Dan Wing’s glare made it clear that he’d have benched me now and traded me tomorrow, if only he could. He stalked away. A couple of players stared at me. I tried a cucumber sandwich myself, decided the bread was too soft. I checked the room again, in case someone new had arrived while I was talking to Wing.
Someone had, and he stood out even more than I did. As white as I was, as old as Randall Lee, balding and chubby, he glanced at his watch when Maria told him the widow was resting and not to be disturbed. I thought he might turn and leave, but he narrowed his eyes, peered around the room, headed for the coffee urn. I waited for him to arrive.
“Sam Landau?”
He gave me a once-over, stirred sugar into his coffee and said, “Who wants to know?” When I told him, he said, “What’s to investigate? I hear Tony did it.”
“Tony’s been arrested for it. There’s a difference.”
“Not to me. Yesterday I had ten percent of Fort Knox. Today I got ten percent of bubkes. You know what’s bubkes?”
“Chickpeas?”
Landau snorted. “Only looks like chickpeas. It’s goat turds. Listen, Tony wants to tell his story, have him call me.” Landau handed me his card.
Just what Tony wants, I thought, but I pocketed the card. “Can I ask you about dinner last night?”
“The cops already asked me. New York ’s Finest.”
“Just to clear a few things up.”
Landau picked some cookies for his saucer. “Why not? Go ahead, ask.”
“Who was there?”
By now I knew the litany, but I waited to hear it. “Lee. Nathaniel. McCroy. That pretty little girl.” Landau pointed people out one by one with a chocolate biscotti, then dipped it in his coffee.
“Anyone seem unhappy to you? Any tension?”
Landau bit off the biscotti’s dripping end. “Damon stole Nathaniel’s headlines. McCroy stole Damon’s girl. Lee was out a pile of dough and Damon said yeah, yeah, he’d get around to it. Sound like a happy party to you?”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You and Damon stayed after everyone else left, to talk. About what?”
“Business.”
“I hear business wasn’t so good.”
“You hear that where?”
“From a little bird.”
“I fucking hate birds. You know what’s the trouble with birds? They shit all over.”
“Business was fine?”
He sighed. “You any good?”
“As an investigator? Fair.”
“Should I bother to lie to you?”
“It would save time if you didn’t.”
“Okay, then. Business stank. We just inked a deal, Nike, terrific, I’m talking multiyear, multo dinero. Suddenly, Damon’s telling me Adidas makes a better shoe. Springier, he tells me, more bounce to the ounce, who the hell knows?”
“Well, if it’s better-”
“Better? Shoe? Nothing to do with the shoe! Look at these feet.” He waved his biscotti around again, this time at the gleaming loafers and wingtips holding down the carpet. “Guys that size, feet that size, they custom-make the shoe. Damon wants more bounce, more grip, he wants the thing to squeal like a pig or sing like a canary, Nike’ll put it in for him. Had nothing to do with the shoe. It was extortion.”
“He was holding Nike up?”
“Goddamn right. Add a few million or I sign with Adidas.”
“Didn’t he have a contract?”
“Oh, sure, he had a contract. But you’re Nike, you don’t want to be on the short end of a news story that the great Damon Rome wants out of an endorsement deal because he doesn’t like your fucking shoe.”
“So it would have worked?”
“Yeah, for him.”
“Not for you? Ten percent of a few more million doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It would have fucked me over, is what it would have done for me. I got other clients, you know. I represent major players, all sports. Who’s gonna sign a deal with any of my guys, Damon pulls this shit? No point in negotiating with Landau, he can’t control his clients: it would be everywhere.”
“And last night you tried to talk him out of it?”
“Right.”
“And?”
Sam Landau gave me a long look. “You ever pee in the ocean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Made you feel better, right? But it didn’t matter a damn to the ocean.”
I asked Landau the same question I’d been asking everyone else: where he was when Damon Rome died.
“On my way home.”
“You and he left Shots together?”
“Are you kidding? I was so pissed I got up and stomped out. Small satisfaction but you get ’em where you can.”
“Anyone see you on your way home?”
“How the hell do I know? I drove, probably not.”
“Where was your car?”
“Right there. Garage around the block.”
Landau ate a few more cookies and I asked a few more questions. His answers put him right where I’d been hired to put people, right where I’d been able to put the others. He had a reason to be furious with Damon Rome and no alibi for the time of his death. He didn’t give any more than a philosophical shrug to the implications of my questions, but he didn’t seem sorry to see me walk away either.
Nathaniel Day hadn’t stirred from the white sofa, nor had his sister, but the seat next to Nathaniel was empty. I went over, offered my hand.
“Bill Smith,” I said. “I’m investigating Damon Rome’s death. I’d like to ask you a few questions. But first I want to tell you what a big fan I am of yours.” I turned to Nora Day. “And of yours. I watched you play in college.”
Ice in her voice, Nora Day said, “Long time ago.”
Nathaniel Day was not a handsome man, but his wide smile and crooked nose had dominated the sports pages, and occasionally the front pages, of New York’s newspapers for so long that it was hard not to think of him as someone I knew, could just sit down and chat with, talk plays and ball handling, ask for tips on my hook shot. Nathaniel’s nose had been broken, famously, in a high school tournament game he’d refused to come out of. He’d claimed it didn’t hurt, was just a bump. Then, because he was afraid a doctor would forbid him to play, he put off seeing one until the tournament was over. The first time New York had seen that wide smile was two weeks later, when Nathaniel Day, a sophomore at Christ the King and already a star, waved the trophy over his head.
He gave me a smaller version of that smile now, offered the seat on the sofa beside him. His sister gave me a cold look, one that: said easygoing friendliness was not a coin with much value in her realm. I was familiar with that look, too, had seen it on TV, as Nora Day followed the games.
I sat, shifted to face the two of them. Nora Day, her voice as chilly as her look, said, “I thought I heard they arrested Tony Manelli this morning.”
“I’m working for his lawyer. We think they have the wrong man.”
“Why?” She sipped her coffee. She was darker skinned than her brother, and better looking, but even seated, her height and her don’t-mess-with-me eyes created the sense of more space around her, perhaps, than there actually was.
“For one thing, he says he didn’t do it.”
She gave a scornful laugh. “Do people often say they did?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes they find they didn’t count on the guilt.”
“Well,” she said, “maybe Tony doesn’t feel guilty.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s not. Can I ask you some questions?”
Nora sipped more coffee, didn’t answer.
Nathaniel said, “Don’t mind her.” He grinned good-naturedly, a younger brother who’d known, and shrugged off, his older sister’s moodiness all his life. “What do you want to know?” Nora rolled her eyes, an older sister who’d known, and been short-tempered with, her younger brother’s affability since he was a baby.
“You went to dinner with Damon last night?”
“Sure.”
“And you,” I said to Nora, “didn’t?”
She turned her icy gaze on me, said, “I don’t go out after the games.”