ticket taker our tickets. Pounding techno music poured out of the speaker system. We found Jannie, Nana Mama, and Ali sitting in a cluster in the tenth and eleventh rows above center court.
“How’s it looking?” I asked, taking a seat beside my grandmother, Bree sitting down behind me with Jannie and Ali.
“Davidson versus Goliath,” said Nana Mama, who’d been a basketball fan forever. “And I hate to say it, but with a few notable exceptions, Davidson wasn’t looking too strong during warm-ups.”
“Where’s the faith, Nana?” Jannie said, sounding irritated. “We could see the breakthrough tonight. Anything’s possible once things start.”
“The way Georgetown’s been playing?” said Ali, who watches a lot of basketball with my grandmother. “Davidson’s going to get stomped.”
The music changed, the recording taken over by a live pep band playing, “Final Countdown.” Members of the Georgetown University Hoyas men’s basketball team charged onto the court with a full light show in progress.
The local crowd went wild, clapping and stomping their feet while the Hoyas went through a few last-minute layup drills.
“Here come the Wildcats!” Jannie said.
The Davidson College team ran out in their sweats and started their own final warm-up drills. As Nana Mama had said, with a few notable exceptions, the Wildcats looked nervous.
My oldest child, Damon, was one of the exceptions. A six-foot-five guard and three-point specialist who usually came off the bench, he entered the court looking all business and ready.
Damon had played at Division II Johns Hopkins, my alma mater. He played so well in a summer league that he attracted the attention of a Davidson coach, Jake Winston, who offered him a walk-on slot if he transferred.
Under Coach Winston’s guidance, Damon had blossomed into a solid NCAA Division I player.
“C’mon, Damon!” Jannie cried as he dribbled in and made a nice jump shot. She whistled and clapped, and that made me happy.
My older son’s basketball abilities came late and had been hard fought for. Athletically, Damon had long been overshadowed by Jannie’s track exploits. He was the sixth man on a team ranked fifth in the Atlantic Coast Conference. She was being recruited by the top track schools in the nation.
So it was nice seeing my boy get his chance in the spotlight. It was even better seeing how much his little sister was supporting him.
CHAPTER
14
NEAR DUPONT CIRCLE in Washington, DC, a man calling himself Pablo Cruz, a fit man with hawkish features wearing a Washington Nationals hoodie, jeans, and work boots, adjusted the shoulder straps of the heavy, black dry bag on his back.
He ambled down New Hampshire Avenue, then made a right on M Street. Near the bridge into Georgetown, he took a right onto Twenty-Sixth Street and went to the dead end.
Cruz glanced around before hurrying past a sign that said Rock Creek Park was closed after dark. Twenty yards downslope, he left the path, cut to his right, and peered up at the lights in the nearest apartment building, focusing on two windows on the third floor on adjacent walls of a corner.
When he got the angle on that corner right, still watching those two windows over his shoulder, he backed down the slope woods. He shuffled his feet through the leaves and wondered if his read of the city’s drainage schematics was correct.
His left heel found the edge of the corrugated drainpipe, and he smiled. Cruz got around and below it. He felt for the edge of the cover, found it, and retrieved a hammer, a chisel, and a headlamp from the dry bag.
Cruz turned on the lamp’s soft red light feature and waited until he heard a bus crossing the M Street Bridge over the park before attacking the spot welds that held the cover in place. Twenty minutes later, he pried the cover off and set it aside.
He turned the lamp off and returned it, along with his tools, to the dry bag, then sealed the bag and put it inside the drainpipe a few feet back. Then he replaced the cover and tamped it into place.
Done, he climbed above the pipe and looked at those windows on the third floor of the apartment building again. Cruz fixed the image in his mind.
He left then, angling back across the slope to the path up to Twenty-Sixth Street and telling himself he could find his way here again, even in the pitch-dark, even under the threat of death.
CHAPTER
15
AS BOTH TEAMS lined up at center court inside the Verizon Center, the overall height disparity was clearly in favor