Paul scanned one side of the field house and I took the other. I tried to take in every face, but with so many people in the audience, it was impossible. I looked at Paul and shook my head. Maybe he’d been wrong about Dante attending the game, and I’d been right, but this was hardly the time to say I told you so, not with my family in possible danger.
I located a uniformed security guard and explained that someone might be showing up to make trouble. I begged him to be on the lookout for a woman matching Virginia’s description. White hair like Barbara Bush, I said. She’s distraught, I said, and unbalanced. The guard nodded. I could practically hear him thinking: If there’s any nut here, I must be looking at her. “I’ll keep my eyes open.” One thumb hitched in his pants pocket, he was watching the game, not my face. “Anybody looks like that comes through, I’ll let you know.”
I didn’t know how it was possible, but the noise in the arena intensified. Wearing bright purple uniforms emblazoned with red W’s and gold stars, the Harlem Wizards streamed onto the court and began their antics to the delighted shrieks of the crowd. While buzzers and whistles assaulted my ears, Paul slipped his arm around me and pulled me close. “I’m sure it’s a false alarm, Hannah, aren’t you?”
“But LouElla seemed so sure!”
“Like the smallpox?”
“I see your point.” We must have appeared to the outside world like a comfortably married, middle-aged couple, standing around looking for front-row seats.
Suddenly Paul’s arm tightened around me. “Look! There she is!”
“Who? Virginia? LouElla?” My eyes vibrated in their sockets as I struggled to look everywhere at once.
“Virginia! Over by the doors!” I followed the long line of Paul’s arm as he pointed across the court. So many people were to-ing and fro-ing near the entrances in a vibrant, colorful patchwork of winter outerwear that I missed her at first. And then it was as if a spotlight had been turned on: Virginia stood there, arms plastered to her sides, solid as a tree, her familiar white head shimmering in the blaze of lights.
I took a step forward and watched, petrified, as Virginia’s arm rose like a turnstile until it extended from her body at a ninety-degree angle. In her hand was a gun. She pointed the weapon toward a spot in the bleachers, straight at Emily, who was sitting next to her husband, bouncing little Chloe on her lap. In that split second, I realized I had been looking for Dante’s Santa cap, but he wasn’t wearing it. It lay across his knees and was no longer blinking. Dante was cheering for the players as they thundered down the court toward the basket.
I shouted “Look out!” but my cry was drowned by the screech of a referee’s whistle.
What’s wrong with these idiots? Can’t they see what’s going on?
Without hesitation, Paul and I dashed onto the floor and raced down the middle of the court toward a herd of basketball players stampeding in our direction. Emily turned toward me, her eyes wide. Dante stood, his hands aloft, frozen in mid-cheer. The crowd around him stood, too, roaring with approval, thinking we were part of the show-Mr. and Mrs. America vs. the Harlem Wizards. Someone started to chant “Go, go, go, go…” and then the rhythmic clapping began.
“Look out!” I screamed again as the Wizards streamed by us on both sides. “She’s got a gun!”
The crowd went wild-“Go, go, go, go!”
I raced toward Virginia, my lungs exploding, waving my arms wildly over my head. “A gun! A gun!”
Suddenly the mood of the crowd changed. The clapping became sporadic as first one section of the audience and then another realized something other than basketball must be going on. Heads turned this way and that in puzzlement and confusion. On the court, the Wizards froze. First a player, poised with the ball in one hand, about to wrist-flip an effortless basket. Then his teammates. Then a referee, arms extended, whistle dangling from his lips, who, thank God, called a time out. Screeeeeeeeeee!
I focused on Virginia. Someone had turned down the volume on the crowd, and in the muffled chaos she turned her head lazily toward me. But the arm holding the gun remained steady. I imagined her finger bearing down slowly, slowly, on the trigger and willed every molecule of adrenaline I possessed into the muscles propelling my legs.
All at once, an object hurtled out of the shadow of the bleachers and launched itself at Virginia in a streak of purple fury. A broad shoulder caught Virginia just below the knees in an NFL-style tackle that sent her sprawling. Virginia’s right arm shot skyward; the gun, gray-black and ugly, spun away, sliding across the polished floor and coming to rest against the athletic shoe of an astonished Wizard. “Gotcha!” exclaimed LouElla. In a single, practiced move, she twisted Virginia’s arm behind her back and rolled her over so that the other woman’s cheek lay squashed against the floor. By the time I reached her side, LouElla was sitting on the small of Virginia’s back, pinning her down.
“Thank you, thank you!” I drew in a ragged breath.
“Are you all right?” Paul extended his hand to LouElla, offering to help her to her feet, but she shook her head.
She wiped her brow with the sleeve of her sweater. “Phew! I’m a little out of practice.” Still balancing on Virginia’s back, she used the fingers of both hands to tuck long strands of hair into the elaborate French twist at the back of her head. All around us the crowd had grown strangely quiet, and I was aware of Dante standing next to me with Emily and Chloe peeking out from behind his back.
Eyes bright and round as coins, LouElla surveyed the faces surrounding her. “Well? Isn’t anybody going to call the police?”
The security guard employed by Halsey Field House happily took over for the exuberant LouElla, who couldn’t help but preen in the spotlight like the Comeback Kid. For the photographers who materialized out of nowhere she posed prettily, but when the Department of Defense police arrived to make a formal arrest, she positively glowed.
In short order, Virginia would find herself locked in a holding cell on Hospital Point, while DOD and the Navy Criminal Investigative Service sorted out jurisdictional issues. We’d be interviewed by NCIS in the morning, we were told. What a way to spend the first day of a new millennium!
In the meantime, the Wizards had resumed their zany tricks, and Ruth had called my cell phone to report in. We’d given Ruth and Daddy the startling news about Virginia and, although badly shaken, we agreed to stay at Halsey Field House until they appeared.
I settled down on the bleachers sandwiched comfortably between Emily and LouElla. Paul, with Chloe on his lap, sat next to Dante in the row above us and behind. Adrenaline still coursed through my veins; I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble staying awake until midnight.
“Lady?”
I turned and stared into the freckled face of a gap-toothed kid around eight years old. He held a needlepoint purse in both hands, its tortoiseshell handles hanging limply to each side. “Yes?”
“My mom told me to give this to you. That other lady dropped it.” He straightened his elbows and thrust the purse in my direction.
I squinted at the kid in confusion. “What lady?”
“The one the cops took.”
Holy moley! I laced my fingers and squeezed my hands together while staring into his innocent, pale blue eyes. My good angel advised me to pat the kid on the head and tell him to give Virginia’s purse to the security guard, but there was a bad angel whispering in my other ear so I smiled, said, “Thank you,” and relieved him of his burden.