Murder at the Foul Line Read online

  They shook hands.

  Cabot grinned and said, “Maybe you don’t drink beer, Danny, but I’ve got some champagne in the fridge. How ’bout we celebrate?”

  But before he got halfway to the kitchen T. D. Randall pulled what looked like a walkie-talkie from his pocket and shouted, “I need backup, now!” He leapt to his feet, drawing a pistol from the back of his waistband and training it on Cabot.

  “Jesus,” Cabot gasped, eyes wide.

  Pettiway stood up, confusion on his face. “What’re you—”

  And then the apartment door burst open and two men in suits, also brandishing guns, pushed inside. Badges hung from their necks.

  Cabot snapped, “What the hell’s going on?”

  Pettiway looked horrified. One of the policemen—a short, muscular man—grabbed him and shoved him against the wall. “Don’t move.” He roughly frisked the man and cuffed him. The other did the same to Cabot, then to Washington.

  The taller of the cops said, “I’m Detective Harvey, Midtown Vice.” Then he recited, “You men are under arrest for conspiracy to alter the outcome of a sporting event and for wagering on the outcome of said event.”

  “You!” Cabot turned to T. D. Randall. “You’re undercover?”

  Randall’s only response was to read the men their rights. He then took a tape recorder out of his pocket. Harvey played a portion of the tape. All their voices were clearly audible.

  “Oh, man,” Washington said. “I don’t understand. What’s this mean? What’s—”

  “It means you’re going to jail, big fella,” Harvey said.

  “No, I can’t—”

  “You lying son of a bitch!” Cabot snapped at Randall.

  The little man said evenly, “You say your job’s making money, Andy? Well, mine’s arresting people when they do it illegally.”

  A third man in a suit, a badge around his neck too, walked into the room. Balding and pudgy, he surveyed the men in the room. “Hey, Lieutenant Grimsby,” Harvey said. “We got the contract, the tape and the perps.” He laughed and looked at Washington. “The case’s a slam dunk.”

  The lieutenant followed Harvey’s eyes to the basketball player, who stood, with his hands cuffed in front of him, staring miserably at the floor. Then the lieutenant frowned. He said, “Wait a minute, that’s Danny Washington? I didn’t know he was the guy. The warrant only listed a John Doc.”

  Randall shrugged and said, “The warrant was issued last week—before Cabot decided on Washington.”

  Grimsby looked Washington up and down. He said to Harvey and his partner, “I’ll take over from here. You guys can go.”

  “But—”

  “It’s okay. I’ll call for transport. Officer Randall, you stay here.”

  “Sure thing, lieutenant.”

  When the two detectives were gone the lieutenant gestured Randall into the corner of the apartment and they spoke for a minute or two. Randall glanced at Washington a couple of times and nodded.

  “Officer,” Pettiway muttered, “I want a lawyer. I’m entitled to one!” The policemen ignored him. Cabot sat miserably on the couch.

  Randall and Grimsby finished their discussion and Grimsby walked up to Washington. He looked his unfortunate prisoner over once more, then said, “Let’s step into the hall for a minute, son.”

  You got yourself into a mess here, didn’t you?” the lieutenant asked, lighting a cigarette.

  “Yessir, I did.”

  Grimsby offered a Marlboro to Washington, who shook his head. “I read that story about you. In the Times. How you take care of your mother and grandmother. You go home regularly to see them. You stay off drugs and out of those gangsta clubs in Midtown. You lead a good life… Why’d you get mixed up with Cabot?”

  “My team was going to fire me and I—”

  The lieutenant gave a sour laugh. “You believed that? Cabot and Pettiway faked it all. That memo in there? Cabot probably wrote it himself.”

  “What?”

  “The team’d be crazy to drop you. They find another two-guard could shoot like you?”

  “Why’d Cabot do that?”

  “He had to make you mad at your team so you’d agree to throw the game. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have, right?”

  “Course not.”

  “They had their bets all lined up in Atlantic City and Vegas. Put a ton of money on the Lakers. They stood to win two million if your team lost.”

  Washington’s face twisted into an angry frown. “And they fooled me. Damn! That’s why they picked me, ’cause I’m stupid. Oh, man, now what’m I gonna do?”

  “You never been in any trouble with the law before?”

  “No, sir.”

  The lieutenant smiled sadly. “My son and I go to nearly every game. We love watching you make those shots.”

  “I love making ’em.”

  The cop’s eyes took in the cheap, stained wallpaper, focused on the corpse of a spider crushed against the wall a long time ago and never cleaned off. “Danny, your name’s not on the warrant. There’s a possibility I may be able to make this go away—if you promise you never get in any trouble with the law again.”

  “Lord, sir, you’ve got my word on that.”

  “But it’ll cost you.”

  “Cost me?”

  “I’ll have to take care of those other cops who were here, Harvey and his partner. Officer Randall too. Then I’d have to make sure the evidence gets lost—permanently. And then the judge who issued the warrants is going to wonder why nothing ever happened with the case. If he asks questions I’ll have to pay him off. His clerk too.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I wouldn’t otherwise, Danny, but you’re a legend here in town. A lot of kids look up to you.”

  “I like it when there’re kids in the bleachers. If I disappointed them ’cause of this, man, I’d feel so bad… How much money would it take, you think?”

  “Probably all of your savings.”

  “Man, I’m using that money for my family back in Maryland. My mother and grandmother… My nieces—I’m making sure they’re going to college.”

  Grimsby shook his head. “Well, Danny, you’re going to have to make a choice here. You don’t have to get me that money but then you’ll go to jail. And what’re your mother and grandmother going to do then?”

  “Man, that’d be terrible.”

  “And if you stay out of jail,” Grimsby pointed out, “you’ll be able to make more money.”

  “That’s true. I will. What about Cabot?”

  “Have to let him go too. But this probably shook him up bad. He may just change his ways—at least for a little while. So what’s it gonna be, Danny?”

  The big man looked down at his hands for a long moment, then held up the cuffs for Grimsby to unlock.

  Three hours later Teddy Grimsby walked up the sour-smelling hallway of Andy Cabot’s apartment building.

  The duffel bag he carried was heavy and he was out of shape. Still he moved quickly; you don’t want to dawdle when you’re carrying a million dollars in cash through Hell’s Kitchen. Washington had come through. They’d met at his gym an hour ago and the player had—almost tearfully—given Grimsby his entire savings account.

  Grimsby now came to Cabot’s apartment. The door was open and the man walked inside, to find himself in the middle of a celebration. Cabot was pouring Asti Spumante into Styrofoam cups and passing them out to the crew from Ernie’s—Mike O’Hanlon and Sedd the Greek, who’d pretended to be Harvey and his partner, the vice cops. Here was Tony Benotti, who’d swallowed his Queens drawl long enough to play “sort of” sports agent Pettiway from L.A.

  Sitting on the couch was T. D. Randall, who’d spent all night rehearsing his critical role by shouting, “I need backup, now!” and leaping up from a table in his Brooklyn apartment about fifty times.

  “I got it,” Grimsby said, gasping from the effort of carrying the money. He opened the duffel bag and dumped a portion of the contents out on
to the table. The packets spilled across the stained wood and onto the floor.

  “Jesus,” Randall muttered, picking up one and smelling it. “Ain’t that pretty.”

  “The big dumb shit… Know what he did?” Grimsby asked, taking a cup. “I meet him in the middle of the locker room of his gym, right? And he says, right in front of everybody, ‘Hey, Detective, I got the money.’”

  “I’ll bet somebody’s got to tie his Nikes for him,” Cabot said, and started distributing stacks of Washington’s million dollars.

  It had been Cabot and Randall’s idea to lay the scam on Washington. So they split $600,000 between them. The others divvied up the rest but nobody complained—they were all just punks and barflies, mostly in debt, and were delighted to be involved in a deal that both made good money and featured a victim who wasn’t going to go to the cops.

  As Cabot dug the last of the cash out of the bag, he frowned and said, “Hey, what’s this?”

  He lifted a little black box from the bag.

  “Looks like a pager,” Grimsby said. “It’s Washington’s bag. Must be his.”

  Pettiway took the device. “Naw, it’s no pager.” Then his eyes grew wide in alarm. “Hell, it’s a GPS tracer!”

  “Oh, shit,” Cabot spat out. He leapt up, just as, for the second time that day, the door to his apartment burst open. This time, however, the law enforcement officers who pushed inside were very real.

  And far more numerous than before.

  In sixty seconds the gang was cuffed and sitting on the floor. A detective from the real Midtown South Vice Unit read them their rights while the crime scene team started collecting evidence: Randall’s “informant” tape, the fake badges, the guns, the phony contract and letter from the coach, the briefcase containing the signing bonus—which wasn’t $500,000 at all but stacks of play money, each one topped with a single hundred-dollar bill. One cop started counting Washington’s cash.

  A moment later a furious and frightened Andy Cabot heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and two men entered the room. One was Danny Washington. The other was a middle-aged man in a suit. His ID card identified him as Detective Tim Getz. “Are these them, Danny?” the cop asked.

  “Yeah. All of them. Those two played they was detectives. And he was an undercover cop, the one with the tape recorder. That guy there, Pettiway—he was playing at being some agent or something for the Lakers, and”—Washington angrily pointed at Cabot—”he was playing at being a asshole.”

  Cabot muttered to Grimsby, “What the hell did you do to tip yourself off?”

  “Nothing!” the faux cop protested. “I did just what you told me to!”

  Getz ignored the bickering. He said to Washington, “The whole thing was a setup, Danny. From the start. They tricked you into agreeing to throw the game, they tricked you into thinking you were arrested, they tricked you into giving up your savings as a bribe. It almost worked too. Except you had the guts to come to us. A lot of people wouldn’t have.”

  The cop inventorying the money finished and looked up. “The serial numbers on the first million match.” He looked around. “Where’s the rest?”

  “Rest?” Cabot’s head turned slowly to the duffel bag.

  “The other five million.”

  “What six million?” Grimsby asked. “Washington only gave me a million.”

  “No, man,” Washington said, frowning. He nodded at Grimsby angrily. “He said to fix it so I wouldn’t go to jail, I had to pay him six million. My whole savings account.”

  One of the cops nodded. “That was the withdrawal receipt from the bank. Six million.”

  Cabot coldly asked Grimsby, “You got six from him? You told us you asked for one million.”

  “I did ask for one!” the man protested. “And that’s what he gave me.”

  Washington blurted, “He said he wanted six million or I’d go to jail and never play basketball again.”

  “No, no!” Grimsby said. “He gave me one million. He must’ve skimmed the rest himself.”

  Getz laughed. “Why the hell would he skim money from himself? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, now, does it, Grimsby?”

  “I don’t know. But he had to. I didn’t do it.”

  Cabot snapped at Grimsby, “You gave it to somebody on the way over here, didn’t you? Who was it? Was it that scumbag Lorn Smales you’re always hanging around with? Or maybe your slut girlfriend? Who? You son of a bitch, you’re going down—”

  Getz waved his hand at Cabot to silence him.

  “Where’s my money?” Now it was Danny Washington who was raging. “That was for my mama and grandma! That was my whole savings account—all everything I saved up playing ball!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Grimsby said.

  “We’ll track it down,” Getz said to Washington to calm him. “But for now let’s book these losers.”

  The gang of extortionists was led outside into paddy wagons for the ride down to central booking.

  The police searched Grimsby’s car, his office at BQE Auto Parts, his and his girlfriend’s apartments and the home of his bewildered friend, Lorn Smales, a skinny druggie living in a walk-up in the East Village. They found no sign of the missing five million. Getz came to the conclusion that Cabot and Grimsby together had probably skimmed the money and hidden it someplace.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Washington,” the detective said. “We’ll do what we can but if we can’t recover the money… well, you better prepare yourself for that. You have insurance?”

  The player said miserably, “Only fifty thousand or something like that—you know, enough to replace my stereo and TV and watch and stuff if my apartment got broke into. I never thought I’d get robbed this much—five million.”

  “We’ll do everything possible, Danny.”

  “Thanks, Detective.”

  The cop started to leave, then paused and turned back. “Hey, Danny, one thing… I hate to ask at a time like this… but…”

  Washington’s face broke into a wan smile. “You want an autograph?”

  “For my kid, you understand.”

  “Sure. What’s his name?”

  A week later Danny Washington was getting ready for a game against the Detroit Pistons. The two-guard had limbered up with a run and plenty of stretches and had just donned his uniform when one of the assistant coaches called him over to the phone.

  He took the receiver.

  “Danny?” the man’s voice asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Detective Getz. I just wanted you to know. That last lead about the cash didn’t pay off.”

  “Oh, man,” Washington muttered.

  “It’s still an open case but the way it usually works is that if we don’t find stolen cash by now, it’s probably gone for good. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, it’s nobody’s fault but my own,” the player said, sighing. “I shouldn’t ever’ve listened to somebody like Andy Cabot. That was stupid. And I’m paying for it now.”

  “Good luck tonight. I’ll be watching the game.”

  “I shoot a couple of treys for you, Detective.”

  After they’d hung up, Washington leaned his head against the locker room wall for a moment. Then he picked up the phone again and placed a call. This one was to his accountant at the man’s home in Manhasset, Long Island.

  “Jerry? It’s Danny Washington.”

  “Danny, how you doing?”

  “Gotta go play some hoops in a minute but I got a question for you. Had this thing happen to me last week.” He explained about the scam and the money.

  “Oh, Danny, that’s terrible. They got five million?”

  “Yeah, it hurt,” the player said. “Anyway, you know I’ve been working on my degree in business during the off-season.”

  “I remember.”

  “Now if I read the tax code right it looks to me like, on my Schedule A, I can take a theft-loss deduction in the amount of the money stolen. Well, less that
exclusion—ten percent of adjusted gross income, of course.”

  “That’s absolutely right.”

  “Okay, my question is—since the loss is five million and I’ll only have three million income this year, can I carry the other two million loss forward and offset most of next year’s income too?”

  “I’ll have to check. But I’m pretty sure you can.”

  “So basically,” Washington summarized, “I’ll hardly be paying the IRS any tax for two years.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, now, that’s good to hear.”

  The accountant said, “It’s still a bummer you had to lose all that money to get out of paying taxes, though.”

  “A damn shame, Jerry,” said the ballplayer, and hung up, thinking: Well, it would be a shame except that the five million, which he’d hidden in a second locker at the gym before he gave the duffel bag to Grimsby, was currently earning sweet interest in an offshore banking account he’d opened years ago in his and his mother’s names.

  Of course he’d known from the minute that little weasel Andy Cabot approached him in the gym more or less what the scam artist had in mind. The two-guard had foreseen the plan unfold as clearly as he could anticipate a 1-3-1 offensive alignment against a 2-3 zone defense.

  Somehow I just know things on the court before they happen. Like knowing when somebody’s going to foul me. Or knowing, when I throw the ball, whether it’ll be a miss or it’ll be nothing but net.

  He looked at his battered Casio. Five minutes until game time. He made one more phone call—to the men’s detention center in downtown New York, where Andy Cabot and T. D. Randall and those coconspirators who couldn’t post bond—which was most of them—were awaiting trial.

  The chief night guard snapped to attention immediately when Washington identified himself. The player and the guard chatted about a recent game, then Washington said, “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure thing, Danny, anything you want. Everybody down here, we’re all big fans of yours.”

  “Make sure the prisoners watch the game tonight.”

  “We don’t usually let ’em watch TV after six but I’ll make sure it’s on. Just for you.”

  “Thanks.”