Ema rolled her eyes. I got out of the car and jogged toward the school. Tyrell greeted me at the door. He wore a white basketball uniform with the word Weequahic across the chest. “You guys are red,” he said, tossing me a red pinny to throw over my shirt.
The scrimmage between Weequahic High and whatever stragglers they could find was already in the final quarter. I quickly checked the stands. Yep, Mr. Waters was there. I gave him a little wave and he nodded back. During the next time-out, I entered the game. I saw Tyrell laughing it up with his teammates and felt my face start to burn. Tyrell’s team put their hands in as one and shouted, “Defense!” and then broke. They were teammates. Tyrell liked playing with me in pickup games, but this was different. This was his school team. This mattered.
How could I have blown my chance?
I still had my junior and senior years, but they seemed so far away, impossible to imagine now. Maybe Mom would get better and we could move someplace else and I could start again-but she couldn’t leave rehab for another six weeks. Maybe Dad…
Maybe Dad what?
I had trouble concentrating on basketball. I kept thinking about my father, supposedly in that grave out in Los Angeles, and I wondered whether I’d ever get the chance to know for certain. Usually I forget all that while I play. But not today.
I didn’t play well. We stragglers got crushed and for the first time in my overly competitive playing life, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get to Mr. Waters and ask him about Henry Caldwell. The sound of the final buzzer was merciful. I got in line and shook hands with the other team. When I reached Tyrell, he said, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Tyrell frowned at me. “Then why aren’t you at tryouts today?”
“I got kicked off the team.”
“What?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Oh man, Mickey, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be fine,” I lied.
“Hey, Tyrell.” It was one of his teammates. “Coach wants a quick meet.”
Tyrell looked at me warily. “We’ll talk about this in a few minutes, okay?”
He jogged away with his teammate. I started to wonder about how to approach Mr. Waters and what exactly to say to him, but there was no need. As soon as Tyrell was out of sight, he hurried over to me.
“How are you, Mickey?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“How is your friend Rachel?”
No beating around the bush this time.
“She’s better.”
“I heard they released her.”
“Yes, I saw her earlier today. I even met her father.”
That piqued his interest. “How is he handling all this?”
Should I tell him about Mr. Caldwell pulling a gun on me? I wasn’t sure, so I decided to keep it simpler. “He seemed very much on edge.”
“On edge how?”
“Jumpy.”
“Jumpy how?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Easily startled. Maybe a little scared. You can’t blame him, I guess. His ex-wife was just murdered. His daughter was just shot.” I tilted my head. “Mr. Waters, can I ask you a question?”
He didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no either.
“How do you know Henry Caldwell?”
Waters didn’t seem to like that. “Who said I know him?”
“When you drove me home yesterday, you asked me how Henry was doing. How did you know his first name?”
His eyes hardened.
“Mr. Waters?”
“It’s not important, Mickey.”
“Are you investigating him?”
“That isn’t your business.”
“Rachel is my friend.”
“And what? You’re going to find who shot her?” He arched an eyebrow. “This isn’t a game, Mickey. These people play for keeps.”
“What people?”
He shook his head and suddenly he wasn’t the nice father anymore-he was the tough cop. “I’ll ask the questions. When you were at the Caldwells’ house, did you see anybody else?”
“Like who?”
“Just answer the question.”
“No, there was just Rachel and…” Then I remembered it. “Wait, there were two creepy guys talking to Mr. Caldwell right after I left.”
“What did they look like?”
“Like, I don’t know, street punks. One had a bandana on his head and a scar on his cheek.”
Mr. Waters swallowed when I said that. He grabbed his smartphone and started pressing some buttons. “Is this the man you saw?”
He showed me the picture on the phone. No doubt about it. It was Scarface. “Yeah, that’s the guy. Who is he?”
Mr. Waters’s face fell. “He’s a very bad man, Mickey.”
“But who is he?”
“I want you to stay far away from him, you hear? You wouldn’t believe the evil he’s capable of.”
If Mr. Waters was trying to scare me, it was working. “Did he have something to do with what happened to Rachel?”
But Mr. Waters was having none of that. “You stay out of this, Mickey.” There was anger in his voice. “I’m not going to tell you again. Stop playing around or someone is going to get hurt.”
CHAPTER 35
I didn’t wait around for Tyrell because I didn’t want to get into the whole getting-kicked-off-the-team mess. Mr. Waters remained firm with me. “If you see or hear anything, you call me. Here’s my number.”
He started to hand me his card again, but I took out my wallet and showed him that I still had the last card he’d given me. “I also plugged your number into my phone contacts,” I said.
“Put it on speed dial,” Mr. Waters warned me for the second time now.
I hurried back down the block. The lime-green Volkswagen Beetle stuck out like, well, like a lime-green Volkswagen Beetle. When I slid into the backseat, Ema said, “How was your game?”
I gave her a curious look as my cell phone buzzed. Ema made a big production of staring hard at my eyes, then at my phone, and I got the message, so to speak. I picked up the mobile and saw that I had text from her: don’t say anything about shooting in front of Niles. he’ll worry. let’s talk later and try to sneak out to Bat Lady’s tunnel tonight. just talk dumb stuff now, like you’re a typical boy obsessed with sports.
I frowned at her. She shrugged.
“Yes,” Niles said, pulling away, “how did your important basketball game go?”
“Great, thanks.”
“It was a very short game, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
“And I had no idea Miss Emma was into helping facilitate your basketball prowess by having me drive down here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s a big, uh, facilitator.”
“Miss Emma is just full of surprises today,” Niles said, turning onto Route 280. “And I guess I’m supposed to just believe every word she says.”
“Niles,” Ema said.
“No, no, Miss Emma, I am merely a servant. You owe me no explanation.”
I texted Ema: Niles isn’t buying it.
“Ya think?” Ema said to me, not even bothering with the text.
In the driver’s seat, Niles smiled.
We stayed silent for the ride home. Niles dropped me off at Uncle Myron’s house. I sat in the kitchen and tried to sort through the last day. Nothing came to me. I grabbed the phone and dialed my mother’s rehabilitation center. I asked for my mother’s room. “Please hold.”
Two rings, a pickup, and a heavy sigh. “You know you can’t talk to her, Mickey.”
I did know. Mom had had a “relapse”-in short, she had taken drugs again within hours of her earlier release-and was now being isolated. The woman on the other end of line was Christine Shippee, the head of the rehab center. “I just want to hear her voice,” I said.
“You know I can’t do that.”
I did. But I missed her, especially now when it felt as though everything was caving in on me again. Before my dad died, Mom had been so vibrant, so wise and wonderful-I’d have called her the perfect mother, but many of us think that, don’t we?