“I guarantee it.”
“Thass good, man. ’Cause I took the points big-time.”
Red steps into the furnace room and his footsteps are instantly masked by the hiss of the boiler. He might be lingering a few feet from the open doorway, or he might be on the moon. Campbell stares up at me and I stare down at him. I wonder if he’s looked through my file, tried to get an idea of who he was up against. But, no, careful is not his style. Freddie told him about the coke and he wanted it and that was all she wrote. When he found Spooky in the locker room, he could have backed off, or busted Spooky and taken the credit. But he was already counting the money, already holding it in his sweaty palm.
“Where’s my product, Percy?”
The shiny white surface of his bald scalp slowly reddens. Most likely, in his entire career, no con ever spoke to him this way. But then, in times past, he always had plenty of backup. Now he’s on his own. He can’t call for help, even if he could make himself heard over the din of the furnace, without everything coming out. Spooky, Freddie, the cocaine, everything. Officer Percy Campbell is helpless.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Yablonsky.”
“You can do better than that.” I watch his hand inch toward his back pocket. It’s pathetic, really. “You wanna go that route, Percy, it’s all right, but I don’t see how it’s gonna do you any good.” I step forward until we’re less than an arm’s length apart.
Credit where credit is due, Campbell’s right hand dives into his pocket and he snarls, “See you in hell, ya Jew bastard.”
Despite the epithet and the made-for-TV dialogue, death is not on today’s agenda. First because I’m not a killer, and second because Officer Campbell’s body would draw far too much attention. Most likely, he’s already a suspect in Spooky’s murder.
I grab his wrist, pin his hand in his pocket, then put all 270 pounds into a looping right that makes a sound like a bat slammed into a watermelon as it crashes into his chest. His eyes roll up, his legs wobble, then fail him altogether. He drops to the floor and stops breathing.
For a minute, I think I’m gonna have to give him CPR, maybe catch some fatal screw disease, but then his eyes snap into focus as he rises to a sitting position, draws a painfully ragged breath, and begins to gasp.
I squat down, remove the knife from his pocket and a can of pepper spray from a holder on his belt. I toss them into the furnace room where they can be easily recovered.
“Time for a reality check, Percy. First, you’re completely on your own here. You couldn’t call for help even if there was someone to hear you. Not without risking a murder charge. Second, you’re a middle-aged, out-of-shape, alcoholic sadist who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, while I’m a hardened, merciless criminal who wants his cookies back.”
I grab him by the collar, yank him to his feet, deposit him on one of the few upright desks. Campbell probably goes about 220, but I handle him easily enough. Last time I was in the weight room, I benched 350 for the first time.
“Where’s my coke., Percy?”
There’s no more fight in Campbell’s eyes. There’s hate in abundance, and fear, but no fight. He points up, to a ventilator shaft in the wall. “Behind the grille.”
A moment later I’m holding the package in my hand. It’s a joyous moment, even triumphant, but it’s not enough.
“Now you gotta pay for Spooky,” I tell him.
“What?” He seems honestly confused, as though I’d brought up the name of a mutual acquaintance he can’t quite recall.
“Spooky was my teammate and my friend. You killed him and now I’m gonna punish you, and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it. You’ve already been checked out on the computer, by the way. You’re on sick leave.”
I push him backward off the desk and onto the floor. I expect a struggle, but Campbell’s eyes reveal only a rapidly enveloping panic. He slides away as I approach, until he comes up against an overturned desk. “Please, please,” he moans. “Please don’t.” I wonder how many times he’s heard those words from the mouth of a Freddie Morrow. I wonder how many times he’s shown mercy in the course of his long shitkicker career.
A long wet stain runs along the inside of Campbell’s thigh, from his crotch to his shins. As I kneel beside him, he rolls onto his side and curls into a fetal position. “Please, please, please.”
In the locker room, before the game, I tape my knees using a pair of Ace bandages that haven’t been washed since the season began. The bandages are still damp from yesterday’s practice and they feel slighty gritty against my skin. They stink, too, stink something nasty. The bandages are part of a ritual that started five years ago when my legs began to give out. As I wind them around my knees, I put on my game face. No mercy is what I tell myself. Take the moron’s game, take his heart, crush his soul.
I flex the knuckles of my right hand. Though I kept well away from Campbell ’s head and face, both hands are a little sore.
“Bubba?”
“Yeah, Road?” I’ve already spoken to Road, Tiny, and Hafez Islam about the officials calling the game close. I left out Bibi Guernavaca because he’s a Pentecostal and begins every encounter with the words Cristo salva.
“You found our product, bro. You the best, you the baddest. You saved our asses. I love you, man.”
A poignant moment, by prison standards. I rise, thump Road’s chest. “Forget that bullshit,” I tell him. “You wanna show your gratitude, hit the jump shot when I pass out of the double team.”
I let the moron win the opening tip. A few seconds later, when the ball comes to him maybe fifteen feet out, I let him drive by me. The packed stands, ablaze with energy a moment before, grow silent. I hustle up the court and plant myself just outside the paint and Tiny gets the ball to me before the double team closes down. I fake left, then spin to the baseline, where the moron checks me with his hip, as he did twenty times in the first game. From fifteen feet away, the senior official, a screw called Dashing Dan Thomas, blows the whistle as I toss the ball in the direction of the basket.
I make both free throws and the crowd wakes up. Red Mitchell, sitting four rows back at midcourt, grins and shakes his head. The moron sets up fifteen feet from the basket, well outside his range. I know he’ll go right and that he’ll bump me with his shoulder on his way across the court. I know because he bumped me in the first game and got away with it. This time, however, Dashing Dan…
The moron goes ballistic, launching a string of epithets at Dashing Dan, who, very predictably, tees the moron up. Satisfied I watch Tiny make the free throw while the moron’s coach drags him over to the bench.
By the end of the first quarter, we’re up 25-9. The fans, even those who bet against us, are on their feet with every play. I’ve scored thirteen points, most of them against the moron’s sub, who’s slow and short, but at least knows when to keep his mouth shut.
As a high school senior, at seventeen, I was already six-six. My knees were coiled springs and injuries were catastrophes that happened to somebody else, somebody smaller and weaker. I was never tired in the last quarter. No, fatigue was what I felt after the party that followed the game, at six o’clock in the morning, with my equally spent girlfriend lying beside me.
I experience all of that again. Just as if I hadn’t thrown it away in a moment of rage. My body is sweat-slick. Sweat drips from my headband into my eyes. I’m completely alive in my flesh now. Flesh is the only reality I have. I measure time in the thump of the ball on the floor. I’m unstoppable.