by Otto Penzler
“Did he play with you on the Celtics?”
Glen looked at that smooth face and those unblinking eyes, wondering if the guy was trying to play some sort of game. “No, he didn’t.”
The chief said, “But he was a teammate of yours, right?”
“Right. But not on the Celtics.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Where, then?”
Maybe the boy was just dumb. Could it be? Glen said, “On the Olympic team, that’s where. Marcus and me and ten other guys, we played for the United States back in ’72.”
“All right, then,” the chief said, making a note. “The 1972 Olympic team. Okay. Now. When did Marcus come up here?”
“Today’s Monday. He came up here Saturday, spent the night, and I dropped him off at the bus stop yesterday morning.”
“Was there anybody else in your house at the time?”
“Nope.”
“And what did the two of you do while he was here?”
Glen shrugged. “Played some hoops for old time’s sake. Talked about the old days. Had a barbecue and some beer.”
Colter took a careful sip from his lemonade. “Were you expecting him?”
“Excuse me?”
Colter said, “He’s only up here for a day and a half. He took a bus up from Queens, in New York. It seems like a lot of work to get up here for just a quick visit.”
Glen said, “Yeah, I was expecting him. But he only gave me a day’s warning.”
Colter’s eyes were now fixed on him. “So why the quick visit? Why did he come to see you, Mr. Jackson?”
Now he knew that the young boy was pretty sharp. “Money.”
“He had money problems?”
“Shit, yes. Poor guy’s about to be kicked out of his apartment, he’s had maybe a half dozen jobs over the years, everything from selling cars to real estate… like I said earlier, Chief, things are so much different now than it was back then. You get a guy like him or me, in our fifties… time’s running out if you didn’t plan real serious back when you were younger for your financial future.”
“Did you help him?”
Glen thought for just a moment, shook his head. “I offered to, but he wouldn’t take any of my money. But he had other ideas.”
“Like what?”
“The silver medal, that’s what.”
“I’m sorry, the what?”
He paused, judging the face, recalled all the times he had seen opponents’ faces on the court, trying to read who they were and where they were coming from. This one was trying to be the Mayberry hayseed, sort of be the dummy cop, and Glen was going to play along with the game. Thing about games is that it’s only fair when both sides know that it’s being played.
“The silver medal,” Glen said. “Marcus decided it was time to get it, and me and the other team members, we didn’t want him to. He came up here to try to convince me otherwise.”
Colter tried a smile and said, “You’re getting me even more confused, Mr. Jackson. Look. I’m sorry to hurt your feelings and all, but I’m not a basketball fan. I don’t know much about you or the game, or the Olympic team. I’m more of a Red Sox fan myself.”
“Okay. No problem there.”
“So I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, the silver medal. Did your team win the silver medal at the Olympics?”
“Sort of.”
“And why doesn’t Marcus have the silver medal?”
Glen shook his head. “Because none of us does, and none of us will. Look, you really meant that, about not knowing anything about basketball?”
A quick nod. “Hardly a thing.”
He ran a thumb across the top of his lemonade glass. “You in the mood for a history lesson?”
“Will it have something to do with Marcus?”
“It’ll have a lot to do with Marcus, and me, and the other guys, and what happened in ’72. Look. Back in 1972, the Olympics were in Munich, okay? First time they had been in Germany since Berlin, back in ’36. Which was one hell of a coincidence, because back in 1936, that was the first time basketball was an Olympic sport. The U.S. won the gold medal then, and won the gold medal at every other Olympics since then, right up to 1972. You know what our record was, the U.S. Olympic team record?”
“No, I don’t, but I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Colter said with a smile.
“Okay. Sixty-two and oh. That means almost over four decades, in six different Olympics, the United States had never lost a single basketball match. Not one. So we were favored, going into Munich, even though the Soviets were tough bastards and had been wanting to nail us for years. Okay. Munich. That Olympics mean anything to you?”
Colter rubbed at his chin. “The Israeli athletes, right?”
“Right you are. Eleven of those poor guys got killed by terrorists. Most Americans, you mention the Munich Olympics, they remember three things: the Israelis, Mark Spitz getting seven gold medals, and the way we guys on the basketball team got robbed.”
“How did you get robbed?”
Another shrug. “We just did. Look, imagine what it was like, being back there, most of us in our teens or early twenties. Our coach was Hank Iba, a legend. He had coached the Olympic teams in ’64 and ’68 and got a gold medal both times. We went through years of work and training and practice to be picked as part of the team. You know? And when we marched through that stadium with everybody else on the U.S. team, representing our friends and families and everyone back home… well, it made your hair stand up on end.”
“Marcus, too?”
“Sure, Marcus and everybody else. Then we started playing and we just blazed through everybody that was in our way. I mean, Christ, we beat Japan 99 to 33. We met other players, fans… it wasn’t like today, with the dream team playin’, every player demanding his own hotel suite. Nope, we bunked together in the dormitories, just like everybody else. And then the Israelis got killed and the Olympics were postponed for a day. It was awful, it was chaos, lots of rumors…”
Colter said, “And when did you get robbed?”
Glen took a breath, fascinated at how it was all coming back, like the damn thing had just happened last week. “We made it to the finals against the Soviet Union. There we were, college kids mostly, going toe-to-toe with guys that had their entire nation and entire sports ministry behind them. All they had to worry about was basketball, basketball, basketball. That was it. And we played them late on September 9, the damn game didn’t start until eleven-forty-five p.m. Can you believe that? The gold medal finals, starting almost at midnight.”
“Why?”
“Because the schedule and everything else got tossed up in the air after the Israeli massacre, that’s why. So we were playing late, everybody was still jazzed up over the massacre, and pretty soon we were losing to the Russians, and losing bad. I mean, at one point, those guys were ahead by ten points. We couldn’t believe it, that our team, our team, would break a winning streak that had been in place for thirty-six years. We felt horrible.”
Colter kept pen to pad, though nothing had been written in a while. “I take it you and Marcus and everybody else fought back.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, and now the old emotions, the old memories, were racing right through him… the smell of sweat and the court, the yells and chants from the crowd, the squeaking of sneakers on the court, the coach yelling and pointing and keeping them together, those damn Russians, staring at them, like they just wanted to crush these college kids and sweep them aside. “We fought back. Man, how we fought back, and at the very end, one of our guys tossed in two free throws, and the score was U.S. 50, U.S.S.R, 49. And there was just three seconds left on the clock. Three seconds. One, two, three. That’s it. And even then, the Russians—with some help—managed to steal it from us.”
“How?”
Another breath, another amazement of how the old feelings of shock and betrayal were rumbling through. “Three times… the Russians were allowed to put the ball into play three times, can you believe that? The
first two times, the clock was reset in their favor. And the third time, one of their guys—Belov—managed to make a basket, even though there were two violations against the Russians that the refs didn’t call. Third time was a charm for the bastards, and the score ended up being 51 to 50.”
“Wow,” Colter said. “I’m sorry, it’s just that my parents hadn’t even gotten married by 1972… this is the first time I’ve ever heard of it. What happened then?”
“Well, protests were filed and a five-judge panel reviewed the results, and since three of the judges were from Cuba, Hungary, and Poland, it was a done deal who they were going to rule in favor of—their Russian buddies. Our whole team voted to boycott the medal ceremony, and not one of us agreed to receive our silver medal. We went home thinking we were winners, while the world thought we were losers. So that’s how it’s been for thirty years.”
Colter now made a note in his pad. “And Marcus, he wanted to get his silver medal, all these years later? For the money?”
Glen looked out at the now-empty waters of Walker’s Lake, where all the boats had finally left the waters in peace. “Yeah. Sorry to say. The silver medals are in a bank vault somewhere, still controlled by the International Olympic Committee, and every few years, they’ve asked us if we wanted to have them, finally. And each time, every one of us said no. We went into the Olympics as a team, we left as a team, and by God, we’re still not going to accept the fact that we got robbed. Those medals can gather dust until all of us are dead.”
“But Marcus changed his mind.”
“Debt can do that to a man,” Glen said. “Thing is, he had an idea. Get the medal and put it up at auction on eBay or something. He figured he could make enough money off that to live quite well, and you know what, he’s probably right. But dammit, thirty years later, we’re still not taking those medals. Some of us are even in worse shape than Marcus, and the fact that we’re still hanging in there, still not letting those medals come into our hands, well, for some of us, that’s the only thing we’ve got going. One guy takes a medal, then the whole team is broke up. That’s the point.”
Another notation in the notebook. “I take it that’s what the two of you talked about?”
“Yep.” He continued to look out on the waters, just letting the words come out mechanically. “I told Marcus not to do it. I told him that I’d give him some money, that I’d contact a couple of other team members… get a package or something together. Just to avoid him taking the medal.”
“And what did he say?”
He kept his view on the lake. “Ol’ Marcus, he wasn’t buying what I was selling. He wanted to do this on his own, and he didn’t want to listen to what I had to say.”
Colter flipped through a page in his notebook and Glen looked at him. The chief glanced up and said, “One thing I don’t understand. Why did he come to see you?”
“Excuse me?”
Colter said, “What was the point of getting on a bus and coming all the way up here? Why not just contact the IOC and say he agreed to take the medal, and leave you out of it?”
Exactly, he thought, and he said, “Thing is, Chief, I’m sort of the guy that keeps in touch with the other guys, you know? I wasn’t team captain or anything, but I’m the one who sort of keeps everybody’s address and phone number up to date. Marcus came up here, sort of looking for permission. Said that if I didn’t make a fuss, then maybe the other team members would cut him some slack.”
“And what did you tell him?”
He took a breath. “I told him that he shouldn’t do it. That he’d be betraying the memory of our team and our coach to do it, that one thing we had going for us was the fact that we had stuck together, had boycotted the awards ceremony, had boycotted the medals for thirty years. I told him that we could help him out, but only if we stuck together. And I reminded him what silver tasted like.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Glen nodded. “Sorry. Just a phrase we had, back in Munich. That gold had the best taste of all. And then we talked some more, had a barbecue, and then changed the subject. Marcus said he had to do what was right for him and his family. I said I could see his point. And that was that.”
“Uh-huh.” The pen made a few motions across the small notebook. “Then what?”
He shrugged. “Up at dawn. Quick breakfast of coffee and toast. Drove him into town, to Frye’s. It opens up at six. Got there about fifteen minutes early. He was going to get into the store at six, buy a ticket for the six-fifteen bus. Last I saw him, he was standing by the front door of the store.”
“And was anybody else around?”
“Chief, you know what it’s like in town. Some days at noon the place is empty. Nope, nobody was there.”
Colter said, “Which is strange, because nobody at the store saw him, Mr. Jackson. The owner opened up at six a.m. on the dot, and nobody was waiting for him. Which means that something happened to him in those fifteen minutes.”
“Sure sounds like that, doesn’t it?”
“Did he say he was going to see anybody else? Or stay another night in town? Or anything?”
“No, not at all. He was just going to get on the bus, head to Boston and then back to Queens.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that can help us in our investigation?”
He shook his head. “No, I wish I could help. Jesus. I mean, what do you think? Somebody picked him up? He wandered off?”
The chief closed his notebook. “We’re not sure, but we’ll be looking into everything.” Colter stood up and so did Glen, and the chief said, “Thanks for the cooperation. And the lemonade. I guess I’ll be going.”
They went into the living room and the chief sniffed the air, said, “Smells like you’ve had a fire in the fireplace.”
“Yeah, last couple of nights, it’s been chilly here. Nothing like a fire to keep the damp out of a room.”
By the doorway, as they were walking out, the chief pointed to a collection of sports gear in the corner. “It doesn’t look like everybody plays basketball who comes up here, does it?”
Glen stood quite still, looking at the mess in the corner. The hockey sticks for street hockey on the asphalt, the soccer balls, Frisbees, baseball gloves, baseballs, and footballs. “That’s right,” he said. “My grandkids come up here, they sure like to play with other stuff. They get tired of Grandpa beating them on the basketball court.”
Colter laughed and just as he was getting ready to leave, just as he was getting ready to step out of the room, he said, “Oh, one more thing.”
Oh, how fake, Glen thought. How fake can you get? “Sure, what is it?”
Colter’s smile disappeared. “I’d like to take a look around. If you don’t mind.”
“Here? The house?”
A crisp nod. “Yes. Your house. If you don’t mind.”
He certainly did mind but he shrugged and said, “Go ahead. Knock yourself out.”
So they spent the next fifteen minutes as the chief went through the closets, checked out the attached utility room that held the water heater and oil furnace, went back into the living room and kitchen and then upstairs. The cottage had no basement. More poking through the closets and in the bathroom and the master bedroom and the two spare rooms—“Marcus spent the night in this one,” Glen said, pointing out the spare room that had a view of the lake—and then they came to the last room in the small house, at the end of the hallway.
Colter said, “What’s in here?”
“My office, that’s all.”
“I’d like to take a look at it, if you don’t mind.”
Glen said, “It’s just an office. Nothing in there at all.”
Colter said, “Please. Open the door, Mr. Jackson. Or I’ll come back here with—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, here,” Glen said, opening up the door. “Look as much as you want.”
The office was small, another spare room that had been converted. There was a desk and office chair a
nd filing cabinets, and a closet that the chief looked into. Glen stood perfectly still. Near his desk was his ego wall, a twin of the one back home, in his larger office. Framed certificates, photos and plaques, and one large framed uniform from his last season with the Celtics. Colter closed the closet door and then looked up at the ego wall. Glen did not move, tried not to show a thing. Colter said, “Lots of photos up there.”
“Yeah, well, you tend to get those over time.”
Colter stepped forward and Glen closed his eyes, imagined the questions that would come his way once Colter looked at the photos and the inscriptions and what was there, but Colter said, “Hey, I recognize this guy. Red Auerbach, am I right?”
Glen opened his eyes. “Yes. You’re absolutely right.”
Colter turned away from the wall and said, “Well, I guess it’s time to go.”
Another handshake outside and then Colter headed to his cruiser. “Thanks again for your cooperation, Mr. Jackson, and for the history lesson. You’re not offended that I’m not a basketball fan, are you?”
Glen tried to keep the relief out of his voice. “Not at all. Tell me—I’m heading home to Boston tomorrow—can you keep me informed on how the investigation is going?”
“Sure,” he said, “but… well, I don’t know. It just seems so damn strange, like the earth just opened up and swallowed him. Quite strange.”
“Yeah,” Glen said. “Strange.”
Twelve hours after the police chief had left him, Glen was out on his powerboat, alone, just past midnight, in the middle reaches of Walker’s Lake. He had slowly motored out here and then waited, and switched off the engine and the running lights, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He sat on the seat and leaned back and looked up at the stars. It was a quiet night and the water was still, and he had no worries of drifting or being swamped.
Out in the distance a loon called out to its mate, the trilling sound making the back of his hands tingle, and he thought of Marcus’s wife, back there in Queens, alone and wondering what had happened to her husband.
He sighed, shifted some in the seat, and then stood up, the boat weaving back and forth. He said in the darkness, “I bet she misses you, though I don’t know why, you rotten son of a bitch.”