“When was the last time you saw her?” Nick asked.
“It was at a bar called the Crooked Fence. It’s not far from here. I yelled at some creep who was trying to come on to me, and he left the bar and she left the bar right after him. I never saw her again.”
“Did she go after him?”
“I don’t know. She just said, ‘I’ll be right back’ and left.” Nick took Ralph Giglio’s sketch out of his pocket and placed it in front of Angie. “Do you recognize this man at all?”
Angie looked at the sketch and shrugged her shoulders. “No, not offhand.”
“Could he have been the man at the bar that you yelled at?”
“He could have been. To tell you the truth, I never really looked at the guy. I just told him to get lost. If he walked in this room right now, I probably wouldn’t recognize him.”
“Anything else that you can tell us that might help us in this investigation?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She seemed calmer now. “Wait a minute.” She sat up straight. “There was one other thing. I didn’t realize it until the next afternoon when I went shopping, but one of my credit cards was missing. I immediately called the credit card company and canceled it.”
Nick stole a glance at Tony to see if he’d caught the significance.
“Can you give us an old bill so we can get the card number?” he asked.
“Sure, I have it right here.” She started shuffling through some papers on the coffee table in front of her. “Here it is.” She handed a single piece of paper to Nick, who passed it over to Tony.
Nick turned back to her. “Angie, just one more question, I promise. Did you ever tell Lois about Carl?”
Angie hesitated once more. Nick waited. There was no need to go through his criminal penalties speech again. She was a sharp girl. She got it.
“I think I may have,” she finally told him.
“Did you tell her about the money and how he brought it?”
“I think so. She’d asked me how I could afford such a nice place. I was trying to be honest.”
Nick thanked her for her time as he and Tony stood up to leave. He needed to go back to the office and methodically fit the puzzle pieces together, but it appeared that Angie’s female lover might have been an accomplice in Carl Robertson’s death. He brought it up with Tony once they were in the car and moving.
“Run that credit card as soon as we get back.”
“Will do,” Tony replied. “How come you didn’t ask her to come down to the station to look at some pictures-see if she could identify the broad?”
“I figured it could wait a day or two. We pressured her enough today.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“So they were a team-the woman and this guy Paul and David identified.”
“It seems that way,” said Tony. “She got the information, he pulled the job. But why kill Robertson?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he tried to grab the gun?”
“There was no evidence of a struggle.”
“We’ll probably never know exactly what happened. Things just don’t add up, though. If they were a team, and if the shooter and the guy at the bar are the same person, what the hell was all that about at the bar-her running out after him? It doesn’t make sense.”
Tony didn’t have an answer for that one. And clearly, at the moment, neither did Nick.
15
Gregory Brown, one of the new black guys from north of the Ninety-sixth Street line of demarcation, was the fastest player on the team-maybe the fastest player the Lexingtons had ever had. Joe Sheffield, the coach, installed him as running back after his very first practice. Floyd Peters, another black kid, and Luis “Rico” Melendez, the Puerto Rican, were neck and neck in the sprints and a close second to Gregory. The next fastest was the biggest surprise-Johnny Tobin. Johnny had grown into his body in the last year, going from a gangly youth to a more coordinated, muscular athlete. As a consequence, his reflexes were quicker and he was a lot faster.
After three weeks of practicing and scrimmaging, the positions were set. Johnny secured a starting spot in the defensive backfield with Floyd Peters and Rico Melendez. Although he was speedy enough to stay with most receivers, Johnny initially had no idea how to play defensive back. Rico and Floyd took him under their wing.
“You gotta practice differently than the rest of the team,” Floyd told him. “You gotta practice running backwards and sideways without looking where you’re going.”
The three of them would go off by themselves and practice running backward on their toes and sideways with cross steps at full speed. They didn’t have the luxury of a defensive backfield coach so they coached themselves-at least, Rico and Floyd coached Johnny. He didn’t know where they’d learned their skills, but Rico and Floyd knew how to play. Floyd was Johnny’s height but thin and wiry. He could twist and turn his body in fluid motions like a ballet dancer. Rico was short, quick, and tough.
Rico was the tactician, and he worked Johnny every day on the fundamentals of playing defensive back. Floyd taught him how to make plays without getting hurt.
“If you want to last in this league, don’t meet everybody head on like that maniac,” Floyd said one day, pointing at Rico. “Catch them at an angle. If you hit a man from the side he goes down a lot easier and it’s a lot easier on you. Just don’t forget to wrap your arms-that’s the key. You gotta play tough but you gotta be smart about it too.”
Rico constantly pushed Johnny to be more aggressive.
“You got a nickname?” Rico asked him the Thursday before the first game.
“Kinda.”
“What is it?”
“They sometimes call me the Mayor of Lexington Avenue.”
“You? Why do they do that?”
“It’s a long story.”
Rico didn’t have time for a story. He was too busy teaching. “I call myself the Rico Kid. You know why?”
“Why?” Johnny asked.
“Because I have my turf, and nobody’s coming into the Rico Kid’s territory without getting hurt. You understand?”
Johnny nodded hesitantly. Rico filled in the blanks. “When we line up in the game on Saturday, you’ll be on the right side-you’ll always be on the right side. I’ll be on the left and Floyd will be in the middle. When you’re out there on that right side, you look at that field in front of you right up to the line of scrimmage and you say to yourself, ‘This is the Mayor’s turf. I own this place. Nobody’s catching a ball in here. Nobody’s coming in here without getting hurt.’ You got that?”
Johnny nodded. “I got it. But you’re not going to call me the Mayor from now on, are you? It’s a little embarrassing.”
“I hear you, man. I’ll tell you what. Off the field I’ll call you Johnny, but on the field you’re the Mayor. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough.”
The first game was at McCombs Dam Park across from Yankee Stadium. Their opponents were the Bronx Bears, whose uniforms matched those of the Chicago Bears-black shirts and white pants. They were big, and Johnny could tell they weren’t sticklers for the rules. They were all grown men in their late twenties and thirties.
The Lexingtons won the toss and elected to receive. Johnny was on the kick return team. Gregory Brown and Floyd stood back by the end zone ready to catch the ball, and Johnny and Rico were ten yards in front of them with Mikey and his brother Eddie; ten yards ahead of them were the linemen. It was a formation they had practiced for the first time on Thursday, for about five minutes. Johnny’s assignment was to find somebody to block after either Gregory or Floyd caught the ball. He was standing out there in his clean white jersey, nervous as hell, butterflies in his stomach, waiting for the referee to start the game. He tried to think about nothing else but finding a man to block.