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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 go
“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. “Da
“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, Da
“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, Da
“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 go
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 onto 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 Da
“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, Da
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-”