Sondra wanted to spend the night with me but the Sadler family’s affairs were tangled enough without her disappearing too. I made her get dressed, put her in a taxi shortly after midnight, then returned upstairs to sack out. The bed was still rumpled and the sheets exuded the faint aroma of her perfume and the pungent odor of female musk. I fell asleep at once and dreamed I was married to Sondra and Richie was our son. Then the dream turned wicked and I was haunted by the specters of Richie in a ditch with his head cut off, my daughter wandering onto the runway of Kennedy Airport, Warnell Slakey taking a pipe to my ankles...
I hauled myself out of the nightmare at 7, went out for a head-clearing jog along the East River esplanade, then came home and showered. By then it was almost 9. I phoned the commissioner’s office but he still hadn’t heard anything more from Vreel. He was getting nervous, however, and asked me if perhaps we shouldn’t bring the FBI into it after all. I said let’s give it another day.
I made a few more phone calls, catching up on the previous day’s business, then phoned the Crispus Attucks High School in Harlem and asked the gal in the principal’s office to please locate Reggie McLaughlin and have him call me back as soon as possible. Five minutes later he called.
Reggie was the school’s phys ed teacher and basketball coach, and a good friend of mine. Several years ago, someone told me he played a terrific game. He was in the famous Ruckers tournament, the annual basketball competition held up at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue in Harlem. I went. He was an exciting player to watch, lithe and quick with big hands and springy legs. I was introduced to him and we talked about my helping him get a college scholarship. But the Army put in its bid first. They drafted him and sent to a place called Vietnam. One day on a mountain patrol his platoon walked into an ambush and Reggie bought a round of AK-47 in the kneecap. Another flower cut down by the century’s stupidest war.
Between excellent medical care and Reggie’s own obdurate will, he’d managed to rehabilitate himself to 95 percent of his former prowess. But as I could very well testify, that other 5 percent was the edge that separates the professional sheep from the hopeful lambs. There was no way Reggie McLaughlin was going to make it as a pro. With government aid he got a phys ed degree at a junior college and I helped him get the coaching job at Attucks High.
“How you been, Reggie?”
“Okay, Dave. You?”
“Takin’ care of business. Say, I got a favor to ask of you. You gonna be around in an hour?”
“Sure. Where am I gonna go?”
“Okay, I’ll be dropping by the school. Can you round up your best basketball players?”
There was a puzzled silence. “You recruitin’, Dave? I don’t allow recruiters near my kids.”
“No, nothing like that, Reg, but believe me, it’s very important. I’ll explain when I get up there.”
“Okay. See you in an hour.”
I called Roy Lescade and asked him to meet me in front of the school in an hour. Then I phoned Trish and told her I wouldn’t be coming in again this morning. She called me some new names I’d never heard and hung up with a resounding slam.
I left the building and caught the Lexington Avenue subway up to 125th Street, then walked over to 128th and Lenox Avenue. The first huge drops of a late-spring thunderstorm were spattering the littered pavement and I found Roy Lescade in his wrinkled raincoat pacing outside the front steps. “Why don’t you get a new raincoat?” I said to him. “Yours is 100 percent absorbent.” Every drop that landed on it spread into a nickel-sized black blot.
“If I did, I’d have nothin’ to bitch about when it rains,” he said. “Say, what’s all this about?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Here comes the rain.”
The pelting rain hit us just as we were trotting up the steps. We ducked inside and Roy said, “Look at this fuckin’ raincoat, will you?” It looked like a towel that had just been hauled out of a swimming pool.
We slid into a frenzied, raucous tide of black kids joking about the sudden downpour as they changed classes. We followed the arrows to the principal’s office, where a beefy old-timer made out passes allowing us to visit the gym. I was sure she thought we were cops.
“I visited Timmie Lee last night,” Roy said.
“How is he?”
Roy pressed his lips together. “I don’t think he’s gonna make it. And your friend Tatum—”
“I know about Tatum,” I said.
The unsmiling secretary gave us our passes and directed us to the gym. Attucks was a brand-new school, but despite some vandal-proofing innovations it was already beginning to show the handiwork of the world’s most prolific young artists. The gym, however, a bright, spacious, well-equipped one, was totally free of graffiti, as if it were the one place the kids revered too highly to desecrate.
I caught Reggie’s eye in the far corner as he worked with a class on the rings. Nearby a group of gangly boys was playing half-court three-on-three, and the quality of the game was high. I studied the players as Reggie trotted over. Compulsively, I glanced at his right knee and noted the criss-cross of scar tissue where the croakers had put his patella back together. Reggie’s face was chocolate brown, round, and serious.
I introduced him to Roy. Then I asked him if he’d ever heard of Warnell Slakey.
Reggie’s gentle eyes hardened. “I sure have.”
“What do you know about him?”
“I know that if I ever find that cocksucker within a hundred yards of this school I’m gonna cut his balls off. I told him so, too. Did you hear what happened the other night? There’s this kid Timmie Lee—”
“That’s why we’re here, Reggie,” I said. “I want to nail Slakey for that little episode. I think you can help me. Roy here, who works for the Post, is going to cover the story.”
“You just say how I can help, Dave. Whatever you need, you got it.”
I glanced over at the game in progress. “We need a decoy, a first-rate prospect we can use for bait.”
“I dig it, I dig it,” Reggie chuckled.
“But the kid can’t just be a good ballplayer. He’s got to be a good actor, too. And he’s got to have balls, because this might be a little dangerous.”
“Yes, yes,” Reggie said, rubbing his goatee. We watched the game for a couple of minutes. The kids were all over 6 feet tall, fast and aggressive, but one of them stood out. He was almost as tall as I am, thin but hard-muscled, and ferocious in action. He could leap to the top of the backboard, and knew all the schoolyard tricks like “pinning” the ball to the board, or slamming the rim so hard it vibrated an opponent’s shot out of the hoop.
“That’s Mike Amos,” Reggie said, “He’s pro stuff for a certainty. Reminds me of Connie Hawkins.”
He blew his whistle and the game stopped abruptly. “Hey, Frisbee! C’mere.” He turned to us and said, “They call him ‘Frisbee’ on account of he hangs in the air for so long.”
Mike Amos left the game reluctantly and trotted over. He had a neat natural Afro with big, Clyde-like sideburns. His eyes were suspicious and his expression ultra-cool, but when Reggie introduced us his manner softened a little. “You the agent, right?”
“Right.”
He grimaced. “Uh, I wasn’t really givin’ it my best out there. Just foolin’ around, like.”
“Your ‘foolin’ around’ looks pretty good to me,” I said.
Reggie interrupted. “Mr. Bolt isn’t here to scout you, Mike.”
“No?” he said, a little bewildered, looking from Roy to me.
“It’s true I’m not here to scout you, Mike, but if you need any help when you’re ready to apply to college, you let me know. Meanwhile, I was wondering if you’d like to help us on a kind of special deal.”
That perked him up. “Sure!” he said.
“Don’t say yes till you’ve heard what it it’s about. There’s likely to be some personal danger involved—and you might get hurt.”
“Sheeit,” he laughed. “I risk my life every time I go to the A&P.”
I liked him. “You know who Warnell Slakey is?”
“Uh huh. He hung around our schoolyard till Coach chased him away. Chased him good, too,” he said, grinning at the memory. I would like to have witnessed that little encounter. “You know about Timmie Lee?” he said turning serious.
“What happened to Timmie Lee is what brought us here,” Roy told him.
“You need help getting back at Slakey, you come to the right cat,” Frisbee said. He looked at Reggie. “Remember what you told us that day? You told us, ‘Boys, if you got to choose between Slakey and a drug-pusher, you take the pusher.’ I didn’t understand that until I heard about Timmie.”
I felt Mike was right for the part of the eager but naive schoolyard basketball virtuoso dying to be discovered. I laid my proposition on him and he got a faraway look in his eyes, like a budding actor hearing he’s up for a lead in a Broadway production.
I wasn’t even finished when he said, “I’ll do it.”
“Maybe you ought to talk it over with your folks,” I said.
“My folks haven’t told me what to do since I was 6,” he said. “If Coach thinks it’s all right, I’m ready to go.”
Reggie still looked a little dubious, mainly, I think, because of the danger to Mike. Roy said, “Reggie, if we can nail Slakey in flagrante delicto, we can wipe him off the streets for years.”
Reggie reflected a little longer, then said, “I don’t know about any delicto shit, but I do know I want that guy’s ass.” He looked at his protege.
“That’s all I need to know,” Frisbee shrugged. “Now, how we gonna work this?”