“You fellas want to have a run?” I ask.
“Hell, yeah,” says Dante, offering a charismatic smile that the Nike people are just going to love. “We’ll make it quick and painless for you.”
He slaps my head and bumps my chest, and thirty seconds later the crash of collapsing waves and squawking gulls mix with the squeak of sneakers and the sweet pock of a bouncing ball.
You might think the older white guys are about to get embarrassed, but we’ve got some talent too. My big brother, Jeff, is pushing fifty, but at six five, 270 he’s still pretty much unmovable under the boards, and Walco, Roche, and Feif, all in their early twenties, are good, scrappy athletes who can run forever.
As for me, I’m not as much of a ringer as Dante, and I’m pushing thirty-five-but I can still play a little.
Unless you’re a basketball junkie you haven’t heard of me, but I was second-team All-America at St. John’s and in ’95 the Minnesota Timberwolves made me the twenty-third pick in the first round of the NBA draft. My pro career was a wash. I blew out my knee before the end of my rookie season, but I’d be lying if I told you I couldn’t still hold my own on any playground, whether it’s a cratered cement court in the projects or this million-dollar beauty looking straight out at the big blue sea.
Chapter 6. Tom
PARADISE COULDN’T BE too much better than this.
Seagulls are flapping in the breeze, sailboats are bobbing on the waves, and the green rubberized surface is bathed in dazzling sunshine as I dribble the ball upcourt, cut around my brother’s double-wide pick, and snap off a bounce pass to an open Walco under the basket.
Walco is about to lay it in for an easy hoop when one of Dante’s teammates, a tall, wiry kid I will later find out is named Michael Walker, comes flying at him from behind. He blocks the shot and knocks Walco to the court. It’s a hard foul, and completely unnecessary in my opinion. A dirty play.
Now the Kings Highway squad is bringing the ball upcourt, and when one of their players goes up for a little jumper, he gets mugged just as bad by Rochie.
Pretty soon, no one stretched out on the grassy hill beside the court is noticing the flapping seagulls or bobbing sailboats because the informal Saturday-morning game has escalated into a war.
But then a beat-up Honda parks beside the court, and Dante’s pretty seventeen-year-old cousin, Nikki Robinson, steps out in very short cutoffs. When I see the way Feifer checks her out, I know the Montauk townies still have a chance to win this shoot-out by the sea.
Chapter 7. Tom
NIKKI ROBINSON LEANS provocatively against the wire fence, and the shameless Feifer immediately takes over the game. He uses his quickness, or stamina, or surprising strength to force three consecutive Kings Highway turnovers.
When Jeff taps in my missed jumper, we’re all tied at twenty.
Now Nikki isn’t the only one up against the fence. Artis LaFontaine and Mammy and Sly and everyone else on the hill are on their feet, making a lot of noise.
Michael Walker races upcourt with the ball.
With five pretty women paying attention instead of just one, Feifer swoops on Walker like an eagle bearing down on a rabbit on one of those TV nature shows. He effortlessly strips him of the ball and races the other way for the winning lay-up.
This time, however, he doesn’t stop at the rim. He keeps climbing, showing that Montauk boys got ups too. When he throws the ball down, Artis, Mammy, and Marwan go crazy on the sidelines, and Nikki Robinson rewards him with a little R-rated dance that seventeen-year-old girls aren’t supposed to know how to do.
This provokes Michael Walker to shove Rochie, Feif to shove him back, Dante to shove Feif, and Feif to really shove Dante.
Ten seconds later, on the prettiest day of the summer, Feif and Dante are squared off at half-court.
At this point, both sides should jump in and break it up, but neither does. The Kings Highway crew hangs back because they figure the white surfer boy is about to get a whupping and don’t want to bail him out. We stand and watch because in a dozen barroom brawls we’ve never seen Feif lose.
And right now, despite giving up a foot and more than fifty pounds to Dante, Feif’s holding his own.
But now I really have seen enough. This is bullshit, and I don’t want either of them to get hurt.
But as I jump between them, catching glancing blows from both for my trouble, the court falls silent.
There’s a high-pitched scream, the blur of people scattering, and then Artis yells, “Tom, he’s got a gun!”
I turn toward Dante, and he’s holding his empty hands up in front of his face. When I turn to Feif, he’s doing the same thing.
I am the last person on the court to see that the guy with the gun isn’t Dante or Feifer. It’s Dante’s homeboy Michael Walker. While I was breaking up the fight, he must have run and grabbed it from the car.
I didn’t see him or the gun until just now, when he walked back onto the court, lifted it to the side of Feifer’s head, and with a sickening click, thumbed back the hammer to cock it.
Chapter 8. Dante Halleyville
WHEN MICHAEL PUTS that gun up beside that boy’s head, no one is more freaked than me. No one! Not even the bro with the gun to his head-although he looks plenty freaked too. This is my worst nightmare coming true. Don’t pull that trigger, Michael. Don’t do it.
Because of my promise to my grandmother Marie, I’ve got sixteen months to get through before I go into the NBA, and the only thing that can stop me is some ridiculousness like this. That’s why I never go to clubs or even parties where I don’t know everyone, because you never know when some fool is going to pull out a gun, and now that’s exactly what’s happening and it’s my best friend doing it, and he thinks he’s doing it for me.
And it’s not like Michael and I haven’t talked about it. Michael wants to have my back, fine. But he’s got to stay between me and trouble, not bring it on.
Thank God for Dunleavy. He doesn’t know this, but I’ve watched him since I was starting out. Till me, he was the only player from around here who amounted to much. I used to track him at St. John’s and then for that short time with the pros in Minnesota. He never got the big tout, but if he hadn’t got hurt, Tom Dunleavy would have done some damage in the League. Trust me.
But what Dunleavy does today is better than basketball. It’s like that poem we read in school-if you can keep your head screwed on tight, when all around you motherfuckers are freaking.
When Michael puts the gun to the white guy’s head, everyone scatters. But Dunleavy stays on the court and talks to Michael calm as can be.
Not fake calm either. Real calm-like whatever is going to happen is going to happen.
I can’t say for sure it was like this word for word, but this is what I remember.
“I can tell you’re Dante’s friend,” Dunleavy says. “That’s obvious. As obvious as the fact that this guy should never have thrown a punch at Dante, not at someone who’s about to go to the NBA. He hits Dante, maybe one of his eyes is never the same and the dream is over. So I’m sure there’s a part of Dante that would like to see you mess him up right now.
“But since you’re Dante’s best friend,” he goes on, “it’s not what Dante wants but what he needs. Right? That’s why even if Dante was screaming at you to kill this punk, you wouldn’t do it. Because it wouldn’t help him in the long run. It would hurt him.”