t it. I know about you going home from college every weekend.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I do. Every opportunity you got for four years. I get that you missed your dad, but he’s not leaving you again.”

  “I know that. I didn’t go home every weekend.” She frowned at the baseball field like it was accusing her of something.

  “Look, maybe choosing a college in Florida had something to do with him. But he needed me then. He was fighting to get back, you know? He was doing the meetings and getting work. But he’s through that. I know he’ll never completely beat it, but he’s got Rochelle now, and the restaurant. I needed to be there for him, not the other way. I know we’re there for each other now.”

  “But you kept coming home.”

  She took a long sigh that I thought might explode her lean frame. Then she turned and looked at me, and I took her eye.

  “You can’t tell anyone.”

  “This is my church,” I said. “I’m like a priest here.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “You’re kind of right. I did go home for a few years, but like I say, it wasn’t homesickness. It was Dad. But once he got on his feet, he didn’t need me so much anymore.”

  “But you kept coming home.”

  “No, I didn’t. The thing is, I met someone.”

  “You met someone? Like a special someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “And we used to go off-campus most weekends to be together.”

  “You couldn’t be together at school?”

  “It was complicated.”

  “Okay, I get that.”

  “And we figured since most people expected me to go away anyway, I could keep doing it and not make anyone suspicious.”

  “You make it sound like you were doing something wrong.”

  “Not wrong, just complicated.”

  “A staff member?”

  “No, a fellow student.”

  As she said it, I thought of Penny Morgan, and definitions of success, and of compromise. “Okay. So are you saying this guy is the reason you don’t want to go away?”

  “I’m saying we both had a life here in Florida, and then I changed that. My life is taking me away and theirs is not.”

  “Have you spoken about that?”

  “About what?”

  “About finding a way to make it work.”

  “How would that look? I’m in China and they’re working here and they should just give it up? Not do what they want for me? You talked about regret. How would you feel if someone you loved gave up their dreams for you? They’d feel regret one day, wouldn’t they?”

  I thought about Danielle. I had encouraged her to join the FDLE, to go to Miami for that very reason—I couldn’t live with the knowledge that I was holding her back from being all that she could be.

  “I don’t have the answers for that,” I said. “But I have a wise friend who recently counseled me on the art of compromise. That maybe when we work so hard to achieve something, we forget to ask ourselves if there’s another way of going about it. It’s not about giving up on dreams; it’s about achieving them together rather than apart.”

  I didn’t know where that had come from, but it sounded very sagely.

  “I just don’t see how.”

  “No, but that’s the point my friend made. Have you really cleared your mind to even think about it? You have so much on your plate right now, it’s easy to think that you’ve thought this through from all angles. But if you gave this problem the same focus that you give a training session, would you be able to crack that nut? I think so.”

  She didn’t move or say anything.

  “Just give it some thought, that’s all I’m saying. Proper thought. If this relationship is a rest-of-your-life-type thing, then it’s worth working at.”

  I stood and looked down at her. She suddenly seemed much younger. She stood and I led her out of the park. I said goodbye to John, and he handed me a couple of tickets to the home season opener for the St. Lucie Mets. Then we got in the car and I pulled out of the lot.

  Tania didn’t speak on the ride home. She was deep in thought. I hoped it was the right kind of thought—the kind I had been espousing but avoiding myself. I, on the other hand, spent the trip wondering if my full-court press had done a damned thing, and whether what was to come—the half-court press part of the equation—was worth a bean.

  I dropped her at the Boys and Girls Club.

  “Can you call your coach and ask him to open the school gym later this afternoon?”

  “I guess. Why?”

  “I’ve got some things in motion regarding the threats. I want to talk to everyone. Can you be there?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Oh, and there’s something I need you to bring with you.”

  I told her what I wanted her to bring, and she closed the door and walked into the club, light on her feet but with a slack posture that suggested her mind was a million miles away.

  And then it hit me. My stupid brain caught up to everything that was going on around it. It was complicated. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. I knew there was someone else I needed at the gym that afternoon, but I had no way of contacting them, so I made a call to someone else who could. I took the risk of starting a game of telephone, of my point getting lost as it passed from one person to another. But the message was simple and clear, and I was confident that it would get through.

  Chapter Thirty

  I drove down to Okeechobee Boulevard and headed to the wrong side of the turnpike. My adventures with Rami had gotten me thinking, and the pawnshop owner had sowed the seeds of an idea, so I pulled into a tired-looking strip mall and parked in front of a Chinese restaurant that offered a seniors’ buffet that ended at 5 p.m. But I wasn’t there for the Kung Pao chicken.

  I walked into Sal’s Pawn and Check Cashing. I didn’t frequent a lot of pawnshops as a rule; in fact, I mostly only visited this one. I stepped inside to the ding of the bell and walked past the disinterested girl who managed the check cashing part of the operation. I didn’t stop for a chat. The Plexiglas bubble she sat in would have made conversation difficult, even if she had been inclined to talk, which, by her facial expression, she did not.

  My friend Sally Mondavi was in the back, looking over something that resembled a VHS player.

  “I thought I might see you today,” Sal said without looking up. A solitary hair from his bald head fell down across his forehead.

  “Why’s that?”

  “The wind picked up.”

  I had no idea what that meant.

  “You thinking about opening a video library?” I asked.

  “Smart guy.”

  “You know people stream this stuff onto their iPads now.”

  “How do you know? You don’t even have a television.”

  “I know Apollo 11 wasn’t last week.”

  “I have a friend wants to get some old home videos digitized before VHS goes the way of the dodo.”

  “I think that boat has sailed. This is more like resurrecting the dead. But good on you for doing it.”

  “I ain’t doing it. I gotta kid who’s doing it.”

  Sal had a n
etwork of kids, many of whom were now in their forties. None were actually his. He had a thing for helping kids who needed a hand up. Some folks called them at-risk youth, but Sally just saw potential.

  “So what brings you ’round, kid?”

  “Apart from the wind?”

  “Apart from that.”

  “I got handed some tickets for the Mets home opener. You interested?”

  “You know my feelings on the matter.”

  I did. Sally was another in that small band of fans who thought Miami Jones’s career was unfairly cut short by an organization that clearly didn’t understand pitching talent. Despite my protests that they probably did know what they were doing, and that I had no hard feelings about it, his position was that the proof was in the fact that the Mets hadn’t won a World Series since I was in preschool. Despite that, Sally had a love of the game, foot-long hot dogs, and beer in plastic cups that could only be satisfied at a ballpark.

  “Good. It’s a date.”

  “How’s your lady?” he asked.

  “Busy.”

  “Still in the Big Smoke?”

  “Yep.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m just fine.”

  He looked up from his project. “You leaving her down there to find someone better?”

  “You think she can find someone better?”

  “It’s not what I think that matters.”

  “She thinks I’m okay, Sal.”

  “I think mint swirl ice cream is okay, but when it ain’t around I’m happy to eat vanilla.”

  “Point taken, Sal.”

  “Is it, kid? You got a good one. A real good one. Don’t let the line snap because you were too lazy to reel her in.”

  “She’s going to be very impressed at being compared to a large mouth bass.”

  “Aach.”

  “Sally, I have a need of some particular skills.”

  “You wanna off someone?”

  “Nothing so drastic.”

  “Good, I’m getting too old for those kinds of shenanigans.”

  “Me, too. You know any good pickpockets?”

  “I know plenty, but I’m trying to help most of them kick the habit.”

  “Understood, but they won’t be committing a crime.”

  “What are you doing, a magic show?”

  “No, just recovering some stolen goods.”

  “When do you need him?”

  “Now. This afternoon, anyway.”

  Sal nodded. He stretched his back as far as it would go, which was still bent over like he was looking for a dropped coin, and then he wandered into his office. I waited a minute before he returned.

  “He’ll be here in about fifteen.”

  “Thanks, Sal.”

  He grunted and shifted uncomfortably. Sally wasn’t the kind who appreciated thanks. He was old-school. Hell, he was just old, and he had done more for me in my days than I could ever properly thank him for. But he was the kind of guy who believed in paying it forward well before that became a New Age touchy-feely thing.

  “You need anything, kid?” he asked, looking around his treasure trove of forgotten goods. Every item had a tale, and I got the sense that if they told their stories, there would be a lot of tears. I left Sally to his archaic technology and wandered through the shelves. There were the traditional pawnshop items—televisions, computers, musical instruments—but less than in the old days. Even that kind of stuff was throwaway quality now, and not worth very much money. Pawnshops these days made their cash in jewels, phones, and guns, if Sal’s cabinets were anything to go by.

  About ten minutes later, the bell on the door dinged, and I heard a voice say, “Hey, Mr. Mondavi,” and Sal reply, “Hey, kid.”

  I wove my way out of the forest of shelving and back to the rear of the store. A kid was standing at the counter. He was Latino and was wearing a hoodie, which I found to be thoroughly unnecessary, given the heat. He turned and looked at me with the kind of expression I usually reserved for watching white paint dry. He might have been eighteen years old or he might have been twenty-eight; he had that smooth skin that made it hard to date him without a mass spectrometer.

  “Emil,” said Sal, “this is Miami Jones. Miami, this is Emil.”

  We shook hands and he called me Mr. Jones.

  “Emil, Miami is an investigator and he has need of some of your previous skills.”

  “I thought I don’t do that no more?”

  “You don’t.” Sal looked at me. “Emil is training to be a carpenter. He’s going to build houses.”

  “That’s a fine Florida job,” I said. “Listen, Emil, this is not any kind of trouble. I’m actually working on a case for the Palm Beach Police Department. Kind of a consulting detective thing.” It sounded like complete hogwash now that I said it out loud.

  “Can’t the police get what you want?”

  “They could, but the risk is that the evidence will be destroyed by the person or persons carrying it. I just need to get a look at it first.”

  He looked at Sal, who nodded, and then Emil looked at me.

  “All right. For Mr. Mondavi.”

  “Good,” I said. “So you think you can pick something without anyone noticing?”

  He gave me a look like I had offended his professional pride.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Thanks, Emil.” I looked at Sally and nodded.

  “Sal.”

  “Kid.”

  I made to leave and Emil made to follow, but Sally stopped us.

  “Emil, what’s the golden rule?”

  Emil offered no smile, as if the answer was some kind of blood covenant.

  “We use our superpowers for good, not evil.”

  Sally nodded and Emil turned to me, and we walked back out into the less-than-stellar day.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I arrived alone at the high school and parked my SUV near the gate into the compound. L’nita and Keisha leaned against the hurricane-wire fencing, looking like they wanted to smoke but had run out of cash to buy cigarettes. L’nita gave me a look of triumph, as if she was about to receive her due. I felt the same way. Keisha wore a look of confusion.

  I got out of my car and took my bag from the backseat. Once upon a time it had held my baseball gear. Not today.

  I looked down the street for Camille but saw only a kid loitering next to an old classic Buick. I wandered over to the gate and Coach Banks came out from the school’s interior to unlock it.

  “I thought Tania was training?” he asked.

  “She’s on her way.” He stepped aside to let me in and I paused for a moment. L’nita snarled at us from her position against the fence.

  “We’re having something of an intervention,” I whispered to Coach. He glanced at L’nita.

  “An intervention might be a good idea,” said Coach. “I’ll find a fire hose.” He winked, but I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not.

  Keisha bounced off the wire fence and made to move around her pal, but L’nita put her palm up to Keisha’s face.

  “Hey, girl,” L’nita said.

  Keisha stopped and let L’nita walk in first, right behind me. Coach waited at the gate for Camille and Tania to arrive.

  L’nita talked all the way to the gym.

  “I gotta tell ya, man, first thing I’m gonna do for Tania is excuse you of your services. You don’t add no value around here.”

  “That right?” I said.

  “Hunnert percent. Girl got me, she don’t need you.”

  I pushed open the door to the gym and gestured for L’nita and Keisha to enter.

  “Yeah, you better get used to holding doors,” said L’nita.

  Keisha passed me with a frown.

  “You got it all worked out, huh?” I said to the empty gym.

  “Better than you know,” said L’nita.

  “Good to know,” I said. “Why don’t you ladies take a seat? We’re just waiting for Tania to arrive.”

  L’nit
a and Keisha took up positions of indifference on the bleachers, and I stepped back out to wait for Camille.

  Coach Banks was watching the kid standing near his car like the kid was about to commit grand theft auto. Then I saw Camille’s Chevy Malibu pull around the corner. The windshield had been replaced, and all evidence of the vandalism was gone. Those glass replacement guys really got about their business. Camille pulled in behind Coach’s Buick.

  The voices were audible before the doors even opened. Camille leaped out of the driver’s side and slammed the door, shaking her head. Then the two rear doors opened. Now the yelling could be heard by everyone south of Jacksonville. Rami and Sheryl sounded like an episode of Jerry Springer.

  The two women started toward the gate but not in any kind of orderly fashion. They were dancing around each other like boxers in a ring. Fingers were being pointed, and those fingers ended in neon-colored nails that resembled switchblades. I worried someone was going to lose an eye—probably me.

  “You nothing, girl,” screamed Rami. “You some half-breed relation!”

  “Half-breed?” yelled Sheryl in return. “You gonna eat our girl out of house and home!”

  “Why you—” Rami stepped toward Sheryl but slammed into the kid standing by Coach Banks’s car. The kid bounced hard into the side panel.

  “Hey!” yelled Coach. “Get away from there! That’s a classic!”

  Rami turned on the kid.

  “Watch where you’re going, you maggot.”

  The kid recoiled and then hurried away up the street.