Glen moved the ball back into his hands, dribbled it a few times on the asphalt. “Really? Anybody I know?”
“Oh, I sure do think so,” he said. “Marcus Harrison. A teammate of yours, am I right?”
Glen said, “Yeah, a former teammate. He was up here a couple of days ago, stopping by. Shit. You say he’s missing?”
Colter said, “Yes. And you’re saying he was here?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, bouncing the ball back up and down. “Stayed for a day and a night. Last time I saw him, yesterday morning, I drove him back into town, at the Greyhound stop, by Frye’s General Store. You mean he never got back down to Queens?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Colter said. “You see, his wife was expecting him back yesterday evening, and he never showed up. And Greyhound is claiming that he never got on the bus when it stopped in town. So it looks like you might be the last one to see him.”
“Wow,” he said, bouncing the ball up and down some more and then suddenly stopping. “C’mon inside, I’ll get you something to drink. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“Gee, thanks,” the chief said, and Glen moved quick, turning his head so the kid couldn’t see him smile.
Glen didn’t bother offering anything alcoholic to the chief, so he poured them both glasses of lemonade and went into the dining room, which had great views from the windows that overlooked the lake. Nearby was the dock and moored to the dock was his light blue powerboat, with a gray canvas tarpaulin covering it. The fishermen were gone and there was now just a solitary sailboat, out on the south end of the lake, catching one last sail before wintering in some boathouse somewhere, and Colter said, “View must be nice once the leaves start changing.”
Glen sat down at the round oak dining room table, letting his long legs stretch out. “Sure, but we don’t come up that much during the fall. Summer’s our playtime, and when we get back to Boston, there’s plenty of work to be done.”
“And what exactly do you do now, Mr. Jackson?” And with that, the polite young chief sat down, took out a little notebook and opened it up on the dining room table. “You haven’t played for the Celtics for a very long time, right?”
“Promise not to laugh?” he asked.
“Sure. Promise not to laugh.”
“Good. I give motivational speeches, that’s what I do.” He couldn’t help himself, he smiled at the chief, who was gracious enough to smile back. “You see, the thing is, once you’re out of basketball, what’s left? I didn’t have the voice for doing announcing work. I was okay in doing some advertising spots, but that kind of work didn’t last long. You see, things have changed since back when I was tossing the ball around. Back then, there weren’t the endorsements, the contracts, the TV work. Today’s guys can earn a couple of million by just showing up in the right sneakers. Wasn’t like that when I was their age.”
“So you give speeches?”
“Yep. About a dozen a year, on how to be better managers, better team players, work together for the same goal. That sort of thing. Not lots of money, but enough to make a living. Hey. Wanna hear a secret?”
The chief smiled but there was something in those eyes that said he liked hearing secrets very much. “Sure. Go right ahead.”
Glen said, “Truth is, most of the time, I’m just stealin’ their money. Companies get in trouble, they have morale problems, they tend to look outside for a solution. They don’t think about looking inside. So I come by and give ’em a nice pep talk, everything’s jazzed up for a week or so after I’m gone, and then the same lousy managers and overworked employees fall back into their ruts, while I’m waiting for their checks to clear.”
Colter didn’t write anything down, which was fine. Glen said, “Secret’s safe with you?”
“Sure is,” the chief said.
Glen said, “All right, enough about me. What do you want to know about Marcus?”
“Did he play with you on the Celtics?”
Glen looked at that smooth face and those unblinking eyes, wondering if the guy was trying to play some sort of game. “No, he didn’t.”
The chief said, “But he was a teammate of yours, right?”
“Right. But not on the Celtics.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Where, then?”
Maybe the boy was just dumb. Could it be? Glen said, “On the Olympic team, that’s where. Marcus and me and ten other guys, we played for the United States back in ’72.”
“All right, then,” the chief said, making a note. “The 1972 Olympic team. Okay. Now. When did Marcus come up here?”
“Today’s Monday. He came up here Saturday, spent the night, and I dropped him off at the bus stop yesterday morning.”
“Was there anybody else in your house at the time?”
“Nope.”
“And what did the two of you do while he was here?”
Glen shrugged. “Played some hoops for old time’s sake. Talked about the old days. Had a barbecue and some beer.”
Colter took a careful sip from his lemonade. “Were you expecting him?”
“Excuse me?”
Colter said, “He’s only up here for a day and a half. He took a bus up from Queens, in New York. It seems like a lot of work to get up here for just a quick visit.”
Glen said, “Yeah, I was expecting him. But he only gave me a day’s warning.”
Colter’s eyes were now fixed on him. “So why the quick visit? Why did he come to see you, Mr. Jackson?”
Now he knew that the young boy was pretty sharp. “Money.”
“He had money problems?”
“Shit, yes. Poor guy’s about to be kicked out of his apartment, he’s had maybe a half dozen jobs over the years, everything from selling cars to real estate… like I said earlier, Chief, things are so much different now than it was back then. You get a guy like him or me, in our fifties… time’s running out if you didn’t plan real serious back when you were younger for your financial future.”
“Did you help him?”
Glen thought for just a moment, shook his head. “I offered to, but he wouldn’t take any of my money. But he had other ideas.”
“Like what?”
“The silver medal, that’s what.”
“I’m sorry, the what?”
He paused, judging the face, recalled all the times he had seen opponents’ faces on the court, trying to read who they were and where they were coming from. This one was trying to be the Mayberry hayseed, sort of be the dummy cop, and Glen was going to play along with the game. Thing about games is that it’s only fair when both sides know that it’s being played.
“The silver medal,” Glen said. “Marcus decided it was time to get it, and me and the other team members, we didn’t want him to. He came up here to try to convince me otherwise.”
Colter tried a smile and said, “You’re getting me even more confused, Mr. Jackson. Look. I’m sorry to hurt your feelings and all, but I’m not a basketball fan. I don’t know much about you or the game, or the Olympic team. I’m more of a Red Sox fan myself.”
“Okay. No problem there.”
“So I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, the silver medal. Did your team win the silver medal at the Olympics?”
“Sort of.”
“And why doesn’t Marcus have the silver medal?”
Glen shook his head. “Because none of us does, and none of us will. Look, you really meant that, about not knowing anything about basketball?”
A quick nod. “Hardly a thing.”
He ran a thumb across the top of his lemonade glass. “You in the mood for a history lesson?”
“Will it have something to do with Marcus?”
“It’ll have a lot to do with Marcus, and me, and the other guys, and what happened in ’72. Look. Back in 1972, the Olympics were in Munich, okay? First time they had been in Germany since Berlin, back in ’36. Which was one hell of a coincidence, because back in 1936, that was the first time basketball was an Olympic sport. The U.S. won the gold medal then, and won the gold medal at every other Olympics since then, right up to 1972. You know what our record was, the U.S. Olympic team record?”