A Time To...

  “Foul! Foul!” shouted the Bryant fans in jest and wishful thinking, because it clearly wasn’t a foul.

  “Foul!” signaled the ref.

  “Yeah! All right!” thundered the Bryant fans who added a wave of supporting hoots.

  The simultaneous reaction on the other side of the gym was a chorus of heated no’s and boos. One of the Apostles was so mad, he pushed his way through the packed stands to get down on the court. He walked along the sideline, hollering at the ref as the Bryant player made both free throws, giving Bryant a one-point lead.

  “You bought the refs?” Tommy whispered again in Al’s ear.

  Al glanced at Tommy, smiled, and zipped his lips with his fingers to end the conversation.

  CHAPTER 38

  The Game Within a Game

  Then a strange thing happened. The scene became dreamlike and the people in it were all dressed differently.

  All the LIC and Bryant fans were now dressed in their respective team’s jerseys, shorts, and sneakers, instead of their street clothes, as they cheered from their seats. And the players were now dressed in jerseys with names on their backs, but not their names. They were the names of prominent people from Al’s life. The names on the Bryant jerseys included the Mastersons, Ms. Weir, the Disciples, H. Colangelo, B. Dylan, and V. Hugo. The names on the LIC jerseys included B. Bensen, Ms. Lemur, the Apostles, A. Hitler, N. Khrushchev, and F. Castro. The referees were now wearing police uniforms. The scorekeeper was dressed as a priest, the time-keeper as Father Time, the sports writers as historians, the Bryant cheerleaders as hovering winged angels, and the LIC cheerleaders as horn-tailed devils spewing fire from their mouths.

  Now, the scoreboard on the LIC side of the gym tallied LIC’s points as “good” and Bryant’s scores as “evil.” On Bryant’s side of the gym, these labels were reversed. It was confusing and would have to be sorted out by the scorekeeper at the end of the game, Al concluded. But it clearly wasn’t just a basketball game anymore.

  While the images in the scene changed dramatically, the conversation between Al and Tommy continued as if everything were the same.

  “Do you really think we’ll pass the initiation and get into the Disciples?” Al asked Tommy.

  “Hell yeah. Are you kiddin’?” Tommy said with supreme confidence.

  “Sometimes I don’t know. I just want to be a Disciple so bad.”

  “Crazy Jimmy got in. We’ll get in,” Tommy assured Al.

  Meanwhile, on the court, Castro faked right then passed to Ms. Lemur, who immediately drove to the basket and scored, but was called for a charging foul for running into the Mastersons, who stood their ground.

  “Can you keep a secret for a day?” Al asked Tommy.

  “Sure. What do you got?”

  “I did it to prove myself ... you know, ‘tough, brave, intelligent, loyal,’ the Disciple’s code,” Al confided.

  “Did what?”

  “I helped fix this game. I’m the one who called the newspaper and told them about the LIC players,” Al confessed.

  On the court, Hitler grabbed a rebound and threw it the length of the floor to a fast-breaking Khrushchev, who made an uncontested layup.

  “Defense! Where’s your defense?” shouted Tommy at the Bryant players. “Really? Way to go. Cool. I wish I thought of doing it. I mean, we got the better team, but it doesn’t hurt to give our guys a little extra.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

  On the court, an Apostle stole the ball and tossed it to Bensen; he called out 86 before firing a pass to Lemur, who started a series of passes.

  All the Apostles touched the ball before Castro dunked it.

  “Damn! Damn!” shouted Tommy. “It looks like we’ll need some extra help. We’re only up by four. You sure we got this one in the bag?” he asked Al.

  “I did my part.”

  There were a few controversial calls by the refs in the last five minutes of the game, and not surprisingly they were all in Bryant’s favor. In spite of that, LIC came within four points of Bryant going into the final minute. Al could hardly believe it. How could LIC still be in the game? He had risked so much for Bryant to win so he could become a Disciple. A loss now would have crushed him.

  On the court, Dylan’s pass to Colangelo was intercepted by the Apostles to the delight of LIC’s satanic cheerleaders, who formed a pyramid. The cheerleader perched at the top spit out a four-foot-long torch like flame from her mouth. And, when LIC scored on the turnover, its cheerleaders turned to their fans to show them their glowing faces—which appeared as if they had swallowed bright lights.

  It was now a two-point game with thirty-five seconds left. LIC’s Lemur quickly fouled the Mastersons, hoping for two free-throw misses so LIC would have a chance to tie the game before time ran out. The Mastersons missed both shots. With ten seconds left, Benson got the ball. He took an open fifteen-foot shot that bounced up and down off the rim before being knocked out of bounds in the scramble for the rebound as time expired. Bryant won.

  Al and all of Bryant’s fans erupted with wild cheers. The scene then slowly morphed from the dream images to the actual game. Al stared at the score to savor the victory, but was pained to see the scoreboard change Bryant’s points from “good” to “evil” on Bryant’s scoreboard. That image was the last to go as reality returned.

  “Champions, baby! Champions!” Tommy declared.

  “Yeah, champions!” Al affirmed.

  “Celebration time!” Stevie shouted as he stood on his seat, waved his hands high above his head, and turned to face his fellow Disciples. “Let’s go, men. We’ve got some heavy-duty partying to do.”

  As they walked out of the gym, Al noticed the Apostles were gathered at the end of the hallway, past the far entrance of the gym. A smiling Bookie walked out from that group toward Al and the Disciples. He gave Al a thumbs-up and a wink as he walked past them on his way out of the school.

  “You know that guy? Who is he?” Crazy Jimmy asked Al.

  “Yeah. He’s a bookie,” Al said. “He just won big on tonight’s game, and the Apostles lost big to him.”

  “Ha ha ha. Now we got even more to celebrate,” laughed Stevie.

  “How do you know about it?”

  “I helped him win the bet,” Al said with a grin.

  “What? You’re kiddin’?” Stevie said as he patted Al on the back.

  “I wanted to show you guys that I’m man enough to be a Disciple, so I set some LIC players up with pot in their lockers, screwed around with another’s test results, and started a rumor about one of them betting on their games.”

  “Man, that was you? And you got the paper to write about it? That’s killer,” Stevie said with admiration. Then he looked at Tommy standing next to Al and said, “Hey, Tommy, the time to prove yourself is running out, just like it ran out for LIC and the Apostles tonight. And it’s gonna take more than just blowing smoke rings. Al just raised the bar. He just screwed the Apostles big time, and they don’t even know it.”

  As Stevie was talking, too loud for Al, Billy Bensen walked past Stevie and looked into Al’s eyes as if to say, “I heard everything and I don’t like it.”

  The jubilant Disciples exited the school, carrying on with each other, completely absorbed in the moment as they walked to their cars.

  “Hey, Disciples! Wait up!” shouted the Apostles’ leader as he jogged up to the Disciples along with the rest of his group. “Just want to congratulate you guys on your team’s big win tonight. That was some game, probably the worst game our team played all year. Too bad for us that we had three Gs riding on it. The way things went, you’d think the game was fixed. Now, that’s an idea; I wish we’d have done that.”

  “The season’s over. You’ll have to wait till next year,” Stevie said with a big smile.

  “Yes and no,” replied the Apostle leader.

  “OK, you hoodlums move on,” blared the loudspeaker on the police car tha
t drove toward them.

  “See you men later,” said the Apostle with a wave of his hand. It was more of a veiled threat than a good-natured good-bye.

  Al knew from the Apostle’s comments that Billy had told them about his fixing the game, and as a result, he was now a marked man.

  He also knew that Tommy was feeling pressure to outdo Al’s performance. And he understood that he had put the collision course between the Disciples and the Apostles on a fast track. But he didn’t know what to do in response.

  Al didn’t account for all these consequences when he had agreed to work with Bookie. Proving to be a man suddenly got much more complicated. And the last thing he wanted to do was jeopardize his relationship with Tommy, but Al wouldn’t have been surprised if Tommy was angry with him.

  CHAPTER 39

  True Friends to the End

  “You messed up, my man,” Bookie told Al over the phone. “The Apostles are after you for fixing the game. You didn’t keep your mouth shut like I told you, and now they’re out to get you. The good news is that they don’t know about me and the fix. So thanks for taking all the credit and the heat. I want to help you now because I feel a little responsible for your problem.”

  “What are they going to do?” asked a very concerned Al.

  “An accident ... you’re going to have an accident that they’re fixing just for you. At least that’s what my sources tell me. A real bad accident.”

  “When? Where? What kind?”

  “That’s all I know. If I were you, I wouldn’t set foot in their territory again. So no more visits with me at my place. And I’d keep a low profile at school and in your neighborhood. Don’t trust anybody you don’t know.”

  “That doesn’t tell me much.”

  “That’s all I got.”

  At school the next day, Al talked with Tommy in a hallway between classes. “They’re after me, the Apostles. I don’t know what to do,” Al told Tommy.

  “Why you?”

  “One of them had heard Stevie say that I fixed the game. Remember, right after the game in the school when we were all together outside the gym?”

  “Uh oh! You’re in big trouble.”

  “Yeah. That bookie I told you about said they’re going to get me and make it look like an accident.”

  “Hey! Don’t worry. In a week, we’ll both be Disciples. They mess with you and they’ll have to mess with all of us.”

  “And what if they don’t wait a week before coming after me?”

  “Just don’t go anywhere or do anything adventurous, so they don’t have a chance to get you. To make sure you’re OK, let’s stick together. I’ll check your back.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Al said with a sigh.

  “Sure. You’d do the same for me. Remember that time you saved my life?”

  “What? Saved your life? When?” asked a baffled Al.

  “You’re kiddin’, right? If it weren’t for your quick thinking, I’d be dead. I’ll never forget that you brought the school nurse with the antidote before I passed out that time because of my food allergy,” Tommy reminded Al.

  “She said it wasn’t a food allergy, that it was just an upset stomach ... that you got carried away and talked yourself into thinking it was something more.”

  “Then why did she give me an antidote?”

  “It wasn’t a food allergy antidote. It was an antacid to settle your stomach.”

  “No. No. That’s wrong. I have food allergies. I should know,” Tommy insisted.

  “OK, whatever you say. I saved your life. You gonna pay me back now when they come after me?”

  “Sure. Sure. Isn’t that what I just said? I got your back.”

  It didn’t take long for Tommy to get a chance to prove himself. The next day, the two of them were window shopping when they witnessed an accident.

  “Get back! Get back!” shouted the policeman to the crowd of people who were surrounding the teenage boy who had just been hit by a passing car on Steinway Street.

  “That could have been me,” Al told Tommy as they moved out of the cop’s way. “The Apostles could have been driving that car.”

  “Don’t ride your bike for a while. Besides, I would have been right next to you and pushed you out of the way.”

  “Yeah, you got my back,” Al said.

  “OK, everybody keep moving,” the cop told the crowd after he took the first-aid kit from his partner. “An ambulance is on its way, so clear the area.”

  “Seeing that kid is making me sick,” Tommy told Al. “The blood, his twisted arm, his moans ...”

  “Come on. Let’s go,” Al said.

  They walked quickly up the street. “Hey man, it’s less than a week now before we become Disciples,” Tommy reminded Al. “I’m glad we’re doing it at the same time. We’ve been friends, but now we’ll be brothers.”

  “Yeah, me too. People won’t look at us the same way. Instant respect, that’s what we’ll get. That’s what being a Disciple is all about.”

  “Nothing’s more important. Nothing’s worse than people acting like you’re not there, like you’re invisible ...,” Tommy told Al.

  Crash! Went Al and Tommy into the fish delivery man, who had been pulling his hand-truck loaded high with crates of fish, when they collided with him. Their collision made the top crate fall and break open on the sidewalk.

  “Jerks! Yeah, you! I’m talking to you two!” screamed the delivery man. “Am I invisible or something?”

  “Sorry, mister,” Al said as he and Tommy bent down to gather up the six whole flounder that lay scattered on the ground next to them in a pile of crushed ice. “It was an accident.”

  Right after the words came out of Al’s mouth, panic spread across his face, which was also reflected in Tommy’s anxious eyes. They both then looked at the delivery man, who stood towering over them with his arms crossed and a scowl on his scarred, weathered face. Once they felt relatively safe with him, they locked in on everything and everybody around them to identify any other potential threats.

  “An accident? I don’t think so,” spit the delivery man as he watched Tommy and Al gather up his fish. “It wasn’t an accident that I was on my boat at five this morning, that I worked my butt off for seven hours, hauling in and packing fish ... that I drove eighty miles an hour to get here in time to restock Pete’s inventory before his customers come in to get today’s catch for their dinners. And it wasn’t by accident that we bumped into each other.”

  Just then, a black Chevy convertible with its radio blasting “Satisfaction”—full of Apostles singing along— cruised by them slowly. If Al and Tommy had not been crouched down on their knees, picking up the fish, the Apostles would have seen them. Instead, the parked cars and the fisherman’s truck shielded them from view. Tom looked into Al’s eyes and put his hand on Al’s arm to make sure he stayed down until their car passed.

  “There are no accidents in this life. Everything that happens has a purpose. But don’t ask me right now what the purpose of this mess is, other than to piss me off,” growled the delivery man as he placed the last fish back in the crate and wheeled it into Pete’s Fish Market.

  “Whew! That was close. Lucky we bumped into that guy,” Al told Tommy.

  “Yeah, let’s get outta here,” Tommy said as he stood up and glanced over his shoulder at the Apostle’s car turning the corner at the end of the block.

  Al then got up and the two of them continued walking in the opposite direction, but faster now.

  “You’re right about getting respect and about what you were saying,” Al told Tommy. “It means that people look you in the eye when you talk, that they care about what you have to say.”

  “And I’ll tell you something else. We won’t be hiding from Apostles. They’ll be hiding from us when we’re Disciples,” Tommy decreed.

  “Respect!”

  While looking across the street, he glimpsed the back of someone wearing an Apostl
es sweater just before he disappeared into a sporting goods store.

  “Damn, if I see one more Apostle today, I’m gonna be sick,” Tommy told Al as they continued on their way.

  “You don’t need an Apostle to make you sick,” Al said with a good natured smile.

  “I’m serious. I’ve got bad feelings about this place. We shouldn’t be here now.”

  “Repent! Repent! Amen! Amen!” urged the passionate voice of a sidewalk preacher who was obscured from Al and Tommy’s view by a crowd of curious shoppers, surrounding the evangelist.

  “Keep walking. Keep walking,” Al told himself. Do I know that voice? Who is that preacher?

  “Headache. I’m getting a headache,” Tommy complained.

  “Your days are numbered; maybe this is your last day,” the preacher proclaimed.

  “It could be if the Apostles get me,” Al told Tommy.

  “No. No. Didn’t I tell you? I’ve got your back,” Tommy said as he winced and massaged his aching head with one hand.

  “It’ll come when you least expect it. Are you ready?” challenged the preacher as he rose above the crowd around him by stepping up on a street bench.

  “Oh no, you’ve got to be kidding. I don’t believe it,” Al said. “Phil? It’s Phil!”

  “The Chameleon. The crazy Chameleon,” Tommy said. “It figures. He loses the election and turns into a doomsday prophet,” he told Al before shouting out to Phil. “Hey, man! I got it! Thanks for the tip. I’ll mark it on my calendar. The world comes to an end next week!”

  Phil turned toward Tommy, stared at him in silence for a few seconds and said, “I’ll say it again. It will come when you least expect it. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, right!” Tommy replied before he turned, grabbed Al by the arm, and continued up the street. “Let’s go.”

  “Now I’ve got a bad feeling about us being here,” Al told Tommy. “Maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that we ran into Phil. He’s crazy, but I keep thinking about the Apostles and the accident they have planned for me. So when Phil said, ‘It’ll come when you least expect it,’ was he warning me about the Apostles? Does he know something about it?”

  “You’re beginning to scare me. He didn’t even see us before he said it the first time.”

  “That’s right, but I don’t need any reminders about being a target of the Apostles.”