Jump

by Mike Lupica

  “Eh viejo,” Pedroza said. He knew Marty hated being called old, but it was a joke with them now. “Don’t lose that tape, or the next job I get will be back with the jíbaros in P.R.”

  “You remember Juan Bobo?” he said to Pedroza.

  “From the storybooks? Sure.”

  “Well, I may be old, but I’m not Juan Bobo,” Marty said. “No me jodas.”

  He just wanted them to go, leave him alone, so he could go get a little bit drunk before he did anything.

  Marty was feeling so sick he wanted to throw up.

  “Cuidado,” Pedroza said.

  “¡Basta!” Marty said, faking a smile for both of them, then starting down Park, the tape in his briefcase. Trying to think about the tape, what was on it.

  Frank Crittendon sitting there crying …

  You got the story, Marty told himself. Wait until Houghton, who deep down thought he really was an old man, not joking about it all the time the way Pedroza did, sees this. He’d have to convince Houghton to wait until the eleven o’clock newscast, the more Marty thought about it. That way, it would be impossible for the other stations to catch up and Marty could still make a clean newspaper hit in the Sunday paper, a million copies.

  “¡Qué tipo!” Marty said out loud. This was why he got into television in the first place, not just for the money, though the money was a big part of it. But to get them all coming and going.

  What a guy.

  So why did he feel sick?

  He had crossed over to Third at Fifty-fifth. He found himself in front of P. J. Clarke’s. Marty looked at his watch. Three o’clock. But there were still a few people sitting at the bar. Marty opened up his briefcase and got his old New York Giants baseball cap, the one his father had given him, out of there and pulled it down over his eyes. Just in case. He didn’t feel like fucking talking. Playing Marty Perez tonight. He just wanted a couple of drinks. The people at the bar, some old guy in the middle, a drunk couple down at the end, didn’t even look up when he came in the Third Avenue door in front. Maybe there were more people in the backroom. That was the way it used to be in the old days, when Clarke’s was the place, before the newspaper boys and girls started to go to Ryan McFadden’s and Macguire’s.

  He didn’t even know the bartender, some kid, who gave him time for two rums and then said, “Mister, I don’t want to rush you, but I got to close it down.”

  He walked down Third, taking his time, not even feeling the rum. He kept walking, hoping he could make Frank Crittendon go away, stop thinking about Crittendon breaking down the way he did, Crittendon begging him to keep his daughter out of it, Crittendon swearing to Marty, when Marty hit him with his visit to Richie Collins’s house that night, that he didn’t kill the bastard.…

  Marty waited for the light and then crossed Forty-second at Third. Halfway across, he heard the car coming, turned his head just in time, the car right on him, running the light. He dove out of the way at the last second, stumbled, ended up on his ass, back to the street, sitting on the curb, briefcase lying in a puddle. Marty wheeled around just in time to see the car, one of those Mad Max gypsy cabs with LIVERY in the back window, probably some crazed spic behind the wheel, flying toward Second Avenue. Let him drive right into the river, Marty thought. He started to throw his arm into the air at the guy’s taillights, give him the finger, scream some curse at him in the night as he did.

  Then Marty caught himself, looked at himself, sitting here like he was sitting in the gutter, four o’clock in the morning. Maybe you nearly got what you deserved, Marty Perez thought.

  Maybe the fucking cab just tried to blindside you the way you just blindsided Frank Crittendon.

  Marty started to laugh.

  Like a viejo fool. Maybe he was Juan Bobo after all.

  It was a very fast bike.

  Ellis made a right into Central Park at Sixty-sixth Street, and that was the first time DiMaggio passed him, slowing down then to make sure he missed the light when he came out on Central Park West. Wasn’t this the way he took Hannah when he rescued her from the media horde chasing her from the Vertical Club? It wasn’t even a month ago and already seemed like a year. Ellis was on him when the light changed, passing DiMaggio in his rental, going south, downtown, then making a left when he got to Fifty-seventh. Then a right on Fifth. By then DiMaggio had developed a good rhythm following him, gradually changing sides of the street, missing some lights as long as he kept Ellis in sight, falling in behind the traffic when there was traffic on Fifth, even pulling ahead a couple of times.

  They went past all the expensive places on Fifth, Cartier and Bijan and Gucci, Ellis with the bike wide-open now, Ellis hunched down low, not even seeing the windows and names flying past him on his right and left, Dunhill now, Mark Cross, Ellis so low to the bike it was as if he and the blue bike were one piece.

  He took a left at Forty-second.

  Went past Grand Central Station now, and the Grand Hyatt. Then a Gap store with a huge window that seemed to take up a whole block. Then Ellis crossed Third, went past some nut in a baseball cap sitting on the curb laughing like a hyena, reaching for a briefcase, and then there was the Daily News building on his right, on the south side of Forty-second.

  DiMaggio studied Ellis, half a block ahead, pumping his legs hard sometimes, bending them out a little from the bike, gliding when he’d come to a downhill stretch, not ever noticing the town car that had been with him all along, alone with the speed of the bike and the street in front of him, alone, DiMaggio thought, with being alone, a big canvas bag stuffed into the basket behind his seat.

  He took a left on First, going uptown again.

  Ellis stayed to the left of the tunnel that opened up at Forty-ninth Street, going past bookstores and delis and a rib place, another bookstore, passing a church, St. John of Something at Fifty-fifth, then crossing Fifty-seventh again, then checking the traffic, mostly cabs, as he went diagonally across First, then suddenly taking a right at Sixty-second, heading toward F.D.R. Drive and the East River. DiMaggio made the right with him. Ellis crossed York, and now DiMaggio wondered if Ellis was crazy enough to put the bike on the F.D.R.?

  But then, maybe they were all crazy.

  Ellis made a right now on the east side of the street and sped down to Sixty-first, went up on the sidewalk, got off, and leaned the bike against a chain-link fence there. He stretched for a minute, shaking his legs loose, twisting his back around.

  Finally, he pulled the canvas bag out from behind the seat, shook it, and the basketball bounced out.

  When Ellis had stopped, DiMaggio made a quick right. Now he eased down the block a little, away from Ellis. Just enough to keep him in sight. DiMaggio had been so busy watching Ellis he didn’t realize he was watching him through a playground for kids, with swing sets and slides and seesaws, with a basketball court next to the playground, cut in underneath F.D.R. Drive. If you weren’t looking for it, you had no chance of seeing the court from the street. DiMaggio smiled, remembering his ride through Jersey City with Richie Collins. Thinking it was like Ellis had found his own little corner of Jersey City now, his own Baby Rucker on the East Side of Manhattan.

  Playground to playground.

  Ellis got just enough help from the streetlights. And there was plenty of traffic noise from the F.D.R. even at four in the morning, to mute the bounce of the ball, the sound of it hitting the old metal backboard.

  And right away, as soon as he started to play, the setting didn’t matter. Even in the hat, the stupid glasses, the fake beard, it was unmistakably Fresh Adair.

  He started out shooting from the outside, DiMaggio able to hear the rattling sound it made as it went through the wire-mesh net. Then Ellis would retrieve the ball quickly, sometimes almost on it before it hit the ground, sometimes dunking absently, before he could go back outside and make another jump shot, then be moving toward the basket again, lost now in his own elegant choreography.

  Even when a car would stop at the light on Sixty-first, m
aybe fifty yards from him, there was no reason to see Ellis in there, at the far end of the court.

  See the amazing show that was going on.

  Left-handed hook. Right-handed hook. Fakes, stutter steps, pull-up jumpers. Stopping every so often to look behind him. Then back to the game, back into the night, like the thousand nights like this he must have had back in Jersey City.

  DiMaggio got out of the car, careful not to slam the door, trying to walk quietly toward the court, past where the blue bike rested against the fence. Ellis Adair had his back to him, underneath the basket now, bouncing the ball off the backboard, catching it, dunking in the same motion. Doing it again.

  “Ellis.”

  He turned around, startled, not picking DiMaggio up at first on the other side of the fence.

  “Say what?”

  DiMaggio stepped onto the court. “It’s me. DiMaggio.”

  “Ain’t no Ellis here. Don’t know no DiMaggio.” He tilted his head to the side. “Get away from my bike.”

  “You do know me,” DiMaggio said, taking a couple of steps closer, wondering what he would do if Ellis just made a run for it. He smiled. “I’m the asshole Ted Salter hired to investigate you and Richie.” Spell it out so he understood.

  They stood there on the court, fifty feet apart, Ellis with the ball on his hip. DiMaggio said, “I need to talk to you.”

  “You alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Ellis said, “How’d you—”

  DiMaggio said, “Doesn’t matter. Point is, I found you. I found Dale’s place. I found you and Dale.”

  Ellis said, “You found. You found. You found shit with me and Dale.”

  “Listen,” DiMaggio said. “I don’t give a shit about you and Dale. I don’t.” He was talking fast, wanting to get it all out there, right now, not wanting to lose him.

  Trying to make it sound as if he was on Ellis’s side.

  Which maybe he was.

  DiMaggio said, “I know stuff I didn’t know before.”

  “Know who killed Rich?”

  “No.” He took a couple of more steps closer, his arms stretched out wide, feeling silly, feeling like he was showing Ellis he was unarmed. “Listen, you mind if we sit down someplace?”

  DiMaggio got a few feet away and stopped.

  Ellis said, “I don’t know that we got anything to talk about.”

  “Just hear me out. I found out A.J. had Hannah before she went off with you guys that night. I believe she’s lied to me. Now I need to find out how much lying she’s done.” DiMaggio took a deep breath, let it out. “It’s just you and me. I don’t have a tape recorder.” He opened his jacket. “You can pat me down if you want. I’m not wearing a wire. I just want you to tell me the rest of it.”

  “I don’t have to tell you nothing, Richie said.”

  “Richie’s fucking dead.”

  Ellis didn’t say anything, just stood there with the basketball on his hip.

  DiMaggio said, “You’ve got to come back, Ellis. You look guiltier every day you don’t.”

  “Guilty of what? Takin’ out Rich? You’re standing here telling me I’m a suspect?”

  DiMaggio said, “You think you’re not? Let me explain something to you, Ellis. When somebody’s wife gets killed, you know who the number one suspect is, before the cops know anything? It’s the husband. It’s the one closest to her. You saw what happened with O.J., right from the start. So who was closer to Richie Collins than anybody in the whole world? You were.”

  Ellis shook his head. He said, “Doesn’t prove one goddamn thing.”

  “You’re absolutely right. It doesn’t. But it’s a place for them to start. And they don’t have to prove anything at the start. There’s a reason they’re called suspects, Ellis. Maybe they think you’re pissed at Richie because he got you into this mess with Hannah Carey in the first place. Hey, the cops say, maybe Ellis is innocent, after all. Maybe it was Richie who raped her and Ellis got fed up with being called some dirty rapist, too. Maybe Ellis got tired of taking the fall.”

  Ellis Adair stared at him, ball still on the hip, frowning at DiMaggio, as if trying to keep up. Like he was listening to him as hard as he could.

  DiMaggio said, “And who’s missing? You are. The season’s starting, your best friend is dead, and nobody can find you. You know what the cops say to that one? What’s Ellis Adair got to hide? They’re starting to think it was you Richie went to meet that night at the house. There’s enough people who will tell them how Richie’s been bossing you around all these years. Maybe the cops are starting to think you got fed up with his bullshit and you’re the one who killed him.”

  Ellis said, “That what you think?”

  DiMaggio said, “It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what the cops think, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s how things look.”

  Not even thinking about what he was doing, DiMaggio took a step closer to him and took off Ellis’s sunglasses, pulled off the fake beard. Then took the Yankee cap off his head. Ellis stood there and let him do it, like a kid allowing himself to be undressed.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Ellis said softly.

  “Then go tell the police that yourself. Or call Ted Salter and have him arrange for you to tell the police.”

  “I didn’t kill Richie, and I didn’t rape her,” Ellis said evenly.

  Just like that.

  DiMaggio didn’t give him any time, any room. “What about Richie? Did Richie rape her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Ellis.”

  “I think he did. I just didn’t see him do it.”

  DiMaggio said, “Give me ten more minutes. Let me finish this job and get back to Florida.” He took a deep breath. “It’s time to turn yourself in, Ellis. You’re going to walk on this rape thing, I’m sure Donnie Fuchs has been telling you that from the start. You don’t want to go from there to being a suspect in Richie’s murder.” Ellis turned away, toward F.D.R. Drive. DiMaggio grabbed his arms, surprised at how skinny they felt, and repositioned him so they were facing each other. “You got an alibi for Richie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dale?”

  “Somebody at Dale’s. I was there all night.”

  DiMaggio tried to read his face in light that kept changing because of the traffic on the F.D.R. but couldn’t decide if he was telling the truth or not, even with his kid’s face no longer hidden by a disguise. “Tell the cops that. Tomorrow. But tell me about you and Richie and Hannah Carey right now.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go off again, somewhere you can’t find my ass this time.”

  DiMaggio said, “I found you once. It’s always easier the second time, once you know the other guy’s moves.”

  “Not my moves.”

  DiMaggio said, “Why’d you take off, anyway? The DNA test on the dress, it made you look innocent, not guilty.”

  Ellis nodded his head slowly, like he wanted to explain, but all he said was, “I’ll tell you about it someday.”

  “Just tell me about that night.”

  “You got no leverage to make me tell.”

  “I got Dale.”

  “Like I said, you got what you think you got.”

  “You say.”

  “Goddamn!” Ellis shouted all of a sudden. “Goddamn! Always somethin’, isn’t it? Always somebody wanting something. You come on like you want to be my friend. Like Ellis and DiMaggio, we’re on the same team. Talk to me, Ellis. Work with me, babe. But you got your own angle. You gots to know. You gots to know and I gots to help you.”

  DiMaggio said, “You’re right. I’ve got to know.”

  “Why is it so fucking important to you?”

  “Because I’m starting to think maybe the wrong people ended up victims here.”

  “You mean Rich?”

  “I mean you.”

  Ellis nodded to the playground. There was a bench next to the seesaw. They went over and sat down and Ellis told him what he did know.
<
br />   Ellis’s story:

  Richie knew Hannah from when she was A.J.’s girl. He’d even run into her the week before, at Gates over in New Canaan, Ellis said. Got her drunk. Thought about maybe getting her into a scene with this high school girl he was meeting there later. But Hannah only wanted to talk about A.J., wanting to know if A.J. might be coming in. Richie told her come back next week after the welcome-home dinner, everybody would probably be around, the team had decided to party after the boring welcome-home party.

  Finally, the high school girl showed up and Hannah blew Richie off.

  Ellis: “It only made Richie want her more. Richie didn’t take too much to turndowns, even if he was trying all the time. So right away that night at Mulligan’s, when he realized Hannah and A.J. was in the same place, Richie said, ‘The Dartmouth boy’s going to get some shit big-time from his ex.’ Then he told me he might hang around, give the bitch a second chance.”

  The place got more and more crowded and before long most of the Knicks were there. Richie and Ellis got separated. The next time Ellis noticed Hannah Carey was later. A. J. Fine was gone, and all of a sudden Richie had his arm around Hannah and was bringing her over to where Ellis was sitting. Ellis couldn’t tell at first whether she was drunk or high, but she wasn’t at the table five minutes when she jumped up and wanted to sing with the band.

  Ellis: “Some old song Richie knew the name of. Said it was a golden oldie.”

  About eleven o’clock, Richie said they should all go someplace more quiet. Hannah said something like, Why leave a great party, right, Ellis?

  Ellis: “Rich acted mad because she didn’t want to leave, but I knew better. She was making it pretty damn clear she wanted to be with me. That’s why he was mad.”

  He said that no matter how hard he didn’t try sometimes, even as Richie Collins was trying his ass off, it didn’t matter, they wanted to be with Ellis. Always.

  Ellis: “I never knew what way to go. If I got up and left, and the girl left, too, Rich’d get all mad at me. Or he’d get all mad if I stayed and he couldn’t get nowhere with the girl. The best thing was, when there’d be two of them, even if they didn’t want to get in one of Rich’s piles.”