Free Jump by Mike Lupica

smile of yours and a little shrug, like you wish you could say more.” Richie said, “I’ll take it from there.”
    “What does that mean, ‘take it from there’? You know what Donnie said.”
    Fuchs had come up from Washington last night and laid it all out for them, the way only Donnie could. Ellis had started to explain about that night, saying it wasn’t anything like it was coming out in the papers. Donnie had cut him off, “Ellis,
listen
to me: I don’t give a shit.” Ellis said, “Don’t you want to know what really happened?” and Donnie had said, “As a matter of fact, I don’t. What happened isn’t relevant. What’s relevant is how we handle it from here.” This was one of those times that Donnie said the D.C. after Washington stood for Damage Control.
    “I heard what Donnie said,” Richie said. “And I’m going to do what he said. I’m going to tell them I can’t talk about this, and I’m not going to talk about this, but as soon as there’s a time when I can, they won’t be able to shut me up.” Richie pulled over and let the Jeep idle for a minute in front of a red-barn-looking house with a porch in front. “We just got to make sure we don’t act fucked-up about this, Fresh. We can’t come off cockylike, but we can’t go hide under the bed either, ’cause we didn’t do anything.”
    Ellis said, “But—” and Richie said, “We didn’t do anything
criminal.
” Ellis, edgy, not sitting still, turned around again. The Taurus had passed when he pulled over, now it was coming back the other way. There was a guy in a blue suit behind the wheel, acting like he was lost, staring at some of the houses on the other side of the street.
    “Trust me,” Richie said.
    “You think this bitch is setting us up?”
    “Donnie does. Donnie thinks the phone will ring any day now, and it’ll be the bitch’s lawyer, expecting some money to change hands.”
    Ellis said, “Then what do we do?”
    Richie smiled. “It’s like Donnie said. We tell her she should’ve asked for money that night, I would’ve given her a hundred.”
    Donnie thought everybody was like him. Richie’d fix Donnie up with strange sometimes, and it made them laugh, he couldn’t even enjoy the hand on his dick because he was worrying about the other hand maybe ending up on his wallet.
    Richie said, “That’s Donnie. The thing that bothers me is, she waits a year. What is that? I understand, maybe she looks at Anita Hill—”
    Ellis Adair stopped him right there.
    “Anita who?”
    Richie just nodded, like it was an obvious question, Anita who?
    “You remember her. When they were trying to get that brother nominated for the Supreme Court, then this bitch comes forward and testifies about pubic hairs and that porno movie
Long Dong Silver
? I made you watch on television.”
    Richie did this, drew pictures for him.
    Richie said, “Anyway, this Anita Hill, she goes on to become the queen of the man-haters, even though the brother made the court. Donnie says she makes like ten thousand bucks a pop now, going around giving speeches about women rising up, kicking the shit out of men. The women all cheer, then she goes on to the next city, gets another ten thousand.”
    “I remember her now,” Ellis said. “You think that judge really did it?”
    “That’s just the point I’m trying to make here. All this time later, people still wonder if he tried to jump her or not. We got to play this better than he did, so when this is all over, people aren’t saying, ‘You think Ellis Adair gang-banged her?’ ”
    Putting it all on me, Ellis thought. He didn’t say anything, not out loud, but to himself he repeated,
Ellis Adair gang-banged her.
    “People didn’t know shit about Clarence Thomas. The judge. They know you, though, Fresh. They want to believe you’re innocent. They don’t want to buy into some woman waited a year to yell rape.” Richie put the Jeep into gear and pulled away from the red-barn-looking