Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

Jacob could actually feel the relief emit from his pores. He decided he’d take a kidnapping at this point. Ransom, being released. He was down with that. Please be a kidnapping, he found himself thinking.

“My family has money, sir,” Jacob said, carefully trying to keep the terror out of his voice and failing.

“Yes, they do,” the man said pleasantly. He could have been the DJ for a classical music station. “That’s precisely the problem. They have too much money and too little sense. They own a Mercedes McLaren, a Bentley—oh, and a Prius. How green of them. You can thank their hypocrisy for bringing you here. Unfortunately for you, your father seems to have forgotten his Exodus twenty, verse five: ‘For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons.’”

Jacob twitched violently in the hard chair as a stainless-steel pistol barrel softly caressed his right cheek.

“Now I’m going to ask you some questions,” his captor said. “Your answers are very, very important. You’ve heard of pass-fail, haven’t you?”

The pistol jabbed hard into Jacob’s face, its hammer cocking with a sharp click.

“This test you’re about to take is pass-die. Now, question one: What was your nanny’s name?”

Who? My nanny? Jacob thought. What the hell was this?

“R-R-Rosa?” Jacob said.

“That’s right. Rosa. So far, so good, Master Dunning. Now, what was her last name?”

Oh, shit, Jacob thought. Abando? Abrado? Something. He didn’t know. The sweet, silly woman that he had played hide-and-seek with. Who’d fed him after school. Rosa, pressing her warm cheek against his as she helped him blow out the candles on his birthday cake. How could he not know her last name?

“Time’s up,” the man sang.

“Abrado?” Jacob said.

“Not even close,” the man said in disgust. “Her name was Rosalita Chavarria. She was a person, you see. She actually had a first and a last name. Just like you. She was flesh and blood. Just like you. She died last year, you know. A year after your parents fired her because she was becoming forgetful, she went back to her home country. Which leads us to our third question: What was Rosa’s home country?”

How the hell had this guy known about Rosa’s termination? Who was this? A friend of hers? He didn’t sound Hispanic. Again, what was this?

“Nicaragua?” Jacob tried.

“Incorrect again. She was from Honduras. A month after she returned to a one-room shack owned by her sister, she had to go for a hysterectomy. In a substandard hospital outside of Tegucigalpa, she was given a tainted transfusion of blood and contracted HIV. Honduras has the highest concentration of AIDS in the Western Hemisphere. Did you know that? Sure you did.

“Now, question four: What is the average life span in Honduras for an HIV-positive person? I’ll give you a hint. It’s a hell of a lot less than the fifteen years it is in this country.”

Jacob Dunning began to cry.

“I don’t know. How would I know? Please.”

“That won’t do, Jacob,” the man said, jamming and twisting the barrel of the gun painfully against his teeth. “Perhaps I’m not making myself clear enough. There’ll be no Ivy League A in this class. No tutors. No helpful strategies to maximize your score. You can’t cheat, and the results are ultimate. This is a test that you’ve had your whole life to study for, but I have the feeling you were slacking off. So I’d try to think a little bit harder. HIV-positive life span in Honduras! Answer now!”

Chapter 3

IT WAS THE Catholic grammar school version of March Madness in Holy Name’s gym that Sunday around noon. A deafening chaos of ringing basketballs, screaming cheerleaders, and howling sugar-crazed kids rolling over the laminated hardwood on Heelys rose to the angel-carved rafters.

In addition to the noise, it was overly hot, dusty, and crowded, and I couldn’t have been happier.

I found myself where I always do when chaos is present, smack-dab in the middle of it. With a whistle around my neck, I was standing at center court, overseeing layup and passing drills as our JV squad, the Holy Name Bulldogs, warmed up. St. Ann’s, our crosstown rival from Third Avenue, was doing the same at the opposite end of the court.

Having one son, Ricky, on the varsity squad and another, Eddie, on the JV, I’d somehow found myself nodding in the affirmative when I was asked by the principal, Sister Sheilah, to replace the JV’s coach. At first I’d been reluctant. Hello? Single dad, ten kids? Like I didn’t have enough to do? But Sister Sheilah can smell a sucker like me from two miles away.

From ball-handling drills to doing the Xs and Os on the chalkboard to even putting away the folding chairs after the game, I’d actually come to get a kick out of

coaching. I don’t know if any of my 0-and-6 Bulldogs were NBA-bound, but witnessing them gain confidence in themselves and watching the magic that came from going from a bunch of individuals to a somewhat cohesive team, I guess you could do worse things with a Sunday.

The crowd had become so loud at the tip-off that I almost didn’t hear the phone going off at my hip. I didn’t recognize the number as work, but that didn’t mean much. We rotated weekends on my new squad. Guess whose weekend this was?

“Bennett here,” I screamed into it.